For those that haven't seen it, Microsoft has released an add on for outlook that allows you to integrate with local.live.com. Download it here; http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4876660 

This is interesting as Ihave said before that microsoft is looking to leverage the dominant position that they hold on the desktop / office front to bring web2.0 to users through the applications that they already use. i love this stuff !!

For those of you haven't checked them out yet, The videos that Randy suggested int eh forums by Ted Pattison are a pretty good introduction to developing SharePoint Web parts for V3/2.0

What struck me as I walked throug hthe first video, is that Microsoft has not really given you a way to graphically design web parts STILL. It seems that you would have to use the "Smart Part" methodology to develop user controls in ASP>NET that can be hosted as web parts. Or am I missing something ?

Ok.. most of you know that I am a pretty big fan of the beautiful game :-) The Cup was opened with an awesome match between the host team Germany against Costa Rica. This was a great match and the germans pulled out a 4-2 win. Six goals scored in the opener ! What more can you ask for :-)

England "squeaked" a win in their first match. Beckham bounced it off an oposing player into the goal for a score (the only one in the game)

I would have to say that the best match so far has been Sweden vs Trinidad & Tobago.

Trinidad is the smallest nation to ever make it to the world cup. It's their first time to make it to the tourney as well. At the last minute they changed Goalkeepers before the game started. Shaka Hislop started (his first world cup appearance ever) at 37 years old. He's played int he EPL for Westham for those that follow the game). He played a spectacular game. Trinidad played only 1 man forward and played a specta ...

Here in Tulsa, the Tulsa Developers Association is organizing Tech Fest 2006 as a Technology Expo and Technology Showcase. We are planning on having Lots of Technical Sessions like a conference and a vendor area for everyone to show off their wares :-)

We just got confirmation from Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell from .NET Rocks Fame that they would be willing to come and speak/participate in the event.

If you haven't checked out .NET Rocks, I highly recommend it. it is entertaining and they talk to some great folks about .. what else.. Technology. Carl and Richard make it highly entertaining to listen while you are coding away :-)

I am excited. Kudos to David Walker for organizing and co-ordinating !!

Someone asked me how to have their custom web service access SharePoint securely without having to give the end users administrative access to SharePoint. The service would work fine when run by an administrator for SharePoint but when a normal user would use it, ti would crash and tell them they were not authorized. I have had this question asked a few times so I thought it worthy of a blog post so maybe others can benefit as well.

I had a question posed to me on how to access SharePoint through web services. Specifically, they needed to be able to list all of the web sites that a user is a member of.

For a basic example of how to access the web services , I would recommend downloading and tearing apart Jan Tielens' SharePoint Explorer Application. This winform application allows you to connect to a SharePoint Instance and list all of the sites on the server.

In order to list all of the sites that a user has access to (or is a member of) you would have to iterate through the sites, checking the membership using a call to the permissions service (after retrieving the list of sites).

Here is a Reference Article that lines out talking to SharePoint Web Services pre ...

I like the new icon that everyone (including Microsoft) is adopting for newsfeeds. This should really start to foster adoption of the technology on a widespread basis. I am already seeing RSS used in the mainstream media. I have been a HUGE proponent of the power of this technology to effectively distribute information. It's finally going mainstream !

So, everywhere that you are used to seeing hte familiar orange XML icon for obtaining a newsfeed, look for this icon instead: