Small Business Server course starts this week

This Thursday 8th of November is the start of our 3 week Introduction to Small Business Server 2003 course to be held at Macquarie Community College.
 
It’s not to late to enrol if you are interested. For more information about the course following the link :
 
 
The course will give you all the information you need about Small Business Server as well as the basics of setting up a server and getting users and workstation connected.

Some more Facebook fiddling

Been looking at what else one can do with Facebook, especially say promoting this blog. Even though the address details are posted on my Facebook page it is unlikley that people will click.
Now there are plenty of “blogging” applications in Facebook but which one???? Interestingly I came across this post from Joel Olsen’s blog –
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Your Posts on Blog friends and real social networking features to promote them
Blog friends is a facebook app allows you to add your blog posts and see your friends posts and a whole lot more.  The coolest thing is when you add this app, add your blog you can see your recent blog entries, your friends blog entries, and even your friends friends posts up to a maximum of 20 (default of ~5).  The next layer of coolness is your ability to say what you’re interested in, so it then tries to pull in posts that you’re interested in.  So let’s say you add SharePoint to your list.  Now across your own network of friends 2-3 layers deep you’re getting the latest blog posts.  Then in your news feed you can see who clicks on what blog posts.  Powerful.  This is one of my favorite features.  People can then also comment on your blog posts right through facebook.  Power of social networking.  Just going to the app group I see that I have 37 friends who also have this app.  Wish it told me how many friends they have that use this app. 🙂

Some tips:

  • click on “more»” next to blog post titles to read the full post without leaving your profile
  • click at the foot of posts to share them with any of your facebook friends
  • visit your Home page to see which posts your friends are reading
  • keep your Interests up-to-date to get an even better service

    • By the way to add bloglines or any of the other blog apps on facebook, login go to your profile click on applications in the left hand corner.  Then click browse, search for blog.  Here’s some of what you’ll find including descriptions clipped directly from facebook.
    Live Blog is simple and easy to use blog, yet introduces powerful features like setting your mood, location, and music. Supports HTML and Youtube videos. The whole entry is displayed on your profile. Works in both the left and right sides!
    Flog lets you quickly and easily integrate your existing blog into your Facebook profile. Get more exposure for your blog and share your content with friends. Join the Flogosphere!
    HotBlog is the most awesome blog app available on facebook! It looks great in both the left and right areas of your profile, and HTML is allowed! Blog with photos, stylized text, and more in just a few clicks.
    Blog Friends Find great blog posts—sociably! Blog Friends taps your interests and social network to bring you just the blog posts that *you* want to read.
    Blog Link Put a screenshot of your blog on your profile. Perfect for Xanga, Blogspot, MySpace, or any other site. Get more visitors!
    Blog RSS Feed Reader Great way to drive traffic to your personal or corporate blog from your Facebook profile. Customise the application with your own image, description, published dates and more. Also sends emails to your friends when your blog is updated.
    Feed Friend  Subscribe to your friends’ blog feeds within Facebook. You can even display them in your profile! If you write your own blog, you can include a ‘subscribe’ link under your profile picture.
    myBlog is an application that displays the contents of your blog, using an RSS Feed, on your Facebook profile. myBlog will also send updates to all your friends whenever you add a new post.
    ———————-
    So I went in and added a few of these to my Facebook page just to get some idea and I must admit that I am pretty impressed! The more I look at all this Facebook stuff the more potential I see for it. Sure it needs a bit of “business-tuning” but I’m sure that ain’t far away.
    So if you’ve got a Facebook account then look me up.

    Shadowprotect on SBS video

    We have just completed our latest YouTube video. This video looks at the process of backing up using Storagecraft’s Shadowprotect. This product takes scheduled image backups of your server that allow you to qucikly and easily restore either a whol file or a whole server much quicker than traditional methods like tapes.
     
    Click here to view the video on YouTube. This first video looks at the process of creating Shadowprotect backups. The next video will look how to restore information from these backups.
     
    We recommend Shadowprotect to all clients with server machines. Shadowprotect also has a desktop edition which will take constant image backups of desktops as well. Sure a desktop machine may not be as important as a server but it still takes a long time to run up if the hard disk fails. That is why we have implemented Shadowprotect on all our internal workstations so we can get these up and running quickly in the event of a failure.
     
    Please let us know what you think of this video (the audio is a little poor, we know) and watch for the next one coming real soon.

    Dot Net issues

    Having issues installing DotNet updates via Windows Update? Try:

    Run cleanup tool:
    http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/dotnetfx_cleanup_tool.zip

    and select remove (cleanup) .NET Framework 1.1 from the dropdown list.

    Download the .Net framework 1.1 redistributable package from here
    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3

    and install it.

    Download the .Net Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1
    https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A8F5654F-088E-40B2-BBDB-A83353618B38&displaylang=en
    and install it.

    Popularity of Facebook

    Been thinking more about the popularity of Facebook. In one of the previous posts I was proposing that the reason is the fact that it allows non-geeks to create and maintain a web site. I now also think that it goes beyond this. A big part of the appeal is that you can add “applications” to your site that allows other to interact with you.
     
    For example you could add a “game” application to your site and invite other to compete. Your web site is then updated with your gaming results. A bit like a medal of honour you could say.
     
    The foundation of Facebook’s popularity is clearly the “social” aspect. The ability to interact with people you know or have met anywhere you have internet access.
     
    Now is it such a stetch to imagine this sort of application being recast into a business networking environment? I’m sure we all understand the potential issues but for a moment let’s dwell on the possibilities. If you created a site that was your business and then invited your customers to link to your site. They could post their testimonials up there and you could interact with them directly. As they developed their own corporate site you could see if there maybe anyone else they know that could use your services.
     
    The above is just one example that springs to mind. The more you think about the application to businesses the more you see that it will only be a matter of time before something like this emerges.

    Second shot Microsoft exams

    If you want to get a Microsoft certification under your belt then if you register here, take the exam before January 30, 2008 and heaven forbid, not pass then you are entitled to retake the exam again for FREE.
     
    Having done a few Microsoft exams I know that some can be quite tricky. It generally isn’t that you don’t know the material, it is that you don’t know exactly how Microsoft wants the questions answered. My advice is that if you are unsure then try and examine the question again from Microsoft’s perspective (ie which option requires the implementation of more Microsoft software?).
     
    Now with this free double shot you should have no problems getting through, even if it takes two goes!

    SharePoint and Social Networking (Business)

    My last post about Facebook was leading onto my thoughts of using SharePoint for social networking. Seems like the SharePoint team has beaten me to the punch with the following post on their blog.
     
    Now I think that social networking is much easier using MOSS than it is Windows SharePoint Services but I still maintain that the fundamental reason Facebook is so popular is that it allows ‘non-geeks’ to create their own web pages and then have other contribute. I certainly feel that SharePoint could be used in a similar capacity if it given some thought.
     
    The ability to easily create and link pages as well as save content is probably the greatest strength of SharePoint. Inside Saturn Alliance I use SharePoint extensively to capture all that information that either doesn’t get saved or ends up spread across many mediums. If I need something additional I just go in and create it. If I need to modify something I just go and modify and then boom it is up and working.
     
    The power of the technology is not the product it is what it is capable of doing. People see the ability of networking with other in Facebook, to me, exactly the same is possible in Sharepoint.

    Thoughts on Facebook

    All you hear about these days in the popular media is Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. We are also noticing a sharp rise in Facebook usage in many businesses whose Internet we monitor. Clearly more and more people are into Facebook.
     
    Interestingly, we also heard about a company that has reversed it’s policy on blocking Facebook because it wants to attract “younger” employees. Interesting eh? No Facebook access no attraction to work for you.
     
    This got us to thinking, why is Facebook so popular? Could it be that these sort of sites allow anyone to create a page on the Internet about their most interesting topic (ie them)? Now, geeks like us have been doing web pages for years. If you want to see the earliest copy of our original web site click here. I think our first eb page went up in 1996 over 10 years ago and we remember how chuffed we were that we ‘had a page on the Internet’.
     
    Could it be that Facebook and MySpace provide a simple means for non-geeks to post information on the Internet so they too can be proud of being part of the revolution we know as the Internet? We’re not sure and we don’t have enough Facebook friends yet to really understand this yet.
     
    What interests us most is how this phenomenon will be extended to businesses. Apart from the all the issue but imagine a Business Facebook site where business could go and post information about themselves, quickly and easily. They could also link to their customers who could endorse theire products and services and so on. We can see it happening.
     
    However, the key to coverting the existing success of Facebook and MySpace to businesses lies in understanding the appeal of these site at its most fundamental.