Write blogs with Windows Live Writer, and schedule publish to look like a PRO!

A blog post a day keeps writer's block away.

I sat down to write a bunch of blog posts tonight, but instead of having everything published at once, I decided to pace it out and have it publish over a few days. Because really, nobody want to read 5 blog posts all at once!

Here's the hot tip with Windows Live Writer.

1. Write your blog
2. Before clicking publish - set a publish date
   
   Figure: Set a future publish date
   
3. Then hit the publish button
   
   Figure: Publish!
   
4. See the articles queued for publishing
   
   Figure: This guy writes a blog every day!

PowerPoint is for code too

This is a follow up post to Outlook (and blogs) are for code, from my colleague Peter Gfader.

I have this problem with PowerPoint

1. I paste code into the slides for the demo
2. During the session I copy that code
3. Paste into VS
4. BUILD ERROR – funny quotes all over the place
5. NASTY!

THANKS to this tip, I changed in PowerPoint as well

We do so much code presentations, this is a fantastic follow up tip.

OneNote - screen clipping + OCR

I have to admit that I'm really new to OneNote, but more and more I realize I don't know how I get by without it before.  Here is a OneNote special tip.

1. Do you ever got a picture where you want it as text?
2. Paste the picture into OneNote
   
   
   
3. Copy Text out from Picture
   
   
4. Magic
   
   
   
5. Result: Text pulled from picture as text

(This works with both OneNote 2010 and 2007)

SharePoint and Office 365 - Joel Oleson predicts 2011.

https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/itpro/Pages/SharePoint-2011-Predictions.aspx

I echo strongly Joel's excitement in the cloud space regarding Office 365.

 

What is all this cloud?  Where's BPOS?

Office 365 = cloud SharePoint + Exchange + Lync (office communication server) + Office = starting at US$6 per user.
Imagine an office of 10 people, you only pay $720 to Microsoft for Exchange and SharePoint and Microsoft guarantee 99.99%

I don't believe small or medium non-IT companies should even be looking at running their own server anymore within 2 years.

(Caveat - in some industries - legal, financial, medical, defence, it may be illegal to keep your data in the cloud, replicated in a few different countries - you had to know where it is stored - on this front, Microsoft's products are available in the cloud and on-premise, and much further ahead of Google)

I think there's still a strong case for Small Business Server, for your own on premise Active Directory Domain, then synchronize the entire AD via Azure ACS and have the rest running in the cloud.  And probably for a Storage/backup /Network Monitor/Windows Update server system.

But I'm so glad that in the nearby future, we will no longer see this crazy AD+Exchange+SQL+SharePoint all in one box.  That was damn scary, talk about business interruption if something were to go wrong with that box.

Looking ahead

When SharePoint, Exchange (and soon, CRM 2011) are all hosted on the cloud, I think the biggest question shifts to:

1. How do we customize it?  Everyone still has to customize!  Sandbox solutions, CRM packages
2. Where does a small or medium company find and buy ready-built solutions and deploy that to their own cloud server?  SharePoint App Store, CRM App Store.

New roles in the future:

1. If hosting and server license are not upfront and now out of the way - MS is willing to take subscription over long periods, and we'll be happier to have more $ for customization - this is the reason I'm so excited.  More $ for partners.  More $ for customization to meet business needs.
2. Cloud business consultants - help clients move their business to the cloud, manage expectations, patch differences between old and new way.
3. Cloud infrastructure dudes - Azure ACS, Cloud Storage, Pricing, SLA specialists
4. Custom Development - time to REALLY know how to build packages inside out.  Cause you won't ever be able to deploy to GAC
5. App Development - you know your Silverlight or JavaScript skills?  Build apps for business that actually would pay you good money, charge them $100 per CAL.  With an optional, paid, ongoing support agreement.  Stop trying to build a silly Phone apps for $1 and have your users expect lifetime support (I told the SDDN guys this and saw a few nodding heads).

My predictions for the future:

2011: To the Cloud

• SharePoint App Store
• Office 365
• CRM 2011

2012: Leaks

This is my cute prediction for 2012.

With all the cloud stuff, I think there's going to be some major business leak and then perhaps we'll see massive push to "lockdown" enterprise information on a need-to-know basis.

SharePoint 2010 - Quick Fix for Ribbon Page Layout switch JavaScript error

1. Your content editor is trying to change page layout via the Ribbon in SharePoint 2010

Figure: Click Page Layout in the Ribbon

2. But they get a JavaScript error

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; InfoPath.3)

Timestamp: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 01:33:17 UTC

Message: Object required

Line: 2

Char: 6422

Code: 0

URI: http://intranet.ssw.com.au/_layouts/cui.js?rev=wvoVpqlQb30nGo4DjDk8Kg%3D%3D

This error is likely caused by SharePoint trying to render available page layouts for the page to switch to, but there is an error.

A very quick fix that can be applied by a site owner is:

1. Site Settings | Look and Feel | Page layouts and site templates

2. Restrict the valid number of page layouts that can be used, instead of allowing "Pages in this site can use any layout"

Figure: Restrict valid page layouts

3. This fixes the Ribbon menu

Figure: Ribbon menu fixed!

4. Tell your sys admin that there are broken packages in SharePoint and must be fixed ASAP