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If you want to have a look at how we will possibly interact with computers in the future, have a look at the video below. Great tip from Danny.

For those who followed my SharePoint introduction session on the Microsoft SMB Roadshow, here are some links that will help you evaluate Microsoft Office SharePoint Server or Windows SharePoint Services:

• the Microsoft “Fabulous 40″ templates
• the Microsoft SharePoint Techcenter on Technet
• a comparison of the different versions of SharePoint
• a trial download of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
• a planning guide for your first SharePoint site

Microsoft gives us a vision of how computing will be in the future (Silverlight required): 

More information and videos here.

What is good about spending 10 hours in a plane? You finally get the time to catch up on your reading. I read the Netlash trendrapport, and Stephen Downes’ The Future of online learning: ten years on.

Both reports were written from a different viewpoint and with a different scope, but it is interesting to see that they make similar observations:

• Interaction will be key: wether it is called social learning, conversation or social networking, technology will facilitate  the fact that we can learn from each other.
• Technology once seen as futuristic can break through: I wrote this in San Diego on a 300$ netbook, you might read this as an RSS feed on your iPhone. Virtualization and cloud computing will change the way we work and learn.
• Connectivity and always-connected devices will allow us to interact with and learn continuously from people in our virtual network. 

The ones who manage to deal with all these changes and use them in a creative way will survive. At least one thing that did not change…

One of our customers is still running Office 2003, but wants to use Excel Services. There seems to be some confusion if this is possible or not. As far as I am concerned, it is very well possible, although there are some prerequisites, and some limitations. These are my observations from an end user perspective:

• The files in SharePoint need to be in .XLSX or .XLSB format, it does not work with .XLS. You can install the Office File Converter pack, which will allow Excel 2003 to save files as xlsx. 
  I had some issues installing it, but installing Service Pack 3 of Office 2003 fixed all issues.
• With Office 2003, you can not limit the display of the workbook in Excel services to a specific area (worksheet, named range…). It always displays the full workbook if you open the file in Excel Services. In the Excel Web Access web part, you can limit the display to a worksheet or a named range. 
• Office 2003 can not work with parameters, that allow you to change certain values dynamically in the worksheet (e.g. using filter web parts). 

If you want to know more about Excel Services from an end user perspective, have a look at the Microsoft online training material.