Office Search Commands

This is the bessssssssssssssssssssssssttttttt office addin I've ever seen! Office Search Commands allows us to search commands, options, wizards and galleries by... name! Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and there it is, right on the ribbon, that distant command you didn't heard about since 2003!

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Just give it a try! Thank Bruno Valente for the tip!

To 64 or not to 64 - that is the question

64 bit desktop OSs are getting easier to adopt. Here a great benchmark (and results), comparing XP, Vista, Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, 32 and 64 bits.

Here's a summary of the summary :)

CPU:
All 64-bit OS dominates with the exception of Prime Numbers and SSE.
Best-Worst: 2008, Vista, XP

Cool, as expected.

Memory:
64-bit performance better
Best-Worst 64: XP, Vista SP1, 2008, Vista
Best-Worst 32: Vista, Vista SP1, 2008, XP

XP 64 rocks, as expected. Now here's another expected result:

Disk:

[...]
XP and Server 2008 both showed even, but noticeable faster results vs Vista.

And finally, here are the results:

Overall:
64-bit is improving and shows a better overall average performance. The 3D graphics are dependent upon the drivers released and I have seen consistently improving performance with nVidia's drivers. The 64-bit performance has exceeded in this benchmark which surprised me. The push for Vista has finally exceeded XP's performance, but SP1 has been a step back for gaming in vista. I've also noticed this in 3dMark tests I have run.

Oops for Vista SP1...

So my Windows Server 2008 64 bits for my laptop doesn't seem like a bad option after all. XP64, today's fastest option,  is probably not an option for the future. Probably time to test drive a Vista 64 bits...

Thanks for the tip, Rasteiro :)

Smart Client Software Factory for Visual Studio 2008 has shipped

Yeap, it seems like it did. Just posting it for logging purposes, not really my focus. Ummm, this is happening to me lately, cool technology I want to put my hands on but just don't have the time for it. Though the days we are living in are exceptional ones, it makes me sad to opt out cool technology. Oh well, like a friend of mine is saying these days:

Looking for 36 hours days for buy or rent.

Choosing the Right Workflow Tool for Your Project

Ok, from within BizTalk Server 2006 or WF... Here's a nice article about it.

Groove 2007 + WSS3 = Wow!...

How in God's name could we work before? I can now work over versioned repositories pointed to my company's WSS disconnected from the internal VPN. Yes, my workspaces are synced from work to home. Better yet, people outside my organization can participate on this workspaces. It's just awesome.

Looks like my mailbox is finally getting some deserved holidays... :)

PS: ok, I still have to convince a bunch of email addicted people to jump on Groove's wagon. And yes, my mailbox will still be of some use, but what can I say, I'm addicted to the next big techy thing :)

Cool Vista gadget for Portuguese speaking

Here's a useful Vista Gadget: a Portuguese dictionary, from Priberam.

W2K8 64bits as desktop - the downside

Now that I have Windows Server 2008 Server 64-bits as my desktop for a while, here's the list of annoyances:

• VMWare doesn't work as smoothly as in other OSs; after a lot of crashes with VMWare player and Server 2, I've finally decided to use good old VMWare Server 1 - yes, I have to boot with unsigned drivers option;
• Hyper-V still sucks up all the memory we throw it - unlike VMWare, that wisely manages usage as needed; on the bright side, it is faster then Virtual PC; the porting from Virtual PC / Server is just too bad to be true, as it makes you uninstall the Virtual PC / Server drivers only Virtual PC / Server...;
• activating Hyper-V disables standby and hybernation;
• most of plugins doesn't work on IE 64bits - no problem, just run 32 bit version;
• still sucking up too much memory - if you don't have 4GB, probably not an option;
• no SIP phone - well, this is also true on 32bits;~

I'm about to get another laptop - I'll probably try the Windows Server 2008 32-bits now.

iGo Stowaway experience

As promised, here's my experience:~

The good:

• excellent laptop-touch like keyboard;
• small and fast;
• easy to setup;
• syncs fast (and smart, no button on the keyboard, opening the keyboard turns it on);
• I can even use it on conferences - it is so cool to write notes, answer to mails and IM!

The not so good:

• it doesn't support the Portuguese layout - Portuguese keys are slow to get to;
• the keyboard base is not stable enough - for example when we hit heavily the CTRL key the keyboard tends to jump more then it should;

The worse:

• if you're holding a meeting with non technical people, you'll risk being seen as a hopeless lunatic;

Scrum for managers

Last Thursday I've attended an excellent session titled "Scrum for managers" presented by Mitch Lacey.

For the few of you that didn't heard about scrum, here's the wikipedia definition:

Scrum is an iterative incremental process of software development commonly used with Agile software development.

[...]

Scrum is a process skeleton that includes a set of practices and predefined roles. The main roles in scrum are the ScrumMaster who maintains the processes and works similar to a project manager, the Product Owner who represents the stakeholders and the Team which includes the developers.

During each sprint, a 15-30 day period (length decided by the team), the team creates an increment of potential shippable (usable) software. The set of features that go into each sprint come from the product backlog, which is a prioritized set of high level requirements of work to be done. What backlog items go into the sprint is determined during the sprint planning meeting. During this meeting the Product Owner informs the team of the items in the product backlog that he wants completed. The team then determines how much of this they can commit to complete during the next sprint.^[4] During the sprint, no one is able to change the backlog, which means that the requirements are frozen for sprint.

Mitch is a great presenter, Agile is highly sellable, so it was a fun session. Here was Mitch's agenda:

• So, what is Agile?
• The Agile Umbrella
• Why Agile
• Scrum
• The Managers role
• Getting started
• Q&A

A little dry, no? Here's the presentation, from Mitch's site.

I'm always collecting arguments to sell the agile way to the traditional project managers. Mitch added a new one (no Mitch, being "fun" doesn't help us here): according to Mitch, about 20% of the team members leave their projects (or organizations?) each year. Experience tells us that the Agile approach offers more guarantees of maintaining the project information on the team than the traditional waterfall pre-development functional document intensive way. Makes you think, doesn't it?....

I hate when the limits are not technical ones

Window XP sets a limit of 1 remote desktop session. As we all know, the limit is not technological, but based on licensing reasons. Some people at Redmond are probably afraid that some organizations defect to other OSs and leave a bunch of virtualized remote XP serving the legacy apps that couldn't be ported yet.

Myself and the organization I work for aren't planning on leaving Microsoft OSs but still need multi-session login on XP. Why? To get our labs working on out virtual servers. We usually setup some XP virtual machines with the next generation tools - a bunch of betas, CTPs and previews that must match each other so we never install them on our stable environments.

We love to experiment we cool new technology, but end up wasting useful resources with the 1 session limit from XP. Sure, we can use Windows 2003 Server, but the limit is only lifted up to 2. Sure we could probably use the (legally?) beta 2055 release of XP PRO SP2, but the limit would only raise to 3 and we'd couldn't add the machine to a domain.

Now that the XP extremely long live has probably paid several times what Microsoft as spend developing it, it would be cool if Microsoft opened this silly limit. What would probably be a fair agreement for Microsoft and consumer interests was opening that limit for remote connections coming from computers holding Microsoft CALs.

Student syndrome

From wikipedia:

Student syndrome refers to the phenomenon that many people will start to fully apply themselves to a task just at the last possible moment before a deadline. This leads to wasting any buffers built into individual task duration estimates.

Oops, most of us do suffer from this syndrome (including myself, for much as I fight it). I heard about this on a great Scrum event presented by Mitch Lacey, and decided to share it with you. But more about it later.

PS: now I post as soon as I can. Am I cured?... :)

PS2: it is good to know this is worldwide problem, not a national one :)

Live Mesh

Live Mesh is now public. I haven't tried it yet, just applied for access. Initiatives live Live Mesh constantly remind us that the Web 2.0 concept is probably here to stay, for much criticism that it encounters. It may be a buzzword, it risks being no more than a hype, but for some piece of nothing that doesn't really get installed anywhere, Web 2.0 is still talked about for more than most people predicted.