Razi's Space

If you have installed SharePoint 2007 SP2 or planning to do so , make sure you are aware of the bug in SP2 that will change the product expiration date for SharePoint 2007 and make it expire after 180 days (like a trial). However there is no other known ramifications , and this bug will not effect your SharePoint data & sites in general.

The good news is there is a workaround available from Microsoft , plus there will be a hot fix available within 48 hours . You can read about workaround from Microsoft SharePoint blog here.

Its been amazing to see what Wolfram Research can deliver, perhaps you know them because of there excellent software “Mathematica” (in its current version 7).This software has been around for now more than two decades and still going strong. But what make me more excited when I get the news , that they are launching “WolframAlpha”, here is the brief quotes coming from there blog.

“We’ll be launching WolframAlpha (you can see the proceedings on a live webcast).This is a proud moment for us and for the whole Mathematica community. (We hope the launch goes well!)”

So what’s exactly  is “WolframAlpha” , well frankly the best way is to go and play around with it to get the answer , but according to there blog , again a brief quotes

“In terms of technology, WolframAlpha is a uniquely complex software system, which has been entirely developed and deployed with Mathematica andMathematica technologies”

I just give it a try here, and following is the result I get, when I type “Singapore” and press “=” (see the images below ,just for an idea and accept my apologies for the image quality , they are just for pre-view anyways) , basically the results gives brief detail of country and then ,detail stats of the important indicators/parameters (population, etc)

I also like , option of downloading the result/computation in PDF. Its very handy and portable.

Now this may not be that tempting for you , but here is something cool (just to start with) , so if I want to know what’s the Singapore population , and  then want to multiple it my 2 , I just have to do following

Type (without quotes) “singapore population * 2 ”  and then  press “=”

The results shows the two times the total population in numbers , and then a graph showing the population growth over past couple of decades. Quite impressive!

For now this ends my brief moment with “WolframAlpha” , but I really liked it , and hope to see it getting mature and popular. In fact there are bunch of examples here. Its like beginning of a new era in computational knowledge search, its get more climactic , as we are at the ending of first decade of the new century.

All the best wishes to Worflram and his Research team.

Cheers!

Frankly , even if you are not going for SharePoint Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) program , this MCM  pre-reading contains an excellent list of resources that you should have read if you working with SharePoint.Its a long list and that’s exactly what make it comprehensive , its divided into sections and each of them corresponds to, key areas in SharePoint 2007.

Honestly , these days its awfully difficult to find good source(s), where you get good quality pointers for the creditable SharePoint resources/links, this list is definitely one of them. One thing I noticed is there are few books mentioned in the list (most of them are the ones you might expect) , but I was bit surprise (no worries here)  to see  the book “Inside the Index and Search Engines: Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 ” , was not in the recommended list under section “Enterprise Search”, perhaps there is a good reason for it , but I think this is the only genuine book in the whole SharePoint 2007 world, on the topic till date, and does excellent job in explaining the concepts.

Anyways , enjoy the resources , I don't want to rehash them here for two reasons , first they might be updated over time so , in future perhaps it will be easier for you to directly access them here, secondly the list its quite big!.

Cheers.

As I installed Windows 7 RC over last weekend , replacing my long running Vista (I never remove vista with windows 7 beta , I have couple of VM’s  with Windows 7 beta , to keep me happy, but to me beta is beta!). Anyways , the first thing I do after installation is that , I tried to browse the internet, using option suppose to be available in start menu named “Search the Internet” , which as in case of Vista present itself when you launch the “start menu” and start typing in the search box.Now may be its just my Windows 7 RC bits , or that option is just not available at all.I really liked this option as it provides great findability.Anyways after some search over web , and drilling into couple of forums posts, and hit and trial (with my registry , oh boy that’s fun isn’t it!) , I found the hack working for me. Now there is no guarantee it works for you , but it should, anyways following is registry hack that should do the trick.

In Registry hive [HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer] add/update entry "AddSearchInternetLinkInStartMenu"=dword:00000001”

Its been such a amazing experience to deliver session in TechDays Developers 2009 , my session was on SharePoint track titled “Common Development Mistakes During SharePoint Projects””,and I had absolute fun talking on this topic!. I tried couple of demos and touch base issues that most of developers face , from architecture to there day to day development tasks with SharePoint.Development in general and SharePoint in specific ,its super important to have a very good argument before you finally say “lets go with this approach”. Sharepoint is big product and provides plethora of choices, the better you chose the better you deliver.

You can download the following resources for my session “OFC 303 - Common Development Mistakes During SharePoint Projects”.

Cheers!