When Software Attacks!

New and coming Microsoft technologies you need to look at

Yesterday was the annual Black Marble Tech Update event, where we try to cover every product in the Microsoft arsenal in half a day, telling local businesses what’s coming and what deserves attention. Writing up the content of the presentations would be almost as exhausting as the research required for create them, but following a few conversations during breaks yesterday I decided that a short blog post on some of the technologies that deserve a closer look was merited.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, January 28, 2010

Remote working solutions (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the snow)

We lost remarkably few days of productivity to the bad weather at Black Marble. That wasn’t because we were all intrepid, hardy types and all made it into the office. Far from it – some of us live in areas where they don’t grit very often and can’t make it to the main roads. As you guessed from the title, the reason we came through the bad weather so well was because of our ability to work remotely.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, January 24, 2010

Solve ‘pending reboot’ setup show stopper for CRM 4 Client (with Update Rollup 7)

I’ve been extremely busy over the past week creating demo systems and updating our own internal Black Marble systems. Part of that long list of tasks was to get around to testing the CRM 4 Outlook client with Outlook 2010. For those who don’t know, you need the Update Rollup7 client if you want to use Outlook 2010 (and x86 Office only need apply). You can download a slipstreamed client installer from Microsoft.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, January 11, 2010

Twitter clients: Twinbox and Tweetz

Anybody who follows me on twitter will know that @rikhepworth is by no means a prolific tweeter. However, I do follow a number of people around the planet, and in addition to the ubiquitous Tweetie2 on my iPhone, I have found two clients to be useful and reliable. The first is Tweetz, from Blue Onion Software. This is a great gadget for the Windows 7 desktop (or Vista Sidebar). The UI is simple and extremely usable (I love the way I can scroll the history for older tweets) and it makes posting a breeze.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, January 11, 2010

Reassigning the correct SSL certificate to SharePoint 2010 Web Services IIS Site

Prologue This post is about assigning an SSL certificate to an IIS 7.5-hosted website which is not located in the Personal Certificate store. The steps shown are not SharePoint-specific, however. Hopefully this post will save you the large amount of time I spent hunting down the information on how to do this. The usual background I’ve been installing and configuring a SharePoint 2010 system that we can use here at Black Marble for our demo sessions.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, January 7, 2010

Berlin: Four storeys of Windows 7 goodness

As you walk out of the U-bahn at Potzdamer Platz right now, you are faced with the most enormous advertisement you have ever seen. Well done HP and Windows 7 – subtle it most certainly is not! IMAGE_006

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, November 13, 2009

Berlin: Legoland Experience

I’d love to say that I enjoyed the Legoland Experience in Berlin, located beneath the Sony Centre in Potzdamer Platz. I’d love to, but I can’t – I’ve been to a conference you know; none of this sightseeing malarky for me. Having said that, whilst visiting the Mauerfall celebrations I stumbled upon the entrance, and I don’t often get the chance to post gratuitous pictures of Lego… IMAGE_036 IMAGE_037 IMAGE_038 As a complete aside, that night we also stumbled upon the European premier of 2012, with Amanda Peet and John Cusack on the red carpet at the Sony Centre, surrounded by photographers.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, November 13, 2009

Places to eat in Berlin: Coa

It’s becoming a tradition that every time I attend a conference or travel anywhere interesting I post at least a couple of places to eat. Perhaps ironically, none of the places I am about to post about serve cuisine that you could reasonable call German. It’s true – we’ve done coffee and cake – that well known German tradition. In an evening, however, besides our hotel we have been to a Chinese, an oriental fusion place and a Portuguese and Spanish restaurant.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, November 13, 2009

Places to eat in Berlin: Grenander

Lets get this straight right of the bat: Grenander is not a restaurant. Sure, it’s open in the evening and it does light meals (think: soup and a roll). However, it’s really a cafe (‘cafehaus and icecream’, says my receipt). Coffee and cake is a deep-seated German tradition. You really must indulge, but beware that this is no piffling, tiny piece of sponge cake we’re talking about – oh no. Coffee and cakes demands a huge, sumptuous piece of one of a range of marvellous gateaux.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, November 13, 2009

Places to eat in Berlin: La Sepia

Anybody who knows me well will tell you that I am prone to waxing lyrical about Portugal. Whilst I haven’t been there for a good few years now, it was a regular destination for my family when I was younger and I have strong, fond memories of the place and its food. Imagine my surprise then, when we found a Portuguese/Spanish restaurant just a few minutes away from our hotel. La Sepia is on Marburger Strasse, just off Ku’damme.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, November 13, 2009