On 16th October 2007, Microsoft launched their Unified Communications (UC) vision designed to seriously compete with the market leader in web collaboration, Webex. A long awaited launch with a whole host of features:
Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS)
Office Communicator 2007
Live Meeting 2007
Exchange Hosted Services (EHS)
Round Table and other sexy UC endpoint hardware
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Windows users, make your life easier by downloadng and installing Launchy - The Open Source Keystroke Launcher for windows:
Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
Launchy is the Windows vesion of Quicksilver adopted by the mac community:
Unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.
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Live Search for Blackberry has been released, meaning the huge chunk of corporate Blackberry users now have access to this excellent service.
Live Search for BlackBerry is the best way to find key local information when you’re on the go. Whether you’re traveling for business, shopping around town, or planning your night out, you can quickly find businesses and restaurants, get turn by turn driving directions, and view it all on interactive maps.
Go to wls.live.com on your mobile phone to download. It is a quick download and you'll be up and running in no time. You can also use the mobile browser version of Live Search at m.live.com.
I have just been sent details of a great rebate offer that Microsoft are running on Small Business Server 2003 R2 deployments done before the end of 2007.
Don’t miss this opportunity! From September 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007, the on-site services you may already provide to customers to deploy Microsoft® Windows® Small Business Server 2003 R2 could make you eligible to receive some great rewards.
The rebate in the UK is either $225 for deployment services on SBS premium, $100 for services on SBS standard, or 5 CALS or a D-Link DIR-615 Wireless Router. Looks like a great offer. Visit the website here.
Just over a week ago I upgraded my mobile to a new HTC Touch Mobile 6 device. Today is the moment of truth when my number transfers over from Orange onto my new provider, T-Mobile and I'll start hammering it with both incoming and outgoing calls.
I have spent the last week setting the phone up, installing mobile applications, configuring direct push for my email, calendar and contacts, downloading new themes to change the appearance and generally playing.
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I recenly upgraded my mobile to a HTC Touch Windows Mobile 6 device and seized the opportunity to change from Orange to T-Mobile in the UK at the same time. You can see a video I did about this here.
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I was at the Office Communications Server 2007 launch today, held at Vinopolis in London, UK. I missed the complete morning sessions because I got caught up on a client firewall issue. But what I did see I thought was great day.
If you've read this blog before, you'll have seen previous posts about Live Meeting and Unified Communications. Mainly because I love technology, resell Live Meeting and setup the Live Meeting User Group .
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If, like me, you are addicted to twitter , then get yourself a dowload of OutTwit, which is a new plug-in for outlook so you can twitter directly from outlook.
I've installed OutTwit, and you get a great new toolbar added with a box to just go ahead and twitter. You also receive tweets into your inbox of friends you are following. I am not sure I like this feature. I like the way you can do an instant tweet from outlook. Having said that, I much prefer snitter that runs on Adobe Air.
Communicator Mobile has been Released to Web (RTW) which gives you the ability to install the Office Communicator client on your mobile device:
"Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile is a unified communications client for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Communicator Mobile runs on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6.0 software for Pocket PC and smartphone devices."
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I was just watching a video over on Channel 10 about Round Table which is an amazing 360 degree panoramic video device, allowing you to see everyone "around the table" that integrates with Live Meeting 2007 or OCS 2007.
Round table is 3 things in one: VOIP phone, Video over IP and a simple PSTN phone with USB connectivity.
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Office Communications Server (OCS) has been out for some time now and the final pieces of the Unified Communications (UC) jigsaw will be launched on 16th October 2007.
Live Meeting 2007 falls inside the UC bucket and Microsoft have clearly been listening to their customers with this release. The interface is cleaner, less cluttered, more obvious and easier.
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I thought I had blogged about this, but realise I completely forgot. I am not a gamer, but Halo 3 looks extremely tasty and the website is created using Silverlght.
It is a stunning website and I serously encourage you to stop what you are doing and give yourself a bit of "You time" and go check it out.
If nothing else, consider it research for the future benchmark of websites.
Live FolderShare is another tool released in the range of Live services. As an application needing installation rather than an online service like SkyDrive, it allows you to share or synch files with anyone you like.
Seemingly unrestricted use:
Up to 2GB per file size
Unlimited file transfers
No restrictions on file type
"FolderShare is an extremely lightweight, efficient, and unobtrusive application. Install the FolderShare Satellite, setup the folders you want to share or sync, and work as you normally do. There is NO spyware or adware included with FolderShare."
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I have blogged previously about Tafiti, which is a new search tool from Microsoft that uses a Silverlight interface with Live Search.
Well, I stumbled across an excellent webcast on Matt Hester's Weblog which highlights some of the great features of tafiti:
Clean and intuitive interface
Easily Search across data types: webpages, RSS, books etc
Sign in to store your searches on your own shelf
Cross browser support between Firefox and IE
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Soapbox is now fully integrated with MSN video Beta. This means that soapbox is no longer a seperate and dedicated site but part of the next generation of MSN video.
So the web address for soapbox now redirects to the new location at http://next.video.msn.com. The new site now has a Soapbox user videos tab on the main navigation.
Some of the new features, courtesy of the Soapbox Team Blog:
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Today I stumbled upon the Facebook Popfly mashup app . I have been playing with Popfly and recently did a flickr mashup . If you haven't had a play with Popfly yet, get yourself over to popfly.com and get yourself an account. They got a whole bunch of community based mashup tools tht you can have great fun mashing up.
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Microsoft recently and very quietly launched MSN Sideguide, a sidebar that:
"enhances your browsing experience with useful and relevant information as you surf".
The sidebar displays content from MSN channels and enables easy Live Search. The main reason behind MSN Sideguide is to fund free wifi networks in Oakland and Portland. ALthough the general experience is not my cup of tea, the funding concept is an interesting one. Similar to the msn idea of adding your charitable cause to your display name .
Further details available here .
I saw a couple of great articles this morning talking about how the new Sharepoint and community integration strategy makes Microsoft the new Facebook for the enterprise. That's quite a leap forward and I can see why it is happening.
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I found a great tool today called OutSynch which synchronizes photographs of your Facebook friends with your Outlook contacts. This is a great tool. I downloaded and very quickly tried this out with great effect.
As soon as you have synchrsied Outlook with Facebook, you can then synch your Mobile device with Outlook meaning you get the photos of your contacts in your phone too.
A thumbs up for this tool. Easy to use and non intrusive.
Some time ago, Microsoft acquired sysinternals.com and wininternals.com which were websites dedicated to providing excellent admin tools and securitity utilities for managing windows networks.
You can now find these tools at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/
There are a huge amount of tools here that network administrators do a far better job and far easier.
Today I had a conversation with Paolo Tosolini, New Media Business Manager for Microsoft in Redmond.
Paolo is working on an exciting project called Academy Mobile,
"a Microsoft internal social computing initiative aimed at creating a knowledge sharing environment through the use of videocasts and podcasts. "
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I have just been looking around codeplex.com which is an excellent resource for Sharepoint and .Net projects and code. While I was there, I noticed a rather big Flickr tag.
When I clicked through, there are 16 projects listed, allowing integration between .Net, Sharepoint and Flickr. Here's a couple to wet your appetite:
I had a great conversation today with Michael Gannotti, Senior Technology Specialist for Microsoft, specialising on Sharepoint technologies. I have been reading Michael's blog and listening to his excellent Michael on the Go podcasts, and following his Academy Mobile videos. So I was really looking forward to speaking with Michael and I'll be publishing the conversation as a podcast.
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I have starting using www.tafiti.com over the last week which is a new search tool released by Microsoft that is based on Silverlight and uses Live Search. It is designed to help people use the internet for research projects allowing you to store searches and queries of all manner of web pages, books, rss etc. You get a shelf that you can drag and drop search results to store your searches for later retrieval. This is a great feature of tafiti and it does extend search in almost a 3D way. It reminds me in many ways to the www.msdewey.com search engine that Microsoft produced using video. Looking forward to the future developments of Silverlight and the search functions.
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This is a new blog that I am starting that will focuss purely on Microsoft products, with the usual mix of culture and fun for good measure. The blog is called Chris Dalby: The Essential Microsoft Toolkit and I am aiming to cover new tools and services that work within the Microsoft ecosystem. I look forward to bringing hopefully useful nuggets of information and welcome comments and being contacted.
Chris Dalby is founder and Director of Yellow Park, a Microsoft Certified Partner located in Kent, UK. Yellow Park is a multidisciplinary company specializing in a range of services, including network support for Windows networks, communications, Live Meeting, web and email hosting, online integration and development. You can also find Chris at his other blog, where he covers more general IT related content, mixed in with a bit of culture and fun. In his spare time, Chris enjoys walking and running in his local woods with his two favorite girls; wife Gosia and Kaija a Doberman.
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