November 2004 - Posts
Read this great piece of prose by English poet Jonathon Swift today which
reminded me of the almost endless possibilities for drilling down into layers of
complexity...
"So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And
these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad
infinitum."
Last week Will behooved me to check out
the IE2OneNote powertoy. Today I needed to save some pages for quick,
offline viewing so I thought that I'd give it a whirl. It's very
useful. It installs as a button on the main IE toolbar and scrapes the
page into a new top level category named WebClippings. All of the styles
and images are perfectly preserved.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/assistance/HA011408961033.aspx
During the week I was introduced to Serena Yeoh by William Luu. Serena's tagline is:
I'm a little ant working in a big-big colony.
Based on what I've seen, Serena may be anything but a little ant as she
already has 2 really cool applications
- Stickies .NET -
allows you to create little notes and reminders to stick on your desktop.
- Paladin
- a generic, feature-rich object persistent framework.
I've installed the Stickes.NET application and have found that it has some
really useful features for posting reminders. The thing that got me about
this application was how professionally it has been done. There has been
not skimping on UI and features. I'm hoping to play with Paladin during
the week.
Over the next few months I intend to do some intensive blog'ging on the topic
of using tools such as InfoPath, Office 2003, Sharepoint and
the Information Bridge Framework and how you can wire them together to
create smart applications which add value to existing information systems.
I've created a new category named "Knowledge and Collaboration" which will
house these entries.
[ Currently Playing : King's Crossing - Elliott Smith - From a Basement on
the Hill (04:58) ]
I've had a couple of Windows Services snippets that I've been meaning to
"rip-to-blog" for a while now...
Advanced Installer... a free, advanced MSI creation tool
http://www.advancedinstaller.com/
Code
snippet to add a description to your Windows Services (note that, in Whidbey
this is all exposed via the API)...
1Public Overrides Sub Install(ByVal stateSaver As System.Collections.IDictionary)
2 MyBase.Install(stateSaver)
3
4 Dim serviceDescription As Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey = Microsoft.Win32.Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey("System\CurrentControlSet\Services\" & yourInstaller.ServiceName, True)
5
6 serviceDescription.SetValue("Description", "This is the FileMonitorService.")
7 serviceDescription.Close()
8End Sub
9
[ Currently Playing : Let's Get Lost - Elliott Smith - From a
Basement on the Hill (02:27) ]
I've been thinking about ways to increase the visibility of UG's in 2005 with
the idea that, through increased visibility we will be able to increase
membership numbers. Much of this
comes from my exposure to both the Adelaide and Brisbane UG's. I thought that I'd take this opportunity
to jot down some of my thoughts.
Partnering
I
think that, at a grass roots level, we should look toward "partnering" with
organisations that we gain synergistic benefits from. The industry which springs immediately
to mind is the recruiting industry.
I've spent the past week in discussions with a recruitment firm in
Adelaide - ChoiceIT - about the opportunity for them to foster a more retentive
climate by pushing their clients towards our group. It will show that they are interested in
the skills and knowledge development of their candidates. I also suggested that ChoiceIT could
gain exposure by having a delegate attend the meeting to meet'n'mingle.
This
idea was very well received.
ChoiceIT currently have approximately 50 current dev's on their books -
over half of which are VB and C# users.
It
would be good to also have some cards - like business cards - which outline our
Groups details:
Group
Name:
Adelaide
.NET User Group
Meeting
Location:
...
Meeting
Dates:
every
N Wednesday of the month
Meeting
Format:
pizza
+ drinks : cost x
Group
Contacts
Group
President
...
Website
...
Email
...
We
could leave decks of these cards at various recruitment agencies for them to
hand out to their .NET clients.
More
Options
An
emerging community activity is "Geek Dinners". I think that it would be good to explore
new options such as these in the hope that the variety will help with the
"richness" of community.
My
experience has been that there are 2 types of users which would embrace this
idea:
1)
The member who is already attending meetings but has a yearning for deeper
discussion of topics and ideas.
2)
The non-member who doesn't attend group meetings because either, a) a perception
that nothing interesting happens at UG meetings; b) time is inconvenient.
Member
Numbers
Now,
this might be a bit of a left-field idea but... I think that we could look to
increase the visibility of our successes both between UG's and also internally
at Microsoft. I wonder how UG's
will feel about exposing "member activity data" on a regular basis?
NOTE: this might ultimately get covered by the
MsdnConnection program anyways???
Member
Boards
As
per my previous blog entry about member boards I think that this will be a great
"ice-breaker" feature which will give members some insight into what other
people in the room get up to.
I had a big SOA with Office 2003 day
today,
First
I read this...
Introduction to Fabrikam
Pasted
from <http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/officesystem/fabrikam/introfabrikam/>
Then
I installed this…
InfoPath
2003 Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET
Pasted
from <http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7E9EBC57-E115-4CAC-9986-A712E22879BB&displaylang=en>
Then
I watched this...
MSDN Webcast: Best Practices for Designing InfoPath
Forms—Level 200
Pasted
from <http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032259532&Culture=en-US>
Finally,
I watched this...
MSDN Webcast: InfoPath in End-to-End Enterprise
Solutions: Integrating InfoPath with Siebel and SAP—Level 300
Pasted
from <http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032259543&CountryCode=US>
You
could say that I'm sold :-)
[ Nothing Playing. ]
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