A frequent request is for a SharePoint 2007 v SharePoint 2010 comparison document. 

Richard Harbridge has compiled a compehensive blog entry from the information that is distributed across multiple Microsoft websites, documents and webcasts / presentations.

SharePoint 2007 vs SharePoint 2010

From the Silverlight blog ...

Microsoft is involved in over 400 standards engagements with over 150 standards-setting organizations worldwide. One of the standards we've been involved in for years is HTML and we remain committed to it and to web standards in general.  We believe HTML 5 will become ubiquitous just like HTML 4.01 is today.

But standards are only half of the story when we think of the advancement of our industry. Broadly-implemented standards are like paved roads. They help the industry move forward together. But before you can pave a road, someone needs to blaze a trail.  This is innovation.

The Future of Silverlight

Announced on the Windows Phone blog ...

Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we’re very excited to say that we’ve reached the biggest milestone for our internal team – the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7!  While the final integration of Windows Phone 7 with our partners’ hardware, software, and networks is underway, the work of our internal engineering team is largely complete.

More

The recent Windows Live Essentials beta, brought together two programs, Windows Live Sync and the Live Mesh beta, into one: Windows Live Sync beta.

With the addition of remote access and cloud storage, the program does more than sync files and so following the beta period, the name Windows Live Mesh will be used going forward. Also good news that the 2Gb cloud storage will be increased to 5Gb ... this is addition to the 25Gb Skydrive storage.

Windows Live blog announcement

Windows Live beta download

Can happen when you recreate Virtual Machines from the VHD files (rather than export/import).

Solution:

At a command prompt, enter the following:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start devmgmt.msc

Click Show hidden devices on the View menu in Device Manager.
The ghost NICs then appear and can be uninstalled.

Visual Studio LightSwitch is available for download. In LightSwitch, you create a data structure (SQL Server Express) or use an existing data source (SharePoint lists, WCF RIA Services), choose from common patterns and the wizard-driven tool applies the templates to the data to build an VB or C# application.

Visual Studio LightSwitch creates a Silverlight 4 out-of-browser desktop application which can then be customized in LightSwitch or handed off to developers for further development in Visual Studio 2010 Professional.

Lightswitch

LightSwitch Beta 1 Download

Channel 9 Introducing Visual Studio LightSwitch

Ive been trying out LastPass - a robust password manager.  With LastPass, you create a master password, and then it uses automatic form filling and one-click log-in to simplify password entry.

More interesting is understanding how it works with encrypted data being stored online so it can be synced across multiple devices, and then decrypted locally. Steve Gibson explains in detail how it works in Security Now 256

LastPass

The Fab 40 templates were free templates released by Microsoft for SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3.0 to address some of the common scenarios  to demonstrate and show case some of the capabilities of SharePoint to end users.

Tech Solutions are now making the templates for SharePoint 2010 available.

Fab 40 Templates for SharePoint 2010

At Gamescom 2010 in Cologne, Microsoft have announced the first wave of games available for Windows Phone 7

Press Release

XBOX Live on Windows Phone

[youtube:CLh2-uc_XMs]

Its been a brutal few weeks for Google …

Google misses deadline for L.A. city e-mail system
Link

Core business is slowing, its stock is down, its Android mobile platform generates scant revenue, and competition (hello, Facebook) is fierce. Can Google find its footing in this brave new world?
Link

Wave Goodbye … one of the most hyped products of 2009, but within months of its launch, the buzz had almost completely disappeared.  Now support for Google Wave has ended due to lack of users.
Link | Gartners response: Link | Link | Link

Two customers who left Microsoft for Google Apps, then switched back, discuss their pain points
Link

Protesters denounce Google plan for 'two-tier internet'
Link | Link

Google accuses California of rigging bidding process for e-mail contract .. seems Google think they know better than the customer their requirements … or have come to market with a product lacking basic expected features ?
Link

Business software maker Oracle has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the search engine giant of infringing patents on its technology.
Link

Wow, long time no post; not that there wasn’t anything to blog about just a serious amount of 2010 work out there :)

Well some good news here; the TIFF iFilter available in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 allow you to search the text in .tiff scanned documents; this is because it does OCR on the fly.

How to get it working:

• Add the TIFF feature to your indexing server.
• Add the Windows 2003 indexing role to your indexing server.
• Start the indexing service on your indexing server.
• Enable TIFF OCR scanning through group policy on the indexing server:
  • gpedit.msc
  • Local Computer Policy –> Computer Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> OCR
• This is important: REBOOT server / Restart the SharePoint 2010 service (I always prefer a good old fashioned reboot)

Sweet, now we have decent OCR recognition for our scanned in .tiff documents without the extra cost of other solutions.

Regards,

Doug McCusker

This paper presents recommended configurations for deploying Microsoft SharePoint 2010 in SMB environments using the HP ProLiant DL300 G7 server platform.

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA1-2650ENW&cc=us&lc=en