If you're a SharePoint 2003 developer or system administrator, you know how lost one can get in the guts of the systems. For the longest time, SharePoint documentation was almost non-existent, but now you can get decent information from Microsoft, as well as from other parties. The SDK, however, can be a bit difficult to wade through. A visual representation of some of the underlying SharePoint core functionality would be a great thing to have.

Enter Mindsharp - they offer documentation, courseware and training for SharePoint professionals, and one of their offerings is three free posters, which they will ship to you. You'll have to sign up on the web site, and they'll ship to the address and info you provide. One set of posters is available at no cost to residents of the US, UK, and Canada. Additional sets can be purchased for $20 (Mindsharp's cost to produce, package, process, and post). Electronic versions of the posters are also available for $45/each (the entire set must be purchased).

The three posters include:

• Windows SharePoint Services Object Model
• Windows SharePoint Services Administration Roadmap
• SharePoint Portal Server Administration Roadmap

Mindsharp also sponsors a mailing list for SharePoint admins and developers. Send email to subscribe-sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com to join.

Other SharePoint information from MindSharp that you can get from their web site:

White Papers

• Best Practices for Designing and Deploying a SharePoint Portal
• How to Move Your Portal Farm from One Server to Another

Webinars

• Reader Course
• My Site Course

Live Meetings

• Moving a Server Farm

Seth Godin points to a photoshop contest gallery with some pretty funny images by some talented photoshoppers. The contest challenged people to depict corporate logos everywhere:

Contest Directions

Everywhere you turn there is another Starbucks, McDonalds or GAP popping up whether it's the logo, store or actual ad you see. In this contest you're going to take corporate takeovers of society to the extreme. Put ads, logos and/or stores in the most unexpected areas you can think of (i.e. the Sphinx in Egypt wearing RayBan sunglasses, or a Taj Mahal McDonalds). The rules of this game are thus: Depict the world completely overrun by logos, advertisements and stores in the most unexpected places. As always, quality is a must. We will remove poor entries no matter how much we like you. You'll have 48 hours to submit for this contest, so make your submissions count.

And the participants came up with some cool - and occasionally subtle - stuff:

View the whole gallery here.

There's another new version of the Firefox web browser out. You know, it's a good browser, but the number one problem I have with Firefox is a lack of automated, verifiable security patching... Plus apparently you have to download a whole new version to update it, and the release notes known issues section says not to install it over an older version:

"Prior to installing Firefox 1.0.3, please ensure that the directory you've chosen to install into is clean and doesn't contain any previous Firefox installations."

Anyhow... The following security issues are fixed in v1.0.3, so if you are using Firefox, go get it now:

Severity key: critical, high, moderate, low

MFSA 2005-33 Javascript "lambda" replace exposes memory contents
MFSA 2005-34 javascript: PLUGINSPAGE code execution
MFSA 2005-35 Showing blocked javascript: popup uses wrong privilege context
MFSA 2005-36 Cross-site scripting through global scope pollution
MFSA 2005-37 Code execution through javascript: favicons
MFSA 2005-38 Search plugin cross-site scripting
MFSA 2005-39 Arbitrary code execution from Firefox sidebar panel II
MFSA 2005-40 Missing Install object instance checks
MFSA 2005-41 Privilege escalation via DOM property overrides

I had to do a bit of eye-balling, but eventually I found it. Supposedly this is imagery showing Area 51 near Rachel, Nevada on Google Maps. Other resources on the web seem to corroborate that (click for a lot of info from a guy who tried this well before I did).

Now, why in the world would they only have low-res imagery of this area??? Escapes me... At least they've blocked out the rooftops of the White House and other critical buildings.

By the way, some people have been wondering what the "lumps" in the ground are to the southwest of Area 51. As it turns out, I don't think that's part of Area 51 at all. My memory tells me that's Areas 1-30 at the Nevada Test Site, if I am not mistaken. And those aren't actually lumps either - they're craters from the underground detonations that have been done at the test site over the years:

Google Maps is just too much fun. Here's the USS John C. Stennis, which is an aircraft carrier that two friends serve on - and it's also the one I spent a week on last year, underway from from Hawaii to San Diego. 

I went chasing all this stuff down after FilmDivision uploaded a similar image to Flickr.

Hitachi's got a bright idea to cram 10 times the amount of data on any given piece of magnetic storage media.

The superparamagnetic effect is what happens when bits of data get crammed too close to each other and randomly reverse their magnetic charge. You get corrupted data, and that limits how much you can cram onto one hard drive platter.

So, Hitachi's plan is to stand those bits up on-end, like stacking a box of dominos standing tall rather than end-to-end on the table.

And they have a rather unique way to explain it to us: A Flash "music video." Check it out here.

Thanks to Omar Shahine for the link.

I've often dreamed of having a small, lightweight helicopter-like vehicle to fly to and from work, and it looks like that is actually becoming a possibility in the near future with the AirScooter ultralight recreational vehicle.

So cool - hey, if the AirScooter people want or need someone to learn to fly one of those and then write all about it on their blog for marketing purposes, I'll gladly participate!

From the product's web site:

Question: When is the AirScooter going to be available?

Answer: The AirScooter II is currently undergoing the final testing phase on the AeroTwin Engine. The AirScooter II is expected to be available sometime in 2005, but no firm date has been determined at this time.

Question: What is the price for an AirScooter II?

Answer: No pricing will be available on the AirScooter II until after final product testing is complete and manufacturing plans are finalized.

Cool stuff - Video here (QuickTime) and more pictures here.

(found via Engadget)