The wonder that is the Microsoft Office system : Steve's bit of banter

MSFT Partner Bot for your Messenger Contacts

SteveMarsh — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:30:45 GMT

Here is a little project that I've been desperate to tell you all about!

I am very pleased to announce that the PartnerBot is now live.

Partner Bot is your Instant Messenger 'data digger', which quickly retrieves partner-related information and shows you where you can find the answers you need. Simply type in your question and Bot will bring back an instant response. Add Bot as a buddy in your Windows Live Messenger contacts and it will always be available whenever you're logged in.

Use Partner Bot to Help You

Get answers quickly, whether you’re in the office or mobile

Find partner resources, like blogs and marketing help, more easily

How Do I Add Partner Bot to My Contacts?

· Log-in to Windows Live Messenger

· Click on 'Add a Contact' icon

· Add 'partnerbot@hotmail.com' into Instant Messaging Address

> Click here to find out more

Please be aware that PartnerBot may guide you to areas of the Partner Portal which can only be accessed by Registered, Certified or Gold Partners, so you may need to sign-in to view this information.

I'm Back

SteveMarsh — Thu, 17 May 2007 12:04:00 GMT

I've been having one of those times recently when you know you have to do something (e.g. blogging) but you put it off for a couple of days, then a couple more, then push it to the end of the week, then the next and before you know it a couple of months have passed. Not good. Rather than start writing a list of things that I should have blogged about recently I thought you've probably read a few post from various bloggers over the last few minutes so I thought I'd treat you to a video instead.

Video: Nightmare

Forget the iPhone, this is the interesting announcement from Macworld Expo

SteveMarsh — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:29:55 GMT

Ok, so maybe the title is a little unfair. The iPhone does look quite cool and sounds like (no pun intended) it has some cool features such as the 'Pinch' feature that you can use to zoom into a webpage. One concern is how thin the device appears to be and therefore potentially fragile although I'm guessing that Apple will have learnt from the issues that it had with the original Nano.

Anyway back to the good bit. Microsoft Office 2008 for Macintosh! See links for details of the announcement from Macworld Expo.

Link to Mac Users To Get New Office Suite For Intel Macs - News by InformationWeek

Has it really been that long?

SteveMarsh — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:46:30 GMT

Well here we are in 2007 and I've just noticed how long it's been since I last posted. I'd just like to point out for the benefit of my manager that this was due to my complete dedication to ramping up for our Business Evolution Roadshow that we undertook in December and not due to lack of commitment to blogging (is it review time soon?). We still have a couple of Business Evolution events in the pipeline for partners of a northern persuasion so check earlier blog postings for details.

Anyway, I'm back and blogging! Woohoo! Keep tuned for all the fantastic insightful nibbles to come.

The new way to work

SteveMarsh — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 23:04:00 GMT

I've been sitting writing some of the content for our upcoming Exchange, Vista and Office road show (more dates tba) and it suddenly struck me how much these new products have already changed the way that I work. I know that a lot of people have seen some of the cool new user experience stuff that has been included that dramatically increases personal productivity and also looks very cool (AERO anyone?) but it also changes things in some subtle ways. For example, I frequently listen to music whilst I'm working (can't wait to get my hands on a Zune!) and it's not unusual for me to put on U2 DVD (HUGE fan) of one of their concerts to listen to but now thanks to Vista I can also glance down to watch occasionally.

Rebuilding Microsoft?

SteveMarsh — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:15:00 GMT

An interesting Friday read. I think rebuilding is a bit strong as I wasn't aware that we had collapsed. Perhaps remodelling would have been a better term to use?

Back Blogging after a break, now where do I start?

SteveMarsh — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 16:53:02 GMT

OK, what with travelling about a bit and a splash of holiday time my blog has been seriously neglected and now there is so much to talk about I don't know where to start. It's a good thing that Live Writer doesn't have a self blogging capability like the XBox 360 otherwise I'd be in trouble although my XBox 360 has also been neglected for weeks so it's a good job that I haven't enabled blogging.

Anyway, back to business. I guess there is a lot of stuff that I'm sure is old news to most of you but I'd better cover it off in the next few posts.

Causing a Security Splash - but is it good to have Microsoft and the word 'bundling' in the same sentence?

SteveMarsh — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 18:22:00 GMT

Our OneCare offering is getting some positive press coverage at present. It looks as though our venture into this market is welcomed by consumers given the chart position held in the US market. I have to admit that I'm looking forward to getting my parents onto OneCare (hmm that sounds I want them on some sort of personal 'care' programme so that I don't have to worry about calling them every so often to find out how they are etc) as they are currently using another vendor's Security 'bundle' and it does some 'interesting' things to the XP firewall and Windows Defender despite the desired user settings for this part of their suite which I think may end up potentially compromising their machine's security.

No holds barred opinion of a Google Apps

SteveMarsh — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:29:00 GMT

Here is an interesting response by one of our Partners to the recent announcement by Google offering Apps for your Domain. Obviously it would be foolish to think that the Google support situation won't change and the comparison is a little unbalanced in terms of the current states of the two technologies but it's good to see that our partners aren't waiting for the Google stuff to mature before taking it seriously and fighting back with their message to customers.

Pick a browser, any browser, show it to the audience...

SteveMarsh — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:47:31 GMT

Following on from my previous post on browsers and anti-competitiveness, here is one example of how we are trying to improve customer experience by helping our competitors ensure that their products will work with Vista.

http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-6109455.html

As well as the large amount of documentation that we are producing (a link to one such document about Vista's Default Program feature is included in the article) the article also talks about our Vista ISV Readiness Lab where software engineers, in this case Mozilla flavoured ones, can get one-to-one time with Microsoft personnel.

Sad thing is; I'm sure even this sort of help still won't be good enough to satisfy some people's expectations of us (or am I just being a little too cynical?). Perhaps the next step will have to be our engineers co-writing our competitors software. Cue 'bloatware' comments etc from Open Source devs.

Amusing 'Vista' on Brussels Bureaucrats

SteveMarsh — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 01:15:00 GMT

Whilst browsing the news sites I came across this rather amusing view on the recent goings on concerning the EU's views on Microsoft. There are some quotes that definitely made me smile; those that deal with Windows XP version N (the one without a browser) for starters.

http://news.com.com/2010-1012_3-6108905.html

The only sad bit is when the author drags Concorde into his reasoning for why it is a bad idea to let elements within Europe dictate tomorrow's software. It was only recently at a team offsite that I expressed a soft spot that I have for the old bird; sure she may not have been a market success but she was one heck of a machine.

Jet-lag: - a useful way to get ready for your working day!

SteveMarsh — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 17:21:00 GMT

As some of you probably know it was TechReady 3 in Seattle last week and 5000+ Microsoft employees of a technical persuasion were in town for the biannual techno love-in. There was lots of cool stuff on show both in the keynotes and breakouts but as this is an internal only event I'll have to sift through all the content to see what I can share but one thing that I can definitely talk about is my jet-lagged state. Despite trying to change back to UK time by getting some sleep on the plane (the combination of red wine and over-the-counter pills did the trick) and then staying awake to a UK 'bedtime', I've still been waking up at 4 am because my stomach decides that it should be eating (as Seattle is 8 hours behind, therefore it's dinner time) which is just rubbish. Instead of opting for trying to go back to sleep yesterday morning I decided that 4 am was a good a time as any to install new Vista and Office builds. It's great to see how both have really started to come together over the last few months. I vaguely remember a time when I had to run them on separate partitions along with the existing release of the other product! I still think I could do with a new machine to demo them on, perhaps a nice Ferrari or Lamborghini. How about it Boss?

Have you seen PTS-TV yet?!

SteveMarsh — Tue, 23 May 2006 17:17:00 GMT

Have you seen PTS-TV yet? No? Well, follow this link to get a bite-sized view of the team and our views on the vast array of Microsoft Technologies that we cover. Please feel free to leave comments on the site on what you liked/disliked/would like to see in future on PTS-TV.

PTS-TV is hosted by Katie Ledger and thus far has featured (along with the ‘official’, highly informative content) Mark Deakin inviting Katie to get in the back of his mini, Dave Sayers’ mid-year review summary, some outrageous flirting by James Akrigg, Christian Bolton talking about sheep and Katie attempting to catch sweets, thrown by PTS-TV Director/Producer Steve Clayton, in her mouth. Watch out for many more coming soon including ‘yours truly’ but I’d probably skip that one of I was you.

Blogging at last!

SteveMarsh — Mon, 08 May 2006 11:55:00 GMT

Hello one and all. I thought that is was about time that I joined in with this blogging malarkey and started to share my thoughts and findings on all things Microsoft Office and anything else that I've found interesting in the big bad world of technology.

but first....

All about me!

My name is Steve Marsh (I bet you knew that already, the blog URL is a bit of a giveaway) and I am an Information Worker Technology Specialist at Microsoft Ltd. My team is part of the Partner Readiness Group within the Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners division. We work almost exculsively with/along side our Partners as a technology resource in a variety of ways but the best way to sum up our role is...

Coach. Compete. Close... the "3 C's" that describe the 3 types of scenarios that we are engaged in.

More posts to follow in the near future, enjoy!