Here is a little humor for your weekend: I own several Microsoft-powered mobile devices but spend virtually all my productive time on a PocketPC. I carry around a 2lb brick attached to my hip, attached to my Exchange and all I do. It has a huge screen, slide-out keyboard, phone, fax, bluetooth all the accessories that Taiwan can export and a enough battery to keep me online for a day. In many ways it is far more useful than my laptop, especially in terms of mobility. But why strap a huge brick to your hip and not a cute little SmartPhone? Ladies love PocketPC. There is nothing more appealing to the ladies than a man with a PocketPC. It is a geek equivalent of the gun. Just clip your holster to the side of your belt and you're the most dangerous thing out there. Lethal too. Just try to impress your date with what you can do on the PocketPC! Not as efficient as a bullet but far easier to clean up when they eventually die of boredom. Integrate Voice Command and you quadruple the danger factor. Think about it, what do you do when you see someone walking down the street talking to themselves? "Call Katie!! Close. Call Katie. Uhh you #@%% @#@#%. Show Kathleen. Call Kathleen at home." - Imagine someone walking behind you listening to that exchange? You will never lose a PocketPC. Since I've gone mobile I've lost many things, my mind included, but there is simply no "misplacing" the PocketPC. It has infinite functionality. Forget about Word and Excel, find yourself in a dark parking lot at night… turn up the brightness and you've got an instant flashlight. Nothing good on the radio during the long trip? Forget about an iPod, crank the volume on your PocketPC and watch it dance around the seat. Alone on the trip and missing your family? Instant album and video player. Signing paperwork during the business lunch at the restaurant and they sat you right under the fan? Instant paperweight. There are also way too many social situations in which a PocketPC can save your day, life and marriage. Got into a fight over whether "love rollercoaster" is by Red Hot Chillpeppers? Google will save the argument before it goes back to "Why don't you get along with my sister." Need to find a good restaurant nearby? Directions? Want a stock quote but don't want to pay $50 in commissions or admit to your friends you bought Apple stock? Point being, PocketPC is a lightning fast way to get stuff done without carrying around a suitcase. Forget about mobile Word. Forget about Pocket Outlook. Say hello to the danger-filled, sex-icon world of PocketPC fans. Mobile solutions for Girly Men There are very few things in life more frustrating than trying to type on a cell phone. SmartPhone combines that frustration with the traditional stability of a Windows operating system. Smartphones are small. Perhaps smaller than your current cell phone. They do not require frequent reboots but they also lack in functionality. For example, no touchscreen. Without a touchscreen you can't pretend to be at work when you're out and about without a laptop. You can not easily connect via TS to your server and restart the services. What's worse is you've actually taken the call and are aware of the problem! Smartphones are functional, somewhat. You can browse the web on your SmartPhone, you can get email on your smartphone. You may even be able to play a little game. But forget about taking notes in silence, doodling the network diagram, process flowchart. At the end of the day you're sacrificing functionality for the smaller size. If your functionality demands are fairly basic and you just bought a slightly bigger purse - SmartPhone is for you. If you're a guy and too weak to carry around an extra pound or two on your hip this will fit in your pocket without dragging your belt down to your ankles. But as a guy, the number one reason not to go for a SmartPhone, all things considered… is the fact that your girlfriend/wife will actually use your cell phone. PocketPC is like kryptonite to women. I've never lost my PocketPC to my girlfriend. I lose my SmartPhone daily… "Hey, does this one have StrikeForce on it?"; So if you're looking for a mobile organizer and you don't want to have a two hour conversation about how you didn't mention that you're going to a July conference in January…. Stick with something she won't steal from you. This is just my experience, feel free to flip the gender for your own circumstances. So which one should you pick? The one you like. The one you can use. The one you can carry. In that order. Bottom line - its not all about applications. Yes, both SmartPhone and PocketPC share Excel, Word and Outlook. Both can take pictures. But mobile devices are more than a laptop, more than a cell phone. They become your lifestyle. You have to like it. You have to like to use it. You will find yourself spending more time in applications outside of the Microsoft's big three - this gadget is an mp3 player, cell phone, fax, remote desktop client, video camera, voice recorder, file storage, presentation, remote control, flashlight, paperweight, mugging deterrent and a sex symbol.

One of the best ways to dodge feature criticism is to say "it will be in the next releases." I know that, because in our own products everything that didn't get classified as "We tried that, failed miserably, it turns out only one guy actually used it" automatically becomes "it's on the spec sheet, stay tuned.". Well, I was reading Lawrence Liu's article about how SharePoint will embrace RSS with Office 12:

Discoverability is another much needed advancement that needs to be done. One way to achieve it is through syndication (via RSS) of content sources that is filtered by popular keywords such as "offline" or "scalability" or "migration." Another way is through proactive searches where the results are RSS enabled, so the content sources don't have to be as is the case in the former method. Perhaps the most exciting advancement of all is the ability for members of the community to create a "personalizable" community portal, so each person can configure exactly how one prefers to search and discover content. Think of it as the Live.com for the SharePoint community!

It's no secret that one of the most widely used SharePoint parts is the one displaying RSS feeds. Yes, document storage with all the interactive stuff and centralized contacts are nice but despite all the flexibility SharePoint is for the most part ran "out-of-the-box" on nearly all the portals we manage at TheOfficeServer. None of them go in via FrontPage to tweak things (that I know of, based on the support call volume) but oh do they love their RSS part. What is the real problem? The biggest obstacle not just in personal searches but in business as well is finding relevant search results. Bob Rebholz hinted at this the other night in talking about the pitfalls of how the most popular search engines return results based on the number of links. Apply this to a real SharePoint site. Real? Yes, real. Don't look at the cute out-of-the-box SharePoint, look at the real SharePoint site with hundreds of documents, updates, workspaces, contacts, linked lists… finding things in that mess is impossible. So lets say you decide to get organized - create a workplace, with another list. Well what if (not really if, more like when) the next person looks at the way you organize stuff and does in the exactly opposite way? Another workplace with a set of links. See the problem and complexity this introduces? Now look at RSS. Look at tagging. Look at the ability for everyone to create their own custom portal based on the way they organize information. I'll take that over the workplace idea any day!

Tomorrow afternoon I'm driving up to Las Colinas to meet our sister show hosts Mark Stanfill and Peter Galagher. I chat with Mark often enough about management and such so tomorrow I'm going over to PSS central to find out how they don't kill some of the SBSers that I have the pleasure of supporting. As I like to say about my business: "If we could just figure out a way to support it, there would be no limit to the amount of bad code we could write." Coincidentally enough, I share that moto with Microsoft Dynamics. I will make sure to send everyone's regards, if you don't see another post here assume I've been assimilated into the hive mind and am doing Exchange support out of Bangladesh. I wonder what my Indian-American name would be?

Last night Katie and I had the pleasure of having dinner with Bob Rebholz of The Working Network. Despite being one of the most social guys in Florida with a lot of connections.. really, world-wide.. I never get to meet cool people. The best I can swing is Joe Rif-Raf the SBS Pimp that sells Action Pack out of this trunk. Last night was a little bit different because I got to hang out with a guy that spent years being in Steven Ballmer's geek squad. Oh the stories that I will have to take to my grave. And he was PM for VoiceCommand. So higher up than usual. We did have an incredible (well, from my side at least) conversation about social networking and where Bob sees it going and benefiting us. Right now, as you look at SharePoint, CRM and other offerings there is a lot of stuff in the way of business intelligence storage, but little in terms of its reputability and relevance in the context of your search. Bob used the example of Google search - you search for something and it spits back the pages that were linked to the most. Fascinating conversation about the whole social networking aspect and definitely something we need to jump into in small business and ITPRO land. Chris and I will try to get Bob on the SBS Show very soon to talk about the many things going on in the social networking world. He is technically family (Katie is a Rebholz and they apparently share a significant gene pool and personality traits) so how can he say no?

Tomorrow night we'll tape the 14th SBS Show. This will be our weekly excursion into the world of small business with "My Fair Lady" cast of Vlad Mazek, Chris Rue and her majesty Susanne Dansey. I am not totally sure what we will talk about but I'm taking input (off air please). We're going to look at things we're changing around for 2006 to respond better and things we're looking forward to seeing and accomplishing this year. Perhaps this gives you some ideas on what opportunities may be waiting for you!

Over the course of last two weeks I've been filling requests left and right for various Microsoft beta projects from Vista to Messenger and back to Mail. Tonight I got a rather paranoid email, essentially, asking why is it so hard to get on the beta and why is Microsoft (or Google, or Yahoo or…) so tight-fisted when it comes to software. Here are three categories that should explain what goes on in the beta process: Who is going to sue us? First question in the mind of a project manager is who is our competition? This is initially a SWOT (Strenghts, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis that evolves into a paranoid guess work of who may be developing the same feature set you are. It goes through the concept, development, analysis and then through legal which makes a decision on whether this is going to get the company sued for developing a feature. BETA Answer: Let's formally announce our goal, our implementation and see what happens. Can this project scale? No matter the company or project scale there are always two finite resources: headcount (cash) and computer power (more cash). There is a really interesting phase of horrible project management that happens right after the concept becomes approved and funded, which is caused by two actions going in opposite directions. You have to prove that the concept is viable and you have to make it happen by the deadline. More often than not those two are mutually exclusive (also known as: every software product ever written). BETA Answer: Let's open up the project as an invitation-only beta. This will give us the ability to scale the project at the pace we define and can reasonably support without setting expectations too high. Oh lord, thank you for not owning us… yet. Finally, the concept of security by obscurity. Spaghetti code's natural predator is the unlimited customer base anxious to play with every feature in a way that the developers never could forsee on the project flowchart. Now should a company release and collect payment for such a product there would be lawsuits, questions to answer, etc. Instead the company gets a ton of bug fixes, feature suggestions and input from the user that feels they are helping instead of complaining about their buyers remorse. BETA Answer: Let's close the project and encourage positive feedback by humbly giving away beta hats to our beta testers. Is this why all my software sucks? No, not all software is inherently flawed from the get-go. However, we write software to solve immediate problems. Beta processes allow for immediate market feedback, for an ongoing PR through multiple sources that are reasonably educated about what they are looking at, not just rearranging the Associated Press wire feed. On a higher level it gives consumers (partners, customers, developers) a sense of ownership knowing that they have participated in the product development since inception. Lots of text for a Wednesday morning? You bet. Think about something you're scratching your head about and find a solution for it.

Discussion of basic networking concepts and how they apply to Small Business Server. This will be a very engaging discussion meeting with the concept presentation lead by Vlad Mazek, Own Web Now Corp and JJ Antequino, Microsoft Corp. Vlad will review the basics of TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP and NAP as well as the associated gear. JJ Antequno will talk about basic concepts of Active Directory such as domains, queries and MMC. Two of our leading SBSers, Robert Belon and R. Scott Buchanan will offer their best practices after each concept and explain how it applies to their SBS deployments. Meeting is from 6 PM till 9PM on Thursday, January 26, 2006. Please RSVP: http://www.orlandoitpro.com/rsvp.asp

The release notes for Exchange 2003 SP2 have been updated to reflect the changes in Exchange SP2 in more detail. Judging by the traffic on Vladville.com, I'm sure that both of the guys that read the Release Notes will be extatic to hear about this news. Download updated Exchange 2003 SP2 Notes Joke aside, looks very thorough and each of the subsections is a good Vladville article on Exchange as far as I'm concerned. If you'd like me to explore some of this stuff in more detail please let me know. In the meantime, check out the articles section.

Much to my dismay the most popular Windows Mobile 5 phone is the Palm Treo 700W which is currently only available from Verizon Wireless. Well, what if you had a Palm Treo 700W and paid a ton of money ($50) for a data plan on top of the $50 you were paying for a voice plan… Wouldn't it be awesome to just use the standard bluetooth on Treo 700W to connect to the Internet with your laptop via bluetooth dialup networking? Of course it would! However, that would mean you wouldn't pay the extra $59 a month to Verizon Wireless for a wireless broadband card! Verizon turned off modem over bluetooth functionality in Treo 700W (its a phone company guys, don't act surprised) but there is a way around it. You can still get on the Internet via your laptop through Treo 700W, you just have to use a USB connection and this software. Check out PdaNet software, for just $34 one-time you can say bye-bye to Verizon Wireless gauging your wallet every month for the service you're already paying for - wireless broadband! PdaNet for Palm Treo 700W

This opinion piece comes on the heels of a discussion started on two groups I belong to, the Greater Orlando Linux Users Group and SBS 2K group. Being Microsoft and Linux biased these two bunches would claim to be worlds apart but they are quite similar in their struggles with evangelism, especially when the product they promote drasticly changes or falls behind times: be it Slackware or SBS 2003. When it comes to promoting technology you have to first understand what makes a good evangelist and what makes for someone whose opinion is actually respected. For example, your church preacher and stoned guy on the corner of the intersection holding "Honk for Jesus" sign probably have a similar message, but who would you trust more? The guy with a big building, and why? Credibility! What establishes credibility over time is being able to provide the right answers for the right situation. If you continuously provide the same answer no mater how much the question changes it does not make you a good evangelist, it turns you into the guy on the corner. You earn respect and professional respect of your peers by being able to evaluate the situation and provide a solution based on your knowledge, experience and understanding of whats available. You become an evangelist when you find a product that helps solve problems of so many people that you take it upon yourself to help them… Congratulations, way to go. But beware of promoting this product to peole whom it doesn't actually help — at this point not only do you lose your peers respect, you turn into the guy on the corner holding a sign. I guess at the end of the day you have a decision to make: Do I want do be a respected professional in this field or someone whose radio dial got stuck on a station in 2003? Things change, solutions change, demands change. Learn to be dynamic, never compromise your ethics for a product you do not develop yourself!