http://web2.0flow.com/top-30-popular-websites-that-still-are-using-tables-as-main-layout-structure/

Will SharePoint does use it as main structuring for layout … :S .. yeah yeah don't tell me Why avoiding tables (for layout) is important I already know it !!

Since more clients are asking me about the same issue, here is the answer below!

Even though Microsoft has done a great job on improving the user interface in SharePoint 2007, some things are still buried and require a little "black magic" to get done. In this entry I'll show you how to enable anonymous access on your site.

First, you need to enable anonymous on the IIS web site (called a Web Application in SharePoint land). This can be done by:

• Launching Internet Information Services Manager from the Start -> Administration Tools menu
  
• Select the web site, right click and select Properties
  
• Click on the Directory Security tab
  
• Click on Edit in the Authentication and access control section
  

Instead we'll do it SharePoint style using the Central Administration section:

• First get to your portal. Then under "My Links" look for "Central Administration" and select it.
  
• In the Central Administration site select "Application Management" either in the Quick Launch or across the top tabs
  
• Select "Authentication Providers" in the "Application Security" section
  
• Click on the "Default" zone (or whatever zone you want to enable anonymous access for)
  
• Under "Anonymous Access" click the check box to enable it and click "Save"
  

NOTE: Make sure the "Web Application" in the menu at the top right is your portal/site and not the admin site.

You can confirm that anonymous access is enabled by going back into the IIS console and checking the Directory Security properties.

Now the second part is to enable anonymous access in the site.

• Return to your sites home page and navigate to the site settings page. In MOSS, this is under Site Actions – Site Settings – Modify All Site Settings. In WSS it's under Site Actions – Site Settings.
  
• Under the "Users and Permissions" section click on "Advanced permissions"
  
• On the "Settings" drop down menu (on the toolbar) select "Anonymous Access"
  
• Select the option you want anonymous users to have (full access or documents and lists only)
  

Now users without logging in will get whatever option you allowed them.

A couple of notes about anonymous access:

• You will need to set up the 2nd part for all sites unless you have permission inheritance turned on
  
• If you don't see the "Anonymous Access" menu option in the "Settings" menu, it might not be turned on in Central Admin/IIS. You can manually navigate to "_layouts/setanon.aspx" if you want, but the options will be grayed out if it hasn't been enabled in IIS
  
• You must do both setups to enable anonymous access for users, one in IIS and the other in each site
  

Hope that helps!

Thanks for http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/ for his awesome useful post.

Windows Live Onecare 2.0 released. Hurry up for 30 days trial version.

Windows Live Onecare 2.0 released. Hurry up for 90 days trial version.

To download it, head on over to the Windows Live Dev Connect page on Microsoft Connect, go to the download page and download it.

Check out this awesome Article on Live Tools for VS 2008

http://www.liveside.net/blogs/developer/archive/2007/11/07/download-windows-live-tools-for-visual-studio-2008.aspx

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20071113/zune-v2-print-ad/

In a press release issued this morning, Microsoft announced its plans to acquire French mobile music company Musiwave. The company is a leading provider of mobile music entertainment services to operators and media companies. According to the press release:

The acquisition would bring Musiwave's relationships with music labels, device makers and mobile operators that deliver digital entertainment to consumers, together with Microsoft's Connected Entertainment technologies and services, including Windows Mobile, Zune, MSN and Windows Live. Should the transaction proceed, Musiwave would continue to operate out of its current headquarters in Paris.

MusiWave provides the technology behind the new T Mobile Music Jukebox, and provides technology, marketing, and content for mobile operators and music companies.

This downloadable white paper explains how administrators managing small to medium-size deployments can protect and recover data. This paper describes data recovery from the item level to the farm level.

Download this white paper as a Microsoft Office Word document (.doc) file.

Read this paper online at:

Data protection and recovery for Office SharePoint Server in small to medium deployments (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=102839&clcid=0x409)

25 November 2007

I was reading recently some articles about this topic in Technet and Windows Server Blogs and I found this:

http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2007/10/29/windows-server-2008-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-update.aspx

Check out this new release in the SharePoint Community Kit for SharePoint.

The CKS:WLA is a membership provider that extends the SharePoint user base to include some of the 350+ million users around the world with active Windows Live IDs. It enables an administrator to add Windows Live ID users to a SharePoint site and provides a new "Authenticated Live Users" group that can be added to a SharePoint site via the People and Groups admin page.
This initial version of the CKS:WLA provider has the following features:

• Windows Live ID authentication supported directly in SharePoint.
  
• Ability to add and resolve a WLID user using an e-mail address
  
• "Authenticated Live Users" group, which works just like the built-in "NT_AUTHORITYAuthenticated Users" group that can be used for any SharePoint access control list.
  
• Ability to lock or blacklist a WLID user.
  
• "Windows Live Authentication Setting Sync" Feature at the site collection level, which upon being activated, will synchronize WLID user information to all site collections that have the feature activated, so the users will not have to register again for each new site collection they access.
  

First Google gPhone photos, probably fake photos. ;)

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gphone/first-google-gphone-photos-probably-fake-definitely-beat-with-ugly-stick-317306.php

http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/MossWcmResources.aspx

The Eye-Fi. It's an SD memory card that adds Wi-Fi to any camera. Plus the free Eye-Fi service supports automatic uploads to 20 different web photo sites (like Flickr) as well as a computer on your home network.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/review/eye+fi-adds-wi+fi-to-almost-any-digital-camera-316537.php

More and More CREATIVE SharePoint sites: check this out

http://www.spinebreakers.co.u

Any Website Developer, Start Now developing your sites on WSS ;)

Ian Morrish, another SharePoint Guru, HE IS IN MY TOP FAVOR SharePoint Gurus. … His website http://www.wssdemo.com is the most favorite for Demos /Projects over WSS/MOSS. I will keep demonstrating his awesome through my WSS pre-sales movies.

Simply his website is AWESOME!!!! ..

Regards,

Soma had the news today. F# is an official .NET language now! Functional programming becomes a first citizen in .NET :-)

Soma wrote:

One of the really promising current projects from MSR is the F# programming language, spearheaded by Don Syme. F# stems from the functional programming tradition (hence the 'F') and has strong roots in the ML family of languages, though also draws from C#, LINQ and Haskell. F# is designed from the outset to be a first class citizen on .NET. This means that F# runs on the CLR, embraces object-oriented programming, and has features to ensure a smooth integration with the .NET Framework.

I am a big fan of technology transfer between a research organization and a product development organization so that we can "productize" the great research ideas and deliver to customers in a timely manner. This is one of the best things that has happened at Microsoft ever since we created Microsoft Research over 15 years ago. Here is another great example of technology transfer at work. We will be partnering with Don Syme and others in Microsoft Research to fully integrate the F# language into Visual Studio and continue innovating and evolving F#. In my mind, F# is another first-class programming language on the CLR.

This is really great news! Functional programming is very elegant and has a lot of benefits compared to other approaches. There are also some negative aspects: mostly people complain about the speed that functional languages offer. But the best thing about F# is that the team says that programs written in their language are as fast as programs written in C#.

You get functional and dynamic benefits with the same speed as if they would have been written in C#. Isn't it cool?

Channel 8

Microsoft might have just got the Mediaroom party started four months ago, but already dozens of providers around the world are drinking the kool-aid and having a good time. The much anticipated XBOX 360 integration is also crashing in any day now, but Microsoft's got one last party trick, called the "Mediaroom Personal Server".

On the generously detailed Microsoft Support Lifecycle's portal, where it lists the support availability dates for all previous, current and upcoming Microsoft products, features an entry for "Mediaroom Personal Server". The general availability date provided is "12/29/2007″.

Okay, I have to admit, I have no idea what the Mediaroom Personal Server is. But thanks to Microsoft's ingenious naming conventions, you can't be too far off with a guess either. It is definitely a consumer-orientated software or device bundle, much like Windows Home Server, which serves as an aggregator and hub for your Mediaroom devices.

Some of the scenarios I can think of with a 'personal media server' includes letting you rip and store your DVDs for instant access, let you subscribe to vidcasts which it will automatically download and archive, or even just manage all of your scheduled recordings including remote recordings from web access.

So far, there's not even one reference to this product anywhere on Google besides Microsoft's support page. It is definitely not something they've mentioned in passing. However since it'll be available in exactly two months, I'm pretty sure it's being worked on very hard.

Quoted from istartedsomething.com

There are reports circulating that the next version of SharePoint dubbed as SharePoint 2009 and MOSS 2009 would have its early adopter and CTP by middle of next year. It is also said that knowledge network is included and seamlessly integrated in SharePoint 2009.

These are still unconfirmed reports, though we would keep tabs on SharePoint 2009 and MOSS 2009 developments.

Source: http://www.techticles.com/

http://www.winehq.org/?announce=0.9.48

This is release 0.9.48 of Wine, a free implementation of Windows on Unix.

What's new in this release?

- Still more fixes for regression test failures.

- Much more complete cryptnet implementation.

- WIDL is now able to generate the oleaut32 proxy code.

- Lots of bug fixes.

What an Awesome Virtual Reality

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/military-sim-almost-brings-halo-3-to-reality/military-vr-simulator-is-closest-thing-ever-to-real+life-halo-3-315435.phpm

http://srslycool.com/24.aspx

Since I receive a lot of issues with "How many Web Applications can be running in the Same Application Pool ?" .. Here is your answer ..

For who has no previous experience on this, Here are some tips for designing your SharePoint implementation:

• Do not run more than 10 Web applications per application pool until you have some performance monitoring experience behind you and you can point to your own numbers, which tell you that your application pools can handle more virtual servers.
  
• Do not plan to run more than 20 Web applications on a single physical server without adding a second Web server (or more) in your farm. The reason for this is because if you're running 20 virtual servers, you've got a growing, busy farm and chances are good that you should scale out before you scale up.
  
• Always purchase servers with 4 GB of RAM to give yourself maximum flexibility in memory allocation for your application pools.
  
• Make each application pool a Web garden with two or three worker processes associated with it. When stsadm.exe runs, it locks one of the threads for its own use. Having other threads available to service calls during backup/restore operations or other scripted operations using stsadm is necessary in most environments. In addition, if a thread becomes very busy, the other threads can pick up the slack.
  

Source: MS SharePoint Server 2007 Administration Companion Book

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/startdoingmore/default.aspx?WT.mc_id=sdmvan

Check this out:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-microsoft-to-push-functional-programming-into-the-mainstream-with-f.html

I was tracking MS investment in Facebook and I found this awesome article around. The first thing I did when I saw the numbers, is the mouth thing :S

http://www.techsoapbox.com/even-microsoft-doesnt-value-facebook-at-15-billion-use-your-damn-brain/

Watch the new Release of Virtual Earth on 10 ;) ---

http://on10.net/Blogs/laura/new-release-of-virtual-earth/

Btw for people who are interested on Integrating Virtual Earth with facebook don't miss Codeplex VE Maps community kit ;)

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/10/14/announcing-community-kit-for-sharepoint-virtual-earth-maps-on-sharepoint.aspx

Check this out: http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2007/10/25/is-live-search-coming-to-facebook.aspx

The essential guide for implementing Microsoft Office as an application-development platform

Get the practical guide to implementing the Microsoft Office system as an application-development platform. This book highlights the breadth of approaches developers can take for extending line-of-business information to information workers in the familiar, usable format of the Microsoft Office interface. These approaches, Microsoft Office Business Application (OBA) patterns, are based on real-world implementations in many cases. In other cases, they are built on Microsoft Office features that have a generalized solution rooted in input from customers and partners. This reference delivers the seven key Microsoft Office Business Application patterns and provides professional developers with extensible examples and the architectural guidance needed for developing custom enterprise applications and extending business information to users.

RELEASED IN -> 05 DEC 2007, STAY TUNED <= MS Press

India is a well-known country in technology outsourcing not only for its inexpensiveness workers but as well the facilities that been provided by Indian Gov which include Infrastructure, Telecommunication, tax pardon and rich investment support escalated from the interest in this sector. I was excited when i heard that Egypt is now moving towards this one but still Taxes, Infrastructure, Investment Facilities, Insurance are key challenges for investors there. China, Philippine is a successful example of Tech. Outsourcing worldwide and Governments there has realized rapid revenue by empowering Technology outsourcing market which represents a high percentage of total incomes. Where is our Arab world from the outsourcing market??? .. i remember the moment when i was speaking about outsourcing in one of events and i targeted the question to Minister of ICT and i remember by heart his awesome answer which has nothing to do with the subject, "We have initiative to give a laptop for each student" he said.

http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=CKS&ReleaseId=7675

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/10/13/announcing-the-community-kit-for-sharepoint-internet-extranet-edition-forms-based-authentication-solution.aspx

The CKS:Internet/Extranet Edition is pleased to announce the first pre-Beta release of its Forms Based Authentication solution. This solution contains the following features:

• Automated Solution Deployment - Zac Smith
  
• Membership request webpart (including CAPTCHA) - Paul Ballard
  
• Membership request list - Paul Ballard
  
• Login web part - Paul Ballard
  
• Recover Password web part - Edin Kapic
  
• Change Password web part - Edin Kapic
  
• ULS Logging - Edin Kapic
  
• User Management - Zac Smith
  
• Role Management - Zac Smith
  
• User Properties - Brendon Schwartz
  

  
  Special Mentions: Stacy Draper for letting us hijack his code and for moral support
  

  How To Use This Solution
  

  1. Setup Forms Based Authentication
  While we plan to add administrative features that will make setting up a SharePoint site for FBA much easier, for now you'll need to follow the instructions outlined in Dan Attis' Blog http://devcow.com/blogs/jdattis/archive/2007/02/23/Office_SharePoint_Server_2007_Forms_Based_Authentication_FBA_Walkthrough_Part_1.aspx.
  2. Install The FBAManagement Solution File
  Unzip FBAManagement.zip onto the file system of the SharePoint server and you will find three files. Deploy/Undeploy command files and the FBAManagement solution file. From the command line enter:
  deploy [SharePoint Site URL]
  
  This will install the solution and activate all of the features.
  3. Add Webparts to pages
  The self registration aspects of this solution include web parts for logging in users, registering new users, requesting a password reset, and allowing a user to change their password. These web parts can be added to any web part page in the site.
  
  User Login
  This web part is extremely customizable including changing prompts, error messages, and turning on/off links to registration pages or password change pages. When the user logs in successfully they will see a link under the "Welcome User" control at the top of the page called "My Settings". Click on this will let the user change their SharePoint user settings.
  
  User Registration
  This web part is also highly customizable. In addition to the standard CreateUserWizard controls, this registration control adds fields for the First and Last names as well as a CAPTCHA field to avoid programmatic registrations. When a user registers on the site an email will be sent letting them know that their account information has been received and that their membership is pending.
  
  Change Password
  
  This web part will allow the user to modify their password. All prompts and error messages are customizable.
  
  Password Recovery
  This web part allows a user to request a password reset by answering the questions they created when the account was registered. This web part also allows modification of all prompts and error messages.
  
  4. Administering Users
  New Membership Request
  When a user fills out the registration information in the registration web part that information is stored in the Membership Request List. The administrator can then edit the user information by going to Site Settings and under Users and Permissions click on "FBA Membership Request Management". When their status goes from Pending to Approved an email will be sent that will notify the user that they have been approved and will also contain a temporary password for them to use to log into the site. If you deactivate the Membership Request List feature, then all registrants are automatically added to the site and the email goes out immediately.
  
  Modifying a User's Information
  The administrator can modify the user information from the Site Settings page by clicking on "FBA User Management". On this page you can add/modify/remove the users. If the roles feature is activated you can also add/delete roles (note: these are FBA roles, not SharePoint roles). When roles are activated the User Management will let you add/remove users from roles instead of groups. The roles feature is not activated by default.

When the Community Kit for SharePoint 2.0 pre-release was announced almost 4 months ago, the Enhanced Blog Edition stood out due to its innovative XSLT driven Modular Theme Framework (MTF), which enabled EBE themes to be easily packaged up and simply deployed to a folder within a Document Library on an EBE blog site. And the themes can provide a look and feel that is nothing like SharePoint's default!

With this Beta 2 release, the team has added the remaining key features that make the EBE complete in terms of enabling you to make your blog look as smart as you think you are. :-) These features are:

• Support for trackbacks.
  
• Category specific RSS feeds -- e.g. appending "?cat=SharePoint" without the quotes to the end of the Feed URL would filter the blog's RSS feed to show only the posts that have been associated with the SharePoint category.
  
• Displaying the categories as a clickable tag cloud. Clicking on a tag would filter the blog's display to show only the posts that have been associated with a category that matches the tag.
  
• Related posts control, which shows posts with the same categories as the one you are looking at.
  
• Dynamic per-post links such as "Digg this".
  
• Compliance with the MetaWeblog API.
  
• Compliance with Feed Validator for the RSS feed.
  
• Spam flagged by Akismet can be configured to be automatically deleted rather than stay in pending status.
  
• Numerous code clean-ups/refactoring and some performance improvements.
  

The CKS:EBE Beta 2 release is available at https://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=CKS&ReleaseId=4767. Please provide feedback prefixed with "EBE" via the CKS Issue Tracker (for reproducible bug reports) or the CKS Discussions list (for Q&A and discussions). The EBE team would really appreciate some aggressive testing, especially for usability and robustness, so they can address any showstopper issues prior to finalizing the release within the next month or two.

Source: <Lawrence />

Finally I got an answer for this well known Issue. Thanks SharePoint Team J

We've received several reports of this issue through our Customer Support Services. Although it would be impractical for us to post every known issue or confirmed bug on this blog, I have a strong feeling that this particular problem is much more widespread than has been reported. If you have experienced this problem and can consistently reproduce it, please leave a comment. While we're still investigating a possible long term fix, here are several workarounds for you to try.

Problem Description

With Office 2007 running on Windows Vista, opening an Office document hosted on a SharePoint (i.e. WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007) site results in a prompt for login credentials even if the user is already logged on with an account that has access to the document. Canceling the credential prompt may still (but not always) allow the document to open in read-only mode.

Potential Workarounds

Go to IE7 -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings.

• Behavior 1: Clearing all checkboxes on this dialog will cause the credential prompt.
  
• Behavior 2: Automatically detect settings - enabling this option will prevent the prompt if it effectively enables a proxy server and enables bypassing the proxy for local addresses.
  
• Behavior 3: Use a proxy server - enabling a proxy server in conjunction with enabling "Bypass proxy server for local addresses" will prevent the credential prompt.
  

When the user does not have a proxy in the environment, it's still possible to work around this issue by setting a "fake proxy" and "blanket bypass" as follows in IE7's LAN Settings dialog.

1. Click the Proxy Server checkbox. Set the address to "fake proxy" without the quotes and the port to 80.
   
2. Click the "Bypass proxy server for local addresses" checkbox.
   
3. Click Advanced and put an * in the Exceptions list to cause all addresses (including external ones) to be bypassed.
   

Source <Lawrence />

Okay, the press release has just been posted, so please take a quick look at it first. Essentially, we've announced two very significant product releases from NewsGator and Atlassian as follows:

• NewsGator Social Sites (on SharePoint)
  
• Atlassian SharePoint Connector for Confluence
  

Several of us in the SharePoint product group have been busily working over the past few months with these two companies to ensure that their SharePoint integration features are useful, compelling, and straightforward to deploy for SharePoint customers. I hope that you will agree, but if not, please do let us know by leaving comments here. We look forward to doing much more with NewsGator and Atlassian as well as a handful of other partners in the next year to bring the best of Web 2.0 capabilities to the enterprise via a unified SharePoint user experience. The integrated functionality that NewsGator and Atlassian have been able to develop in a relatively short period of time provides further validation of the extensibility and interoperability of the SharePoint platform.

Source <Lawrence />

Just thought you should know about this. It is an important update to improve the security of your SharePoint system: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-059.mspx

It fixes a vulnerability that would allow someone to gain elevated privileges within a SharePoint site. Note this will not affect the server or the user's PC, just the rights they have in the site they have access to. Still, security is always preventative not reactive, so you should get it.

The Content Query Web Part (or CQWP) in MOSS 2007 is one of the most often used components on SharePoint-based Internet facing content publishing web sites and intranet information portals. This introductory post on how to configure and customize the CQWP was one of the most widely read and commented entries on the ECM Team Blog. While the MSDN how-to article and several other people's blog entries provide more details on how to customize and override some of the CQWP's features, Ishai Sagi, a SharePoint MVP, has gone above and beyond all that by developing an enhanced version of the CQWP and posting it along with source code on CodePlex at http://www.codeplex.com/ECQWP. The enhanced version includes features such as context menus for the items, toolbar for lists, and much more that you can read about from the release log.

Ishai is ready to wrap up the development of the ECQWP and move on to something else, but he would like to get a few more testers to make sure that it's rock solid. So, if you're a frequent user of the CQWP, please try out Ishai's ECQWP and give him some feedback -- good or bad. Thanks!

Post Source >> <Lawrence />

Please Install New Security Hotfix MS07-059

We will be releasing a security hotfix for Windows SharePoint Services MS07-059 on October 9th. Be sure to note that as Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is included with all editions of Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, and Performance Point Server as well as any others which include WSS 3.0 you need to apply this hotfix on those environments as well.

We recommend applying this hotfix during your next planned downtime, or change management window and scheduling this with priority. This hotfix contains previously released hotfixes including the DST (Daylight Savings Time) hotfix.

First, if you have deployed "host named site collections" previously known as "host header" sites you should wait to apply the hotfix if you have more than 50 host named site collections. We will be issuing a performance related fix related to the hotfix. This hotfix will include the same hotfixes as the October 9 public update in addition to the host named site collection update performance related hotfix. You need not wait if this does not apply.

The most important thing as the title suggests is this hotfix addresses a security vulnerability in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that could allow cross-site scripting. This update resolves this vulnerability. Please read the entire contents of the KB article before applying the hotfix as there are a number of known issues which should be well understood.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942017

934525 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934525/) Description of the security update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: October 9, 2007
937832 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937832/) Description of the security update for SharePoint Server 2007: October 9, 2007

To view the complete security bulletin, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms07-059.mspx

How to deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

We recommend that you follow the process and procedures in the Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 topic for most deployment scenarios, from stand-alone server deployments to very large server farms.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/91649a7e-6b5a-4e5a-9ee5-51951f4b857f1033.mspx

If you are running Office SharePoint Server you may find additional guidance in the article Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/f484f5f2-35bb-4d70-bf56-dd1c4c287c721033.mspx

Other relevant recent posts:

Hotfixes, Service packs, and password resets

Daylight Savings Time Hotfix post

How Parlano (Now Microsoft) MindAlign Technology will empower Office Communications Server ?!!!

Stay Tuned ..

Yesterday, Microsoft launched HealthVault, a health-information platform and service online. If you can get your head around the fact this is provided by the same company who makes a computer operating system and game console, read on.

Currently in beta, just like your GP, HealthVault offers three online services as part of the health-information management strategy: HealthVault Search, HealthVault Account and HealthVault Connection Center. HealthVault Search is an overhaul of the recently available Live Search Health tool. The latter two work together, unified by a Windows Live ID to form a platform to upload and store and interpret personal health data.

HealthVault Search is a search engine specifically tuned to return only health-related web results through a variety of trusted and credible sources, including notably Wikipedia articles where available.

LiveSide has already uncovered Live Search Health a few days ago and HealthVault Search is pretty much identical to that, except a minor cosmetic change - to a vibrant and reassuring green theme. The search interface and search results are presented in a neat three-column layout with articles in the left, websites in the middle and sponsored results on the right. Relevant topics are also suggested at the top of the results leading to deeper or broader understanding of the medical conditions.

HealthVault Account is an extension of your Windows Live ID account (required) to store and share personal health information. A HealthVault account will then allow you to store search results in a scrapbook, store personal information, upload or fax in health records, manage family records, collect data from devices on your PC, share health data with websites, applications and doctors, record prescriptions history, and store imaging or lab results.

With any health information comes the issue of privacy, and Microsoft isn't taking any chances. In fact when you first sign into HealthVault Account, it will likely ask you to change your Live ID password to a much stronger password before you can use the account.

The third part is a desktop client called HealthVault Connection Center, used to upload health data and view medical analysis from those data. Its interface has a strong resemblance to Live OneCare, the desktop security software, which I thought was an interesting connection.

You can download device drivers for your medical devices such as heart-rate monitors and blood analyzers so they can upload data directly into HealthVault, which then can be uploaded to your account from the same interface.

You can also download applications made by a variety of partners who can then (with your authorization) analyze your health data and present useful medical analysis back to you with all the pretty bar graphs and charts that either show you how healthy, or unhealthy you are.

Ever wished you just had a sample project plan that you could then modify for your own use? I'm sure this comes up on occasion.

Announcing the Office SharePoint Server Deployment Plan sample (MOSS Deployment.mpp) build using Microsoft Project.

The more you become familiar with SharePoint Server, the more likely you'll notice that there are a mirad or a plethora of ways to deploy. This really is intended to be a sample that you modify and use as a starter. There are over 300 items in the project with the idea of sparking ideas and in an attempt to be inclusive. I welcome feedback and encourage people to use this and make it their own. Thanks Ascentium for allowing me to bounce this project plan off your deployment teams.

Quoted from Joel Oleson Blog

Try this pretty awesome Website http://www.quranexplorer.com/quran/

I like it … Simply it's magnificent.

My participation in FIKR 6 Conference has been confirmed (1-3 December 2007, Bahrain). I will fly to Beirut for Youth Brainstorming session in 20 Oct 2007 held at Le Royal Hotel. Through my participation I will present my Proposals at the following (Technology R&D (Technology), Outsourcing in ME (Economy), University that adopt HyperGeniuses (Responsibility and Education)).

Am really passionate to participate for this one and am pretty sure it's going to be one of a kind. Million Thanks for Arab Thought Foundation for their valuable efforts in making this possible.

For more info http://www.arabstrategies.org/En/

This is an awesome Article on how to schedule to your Daily MOSS Backups using task scheduler. Articles include snapshots, scripts and valuable tips for doing this job.

http://www.sharepointbeagle.com/2007-09/AdminCorner/MOSS_2007_Backup_And_Restore.aspx

See this awesome AD for this game ;)

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070924/project-gotham-skid-art/

Gosh i like XBOX 360 ads :)

Installing update (hotfixes, public updates, service packs) for WSS and MOSS can be a challenging tasks. Especially as a rollback in case that a problem occurs can be very expensive as it requires the restore of a backup as uninstall of hotfixes or service packs is not possible.

To help administrators plan such a task Microsoft has now published specific documentation:

• Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  
• Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007
  

Quoted from MS Sharepoint Products and Technologies TEAM Blog

The HP ProLiant Sizer for Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 is a downloadable tool (includes update notification) that assists the user in selecting the optimum HP ProLiant Server, HP BladeSystem and HP Storage configuration for collaboration and document management environments based on user requirements. The tool solicits data or uses built-in defaults to determine the optimum solution, based on the Office SharePoint Server 2007 best-practice configurations and supported growth paths.

The zip contains an executable. Run that and answer a few questions about where to install the tool. The install procedure will first install the SharePoint 2007 sizer, and then the (required) StorageWorks (SAN) sizer which allows the MOSS sizer to generate detailed storage solutions. Once installed, run the SharePoint sizer - that's it.

The sizer includes quick configuration and allows you to do "what if" scenarios. This release includes support for the DL, p-class, c-class, storage, and the latest dual and quad core servers!

Would love to hear your feedback on this tool. Thanks HP, especially Jimi Ibbett from the HP Engineering team for such a useful tool to help customers with their deployments!

You can download this free tool by going to the SharePoint Active Answers page on the right hand side under Sizers and clicking on "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Sizing and Configuration Tool" and logging in. (You will need to create a free account if you haven't.)

http://www.hp.com/solutions/activeanswers/sharepoint

While I was reading my subscribed RSS feeds I found this discussion:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.excel/browse_thread/thread/2bcad1a1a4861879/2f8806d5400dfe22?hl=en

I will update you with Microsoft Answer soon I get it.

Quoted from Joel Blog

Some great content has recently been pushed out to TechNet and in the KBs. While we haven't announced the timing for SP1, you may have heard some customers have been beta testing it and internal testing that's been going on. There was also a post on the team blog around the DST fix with updates to the time tables which impact most of the world.

TechNet Articles related to updates (hotfixes and service packs)

Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Check for Updates

Microsoft Update (also known as Windows Update) - This will check core Microsoft products including Windows, .NET Framework, etc...

Office Update - Check to see if you need any updates. Note this works with Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers to check for Office SharePoint Server and SharePoint Portal Server updates as well as Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Team Services Updates.

"The Office Update service is maintained to support previous versions of Microsoft Office and for compatibility with older operating systems. Microsoft Windows Vista users can now get all Office XP, Office 2003, and 2007 Office system updates via the Microsoft Update service. For Windows Vista users using Office 2000, you can manually download updates from Downloads on Office Online." Vista itself has a special page for updates. You will be redirected there automatically.

Latest Hotfix/Rollup

Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB941422) (includes latest hotfixes, including the DST (daylight savings time zones) The XML file will allow it to be much more easily managed and changed if necessary for future time zone changes.) Note: This applies to MOSS 2007 standard and enterprise editions as well.

KB 888253 How to configure time zone information in Windows SharePoint Services by modifying the Timezone.xml file

KB 941422 Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Hotfix package: August 24, 2007

This package includes the following:

• Fix to address a problem with Timer Jobs failing to run in the US daylight saving time (DST) change window beginning October 28th, KB 938663.
  
• Non-DST related fixes for volume shadow copy writer service, KB 935605.
  A fix to address database creation failures after Internal Database Engine SP 2 is applied to Basic installations.
  
• Other top support issue fixes including KB 937038 where configuring Inherit Permissions causes HTTP 500 - Internal server error.
  
• A primary fix for 941422 expands the capabilities of SharePoint such that TZMOVE can address future Time Zone changes in SharePoint timezone.xml for US or international Time Zones, KB 939809.
  

Some may ask what happens if there is a critical hotfix for WSS? Since it is in Windows it would be available via Windows Update. If the server was set to auto update it would be auto applied. For this reason I would recommend being notified when an update was available in a smaller shop that isn't tracking these, but in no circumstances would I recommend auto applying the hotfixes. There are just too many chances that the box would want to reboot and when it came back up, all the services may not come back online, not as a result of the hotfix, but some environments require an F1 to initialize a disk array or various things like this. I have applied hotfixes and service packs in the past that installed some of the binaries but as a result of something being in use, it was not able to be fully applied until after the reboot which then didn't get a chance to apply changes to the database. Most hotfixes maybe even all won't make changes to the schema, and may simply be binary updates. Service packs and some hotfixes may need to increment the version in the config and content databases or other databases and having the database listed version different than the binary versions can cause problems.

One of the more common requests I've seen around downtime and trying to recover is related to passwords. Either someone who built out the farm and used their account left the company, or someone lost the password and everyone is afraid for the SharePoint environment... you get the picture. Password resets is much, much easier in this version. I think you'd be suprised how many times you find out that something went bad a while back and only resetting the services exposes it. Here's an excellent KB with usage on the commands with examples for resetting the service accounts, crawl accounts, db connection passwords, etc...

How to Change Service Accounts and Passwords in MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 KB 934383 (September 21, 2007)

Note the above steps include changing it once in on one server via the command line and leveraging timer jobs to change it across the farm. Be sure to verify. Very cool. It also includes syntax for changing passwords on the SSP, and search/content access account.

Windows Live FolderShare is a great, easy way to keep your files synced between multiple devices. With FolderShare, you create a private peer-to-peer network that syncs your files and lets you share them with colleges and friends. You no longer need to worry whether your files, photos, or videos are on your home PC, your laptop, or your work computer. FolderShare keeps them all in sync, letting you access them from any computer set up with FolderShare or any web browser - even the browser on your mobile device! Files can be up to 2 GB in size, there are no limits on the quantity or size of files transferred, and all file formats are supported.

The software's sharing feature is an easy way to send others large files - no more trying to zip files to get them through email, burning to CD/DVD, or uploading to a website. To use FolderShare, you must download and install the FolderShare Satellite - the software that is installed on the device(s) you want to sync or share files with. This software runs in the background and automatically updates your files on the other connected devices. The software, part of Windows Live Services, works on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or OSX and it's completely free! FolderShare can be downloaded here.

I was reading about CERTEON through Microsoft SharePoint Performance discussions until I found what S-Series Accelerator is doing in order to enhance MOSS performance and optimize data transaction process and speed.

Read this pdf http://www.certeon.com/marcom/click_counter.asp?Deliverable=5

Quoted from Sheet:

Certeon S-Series™ are network devices that

accelerate the document flow between centralized

Microsoft® Office™ System applications such as

Word®, Excel®, PowerPoint®, InfoPath®, and Publisher®

and SharePoint® server farms by minimizing network

traffic, decreasing packet turn around times, and

reducing application chattiness. The result is a

breakthrough in response time and scalability

performance levels.

Certeon's Application Acceleration Blueprints™

enable high acceleration through an understanding

of underlying protocols, data object differences,

and Microsoft® Office™ System features such as

the XML-based file formats for PowerPoint, Word,

and Excel. The Application Acceleration Blueprints™

deploy data object differencing through an Object

Differencing Engine (ODE), which accurately identifies

prior views of these data objects.The greater the

accuracy of identification, the more efficient the differencing,

and therefore the better the acceleration.

Furthermore, SharePoint® employs different techniques

to pass arguments and data objects between

the server and each Office® application. With its

application fluency, Certeon's S-Series™ understands

how these elements are used and thus can make a

more accurate identification of these data objects.

Customers will be able to utilize these new upgrades

to 2007 Microsoft® Office™ System and Microsoft®

SharePoint® Products and Technologies without

sacrificing application performance over a WAN.

2007 MICROSOFT® OFFICE™ SYSTEM

AND MOSS SUPPORT

Certeon's S-Series™ accelerates the full range of

protocols and file system formats employed by the

2007 Microsoft® Office™ System and Microsoft Office

SharePoint Server (MOSS). Certeon's Application

Acceleration Blueprints™ securely accelerate access

to the new Office™ Open XML documents (including

.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) and dynamically generated MOSS

Web pages.

"

In Jordan, Beat is one of Certeon's certified partners who provide a full range of deployment for MS Partners and Customers who uses SharePoint, K2.NET and other office system applications. I met Mr. Muhab (Beat CEO) who has emphasized the productivity and customer feedback satisfaction for this awesome accelerator for MOSS.

I'm reading Tolly Group Test case, upon results I will recommend S-Series for partners and customers who runs MOSS on different branches or different remote front-ends.