Microsoft has the gloves off and is ready to rumble.

It proudly shows 6 compelling reasons to switch to SQL Server from Oracle on their Microsoft in Government site.

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/products/server/sql2008.mspx#WhySwitch

Has Microsoft really surpassed Oracle?

Well their site claims so..:

Round 2 of the Database wars appears to be on. Microsoft appears to have taken the first shot!

REAL TIME REPORTING, not NEAR, NOT Yesterday.. NOW!

SQL SERVER 2008 R2, a bold new era of some great new features. I wanted to share one that I have been looking at recently.

STREAMINSIGHT

The short of it is that you can now monitor a real time data stream for reports and or alerts. This has been a long time coming and finally closes an open hole in the Microsoft reporting strategy.

Recently one of Microsoft’s ISV’s talked about how much it saved them being able to monitor the real time stream, rather than storing all of the data, they were able to store exceptions, and averages saving 100’s of gigabytes of data per day.

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2-complex-event.aspx

OK, this is the best blog update tools that I’ve seen in a while. It’s simple to use, a clean interface and its free.

 http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

Don’t forget to check out all the plug ins too! Great Job Microsoft!!

http://gallery.live.com/default.aspx?l=8

Ubuntu 9,04 is out!

Install Ubuntu on a VPC 2007 :

Boot up and select yoiur language, for me english,

Then press the down arrow to install ubuntu and press f4

Select safe graphics mode

Then press f6

This will pop up a menu press escape and yoiushoyou see the command line, Delete the Quiet and No Spalsh and add

So :
Boot Options seed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.gz quiet splash –

Becomes :
Boot Options seed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.gz vga=791 noreplace-paravirt

Press enter and the installation should begin! 

It runs slow, so be patient during the install

then edit the GRUB Menu and add the same change to the kernal option..

then mod yoiur x11 screen res :

You need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Here's what I have:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier	"Generic Keyboard"
Driver		"kbd"
Option		"XkbRules"	"xorg"
Option		"XkbModel"	"pc104"
Option		"XkbLayout"	"us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier	"Configured Mouse"
Driver		"mouse"
Option		"CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
Driver		"vesa"
#Option		"UseFBDev"		"true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
HorizSync	30-70
VertRefresh	50-160
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier	"Default Screen"
Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
Device		"Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth 	16
SubSection "Display"
Depth	16
Modes	"1024x768" "896x600" "800x600"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier	"Default Layout"
Screen		"Default Screen"
EndSection

It’s BI TIME!

With the recent announcement of the integration of SharePoint and the Performance Point Analytics and Monitoring parts it’s time to get the ball rolling on your implementations.

Microsoft has been so kind as to put up one of the top OLAP analysis tools for consumer to download and evaluate.

If you have not seen this product before, then you are missing out, there are very few tool available that can do anything even close to what this one can.

Don’t believe me? Well, try it for yourself!

Microsoft ProClarity Desktop Professional Evaluation 6.3

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1fbeb8a0-25e6-4963-9cf2-b0a3c6852f49&DisplayLang=en

Microsoft ProClarity Analytics Server 6.3.Evaluation

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=682fde6f-30de-45d1-93d2-25081a142e2f&DisplayLang=en

MICROSOFT BI = FREE ?

What a day,

Yesterday saw an interesting change in BI. One small part bad, and a HUGE part good. Microsoft has made a very aggressive move against its competition in the BI space. Everyone will put their own spin on this however from my standpoint its pretty simple math as to the outcome and the roadmap for the future.

First move, the bad news. Microsoft will be sun setting the planning application that is part of Performance Point Server. There will be one more update in the summer in the form of a service pack, then no further updates to the product.

Second move, the rest of the Performance point tools will be delivered in the future through SharePoint and Office.

Third move, effective immediately all PPS licenses are now covered by eCal of SharePoint.

So what does it all really mean?

Let’s look at the product direction. Many customers were having issues with having to buy a SharePoint license and then buy PPS licenses to view embedded objects in SharePoint. It seemed like a double bill (Yes I know the competition does this as well…, but that doesn’t make it right). Also, the future of the analysis tool ProClarity was in some doubt, between excel, and the new tools demoed (Gemini) this was not clear. Now Microsoft has indicated that information would be delivered in the next release of Office through Excel, and most of the functionality on the server side would be part of SharePoint. So this is all great news.

Licensing. Well the number of companies that already have SharePoint and SQL Server 2005/8 are rather vast, so in a reporting / BI game Microsoft is now available to most customers with no additional costs. This means that your implementation and consulting are the only costs to deliver BI (Provided that you ready have SQL Server and SharePoint eCals.). That is AMAZING!! It’s like free BI for a LOT of the clients that I currently deal with.

It’s going to be a pretty big and impressive year with BI, that much is for sure. Talk to you soon!

See the announcment for more info.

Fraser

Task management has always been near and dear to my heart. Basically because I was never any good at it. I found a solution a few years ago to the many issues that I had with work, home, emails, things to look at in the future. This was David Allen’s Getting things done, Known as GTD. Well one issue that I had was that the IPhone does NOT have a task list. so you have to download one. I use Remember the milk. It is a web based task list and has an IPhone client. You have to pay to get the IPHONE client but the cost is VERY LOW! (The app is free, but you need a pro account to enable use of it.)

The app can be VERY intimidating to use at first. I recommend ONE list.. youi will figure out how to tag things and sort them later, but if you are implementing a GTD solution I highly recommend getting a free account and trying this out.

2 things to do this year.. 1) learn to search google, more on this later. 2) get your task list under control.

This email leads into 2 more topics that I will talk about later.

1) getting your email under control

2) Google search

I was just at a fantastic event held by

The Calgary Entrepreneurs.

We learned about Maximizing Search Engine Optimization and how a company can drive people to its site by simply making some minor changes to their site. It was a fantastic look into the world of how Google and like search engines function.

No one is finding you on the Internet

Was the title for this meetup.

David West from eKzact Solutions

shared some fantastic tips on how to get your
web site noticed and how to drive results from it.

It was also great to see some people there like my good friend

Stuart Crawford. I also met another fantastically interesting person ,

Ronda Bertram, author and Entrepreneur extraordinaire. You can

visit her web site at http://www.circlesofsand.com/ and http://www.rondabertram.com .

Now I’m off to fixup my web site.. Yikes!!!!

The Southern Alberta Microsoft User Community (SAMUC) will be hosting a very special luncheon with SMB Phones on January 20, 2009 at 11:30 AM. Our feature speaker is Trent Johnsen, Vice-President of SMB Phone.

From POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) to SIP; How Microsoft is changing all the rules in small business communications with Response Point.

Join Trent Johnsen, Vice President, SMB Phone to see how Microsoft Response Point is changing small business communications and what it means for you and your customers. SMB Phone is Canada’s newest Microsoft certified Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP). Along with a working demo/overview of Response Point, Trent will provide an insider’s industry perspective on how you can improve your customer’s business communications and enjoy significant income opportunities working with Response Point and SMB Phone.

To register for this free luncheon in Calgary visit http://www.samuc.com

Event is open to all IT Professionals, Microsoft Partners and Microsoft Small Business Specialists. Lunch is provided.

So here is a little gem for those of us with multiple computer, be them desktops plus a laptop, or 2 desktops.

You can hide all the boxes these day and you may have one or 2 monitors, but one thing that you can’t hide is the need for multiple keyboards and mice. With Synergy you can have just one mouse and keyboard on your desktop and move between systems without the need for a kvm switch, it is also cross platform!!

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/