Today at MIX07, Silverlight was announced along with some amazing demos showing off the media capabilities, as well as the .net/managed programming model... Read More......(read more)

I give Nikhil a hard time because almost all his demos are some sort of photo album. (It's true.) In spite of that, his demos are always fresh and instructive. His latest is no different. Right now he's demoing it at MIX'07, but you can play with it live at http://mixer1009.mixsandbox.com/app . I'm sure he'll blog about the sample soon, but it's interesting just to play with the app. By the way, he'll be showing the live mixsandbox version of the app during his talk, so don't leave any inappropriate comments (yet). :-) Read More......(read more)

I've been quiet again for a while, mostly because my team has been heads-down for a few weeks working on a demo for ScottGu's MIX keynote, and today it went off without a hitch. Silverlight is an absolutely amazing platform, and I'm not just saying that because it's coming out of MS. The whole story - from designer tools, to developer tools, to platform - is just fantastic and has a great feel to it. It's one of those times when you've got the right pieces floating around (.NET, WPF, the Expression Suite) and you tie them together into something that's bigger than the sum of it's parts. Mac support, FireFox support, cross platform debugging, light auto-install, it's all there. My team has been working on the Airline Demo that Scott showed today...(read more)

Today at MIX'07 , Brad Abrams and others are going to show how to build a video site using ASP.NET Futures , Silverlight , IIS, etc. They'll be showing a number of really impressive demos. I've been spending the past few weeks writing most of the code for the main application they'll be demoing. (It's one of the reasons I haven't blogged in so long.) You can now see the fruits of our labor live on the web, thanks to the MIX Sandbox in the Sky . The sandbox is a really cool idea that lets all attendees of MIX get their own website to play with and share the things they make. If you want to see the features of the site, here are some quick steps that will show the highlights of what we built: Launch http://mixer1004.mixsandbox.com in IE7, Firefox,...(read more)

Today Lotus announced two new software bundles to help small companies purchase a combined offering of Notes/Domino and Sametime.


Designed for organizations with less than 1,000 employees, they are available in 10-user licence packs and are built on IBM Lotus Domino Express 7.0.2 and IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5.1.

IBM Lotus Complete Messaging Express Starter Pack makes it faster, easier and less expensive to deploy secure and reliable e-mail, calendaring and scheduling, document libraries, blogs, VoIP, instant messaging, point-to-point video and Web conferencing. ?10-user license packs start at $1,320 USD SRP per pack.

IBM Lotus Complete Collaboration Express Starter Pack provides support for thousands of third-party Lotus Domino applications to run your business and delivers secure and reliable e-mail, calendaring and scheduling, document libraries, teamrooms, blogs, VoIP, instant messaging, point-to-point video and Web conferencing. ?10-user license packs start at $1,710 USD SRP per pack.

We’ve just announced the new Silverlight 1.1 Alpha and Orcas Tools support at MIX ’07! Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for building next-gen media experiences and rich interactive applications. Silverlight 1.1 contains a cross-platform CLR, allowing you to use your favorite .NET language rather than JavaScript to build the client-side functionality of your apps. Check out http://silverlight.net/Default.aspx for more details. Install links: (* = optional) Orcas Beta 1 ( http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx ) Silverlight 1.1 Runtime ( http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88986&clcid=0x409 ) Silverlight Tools for Orcas Alpha ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6C2B309B-8F2D-44A5-B04F-836F0D4EC1C4&displaylang=en...(read more)

Have you checked out the Mix Sandbox in the Sky yet? It is a free web hoster that has all the cool bits we are talking about here already installed. If you are here at Mix, it allows you to build, install and share YOUR work. If you are following the action from home , you can see what folks are building. Steve Marx just got the demo for my talk posted on the sandbox ... Go check it out! But please come to the talk to see how it is built ;-) (today at 4:30p) Notice it is just a demo, so not everything fully works... You will need the beta of Silverlight 1.0 that we just released ( silverlight.net ) Enjoy! Read More......(read more)

I love helping developers understand our developer platform... one of the fun ways I get to do that is be at least a little bit involved in making some fun poster... We have done them for the BCL , .NET Framework 2.0 and .NET Framework 3.0 ... Today we started giving out this Silverlight poster. If you are at Mix, please come to one of the sessions with "Silverlight" in the title and pick your up! If you are not there, you have have to settle for the highres download. Enjoy Read More......(read more)

I just ran into one of the editors from O'Reilly in the halls at Mix and he told me that they just published a "Short Cut" on Silverlight. I have not read it yet, but Shawn Wildermuth is very plugged in guy and a proven author so I am sure it is great. Getting Started with Silverlight By Shawn Wildermuth April 2007 Pages: 62 Let me know what you think... Read More......(read more)

HTML / ASP.NET spell checker addin was updated with support for multiple languages. Spell checker is now able to detect lang attribute specified on elements, extracts ISO language and uses it to specify appropriate dictionary for the Office spell checking engine. In order to be able to run spell check in multiple languages you may need to install Microsoft Office 2003 Proofing Tools or an appropriate Office 2007 Language Pack . If you never used particular language dictionary in Word, you have to try it before it becomes available in the Spell Checker add-in. Many dictionaries are installed on demand and if particular language was never activated in Word, the disctionary may be still missing. Open Word, type something in the desired language...(read more)

I can't wait for Mix to start... Friday we locked down all the bits we are giving out (and it is a LOT of them)... polished some very cool demos and got our hands on the final version of some other cool stuff. You could really feel the buzz growing over in building 42 and building 10! I am very excited about the talk I am giving... It will be a lot of fun and will cover a some great Silverlight media stuff, some new ASP.NET AJAX work and of course Expression and Visual Studio. If you are there, please come... If not, look for the demo and slides after the event. Silverlight: Creating and Delivering Amazing Video Experiences on the Web Monday, April 30 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM, Lando 4301A Speakers: Brad Abrams , Chris Knowlton - Microsoft Audiences:...(read more)

This week we shipped IIS 7.0 Beta 3 as part of the Windows "Longhorn" Server release. IIS 7.0 is the biggest release of IIS in the history of the product, and brings with it major improvements to the Microsoft web-server stack. This article and this blog post list just a few of the major improvements it delivers. New IIS 7.0 Beta3 Features This week's IIS 7.0 Beta3 release introduces a bunch of new features and capabilities above and beyond what shipped in the IIS 7.0 release that came with Windows Vista. These include: Web Farm Shared Configuration : You can now configure your web-servers to be stateless, and centralize all configuration, code and content across web farms (making it much easier to scale out and manage). Learn more about how...(read more)

The USA is only 20th in the world in broadband penetration. (Luxembourg just surpassed us.) Read More......(read more)

Today is one of the posts where rather than sharing tips, I am requesting your help and expertise. ? I have a simple question, but one that has many different answers!

What business processes do you want software to help you with?

Think about the things you need to get done during the course of your day, week, month, year, or maybe during a specific project. ? Now how does software help you, and more importantly what are today's tools not helping you with?

I am looking for things like:

• I need to author, revise, and share a set of slides with people located around the world.
• I need software to help facilitate the process of gathering customer requirements for our new product, and follow the steps to get that product made.
• I need to book people calendars, meeting rooms, and my flights, hotels, and car for an upcoming trip to 3 customers, in 2 different cities.
• I need to create a marketing campaign, working back and forth with our advertising agency, and get the finished material published in time for third quarter.
• I need to create a product catalog, using images uploaded from my digital camera.
• I need to find the highest value sales leads in my region, and communicate our company's value proposition with these potential new customers.

There are a million other examples, and that is what I am hoping you can help me with. ?What tools do you use today? ?Email , teamspaces, web conferencing, photo editing software, office productivity suite, blogs, screen capture software? ???? ?What do they not do well? ? What tools do you wish existed that currently does not?

Be as creative as you would like. ?There are no rules. ?There are no wrong answers. ?

I am hoping this thread generates a lot of responses, so please pass it on to anyone you'd like, Lotus Notes user or not! ?The more diverse the set of respondents, the more interesting this could be. ? Let's see what type of patterns emerge.

I don't have time to write a long entry tonight, so I'm going to break from my series explaining how to make a local mail replica for this entry.

Your password is a very important part of the security of Lotus Notes. ? I know sometimes they can be annoying, but so can having to use the key to get into the front door of your house. ? Security is necessary sometimes. ?I read a great tip today in the Lotus Business Partner forum about passwords that I thought I'd share with you.

Your Lotus Notes password does not have to be a single word, it can be a sentence.

So instead of some complicated combination of letters and numbers, which you just end up writing down somewhere anyway, choose something important to you. ?For example, "I love playing tennis", or "I hate having to remember passwords". ? These will be difficult for someone to guess, but still easy for you to remember.