Before Yahoo Mail became a big deal, it didn’t have its own URL (its currently mail.yahoo.com). The URL was www.yahoo.com/r/m1. This URL hasn’t been promoted or used for about 10 years now but it still worked. My brain’s automatic typing reflexes simply remember that URL as a habit.
As of this week, it finally died! Now when I without thinking type www.yahoo.com/r/m1 I get this error message:
I guess it will take me a while to remember mail.yahoo.com as a replacement…
Microsoft has released a new site on SharePoint 2010.
In the site, you will find information on SharePoint 2010 for developers and it professionals.
There are some interesting announcements in video format here that are worth exploring. In the developer video, they show SharePoint integration into Visual Studio 2010. There are a few new bits in here:
It was widely announced that Google will be releasing a new operating system called the Chrome OS that will be initially deployed to NetBooks but will hopefully compete with Windows on the desktop.
Yawn…shades of 1995 when Java OS, Oracle OS, Network Computer etc. tried to do the same thing.
If you want a OS replacement for Windows on your NetBook, you can get it today – its called LINUX! Acer, Dell, etc. all have Net Books that will come with LINUX today. And if you want to run Google’s browser, you can download it for free.
Can you even call Chrome OS a new operating system when you’re just repackaging LINUX? KDE and GNOME aren’t operating systems, so why is Chrome?
"The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no Web," the blog post said. "So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome--the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be."
Huh? Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS, and LINUX were all designed with the web in mind.
COREL had the same vision in mind when they created COREL LINUX. They had WordPerfect, CorelDraw, etc. (even at the time much more sophisticated applications than Google Spreadsheet is today) and they couldn’t sell any more office licenses because Microsoft had a lock on the desktop and was killing them in the office market. So they made a big splash (and almost killed the company) investing heavily in desktop LINUX, the supposedly Windows killer.
BE Operating System was an entirely new OS developed in 1991. Unlike the Chrome OS or Corel, it wasn’t a rehash of LINUX with a new set of apps thrown on top of it. It was an entirely brand new operating system from the kernel upwards. It had the same ambitious target – replace Windows with a better operating system. It had a niche following originally as a replacement to the Apple Operating System (since the BE OS initially only ran on Power PC Chips and not Intel) and then as a Windows replacement. The company could not gain enough market share and eventually was bought out by Palm.
The same reasons why these operating systems didn’t survive will cause major challenges for Google. I found this table from Microsoft to challenge the proposition of the Network Computer:
| PC | Network Computer | |
| Operating System | Windows | Proprietary / Incompatible |
| Mobile Support | Excellent | None |
| Applications | > 100,000 | Limited / Incompatible |
| Development Tools | Choice | Limited to Java |
| Device Support | Thousands | Proprietary / Incompatible |
| Device Model | Windows | None / Incompatible |
| Manufacturers | 2,500 | Few |
| Networking | Choice | Requires high speed net |
| Availability | Now | Limited |
| Printer Support | Thousands | None |
| Scalability | Excellent | Poor |
With using LINUX, Google can solve some of these issues (scalability for example). But even OS X for example has less third party support than Windows and far less partners and applications and it is fairly mature. Google will have none of these advantages.
In Excel 2007 (and 2003), you can share a workbook. This allows users to simultaneously update the same file:
This feature is used in many enterprises for collaboration, especially in departments such as Finance or Planning where there are lots of shared figures, budgets, plans, etc.
There are some interesting features that allow for some rich collaboration scenarios simply within a single Excel file:
When moving to SharePoint as a document management platform, this feature is no longer supported:
More than one user cannot simultaneously make changes to a shared workbook that is stored on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site. If you want to store your workbook on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site, you should do so only after the collaboration effort through sharing is complete.
Document libraries by design only allow one person to edit a document at the same time. In addition, they support check-in and out to provide locks on documents during the editing process. When a user grabs a file for editing from SharePoint, they edit a file on their local machine and then when done it is saved back to the central document repository.
Excel Services allows for running of Excel files within the SharePoint server, but only in read only fashion. Excel Services is great for read only dashboards, charts and graphs but isn’t a collaboration service.
For more information on the different options for Excel collaboration, see Microsoft’s article on the subject.
I was on TheServerSide.NET which is one of the leading Microsoft .NET community sites and typed in “SharePoint”. The result I got was this:
I thought that was kind of amusing, so I tried a few other Microsoft product names:
Based on the various blog posts and articles, here is what we know from the publically available information on SharePoint 2010:
This is just a preliminary list – Microsoft will be publishing more information when the public beta is released this summer. Stay tuned as more details about the next release comes out.
One of my colleagues ran into a major Project usability problem when he started filling in the cost column manually. He actually did it by right clicking on a cell in the cost column and selecting “fill down” which he thought might like in excel just copy the formula. In Project, this copies values and overrides the calculations normally done, e.g. cost = rate * number of hours.
Here is what Project assumes when you type in a cost into the Cost Column:
1. Normally, the cost column is calculated based on the rate (in this example $100 / hr) * the number of hours.
2. If I type in a number into the cost column, I can replace the calculated cost with a new cost – in this case, I have specified it to be $1200.
3. Project takes the cost I typed in and calculates the DIFFERENCE between takes the original calculated cost and what I typed in as a FIXED cost, e.g. in this case $400. If you insert the Fixed Cost Column, you will see this value.
4. If you do not understand what Project has done, it becomes really confusing as to how to get rid of the fixed cost. Simply changing the duration or hours doesn’t remove the cost. For example, if I change the duration to 2 days it doesn’t recalculate the cost to be $1600 – it keeps the $400 in fixed cost and makes the total cost $2000.
5. If you have added a fixed cost my mistake, the simple way to fix the problem is to set the fix cost to $0.00 manually. This resets to the default behaviour and now your cost is calculated normally. See below – now that I have changed the fixed cost to $0 I can easily change the duration and the cost is calculated correctly.
I have been using Microsoft Project for ages and didn’t know this behaviour existed. I found this problem because one of my colleagues was not an experience Project user and started filling in values like in Excel. However, this is nothing in Project that warns you or points you to the solution – it took me digging through help and google to figure it out.
If you are new to Project, keep this simple lesson learned in mind – do not manually change the cost column. Let Project always calculate it for you. If you have a specific fixed cost for a task, then insert the Fixed Cost column and type it in there. This will avoid a lot of confusion.
