RC1 for Community Server 2007 (the thing that runs this blog) is available now and you can get it from here . If all goes well then the RTM version is supposed to come out on the 16th of this month - in other words in four days. I will wait for the RTM before I try and update the blog to the new bits.
Interesting way to do advertising - something (which incase you did not know), is something Avanade does not do - it is mostly word of mouth or very targeted marketing to the CxO. Video: Avanade - Where Microsoft Innovation Meets Unrivaled Insight
Telligent have released the Beta 1 for Community Server 2007 and you can find more details here . I have the beta running locally on my machine and on the surface I don’t see many changes, but I have not had too much time to dig into it. The only notable change is how the themes are handled - making it very easy. E.g. changing the image on the paperclip theme is a piece of cake....
I just upgraded to CS 2.1 SP2 (I was on SP1) and from my quick smoke test all seems to be well; if you find something not working then please let me know.
Given my book is up on Amazon this might not be the best time to write this . There is an interesting article by one of the LA Times reporter on his experiences with how the price changes for books “left” in the shopping basket and not actually bought. This is something I have noticed first hand and I can tell for a fact it is not just books but other items as well....
I finally upgraded the blog to Community Server 2.1 SP1 today - its been out for a little while but did not get the time to upgrade till now. Everything seems to be running fine, but if you find something broken then let me know. The next version of CS , does have lots of code-names, but I don’t know what to make of it. It is supposed to be out sometime in Q1 07....
I recently bought a new Multi-function printer at home - a Dell 1815dn and it works great. I am quite impressed with the speed and quality - both of which are fine for home use. This can also scan documents and send it to a machine on the network and that was one of the features that was very useful at home, but the Windows Firewall did not like it and would block the incoming request....
I am finding all kinds of interesting bits and bobs now that the primary OS I am running is x64 bit. For example did you know that Flash Player does not have a x64 bit implementation? Believe me, less Ads for me to see on pages and you don’t see me shedding any tears! Here is what I get when I tried to install Flash on IE 7 x64: Flash Player is not supported for playback in a 64-bit browser....
Vista x32 is available on MSDN - go get it! 😄 Update: Here is a screen shot: <p> <img src="images/VistaonMSDN_thumb.png" alt=""/> </p>
Still trickling down …. just another few hours to go. <p> <img src="images/VistaRTM_thumb2.png" alt=""/> </p>
If you are running Community Server (CS) like this blog and you would like to get Google or YouTube videos in your posts ( like this ), then you need to add the following setting in your section of the communityserver.config file. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 <embed style="true" type="true" src="true" quality="true" bgcolor="true" scale="true" wmode="true" salign="true" FlashVars="true" width="true" height="true" /> <object width="true" height="true" /> <param name="true" value="true" /> (via Chris Hammond’s post )
If you buy a en eligible Dell on or after October 26th you can upgrade to Vista. Check out Upgrade Express Site and http://www.dellvistaupgrade.com/ and for more details.
Yes, they are like Military Intelligence - an oxymoron. And HSBC is not too off as well by locking out accounts of users running on NetSurf (which incase you did not know is an opensource browser for RISC OS platform). See I keep saying, common Sense ain’t very common.
If you got more time to waste while searching than doing anything then check out Ms. Dewey . While it seems cool at first, it very quickly gets very irritating. And the fact, she does not shut up does not quite help. (via fellow Avanut, Christopher T Clark)
This is the screen shot from Windows Media Player in Vista Build 5728 - I guess there is still work to be done by Microsoft. <p> <img src="images/wm11.jpg" alt=""/> </p>
Well, Gartner is saying that Vista will be the last of its kind, as for any future versions using a modular architecture as the current integrated architecture is unsustainable. I don’t think this in itself is anything new (most other companies have been doing it for a while). But in practice this is more difficult than it sounds. It will be quite difficult to break the Windows team and the way they do builds, code branches, etc....
Observer has a list of the top 15 websites that change the world. I am not sure I personally agree with all of them, but interesting nevertheless.
Continuing my quest for better offline blogging , this is a test post using Windows Live Writer - first impressions are good despite some people having “interesting” behaviors with this online. I’ll keep you guys posted on how this goes for me.
I upgraded the blog to CS 2.1 RTM, after a few days of testing and everything seems to be working fine. If you find something thats broken, please do let me know .
What is a collation? Before I get into the exception details, a collation is something that defines what the bit pattern looks like for each character and is used sorting, ordering and comparisons. You can read more details here . When I had originally upgraded from CS 2.0 to 2.1 Beta 1, I had started to get a collation error in SQL – but only when I clicked on any specific tag to see posts listed by that tag....
Community Server 2.1 went RTM yesterday and I am not quite happy. Didn’t they just release the RC1 just a few days ago (on August 4th to be precise) What is the point of pushing a RC1 for 5 days! After I spend a considerable amount of time testing and upgrading to RC1, the RTM was released. Yes, I am irritated by the fact I have to do some more testing, but I am more irritated about the fact, why bother releasing a RC if you are not going to be really testing with it?...
<p> <img src="images/Qtek8500_3QTR_CLCK_080606LO.jpg" alt="Qtek 8500"/> </p> Meenakshi (don’t bother checking the link, she has not started blogging), also got her new phone – a Qtek 8500 yesterday. And after a few hours of grumbling as she had to manually update her Outlook contacts with the phone numbers before she could sync. it up she seems to be happy with it and I think she really likes it. 😄 I do have to admit she was brave running the original version of Windows Mobile released on a Motorola MPx200 ....
I had been testing the CS 2.1 RC1 over the weekend at home and after it seems everything seems to be working, I upgraded the production blog to the latest bits as well. If you see anything missing or any broken links then please let me know.
I have been looking at a few offline blogging tools and I am trying out BlogJet based on Adam’s recommendation who has been using it for a while. It seems to be OK thus far, but I have not had a chance to play with it except for a few hours and it seems to be promising. The only issue I have is it does not seem to support Unicode characters – at least not in the title – I do not know of the posts themselves....
I have been asked this everytime we get around to talking about Avanade (my current employer), now what does it mean. I did not know till now and had always wondered till now. But I came across this old archive (in another context) and now I know what it means: n. 1. A proposed joint venture of Andersen Consulting and Microsoft. 2. An organization that will help its customers leverage the Internet and advanced technologies to achieve strategic advantage....