David Overton's Blog

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• Want to legally download Microsoft Software (Vista, Office, Works, Maths and Expression) - go to the www.MicrosoftStore.co.uk (UK & Germany for now)

  I would have put money on this not happening this year, but finally there is a legal place for people to download full copies of Microsoft products. Go to http://www.MicrosoftStore.co.uk and you can buy software and download it there and then. At the moment this is limited to the UK and Germany, but I would personally expect it to go broader like all Microsoft ventures! I suspect the list of products will also expand. ttfn David Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Windows Vista , Office 2007 , Works 9 , Expression... Posted Jun 02 2008, 09:04 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Business, Microsoft, Windows Vista, Office 2007, Marketing, Small business, Internet and Web, Expression

• Silverlight Adoption Expected to Triple .. especially when you look at what is in V2

  Forward looking statements are always risky, but I do see Silverlight popping up all over the place. Even the next rev of the theme for this website will be based on Silverlight. in a recent article Evans Data claimed that Silverlight Adoption Expected to Triple . Evans Data official says Microsoft's support of its products will drive the growth of the company's alternative to Adobe Flash over the next 18 months. Despite Adobe Flash's dominance in the world of rich Internet applications, Microsoft's... Posted Apr 15 2008, 08:59 AM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, Microsoft, Internet and Web, Silverlight, ISV

• Where will your customers be looking for solutions – will they stick to on premise, or will they move towards a S+S or SaaS solution not from you?

  I know the table above is really, really simple, but I wanted to start the ball rolling – I have been thinking about this for ages!! Let me explain the diagram. The horizontal axis signifies how much of a solution is hosted. An example of this might be Office Live or Hotmail, where almost all of the solution is hosted. We then have the “on premise” or on-site IT going vertically. For most people, this is solutions like SBS 2003. A typical S+S solution might be MS CRM Online which has online components, but also... Posted Apr 12 2008, 04:02 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: SBS 2003, Business, Virtualisation, Community, Live, Software as a Service, SBSC, Microsoft, Office Live, SBS 2003 R2, mobile, Small business, Internet and Web, Partner, Licensing, Software plus Service, If you only read one post today

• How to get DNS and DHCP working on a Windows Server from behind the Windows Firewall

  I have a Windows Home Server at home and I decided I wanted it to be responsible for handing out DHCP and DNS addresses in the house. All very good, but when I set up the services none of it worked because of the built in Windows Firewall. While I could have just turned off the Firewall I decided to learn how to put the holes into the firewall to make it work with the firewall, thus maintaining better security. A quick search of the web showed me many settings, but it did not seem to cover the whole picture... Posted Apr 10 2008, 09:55 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: SBS 2003, Support and Tools, Security, Windows Server 2003, Windows Home Server, Microsoft, SBS 2003 R2, Tips, Internet and Web

• How UKSBSGUY.com and DavidOverton.com use Dynamic DNS and why it broke the site … anyone have a better provider?

  Hi, My site is hosted by me on the end of a dynamically changing IP address (well, it could change, but has not for about 18 months). To get round this I have bought a number of domains, but they are all changed and updated by a magical piece of software that sits on my server that updates the DNS records for my domains whenever they change. This would be great, except for the fact that having had network/ISP trouble I now have Dynamic DNS trouble: When it works it is great, when not, it is very poor. In this... Posted Apr 08 2008, 12:39 AM by David Overton with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: Personal, Tips, Internet and Web

• Making peace between web designers and developers - watch the movie

  This is a nice simple cheeky movie: ";" galleryimg="no" mce_src="http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/WindowsLiveWriter/Makingpeacebetweenwebdesignersanddevelop_E257/videofe25ed816e48.jpg"> It is all about and the finding some . Enjoy David Technorati Tags: Developer , Designer , Harmony , Web-harmony , XAML , Expression Posted Mar 19 2008, 04:32 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Developer, Fun, Internet and Web, Expression

• If you liked the Deep Zoom (aka Sea Dragon) tool, then you will be blown away by the preview of the Deep Zoom Composer

  I created my Star Wars Deep Zoom preview and really liked it, but then contacted the author of the site to see how I could add more pictures and control the layout &/or host it myself. Normally when I ask these sorts of questions I get a response about "later" and "out of beta", but instead I got pointed to these 3 articles and I have to say Wow!! You can see what someone can do with this technology at The Hard Rock Cafe - http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/ Download the Preview of the Deep... Posted Mar 13 2008, 09:55 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, Community, beta, Microsoft, Documentation, Demo, Internet and Web, Expression, Partner, Silverlight

• How to Report a Problem Page in IE8 with the Report a Problem Webpage for Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta Add-On

  I've spent the day using IE8 and while it is faster, some pages have problems. If your seeing this, download this add-on to submit to Microsoft. Report a Webpage Problem Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta Add-On The Microsoft Report a Webpage Problem Internet Explorer Add-on allows the user to submit a report to Microsoft for webpages they believe are having rendering problems, scripting errors, or various other types of problems Download details: Report a Webpage Problem Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta Add-On To use... Posted Mar 07 2008, 09:53 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Support and Tools, Developer, Community, Internet Explorer, beta, Microsoft, Internet and Web

• Microsoft SQL Server Data Services - more online services announced this week

  This is one big week for developers (as Mix was always going to be). We now also have data services in the cloud ( http://www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices/default.mspx ) On-demand Scalability SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) are highly scalable, on-demand data storage and query processing web services. Businesses use storage resources as needed transforming large upfront capital and operations expenditures into much smaller on-demand costs. On-demand storage and access Store and query your data virtually any... Posted Mar 07 2008, 02:27 AM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Developer, SQL Server, Community, Hosted, Microsoft, Documentation, Internet and Web, ISV

• Internet Explorer (IE8) beta 1 now available ... Wow

  We all new that the super standards mode was coming, but look at all the announcements today, including the downloads : IE8 and CSS 2.1 Testing Since I joined the IE team at the beginning of 2007, it has become clear to me how important it is for web developers to predict how a given browser will work. I’ve certainly heard and read how very important it is to web developers to minimize the cost IE8 and JScript As Dean mentioned yesterday in his post announcing the availability of the Internet Explorer 8 Beta... Posted Mar 06 2008, 10:56 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Internet Explorer, beta, Microsoft, Internet and Web

• Office Live Workspace is now available (in beta) for all - aka Windows SharePoint Services for all small businesses

  According to the site Workspaces (WSS for Office Live users) is now not quite out of beta, but still has a lot to offer: Anywhere Access Save 1000+ Microsoft Office documents in one place Access them from almost any computer with a Web browser No more flash drives or sending yourself documents via e-mail Learn more Share with Others Invite people to your workspace You control who can view, comment, and edit your documents Stop manually merging versions from multiple people Learn more Extend the Microsoft Office... Posted Mar 04 2008, 10:42 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Office System, Windows SharePoint Services, Hosted, Software as a Service, beta, SBSC, Microsoft, Office 2007, Office Live, Small business, Internet and Web, Partner, Software plus Service, SharePoint

• Microsoft Online Services - beta in US, international .. not for a while yet, but you get to see where Microsoft is going!

  What is it? I know Vlad is not going to like this, but even he will admit that this has been on the cards for a while. Software plus services is coming to town in a bigger and bigger way. At the moment there is a limited beta in the US and (just like Google), it has the beta tag on it . So what have we seen today, well we have seen Microsoft stand up and be counted in it's commitment to the software-plus-services strategy. We have seen existing "on premise" solutions of Exchange and SharePoint... Posted Mar 03 2008, 09:01 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Business, Community, Exchange, Hosted, Software as a Service, beta, Event, Microsoft, Office Live, Internet and Web, Partner, Licensing, Software plus Service, SharePoint, OWA, Outlook Web Access, If you only read one post today

• Microsoft Office Live Small Business v2 - have you got it already?

  This happened a couple of weeks ago, but it is always worth sharing the improvements in Office Live. Not only do we have this going on, but we also have the beta of Workspaces progressing. Remember, your customers could benefit from Office Live and if you don't offer it, someone else might just offer them Office Live or something else, blocking you out from that customer as they grow in size. Microsoft Office Live Small Business is the award-winning, easy-to-use suite of Web-based software and services designed... Posted Feb 24 2008, 11:29 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Business, Windows SharePoint Services, Community, Hosted, Office Live, Small business, Internet and Web, SharePoint

• Is your network going to be IPv6 ready?

  You remember IPv6 - it was that thing that people didn't like in Vista and tried to turn it off? Well it is coming and it is coming quickly. I saw this and thought I would remind everyone that what you know about IPv4 is no longer going to be enough. Is your network technology and software up to the task? Switch To IPv6 On Internet's Root Servers Begins The current version -- IPv4, which can accommodate 4.3 billion addresses -- would have run out of addresses by 2012, experts predict. The switch to a... Posted Feb 05 2008, 11:02 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Windows Vista and XP, Windows Longhorn, Developer, Windows Server 2003, Windows Client, Vista, Windows Vista, Internet and Web, network, Windows Server 2008

• Web Developers were just tooo smart for their own good - they got web pages to look just right in IE6 and didn't see Microsoft fixing the compatibility issues (or some of them) for IE7. Now IE8 has to clean up it's and others mess

  OK, so the title is mine, but you can see here how the defacto standard that was IE4/5/6 meant that people thought IE7 would live by the same rules. If you care about "standards based websites" then the IE team blog on compatibility is a must for you. Compatibility and IE8 In Dean’s recent Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone post, he highlighted our responsibility to deliver both interoperability (web pages working well across different browsers) and backwards compatibility (web pages working... Posted Feb 03 2008, 11:38 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Internet Explorer, Internet and Web, Open Standards