Top News Stories
A New Approach To Collaboration and Enterprise Content Management (Informationweek)
Larry Hawkins has a problem. Actually, he has several million. The company he works for, First Energy, generates 2 million e-mails a week. Then there are untold Word documents, spreadsheets, CAD files, videos, and other pieces of content flooding the company.

Microsoft To Offer Office Online for Free, Apparently (Redmond Channel Partner)
We were wondering when this would happen. We’ve asked here many times over the last couple of years whether we’d ever see a true hosted version of Office from Microsoft — and unless Stephen Elop somehow falls from power and Microsoft changes direction dramatically in the months to come, the answer appears to be yes.

Microsoft’s 2009 To-do list: Deliver Services, Get Virtualized, Storm the Googleplex (Network World)
It has been a year of transition for Microsoft in 2008, with the biggest being co-founder and company icon Bill Gates stepping aside and Ray Ozzie assuming the role of chief software architect. On the technology side, Microsoft’s services push dominated its agenda. Microsoft introduced Azure, its cloud operating system, and released online versions of Exchange and SharePoint, two of its most popular infrastructure servers. “Exchange Online could be a sleeper product,” says Peter O’Kelly, principal analyst with O’Kelly Consulting. In addition, the company revealed it was developing for the first time Web-based online versions of popular Office applications. It’s all a set-up for what will define Microsoft’s 2009. Here is a look at five key issues and a handful of honorable mentions that will be in the spotlight over the next 12 months.

Microsoft: Big Security Hole in All IE Versions (The Washington Post)
On Wednesday, Security Fix warned readers about a newly-discovered security hole in Internet Explorer 7. I’m posting this again because Microsoft now says the flaw affects all supported versions of IE, and because security experts are warning that a large number of sites are being compromised in an effort to exploit this vulnerability and install malware on vulnerable systems.

Windows 7 Performance Whoops Vista and XP (IT Wire)
The latest Windows 7 6965 build has been tested by ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, and his results show that Microsoft’s promise of a vastly improved Windows experience in Windows 7 is coming true – despite 6956 not even yet at official “beta” status.

Microsoft, Google Provide Great Web Joust in 2008 (eWeek)
Though always rivals, 2008 was the year Google and Microsoft officially recognized each other as archenemies, firing shot after shot across each other’s bows in search, mobile Web and browsers. The arrival of Google Chrome and the Android G1 and the expectations of Microsoft Windows Azure should make for a number of interesting battles in Web services, cloud computing, search engines, and mobile and wireless controls in 2009.

Down To Business: Rumble In The Cloud: Salesforce Vs. Microsoft (Informationweek)
Two distinct cultures, two different commercial priorities, but a similar message: Amid the economic downturn, the time is now for IT organizations to consider moving their IT resources into the cloud.

Can Microsoft Juggle Three Operating Systems? (PC World)
Microsoft’s tricky balancing act in 2009 will be to phase out Windows XP while boosting demand for Windows Vista and building anticipation for Windows 7.

Around the Blogosphere
Everything You Need to Know about BDC: Part 3 of 8 (SharePoint Magazine)
Welcome to part three of our BDC series.  In this article our focus will be on consuming Web Services from BDC.  It will cover the value of Web Services, how to develop the Web Services to be BDC capable, and introduce how the Application Definition File describes these Web Services.  We will building on what we learned in the first two articles, so if you’re still learning BDC and haven’t gone through those yet, you are encouraged to go back and read them.  Since this article covers the programming of Web Services, it will be more developer-oriented.

What is SharePoint Development? Notes From the Field (Jeff Webb)
I just got back doing a series of training courses across the South and met a lot of excellent people dealing with SharePoint as a new technology. Here are some notes: Folks like “fer-instances”. Fer instance: you need to create a way for users to sign up for a class with limited seating. To do that in SharePoint…

Credit Crunch SharePoint (Andy Dale)
As Christmas approaches many businesses and organisations are starting to feel the pinch of the Credit Crunch all over the world. Many employees are having to pay for their own meal at the Office Christmas parties and the number of corporate gifts in circulation seems to be less this year. It is now nearly the middle of December and still the Officetalk office awaits it’s first Christmas card of the year. Gone are the days when company’s marketing departments sent all their customers calendars of lovely local views.

Power User Toolbox: JavaScript for SharePoint – Pt9 (EndUser SharePoint)
If you use the Content Editor Web Part to embed JavaScript on your SharePoint pages, you run the risk of someone with edit rights wiping out your scripts.  I will present some strategies for preventing that.  Since some of these techniques could lock everyone out, we also need to review the exit strategy.

Welcome to the SharePoint Dev Wiki! (SharePoint Dev Wiki)
As promised by Jeremy Thake, this wiki will hopefully act as a more structured online resource for SharePoint Development which will incorporate not only its own content, but references to Blogs, Forums, Wikis, List Serves, Social Bookmarks, White Papers, Microsoft sites and anywhere else that SharePoint Development is being mentioned on line.

Administrator, Specialist, Consultant, Architect or Guru (Liam Cleary)
Like most of you I would assume that you have had various job titles and sometimes they change with the times. I started life as an IT Trainer, progressed to an Internet Developer, had a few more in-between and am now a Principle Consultant. I remember when it was kind of cool to be called a technologist or an evangelist but now you don’t see many jobs asking for that anymore. So what is so special about job titles and why do we get so hung up on them?

Your IT Guy is Not Your Mom – Announcing the SharePoint User Registration Accelerator (The Bamboo Team Blog)
When I was a little kid, and I got hungry, I would immediately alert my mom. In most cases, she would make me something to eat. In some cases (like when my mouth was full of cookies), she would not. This worked out okay for a while, until I got older, and like many teenage males with metabolisms similar to velociraptors, I started being hungry basically all of the time. If my mom had been required to make me a sandwich every time I was hungry, she may as well have put on a visor and a little headset, and just stood in the kitchen all day.

Modifying the Zone Configuration of a SharePoint Web Part Page (SharePoint Blank)
Today’s question comes not from the SharePoint Blank “mailbag,” but from a question that was posed to me the other day by my manager.  He was looking to reconfigure the Zone layout that had been applied to one of the existing Web Parts pages in our team site.

Introduction to SharePoint Administration (SharePoint for Administrators)
Welcome to the SharePoint Administration community area.  This site was designed to be a resource for pointing you to the most critical resources.  You don’t have to talk to many administrators to know that many of the best resources are found in blogs.  The design of this site is really to help you find the information you’re looking for without having to scour the Web yourself.

Microsoft Updates
MS08-077: Description of the security update for SharePoint Server: December 9, 2008 (Microsoft Knowledge Base Article – KBAlertz)
Microsoft has released security bulletin MS08-077. To view the complete security bulletin, visit one of the following Microsoft Web sites:

MSDN Architecture Center (Shared Points for SharePoint…)
The unified knowledge base and latest news on Architecture (MS and non MS sources) is at http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture  Learn about MS’ Gen-4 Datacenter Vision, the call for papers for the Arc track of TechEd 2009 NA (you still have time to submit but it goes quickly!), the recently launched v3 of the Threat Modeling tool, the latest ARCasts, blog posts, forum threads and much, much more.

Unit testing MOSS part 2 (of 2) (Shared Points for SharePoint…)
In the 1. article on Unit testing MOSS I described some of the findings and experience on unit testing SharePoint applications using the TypeMock Isolator framework. In this 2. article I will provide some examples of unit tests.

SharePoint Events
December 15, Amman, Jordan, Jordan SharePoint User Group
December 16, New York, New York, Leveraging SharePoint and the Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure – Programs, Products, and Prizes!
December 17, Iselin, New Jersey, NJ SharePoint User Group
December 17, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
December 17, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Administration Webinar
December 18, Online, What’s New from Bamboo
December 18, Louisville, Kentucky, Kentucky SharePoint Users Group
December 18, Virginia Beach, Virginia, Hampton Roads SQL Server and SharePoint User Group
December 24, Melbourne, Australia, Microsoft Office System Special Interest Group
December 30, Online, What’s New from Bamboo

January 7, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
January 7, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Administration Webinar
January 10, Virginia Beach, Virginia, SharePoint Saturday
January 14, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
January 14, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Administration Webinar
January 15, Online, What’s New from Bamboo
January 21, New York, New York, 2009 IMAGINE Event — SharePoint in the Real World
January 27-29, San Francisco, California, SPTechCon

February 2-4, San Diego, California, SharePoint Best Practices Conference
February 7, Kansas City, Kansas, SharePoint Saturday

* Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event in our listing.

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