Microsoft is a pretty big place, so no matter how hard I try to keep up with everything, I still end up missing a bit of important news from time to time. But by following the blogs on MSDN and TechNet , I don't miss anything important for very long....

Looks like every enterprise server product group at Microsoft is trying to provide self-paced, hands-on labs via the TechNet Virtual Lab . Now, the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Virtual Lab is finally available, and -- quoting from its home page -- "it...

Building SharePoint Web Parts? Then this post (excerpted below) from Dino Esposito is a must read: WebParts: From SharePoint to ASP.NET 2.0 In the Windows world, SharePoint products and technologies simplify and support various forms of collaboration...

I see that a couple of MSofties ( Eileen and Mayur ) have excitedly blogged about Microsoft's new "OC" application that was announced as part of the Real-Time Collaboration launch event that I attended on March 8th. Although its IM features will be best...

Since I've been getting decent traffic to my blog during the past couple of weeks (and thank you all for your interest and feedback), I wondered if I've climbed up on the Results page of the major search engines. So, I searched for "Lawrence Liu" using...

True story. During my weekly trip to the local public library yesterday, I decided to use one of their Internet surfing machines to quickly check my e-mail. While sitting there, I noticed that the woman next to me is frantically looking for someone (tech...

If you are (or want to be) developing solutions for SharePoint, don't pass go, don't collect $200, and immediately read Mike Fitzmaurice 's blog . Better yet, subscribe to it in your favorite RSS aggregator by right-clicking here . Mike is Microsoft's...

Some of you might have noticed that the layout and color scheme for my blog have changed significantly over the weekend. Thanks to Ken Levy's custom CSS , my blog is now a bit easier to read, I hope. But the more important (though visually subtle) change...

I just left Joe Kraus a comment that describes why I think his startup, JotSpot , is doomed – or at least will have a very short Tail. J The thing is, in order to be the Head of a healthy, ever growing Long Tail , many, many, many (did I mention “many...

Joe Kraus (co-founder of Excite , which is now a part of AskJeeves ) has just written an exceptionally concise and easy-to-understand post on his blog about the Long Tail phenomenon even though he ends it with a marketing spin towards his startup, JotSpot...

Alan Page's recent post struck a nerve with me. Blogging nothing but a link to someone else's blog post is almost like forwarding an e-mail that was sent to a distribution group back to the same DL . Right, it's utterly useless and a waste of the reader...

From Ray Ozzie's interview yesterday with Microsoft PressPass re: the Groove acquisition, I've excerpted my favorite parts below. The emphases are mine. PressPass: Why is collaboration becoming so important in today's business world? Ozzie: The nature...

Use the TechNet Virtual Lab to familiarize yourself with deploying Live Communications Server 2005. Topics include: deploying in a single forest, single domain topology, enabling federation, enabling remote access, and deploying the Live Communications...

Well, it appears that I was overly optimistic about a blogolocity of just 2 hours for my original “blogolocity” post . So, based on Scoble’s guidance about getting attention , I’m purposely including his name in this blog entry. Given that “Scoble” is...

Joshua Allen , the first corporate blogger at Microsoft, best describes how blogging has had a positive impact on the company while Tim Bray , the Father/co-inventor of XML and Sun employee, perfectly describes why blogging is good for the employee who...

The announcement today may not be a huge surprise to some people , but I'm certainly glad that this deal has finally happened because I've been hoping that it would ever since I first used Groove for team collaboration a few years ago. The main concern...

Thanks to Major Nelson , I was able to attend GDC2005 today with an Expo Pass. It's truly amazing how far video games have come since I spent my summers playing Gauntlet at Pier 39 so many years ago. I actually took the bus there in the morning, played...

It's been over 4 months since my previous blog entry, and I've received e-mails from several readers nudging me to write again. I really appreciate the support, and now that I'm finally 100% back in work mode, I'm very excited about posting here much...