Barnaby's Canadian IT Pro WebLog : Miscellaneous

Changing Blogs...

Barnaby_Jeans — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 23:24:52 GMT

I think Bruce says it best in his blog post:

For all of you wondering if I had disappeared from the planet, you may be pleased to know that I am simply moving blogs.

Based on your feedback the Canadian IT Pro team is amalgamating our efforts and our blogs in to two new spaces:

The Canadian IT Pro Blog

http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro

The Canadian IT Managers Blog

http://blogs.technet.com/cdnitmanagers

You told us that you want to connect with the team, but that we could make your lives easier by consolidating the blogs and providing separate technical and manager / architect information. You informed us you wanted more guest bloggers from the community and industry. You shouted from the roof tops you wanted more.... so I ask you to add the new blogs to your favorites and RSS readers and I look forward to meeting you all there.

I will still be posting here occasionally, but you will find me spending most of my time on the Canadian IT Managers blog.

See you there.

MSN Messenger 8 Beta invitations

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:13:00 GMT

This one is for the Canadians out there. If you are interested in trying out the MSN Messenger 8 beta, just leave me a comment here with your email address, where in Canada you are, and if you have been to any of our events.

Right now I have 10 invites to share, so first come first served.

Content for Canadian IT Managers

Barnaby_Jeans — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 01:55:00 GMT

As I am sitting here in Winnipeg on the last stop of the SQL Server / Visual Studio Launch Tour, I have been thinking more and more about how to provide meaningful information to the IT Managers as well as the DBA's, Administrators, and Developers that we see at our events.

One of the things that my team has done is to launch the Canadian IT Managers Blog which will focus more specifically on the types of issues that are of interest to the Canadian IT Manager. To date we have talked about both technology and business topics which hopefully you will find interesting. If there are topics or suggestions that you might have, please post a comment and let us know what you would like to hear about.

Consider this your personal invitation to head over and take a look.

http://blogs.technet.com/cdnitmanagers/default.aspx

Standardize on the Office Open XML document format

Barnaby_Jeans — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 02:39:00 GMT

Today we announced that we are putting forward the Office Open XML document format to Ecma with the intention of making the formats an ISO standard.

The official press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/nov05/11-21Ecma.mspx

Brian Jones, a program manager in the Office team has a great write-up on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/11/21/495466.aspx

I think one of the key comments is around what this means to open source developers: (from the press release)

Finally, Office Open XML is open because the license for Office Open XML is open to anyone. We are expanding the language of the current royalty-free license to specifically enable developers who work only with open source licensing to also be able to work with Office Open XML. This will enable any customer or technology provider to use the file formats in its own systems without financial consideration to Microsoft.

And this: (from Brian Jones)

I'm not a lawyer, but from what I can see, this "covenant not to sue" looks like it should clear the way for GPL development which was a concern for some folks.

As someone who talks to the open source community this should help clear the way for broader adoption.

Tags: [Microsoft]

IT Pro Resource Guide available for download

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 19:41:00 GMT

If you have attended any of my sessions in the last few months we have been giving out the IT Pro Resource Guide laminated info sheet. If you would like to get this electronically, or haven't had a chance to get one yet, we have made it available online in PDF format.

Tags: [Microsoft] [IT Pro] [Canada]

Tag the Launch

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:25:00 GMT

Are you blogging about the joint SQL Server / Visual Studio / BizTalk launch this November?

If you are, you might want to consider tagging your blog posts to make it easy to search for anything "Launch 2005" related.

Simply tag your posts with Launch2005 by adding the following somewhere in your blog post:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Launch2005" rel="tag">Launch2005</a>

If you're uploading pictures to Flickr, you may want to join the Launch2005 group; and remember to tag your photos with Launch2005 as well.

I'll be presenting at almost all of the Canadian tour dates, so look for me in your city starting November 8th.

Update: Don't forget to ping technorati to let them know your blog has been updated.

Tags: [Microsoft] [SQLServer] [Launch2005] [VisualStudio] [BizTalk]

The inside scoop on *.microsoft.com from the team that runs it...

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 23:23:00 GMT

It looks like the team that runs all of the Microsoft.com sites have started a blog (http://blogs.technet.com/mscom/default.aspx). Their first post has some great information on the number of servers they are running, the number of hits on www.microsoft.com, and all kinds of other interesting stuff.

More importantly, as their post states: WE WANT TO HELP YOU!

So if you have operational questions, head over to http://blogs.technet.com/mscom/default.aspx and see if they have an answer for you.

Reading RSS feeds to your watch

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 17:14:00 GMT

I have just found a great article over on an O'Reilly site that talks about the steps that you can go through to deliver RSS content to your SPOT watch.

For those of you that haven't heard of SPOT before, SPOT stands for "Smart Personal Object Technology". This technology allows you to receive information over-the-air through the use of a data band broadcast alongside the FM radio band. The SPOT watch is managed though a couple of MSN sites: http://www.msndirect.com and http://direct.msn.com/ and through those sites you can configure things like:

Favourite Sports teams
Local Weather
Stock information
Movie Times
Horoscopes

Additionally, you can sign up to receive MSN instant messages direct to your watch (this is what is used to receive RSS feeds) as well as sync to your Outlook calendar. Once you have set-up these features, you'll never miss an appointment or instant message.

I have had my SPOT Watch for close to a year and absolutely love it. Let me know if you are using a SPOT device today.

Our address has changed

Barnaby_Jeans — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:13:00 GMT

Over the weekend my blog was migrated from the blogs.msdn.com server to the blogs.technet.com server. For those of you who have bookmarked this blog or are subscribed to an rss feed, you may want to update your bookmarks.

The new address for my blog: http://blogs.technet.com/barnaby_jeans/.

There are now RSS and ATOM feeds available:

RSS http://blogs.technet.com/barnaby_jeans/rss.aspx
ATOM http://blogs.technet.com/barnaby_jeans/atom.aspx

If you notice any strange behavior, please post a comment back to this post.

Free Microsoft Security E-Learning

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 18:18:00 GMT

If you are interested in taking some Security training from the comfort of your office take a look at: https://www.microsoftelearning.com/security/. Currently there are four different E-Learnings available as well as one Hands-On Lab targeted at the IT Pro audience. There is also one E-Learning available for the developer audience. All are available free.

Let me know if you find these useful.

Add a little Geography to your Blog

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 19:01:00 GMT

Chandu Thota continues to add some great functionality to his BlogMap project. You may have noticed the map and image on the left of my blog.

Chandu's most recent update is the link which when clicked shows you a map of all of the other Geo-Coded blogs in your area. The more people that add their sites to his project, the better the results will become.

To add your blog to this project simply go to http://www.csthota.com/blogmap/ and click on the submit blogs (geo-code) link to identify where you are located.

To see a really great example of this try looking at the for Scoble's blog see all of the activity around Seattle.

Leave me a comment if you are in the area, and go ahead and add your site to .

Grow Your Small Business Contest - Canada

Barnaby_Jeans — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 18:34:00 GMT

Here's one for all the small businesses out there in Canada.

Microsoft wants to help you make your small business even more productive through technology. See where your business can go when you put the latest Touch System’s hardware and Microsoft software to work for you.

For more information take a look at: http://www.microsoft.com/canada/smallbiz/technologycontest/landing.mspx

According to the website, the contest runs until April 30th, 2005.

Good Luck.

MSN Search now available for Barnaby's Canadian IT Pro WebLog

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 22:34:00 GMT

Thanks to Evan Dodds and Eileen Brown for links to the code for the MSN Search box on the side of my blog.

If you are interested in adding MSN Search capability to your website take a look at the Site Owner Help section over on http://search.msn.com. There is also some information on how to control what pages of your site get indexed.