When Software Attacks!

Balancing customer needs against forward motion: IE8

I’ve watched the debate with interest but not posted anything until now. The news of Internet Explorer 8 keeping it’s new rendering engine to itself unless you tell it otherwise caused a strong outpouring of opinion around the web.

I must admit, my initial reaction mirrored that of many others - that it’s just plain wrong (although my good friend Nick’s posting took some concentration to ascertain his thoughts!). Why hold back on improved support for CSS; why hide the fact that the engine now passes ACID2?

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, February 10, 2008

EMEA Project Conference - Madrid

Finally, after all the excitement that Richard and Robert had in Seattle and Barcelona, I find myself in the Auditorium Hotel, Madrid for the EMEA Project Conference.

According to the multilingual sales blurb in my room, the hotel is the largest in Europe, and I must say it’s very nice. We flew in yesterday and today is an MS Partner-only day before the conference itself kicks off tomorrow.

Project Server is something we’re very interested in using ourselves, and it’s integration with SharePoint (MOSS/WSS) makes it an attractive solution to anybody who has already deployed MOSS for their corporate intranet, as we have.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, December 3, 2007

Project Partner Day

Well, it’s the end of day zero, the partner-only day here at the Madrid Project Conference. It’s been an interesting day. I’m not sure what I am allowed to say, but service pack 1 for Office 2007, which covers the desktop products, sharepoint, project server et al is very close to being available now. That was an interesting announcement, as we are looking at installing Project Server in Black Marble. I’d like to wait for SP1 - it makes sense - but because SharePoint will be patched at the same time I need to do some testing of our customisations first.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, December 3, 2007

Mix:UK 07 Round-up

We’re back up north after Mix:UK 07 and I thought I’d follow up my earlier post with a few thoughts on the event and it’s content.

Before I do that, however, I need to give a cheer for our guys: Jonny performed incredibly in the Guiter Hero competition to  be triumphant in front of his screaming supporters, and Sam, Mat, Tom and Jonny cleaned up the the goody-bagging stakes of the Swaggily Fortunes quiz!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, September 13, 2007

In the Mix

Well, it’s just after 3pm on day one of Mix:UK 07. I’m taking a break with a coffee so I thought I’d post.

It’s mixed bag down here (sorry - no pun intended). The technology is fantastic - the stuff that can be achieved with WPF and Silverlight is excellent. I’m still a little uncertain that usability has been sacrificed on the sacrificial alter of bling, however. To be fair, that’s more telling about the rapid-development nature of conference demos, where the wow-factor is more important, but I think it’s a very, very significant issue which should not be allowed to get lost in the excitement.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, September 11, 2007

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Rik is CEO and Co-founder of Zure in the UK. He is a recipient of the Microsoft MVP Award and a Microsoft Regional Director. He is a member of the admin team for the Global Azure worldwide community event.

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