Craig Bailey on Microsoft

These days it seems the best indication of when a particular social media source has reached it's used by date is when recruiters are using it more than your 'real' connections :-)

Take LinkedIn for example. A year ago, this was a valuable tool, allowing us all to connect to business associates. These days, all I seem to get is requests to connect with recruiters, and poorly targeted job offers. Facebook isn't so bad, but that's more likely to be because I don't have technology related keywords against my profile.

So, I'm wondering how long before the recruiters start swarming over Twitter? How long before we get shotgun broadcast @replies to everyone about new jobs?

My guess, the wonderful Twitter landscape we enjoy today will be polluted within 6 months. The Block button will be a regular in our daily use, and the 'continual conversation' we enjoy now will regularly be little more than a prelude to a job offer...

But hey, on the flip side, maybe there's an opening for someone to develop a Twitter app for recruiters...

Here's what RecruiTwit could do:

1. You seed it with a few people to follow (eg Scobleizer). Then it goes along following the followers of the seed people (all automatically of course)

2. Then, when you are ready with your job ad, you type in the description and click Send. RecruiTwit creates individual @replies to everyone you follow, spamming them with a 'personal' job ad tweet

3. In the Premium edition it'd allow you to use multiple Twitter accounts so you can avoid the Twitter API limitations (60 an hour currently I think)

4. In the Platinum edition it automatically creates new Twitter accounts for you every 7 days, since everyone will have blocked your existing ones by then

Am I being too cynical? You can reply to me on Twitter here if you like.

This one has bugged me for ages - you open up stacks of tabs in IE and after a while weird things start happening. Perhaps its the menu not appearing on some tabs, another tab has missing toolbars, etc.

And it affects other programs as well including File Explorer, shortcuts, and in my case SharePoint Designer (and even Live Writer - with which I am currently writing this post).

Well, thanks to Jon Galloway we now have a (Microsoft non-supported) solution. Jon points to posts by Ed Bott and Kevin Dente, the latter being almost 4 years old. Some things never change huh?

Warning: All registry changes are 'do at your own risk' affairs, so be careful as always with this one.

The main interest in this article from Mary Jo is not about CRM (who cares about a name change after all) but rather how Microsoft are clarifying their terms:

Live: Consumer focus

Online: Business & Enterprise focus, hosted by Microsoft

Hosted services: hosted by Microsoft partners

And don't miss the revenue sharing snippet at the bottom - Microsoft will share 10% of the CRM Live charge with reseller partners (its at the bottom of page 10 of the linked document).

(via Mary Jo Foley)

I've had issues recently with Outlook crashing when I shut it down. Initially I thought this was due to a rogue Outlook Addin (eg I've got Xobni, ClearContext, OutTwit and others installed). So I went through systematically getting rid of them. Put the problem persisted.

Finally I found the issue was to do with the actual .ost file being corrupted. The way I discovered this was by chance when trying to clear my Deleted items. Outlook gave me a message informing that the file was corrupt, and even better recommended using scanpst.exe to fix it.

I'd never heard of scanpst.exe but a quick Google check shows it has been around since the dark ages, and has been a regular in the Sys Admin's toolbox for years.

If you are looking for it you can find it in your c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 12\ folder or equivalent.

Everything Outlook related needs to be closed down (eg Mobile Device Sync) and then you run it up. It'll prompt for the ost file and away you go.

Since repairing my file I've had no further issues with Outlook.

This Wednesday we’ve got another great Sydney Business & Technology User Group (SBTUG) lined up.

This month: Unified Communications: What is it, and why does it matter? Presented by Craig Pringle.

• When: This Wed 26 March 2008
• Time: 6pm (until approx 8:30pm)
• Where: Microsoft, North Ryde
• Contact: Craig Bailey : 0413 489 388
• Cost: Free (Pizza all provided)

Sessions

Craig Pringle (Unified Communications Practice Leader at Gen-i Australia) will be explaining why Unified Communications (UC) is getting so much attention right now.

Microsoft is making a big push into the UC space, and this session will give you an overview of what UC is, why it matters and how it applies to your business. He’ll also be covering some of the pitfalls with adopting this latest technology. More details...

Wave Launch recap

Prior to Craig’s talk I’ll be giving a quick recap of the Microsoft 2008 stack launch that happened around the country (and the world) these past few weeks. I’ll quickly cover what was included in the release and the main benefits as they apply to various businesses.

I’ll then be opening the meeting to discussion about how we shape SBTUG for the remainder of the year. Speaking with many of you lately there’s plenty of great ideas flowing. So, I’m asking for your help in organising the group better as we proceed.

Plus, we’ll have a quick ‘Member Spot’ – this is a new item each meeting where we get to meet one of the SBTUG members and find out a bit more about who they are and what they do.

And as usual we’ll be having our monthly News roundup from 6pm.

New SBTUG web site

Check out the revamped SBTUG web site.

We’ve made it into a Wiki, which means anyone can edit the pages (after simple Registration). Please feel free to contribute to the site.

Facebook

Don’t forget, if you haven't already, you can join the SBTUG group on Facebook.

And please RSVP for Wed night’s event here. This helps us know how many people are coming (for catering).

Twitter

Last but not least, you can always follow us on Twitter here.

Thanks to Brad Abrams, here's the Silverlight 2 Developer poster (JPEG).

Yes, it's officially supported. But I don't think it is installed by default - your installer still has to do that - however I may be wrong...

Not only does the download (a whopping 687 KB :-) include all the source code for the S2B1 controls, but also all the unit tests. Check out Brad's post for other useful links as well. Like this one from Shawn Burke which gives a nice overview.

(via Brad Abrams)

You've no doubt used SitePoint before. So I probably don't need to tell you about their excellent CSS Reference. And it'd be silly to think you don't also know about their freshly released HTML Reference. Great resources.

A quick note to promote the upcoming Sydney BarCamp (or more correctly: BarCampSydney), being held at the Uni of NSW on April 5 & 6.

Don't know what BarCamp is? No problem - here's the details.

'BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols. (from Wikipedia).