I am starting to think that little things like privacy and security are things of the past. I’ve lost track of how many emails I have received over the last few weeks saying that my email address may have been stolen. The PlayStation Network was hacked and info was stolen. Microsoft, Google and Apple have all admitted that our phones may or may not be tracking us (depending on who you talk to). My bank has mailed me new debit cards at least 3 times last year due to possible security issues. Maybe I should make things easier for the hackers and start publishing all my info at the end of every Daily post.   [:P]    /whining   — Chris

Top News Stories
Collaboration: Far More than Just a Buzzword (CFO World)
Procurement departments are the front line gatekeepers to many software vendors seeking to sell their solutions to an organisation. Ask a procurement agent if managing software vendors is difficult, and he or she will reply that the most challenging, yet insulting, aspect is that most vendors scatter industry buzzwords without much appreciation of their true meaning. For example, the word ‘synergy’ has been copied from movies into the business world to confuse issues or to create an appearance of intelligence on the part of software vendors.

Is Internet Explorer 9 Now the Safest Web Browser? (Security News Daily)
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 comes with an advanced security feature that makes it much safer than other Web browsers, including Google Chrome, according to a computer researcher. Internet Explorer has long been a favorite target of cybercriminals; security holes are regularly found in older versions of the popular browser, leaving it easily exploitable for a number of different attacks. But with the March 14 release of IE9, Microsoft may have finally gotten things right, Ed Bott of the security website ZDNet says.

Windows Azure: Microsoft’s In It For The Long Run (CRN)
At its recent Convergence conference Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) unveiled plans to develop cloud versions of its Dynamics ERP applications by adapting them to run on the company’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform. Azure has been available since Feb. 1, 2010 and Microsoft has been promoting it as the cloud development platform for ISVs and partners. Some observers noted the irony that it took Microsoft more than a year to commit to developing its own applications on Azure — that’s a long time to wait to eat your own dog food, as it were.

U.S. OKs Expiration of Microsoft Antitrust Deal (InformationWeek)
Attorneys for the Department of Justice and several states told a judge on Wednesday that they would not raise any objections to next month’s expiration of Microsoft’s decade-old antitrust settlement with the U.S government. The plaintiffs’ attorneys told U.S. DC District Court judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that they believed Microsoft has met the terms of the settlement, which mainly required the company to share Windows APIs and other key technical information with the broader tech industry and provide licenses on reasonable terms.

Windows Phone 7 Gets Hit Again — Developers are Losing Interest in Writing Apps for it (ComputerWorld)
New research shows that developers are losing interest in writing apps for Windows Phone 7. Combined with a separate report showing that consumer interest is waning as well, it appears that Microsoft’s phone platform is losing steam. A joint survey between IDC and appcelerator about developer interest in smartphone platforms has bad news for Windows Phone 7. Only 29% of developers say they are very interested in writing apps for the platform — a drop of 7% from a quarter ago. That 29% is just barely above the percentage of developers who said they would be very interested back in September, before Windows Phone 7 was released.

Windows 7 Helps Microsoft boost OS share to 78.6% (CIO)
Microsoft’s Windows accounted for 78.6 per cent of worldwide operating system revenue in 2010, up nearly a full percentage point, despite growth in Linux servers and Mac desktops, according to Gartner. Gartner’s new analysis adds up the revenue for both server and desktop operating systems worldwide, comparing Microsoft to IBM, HP, Oracle, Red Hat and Apple.

Google Apps Echoes Microsoft Office 365 with Flexible Billing (eWeek)
Google has revised its Google Apps for Business pricing to make it more attractive to small businesses, offering a $5 per user, per month plan that follows Microsoft’s flexible pricing scheme. The search engine also lowered its paid service entry level from shops with 50 users to 10, an effort to make more money from Google Apps in a hyper-competitive cloud collaboration software market.

White House Holds Forum on Transforming Government Technology [VIDEO] (Daily Caller)
It’s been over a year since America’s first chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, announced a nationwide effort to improve government information technology and consolidate federal databases. His 25-point implementation plan aims to close 800 data centers by 2015, which White House officials believe will save $3 billion annually. Kundra says that a typical data center spends roughly $450 million on electricity bills, but only 27 percent are operating at full capacity. Under his “cloud-first” initiative, Kundra is asking all departments to prioritize uploading data to cloud servers.

 

Around the Blogosphere
Is SharePoint Ready for Enterprise-Strength Applications? (SharePoint Magazine)
SharePoint is increasingly being deployed not just for simple collaborative tools, but as a robust platform for enterprise-wide requirements, for supporting numerous departments in mission-critical processes. A case in point is automated contract lifecycle management, which in our own experience, we are seeing a growing number of companies adopting, across multiple departments.

Building Windows Phone 7 Applications with SharePoint 2010 Products and Unified Access Gateway (UAG) (Mark Harrison blog)
This white paper describes how to build Windows Phone 7 applications with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products and Microsoft Unified Access Gateway (UAG). It provides business scenarios that can benefit from custom mobile applications that authenticate by using UAG and use the features of SharePoint 2010 Products for collaboration. It also introduces the concepts and code that are required to access SharePoint list data in a secure manner from a Windows Phone 7 device, and provides steps to install and configure a non-production instance of UAG for the purposes of developing and testing mobile applications for SharePoint 2010 Products.

Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010-Part 3 “The Environment” (Geoff Varosky’s Blog)
I know quite a few people have been waiting for this post. In this post we’ll cover the environment itself, which I have made mention of in Part 1 of this series, and went through more of the configuration in during Part 2. I even made mention of it during my session at SharePoint Saturday Boston on the same subject. I have been extremely busy over the past two weeks with work, and finally had a chance today to finally put the finish touches and testing on the environment, and it is now ready for release.

PowerShell Doesn’t Show All of your SharePoint 2010 Content Databases (The SharePoint Farmer’s Almanac)
Today SharePoint managed to freak me out for a few minutes. I was looking at a customer’s farm and when I ran the PowerShell cmdlet Get-SPContentDatabase it was only returning one content databases even though my farm has two content databases. The output looked like this. So then I thought about it and figured I had the problem where the account I was logged in as didn’t have access to the other databases. So then I grabbed Todd’s blog post on How to create a SharePoint 2010 admin account and stop using sp_farm because I knew it would jog my memory on how to give my account access to the databases. I ran through it and I still got just the two databases. UGH.

How to Get Someone to Edit a SharePoint Page for the Very First Time (SharePoint and Assessment Blog)
If you’re presenting on SharePoint, it can be a great idea to give attendees the opportunity to practice. Here is what I did at the Questionmark user conference, in case it helps others with similar needs. I wanted people to understand how easy it is to include a simple assessment in SharePoint (by editing a page and embedding an assessment with the Page Viewer web part). I knew many of my attendees would have laptops with them, so I decided  to break my talk  and have people sit in small groups using laptops and actually edit a page during my session.

Where are all the SharePoint Testers? (SharePoint Joel’s SharePoint Land)
A few weeks ago Mark Miller posted about “where have all the SharePoint Evangelists gone?”  He talked about my move to a nonprofit customer, and Bill English’s refocus, among other changes. My question is broader.  Why are there no real SharePoint testers to speak of.  I know Andrew Woodward focuses on testing, but with that’s more of an ISV tool or consulting for development and testers around agile development.  Have you see the 21Apps 21SCRUM? There’s some interesting info on team based development using SharePoint for dev tasks, testing including user stories.  Great example of building a sandbox solution as a tool.

SharePoint 2010 Lessons Learned, Part 8: ‘What? I Can’t Embed Video in a Blog Post? You’re Kidding, Right?’ (SharePoint Blank)
I may have mentioned the following video-related discovery earlier in this series but, if so, I’m pretty sure it would’ve been nothing more than a casual aside.  Well, it’s now time for me to devote a post to the matter.  As was the case with several of these lessons learned, at first I thought that surely it must be user error on my part … in this case, the only alternative explanation to user error seemed to be the frankly unbelievable notion that SharePoint 2010 didn’t support the embedding of video into blog posts out-of-the-box.  That couldn’t be right, could it?

 

SharePoint Job Listings*
SharePoint Systems Architect / Developer – Manassas, VA
Working with a team of top-notch developers, the Systems Architect will be involved in all aspects of the software development lifecycle.  This includes system architecture, design and coding as well as business analysis and requirements analysis. Responsibilities include consulting with clients and other team members to design, build, and manage web sites; working with project managers to negotiate contracts/agreements with software vendors and other companies; mentoring junior engineers; and perform tasks with a wide degree of creativity and latitude.

Technical Trainer – SharePoint – Madison, WI
We are currently assisting our client with their search for a Technical Trainer – SharePoint.  This is a direct hire position and will be responsible for conducting training and performing consulting services for the MS SharePoint application.   This position can be located in either Madison or Milwaukee, WI. Qualified candidates will possess the following experience:

 

Microsoft Updates
Deploy a Client Tool for Taking SharePoint Content Offline (Video) (Microsoft TechNet)
This video shows how to deploy Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 to SharePoint client machines so that end users can efficiently synchronize offline work with SharePoint sites. In order to benefit from this video, you should have expertise in the following areas: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 administration; SharePoint site administration; Microsoft Office 2010 policy deployment.

 

SharePoint Events*

• April 28, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Calendar & Scheduling Workshop
• April 28, Online – Going Social without Going Crazy, or Broke Webinar
• April 28, Online – Delivering SharePoint Success: Key Steps to Reap the Business Benefits
• April 28, Washington, DC – Networking Event: Women in Technology
• April 29, Alpharetta, GA – Executive Workshop: Empowering Your Organization with SharePoint 2010
• April 30, Copenhagen, Denmark - SharePoint Saturday
• April 30, St. Louis, Missouri – SharePoint Saturday
• May 2-4, San Diego, California – SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast Tour + Microsoft Bootcamp
• May 4, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
• May 4, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Essentials Webinar
• May 4, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Workflow Conductor Webinar
• May 4, Online – Accelerate Your SharePoint Adoption ROI: Ford Foundation and Forrester Make the Case for Smartlogic, Semantics & Semaphore Webinar
• May 5, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
• May 7, Houston, Texas - SharePoint Saturday
• May 7, Atlanta, Georgia – SharePoint Saturday
• May 9-11, San Francisco, California – SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast Tour + Microsoft Bootcamp
• May 10, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Essentials Webinar
• May 10, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Calendar and Scheduling Workshop
• May 10, Birmingham, Alabama – Birmingham SharePoint Users Group
• May 11, Online – The Shape of Collaboration to Come
• May 11, Cambridge, Massachusetts – Boston Area SharePoint Users Group
• May 12, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Data Visualization and Dashboarding Workshop
• May 12, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Lists Workshop
• May 14, Troy, Michigan – SharePoint Saturday
• May 16, Washington, D.C. – Department of State 2011 SharePoint Conference: Share the Power!
• May 17, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
• May 17, Las Vegas, Nevada - Leverage Microsoft Project 2010 with SharePoint 2010 for Project Management Success @ NACSTech
• May 18, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
• May 18, Online - Success is Spelled with U: You should get Users Involved Webinar
• May 18, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Workflow Conductor Webinar
• May 18, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Administration Webinar
• May 19, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
• May 19-20, Denver, Colorado – SharePoint Fest
• May 23-25, San Antonio, Texas – SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast Tour + Microsoft Bootcamp
• May 24, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Data Visualization and Dashboarding Workshop
• May 24, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Lists Workshop
• May 25, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Essentials Webinar
• May 25, Annapolis, MD – Effectively Leveraging Project 2010 with SharePoint 2010 for Project Management Success
• May 25, Online – Q&A with the SharePoint MVP Experts
• May 26, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Essentials Webinar
• May 26, Online – Bamboo SharePoint Calendar and Scheduling Workshop
• June 1-3, Boston, Massachusetts – SPTechCon
• June 8-9, Vienna, Austria – SharePoint Konferenz 2011
• June 11, Sri Lanka – SharePoint Saturday
• June 11, Tampa, Florida – SharePoint Saturday
• June 15, Online - Secure and Accessible: Records Management Done Right Webinar
• June 18, Sacramento, California - SharePoint Saturday
• June 20-21, Ullesthorpe, Leicestershire, UK - Delivering SharePoint Success Exclusive Mentoring Workshop
• June 22, Online – Q&A with the SharePoint MVP Experts
• July 27, Chicago, Illinois – SharePoint Fest
• July 30, New York, New York - SharePoint Saturday
• August 8-10, Chicago, Illinois – SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast Tour + Microsoft Bootcamp
• September 24, Manchester, New Hampshire – SharePoint Saturday
• October 3-6, Anaheim, California - Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011

 

SharePoint Training*

• May 2-13, Winchester, Virginia – SharePoint 2010 Immersion – SusQtech
• May 10, Online – SharePoint PM Central Application Administrative Training – Bamboo
• May 17, Online – SharePoint 2010 End User Training – SusQtech
• May 17, Online – SharePoint 2010 Site Administrator Training – SusQtech
• May 17, Dallas, Texas – Introduction to SharePoint 2010 – Using SharePoint Foundation 2010 – SharePoint Solutions
• May 17, Dallas, Texas – Introduction to SharePoint 2010 – Using SharePoint Server 2010 – SharePoint Solutions
• May 23-25, Winchester, Virginia – SharePoint Designer 2010 – SusQtech
• May 24, Online – SharePoint PM Central End User Training – Bamboo
• May 24, Nashville, Tennessee – Exploring SharePoint 2010 – New Features – SharePoint Solutions
• May 24, Nashville, Tennessee – SharePoint 2010 Upgrade and Planning – SharePoint Solutions
• May 26-27, Winchester, Virginia – Styling & Branding in SharePoint 2010 – SusQtech
• June 7, Online – SharePoint PM Central Application Administrative Training – Bamboo
• June 21, Online – SharePoint PM Central End User Training – Bamboo
• June 22, Online – SharePoint 2010 End User Training – SusQtech
• June 22, Online – SharePoint 2010 Site Administrator Training – SusQtech

* Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to be included in SharePoint Daily™.

 

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