Mylearning.be

Some time ago, I attended the Windows Mobile Smack Down, a sneak preview of Windows Mobile 6.5. And it became very clear: my next device will probably be a Windows Mobile again. I had a Tytn II before my E71. A very powerful device, but practically unusable without the stylus. The fact that HTC added his own UI on top of Windows, is not really an elegant solution for me. And yes, one of the major improvements of 6.5? The usability with just your fingertip. That and a better personalisation are key features for me that I missed on previous windows mobile devices. 

I will probably have to wait until september to get my hand on a new device with 6.5 preinstalled. As the hardware requirements seem to be different for this release, it is better to wait than to upgrade. 

Have a look at Miels overview of the new features.

How Microsoft Surface can be used in a commercial environment:

To promote their new Windows 2008 server, Microsoft announces the availability of learning snacks. A learning snack is a short module that illustrates one specific topic or learning objective. Of course, Microsoft uses Silverlight as the underlying technology.

Have a look yourself on the Windows 2008 learning portal (click the Learning Snacks tab). Microsoft uses very simple, but effective interactions: mouse-overs, software demonstrations, click-to-reveal-more, …

What I like about it:

• simple but very nice layout
• good performance
• easy to navigate interface

What I do not like about it:

• voice-over quality is not consistent: sometimes good, sometimes very bad;
• it does not work on my Mac. There is a Silverlight version for Mac, but the learning snack player does not seem to load the content, not in Safari, not in Firefox;
• clicking on some of the links is blocked by the IE popup blocker (althoug it seems to be a simple hyperlink)

Still a great initiative. Wouldn’t it be nice if this Silverlight player could load SCORM manifests? What if Microsoft made it freely available? Wouldn’t that be a great promotion for Silverlight?

Recently, my company laptop was upgraded to Communicator 2007.

Two things I did not like about this:

• the “old” communicator 2005 had the possibility to do screen sharing. In OCS2007, it’s not there anymore. Of course, you can upgrade your conversation to live meeting, but we do not have that yet.
• after installation, my presence icons in Outlook 2007 did not work anymore.  And this made me realise how convenient these things are, and how quickly you get used to them: you start a new message, type in your recipient, you notice that he is in the office,… you close the message and go see him!
  Fortunately, I got them back to work by installing a microsoft update.

I have been testing the new Office Live Workspace, of course I wanted to check how this tool can be positioned in relation to Windows SharePoint Services or even MOSS.

A quick feature overview:

• sites and subsites: you can create different workspaces, based on a template (class workspace, household workspace, job search workspace).
• new documents can be created directly from a workspace, but the list is limited to Word, Excel, PowerPoint.
• built-in lists: tasks, contacts, events.
  
• custom lists: you can create your own list, but the available columns are fairly limited:
  
• interface: is very cool and easy to use. Unfortunately, Safari for Mac is not supported. You can uses Firefox 2 though.
• Office integration: you can install an add-in that adds the option to save or open files directly from Office. It did not work on Vista immediately, I had to install an additional update to get it to work.  
  Some of the lists can be exported to Excel, and calendars and contacts can be synced with Outlook. For the calendar, I encountered some issues with time zones and/or daylight savings, but that seems normal as the service has not been “localized” yet.
  
• Storage: you get 500 MB of storage. Not very much, but the purpose is not to distribute your divx movies .
• Alerts: there is a nice Activity pane that shows you recent changes to the list; you can specify if you want to receive activity mails, but you don’t have all the options you have in SharePoint for configuring the mail frequency.
• Sharing: you can share a workspace with up to 100 people; two security levels: viewer and editor. That’s it.

Check out the Frequently Asked Questions for the service. Or watch the demo.

It seems like a small version of Windows SharePoint Services Team sites. The interface is much slicker and easier to use, integration with Office is very good. A great service for occasional collaboration. There is even an option to collaborate in real time on documents (with SharedView ) but I haven’t tried that one yet.