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

Analysing Active Directory

I think I’ve mentioned before how I’ve been updating our IT infrastructure. Company growth has meant a need for expanded services. Add to that new versions of SharePoint and Exchange, mix in a need to run virtual servers for development and you have a need for more tin. Over the past six months I’ve expanded our domain to keep pace with our growing needs. The number of physical servers we have has increased, with a few more virtual servers for specific roles that I prefer to keep separate but which don’t really merit their own box.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, April 15, 2007

What happened to the idealists?

Douglas Coupland’s Jpod has been doing the rounds in the office of late. I enjoyed MicroSerfs, so approached Jpod with excitement. Frankly, I’m disappointed. It’s not the writing - I ’ve enjoyed pretty much all of his books. It’s not that the books are similar in approach and style (they are) but rather the contrast in the lives of the characters. Overall, MicroSerfs was optimistic. The characters in the book were using their talent to make the world a better place.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, April 15, 2007

Vista Upgrade - attempts 4, success 0

I have yet to succeed in upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Each time it runs through to the completing upgrade phase, gets about halfway through that bit whereupon I get stuck in a reboot cycle. I have tried this now on three separate machines and two different installed partitions on one of them. Two of the machines were Shuttle SN25G2 SFF boxes with Nforce 2 motherboards and the onboard nforce 2 (basically a geforce 2) video.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, February 19, 2007

Windows Home Server - something for my father

On Saturday I got the email telling me that I’d been accepted onto the Home Server Beta 2. I’m excited about this product in a way that I haven’t been about new software solutions for a while. I’ve taken part in beta programmes before. I’ve been around a while, and as an IT pro you get desensitised after a while. Vista has some innovative features, but it’s evolutionm, not revolution.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, February 19, 2007