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Telligent was invited to participate in the Austin PhizzPop event. PhizzPop is an event where interactive agencies get the chance to really push the limits of design. As stated on the PhizzPop site:

The PhizzPop Design Challenge pits top interactive, Web, and design agencies against one another to push the limits of technology and creativity in a battle royale. Think Mad Max for design.

Great. Sounds intense… or just like another day at the office 🙂

We’re sending our team to Austin for the event on the 14th. I’d like to win (yes, I’m somewhat competitive) but I’m also just happy to participate. It’s a great chance to flex our design muscles and get people from our team pushing the creative envelope with some of the exciting new Microsoft technologies.

I also just made my reservation for Mix 2008.

I missed Mix 2007 last year and regretted it. I can’t remember why I missed, I think it was probably due to something like trying to have a life outside of work. But hey, who needs that. My New Year’s resolution for 2008 is to fully embracing my workaholic life.

Ok, no not really.

I’m going to Mix 2008 because its relevant, because Microsoft has a kick-ass web developer platform, and I know there will be other people there that I want to talk to. Oh yeah, and I also want to see Guy in person! Kudos to Microsoft for getting him to participate.

Hans Hugli, a friend of mine (we worked together on Microsoft’s evangelism team during the heady dot-com days) and developer on Microsoft’s UberDemo team wrote up a great article on SharePoint and Community Server integration. Below is an excerpt:

The business scenario discussed in this article is how to enable Community Server site users to log on to sites that are running Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, by using the same credentials they use to log on to their Community Server site. Much of this article is based on Steve Peschka’s post on the official Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies blog. I recommend reading through his blog to get a better understanding of how this works by using SharePoint Products and Technologies. The blog entry describes how to integrate the membership database of Community Server with the security model used in SharePoint Products and Technologies. This article assumes a limited knowledge of Community Server, SharePoint Products and Technologies, and Microsoft ASP.NET.

You can get the complete article here.

If you are a SharePoint & Community Server customer let me know, I’d actually love to chat with you about some of our plans to integrate the two.

We’re also looking to hire a developer who knows SharePoint (or wants to learn) to set the foundation for our SharePoint and Community Server integration plans.

Okay, we thought we were done last week — what can I say… mea culpa? Turns out we had a bit more fit-and-finish to do. Well, beta 1 is done!!!

Everyone who signed up for the beta at Graffiticms.com will soon get an email from us with download details and setup instructions.

If you want to get there a little faster:

• Download Telligent Graffiti CMS, Beta 1
• Graffiti CMS Documentation

The official GraffitiCMS.com website will go live in the next few days and will have more information about Graffiti as well as a feature roadmap.

Please check-out the readme file that comes with the Graffiti download. The download also includes a Quickstart Graffiti site with the same content published on docs.graffiticms.com. It provides a great working example of Graffiti and also starts you with some content for helping learn Graffiti.

If you’re hearing about Graffiti for the first time…

Graffiti CMS is meant to be a really simple content publishing platform for individuals and small businesses. It’s designed first and foremost to be simple.

What about Community Server? There are no plans for Graffiti and Community Server to work together (even though initially we thought there might be). Graffiti and Community Server target 2 completely separate audiences. Community Server will continue to focus on being a best-of-breed community and social networking platform. Features from Graffiti, such as content management, will find their way into Community Server over time. But those plans will be announced later.

Why create another tool? We thought traditional “content management system” tools were complex. We believe customers want something simple, something light and friendly. For us the “CMS” in Graffiti means “content made simple” not the stuffy overloaded term “content management system”. Graffiti supports old-school content management system concepts such as workflow, revisions, content, files, and more but also bring in the fresh perspective of more modern publishing tools like blogs. We don’t think of it as a CMS, blog, or ‘tool’ but instead as a way to introduce more people to a better and simpler way to publish and share their thoughts and ideas.

Is Graffiti free? Yes, our plan is that we will have 2 versions of Graffiti. A free version and either one or two commercial versions. Our free version uses Microsoft Access for content storage and our commercial version will use SQL Server.

Is Graffiti a blogging tool? Graffiti helps you publish content. If you want to organize that content as a “blog” Graffiti makes this really easy. We’ve included a couple blog themes in the beta.

We’re excited to hear your feedback about Graffiti. Until our site goes live please email feedback/bugs to:

Graffiti-Beta@Telligent.com

Thanks for your patience. It took us longer to get Graffiti Beta 1 out the door than we wanted. We’ve tried 3 times to get this right over the past couple of years and we’re really proud of what the team has done. We listened to what people were asking for. Hopefully you’ll love it!

Hopefully we’ll also have an announcement about our other new product Reporting Server (demo site). But more on that later!

As I mentioned yesterday here is one of the photos from the Mix and Mash event. That’s me to Bill’s right and Molly from molly.com to his left.

I’m really pumped about Mix 08 based on what I saw at Mix and Mash. Microsoft has a lot of really exciting stuff going on – of course most of it is coming out of Scott’s team (Silverlight, MVC, etc.).

I’ll post some more photos tonight or tomorrow when I find my camera cable.

This should be fun. We’re just a few minutes away from Bill showing up at the Executive Briefing Center. It’s been quite a while since I last was in a meeting with Bill. Last time it was as an employee of Microsoft walking him through a review of ASP.NET and SQL Server caching. This time its as a customer.

There are only about 8-10 of us here and we each get to ask 2 questions.

I’m going to try and live blog the meeting.

Wow. It’s still intimidating. I was nervous just to introduce myself. Bill is now going through an overview of where they started and where the industry is at now. It’s interesting listening to him talk through what he sees happening in the next couple of years with interactive content and video.

He’s still geeky. Cool 🙂 Talking about some problems and how Microsoft is looking at technologies like Microsoft Surface (pictures forthcoming).

He has spent the last 10 minutes going through a really high-level vision of the services [Cloud Services] of the internet: sharing content, some thoughts on 3D web, etc. Talked about how moving “cross web” as you move from site to site that your data should follow you.

I asked Bill about how Social Software, like blogs, has changed how business happens. Specifically, looking at Microsoft and how as a company they have become more transparent starting in the late 1990s; was it motivation from the business that drove the transparency or was it the technology that enabled it?

His answer was that they have always wanted to get the message out and that the motivation was always there. Starting back in 1974 when he started Microsoft he was out trying to get the message out and that the motivation to talk about what they are doing/planning was always there. He then said he gives full credit to the technology for enabling them to more easily get the message out. He mentioned sites like Channel9 and how it now seems obvious to do what that site does with a camera and just going around and talking with people. Obviously there was more to it (and apparently we’ll get a full transcription of the chat) so I’ll hopefully post more later.

I’m spending the day at the Microsoft Briefing Center here in Redmond at the “Mix and Mash” event. We’re supposed to get an overview of some of the efforts that Microsoft has underway in the web space.

It’s a pretty small group, only about 8-10 people, so we should get some good 1:1 time. Bill Gates is supposed to make an appearance towards the end of the day too.

We started the morning with Scott Guthrie. My prediction is that Scott will soon be a VP at Microsoft. I’ll also predict he will be the first VP you’ll ever see give his own demos complete with code =)

Scott gave a really good overview of his team’s strategy for the web. Including Silverlight, ASP.NET, and everything else he owns (he owns a lot these days).

We’ve spent a good part of our time chatting about mobile. I have a huge amount of interest in the mobile space. Mobile is the “new PC” and mobile support is something that we’re having more and more discussions about at Telligent.

Before I left for TechEd Barcelona I picked up a new MacBook Pro. I was headed to Europe for 3 weeks, the first part of which was business and the second part vacation.

I presented and demoed on Windows XP using VMWare’s Fusion (this works *flawlessly* BTW and seems to be faster than my Lenovo T60). I still use Windows XP for all my work related stuff, but I’ve pretty much committed everything else (photos, videos, etc.) to Apple.

After I got back, I headed down to the Apple store and picked up an iPhone and said goodbye to my trusty BlackBerry.

The move to the iPhone was the result of being a long time iPod user and then absolutely loving my MacBook experience. So far, the iPhone is really nice but disappointing in comparison to my BlackBerry for managing email. While the iPhone does have "Microsoft Exchange" support it’s pretty weak (IMAP/SMTP only). Note the iPhone is awesome at web browsing, video, music, calendar, phone, and contacts. So while this is a bitter pill (giving up BlackBerry’s email support) the tradeoffs were well worth it.

One of the first problems I ran into was syncing my Contacts and Calendar to the iPhone which required that my contacts and calendar be in Apple’s "iCal" and "Address Book" applications since I was syncing the iPhone with the OS X. I read that you could sync if you were running Microsoft’s Office for the Mac so I started doing some research.

I installed the trial of Office for the Mac. Yuck. All my friends and co-workers running Macs tell me that the next version of Office for the Mac due out in January is supposed to be incredible though. I can’t wait.

Next, I went to the Apple store by my house (which was crazy busy). Surely someone there would know more and maybe even be able to help me. This is where the Apple people started to look dumb.

Me: I’ve got an iPhone and an MacBook Pro and I run Exchange at work and want to sync the iPhone to my Exchange Server.

Apple store: Why?

Me: (long explanation, ending in me trying various things like Office for the Mac)

Apple store: We don’t recommend installing that company’s [Microsoft] software. You’ll get viruses. It’s a huge target for attacks. If you want to buy it though you can by the Student Edition for $49.

Me: I’m not a student. Is this version different from the commercial version?

Apple store: Yes, one is professional one is not.

Me: So the commercial version is different?

Apple store: We really just recommend avoiding that company’s software.

That was about it for me. I said thank you and left. It’s pretty amazing to me that (a) I would be told some complete lies about Microsoft and (b) then told that I can buy the Student Edition. Note, they also didn’t answer my original question either.

What’s frustrating is that the 2 sales people I spoke with put their own personal politics/issues ahead of my actual problem. While frustrating it also makes Apple look bad.

So I was back to solving it myself… I found out that by installing Plaxo on OS X and Windows XP I could keep everything in sync (which is now working perfectly BTW).

I really do hope that Apple adds better support for Exchange in the iPhone. I also really hope that Apple starts encouraging a more open attitude at it’s stores for people that use mixed environments like myself. I suspect this type of scenario is going to become more common in the coming years.

Unless we run into some major last minute bug(s), beta 1 of Graffiti CMS will be available this week!

We’ve had a large response to our announcement of Graffiti and a lot of people have also signed up for the beta. If you are interested it’s not too late to sign-up for Beta 1 — see the link below — I’ve also include some other useful Graffiti links:

• graffiticms.com – web site for Graffiti and where you can sign up for the beta
• Overview video – a short video overview of Graffiti
• Graffiti FAQ – Frequently asked questions about Graffiti

Graffiticms.com will soon go live to with more content and videos about Graffiti as well as a community (of course).

Lastly, Scott also recently wrote a post about the development philosophy behind Graffiti. It’s definitely worth a read.

We’ve been working like crazy to get Graffiti out the door. We’re really, really close but it’s always that last 2% that is the hardest. We’ve also been doing some work on the business side and we’re pleased to announce that Graffiti CMS will be available to customers of Windows Home Server (some details on the PR piece picked up by CNN).

I picked up a 15" MacBook Pro on Sunday after struggling with this decision for about 8 weeks now. I figured I’d just have to dive right in.

First impression: wow. Just opening the box was a great experience. There was: 1 laptop, 1 DVI to VGA converter, 1 power cord. It took me about 5 minutes to unpack, plug-in, power-up, and get on my home network.

The laptop itself is just awesome. I’m still getting used to the Apple OS, but I also picked up VMWare Fusion, which I’ve been told is better than Parallels. I installed XP as a virtual machine and am now in the process of installing all the other necessary software. Tomorrow I leave on a 15 day trip to Barcelona and my goal is leave my ThinkPad at home and only bring my MacBook.  The MacBook is lighter than my ThinkPad and the screen is bigger, so that’s another plus.

Suffice to say, I’ve got a lot to do in the next 24 hours to ensure this isn’t a disaster as I’m presenting at TechEd Europe!

My concerns with the two-mouse buttons was easily resolved. Turns out you can configure the touch pad to detect a right-click when you clicking using 2 fingers instead of one.