Posts

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Google Search Suggestions


As you’ve probably noticed, Google has recently started to suggest auto-completes for your searches…at first this annoyed me but now I quite like it. Not so much because it saves me an all important 0.75 seconds when searching but because it’s a great source of amusement; seeing what has been searched for, and how many people have used that search is brilliant! Here are some examples:

google1

Not by using the internet!
Not by using the internet!
Looks like some people have watched Twilight too much!
Looks like some people have watched Twilight too much!

There are quite a few more just using “how to”…some surprisingly rude, (although with it being the internet perhaps not that surprising!) which I decided not to put up here.

This is another favourite of mine:

That bloomin' Matt!
That bloomin' Matt!

Is this the same “Matt” who keeps getting lost or does this show that all people called Matt are no good at being on time?!

One thing I find a little odd (what with it being the internet) is that “porn” doesn’t come up with any suggestions…I was at least expecting to see “How to become a porn star” but no! However, there are 54,000 searches for:

Cheap Transition metals...
Cheap Transition metals...

I’d love to see what great examples you can find 🙂

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Microsoft Online/BPOS Guide


I’ve been working with Microsoft for months on BPOS, their Software Plus Services offering and getting the word out to customers etc…helping them align their business decisions with MS Online and more. I think that MS Online Services are excellent and will be a real game changer-allowing end users to increase profitability while simultaneously reducing costs and streamlining processes…what more could you want?! 🙂

I’ve put together a guide to MS Online Services (collectively called BPOS) over at:

https://richardgibbonsuk.wordpress.com/ms-onlinebpos/

which should answer most questions you might have. I’m constantly updating it as I discover/remember more info but please feel free to leave a comment if you’re question hasn’t been answered.

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Azurelight


Microsoft Architect Aleksey Savateyev is building a basic product support app…that is based in the cloud and is to be called “Azurelight”. It will collect feedback about products and allow users to exchange opinions on the products too. “It’s also intended to be used by developers as a reference application utilizing both Windows Azure and Silverlight for rich yet scalable and highly available business solutions…” as described by Savateyev himself.

Mary Jo Foleyreports that as well as utilizing Azure & Silverlight (as it’s name suggests) Azurelight will also use Microsoft’s ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services (aka Astoria) and SQL Data Services.

azurelight

Once it’s all up and running “sometime in the summer” of 2009 (via MSDN it seems) this should be a great example of what Microsoft’s technologies, both cloud and programming, can do 🙂

I’m excited about this program and as the source code will be released Free of Charge, I hope I’ll be able to make full use of Azurelight!

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Flutter-The New Twitter?


Are Tweets too long for you? Do Twitters 140 characters weigh you down? Would you rather Flap than Tweet?

If so-Flutter could be the hot new thing for you:

 

Although just a joke, this does say something about the way things are going…and certainly how people not “with it” perceive sites like Twitter.

The big question is-how long until this becomes real?!

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Sharepoint Online & Groove


This week I ‘ave been mostly…using Groove.

Groove has been the one bit of MS technology that I’ve never taken a look at before and I’ve always thought it was a bit pointless…but not anymore! Now I think it’s awesome and perhaps the best product they’ve got, alongside Sharepoint. I’ve had it installed for years as part of Office ’07 but I have literally never opened it up until this week. The thing that prompted me was this post here over on Dutch Technet about using it with Sharepoint Online and as MS Online is my big thing-I figured it was worth investigating.

Groove is essentially a collaboration tool that let’s you create “workspaces” and then invite co-workers and/or external people to join; you can then share and edit files, chat via IM, track issues, play chess (!) and more-all with a minimum amount of effort. As an example, I’ve created a MS Online/BPOS workspace and have invited the various people involved @ MS-this way we can share info, ask questions and keep updated much easier than simply via email.

The Technet post revealed to me that you can link Groove to Sharepoint and thus share files from your site collections without the hassle/cost of giving users direct access to Sharepoint…even better, you can do this with Sharepoint Online too!

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Internet Explorer 8.1 is an April Fool


Internet Explorer 8.1 AKA “Eagle Eyes” has been all over the net this afternoon, sitting on the Front Page of Digg and Techmeme…but it’s an April Fool’s joke-at least according to Mary Jo.

It did perhaps sound too good…faster Javascript and better Acid 3 testing and, best of all, support for Firefox extensions. Would MS really have released IE8 without these features if they were so close at hand? Apparently not…

I thought it was against the rules to do the pranks early so I think that means the joke is on you Jacob Gube (technically) Good skills though 🙂

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Windows 7 Release Candidate


Thanks to some eagle eyed spotting by Ars Technica, we now know that the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) is slated for a May 2009 release-(that’s only 5 weeks away!) and will run through until June 2010.

Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions will be available in English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. The hardware requirements remain unchanged:

  • 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor or higher
  • 1 GB of system memory or more
  • 16 GB of available disk space
  • Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
  • DVD-R/W Drive

rcleakdate2

I think this will see another wave of people moving into the world of Windows 7, there are a few people at work who’ve been too scared/cautious to install the beta but can’t wait to get hold of the RC 🙂

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Samsung say Windows 7 beats Linux


I just saw over on Endgadget that Samsung’s European Product Manager Patrick Pavel has said he expects Windows 7 to spell the end for Linux on Netbooks 🙂

That’s yet another great compliment for Windows 7-and it’s not even finished yet!

He also said that, depending on licence fees, Samsung would like to include some of the higher end versions of Windows 7 on their netbooks…that would excellent!

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No need to wait for Windows 7 SP1


Gartner have said something that I suspect many thought they’d never hear in these post-Vista years…there is no need to wait for Windows 7 SP1 before you get it installed or to quote:

“The first Service Pack for Windows 7 is not necessary for the operating system’s stability and security readiness…”

How awesome is that?! Windows 7 is not even at Release Candidate stage and it’s already super stable!

This is yet another example of how different Windows 7 is to Vista and really helps to show the vast improvements Microsoft have made.

Are you looking to deploy Windows 7 in your corporate environment before SP1?

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Outlook/Sharepoint Problem


I had a funny little issue with my PC at work that took me a fair while to figure out today. I’d set up a new Site Collection in Sharepoint and connected it to Outlook (something that I’d never done before) and it was excellent…I could see all the different documents (Excel sheets, Word docs etc) in Outlook just as I could in the portal…nice 🙂

However after a while I noticed that Outlook was taking it’s time to send mails etc and then when I tried to swap to another application-it all went wrong! Apps started “not responding”, hanging, the works…a quick CTRL+SHIFT+ESC and Task Manager showed OUTLOOK.EXE on 99%…WTF!!! I killed the process tree and restarted Outlook but to no avail…I rebooted my  machine too but it was useless; my processor was maxed out.

I started turning off add-ins in the Trust Center and then noticed 3 search/index related processes in Task Manager so I killed those and disabled indexing of the Sharepoint list I’d created. This was bound to work so I closed and re-opened Outlook and it was on 37%…not brilliant but better, then all of a sudden BOOM-99% again…holy maxed out processor Batman!

After having a look online I became pretty sure that it was related to .PST files but I was equally sure that I didn’t have a .PST file so that left me in something of a conundrum! However I went off to have a look anyway in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\<PST File name>

and what I found was interesting. While there was no Outlook .PST there WAS a Sharepoint List .PST…I deleted that and lo and behold, Outlook started behaving again (I also deleted the list from Outlook).

While I was happy to sort the problem out and be able to use my PC properly again, I am sad that I seemingly can’t have Sharepoint lists in Outlook 😦 Perhaps if I’d left it for a while the indexing would have finished and calmed the processor down but I just don’t have time for that…if anyone’s got any ideas please let me know!

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