Fly softly, and carry a big stick...

I just found a great story linked from a new b5media blog (oops ) called Flightnest.com, where a student pilot was out with his instructor in a Cessna 172 and the landing gear would not lock down. Talk about baptism by fire!

Anyhow, even better is the way they solved the problem. While the student ad his instructor flew around the airport for about an hour and fire crews stood by, a couple guys in a jeep raced down the runway with the aircraft flying a few feet away. they eyeballed the gear, grabbed a big stick, and - well - go watch the video. Nice.

Scoble's posted an interview with Rob Leferts, a program manager at Microsoft, who talks about the new workflow services that will be built into SharePoint in the next version, which is tentatively set to release in the last half of 2006.

There's all sorts of new features that take advantage of the two-way connection between SharePoint 12 and other Office tools, including the Office suite of applications like Word, Excel, Outlook and others.

What does baking workflow into SharePoint in the Office 12 release mean for business people? In a nutshell, it means a set workflow features that just shows up and notifies you that you've got something that needs to be checked on or completed. It also means users can create workflow and leverage it to suit their business needs.

Example: I open Outlook and I get a notification in Outlook that says I have a task pending to complete an employee's performance review, which points me to a SharePoint site where that document lives and is waiting for me to add my two cents. When I am done, I click a button in Word or whatever program I'm in that says I am done, and the workflow takes over and pushes the document on to the next step in the business process and notifies the next person. You can buy that kind of functionality and build it in to existing SharePoint sites if you really want to, but it's a lot of work and it takes lots of time (and therefore money). So, out of the box is a terrific thing. Some of us need that. Badly. 

Automating the processes that business follow in writing documents, managing tasks, and a variety of other things can be well-served by workflow automation, and the fact that they're building it into the entire Office system is not only nice to see happening, it's important to making SharePoint and the Office system in general better accepted and more usable - and therefore a more worthwhile investment.

• What you have today in SharePoint: Share and save documents, control security, publish and get notified of changes, etc.
• What you get tomorrow: Build workflow to share the document template, drive it through a process of step by step edits and reviews, get sign-off and then publish (or whatever). Note: Approvals are processed online, it's not an off-line process. You can take a doc off-line and work on it, then connect back to the server to sync it back up to its "home," then push the button to indicate you've completed your workflow task.

Expiration and document lifecycle policies can be created and automated, to ensure content is properly disposed of, flagged, reviewed or whatever. This is a pretty big deal in today's business world, where a document lifecycle process and program is - in some cases - legally mandated.

Lots of great stuff coming from these talented people, and lots of business uses and enhancements to look forward to for those of us that need to help workers better organize information and collaborate.

Again, it's going to be a very, very interesting year.

If you're like me and you disappeared for random business trips at the last minute this past week, and if your business trip didn't take to PDC in Los Angeles (neither did mine), you may have also missed out (like me) on the real-time updates related to the next version of the Office System products - currently known generically as Office 12 and the Office 12 servers.

Simply put, the Office user experience is changing significantly - and at first glance, the changes are pretty amazing and definitely fall on the "hey that's cool" side of the fence. Watch this Channel 9 video interview with Julie Larson-Green of Microsoft to get a sneak peek of what's coming.

Check Jensen Harris' blog here for Office 12 experience updates, too. Good stuff showing up there already.

Channel 9 tags for categorized videos and articles related to the topics:

• MS+Office
• SharePoint
• PDC05

Got SharePoint? Over at The Dean's Office, Dustin Miller lists a long - and exciting in a geeky way - list of what's coming up in the next version of SharePoint - which is due for release in late 2006 as part of the next version of the Office system.

HUGE improvements coming, and v2 to v3 will be an upgrade, not a migration. Phew! Check out the list.

A good Channel 9 video showing/discussing SharePoint v.next is here.

• RSS on all SharePoint lists - and access to the feeds respect the SharePoint security model
• RSS feeds are per-list and per-site (aggregated)
• Support is for RSS 2.0
• Out of the box blogs AND wikis! (and you get RSS feeds for those, too)
• Lots of search improvements and enhancements
• Outlook 12 will have an aggregator, IE7 also has one
• WSS v.next runs on ASP.NET 2.0, so ASP.NET v2 web parts are SharePoint web parts
• Version history in all SharePoint lists - with line-by-line diffs! Nice!
• Take documents off-line and bring them back
• Workflow built in - see a Channel 9 video about that here
• Document management significantly built out
• Email enabled discussion boards - send email to a SharePoint alias and it shows up in the discussion list! Nice - great internal option to things like Yahoo groups. You can also sync emails, tasks and other stuff to a SharePoint site from the Outlook UI.

It's going to be a big year for Microsoft's Office and Office Servers. Huge, really.

My employer, Corillian Corporation, announced the other day that it's achieved certification under the international security standard BS7799, which is also the basis for the about-to-be-released ISO17799 standard. Without disclosing anything confidential here, I wanted to write a few of my own personal thoughts about the process and my experience in it, and what I think it means in the real world.

Those of us that have been involved in making this happen - which in the end really means every single person employed by the company - are excited about the achievement. We didn't just work to certify a portion of the company's operations, we did the full-meal-deal. I know that those of us on the security team all feel a real sense of accomplishment and success, while cautiously recognizing that we now have that much more to continue to live up to, now that we've arrived. After all, resting on one's laurels in the security world is a dangerous place to be, and security is a process, not an event.

What does it mean to be certified under the "7799" standard? Simply put, the certification says that the company has put in place a comprehensive security management system and program, and that it has shown evidence through a set of documentation and on-site examinations that it's meeting the complete set of standards without deficiencies. In other words, it means we've proven under close scrutiny that we have a solid security program that we take very seriously, and that it works.

I can't begin to explain the amount of learning I did in the process of doing my part in the effort to attain certification. I can tell you that I am convinced - well beyond the shadow of a doubt - that a strong security program and management system can and does contribute directly to the delivery of high quality of products and services. It's a lot of work to get to the point where certification is even possible, and many people dedicated incredible effort over the course of a couple of years to reach this point, but the value gained through the process is very high.

Every organization that deals with security issues and responsibilities should go through the process of certification under the standard. It would make for a much better operating environment, and would result in better-run companies. And in this day, age and operating environment, where trust and security are of paramount importance to business success, there's almost no excuse not to do so.

Google has launched their Google Blog Search -and its good stuff. One of the best things in my book is that you get a list of highly-relevant weblogs before you get the text search results.

Some searches:

• OneNote
• Security
• Exchange 2003
• Obligatory ego search

The XBox 360 console will be released in late November, and Microsoft has announced that several games will be backward-compatible and will run on the new machine.

Here's your chance (for the next few days, anyhow) to vote on which games will receive backward-compatibility support:

"... when it comes to determining backwards compatibility, the ball is entirely in Microsoft's court. As you'd expect, they've already baked-in all the no-brainer Xbox games that will work on 360 (e.g., Halo 1 and 2, Knights of the Old Republic, Fable, etc.), but with the Xbox 360 launch just around the corner this November, the boys from Redmond are unofficially reaching out to the gaming community to learn what remaining games Xbox fans would like to see backwards compatible on Xbox 360.

"We present below (split into two digestible lists) 80 worthy Xbox titles Microsoft isn't sure about. 80 games that will, over the course of the next 5 days, battle it out to the death. While there are no guarantees that the top 10 or 20 games will make it into the backwards compatibility list, or even what the cut-off number will be for the top titles, the stakes here are unquestionably high. To be sure, Microsoft will be checking out these results to gauge consumer interest in many of these excellent games. And they will act accordingly. So know that your vote will make a difference."

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3143553&did=1

News broke this morning: eBay to buy Skype for 2.6 billion in cash, stock. Crazy.

And for exactly twice that dollar amount, Oracle is working to buy Siebel.

So, in essence what they're telling us is that Skype is worth 50% of what Siebel is worth? Does this make any real sense?

Today I once again had the pleasure of working closely with Cops on Top, a non-profit organization that undertakes mountain climbing expeditions to the highest points in the world in order to remember and recognized the sacrifice of police officers killed in the line of duty.

Today expedition teams from across the United States and Canada took off for their respective state or territory high points to remember the first responders who were killed helping others on September 11th, 2001. We've enabled the teams to dial in via mobile or satellite phones, and their audio blogs are posted to the Cops on Top climber's weblog.

Congratulations and thanks to all the police officers and their team mates who undertook expeditions today. As a former cop and someone who's seen the positive impact the Cops on Top program has, I can tell you it means a lot to many people.

Hey, if all else fails, boot to a USB drive, right? Only problem is, who wants to haul around an external hard drive?

Actually, Tom's Hardware has an article on installing and running Windows XP on a USB flash drive. Windows in your pocket - it doesn't get much easier than that eh?

Boot up, access the Windows install and do whatever you need. Great idea.

Notes from the article:

• A USB flash drive with at least 256 MB of storage is enough for the uses described in this article. Additional system tools or applications require more space. The upper bound limits for storage in this case is 2 GB - a byproduct of the tool's use of FAT16 for the local file system.
• Most new motherboards recognize USB flash drives as valid boot media. But conventional motherboards that are more than two years old aren't likely to boot from a USB flash drive. But in many cases, this omission can be remedied through a BIOS update for that board.
• 1.5 GB of unused disk space is the maximum needed for the tool to do its job, particularly if you want to pre-install Service Pack 2 and RAM disk capabilities. 190 MB of unused space is all that's needed to use PE Builder and the applications described in this article, however. Additional plug-ins will increase storage requirements, as will additional tools or software.
• 512 MB of USB flash drive storage space is needed only if boot-up works from a RAM disk. Otherwise, 256 MB is big enough.
• Access to a USB 2.0 port is not mandatory, though booting with a USB 1.1 port takes about five times longer.
• A Windows XP Setup CD works fine as a foundation for PE Builder to generate the USB flash drive's contents.

We're not all perfect, bulletproof or even smart. Funny how it works that way. In fact, there's a certain percentage of IT and security pros out there that come up with bone-headed, stupid ideas - and who make decisions based on those ideas.

Marcus Ranum wrote about what he calls "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security." It's a good read, and I agree with almost everything he says there:

http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/

In reality, anyone in the IT and security field should have a solid, well-formed opinion that they can back up on everything Marcus mentions in his essay.

(via Bruce Schneier)

Damn you, Apple.

Stop teasing me with higher-cost hardware that has that extra "woah dude, woah" factor.

I can't afford to be tempted like this. Stop!

Ya gotta admit it, that nano is pretty sweet. Take the smallness they went for with the Shuffle (which, by the way, is about as useless as the stick of gum it's often compared to) and then put back all the cool stuff about the iPod (you know, like menus and the touch control) and then double or quadruple the storage capacity compared to the Shuffle, and there ya go. Oh yeah, and that color display is nice, of course.

Okay, okay - I'll think about it.

Grrrr...

This is how exciting my weekends are. Here I'm on IM with my next door neighbor this fine Saturday morning (which is weird enough, in an antisocial sort of way, now that I think about it):

Yeah, yeah whatever.   I have yet to see a "good chat client" that I truly want to use on Linux (we were discussing IM clients). Don't get me wrong - Linux is great. I have a couple of secret (I do have a rep to uphold ya know...) little Linux-y things going on. 

(And yeah, I know - my typing sucks)

The Linksys WRT54G is a great little WiFi (Wireless-G) home router, and there are a number of communities out there that  have created custom firmware to run on them. But one of the risks of flashing your router with new and different firmware is that you might just end up with a useless brick, typically characterized by red flashing lights and a severe lack of functionality.

If you can't get a SFTP upload of the default Linksys firmware to apply to the router using their utility, it's possibly toast. But there are still a few options (try at your own risk).

First of all, though: Have you tried to upload a fresh copy of the Linksys firmware using the Linksys utility you can download from their web site? Was your router running the Linksys firmware or one of the community firmware builds when the problem started? Depending on the firmware and router version, you might find that you need to go back to an older/original firmware file, then re-apply the custom one. Your mileage may vary, but if you're bricked you might not be worried about things like warranties. Just be aware of the fact once you start messing with stuff, warranties are often a thing of the past.

Here's a few links to try to help - feel free to leave a comment if you know of others:

• Red Diag or Power Light Blinking on the WRT54G:
  http://tinyurl.com/7al4s
• For the courageous:
  http://nino.net/blogs/nino/archive/2005/06/09/744.aspx
• More info on un-bricking it:
  http://www.barik.net/archive/2004/12/03/220751/

Ruth at RCM Technologies sent along an opening they have for a guru-level SharePoint business consultant in the Beverly Hills, California area. If you or someone you know if interested, give Ruth a call or send her an email (her contact info is at the bottom of this post):

RCM Technologies is a leading provider of comprehensive of Information Technology solutions for customers in the Financials Services, Healthcare, Insurance, Communications, Entertainment, and Pharmaceutical markets is looking for a Business Systems Consultant for a project in the Beverly Hills area. 

This is initially an 8 week project. There is a high likelihood of extension after the initial phase is completed.

This project is slated to start ASAP.

Job Description

Responsible for providing business solutions to enterprise-wide technology initiatives.  Candidate must be a self starter with excellent communication skills.  Background in web testing and training on web based systems.  Formal classroom experience is not mandatory. 

• Acts as a liaison between business/user and the technical developer 
• Plan and analyze business initiatives to be solved with business systems. 
• Provides technical expertise in identifying, evaluating, and developing effective procedures and systems requirements that meet business requirements. 
• Works with business user to provide assessment of developed system in respect to the user’s needs.  Also provide training and resolve issues and questions. \
• Participates in validating existing design features with specific system requirements and specifications. 
  Initiates systems testing. 
• Acts as internal consultant within technology and business groups by re-engineering technical processes for greater efficiencies with significant impact to the business.

Required Experience or Knowledge of the following technologies/functions

• Microsoft SharePoint 2003 - Candidates must be expert level in SharePoint
• .NET development
• SharePoint implementation/migration experience
• Please send your resume as a Word document. You may also reach me at the number below.

Thank you,
Ruth Lozano
RCM Technologies
Anaheim, CA
800-972-6269 x220
ruth.lozano(at)rcmt.com
www.rcmt.com