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May 15
A funny thing happened today caused by the fact that my location in the OS is set to the UK and not the US.

I have a RSS feed set up for TechNet Magazine articles and, because of that location setting, when I click on the link to one of the articles (in this case to the one on SharePoint 2010 Government from the May 2012 issue) I get the article in the normal US English but with a UK (actually /en-gb) URL instead of the usual US (en-us) URL.

So far so good and you may be wondering why this bothers me as after all you get the correct article even if the URL is a bit different.

The problem however is in what happens if you decide as I did to see if this was a May or a June 2012 article by clicking on Home.

What you should get (and would get if you were on a page with the US URL) should be a page with the heading TechNet Magazine May 2012 that contains links to all the May 2012 articles. But what you actually get (when the URL is the GB URL) is a page with the heading June 2009 and links to all the June 2009 articles.

The explanation is that there used to be a TechNet UK Magazine that first became web only and then very soon afterwards was completely dropped. June 2009 was clearly the last issue of the version with correct (in my eyes!) spelling.

I can understand why Microsoft dropped the UK issue but what I can't understand is why nobody *since June 2009* has bothered to amend the en-gb web pages so that they too show the latest US edition of TechNet Magazine rather than the extremely old final UK English edition.

Surely someone has noticed this before me?

P.S. I case you are wondering, getting the UK page rather than the US page is MS´s doing. The link on that RSS feed URL is http://technet.microsoft.com/magazine/f9c02b6e-9306-46b9-8f66-a40c9ecccf7b, it's the fact that they completely unnecessarily convert that into a UK URL rather than into a US URL that's causing the problem here.

May 14
When I first installed the OneNote app on the iPad there wasn't much I could do with it because all my OneNote notebooks were OneNote 2007 format so I could access them (from a USB stick) on all machines (including the one running Office 2007).

OneNote for the iPad however required OneNote 2010 format so all I could do at the time was to create a single page OneNote 2010 format notebook in OneNote iPad itself and see how it looked.

But then I got the new portable and created a couple of OneNote 2010 notebooks (with genuine content) and, as discussed in an earlier post, stored them in SkyDrive.

Today I thought about seeing what if anything OneNote for the iPad would do with them. At first it seemed the answer was "nothing at all" because when I opened the OneNote app all I could see was that earlier single page test notebook.

So I clicked all the available menu line "buttons" looking for one that would let me specify "show me my SkyDrive content" and on clicking one of them for I think the second time, there were now three different SP 2010 notebooks listed - the local one and the two recently created SkyDrive ones.

In other word the app had gone automatically to SkyDrive; found the new two notebooks and added them to its listing of Notebooks. Quite impressive.

No doubt there are some limitations in what OneNote content you can see / play on an iPad, but for my text plus images technical content taken mainly from web sources, it's fine.

Except that is for the fact that on the iPad you have to copy/paste URLs from the OneNote page into Safari. No double-clicking here I'm afraid.

May 12
As an old SkyDrive user I recently took advantage of the link that let old users increase their storage space (free) to 25GB.
 
I did this knowing full well that I hadn't actually used the 5 GB I already had in any serious way and so had a lot of space (4.9GB probably!) left, but, it cost nothing and was a limited time only offer so why not.
 
I can't say that I then started hunting around for ideas about how to use this space. I can't for instance use it as extra storage for the iPad backups which already take up most of my (free) 5GB iCloud storage [which would have been useful] and I've given up using Dropbox to transfer files between a portable and the iPad and just e-mail them instead [and then store them in iBooks].
 
However the knowledge that I did have that "massive" amount of space available and unused did make me read the following article http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/05/10/six-tips-to-make-skydrive-your-cloud-backpack.aspx ("Six Tips to Make SkyDrive your Cloud Backpack") in a different way.
 
In particular the section in that article about being able to read the OneNote files (from the Sky Drive) in Windows 8 was something that I wanted to try out. [Mainly, I'll confess to see whether that would work out-of-the-box without any need to download a OneNote reader app.]
 
So off to Windows 8 running in Oracle VM Virtual Box and to my (almost) amazement it not only worked but worked well.
 
All you have to do is click on the already installed SkYDrive app and you'll see the files stored there. Click on one of the OneNote ones (I had two) and it will open in Windows 8.
 
If I worked for Microsoft, I'd say that was pretty cool.

May 12
I've noticed quite often that people in different Microsoft Office product teams are rather blinkered. They know a lot about their own product but often don't know much about other products grouped as part of the Microsoft Office range.
 
This often becomes apparent when you look at KB Articles for an Office product. They will carefully list all the versions of their own product that it affects, but then - despite having another Office product mentioned in the Title and/or text - they won't bother in the same Applies To section to mention that other product.
 
A case in mind is the following Access KB Article which as the Applies To section says is for Access 2007 and Access 2010 (and that's all).
 
 
(This comment of mine is about ver 1.0 dated 11th May 2012. I've informed them of the problem and the KB article may have been corrected by the time you see this.)
 
The title of this KB article is
 
"Access: Errors Publishing or Exporting to SharePoint when Attachment File Name is Invalid"
 
and the text of the article talks only about "SharePoint" too.
 
Clearly anyone reading the article needs to know which SharePoint product(s) can be affected by this problem. Equally clearly the (Access specialist) writers of the article couldn't be bothered to say.

May 10
Published: May 10, 2012 11:05 AM by  Mike Walsh
One of the columnists in the UK magazine PCPro has just pointed out in his latest column that there - for the first in MS Operating System history, he says - will be a British English version of Windows 8 (naturally in addition to the US version and, who knows, twenty plus other language versions).

He pointed out that this will mean that we over here will no longer have to put up with the abomination of Favorites reminding us of the fact the US Americans have taken over the world.

Well any reduction in the amount of bad spelling in computer products is good of course but I can't help wondering just how many software products will still in their installation routines be still looking for "Favorites".

In fact why bother with a British English version anyway. I've spent years selecting English (US) automatically because that's the version that has been tested the best; has less bugs and almost certainly quicker fixes. Why, then, use anything else - is it really that important to get our letter "u" back in colour and Favourites?

May 10
Published: May 10, 2012 01:05 AM by  Mike Walsh
The Apple TV is the only kind of device I would be allowed to put anywhere near the TV. It's small and it looks good so it satisfies the style expert who also lives in this house. It's black too which is also essential to fit to the black TV which until now was the only thing on top of the white surface of the unit it's on.

So as far as design goes, it's OK.

It also works the way it's supposed to too. The problem lies in the way it's supposed to.

I naturally checked out several reviews before I bought it but none of them spelt out the restrictions in use as well as this web page (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4437) did that I found *after* I had bought it and was wondering how to set it up on a Windows-based portable (after having everything work fine with the iPad).

This is the key phrase there: Play streamed videos, music, and photos from an AirPlay-enabled iOS device. Play streamed videos or music from iTunes on your computer.

If you read that carefully you'll notice that on the iPad (an iOS device) you can play streamed videos, music and photos using AirPlay but if you are using a PC you stream videos or music using iTunes.

It doesn't seem like a major difference, but it is.

One of the things I prefer watching on the TV rather than on the iPad or portable are TV programs from German TV that can only be watched streamed (either Live or up to seven days later) - i.e. there is no way to watch them via iTunes.

Before the Apple TV arrived I was able to watch them from the portable (and not from the iPad) by connecting the spare HDMI cable to the HDMI connection in the PC and thus transferring the picture from the portable's screen to the TV. This worked fine but the portable could only be placed in a very uncomfortable location to do this (within reach of the HDMI cable for one) so it mostly was too much effort and I watched them on the portable anyway.

That spare HDMI cable is now connected to the Apple TV and so I can leave the portable or the iPad where they are normally and with Wifi transfer the TV programs to the TV screen.

Except that is for the fact that I can't stream German TV programs from the portable because that means I would have to use iTunes - the browser alone isn't enough (even Safari).

I can however stream German TV programs from the iPad because when the TV program starts running in Safari on the iPad, there's a small icon at the bottom of the screen allowing me to decide whether playback will be via Apple TV or on the iPad's screen.

So why is that small print bothering me?

Simple. Because the late Mr Jobs decided that there would be no support in the iPad for Adobe Flash, all the TV programs that rely on Flash can't be seen on the iPad and if they can't be seen on the iPad they can't be streamed to the TV via the Apple TV either.

That means that all the programs of the First German (State) channel (= ARD) can not be seen on the TV whereas those of the Second German (State) Channel (= ZDF) can.

The other problem is that these two channels have different rules for the programs from the previous week that you can call up. Basically if it's a crime film, on ZDF you can watch it any time, but if it's a crime film (with no more nastiness) on ARD you can only watch it after 8pm. 8pm wouldn't be so bad, but Finland is an hour before Germany so that's 9 pm here and usually by that time the main portable has been turned off and I'm using the iPad.

So I really need to make a special effort to see the ARD films and of course they are the ones that I can't stream from the iPad.

Talk about Catch-22.

But ignoring reading the my small print problem, the Apple TV is performing as it should and was remarkably easy to set up.

P.S. When I was writing the above, I was playing music from the portable's iTunes Library via Apple TV on the TV. Clearly - as the quality of the TV loudspeakers is hardly better than that of the speakers of the portable, this was mainly because I could. However I wonder if that means that my next buy should be a Yamaha sound bar to fit under the TV. If so the ca 100 Euros purchase of the Apple TV device will turn out to be rather more expensive than I thought.

Later: I've discovered that the method chosen by the Spanish TV channels (the state channels and at least Antenne 3) for streaming means that they work on the iPad and thus via the Apple TV on the TV. Things are looking up; especially because my Spanish TV viewing is more likely to be 5 - 10 mins at a time getting up to date with the news and so it was highly unlikely that I'd go to the trouble of physically connecting the HDMI cable to the portable. The iPad on the other hand is used by me mostly when sitting in the easy chair within viewing distance of the TV so seeing these additional channels is turning out to be just like using a rather difficult remote to see normal channels.

 

May 04
Look at

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909506/en-us

"You cannot view a list in Datasheet view on a Windows SharePoint Services Web site" (revision 6, April 30th 2012)

and try to see how many mistakes you can find.

The mistakes (or rather the main ones I could find) are below

1. The main one is that the symptoms say that this KB article only applies to WSS 2.0 and WSS 3.0 (which does match the title) and yet the Applies To section has a long list of products including the other two 2003 and 2007 SP products as well as the highly unlikely - given the title and the symptoms text - SPF 2010 and SPS 2010.

2. The minor point is that they *once again* don't know the name of their products as the word "Office" (valid for the 2007 charged product) has crept into the name of the 2003 charged product (where it isn't valid).

P.S. In case anyone cares, I do always (OK, mostly) fill in the Comments section and I did so here for point 1 above. Even I didn't expect them to invent a product name "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2003" so my comment was sent off before I spotted that - and of course you only get one change per KB article to tell them how wrong they are.

Occasionally even I have my doubts so I went off to check the Internet to see if I was wrong and the product *was* called "Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003".

This site http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb267364 gives a clear indication of the problem.

It's clearly been "improved" by the same kind of bozos who amended the above KB article because the title is "Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003" however you need to look at the name of the product in ALL the links on the page - Yes, they all refer to "SharePoint Portal Server 2003".

A further check was to look at my SP 2003 book page here - http://wssv2faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v2%20WSS%20FAQ/VII%20view%20%20SPS%202003%20and%20WSS%20Books.aspx - without exception all the book titles were "Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003" with no "Office" in sight.

Apr 25
I received a number of RSS feeds for several new (and a few revised) KB Articles for both the 2007 and the 2010 SharePoint products.

While adding them to the relative WSS FAQ sites, I noticed a few things.

1. Two of the KB articles for SharePoint Server 2010 hot fixes had already been withdrawn (= the link didn't work and then a search on the title from the RSS feed gave a link to a KB article number that was not available).

Sloppy to make public a KB article on the 24th of April and then withdraw it by the 25th.

The above wasn't in the title of this blog, I know, but number 2. is

2. The cumulative update; and the hotfix for MOSS 2007 called it "SharePoint Server 2007" in the title when as we all know Microsoft were very keen in calling this at worst "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007" [hence MOSS 2007] (and at best "Office SharePoint Server 2007") which makes it clear that this is the 2007 product and not the 2003 product [included "Portal" but not "Office" in the name] and especially that this is not the 2010 product which IS called "SharePoint Server 2010 with no "Office".

Mind you even "SharePoint Server 2007" was an improvement in the name chosen for one of the two security updates which didn't bother with the "2007" and just called it SharePoint Server yet there was no sign of SPS 2010 in the Applies To section and it was clear from the date also mentioned in the title that the KB article could only be for MOSS 2007.

The other security update actually had "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007" in the Title. So one lot of MS guys was on the ball. But none of the other ones.

Apr 23
I should have known better. My first thought at work if a user reported an error was "did they really do exactly what they now say they did?" and I was never really happy until I saw them do whatever it was before my eyes.

Fast Forward to the problems with the hard disk on the desktop at home.

It's mainly used by my wife and so when she complained that the hard disk was making a terrible racket and was thus on the edge of failure, I listened to the machine on booting for myself and as it was indeed making a racket I started making a backup .iso file of the entire disk on an external device (took all night and then failed because it ran out of space at ca 99%!); made another (this time, successful) attempt to create an .iso backup (to a slightly larger external disk) and then started looking at local internet suppliers for a similar (but larger) internal hard disk.

Luckily they could only supply a slower one at once and equally luckily I decided to wait until the 7200rpm version was available immediately.

Because you see there was nothing at all wrong with the hard disk.

I discovered this when she asked me to install some Canon camera drivers from a DVD that came with the Canon and discovered in the DVD drive a DVD with some (older) Canon camera drivers that came with a Canon I had bought for myself about a month earlier.

You are all by now way ahead of me.

The terrible grinding noise caused by the hard disk when the machine was booted was in fact the DVD drive winding itself up to 24x (32x?). This became clear even to me when the moment I inserted that Canon DVD with drivers there was a rather loud set of noises...

Finally:

This happened a couple of weeks ago. In the end I decided that as I'm no longer an MVP nobody can possibly expect me not to make beginner mistakes and - who knows - someone may in the future remember this piece when *their* hard drive "starts failing".

Apr 14
Published: April 14, 2012 06:04 AM by  Mike Walsh
When I was in Germany in the 80's I was used to writing off from my taxes the money I spent on my own computers (starting in ca 1982 with the Osborne 1) and software/computer books.
 
So when I came to Finland in 1989 when it came to do my taxes I asked around; found everyone saying that it was virtually impossible to get private computing costs deleted from taxes; but decided to do so anyway - hanging the deductions on the fact that my title was "Internal Consultant" - and got them through.
 
Now with my marginal tax rate (and, yes, that was for a normal IT job at a normal salary) at around 50%, it was naturally quite useful to be able to deduct computing costs from taxes even though they only allowed a 33% deduction per year (later reduced to 25%) and - unlike the Germans - in following years only allowed you to deduct 33/25% of what was left (which means that deductions continue until they decide that the paperwork for a 10 Euro deduction isn't worth their time and write off the whole 10 Euros at one go).
 
Once the principal had been established I was able to every year in my tax returns justify the deduction by saying "the reasons are the same as in 1990, 1991, 1992 etc. and the deductions continued to go through.
 
However in 2010 I took early retirement and so 2011 was my first full year when I wasn't earning (and my pension was from the 20 years in Finland only (- and therefore small - with pensions from other countries - each small, but they add up - only starting to come in mid 2012), so there wasn't as much money as before and so I stuck to the computers I already had.
 
This gave me a couple of problems when filling out my tax returns for 2011.
 
1. I was no longer working.
 
However I still "worked" on the forums (no payments); my web site ($100 a year if lucky these days) and although there was no new book, I was still able to get some royalties from the old books.
 
So I could justify write-offs mainly from "writing books" even though the write-off was almost as much as the income used to pay for it.
 
2. I hadn't bought any new portable and although I had been forced to buy a new printer because the old one had given up the ghost I could no longer find the invoice for it (and it anyway had been a €100 one).
 
So I scraped through the invoices I had and found one for the iPad and submitted that.
 
NOW we finally get to the title of this piece....
 
This is what I have so far
 
- I use the iPad to monitor the forums on a many times a day basis (on a "real" computer I was doing that maybe 2 or 3 times a day.   (No longervalid, but valid for the whole of 2011)
 
- I deal with most of my e-mail on the iPad which include computer questions.
 
- I put pdf files of SharePoint/Windows books on it and read them there.
 
- ditto for the occasional free issue of Windows IT Pro and SQL Server magazine the publisher sends me.
 
- There's a software available for the iPad which I use to read information from my SP web sites off-line.
 
- I subscribe to a  computer magazine's iPad edition.
 
So with those, I'm perhaps prepared for the almost inevitable question from the Finnish tax authorities (*) about how do I justify deducting the iPad.
 
[Further suggestions are welcome - I might well be using it for some of them already, but they don't come to mind]
 
(*) The Finnish tax authorities being Finns - actions rather than words - are likely not to contact me to ask me to justify it. They are more likely simply going to deduct it (or accept it).
 
The only way I have ever found out in the past that they have decided to write off the entire amount (€ 10,35 say) of what was left from my (say) 1990 computer deductables was when I visited them in person and asked them.
 
Otherwise, they simply do their thing and you are supposed to work out from the difference between what you have calculated you have to pay in back tax and what they say you have to pay how they arrived at the difference. [Too much effort, so these days I have residual costs of € 6 that I deduct 25% from...]
 
 
P.S. Sometimes I sigh for the Germans. Their tax people sent me a little handwritten note when they returned my revised tax return which said exactly why they hadn't approved of my 5 DM reduction. [So I knew where I stood the next year.]
 
 

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