I apologize for my lack of involvement in the site the last couple of months... Life altering events have a way of doing that (sucking up all of your free time :-) )

I am embarking on a project at my current employer that has me very excited. I am the Platform Architect for our systems and have a lot of work to do to get us ready to deploy our MOSS Server for internal and external collaboration.

First step (and those that know me can guess what this one is) is to get our Network Infrastructure in order. Ad / Exchange / DNS / ... etc... I am a HUGE proponent of getting that house in order before you begin to build systems on top !

We are kicking that project off today and should move fairly rapidly (we are a smallre organization that manages quite a few hosted applications that we have developed. This is a slightly different environment than I am used to working in. The previous AD design and deployment projects that I have done were ...

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 ?

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:

In Summary, I think the Code Camp in Wichita was a great event. I got to meet some wonderful folks from the Wichita Area and also got to meet some of the folks from OKC that came up the turnpike to present / attend. The event drew folks from other areas as well so if I forgot to mention your area, it's nothing personal :-)

It's great to see how the members of our .NET Users Groups in this region are so willing to help out the other groups. I have always tried to help where I can and will present at other groups if asked. It's good to see others that feel the same way !

I got invited to speak sometime in OKC about SharePoint Development so I look forward to scheduling that sometime soon. I also look forward to having some of these folks (Wichita / OKC) at our code camp / tech expo that we are putting on in Tulsa in October. It' won't be a "Code Camp" per se (we will have sponsors / vendors so it goes against the Code Camp Manifesto) but we are going t ...

Didn't blog about the last session I attended at Code Camp in Wichita and I didn't want Don to think that I didn' t enjoy his session ! ;-)

Don gave a presentation on "Developing Secure Web Based Applications". Since I have been a "Security Guy" by profession in the past, most of the concepts were pretty familiar to me. It was interesting to see the reaction of some of the folks when we talked about some of the topics (SQL Injection, encryption of config entries, etc..). I thought these had been beat into everyones heads pretty well but from the exclaitions from the crowd, there were some folks that learned a thing or two !

It is really a good idea to attend these security sessions even for us seasoned developers. You can never have too much training when security is involved... especially in these days of mashups and composite applications, making sure that you data is secure is more challenging than ever !

Good job Don ...

I am presenting SharePoint Development after this session. My Slide Deck is posted here for those that are interested (its pretty close to what I have presented before... just a new look & feel :-) )

Enjoy !