Do people like SharePoint?

IT departments, or maybe just IT people who blog, seem to universally hate SharePoint. And their point of view is not entirely off the mark. SharePoint is riddled with compromises that should not have been made. The source code produced is a nightmare, the administration model is confusing and inconsistent, and the UI is a mess.

People like to point to Google Docs, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks as how things should have been done.

I have to take an opposing opinion. It is not a case that SharePoint has grown because Microsoft has forced companies to take it on in some mind control conspiracy. Vista proved that Microsoft has no such power.

SharePoint has grown because it is the only ECM that people actually do like to use.

And that is actually a bad thing.

Well its not entirely a bad thing. To quote British Conservative Leader David Cameron "it is a good thing and it is a bad thing." Users take to SharePoint. I have seen time and time again the take up explode on firms who had not strategy for promoting or controlling it. Users flock to the tool because it is fairly easy to use, employs a web based UI, and allows devolved solution design by local experts that can then be shared.

I don't have any proof so I can only state that I assure you that people take to using SharePoint in vast numbers and create a large number of solutions in it. I have seen it time and time again.

So what could be wrong with that? Well the problem is that people like it and IT hates it, and I see organizations fall in to the same trap time and time again. IT never learns to understand SharePoint or work with the business to provide Enterprise support. The end result is that SharePoint gets cluttered with inconsistent user generated solutions and does not work as an Enterprise.

BBC News - Apple patent case 'could affect all android phones'

Apple's legal action against HTC may have "wider implications" for all phone makers using Google's Android operating system, an analyst has warned.

Ian Fogg of Forrester Research said that the case against HTC, in which Apple alleges infringement of 20 of its patents, could be the first of many.

Although Apple has not named Google in the suits, many of the named patents relate to operating system processes.

Google has taken the unusual step of publically supporting HTC in the case.

"We are not a party to this lawsuit," said a Google spokesperson.

"However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it."

BBC News - Apple patent case 'could affect all android phones'

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6 Flickr Horror Stories | Geekpreneur

Pedophiles on Flickr

Perhaps the scariest creeps of all on Flickr though are the people who post no photos or profile details but who have a long list of favorites… all of them featuring children.

It’s a complaint that crops up with disturbing regularity in the Flickr help forum. Citykitty, for example, describes how one user added her as a contact, only to find that his favorites consisted of a long list of images containing young boys. Flickr icon, Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, had a similar complaint after finding someone had marked photos of her children as favorites… and that all his favorites were pictures of children.

Flickr responded my extending the power of the “ignore” feature to prevent blocked users from adding users’ images as faves.

Of course, none of this means that Flickr isn’t a good place to hang out and show off what you’ve been pointing your camera or your iPhone at. But it does mean you have to be just a bit careful if you don’t want to be stalked, hacked, harassed or creeped out.

6 Flickr Horror Stories | Geekpreneur

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North Korea’s “secret cyber-weapon”: brand new Red Star OS - RT Top Stories

North Korea’s “secret cyber-weapon”: brand new Red Star OS - RT Top Stories

Red Star OS is a North Korean brand of Linux.

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Enterprise Wiki Layouts in SharePoint 2010

Additionally there’s a new Site Collection feature called “Enterprise Wiki Layouts” for creating a large-scale wiki with categories and page layouts.

iLove SharePoint: Preview - Wikis in SharePoint 2010

I think there can only be three views on Wikis in SharePoint 2007. People either hate all wikis, they don't hate wikis but they hate SharePoint 2007wikis, or they have never used SharePoint wikis in 2007.

I think SharePoint 2007 is essentially an alternative to Wiki Media, and it has all the problems of Wiki Media. Its very hard to use correctly, you need to have programming skills to format things, and you need to know what you are linking to before hand, which limits its "organic growth issues."

Beyond that you have a terrible "copy and paste" problem. Allowing you to copy and paste in word documents I guess is suppose to make SharePoint 2007 wikis easier to use, but I have found that it causes more trouble than it is worth. I have seen that most wikis that are not centrally controlled and extensively planned out inevitably become mess or formats and layouts that have been pasted in to the document and now are embedded HTML. Fixing a wiki of this kind can be a real nasty problem.

Personally I wanted to see SharePoint 2010 wikis more like the wikispace.com tool.

Wikispaces I have found is much easier to grow organically because pasting works better and editing is cleaner and has a better UI. Linking provides a button and a tool and I could work for hours without really "breaking" the wiki. SharePoint 2007 wikis could be broken. Formatting got to be a mess and links were hard to find. I kept finding I would make a link and SharePoint would create a new wiki page. All the time I would forget there was one page for the singular and one page for the plural. I could create a rule that definitions should be in the singular but this felt unnatural and I found myself lapsing. In the end I gave up on SharePoint wiki at home and moved all the wiki work I had done on SharePoint to my wikispaces page in the Cloud and have never looked back.

So SharePoint 2010 had a lot of nuts and bolts issues to resolve which so far it has not. There is still not a easy to use button to link a wiki and though their is a keyboard shortcut to help wiki linking its nothing like the Wikispaces tool.

Rather than repair the core WIkip Microsoft has seemed to have just created an Enterprise Wiki that uses SharePoint's Web Content Management Publishing to control the look and publishing of a wiki. Permission to speak freely on this one. It seems that Microsoft has taken the two of the worst functions and made one new function out of it. SharePoint has also allowed used to ad web parts to a body of a Wiki but again this seems to be combining two bad things to create an even more evil new thing.

Okay I have not had a chance yet to work on a SharePoint 2010 Wiki like I have worked on SharePoint 2007 wikis, but so far I have not seen my wish list satisfied. I realy didn't want to make a publishing wiki because frankly the publishing feature in SharePoint is kind of weak and not really what people like about the tool. SharePoint is about light weight easy collaboration, and the wiki has been a very weak part of it.

How to configure Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) successfully - From The Field

I am giving you this information because I found it the most useful hub for AAM data in SharePoint 2007. But rather than just Tweet it over I wanted to state clearly that there is probably no reason ever to be using this in a live production environment. If you find you are reading this late a night or on the weekend and you are trying AAM to get a live farm working you are probably already in trouble.

The one time I was going to use AAM was to allow the Central Admin server to work on the URL for the Intranet in a farm. In pre-production we got this working using AAM, but the difficulty caused us to step back and speak to some of the more level heads on our team. What we decided was that AAM would impose a great deal of risk on the project and we answered back on the requirement. Once we explained the risk to making your Central Admin a mapping to your intranet URL the client understood and we simply dropped the requirement.

So with that warning please feel free to read on.

To avoid many questions and simplify troubleshooting, I would suggest this order when configuring AAM, which worked for me so far :

1. Understand what AAM is, and what is it being used for in your particular case. (Read the blog posts below).
2. Create a top level site collection in the application that you are trying to configure ( like http://mymossserver )
3. Browse the site, make sure it works
4. Complete the network configuration for the alternate URL that you are planning to use ( like http://intranet.mycompany.com ). If you do not know how to do this part, get your network administrator involved. This is a fundamental requirement to get it working.
5. Create the host header entries on IIS for the web application you are trying to configure. If you do not know how to do this, get your IIS admin, or system admin (whomever configures IIS in your environment) involved. This is a fundamental requirement to get it working.
6. Then browse the site using the new url you have configured. If you have configured it correctly, you should be able to browse the sharepoint site with the configured URL ( http://intranet.mycompany.com ), but redirected to the default zone mapping you have at this point ( http://mymossserver )... This means the network is capable of transporting the request to IIS, and IIS is capable of handing the request to the correct SharePoint web application.
7. Then add the AAM for the desired zone in central admin, and make sure you have ONE mapping configured for each zone. (intranet zone in this case) Beware, the default zone will be selected when you open the page, you probably want to CHANGE IT...
8. Browse the site with the new URL (http://intranet.mycompany.com). Voila ! Note: If you added two mappings to the same zone, you will see the exact same symptom of getting redirected to the first URL mapping in that zone...

Click here to read full post: How to configure Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) successfully - From The Field

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Google Chrome Continues to Grow at Other Browsers' Expense

Chrome (Chrome) grew from 5.22% to 5.61% (0.39%) over the course of February. Internet Explorer (Internet Explorer) shrunk from 62.12% to 61.58% (0.54%), Firefox (Firefox) from 24.43% to 24.23% (0.2%), Safari (Safari) from 4.53% to 4.45% (0.08%) and Opera (Opera) from 2.38% to 2.35% (0.03%).

Google Chrome Continues to Grow at Other Browsers' Expense


IE 6 may be a terrible browser, but right now you just have to assume a IE 6 user.  IE 6 and Windows XP will likely be the desktop for some more years as companies struggle with finances.

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Apple over the years

Anatomy of Apple Design from Transparent House on Vimeo.

Funny all the Apple products that I got which crashed horribly just after the warranty expired seem to have been excluded.

Facebook | Fan photos from Robert Scoble

Facebook | Fan photos from Robert Scoble

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Is the Facebook imperative really so great for Corporate America? | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has been pounding the table that enterprise software should be more like Facebook. Does Corporate America really want or need this so-called “Facebook imperative”?

Is the Facebook imperative really so great for Corporate America? | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

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BBC News - Local government web use 'disappointing'

Basic problem

Socitm, which represents IT managers in councils, rated websites on many different criteria including whether citizens could find answers to their questions, if the site was up to date, if it had a consistent style that aided navigation and how easy it was to search.

Of the 433 sites reviewed, 3% got top marks of four stars, 24% got three, 46% got two and 27% won only one star.

Overall, the survey found that the number of satisfied visitors to council websites dropped by 18% during 2009.

"It is really disappointing that the performance of this lowest cost service delivery channel seems to have stagnated over the last year," said Martin Greenwood, author of the report.

This should not be taken as a criticism of web managers, he said.

"Responsibility lies with councils' top management, many of whom still do not recognise the key role of the website in reducing corporate costs through the efficient management of customer enquiries," said Mr Greenwood.

BBC News - Local government web use 'disappointing'

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BBC News - Online 'more popular than newspapers' in US

Online news has become more popular than reading newspapers in the US, according to a survey.

BBC News - Online 'more popular than newspapers' in US

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