Digital Collaboration Guide, a SharePoint Architect's view

A week ago the Emerging Business Team at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus hosted a SharePoint 2010 competition titled “SharePoint 2010 SocialFest” where seven startup companies were given one week to develop an application on SharePoint 2010. During the week long event activities such as talks from developers, SharePoint engineering and product management teams, and venture investors were done. By Friday, the contestants presented their applications to a panel of judges which included Charles Schwab & Co. and McKesson. The winner of the competition was Huddle, which was basically synching up external team sites.

The rest of the application developed are the following:

1. Calinda MindUP – presents email interactions into visual maps which help create conversations between groups enhancing collaboration.

2. Confer – is simply twitter on SharePoint 2010 for both internal and external employees.

3. Cortex Intelligence – is an intelligent RSS tools which is presented via webparts fpr discussion, sharing, etc.

4. Leverage Software – makes your email thread into on-deman social workspace for sharing with others.

Video description: The video demos how to send large file attachments through a Cloud (Amazon S3 or Microsoft Azure) directly from your MS Outlook email client. No more FTP, no more sharepoint, and it is cheap and secure. Best of all, pay as you go ($0.15/GB/month for Amazon S3) and unlimited storage.

Everyone wants to be in the cloud and SAP has continued improving its vertical market by acquiring the intellectual assets of Coghead, a company developing the next generation of web applications. The company claims they are the fastest and most efficient way to build and deliver applications in the cloud. Whatever those applications that make them the fastest cloud building tool would surely benefit SAP.

SAP is a large scale company and Coghead’s tools might help SAP get their modules to the cloud in chunks.

More cloud news here. Sun is reported to have their own Cloud Computing game anytime soon.

As written: SAN FRANCISCO —Sun Microsystems, in the midst of a reorganization to reverse its recent losses, is inching toward the launch its own cloud computing service.

“We think there will be lots of public and private clouds throughout the Internet,” Tucker told the audience. “We’ll see generalized clouds like Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and specialized clouds, for different vertical needs like high-performance computing, and we see Sun as being a major player in the cloud.”

Continue reading here.

HP discusses cloud computing via putting their products on the net like being able to order prints of newly updates pictures by family members.

As written: An HP man who appeared on CNBC’s “Dispatches from Davos” on Friday, January 30, 2009 described Cloud Computing to Maria Bartiromo as designing and printing color brochures online on HP’s website and printing them by using HP inks and toner cardridges.

The man whose photo appears here also explained that Cloud Computing would be the most significant technology for corporations to come out of the recession.

Continue reading here.

Cloud computing: Hot technology for 2009 (NetworkWorld)

Sun Turns Its Gaze to the Cloud (ECommerceTimes)

Why Windows 7 will crush Linux (NetworkWorld)

3PAR and Cloud Computing Give SupplyScape the Competitive Edge (CNN)

The Cloud Computing Ecosystem: The Top 100 Cloud Players (sys-con)

Cloud Computing Is a Big Whiteboard (sys-con)

Blue Mountain Labs Launches Cloud Computing Program Blue PVP (sys-con)

Qatar Cloud Computing Startup Signs QR125 Million Deal with Vodafone Qatar (sys-con)

3Tera, one of the cloud computing companies are offering a free downloadable whitepaper titled “Is Cloud Computing Ready for the Enterprise?” which is valued at $279 USD provided you register.

The cloud computing page is here.

The registration page is here.

Extentech Inc. Announces Open Source Multi-Platform Alternative to Sharepoint (EMediaWire)

The Business of Managing Content: Xythos Document Management & Microsoft SharePoint (CIO)

Littler Mendelson Chooses Recommind to Power SharePoint Portal Search (MarketWatch)

Cloud Computing Is a Big Whiteboard (Sys-con)

Expo: Microsoft to enhance Entourage Exchange, SharePoint on the Mac (MacWorld)

End User SharePoint (SharePointBlogs)

Acumen I.T. Offering SharePoint Office 2007 Classes (SwampFox)

Do Not Open SharePoint Master Pages from the File System using SharePoint Designer (211.entry”>SouravNayyar)

SharePoint Designer Video Tutorials (SecureSPSite)

The wrong way to iterate through SharePoint SPList Items (DynaTrace)

Quick tip: link to your page’s main content (PathToSharePoint)

Daniel Feller talks about Cloud Computing where he aims to understand the explanation on this. In an excerpt:

Am I the only one who has trouble understanding Cloud Computing? Is Instant Messenger considered cloud computing? Is my company’s enterprise deployment of XenApp on XenServer considered Cloud Computing? Is the iTunes store considered Cloud Computing?  Why is Cloud Computing so hard to figure out? Well, look at it from a different perspective.

Have you ever laid down on the grass and looked at the sky and tried to figure out what a cloud looked like?  You might think one cloud looks like a puppy and another looks like an airplane while someone else thinks your puppy looks like Homer and the airplane looks like a TV.  Trying to find shapes in the clouds is all based on your perception, just like if you try to get a definition of cloud computing from 5 different people, you will most likely get 5 different ideas. 

Continue reading here.

Sun Discloses Plans To Enter Cloud Computing (InformationWeek)

Migrating to cloud computing? Don’t forget DNS (NetworkWorld)

Should Your Windows Apps Move To The Cloud? (Forrester)

Selling Web 2.0 To IT (Forbes)

Is Cloud Computing the Wave of the Future? (Sys-con)

Test Center preview: Windows Azure Services Platform gives wings to .Net (TMCNet)

Microsoft’s Billion-Dollar Cloud Business (InformationWeek)

Cloud computing to the max (Infoworld)

Micro Focus Snatches Relativity, Expands App Modernization (ITJungle)

IBM Unveils New Version of Its Web Conferencing Service (ITBusinessEdge)

Microsoft Data Center Pro to Amazon (TheWhir)

Microsoft: The top 5 risks; Will it cut 2009 outlook as PC market stumbles? (ZDNet)

I cannot remember the last time I worked on Cobol but I know there are lots of systems that still rely on this archaic technology. Microsoft Azure allows applications and development platforms to run in the cloud which include non-Microsoft platforms like Eclipse and yes, even Cobol.

Mark Haynie who is the Vice-President of Product Solutions at Micro Focus has a product called Microsoft Focus Enterprise Cloud Services which allows running Cobol transactions to run easily in the cloud. In Mark’s question and answer article from DDJ,

Q: A recent player in the cloud computing arena is Microsoft’s Azure. Can you tell us a bit about it and how it fits in with COBOL, if at all?

A: We worked with Microsoft for months preparing for the Microsoft Azure platform, announced in October 2008. At the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Micro Focus demonstrated a managed .NET version of a COBOL accounting transaction running in the Azure development fabric where the COBOL keyed sequence dataset was stored under SQL Data Services. This was demonstrated after Micro Focus and Microsoft made a joint announcement on July 2, 2008, laying out our plans for a full .NET implementation of our runtime. The other big advantage is that Micro Focus Enterprise Cloud Services is cloud-agnostic. Just as Micro Focus Server (the COBOL, CICS, JCL, IMS, VSAM, DB2 compatibility layer) has run on Windows, UNIX and Linux for years, we are now bringing the same level of portability to Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2 and other public clouds.

Even before the launch of Windows Azure, it is obvious that players are moving into this space in preparation for a possible huge growth. Even if Microsoft is late in the game, they are still Microsoft and their strategy has always been to copy their competitors, make it better and sell cheap.

Continue reading the full article here.

The whitepaper for Micro Focus Enterprise Cloud Services is here.

Microsoft’s Billion-Dollar Cloud Business (Information Week)

Yahoo shareholder looks to revive Microsoft talks (Market Watch)

Search Anonymization: More Hot Air from Microsoft (PCWorld)

Microsoft looking into WordPad zero-day flaw (CNet)

mocoNews.net – There’s No Zune Phone Coming; But Even If It Was, Would It Be Big News? (Washington Post)

Microsoft tacks on not-so-social bookmarking tool (Cnet)

No Zune phone to be shown at CES 2009 (Phonemag)

Web site-based crimeware hits all-time high (CNet)

Small is beautiful for green-tech newbies (CNet)

Now Comes the Hard Part as Yahoo Wrestles With a Question of Direction (NYTimes)

10 Companies Spurring Enterprise Cloud Computing (Pt. I) (on-DemandEnterprise)

Microsoft’s Cloud Vision (RedDevNews)

HP Gets Touchy with New TouchSmart tx2 (WashingtonPost)

Mac Malware Market-Share Myths (eWeek)

Microsoft: Morro Won’t Compete With Symantec, McAfee (CRN)

Microsoft kills OneCare, replaces it with freebie ‘Morro’ (ZDNet)

This should make your Windows Vista box open up faster.

Video description: tips to make vista faster at start up and everywhere else, defrag and do virus and spyware checks as well as these tips to have a speedy computer.——-PAUSE to read everything——-, i didnt want to guess how fast people can read and also i figured you would pause to do these steps anyways so it wouldve been pointless me making this video 5 minutes long and for you to skip around. have fun!!

Asus has announced their latest version of their revolutionary netbooks, the Asus Eee PC 1000HE. The current introductory prices is at $399 USD.

As of their press release:

Asus Eee PC 1000HE are devices to support Lenovo S10.

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