Jun 26, 2006 | blog
Slashdot is reporting that WinFS Gets the Axe. The full discussion is actuall over at the WinFS Team Blog. According to what I can gleen from the post is that a number of important advances the WinFS team has made will be integrated into the next release of SQL Server. Also, as client components become ready for “prime time” they will be integrated into the Windows client:
Windows will continue to adopt work as it’s ready
The way I read this is that Microsoft simply can’t make this technology work as a file-system replacement at this time and are choosing to “productize” the current advances that the team has made and will not answer all the questions we all have regarding the promised “Windows Future Storage” feature for Windows Vista.
Jun 23, 2006 | blog
Ah, Microsoft beta software. Applications you love to hate… wait a minute. This stuff actually works!
So I’ve reconfigured my system yet again – well, about a month ago I did :). Figured that I couldn’t get around it any longer and loaded up Windows Vista B2, Office 2007 B2 (w/ OneNote, Visio, Project), and the included IE7 B2, and Media Player 11 that comes with Vista.
My first reaction – its slow, but that’s part of beta software. It may be feature complete, but the performance optimizations have yet to be done. With that said, Vista performance is much improved over previous beta releases and so is IE7 – it’s gotten much more stable.
Previously I had not been keeping up on the Office betas, so when I had the chance to “level set” my system I figured that I needed to go all the way. The new toolbars in Office 2007 are a nice surprise – I mean, I had read about them last year and was intrigued, but didn’t know what to expect. It turns out that (for me) they are a productivity enhancement. The tool I needed was within easy reach, right on the visible toolbar, and organized by function with easy to identify icons and labels.
Internet Explorer 7 is a pleasant experience as well, with the new tabbed interface and built-in RSS support. Usually I add the MSN Toolbar to IE6 for a (pseudo) tabbed interface, and Pluck for RSS reading. IE7 is polished enough that I am quite pleased with the tabs and the RSS support. I simply imported my OPML file containing my feeds into the browser and I was off and reading my feeds in seconds. The other neat feature is the search function – the fact that you can easily add different search tools with a simple click or two, and choose your favorite search engine very easily.
Honestly, I’ve not used Media Player 11 yet – I have a better speaker system on my main home system and simply play tunes on that PC instead. Sooner or later I’ll get around to trying it out and I’ll probably talk about it then.
One new item in Vista B2, is the new Windows Mobile Device Center, a replacement for ActiveSync. This tool is used to sync your Pocket PC or Smartphone with Outlook. It works very well, though its really not significantly different than ActiveSync, simply built into the OS. The process and interface is highly polished as is the entire Vista and Office 2007 experience. Added functionality to sync media and such with mobile audio, mobile video, and camera devices automatically just like PPCs have done for years.
Of course Vista Ultimate Edition includes the Tablet PC and Media Center features in addition to the base “Windows Pro” full Active Directory networking integration. I’ve only toyed around a little – my laptop is not a Tablet PC so those specific tools don’t add anything in my case. The Media Center features are intriguing and I’ll be investigating them more as time goes on. I’ve not had a MCE before, so I’ve got some exploring to do – neat stuff though!
Alright this post is getting quite long so I’ll cut it short – though I’ll admit to using the OneNote & Word combo to post a number of posts lately. The integration promises to be impressive, though it is a little rough in this beta. This post details what it takes to post from OneNote 2007.
Anyone else running all the major MS betas on their main system? What do you think?
Jun 22, 2006 | blog
If you have been watching the Windows Vista space, you would be aware that there is a built-in sync service called Windows Mobile Device Center.
With WMDC, ActiveSync will be a fuzzy memory as all synchronization services are brought directly into the OS with Vista. In addition to Pocket PC and Smartphone, the new tool will sync audio, video, and camera devices as well.
Anyway, Smartphone Thoughts has a Quick Look at the new Windows Mobile Device Center. Check it out, its worth a look!
Jun 16, 2006 | blog
I’m a little disappointed in both Microsoft and Adobe on this topic. On the one hand, Microsoft has answered the requests of many of its customers in adding the feature to the current Word 2007 beta 2 release. On the other, you have them also adding their new XPS document format – a competitor the PDF format that we all use.
Adobe, is threatening Microsoft in statements about how Microsoft’s history of “embrace and extend” has destroyed other products and markets, in essence absorbing the market to the point that there is no point in competing. Of course Adobe does keep pointing out that their PDF format is an open standard and is the “de facto standard” for portable documents.
The disappointing part is that Adobe simply doesn’t trust Microsoft on this, and Microsoft has done nothing to make anyone believe that it isn’t after conquering the portable document market. The same behavior has been seen before on numerous occasions and Adobe has every right to be worried – Acrobat & PDF are one of its most visible brands that define the company.
So how do these partners move forward? How will they resolve this in the best interests of the customer? Microsoft’s Word development team had the right idea in making it easy for their customers to create PDF documents from Word documents. The XPS document format is interesting, but why create another portable format when PDF is already entrenched? What “enhancements” could Microsoft bring to the table in a service pack and render the Adobe Acrobat unable to read the new file format? Who’s to say that’s what would happen? Why wouldn’t it?
The simple thing for both companies to do is for Microsoft to abandon its XPS format in this case, actually enter into a licensing agreement with Adobe with verbiage to explicitly accept that Adobe is the sole developer of the PDF format. Adobe would generate royalties from licensing and both companies customers would gain from the agreement.
Of course the reality is that PDF may be an open standard, but Adobe’s Acrobat Pro is a $125 shipping product, and simply having PDF creation capabilities in Word virtually eliminates the need for this product, regardless of who develops the file format going forward. Add to that – if Word usurps Acrobat’s creation abilities, what incentive is there for Adobe to expend resources to develop and distribute a free reader for it?
Also, don’t forget that competition is the lubrication of innovation. Interesting stuff will develop because of this little riff.
Jun 14, 2006 | blog
Ok, thought I’d give a quick update on where I’m at using OneNote as a blogging tool, and I’ll try to keep it short.
ITS GREAT!
So I was able to follow Chris Pratley’s workaround (look at the bottom of the post) to get blogging through Word to work. And it does! Here are the steps I do have to go thru:
Simply highlight what you want to post, right-click and select “Blog This”. OneNote then shoots the selection over to Word and uses the blog template that ships with Beta2.
Edit the post if needed, and then I publish the post as a draft to my blog.
Once the draft post is on my blog, I can log in and make sure the formatting is correct, select the categories I want for the post, and add the
Technorati tags.
Finally I correct the date for the post since Word currently generates an incorrect date.
Publish post
So that’s it! Yes there are a few steps to the process, but being able to use OneNote as the creation tool is simply incredible.
