Google Sites Now Live – Their Answer to SharePoint?

Google Sites is now live, and you can take a look here.  Lots of talk today about it being a “SharePoint Killer”.  From what I’ve read so far, it won’t really cut it with corporate users.  Not least of all for the simple reason that they would not want to trust their corporate knowledge to the web instead of servers that they have control over.

More info on this from someone who appears to have taken a closer look on this blog post.

Technorati tags: sharepoint 2007, Google Sites

SharePoint Designer 2007 Training Resources

If you are using or planning to use MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0, then I think SharePoint Designer 2007 is an essential tool.  I know there is a fair bit of discussion out in the blogosphere about the best way to customise pages and sites, and whether Designer is too much of a dangerous “end-user” tool, but I think it’s a great way to make minor customisations very quickly.  Anyone who thinks it’s still the same old FrontPage product definitely needs to re-visit it.

So if you are looking for SharePoint Designer training resources there are a few things you might want to look at -  

Late last year I took the SharePoint Designer course at Combined Knowledge.  Definitely a good use of time and money if you want to get up to speed quickly.  Combined Knowledge currently run this course in the UK, but I see that they are branching out into several other European locations, and they also have a link with MindSharp in the USA who I believe authored the course.

Also very useful is the Microsoft Press book Office SharePoint Designer Step by Step by Penny Coventry.  Penny also teaches at Combined Knowledge, and has set up a site to go with the book.

Finally, this week I noticed that Microsoft has downloadable training modules for SharePoint Designer.  You can download the Portal Edition here and the Standalone Edition here.

Technorati tags: sharepoint 2007, sharepoint designer

New SharePoint Knowledge Base Wiki and Database Maintenance for SharePoint

Glen Cooper has opened up his SharePoint Knowledgebase to the world.  Looks like this could be quite useful.  I haven’t looked at all of the content yet, but good to see an Install MOSS page complete with screenshots.  Given how many steps there are in this process I’ve often wondered why Microsoft hasn’t posted something like this on TechNet.

And Bill Baer has published his paper on “Database Maintenance for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies”.  Definitely worth a read.  Download here.

Technorati tags: sharepoint 2007, sql server, knowledge base

More on PDF IFilters with WSS 3.0

I came across another useful post on this subject from ServerGrrl, which you can read here.

In my earlier post on the subject, I referenced the downloadable version 6.0 IFilter. ServerGrrl’s post makes the point that PDFs created with later versions of Acrobat, or other PDF generators, may not be picked up with the version 6 IFilter, and she gives instructions for using the version 8.0 Acrobat Reader instead. The instructions given are pretty similar to my earlier post, except for the CLSID you need to use.

WIndows Vista – Operating System or Satirical Cartoon?

Charlie Brooker’s article in today’s Guardian is about his proposal for an “UnValentine’s Day”, but at the bottom of the article, this little piece caught my eye:

<snip>

This week Charlie bought a new computer and spent what seemed like 5,000 hours clicking dialog boxes in Windows Vista: “Which feels more like a satirical cartoon about infuriating bureaucracy than an operating system.”

</snip>

Reading the various comments posted it caught a lot of other eyes as well…