You can visit the SharePoint Server 2007 Demo Site to see some preview information about the new version coming out at some point. We’re a SharePoint-using company where I work, and SharePoint is what I received my Microsoft MVP in 2 years in a row. SharePoint is a great collaboration tool and platform to design other enabling applications around.

This happened to me today

*sighs*

Turns out that it was a recent Logitech Camera install. This was my first reboot since installing it… sheesh.

http://www.ntcompatible.com/Logitech_Quick_Cam_screws_up_XP_Start_MenuTask_Bar_t34001.html

I guess I’ll uninstall and see how that works.

In a recent post I commented that 1and1.com (the ISP I use for hosting my web sites, email, scripting, mySQL, etc) has had several problems with their phpMyAdmin interface, mySQL connections, and general support of their customer. I also did a bit of googling (ok, actually a friend of mine did some googling for me while I was verbally complaining about 1and1, and she found some links where people all over the world were having mySQL db problems with 1and1 and were unable to contact support at all) and it was evident I wasn’t alone in my troubles. I will point out that in the 3+ years I’ve used 1and1 (I’m on the Premier Developer Package) I’ve had nary a problem. My domains, email, applications, and the minor stuff I use them for have always been solid, I’ve never been overbilled, and I’m a satisfied customer in general. This is basically my first time to use their support service.

A case I had with them had me describing my problem thusly:

Their response came in recently and said:

I do hope they fix it. Using their phpMyAdmin site is unbearable for any real work, meaning I have to code all my changes with SQL either in a php client on the linux box that I’m hosted through (which I haven’t even tested at all anyway) OR right some php or perl to wrap my SQL text, which is just plain dangerous for semi-interactive usage. And it’s not cool. Or tasty.

Just for grins, I logged into the admin interface again just now and it worked smoothly. Granted, I only tried using it for about 2 minutes just clicking around, but I was still mentally consumed by trying to figure out what “and of prior time still checking” meant in their response. Am I learning a new language here? I have a hard enough time combatting the increasingly multi-lingual situation the United States is becoming (I’m an advocate of ensuring English is the one and only official language of the states) and now I have to combat someone re-inventing English? I will show off some of my incredible talents and let you know that I was easily able to get past the incongruity of a single administrator “are already aware”. See how tolerant I am?

To me, it simply shows that 1and1 support is likely using some kind of email support program that helps untrained people appear trained by providing canned responses, text and keying on phrases and suggesting content to the agent while processing the inbound email. What’s sad is that it took what, a week, for even the untrained person to get back to me.

I estimate that of the entire response, the only thing that the support agent actually typed vs having the email support program they’re using generating for them is highlighted below:

Yeah, so now it comes together a little more clearly. Although I’m assuming a bit here, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to think that what happened here was an underqualified agent answered my email. While the end result is that I found out the real status of the case (that someone is aware of the problem), I still yearn to be talked to by someone who actually understood the problem. Maybe I’m spoiled. I definitely know I wouldn’t pay any extra for what I’m yearning for, so maybe 1and1 is being the prudent business owner by giving me the minimum required and keeping costs low.

Well I saw Blogcode.com recently and decided to give it a try. The simple idea is that you answer a few questions about a blog that you read, and it generates this “blog code”, which can be used to compare other blogs. Multiple “blog codes” stored about a specific blog equals a pretty good picture of a blog in general… so if you are looking for a specific kind of blog, the more blog codes there are about a blog, the more accurate it will be for finding the blog you’re looking for.

I logged in, registered, and created a blog code for my own blog. You can see Blog Recommendations for my blog and it’s supposed to be

My results had a highest match of 71.89% for http://blog.dehumanizer.com, a site totally in spanish. Maybe blogcode should put language as one of the rating criteria.

Another match in the 79% range was http://www.blogography.com/. Ok, I looked at the blog and yeah, his blog might be like mine. Except that mine is slightly more kid-friendly. But it seems from the one post I’ve read that he’s got a decent sense of humor. Then I checked his FAQ and browsed the site a bit; liked it. I like that his blog has a “best of” link, a “100 items about me” and archives, map, etc. Actually an interesting blog and I think I’ve gotten a few ideas of things I’d like to do with my little bloggie as well. I especially liked the Toothpaste entry.

Visit Blogography – the blog of Dave something-or-other

Now that I’ve learned a little more PHP and mySQL coding, I plan on doing a lot more customization of my MyBloggie installation. I definitely want more of a “site” than a “blog” but I don’t want to go through a lot of administrative overhead. So we’ll see.

I was looking for RSS feeds to add to my personal copy of FeedDemon specifically regarding Sharepoint. I need to customize my FeedDemon so I’m not wasting so much time just trying to figure out what’s worth reading, so I cleared out just about everything, re-organized into just a few channel groups… and will start adding things as needed.

One of the things important to me is [urlMicrosoft's Sharepoint[/url] and it’s related technologies. Those in the know call it SPS (Sharepoint Portal Server) and WSS (Windows Sharepoint Services). I earned Microsoft MVP award two years in a row (2002-2003 and 2003-2004) but have effectively dropped off the face of the planet as it relates to Sharepoint… We deployed Sharepoint 2001 successfully then did a huge migration to 2003 but so many other things have occupied my time as part of my job, that I couldn’t help the user community as much, so the MVP was dropped. I loved being an MVP but I totally understand thatthey should only recognize those individuals who stay current and keep helping people.

My dilemma — how do I not waste time while trying to keep up to date on Sharepoint tips, tricks, product news, hints and information? Naturally, RSS feeds are the way to go when it comes to aggregating information. Sure beats browsing the web manually and who knows how many mailing lists you’d have to subscribe to to get the info? I don’t want to have an email reader AND a usenet news reader AND a yahoogroups webpage open AND browser to this site and that site and this other site AND read Sharepoint Advisor AND keep up my own blog all day long… wastes too much time.

So eventually I found Mark Kruger’s Boiler Room blog on sharepoint als subsequently found an article he wrote and OPML list he’s maintaining of a ton of sharepoint blogs out there. Why is this cool, you ask? Well, instead of me finding each useful RSS feed of a sharepoint blog somewhere, then manually clicking “New Channel”, and pasting in the URL for the feed… I can just go to Tools –> Synchronize with OPML feed. I put in the url of this OPML list, and bango – it automatically adds all the feeds to my channel group. Now I have dozens (maybe a hundred!) blogs in my aggregator so I can more easily browse sharepoint news.

One of the coolest things about using an RSS feed reader (such as FeedDemon or Bloglines or any of a hundred options available to people) is that you can truly skim articles. It gives you not just the headline but also a little bit of the content in group pane and can be customized to your own browsing style. It can generate a “group newspaper” of sorts that pulls all sorts of news and blog items from all over and puts it in an easy to digest format. You can mark stuff as read and quickly get through a hundred articles. You can mark it as a news item to keep; blog it yourself as a trackback; send the link to the item to someone by email… all sorts of management of information.

Thank you Mark!

Been getting some weird 1and1.com errors… I called in and they’ll escalate it. Case ID is 47887356. Weird database connectivity problems, etc.

phpMyAdmin doesn’t work half the time, the mySQL databases don’t let me connect, one or the other db shows offline in the control panel, and now when I ssh in, it doesn’t even say I have access to my own dot files. My screen session is locked up.. get this:

Now that’s classic. I’m not the owner of my own pseudo-tty.

I hope they get this fixed soon; I have a really cool new web app I’m excited to finish and publish… hint: it has to do with the RSB Pool Table tool. hint#2 it’s going to be extremely coolerific.

I always forget how to check what version SQL server is installed….

http://www.windowsitpro.com/SQLServer/Article/ArticleID/41613/41613.html

Basically, run

inside of Query Analyzer. The link here tells you that PLUS tells you what all the version numbers map to in terms of SQL server version. Quite useful.

I keep forgetting to just have this documented somewhere “permanent” like my blog… so every time I need to do it, I won’t have to go to the last server I configured like this.

Just look for the place on the META line that says “URL=”… and put in the http:// url that you want right after the equal sign. Save it as default.htm (for IIS) or index.html (for Apache) or any file that your web server recognizes as a default document.

http://www.minasi.com/thismonth.htm

I like Mark’s newsletters. They’re no-nonsense and contain useful information. Enjoy!

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060210_490726.htm

Summary: get your BES server and all your devices patched.