March 23, 2007
you should be in new orleans, that’s where.
a whole boatload of folks will be gathering for the it pro summit hosted by sbsmigration.com, the good folks responsible for the swing migration method.
there’s a raft of experts currently expected to speak and/or lead discussions. expect this conference to be insanely light on powerpoint, but heavily weighted with broader panel discussion formats & peer networking opportunities.
and yes, i’m slated to be among those speaking.
now, may might seem like a long way away, but i wasn’t kidding when i said boatload.
the most unique aspect of this conference has to be the fact that it’s comprised of 2 major parts: a 2 day weekend conference on land & a 5 day caribbean cruise.
you can get all the details at the conference site itself, but don’t dawdle. the absolute last day to register for the cruise to get in on the conference block & pricing is march 26. that’s next monday, btw. after that, you’re on your own if you decide you want to set sail.
hope to see you there!
|| posted by chris under biz, community, it pro, travel || comments (0) ||
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March 20, 2007
regular visitors might remember our kickass integration of the following items here at the funcave:
- small business server 2003 r2, premium edition
- sql server 2005, workgroup edition
- microsoft office accounting professional 2007
- microsoft office outlook 2007
- business contact manager 2007
- windows mobile 5 pocket pc
- business contacts for pocket pc
as fantastic as this integration has been working, my recent visit to san diego uncovered a key flaw.
while there, i realized that many of my business contacts that had been synchronized on my pocket pc had only bare-bones information. these were contacts for which i had specifically keyed in additional information. i verified that the same information loss had occurred in the outlook client on my laptop as well.
this was obviously an issue for me since i was stuck without some of the more detailed contact information that i needed to stay in proper contact with my customers.
after a little bit of troubleshooting, i discovered if a customer account is modified or updated in moa 2007, any contact in bcm 2007 that is linked to that customer account will lose any & all contact information other than the 5 fields which are displayed in moa 2007:
- primary contact
- name
- title
- phone number
- e-mail address
this data loss occurs no matter if the contact was originally created in moa or bcm.
after posting this issue to the partner managed newsgroups, i received this response:
I did find that this is a known issue that is scheduled to be resolved in an upcoming service pack.
You should see this particular service pack for Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 available in the oncoming weeks
so keep an eye out kiddos. when this moa service pack drops, either susan or i will post up a link right away.
in the meantime, our workaround here at the funcave consists of a subfolder called backup bcm that we created in our regular contacts folder. we push copies of our bcm contacts there so if the contacts linked to a given account get flattened, we can copy replacements over in a flash. however, if you do a lot of e-mail and/or item linking, this workaround will utterly & totally break that linking in terrible horrible no-good very bad ways.
stay frosty…
|| posted by chris under biz, funlab, mobility || comments (2) ||
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March 19, 2007
this one bothers the crap out of me.
i understand the importance of patch backup files. if given a choice, i always allow them to be created for the added insurance if something goes wrong with a patch.
but why does ms insist on having them created at the root of the windows directory?
invariably what happens is…
as each new patch backup is created, it gets added on to the backup list automagically. which makes the backup grow slowly over time, at a minimum.
heck, the patch backup after a big service pack can be a pretty large slice.
why doesn’t ms instead create the backups under a subfolder off the root of windows? that way, we could exclude just that one subfolder & they wouldn’t artificially impact the backup.
plus, it would make it a heckuva lot easier to script a periodic cleanup routine to delete those patch backups for systems with system partitions running low on space.
just delete the subfolder, then recreate. easy peasy.
anyone else have any thoughts on this?
|| posted by chris under clueless, it pro, opinion || comments (0) ||
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March 19, 2007
we all knew this was coming…
but microsoft just slammed the door on every other small business conference out there.
their 2nd small business summit is an absolutely astounding achievement!
they definitely had the content at the first one last year, but the execution & logistics were, as guy kawasaki might have termed them…
craptastic
but that was then…
this is now!
microsoft made this year a drop-dead simple operation. no complicated logins. no disconnection problems or video & audio dropouts.
they even added a caption box, which runs closed captioning of the current session. that’s just one simple little addition, but one which opens this entire series up to both folks with hearing impairments & also people who can’t blast audio in their office.
here’s the impact of this type of thing…
just this morning, from my desk here at the funcave master complex, i’ve been able to hear the coo of the largest software company in the world, the founder of a multi-million dollar business that she started in her basement, & prolly the most well-known technology evangelist/pundit in the industry.
all of them talking directly about issues that my business & my customers’ businesses are facing.
this isn’t a bunch of half-baked things that someone might have heard about from someone on a damn web forum.
i won’t say this summit is free because it actually does cost my time & attention, which is a very real cost to my business…
but it for sure isn’t expecting me to pony up for travel, lodging & registration to hear the same old tired crap that has either been covered ad nauseum in white papers or webcasts that i could easily download & watch for free on my lunch hour.
and as such, this summit totally destroys the value prop of 99% of the the tripe that’s being shovelled in the smb space right now, desperately trying to pass itself off as something offering compelling value, but in reality can be learned by anyone who can read the e-myth or 1 of about a dozen other business books.
so good luck to all the jimmy joe bob conferences, associations, initiatives & consortiums out there…
you’ll need it!
|| posted by chris under biz, freebie, mothership, thumbs up || comments (1) ||
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March 18, 2007
that’s right, kiddos…
as promised, the robot horde spared no expense getting windows mobile 6 running standalone with device emulator v2. here’s a few screenshots as proof:
and yes, these are functional…
apologies for the large pics…want to be sure everyone’s clear that this is true standalone emulation.
now, as has been mentioned here & elsewhere…
if you have a copy of visual studio 2005 standard or higher, you can use the windows mobile 6 sdks that have been released with device emulator v2.
but for those of us without vs2005, we’ve been sitting on our hands since the wm6 sdks were released.
well, that was then…
this is now.
consider this your only warning…
this method is not for the faint of heart. nor is it for the short of time, disk space, or bandwidth. as in, you’ll need to download roughly 8 gb of data. that’s right, i said 8 gigabytes.
and the installation process will take at least a 24~30 gb slice temporarily, altho the final operating space needed is actually quite small, comparatively speaking. which means less than 600 MB.
here’s the list of all the device types you’ll have at your disposal…
if you’re still interested, well…
you’ll just have to follow me.
updated: in response to the deluge of inquiries we’ve received & just so everybody’s clear on our method. it doesn’t use pirate roms, cracks, nor anything illegal whatsoever.
|| posted by chris under freebie, funlab, mobility, virtualization || comments (11) ||
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