Microsoft gets more than 25 million spam submissions a day. Makes sense I guess, they’re a big company. I discovered this staggering stat going through their Microsoft IT* Showcase write-up on moving to Exchange Hosted Services. I’m not an IT Pro so the article probably isn’t aimed at me – but I still found it an interesting article to scan through. Microsoft basically transitioned the...
Benchmarks are like statistics – they are only relevant in context. Take this new TPC-E benchmark from the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) as an example. If you were to read the gushing Microsoft Press Release you’d be forgiven for thinking that SQL Server 2008 topped out the list of all major database vendors in terms of price/performance. Here’s the quote: Of course what...
There’s a new Outlook Connector released, and this one improves the sync features with Windows Live Calendar. Supposedly. I had a play with Windows Live Calendar and I quite liked it. Having the connector would make it seamless to share calendar items. So I downloaded and installed it. Ran up Outlook and it crashed. Try again. Crash. Uninstalled the Outlook Connector and it still crashes...
I can’t believe I didn’t know this – you can easily switch between the different functions in Outlook (Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, etc) using Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, etc. Yet another reason why you should be reading the Outlook Team Blog. See their other keyboard shortcuts here. Here’s the full list: Mail Ctrl + 1 Calendar Ctrl + 2 Contacts Ctrl + 3 Tasks Ctrl + 4 Notes Ctrl + 5...
This is a follow on from my overview of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). If you are interested in learning more then here’s a list of resources. General VSTO resources MSDN VSTO Developer Portal Start here. This is the best place to start in terms of getting up to speed with what is happening in the VSTO world. See also the MSDN Intro to VSTO. MSDN Forums This is where I learn most of the...
I get a few emails each week from people asking about various VSTO related scenarios. I can usually point them to a related MSDN forum entry or blog post, or even (on a good day!) solve it for them myself. Interestingly the question of Access add-ins has come up a few times lately, so I thought I’d make mention of it here. Basically, the official position is that building Access Add-ins is NOT...
Less than a day on IE8 I’m really getting frustrated. It’s not IE8’s fault of course, but the majority of sites I visit have problems rendering (my own included). Yes, it is up to the site owners to fix their sites, and yes they should have been more standards compliant in the first place, etc, etc, but hey, then there’s reality! Anyway, I’m going to try and stick with IE8 (at least for...
Just a quick post to note these links to Ray Ozzie’s previous memos: From November 2005: The Internet Services Disruption From April 2008: Services Strategy Update As I re-read them this morning, I was struck by how much easier it is to understand ‘vision’ in hindsight :-) Well worth reviewing yourself if you glossed over their impact the first time (as I did). (Thanks to Grant for...
Oh how I wish I was going to PDC, but no, sadly I won’t be there :-( However that hasn’t stopped me going ‘window shopping’ on the PDC agenda page. The first thing that strikes you when you land there is the breakdown of sessions – I’ve highlighted the tags I see as unusual: Six sessions on Oslo (ie BizTalk) and seven on Parallelism should tell you something about the focus Microsoft...
Easily the best TechEd lock note I’ve seen (but then again I’ve only been to TechEd 4 times). Miha Kralj talked us through the technology changes we’ll be seeing over the next few years. If you get a chance to see his presentation (I’m sure it will be repeated at other events, or put up on a video site somewhere) make sure you do – it is well worth it. It’s difficult to do the session...