Wictor Wilen

Microsoft has released three more updates for Windows Vista mainly targeting performance, stability and reliability, one thing that Microsoft and Vista currently lacks. Service Pack 1 is in beta, but will not be ready for launch for several months, but to get get back some credibility for Windows Vista and to get the sales back on track I think Microsoft will continuously release these kind of updates. And of course they will get a wider target area for testing them.

Joost is now for everyone, no more invitations to get your hands on it! It’s still a beta but called Joost 1.0 beta and it’s getting better and more importantly it’s getting more channels and content (more than 15.000 shows). So if you have not tried Joost, head on over and download it. The one thing I think is missing, is a seamless Media Center Integration - wouldn’t that be something? Microsoft currently released Internet TV Beta for Media Center (only for the US customers, so us living up north in Sweden are left out as usual…) which I would like to test and compare to Joost - anyone have any interesting comparisons, is it a competitor or can they cooperate?

A few weeks ago I met a friend of a friend at a party who started to work for Accenture as a programmer a few months a go. After some talking we started discussion jobs, and I was wondering what she did at Accenture; what kind of development and projects. As a programmer I was eager to know what she was programming and stuff like that, I know that she had studied C++ at the university and that she had worked with that for a while. At Accenture she had entered the Java world and now she was developing a SOA application - interesting I thought and started to fire some more questions.

Barry Goffe, Director of Windows Vista Ultimate, has now responded to the last days of angry posts on the non-existing upcoming Extras for Windows Vista Ultimate. In his post he announces that Windows DreamScene now is officially released. I really hope that this is not a release that has been forced out from the Redmond buildings, due to the complaints, but instead something that actually works smooth. The language packs are still on delay - let them wait until they are ready, but keep us informed (not only when you are forced to!).

Today the Office 2003 Service Pack 3 popped up in my Windows Update (Vista Ultimate) as an important update. Duh! I have only installed Office 2007, as far as I know!? But after a check in Programs and Features of Vista I found out that I sometime installed the Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components and Office 2003 SP3 applies to the OWC. So the update was not for Office 2007…

The summer is now officially over and there has not been any Windows Vista Ultimate Extras as promised! In July, the Ultimate team the Ultimate Team directory promised us a that the remaining language packs and DreamScene would be released, so far no trace of them! Windows Vista Ultimate with the Ultimate Extras was a smart way to get consumers to pay a whole lot of extra money, about 60% more than the Home Premium version, to get nothing! Yes, there has been some extras released, but that was like 8 months ago! Since then we have seen some language packs removed and a technical preview of DreamScene.

I’m really happy that CNET Download.com has reviewed my application msfeedicon, a free RSS plugin to the Windows RSS platform. The rating is 4 stars of possible 5 and here is the review: If you cant get through the day without checking your RSS feed subscriptions, you’ll be glad to know about Msfeedicon: It perks up and simplifies Internet Explorer’s RSS feature by adding some functionality. There’s one caveat: The tagging feature described by the publisher didn’t work in our tests.

The standardization of the XML Paper Specification (XPS) as an ECMA International standard proceeds. Adrian Ford reports that the initial working draft has been published on the ECMA web site. There are no major changes as of now to the original specification by Microsoft, but rather some editorial changes, read the latest draft here (available as PDF or XPS). Lets hope that the ECMA TC has learned from the recent Office Open XML ISO failure and get rid of all these non-issues that most of the OOXML comments really was about.

The net is crowded with SharePoint blogs, including this one, and I have missed one thing - information for the end-users. I think that there is a great void in knowledge for SharePoint users out there,for example how to use SharePoint as an end-user in the most efficient way, how to do the simple stuff such as creating sites or lists etc. Today I stumbled upon “Get the ‘Point” by Suzanne Ross, which has a focus on the SharePoint end-users. The blog is quite new but features a two-part article series on how to set up a Team Site. It does not sound like rocket science to us developers, but hint you customers and/or users about this blog.