Blogroll Update

When i moved to Outlook 2007 i didn’t import my old feed list. I had subscribed to lots of blogs that while initially useful i just stopped reading after a while

I’m now more selective over the feeds i subscribe to.

I added some feeds i hadn’t gotten around to today so i’ve updated the blog roll accordingly!

Cool New Sidebar Gadgets

Over on the Live Search blog they have released a couple of new sidebar gadgets

While i like the look of the traffic information gadget i’m in the UK so it’s of no use to me

I do like the Live Search Gadget. Simply drop it on your sidebar and type in your search term.

The results appear in a pop out window. It is also configurable and lets you search specific sites and use search macros
I have one request though…

“Can we have regional settings please?”

When i use live search (or google) i frequently tick the “only show me sites from the UK” box.

Other than that keep up the good work!

Infopath / SharePoint Tip

I’ve been working on an InfoPath solution for one of our customers. I’ve certainly learnt quite a bit while doing this.

Just wanted to post about this excellent tip

I needed a list of SharePoint users in a drop-down list box.

Your can’t access the user list in the same way you would a standard list

This post from Jan Tielen shows how to give one of the web services a kick to return the information you need. The post is very in depth but it’s actually pretty straightforward and i had it working in no time

Top marks to Jan!

#Note 1 # I used this on Sharepoint 2003 & Infopath 2003. I’m not sure if any of this applies for 2007

#Note 2 # Jan’s tip talks in the conext of a Visual Studio based solution. This particular project didn’t call for that but it still works perfectly well if your using vbscript in the background

How does anyone do business?

Good post today from Susanne about problems with distributors.

This is something I have had to learn lots about over the last couple of years as I’ve become more involved on the business side. It’s very frustrating when your account manager isn’t tuned into your needs.

An example of bad management happened recently. I’m not going to be naming names so we’ll call them “Dist X”.

We have had a couple of calls and emails recently from Dist X asking why were hadn’t been using them much.

First thing is we had the same thing about six months ago and we told them some of the issues were

1) Everyone else gives us better credit facilities than you

2) We don’t even know who our account manager is!

So we got our credit facility updated and an account manager was assigned to us. This account manager then hounded us for an order. Letting us know the “offer of the day” and generally being a bit of a pain.

We had a small order to make so thought we would give them a go.

This is where it got even worse. Once we had placed the order the account manager did a disappearing act. Then we got our goods, but we also managed to get an Exchange 2003 media kit we hadn’t asked for. The invoice for this arrived so we asked the account manager to sort it out. They wanted us to fill out lots of paper work to return the item. The guy in charge of our purchasing wasn’t impressed with his staff having work created for them when it wasn’t their error. The account manager eventually told us to dispose of the media kit as it wasn’t worth arranging a collection. We then couldn’t fill out their returns paperwork as they wanted a serial number from the product.

I’m not entirely sure where we are with this now but as a first order they didn’t really do themselves any favours.

As Susanne said we are the small customers but surely we deserve better?

What to know about your local telephone exchange?

Just a quickie as I’m really busy catching up everything after my enforced absence I thought i ‘d share one of my favourite resources

The Broadband Resource (UK only)

The idea of this site is that you can gets lots of juicy information about your local telephone exchange with regards to ADSL. It will tell your exchange, how far away you are, who is doing unbundling work, if you can get wireless, who your cable provider is (or isn’t!), if the exchange is SSL enabled, if it’s been “MAX” enabled and much more. I use this when we have a customer/friend asking about what broadband services they should be looking at

Based on the information from this site I’ve made the decision to switch to cable when my current contract runs out. At the moment i have 1Mb ADSL at home. That was AFTER an upgrade. Granted my provider is a bit pants but even with the ADSL MAX upgrade I don’t think I’m going to get any higher than about 3.5Mb due to the distance from the exchange. My cable provider is currently offering speeds of up to 10Mb and with multiple pc usage and online gaming (me!) going on in my house I need the speed!