It’s a busy lifestyle running a compnay, and as part of improving our brand at Sharing Minds. I will be moving my blog in the next few weeks. Once complete you’ll find my blog at http://adamclark.sharingminds.com.au. However at the moment you can find the raw blog at http://www.sharingminds.com.au/adamclark
I’ll be sure to post again once i’ve completed the application of the Sharing Minds master page and put the propoer URL in place.
For some time now it’s been on our radars, however at the moment with elections being talked about, discussions around content classification for video games and the implementation that just isn’t happening for the National Broadband Network (NBN), it appears that this could all be superseded by the implementation of an national content filter that would contain block access to certain sites and/or pages on a web site.
This morning I read the following article http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/no-proof-isp-filtering-works-abbott/story-e6frgakx-1225850260443 , and I am wondering if this is the first step to a Big Brother society being setup here in Australia. In the proposed filtering scenario being presented by the government, it comes across to me as a very small step from filtering certain ‘inappropriate’ sites to censoring free speech. It also makes me wonder due to the ‘secret’ nature of the blacklist that has been leaked, do the owners of these blocked pages have a right of reply to the blocking of their content?
I would think it would be a much smarter move for the government to provide an opt-in filter (as I was understanding was the original proposal) where an ISP subscriber could request the filtered view of the internet as opposed to the filtered list being pushed on everyone. Had I small children in my home, I would view that this is a great tool to work in conjunction to an internet connection. However I quote now from a comment written in the above article:
“When in public, one has a right not to be presented with commonly considered offensive sights, sounds or smells. When in the privacy of one’s own home, such issues don’t arise because one is in control of the environment. You are in control of what comes into your house via selective providers, or your own filters, not to forget the simple off switch if it all gets to be too much. However, the idea that big brother will protect you, and willingly asking him to do so, is far more offensive a threat to my well being than what I am supposedly being protected from. Who will protect me from my protector?”
In the definition of Refused Content (RC – See here) or other such categories of content, how are we being ensured of the right web sites being blocked, the following is an interesting article, however I once again have found the comments a more interesting read around how people are reacting to news of this ISP filtering.
In closing this commentary off, the question of should the Australian Government be filtering our internet site is still to be answered, my view is No they shouldn’t, an individual should have the right to choose in the privacy of their own home. However my belief is that the Australian Government is going to put this filtering in place regards of what people say, or whether it is the right or wrong thing to do. and just like the promises that are always made by government when the change something, or tell us it won’t be used for ‘that purpose’ it will be, let’s just hope that there can be a level of transparency not secrecy in our government…
At last, announced (publicly) at SPC09 in Vegas a couple of weeks ago, it is now possible to load SharePoint technology directly onto a Windows 7 machine (without a VM). This is something that has been missing in the product supporting development of complex solutions for some time. Microsoft have also already released an article on the steps required to install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx
There are still some prerequisites to take into account before you install SharePoint onto your desktop machine such as ensuring you are running a 64-bit OS and you have the right service packs installed (for Vista). However from reading through the above install article it all ‘appears’ fairly straight forward.
I myself look forward to giving this a go once the beta is released on the 26th November.
This isn’t a new trick by any accounts, but now that the company has been up and running for a while I want to begin changing my online presence to include my Sharing Minds branding, rather than just personal accounts. Part of this is associating my Live ID with an MSN login (I do a lot of communication over MSN). Now it’s simple enough just to log into my Live ID account on my MSN messenger, however I still want to access my personal MSN contacts at the same time and MSN OOTB won’t allow me to do that.
There are a couple of ways to get around this, simplest of this is to just run a copy of MSN messenger with one ID and a copy of Windows Messenger with another. However I am on Windows 7 so that isn’t going to work for me. To get around it I have loaded a little application called MSN_Polygamy from TechnoBuzz that allows you to run multiple instance of MSN.
Now I can run both ID’s through MSN, yay!
When it comes to conferences and events around the SharePoint and Office space, the past few months have been very intense. Having been to a number of these events I can easily say that I have been conferenced out for the most part, and I am looking forward to a break over the next few months while we prepare for what I believe is going to be an even bigger year for technical conferences in 2010.
However one of the great benefits of having some many conferences that are taking SharePoint and Office concerns into account is that we can see a lot more content coming through to the users group. This Tuesday night (3/11/09) we will be having our regular Tuesday evening Brisbane SharePoint Users Group. This time we’re going to be taking a look at some of the content from the SharePoint Conference 2 weeks ago in Las Vegas, where Microsoft began to unveil publicly some of the new advances coming out in SharePoint 2010.
To know more about the conference goes to http://www.mssharepointconference.com and I hope to see you at the BSPUG on Tuesday night.
PS – #SharePint is on as usual after the BSPUG and make sure your there to celebrate your Melbourne Cup Wins!
This is a bit of a belated post since Tech Ed finished a little more than a week ago, however I thought I would take this opportunity to provide my view for the third day of Tech Ed, my thoughts on the lock note and just a couple of general thoughts (both good and not so good).
The beginning of day three for Tech Ed saw a number of us User Group leads up early for a catch-up breakfast on the balcony of the Gold Coast Convention Centre, It was great to catch-up with everyone in one place and here a little of the UG leader space.
The rest of the day was great to meet a number of new people (some of who are now going to start coming to the User Group) and continual catch-up with a number of people I was not aware were attending Tech-Ed. Session wise I only made it to one session early in the day (other than the lock note), as I found that the majority of my time was spent networking with people.
All in all, I thought that the lock note was better than the key note with more interesting topics from Microsoft Research. You can check my tweets (@crazzysyfen) for more on this. Overall I found this Tech-Ed event a great event to attend and I am hoping to attend next year’s once again being held on the gold coast.
Having used Windows 7 during its RC Cycle and now using Windows 7 with its full release, I have come across what I believe is a side effect new cool functionality. Let me set the scene…
I like most IT people love to store content everywhere (this is bad being a SharePoint guy, I should know better, however…) I store content in my documents folder, my SharePoint sites, on USB drives and of course on my desktop. Also being in the IT industry I rebuild my laptop on average every six months due to a new product or something I have tried that didn’t work quite right J. To counter this proliferation of files I make a habit of changing the default location for my files (Documents, Pictures, Desktop) etc to something other than my OS drive. This way if something happens to my drive unexpected I have all my files up to date without having to rely on last Friday’s backups. In Windows Vista this could be done by right clicking on the documents or desktop folder and changing the default location to wherever you desire. In Windows 7, Microsoft has introduced the concept of these common folders as libraries, meaning that in your My Documents you can have multiple locations for storing things. For example: I have two folders of ‘Music’ mapped under my music library. The first location points to a music library on my laptop hard drive where I carry a selection of music I love to listen to all the time while working, while I have also mapped a second location to a USB hard drive that stores more ‘less required’ music. The great thing with these libraries is that they only appear when available and you won’t get lots of errors if there not. I also like the implications of adding SharePoint document libraries to this scenario where a user can access a SharePoint document library with little effort.
But enough on these new features, By Microsoft adding these great library features that have removed the change location ability that allows me to move my desktop from %USERPROFILE%\Desktop to another location. Frustrating!
Doing a little digging through the registry I found that it is possible to change the location of the desktop folder (or any of the core folder locations) to a location other than the default. Please note, that editing the registry can be dangerous and you should only make changes if you are willing to take the risks involved in editing the registry.
To change your default desktop location and do the following:
When you log back on your Windows 7 folder location such as the desktop will be stored at the new location. You do need to note that any content that was stored in the old location does not move with the change and will need to be moved from the old location to the new location before you will see it again.
Well the day after is always a little harder (especially when you have been doing late night ‘networking’ every night since Monday), but thinking back on the second day of Tech Ed here on the Gold Coast it was an interesting day. Firstly I should note that I didn’t make it to a single session yesterday L. But I did hear a lot of what was happening in each session through the Twittersphere…
I personally spent a lot of the day once again catching-up and meeting people all around the convention centre, with such a concentration of people all around the place I found someone to chat too everyone few steps. I found that a great tool for finding people was using the OCS R2 client that we have been given on our HP Mini Notes, If I noticed (usually on Twitter) someone around me I found it easy to ping them over OCS and say “Let’s Meet”).
About the only not so good thing for the day, was a couple of people complaining about the event and the Internet connection. This really irked me. I think the Microsoft and all the guys involved arranging this event have done a fantastic job arranging it. Jorke in particular leading the technical deployment and Infrastructure is a legend. With over 2,500 laptops handed out and working on a wireless network the configuration required is incredible. My only hope is that the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas next month runs as smoothly as Tech Ed has run. Well done guys!
The big event for this Tech Ed was if course the Dream World (#DWParty) part where all of the Tech Ed delegates took over ½ the park. I believe that I was lucky to be one of the first into the park and managed to get onto a number of rides early before the lines got too large. This included: Cyclone (Roller-coaster), Alien vs. Predator (Laser Skirmish), The Claw (rotating pendulum), MotoGP (Roller-coaster), Various Arcade games (Time Crisis, Air Hockey, Dance-Dance Revolution, etc) and a few other rides that I don’t recall the name of. I liked the fact that all around the park in most area’s that I wandered there were food and drink stations was good, although I did get a number of almost flat beers. If there was one thing that was somewhat disappointing it was the entertainment. While the rides were great there was very little roving entertainment or something that pulled us altogether. this would have really solidified the event in my view. At this point I have to laugh as one of the rides that was open was a controlled surfing event. I saw some ‘interesting’ attempts to ride the wave, however one guy really threw himself into body surfing the wave which was awesome. I sat with this guy (can’t remember his name) on the bus home and it was great to hear his perspective on the (wave) ride and the overall event.
Following on into the evening, Moo Moo’s has been the bar to be at, and last night was once again, with a few good drinks, meeting even more people (I love Tech Ed for this) and discussions around the event and its people, myself and a few hardy souls moved onto a night club (called Platinum) around midnight. I think I’ll leave the rest for in-person conversations…
So overall Day 2 of Tech Ed was once again a great event, lots of good things going on and people to talk too.
I didn’t get a chance to get my thoughts down before drifting off to sleep last night (well actually it was early) but now sitting down and enjoying a Muffin and some fruit before heading off to the next session I thought I would just recap some of my thoughts and impressions from the first full day of Tech Ed 2009.
Following the Keynote (See previous post), overall I only got to about ½ the session’s day one, and the sessions that I did get to were good. The presenters were well spoken and obviously knew their topics well. My favourite session would have been the Windows 7 Virtualisation session where we saw the capabilities of Windows 7 to show us a variety of modes and capability to support our virtual environments.
The rest of my time was spent networking with the oodles of people that have frequented the floors of TechEd Australia. It has been awesome to meet so many new people, hear a little of their story, their passions and what they have liked and disliked about TechEd so far. The people here while a little more subdued the I was expecting have had big expectations of all aspects of the event, and from what I can tell ‘most’ of them have been met.
As my first TechEd under the Sharing Minds banner, I have really enjoyed talking to my fellow attendees, getting interviewed for Windows 7 (on-the-spot) and talking to the various vendors about the floor. A lot of the vendors represent some great products and I have seen great products from Secret Server, Mimosa and AvePoint. As an Office and SharePoint specialist I have also enjoyed catching up with the Microsoft Office team including Ian, Alistair, Gayan and Rich. These guys are very passionate about the office space and I am looking forward to continuing building relationships with these guys as the Office and SharePoint 2010 product range launch over the next year.
Moving onto the evening I must admit that I was initially disappointed that there was no event being run for the evening (like an ask the experts dinner), however I managed to head on over to the WardyIT party at the Beach House, where some good food and drinks where had by all. The rest of the night was a great time had by all were we talked shop and life, shared a few drinks and frequented the local night spots around the place.
So day 1 was good and day 2 is also shaping up to be a great day with the BIG Microsoft event at Dreamworld to be held this evening. Stay Tuned….
Posted from my HP Mini
I have just finished watching the Opening KeyNote address for TechEd 2009. I found this was interesting more from the perspective of what has happened across the twittersphere rather than the event itself. The first two speakers our MC Colin Timm and Paul Lamb (HP) talked a lot of business and almost sales type information to the crowds, which on twitter most people gave a bored expression. I must admit the Techie in me was a little bored, however the business man in me found a lot of the POV’s interesting.
The rest of the presentations in the Key note were a lot more technical orientated with the two stand out highlights around Sarah and Jorke giving information around windows seven.
Overall I was a ‘little’ disappointed in the KeyNote, while a lot of the information was good, I have seen a lot of the information at UG’s around the place over the past few months. However what I did see was interesting, well presented and set a good base for everyone to learn over the next three days. Now i’m off to learn around Exchange 2010. More later.
The Information Worker 