The Open Government Initiative spearheaded by The Obama Administration is spawning a bunch of discussions around the Beltway about Social Media’s impact on Federal Govt. Agencies.
March 31 will witness the 1105 Government Group’s Webcast on Social Media and Security.
Date: Wednesday, March 31
Time: 2 p.m. Eastern Time
Duration: 1 hour
Moderator: Doug Beizer, staff writer for Federal Computer Week
Panelists: Linda Cureton, CIO, National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Chenxi Wang, Principal Analyst, Security and Risk Management, Forrester Research Inc.; and Samuel Chun, director of the Cyber Security Practice for HP Enterprise Services U.S. Public Sector,
Topic of Discussion:
Security barriers to adopting collaboration tools across the government from a human resources and leadership perspective.
This presentation will address:
Security vulnerabilities facing government use of collaboration tools;
The leadership imperative in cybersecurity at an agency-wide level;
Case-studies of agencies that have successfully overcome the barriers facing adoption; and
A discussion of tools and techniques that can reduce security incidents and make agencies better stewards of information.
Animoto’s product team has now rolled out high-resolution as an upgrade for its service.
Hi-res provides a higher picture quality than standard Animoto videos and can be burned
to DVD or viewed on a large screen monitor without becoming grainy and distorted.
Each upgraded video provides an MP4 files to playback or .ISO for DVD burning.
On the video toolbar, switching to Hi-Res launches a video player that is a larger size than traditional Animoto video players.
You can now share & embed your videos in hi-res so that your audience views them in their full resolution. For instance, if you’ve upgraded a video to hi-res and then share it to Facebook, your friends can watch it in hi-res from within their feed.
Also, if you embed videos to your blog or web site, you can customize things like autostart, looping, and streaming resolution.
The Global SharePoint User’s Group will introduce Sandboxed Solutions at the March Meetup.
Topic : SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed Solutions
With a lot new features included in SharePoint 2010, it has and will become very easy for the developers to design, develop compelling and robust applications and deploy them safely using the new Sandboxed Solutions. The speaker would speak on why we need Sandboxed Solutions; cover Sandbox Solution Building, Deployment, Debugging, Monitoring and various other stages.
Intended Audience: Developers, IT Analyst, Administrators
Agenda:
#1 Existing Challenges for Developers & Administrators ( WEG )?
#2 What Sandboxed Solutions bring? and comparison against Farm Solutions.
#3 Why Sandboxed? and When?
#4 How to use Sandboxed Solutions
#5 What Can and Cannot be done using Sandboxed Solutions
#6 Restrict Sandboxed Solution
#7 Monitor Sandboxed Solution
#7 Validate Sandboxed Solutions
#8 Demo’s
Srini is Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist with over 10 years of experience designing and implementing IT solutions on a variety of platforms, including SharePoint Services, SharePoint Server 2007 and now evaluating SharePoint 2010 beta. He works in many areas within SharePoint; however, his area of expertise includes SharePoint Features, the SharePoint API and Branding. As a subject matter expert, Srini is often asked to review, improve and approve a variety of technical designs and approaches. He regularly contributes to several blogs, has done a fair amount of speaking, training and authored several screencasts. twitter @srinisistla and blog @ http://codename-srini.blogspot.com
Please use the correct contact info…
We will be distributing the LiveMeeting information the day of the event via the Email you provide. We will also be giving away our prizes based on those that attended and the emails you provide as well.
Name of speaker & organization: Christophe Fiessinger, Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Corp
The speaker will provide an overview of the key investment areas andcapabilities of Project Server 2010 and Project Professional 2010. Theareas to be covered include demand management, portfolio analysis, timetracking, business intelligence/reporting, and other better togethercapabilities being built of top of SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprisefeatures. Learn key enhancements as well as key usage scenarios ofProject Server 2010.
Christophe Fiessinger is Senior Technical Product Manager forMicrosoft. As part of the Microsoft Business Division Product MarketingGroup he focuses on the enterprise project and portfolio managementsolution - EPM. Christophe is responsible for technical readiness.
The presentation will include a product demo.
Suggested audience: Administrators, Developers, Management and End Users
Audience experience level: Beginner
—-
Location:
At the offices of Hire Strategy, 11730 Plaza America Drive Reston, VA 20190
Map: http://tinyurl.com/24qv88
The Open Government intiative set forth by the Obama Administration has rapidly grown into a white-hot topic throughout government agencies in Washington DC and surrounding areas. On March 18th, 2010, Adobe in partnership with Federal Computer Week will be hosting a FREE half-day seminar entitled “Unified Cross-Agency Collaboration - How to Craft Your Agency’s Open Government Plan,”
Verizon Wireless has recently announced that the company would integrate Skype application to select smartphone devices in a joint press junket at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona.
Verizon subscribers will have the ability to download Skype as early as the latter half of March 2010.
Leveraging the application, Verizon customers can contact another member of Skype free of charge anywhere on Planet Earth. The main requirement is that Verizon subscribers need to have a voice and data plan.
In the not-so recent past, cellular phone companies were deadlocked in a battle against Skype and other services for fear that the free services would eat away at core business.
For a corporation that many viewed as ‘behind-the-times’ in comparison with rival Apple, the recent announcements have many wondering with enthusiasm how the combination of Windows Phone 7, Outlook Social Connector, and the enhancements of the 2010 Suite of Office Applications will shake up the marketplace.
OSC connects the user to the social experience via a provider that connect the social and business networks that you utilize. The surprise in this initial offering is that it has partnered with LinkedIn amongst the other networks introduced which are: Facebook, MySpace.
Impact on Productivity
How will information workers be impacted by the increase in “social media noise” within their respective inboxes? Many organizations have completely blocked social media within corporate settings and have been either reluctant or dismissive about creating a solid Social Media policy that addresses the upcoming changes in the workplace. Is there a business reason for employees to use Facebook or MySpace? Time will reveal these answers as decisions will need to be made.
Particularly (but not only) in the German speaking world (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) Xing is much more popular than LinkedIn for professional social networking. Any chance to get a connector for Xing? And what about Facebook? I have over 200 friends there, at least half of them I know professionally…
Microsoft announced the Outlook Social Connector as early as Nov 2009 but additional testing has lead to the integration of Facebook amongst additional new features.
Features Include:
The People Pane - This includes a profile appearance of your friends/colleagues when you receive a message from them.
Rich history - Instant access to a history of recent message traffic and attachments from each incoming/outgoing message.
Activities Real-time updates from social networks
SharePoint 2010 Integrate your Social networks right into the revamped MySite. I believe that Windows Phone 7, SharePoint 2010, and Outlook 2010 will be a killer trio. Joel Oleson put together a great post on Win Phone 7 and SharePoint 2010 capabilities
Extend A The OSC Software Development Kit will enable developers to integrate a variety of social networks. The possibilities to build a true Social Media Center are becoming apparent.
From the Microsoft Outlook site regarding compatibility:
“NOTE: The Outlook Social Connector included in the Office 2010 Beta is not compatible with the beta providers currently available online. Office 2010 Beta users must install the Outlook Social Connector 32-bit Beta in order to successfully use the social network providers currently available. Also, you cannot install the 32-bit OSC Beta on Outlook 2010 Beta 64-bit.”
System Requirements
OSC is supported by the following Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Vista; Windows XP
OSC is supported on the 32-bit version of Outlook 2010 beta, Outlook 2003 and 2007
The Baltimore SharePoint User’s Group welcomed a special guest speaker to the meeting held on February 18th, 2010.
Tom Miller of Bluethread stopped by to discuss BLOB storage within SQL Databases and what his company’s product StoragePoint can do to alleviate under-performing database management leveraging the tool.
StoragePoint is deployed to the Web Front End server as a solution package and provides a list of options within the SharePoint Central Administration site to manage and configure the tool.
StoragePoint is available as a 30 day trial installation for evaluation and testing purposes with full support for SharePoint 2010 at this time.
For more information on StoragePoint, log into www.storagepoint.com
Video of the Windows Phone 7 Series debuted at the Mobile World Congress
Written by: Shadeed Eleazer
If the mobile wars were not already at a white hot frenzy, Microsoft has definitely added a few coals to the inferno by overhauling its internal mobile strategy for and returning back to the drawing board to hammer out a new release of a new device that looks to aggressively compete with the innovations set forth by Apple’s iPhone and Google Droid SmartPhones.
The most refreshing news surrounding the release of Windows Phone 7 is that it does not resemble an iPhone, as many of the recent releases have seemingly set out to do. The competition is in its innovation.
The Windows Phone 7 is a departure from the latest rounds of cell-phone interfaces. The user interface is based around information as opposed to applications. The user is greeted with “live tiles” labeled as:
Office, People, Pictures, Games, Marketplace, and Music and Video.
Music and video is handled by Zune, which the user interface mimics. X-Box Live integration is also a plus with this device. The real wonder of the phone is in the People hub, which features real-time updates of Windows Live and Facebook. At the Mobile World Congress, Twitter has not been announced as an integration partner with Windows Phone 7 but you can envision Twitter integration down the line, quite possibly close to release.
Bing will handle the maps and search duties with Microsoft announcing that Windows Phone 7 devices will have a dedicated button on the keypad.
Expect the Windows Phone 7 device to hit retailers close to holiday season. Hardware partners have lined up to support this device including Dell, Toshiba, Samsung and HP.
Mobile carriers include Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile amongst others.
Twedemption HomePage allows Twitter users to login using Twitter credentials
Written by: Shadeed Eleazer
The Direct Message is one area of Twitter that many active members of the real-time
communication platform have come to dread. Since there is no approval mechanism on
sending and/or receiving DMs, people can use the Direct Message feature to flood your inbox
with sales offers, event invites, offers for e-books and more annoyances.
Pile-up and subsequent management and removal of junk DMs is a painstaking tasks.
Deleting DMs is a per-DM process which can take forever in a world of deadlines and
new friend requests.
The downside to this is that users risk the chance of missing out on Direct Messages that
are personal in nature from esteemed colleagues within their network.
Enter Blast Application, with the development of a new app known a Twedemption.com
Twedemption.com is a script written in PHP that enables active Twitter account holders
to mass delete DMs for a one time fee of $5.99
Once the initial purge is complete, the script runs every hour attempting to delete 50
to 100 DMs.
This service may be of value to Twitter holder with a follower base of over 10,000 or
celebs and other verified accounts.
Dino Luzzi, CEO of Blast Apps mentions, “If you’ve been receiving a lot of auto generated-direct
messages or are building quite a following, this type of program is invaluable for Twitter users,”
Blast Applications is a developer of Facebook, Twitter, and iPhone apps.
The Questions
Will the $5.99 fee scare off a number of Twitter users who need to purge their inboxes?
Is an inbox free of junk DMs something that is worth paying for in a one-time fee?
Have Twitter users grown accustomed to free services since many Twitter-friendly apps are free?
What bells and whistles would you add to improve this service?
Amazon Simple Storage Increases Security and Retrievability of Objects
Amazon S3 Unveils New Versioning Feature
written by: Shadeed Eleazer
Amazon Web Services has announced a new Versioning feature for usage across all Amazon S3 Services.
What is it?
Through the Versioning feature, Amazon S3 now preserves all existing objects with any POST, COPY, DELETE, or PUT operation performed. Now, older overwritten or deleted objects can be obtained via specifying specific versions in your request.
Why is this Needed?
In instances where users are allowed to perform specific actions with an S3 account, objects (content) can be accidentally overwritten or deleted. Application failures can also disrupt storage of content. Versioning of these objects enables easy recovery.
Public beta testing has concluded and has led to an addition of MFA Delete being added to provide additional security and control over access to S3 objects. Using MFA Delete on your Amazon S3 bucket will require two forms of authentication in order to delete an object
*AWS account credentials
*Six-digit code and serial number from auth device from a participating third party provider and to set it up for use via the AWS website.
SharePoint Developer delivers session on Silverlight and SharePoint for BSPUG
Written by: Shadeed Eleazer
The Baltimore SharePoint User’s Group keeps rolling forward with a recent lineup of speakers that reads
like a major conference lineup from month-to-month.
January’s meeting welcomed New Jersey based SharePoint Developer Rebecca Isserman to discuss Dazzling Silverlight with SharePoint.
As is the case with many User group audiences, the turnout tends to range from Information workers
looking to learn more about technologies that are shaping their workspace to Senior Developers
looking for best practices when building applications. I thought that Becky did a great job of
balancing her presentation to include both overview and advanced strategy to keep all members of
the User Group engaged.
She tailored her demo to include BSPUG specific content which is a sign of a confident and seasoned
speaker.
Look for Becky to deliver sessions to bigger audiences as she will be a featured speaker at the 1st The Experts Conference in Los Angeles and many other events to come.
Find more Development info from Becky Isserman at: www.mosslover.com
Web-based meeting productivity scheduler Tungle has launched new updates to its iPhone application.
New features include:
Scroll from day-to-day without needing to load one day at at time
Renaming button
Message prompt when user selects inappropriate times to meet
Version 1.2 of the Tungle iPhone app is available in the apps store.
Goals are a necessary benchmark to monitor progress and achievements.
Since being around for over a year, there have been many learning experiences that come with the attempt at hitting the mark content-wise. As the calendar ushers in the year 2010, here is what I’ll be focused on with the Collaborpedia blog.
* New comments integration. -> I want to build a community through the content that is posted here on Collaborpedia. This is difficult to do if its only one-way communications.
* Late-breaking News -> Looking to have Collaborpedia break the news as opposed to providing reaction posts this year
* Guests -> Speaking with a few people about interesting recurring posts/series centered around a few themes. Stay tuned for that.
* Consistency. -> Whether 5 times a week or once a month, Collaborpedia readers need to have an expectation of news.
Thank you for continuing to visit Collaborpedia. We hope to reach our benchmarks for 2010.
Fabian Williams unveils Business Connectivity Services for Baltimore SharePoint User’s Group.
Written by: Shadeed Eleazer
CDW Senior Architect Fabian Williams was the special guest speaker for November’s
Baltimore SharePoint User’s Group meeting. The evening of the meeting featured heavy rain which
made beltway traffic unbearable for many participants but all whom attended were in store for a great session which featured Fabian’s command of BCS, a new addition to the SharePoint 2010 product offering.
Fabian was all-business during the demo but maintained a sense of humor as he presented a slide for the audience to Tweet to his manager to request a new laptop to make his SharePoint 2010 run smoother.
The significance of this presentation to the User’s Group was huge as Fabian was gearing up for the SharePoint Saturday DC event, which has quickly become an event that is a must-attend for SharePoint professionals based in the DC, MD, and VA tech corridor. The audience presented Fabian with many questions and comments which were to be incorporated into his upcoming session.
Ning has recently announced new functionality to improve the management of members of respective Ning networks.
The major wrinkle in Ning’s member management policy is in the area of suspending members. The previous option was to ban a member completely. There are additional controls within the suspending policy.
Suspending members from your Ning Network
Now, instead of banning a member, you’ll have the ability to suspend the member instead. This is much more than a language tweak; in fact, you’ll see three new options enabled with suspending:
* During the suspension process, network administrators can delete member content.
* New re-instate feature for members that have been suspended.
* New “Suspension Notes” feature to keep detailed info on why the member was suspended.
To access the suspension feature, acess the Manage Members page, check the box next to one or more members, and click “Suspend” in the “Actions…” drop-down menu.
The Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group will be unveiling SharePoint 2010 at their next meeting scheduled for October 28th starting at 5:30pm.
The meeting location will be the Microsoft Greater PA District office located in Malvern, PA.
Meeting Overview
We will discuss the business momentum and investment areas in the new release including demonstrations of new functionality that makes SharePoint the premier choice for a business collaboration platform. We will drill into the new functionality in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and the benefits it provides to end users, IT professionals, and developers.
Areas such as SharePoint Communities, Insights, and Sites will be discussed and demonstrated to show the value that the new Microsoft SharePoint 2010 can bring to enterprises of all sizes.
Explore the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and the remarkable changes to the Business Data Catalog (BDC).
5:30 - 5:45 Registration, Food and Beverages, Networking and News
Discussion of events and news in the local SharePoint community.
5:45 - 6:00 Topic: SharePoint Tips and Tricks
Audience: All
Technical Level: 100 - 200
6:00 – 7:00 Topic: SharePoint 2010 Unveiling
Audience: All
Technical Level: 200
7:00 – 7:45 Topic: SharePoint 2010 Composites
Audience: All
Technical Level: 200
7:45 - 8:00 Round Table Q and A, Raffles and Giveaways
Round table discussions will be held on specific challenges facing the members. If you have an issue that you would like to have addressed by the group submit your questions to phillysharepoint@rjbtech.com
Written by: Shadeed Eleazer
The SharePoint Conference held in Las Vegas, NV marked the first public unveiling of the SharePoint 2010 release. The SharePoint conference welcomed over 6,000 international attendees. The feedback was excellent and excitement surrounding the platform is at an all-time high. There were many professionals who could not attend the SharePoint conference for various reasons. To fill the void, The SharePoint 2010 Unconference (ShareClave)was organized to provide attendees with a free viewing of SharePoint 2010.
What distinguishes this event from other code camps, expos, etc. is that the structure of the event will be utilizing the Unconference method. The UnConference concept is used heavily in the arena of Social Media/Networking events, so the spontaneous nature of such an event will be new to the SharePoint community.
What Is An UnConference?
Unconferences are governed by deep discussions by passionate people of a spontaneous nature. At a traditional conference, attendees are “spoon-fed” topics and are asked to decide which topics are of relevance to them. Unconferences typically feature a blank board with timeslots. The conference structure is dictated via collaborated at the beginning of the event. If a topic moves you, and you would like to discuss it, you are welcome to write your topic down and host a discussion.
The strongest rule governing Unconferences is the “Law of 2 Feet” which states that:
“If you find yourself in a situation where you are not contributing or learning, move somewhere where you can.”
The event is sold out which indicates a huge interest in both the release of SharePoint 2010 and the concept of the event.
Event Details
When: Saturday October 24, 2009
Where: Microsoft Mid-Atlantic Office
12012 Sunset Hills
Reston, VA 20190
Start:8:30am
Stop:6:00pm
More Info: http://shareclave.org
The DC Metro area public transportation rail system known as the Metrorail has implemented a long-awaited expansion of cell phone service via Verizon. The expansion will service 20 of the busiest Metro platforms.
What if I have a carrier other than Verizon?
Metro patrons who use T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel, and AT&T will be able to surf the Web, text, and make outgoing calls from the approved 20 platforms. The caveat is that the service will be available only on the platforms but once a rider boards the train or inside the tunnel, the reception will be lost. The Plan for Expansion
Service is expected to expand to cover the entire station for the initial 20 pilot stations. By the close of November 09, the expectations are to have coverage from the surrounding street down to the platform. Fall 2010 should include the remaining 27 stations with the initial wiring.
Full underground coverage is not planned to happen until fall 2012.
