I was reading one of the blogs over on Network Computing, and one popped out at me, not because I’m a geek, but because I spoke with Bill this morning. The title alone was the catch… “Beware My +2 Sword of Leadership”. It brings up a good point about marketing, and how useless words are now becoming. Andrew even goes as far as to compare marketing with the cold war:

But, using the same logic that led to a nuclear arms race, marketing departments can’t stop using meaningless words because their competitors still do.

It’s quite interesting, because for the most part, he’s probably right. Marketing targets us by using flash catch words, but they all use the same words. How is one product better than another, if they are all leaders?

He ends the post with a nice little project, you should give it a shot.

Up the wall. Demanding that I fix things, without knowing how to use said things first. For example, demanding that something is blocked, or broken, when you have no idea how to get access to something first. The issue is obviously on my end because the user doesn’t know how to:

• Ask for instructions on how to use functionality
• Because they don’t know how to use it, it’s broken

In this case, the error is clearly between chair and keyboard. Instead, the resolution to said issues would be for the user to address me as follows:

I am having issues with [item], I don’t appear to be able to operate it correctly, can you help?

Much easier to get along that way.

As I have an MSDN license, I am allowed access to Microsoft’s software for development reasons. I gave Office 2007 a demo run while it was in beta, and was running it inside a virtual server. The initial view on it was… “interesting”. The change of layout for most of the office applications with their Ribon Technology made for some new user experiences. I didn’t really get a chance to play with outlook, until today.

As everybody else is off, with the exception of the Helpdesk, I decided to upgrade. After a length install process, I finally got in. The first thing about Office 2007 I noticed was the “Todo Bar”. This bar sits on the right hand side of the screen, and contains a quick lookup of your calendar, todo items, and flagged emails, rather handy. The one set back is probably going to come if you’re using a monitor that only goes up to 1024x768. I’d imagine the screen would be a little tight. I’m not in that realm though, my screen is at 1920x1200, so I can have the folder list, preview, mail list, and todo bar all side by side, and nothing looks squased.

Another thing I was immediately prompted for was the “Instant Search”. This is pretty sneaky, I thought it was originally a feature that wasn’t installed by default, so I decided to go check it out, thinking that it would be odd for Microsoft to ship Outlook without a find feature. I come to find out it’s actually Microsoft’s sneaky way of pushing the “Microsoft Desktop Search” application.

Microsoft have also decided to add the ability to categorize your emails. In Outlook 2003, these were simply flags of different colours. However, those flag options now correspond to turning an email into a task, and categories are handled by a small square. The categories can have their names changed too.

Something I do love in the new version of Office is the fonts. The whole interface has had a font facelift. The fonts seem a lot clearer, and definetly smoother, and sharper at the same time. It’s certainly a plesant experience on the eyes.

With the exception of the above few items, the general behaviour of the core application is just the same. The real differences begin when you try starting a new email. This is where the “Ribbon” comes into play. Microsoft have finally decided to scrap the “Word as an editor” option, and have simply merged in the same functionality from MS Word. This is good, because you no longer have to deal with both Word and Outlook consuming memory when all you’re doing is reading emails. The down side is, Outlook seems to still use the same memory footprint as both applications combined.

I recomment a quick view of their user preview video that gives a good run down of the new “Ribbon”, and a good idea on what people can expect. All in all, I certainly like the new office, though some things are going to take a bit of getting used to, it shouldn’t take too long.

Apparently Microsoft hasn’t really considered the “user” when thinking of remote exploits. The Register has an article about another exploit that could allow a local user to elevate their privileges (Secunia have the original article). I cannot count the number of times I’ve had to handle a user issue where they opened an attachment. Combine a couple of exploits, and you can make it close enough to remote that it’s dangerous. For example, we received a call from an account manager the other day that said they’d received an email saying their system was insecure, and they needed to install this patch. That same theory could be used to deploy this new issue… shesh.

I’ve been playing with RSS readers for a while. I used to use FeedReader, but kept wanting more. I found a few items difficult to get used to, like adding a custom tag to something I might want to go back and look at later.

Then I started playing with RSS Bandit. It has a very “Outlook” feel to it, though the graphics aren’t so up-to-date. Again, I still felt something wasn’t right with it.

In the meantime, I kept reading how Scoble is addicted to the Google Reader (He’s apparently not the only one), so I thought I’d take another peek. I wasn’t too impressed with my first usage of it several months ago, but I kept noticing people mentioning sneaky upgrades, so I decided another look should be warranted.

Thankfully, both RSS Bandit and FeedReader have options to export my subscription, and Google Reader has an import option. Having read Scobles handy comments on short cuts, I quickly found myself addicted to the J and K keys. I usually skim over the headlines (J), if something catches my attention, I might have to skip back (K) and read a little more. They even have a whole slew of other shortcuts.

I have to admit, Google is something a little like the original Coca Cola… Very addictive.

Most people don’t understand how powerful listening can be. The best place is in business. Today I got a spoonful of “listening” from a web site I regularly read news on. Dark Reading send out daily news letters with security stuff on it. I noticed that one of their blogs (Firewalled), actually all of them, have RSS feeds on it. So I decided to subscribe, and click on over to Google Reader. As soon as it snapped up the RSS, I clicked on an interesting looking article, and was taken to the front page for that blog… Odd, until you see that all the RSS items had the same link. So I submitted a “Contact Us” form. My submission was sent at approximately 1739, and was replied to, and corrected by 1757. Google Reader picked up the whole feed again, all items with nice shiney new links to the correct documents.

I’m always very impressed with simple things like this. The guy that replied, could have easily blown it off until tomorrow, or add it it on the back burner of things not so important to do. Instead he took less than 20 minutes to look at the issue, resolve it, post the update, and respond. That is what goes into “customer satisfaction”. Great job.

I read recently in an article in InformationWeek that IT spending is balanced 80/20 towards maintenance over new projects. The Register has an article that goes over a survey showing that it’s not just the budget that goes that way. Most of IT managers time is spent making things work. This seems fairly resonable. I’ve not had any time recently on looking at new technology. I’m hoping to spend next year on implementing “new stuff” in the office, from replacing the wireless infrastructure, to replacing the switching infrastructure with all Ciscos.

This morning our CCC application that does call tracking for call groups started generating a weird error about it not having any licenses. The error was

No available license could be found at this time.

This was a little odd as it had worked before our office move, and I’m pretty sure somebody wouldn’t have figured out that they can license per physical location. So trusty google I go. After a few links, I stumbled upon this one on Tek-Tips (great site if you’ve not used it before, a little like experts-exchange, but free). Somewhere in there is a comment on the order of start up for the CCC software. Basically says that the key service has to start before the delta server, which has to start before the report service. If it doesn’t, or they start at the same time, the key server doesn’t get chance to report the licenses available, which causes the above error.

So this evening, I took it upon myself to construct dinner. Steph didn’t fancy the usual meal, so we popped to the store, and picked some stuff up. We ended up cooking Stuffed Chicken breast with greenbeans and rice. Chicken breast was stuffed with cream cheese, and a variety of herbs (that’s with an H). Then the chicken breast was wrapped in bacon.

I really need to get some decent lenses, and start taking some food photos as I’m cooking.

Finally, it’s nearly all over. That is, we’ve moved mail systems, we’ve moved offices, and earlier today, we moved data centers. All but the mail migrations went incredibly smoothly, with only minor issues in all cases. I’m very happy, now I just need to figure out some time to get some rest. Got up at 6am yesterday, and finally got to bed at 11am this morning. Of course, I’m on a conference call right now doing code promotions… weeee