DavidOverton.com
This site is my way to share my views and general business and IT information with you about Microsoft, IT solutions for ISVs, technologists and businesses, large and small.  

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  • 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 Experience Open and save files directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Synchronize contact, task, and event lists with Outlook No need to learn a new program Learn more In terms of what is actually new: Public availability of Office Live Workspace beta at http://workspace.officelive.com with immediate access and no waitlist (English language version only) The easy way to save Office documents to/from the web Organise documents and projects online and work on them from almost any computer (full Firefox...
  • We may live in the Web 1.5/2.0/3.0 world, but most of our customers don't - Online office suites barely register with public, says study

    Just a final one before I go to bed (been at home ill today, so fired off some blogs while I was bed bound) - It is funny how much noise Saas and applications like Office suites online get in the IT press, yet go to your average consumer and you are down with 26% who are aware of them and just 6% who have tried them - and most of these are not regular users. Just reminds us to keep our feet firmly on the same planet as those of our customers, or help them very carefully to step to the new planet. A new study by the NPD Group doesn't paint a great picture for the current state of online productivity suites. If the numbers from a survey of 600 US residents are to be believed, most of us have never heard of, let alone tried, products such as Google Docs or Zoho . Considering various factors such as visibility and the industry's untested waters though, these numbers could be due for a significant shift in the coming years. According to NPD Group numbers, 73 percent of the 600 Americans surveyed have never...
  • How to connect to and import data from an XML Web Service into Excel 2007

    I have been wondering how to do this recently for one of my own projects and then the subject came up internally. A very unassuming Hovsep then wrote up the answer, so as a tip here it is - if you follow the link at the bottom you will see a step by step process with screen shots to help you along the way. Excel 2007 - How to connect to and import data from an XML Web Service Many organizations have adopted a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as the architecture of choice. SOA allows a company to expose its services and data in a manner that is compliant with industry standards. SOA is the buzzword these days. Down the wire of SOA is XML data that is exchanged between entities. Microsoft Office Excel 2007 has built-in features that allow a user to connect to and consume XML data. Such data can be stored in an XML file on the local hard drive, shared in a portal or returned from an XML Web Service. If you’d like to use Excel to import XML data from a Web Service, follow these step-by-step guidelines. For the...
  • Jeff Raikes (Important Exec at Microsoft) talkes about lots of things, including how Office might go in a SaaS / SwS world

    This is funny, I was discussing Software as a Service (SaaS) / Software with Service (SwS) with a few people the other day. I said that I thought Exchange and Outlook were the best examples of Software WITH Service and why SWS is better than SAAS. Lets run through a scenario, it’s OK, not brilliant, but highlights the point. Client Server – a bit like Outlook with a POP3 account and no offline functionality. Service only – Exchange without any client except Outlook Web Access – full web based access – the 07 version is great, but no offline capability and limited by what a browser can do. Software WITH Service – Outlook connected to Exchange 07 – can use on the web (OWA) can use disconnected – Outlook in Cached mode. You get the best when the two are connected and working together. To me, this is the ideal of the future – I get what I want when I want it – like now, on a train, writing this blog – I hit send, when I sync up, it will appear on my blog. Magic and the 3 hours on the train are useful catch-up time...

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