Upgrading to Office Communicator 2007

Recently, my company laptop was upgraded to Communicator 2007.

Two things I did not like about this:

  • the “old” communicator 2005 had the possibility to do screen sharing. In OCS2007, it’s not there anymore. Of course, you can upgrade your conversation to live meeting, but we do not have that yet.
  • imageafter installation, my presence icons in Outlook 2007 did not work anymore.  And this made me realise how convenient these things are, and how quickly you get used to them: you start a new message, type in your recipient, you notice that he is in the office,… you close the message and go see him!
    Fortunately, I got them back to work by installing a microsoft update.

Switching to WordPress…

I made a tough decision today. I decided to abandon SharePoint as a blogging tool, and I am switching to WordPress.

Why this move?

  • the standard site template for blogs in SharePoint is rather limited, especially for the typical web 2.0 features (pingbacks, comments, tagging…)
  • writing content is sometimes very painful. Ever tried embedding a Youtube video?
  • there are some nice extensions (tag cloud, Enhanced blog Edition) but my hosting provider did not manage to install them properly
  • SharePoint hosting costs me money 🙂
  • I am using WordPress for our family blog and it is working great
  • my friend Gert is giving great service for the php hosting.

So if you have this blog in your feedreader, don’t forget to update the feed!

The value of a great idea

Leopard File Rename Sometimes you see a great function in a software that makes you think: “why didn’t I think of this”? Especially when it is very simple, but so effective.

I just noticed one in Leopard. When you need to rename a file, you often struggle to leave the file extension untouched, and just change the name. Not in Leopard: when you click on a filename to rename it, it does NOT select the extension, just the filename.

Why didn’t I think of this?

Watch it live on http://screencast.com/t/pLBDkLeMd

A great view on business

The people from Common Craft have introduced a new concept of explanation. With their concept called Paperworks, they explain difficult concepts in “Plain English”. They have been all over the learning blogs in 2007, because of the simplicity and the effectiveness of the idea.

They do not only have a great concept, but also great ideas about how to do business today. I recommend everyone to read their 15 Lessons Learned in 2007.

My favorites?

  • Simple is better
  • Constraints facilitate creativity
  • Give it away
  • Be Authentic, genuine and legitimate

Makes you think!

Store it in SharePoint or not?

One of the “frequently asked questions in a SharePoint course is “should I store it in SharePoint or not?”

There are some simple guidelines: these files don’t really belong in SharePoint:

  • very large files (there is a limit of 2 GB)
  • files that are linked
  • executable files

Joel Oleson posted a great overview.