Top News Stories
Survey: Despite Increasing Sophistication in Web Threats and Cybercrime, Most SharePoint™ Users Are Inadequately Protected (Trend Micro)
There appears to be a void in security around companies’ Microsoft SharePoint infrastructure even though SharePoint usage is on the rise. This puts SharePoint servers and employee PCs at risk for data-stealing malware; outside customers, clients, partners, and remote employees who share the same collaboration platform also become vulnerable to the growing complexity of Web threats that can spread silently, but destructively.

Internet Hits Milestone, Surpassing 1 Billion Monthly Users (NetworkWorld)
The Internet last month passed a major milestone. The number of worldwide Internet users passed the 1 billion mark for the first time in December, according to online researcher ComScore, Inc. With about 18% of total global Internet users, China had the largest online audience with 180 million Internet users in December, ComScore said. The United States came in second with 163,300 users or a share of 16.2%, while Japan housed the third largest online audience 59,993 users or 6% of the worldwide total in the month. Germany came in fourth with 3.7% of Internet users and the U.K. was fifth with 3.6%.

In Cloud We Trust? (Read Write Web)
Cloud computing may have been one of the biggest “buzzwords” (buzz phrases?) of this past year. From webmail to storage sites to web-based applications, everything online was sold under a new moniker in 2008: they’re all “cloud” services now. Yet even though millions of internet users make use of these online services in some way, it seems that we haven’t been completely sold on the cloud being any more safe or stable than data stored on our own computers.

Symantec Merges Web 2.0 With Cloud Computing (bMighty)
As more and more businesses embrace SaaS and cloud computing, workers faced with juggling more and more online workspaces. With an ambitious new beta program, Symantec hopes to unify these disparate workspaces so everything’s accessible with a single password. “It [Symantec GoEverywhere] uses Web 2.0 to resolve the management problems we’ve seen with the cloud computing paradigm shift,” says Don Kleinschnitz, Symantec vice president and general manager Symantec GoEverywhere.

Windows Live and Office Live Merge, But I’m Still Confused About What They Do (CIO)
Any news late last week about Microsoft would have been overshadowed by its 800 lb. gorilla announcement about layoffs and weak earnings. So it’s easy to understand why Microsoft’s decision to merge Windows Live and Office Live into one online portal slipped through the cracks. This isn’t earth-shattering news, but it does represent a shift in Microsoft’s focus to consolidate its services online, make them accessible and market them. This merging would have happened regardless of Microsoft’s current financial predicament.

Windows 7 Build 7025 Is Live, Forget Beta Build 7000 (Softpedia)
Forget Windows 7 Beta Build 7000, Microsoft has already moved past what Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, referred to as the four core development milestones of the next iteration of the Windows client (M1, M2, M3 and Beta). In this context, the Redmond company has already debuted the testing of post-Beta builds for Windows 7. The leaked screenshots and version information available for Windows 7 post-Beta Build 7025 are illustrative examples of Win 7′s evolution. At this point in time, Windows 7 Build 6.1.7025.0.090120-1850 is live and already deployed in testing environments.

Windows XP Upgrades: Why You Must Start Planning Now (IT World)
An XP-to-Vista migration may not be in the cards for everybody, but at this point, the jump to Windows 7 is inevitable for XP users. A recent report from IT research firm TAC (The Advisory Council) highlights the most efficient ways to roll out Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrades. One key message: if you are not upgrading in 2009 you should at least be planning to do so.

Microsoft Reveals EC’s Plans for Windows Browser (ZDNet)
The European Commission is considering forcing Microsoft to distribute rival browsers as part of Windows, the software maker disclosed in a regulatory filing on 22 January. As part of its quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission filed on Thursday, the software maker offered more details on the Commission’s statement in which it objected to Microsoft’s inclusion of a browser in Windows, saying it could violate antitrust law.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Inches Toward Release (InformationWeek)
The latest version of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s Web browser, Internet Explorer 8, inched closer toward release today, as Microsoft will make the software’s first release candidate available for download this afternoon. Microsoft’s been putting IE8 through the paces in beta for months, and with the software now feature complete, the company’s ready to push it down the homestretch. However, it’s still unclear when the final version will be ready other than sometime this year before Windows 7 comes out.

Around the Blogosphere
Book Review: Seamless Teamwork – Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways (Michael Gannotti)
So, your IT department has rolled out SharePoint and as someone in one of your company’s line of business you are wondering just what on earth you are supposed to do with it. You have heard that it helps with collaboration, can help small project teams work better together, but you really need someone to take you by the hand and help you get started without a lot of muss and fuss. After all learning SharePoint is not your job, meeting your business objectives is. If SharePoint can help you meet those objectives easier well then great! If not it’s just another tool thrown at you that frankly is going to be left by the wayside while you continue working the way you have for years.

TDD in SharePoint Using DI – Summary (Andrew Woodward)
This post is part of a series on Test Driven Development – Using Dependency Injection. In this 5 part series we refactored the solution developed in our white paper Unit Testing SharePoint – Getting into the Object Model to make the code more testable, and enable us to work within the available features of TypeMock Isolator for SharePoint.

SharePoint Sticky Sessions and Persistence (SharePoint Joel)
Try to find the answer to that in the docs.  It doesn’t say. Why? Because it depends… With WSS if you’re using NTLM you might never notice if you didn’t setup persistent connections.  With plastic SharePoint you could use it as a document sharing platform and never require persistence. If you’re using Basic over SSL you definitely will.  You’ll get prompted twice. If you’re using forms and cookies, again, you’re going to have issues. If you’re using client certificates, again, issues. Kerberos? don’t even think about it.

SharePoint 101 to the Rescue: Help, I Lost a Web Part! (EndUser SharePoint)
Wanda emailed me in a panic this morning… something about working in a production environment and losing a web part along the way. She took the Fundamentals of SharePoint Dashboards online workshop last week and was in the process of implementing a solution to show visual indicators in WSS lists.

Big Changes in Performance Point Server and MOSS! I Cant Wait! (Darrin Bishop)
This is great for the SharePoint world!  Last week Microsoft announced that anyone who purchased MOSS Enterprise with Software Assurance would now be able to access Performance Point Server with no additional CALs.   I had heard about this sometime ago.  But wait there is more. Performance Point Server is actually “two” products lanning Server – Supports the planning of an organization. Monitoring and Analytics Server  – Dashboards, charts, graphs and KPIs.

Control Workflow Behavior with Custom Lists (Again) (Paul Galvin)
Earlier this month, I put together an article originally planned for Mark Miller’s www.endusersharepont.com.  However, I instead used like Dustin Hoffman used a cross at the end of The Graduate to fend off my (awesome! friendly!) editor at TechTarget. This is another SharePoint Designer workflow article in the same vein as my more recent effort here: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/?p=1226 (“Use Control Lists to Create Flexible Workflow Solutions”).

Customizing a SharePoint Library (Part 5): Columns (SharePoint Blank)
We’re nearing the end of my look at the customization options associated with SharePoint libraries (and it’s a good thing, since I need to clear the decks in order to begin shifting my focus to best practices as a warm-up for my coverage of the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in San Diego next week), so I’ll only have to offer my now-standard proviso once more after today.  That proviso is that even though I happen to be looking at a Customize page for a Picture Library, the customization options are almost identical for document libraries, and I’ll be pointing out the differences as they occur.  And with that out of the way, let’s take a look at the options associated with the Columns module:

SharePoint Support for iCalendar Using the MashPoint REST API (MashPoint)
In my last post where I introduced you to our new MashPoint REST API for SharePoint I showed you how to access entities in MashPoint (or MOSS BDC) in a RESTful way. But that’s just one part of the story, most of your data is probably stored in SharePoint and you want to be able to access this data using the API too. In this post I will show you our support for the iCalendar format. It is a standard “file” format for calendars tasks and meetings. From now on I will refer to this as a “representation” and not file format. At the heart of an RESTful API is the notion of being able to get resources in different representations. If we look at the default representation of a SharePoint calendar it is it’s HTML representation.

Microsoft User Research in Atlanta and Boston (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Starting in 2009 Microsoft User Research is planning a series of user research studies during February and March timeframes in the Boston and Atlanta areas for several of Microsoft’s product groups.

Microsoft Updates
You cannot browse to an SSL-secured Office SharePoint Server 2007 site or to the Search Settings page for a Shared Services Provider (KBAlertz – Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
You cannot browse a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-secured Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site or to the Search Settings page for a Shared Services Provider (SSP). Additionally, when you examine the Application log on the server in the server farm that is running Office SharePoint Server 2007, you see that an Error event ID 6482 was logged every minute. The following event entry is an example of one of the Error events:

Demo: Display Data From Multiple Sources in a Single Data View (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer)
With Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you can link two or more data sources that contain related data and then create a single Data View that displays data from those linked data sources. In the example in this video, product information is stored in an .xml file named Products.xml. Information about product categories is stored in another .xml file named Categories.xml. The two data sources are related to one another by a field named CategoryID. Watch how you can first link these two data sources and then use that linked data source to create a Data View that displays the products organized by category.

Watch This: Customize a Site (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS))
In this demo I show how to easily customize a site, right from the browser, so that users know where they are at just a glance. The scenario is based on the Adventure Works Marketing team which likes their new site, but wants to make it distinct from other sites within the company.

SharePoint Events
January 27, Christchurch, New Zealand, Christchurch SharePoint User Group
January 27-29, San Francisco, California, SPTechCon
January 28, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
January 28, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
January 28, Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland SharePoint User Group
January 28, Melbourne, Australia, Microsoft Office System Special Interest Group
January 29, Online, What’s New from Bamboo
January 29, Richmond, Virginia, Richmond SharePoint User Group Meeting
January 30, Online, Become Your Company’s SharePoint SuperStar!

February 2-4, San Diego, California, SharePoint Best Practices Conference
February 4, New York, New York, Case Studies in SharePoint Dashboards
February 4, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
February 4, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
February 7, Kansas City, Kansas, SharePoint Saturday
February 11, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
February 11, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
February 12, Online, What’s New from Bamboo
February 17, Milan, Italy, SharePoint Administrators Summit
February 19, Falls Church, Virginia, PMI Washington DC – Skyline Luncheon
February 21, New York, New York, SharePoint Saturday
February 26, Online, What’s New from Bamboo

March 23, Baltimore, Maryland, SharePoint .Org Conference

April 6-8, London, England, SharePoint Best Practices Conference
April 6-8 Montreal, Quebec, SharePoint Summit 2009

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

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