When Vista’s ship date slid this week, the tech press had a field day. And in the feeding frenzy, some of them got carried away and started attributing Vista delays to Office.
I won’t dignify the rumor-makers by name, other than to say that Office’s ship date has not slid. Microsoft’s official statement on the topic is here.
The thing that made this a bit confusing for the cretins who write for tech-news rags is that the OEM release of Office (for bundling on preconfigured computers like those from Dell, Compaq, IBM, Toshiba and others) will be tied to the release of Vista, so that stuff will all ship together in January.
This is happening in part because Microsoft has been beat up by the feds in the past for not being fair enough to all OEMs, and this is the only “fair” way to handle the situation. You see, some OEMs have too many boneheads in top management to be able to deal with an Office release in the fall followed by a Vista release in 2007. So to be fair to these highly paid boneheads, we can’t give Dell and other well-run companies Office 2007 in the fall, because then they’d be able to offer something their mismanaged competitors couldn’t offer. And that just wouldn’t be fair now, would it?
But none of that affects Office’s release schedule. You will be able to put a shrink-wrapped copy of Office under the Christmas tree this year, mark my words.
I’m thinking of getting my Mom a copy of Sharepoint Site Designer for Christmas, actually. Don’t worry, Mom, you’ll love it. And if you don’t, we can just exchange it for Infopath or something. I’ll save the receipt.
Courtesy of Robert Scoble, here’s a cartoon by Hans Bjordahl …
So I blogged about it, of course.
March 24th, 2006
11:32 am
After a long week of long days, I noticed this morning that my Bloglines RSS feeds had a huge backlog of unread items. There went the next hour. 
I can’t wait to have RSS in Outlook 2007 solid enough to trust it for this stuff, but for now I’m sticking with Bloglines until I’m sure it’s ready for prime time.
Anyway, I came across a few cool things in various blogs that I’ll summarize and pass on here …
If you’re on the Office 2007 beta program, you’ve surely noticed that the File menu is gone, replaced by a round Office-logo button in the top left corner of the screen. On Jensen Harris’s blog this week, Brad Weed explains about the thinking behind this change.
One of the most popular announcements at this week’s Office Devcon was the news that VSTO “v3″ is available in a March CTP (Community Technology Preview) version. The last version of VSTO doesn’t support Office 2007, so this CTP release means VSTO developers can finally start writing code against Office 2007. The CTP includes support for the new Office Open XML file formats, support for RibbonX (the XML-based UI extensibility model in Office 2007), application-level custom task panes, and a set of templates for building add-in projects for all 10 of the Office clients.
If you’re one of the developers who has communicated to me your frustration over the lack of an available VSTO version for Office 12, please download the VSTO v3 March CTP and let me know what you think of it.
Are you learning C#? Or still new enough to C# that you’re often scratching your head wondering where to start in writing various types of code constructs? Me too. So you’ll probably find this very handy: a freely available set of straightforward Visual Studio 2005 Code Snippets. There are VB versions on that page as well.
Finally, an announcement out of Mix this week, that other Microsoft conference that took place at the same time as Office Devcon: there is a Beta 2 preview of Internet Explorer 7.0 now available. I’ve been using the beta of IE7 since early January, and I love it. Once you get used to a few basic concepts, like Ctrl-T to create a new tab, it’s a much faster and simpler way to surf the web.
I know, I know, Firefox and others had some of these features long ago. But now these features are available in a browser with huge market share, backed by a big company that pays my rent. Who wouldn’t want to support a cause like that?
March 24th, 2006
11:30 am
We launched OpenXmlDeveloper.org earlier this week, and there were a bunch of details that had to come together to make it all happen: press releases, presentations, announcements, content creation, site customization, signing up charter members, collecting quotes on the Open XML Formats, a party for the developers, and lots more. But there was one detail that didn’t fall into place as planned: running the pre-launch video on Channel 9.
So we’ll do another Channel 9 video soon. Probably something centered around the cool things that developers have already built around the new file formats.
Meanwhile, for Mom and anyone else who cares, here’s a link to the video. Mauricio Ordonez, Kevin Boske, Brian Jones and I talk about the new file formats, the developer group, and the “dirty secret” of how developers have been running the Office clients on web servers in order to do document assembly in the past.
Next time, I’m going to sit in a real chair. Although the orangutan look has a certain charm, don’t you think?
Yesterday was a great day for the launch of OpenXmlDeveloper.org. First Bill Gates talked about XML for a long time at the beginning of his keynote, including the announcement of OpenXmlDeveloper.org.
Then we were Slashdotted. They couldn’t find much negative to say, and as somebody who knows all the details of how and why this site was built, I found the theories being offered about “the true goals” of the site and community very entertaining.
The Office Open XML file formats sessions at Devcon played to packed rooms in the afternoon. Brian Jones (above) kicked things off, and by the time Kevin Boske started his presentation late in the afternoon every seat was taken in the huge room and developers were lining the walls
Later in the evening, after beers and appetizers at the conference, a bunch of developers and Microsoft people met up at Parlor Billiards in Bellevue to enjoy some free drinks, food, and pool. And — surprise — talk a lot about the XML file formats. Everyone was upbeat and excited about what the future holds for Office and other applications that work with the new formats. And the range of participants was great, from lifelong Microsoft boosters like Stephen Peront to Antti from Finland, who told Alan Yates that if he had attended a Microsoft event like this just a year or two ago, he’d have been tempted to strap explosives to his body.
Microsoft’s new openness, both in technical terms (the open file formats) and in general terms (thousands of blogs like this where each of us can say what we really think, no spin, no PR/marketing approval required) was a recurring point of conversation all day long. On OpenXmlDeveloper.org, one of our first posts was an article about how to generate a Word document from Java, without using any Microsoft technologies at all. You think you’ll ever see Apple or Sun or Red Hat publish something like that, an example of how to solve a real-world business problem without running a single line of their code? Don’t hold your breath!
Meanwhile over 100 people quietly registered on the site in the first day, and when we start posting all the content we’ll have soon, I’m sure that number will rise rapidly. As people said on Slashdot yesterday, OpenXmlDeveloper.org is “just informational.” That’s right, guys — while others fight political battles and pander to bureaucrats and lobbyists, we’re going to “just” provide lots of specific information to help developers build world-class software around the Open XML Formats. If that’s evil, then we’re planning to be extremely evil on OpenXmlDeveloper.org.
March 21st, 2006
11:26 am
Well, it’s finally public: OpenXmlDeveloper.org is live. It’s a web site that will serve as the portal for a community of developers working with the new Office Open XML file formats, and I’ve been working with a wide variety of people to pull it together over the last week or so: the folks who built the site at Telligent, our PR people at Waggener Edstrom, a lawyer from LCA, various DPE colleagues, a few people from the product group (including Brian Jones, who has a post on his blog today about the site), Office marketing, IWPMG, and others. I’ll be the moderator of the site, as well as the proofreader, mediator, and janitor.
Bill Gates announced this community and web site in his keynote at Office Devcon this morning. I was pleased to see how much XML played into his presentation, but I’m a bit biased. He said “the cool thing about this community is it includes three of my favorite words: open, xml and developer.” In the middle of Bill’s speech, Jay Paulus gave a cool demo of various Office 2007 functionality, including opening an Open XML Format document as a ZIP file and showing how easy it is for developers to bind Office documents to XML data.
There are 40 organizations that have already signed up for this community including Apple, Intel, Toshiba, and others (see the full list here), and we’re expecting a lot more. And there are a bunch of people working on content for the site, which will start to show up over the days and weeks ahead. Right now there are a few submissions already on the site, including a cool example of building a Word document from scratch in Java (developed by the team at Sonata), and an example of how to work with embedded documents from Stephen Peront at Xinnovation.
Man, I could use a nap … but we have a full day today, including the file formats track of Office Devcon this afternoon and social events with some of the OpenXmlDeveloper community this evening. So I’ll go get a latte instead. Tonight’s meeting should be interesting, and we’re going to have even more ideas for content on the site after talking with a room full of developers about what they’d like to see.
There should be a video on Channel 9 later today with more info about the site, featuring Brian Jones, Kevin Boske, Mauricio Ordonez, and yours truly.
I was at the office Saturday. And Sunday.
Monday, I started swapping email with colleagues at 5:00AM. I was at the office by 6:00. I was still there at 11:00, and had received over 150 emails on the specific project I’ve been working on, and had sent 90 replies.
Today, I was back on-line at 5:30, and in the office by 6:30. I’ve had about 20 exchanges with co-workers on the project since then.
Now I’m headed over to the Executive Briefing Center (the EBC, in Microsoft parlance) to watch Bill Gates announce this project. Then I can finally blog about it.
Oh, an email just came in from our LCA lawyer about some last-minute changes. Gotta run …
Well, I broke down and went with the new Microsoft standard, or at least the DPE standard: the Cingular 2125. Everyone around here seems to have one, and these are all people who bought them with their own money.
Robert Scoble picked one up in December, and I’ve been reading his rave comments about it for a while now. Then my manager got one, and his first business trip with it was to Wuhan, China, where it worked just fine. Then a co-worker got one, then another … and now me.
The hype is true: this phone rocks. Great reception, bright readable screen, speedy web browsing (compared to other handheld devices I’ve used), Windows Mobile 5.0, and lots of nice usability features. I’ve got it set up to synch over the air every 10 minutes, so now I can handle critical emails any time of the day, wherever I am. And it’s the smallest phone I’ve ever carried, so I’m not paying anything in terms of physical inconvenience for all the capabilities it gives me.
Sure, the triple-tap typing is a bit slow, but that’s not what this is about. This device is about portability and convenience, and the Cingular 2125 has those attributes in spades.
If you’re a Microsoft employee, there’s a good discount on these. Go to the Cingular store in Bellevue Square, and tell Josh the silly bald guy sent you.
The Microsoft Office Developer’s Conference will take place in Redmond next week, March 21-23. It’s going to be an exciting event for everyone involved with Office 2007, especially the developers who are working to integrate their applications with the Office clients or build new solutions on top of the Office servers.
It’s a sold-out event, so you can’t attend unless you’ve already signed up. But you can register here to watch Bill Gates and Kurt DelBene (VP, Office Server) give their keynote presentations via a live MSDN webcast. Here’s the official blurb for what Bill and Kurt will be talking about: “The 2007 Microsoft Office system is a breakthrough solution platform that includes clients, servers, services, and tools. Built on XML and a set of new extensibility technologies, it gives you the solution building blocks you need to meet today’s business demands more quickly than building from scratch.”
Buried in that paragraph is a hint of something I’m extremely excited about, which will be announced by Bill in the keynote. It’s a project I’ve been working on around the clock the last few days, with the help of a bunch of other people. After Bill makes the announcement, I’m going to have a lot more to say right here, but for now it’s a secret. Shhh!
I have a dear friend whose father was a Protestant minister. He (my friend) married an Irish Catholic girl from a big boisterous Irish Catholic family, and they now have two beautiful teenage daughters.
Today, my friend sent me this joke in honor of St. Patrick’s Day …
An Irish daughter had not been home for over 5 years. Upon her return, her father cussed her. “Where have ye been all this time? Why did ye not write to us, not even a line? Why didn’t ye call? Can ye not understand what ye put yer old mum thru?”
The girl, crying, replied, “Sniff, sniff … Dad … I became a prostitute.”
“Ye what!!? Out of here, ye shameless harlot! Sinner! You’re a disgrace to this family.”
“OK, Dad — as ye wish. I just came back to give mum this luxurious fur coat, title deed to a ten bedroom mansion plus a $5 million savings certificate. For me little brother, this gold Rolex and for ye daddy, the sparkling new Mercedes limited edition convertible that’s parked outside plus a membership to the country club … (takes a breath) … and an invitation for ye all to spend New Years Eve on board my new yacht in the Riviera and …”
“Now what was it ye said ye had become?” says Dad.
Girl, crying again, “Sniff, sniff … a prostitute dad! Sniff, sniff.”
“Oh! Be Jesus! Ye scared me half to death, girl! I thought ye said a Protestant. Come here and give yer old man a hug!”
