RSS Feeder .NET is a good open source RSS reader with Outlook integration. The nice thing is that you can manage and read outside Outlook or from within Outlook. And of course, because the articles are stored in Outlook, it integrates nicely with MSN Desktop Search so I can search from the desk bar.

Some other features:

• Outlook style view
• Daily blog paper: newspaper style reading
• Export / import OPML

Check it out!

The link below shows the products from WinApp. One of their tools, Echo, looks promising. We have been looking for a product that can easily change metadata across multiple libraries. It looks like Echo can do this.

Winapp technology: smart tools for SharePoint

Check out the article below about new features in Windows 2003 R2 and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)

Window Server 2003 R2, what’s new with Active Directory?

To easily add tabs to web part pages, use the Easy Tabs Web Part. It is a sample so full source code is provided. There is a cab in the download that you can install with stsadm -o addwppack.

An simple example of what it can do. The All Slides tab provides a view on a document library with a form to filter.

The Slides by product tab shows the document library again but grouped by product.

All the web parts are actually on the same page. The tabs web part just hides and shows web parts depending on the tab you select. All very simple but effective.

When I am working on a document that needs to be saved in a Sharepoint document library, I don’t want to work on the server the whole time. I certainly don’t want to do this from home because everytime I save the document, it adds to my upload limit. And it takes way too long if the document grows to >2MB.

So I needed a way to work locally on the document (on my home desktop or company laptop) and when I feel like it, put the document in the document library.

I could work locally and then just upload the document to the library. Or I could open the library as a web folder and drop it in. But there has to be an easier way. After searching a bit on the net, and reading some blogs, I saw a post about using the good old Windows briefcase.

So, what to do?

• Map a drive letter to the document library (you knew you could do that right?): net use Y: \\server.domain.com\sites\sitename\doclib can do that for you. Technically, this does not require a VPN connection because HTTP is used. However, since it is not safe, you better do this over a VPN connection. See bottom of this post to know how to map a drive to an https location.
• Next, create a briefcase in Windows. I put mine on the desktop.
• Drag and drop the document from the drive letter (Y: ) to the briefcase.
• Now edit your document in the briefcase and when you want to sync, click the Update All or Update Selection button in the briefcase.

In the briefcase, it looks like this (click the thumbnail):

You can easily see the status and sync when needed. Great!!!

One more thing. If you would like to map a drive letter to https://server.domain.com/sites/sitename/doclib then you should use an application like WebDrive. It is like Novell’s NetDrive application but enhanced with many more features. Novell’s latest version of NetDrive does not even work on my system. But WebDrive works great. Too bad it costs around 50$.

After a tip from a colleague, I decided to check out Rojo, a web-based RSS reader. I am glad I did because it is one of the best I have seen so far. 

Thanks to Greg for the tip.

Rojo

Check out the tools on this site. XSync looks especially interesting. I just need to find some time to try them. ;-)

Yside

Check out this article to find out how to install a free 3rd party SSL certificate from StartCom.

The end of the article has info on how to easily deploy the root certificate to your users.

Check out the link below to find out more about new features in WSS 3.0. A lot of my annoyances with WSS 2.0 will be erased. Here is my list of annoyances:

- templates in WSS are too difficult to change
- ghosted/unghosted pages when you edit pages with Frontpage or using WebDAV
- single item security
- users seeing buttons and links they don't have access to
- no recycle bin out of the box
- in general: just too damned difficult to customize

Judging from the list of improvements, most of this stuff will be improved. Can't wait to see that.

Link to article

Take a look at this enhanced Sharepoint search product. When you find a result with Sharepoint, the product can show the location in the document with hit highlighting. Check out the demo at the link below.

BA-Insight - Enhanced Search for SharePoint

Some interesting information about WSS SP2 can be found at the link below. At last, it is supported to bind a virtual server to a fixed IP which is useful for multiple virtual servers in combination with SSL.

To play with a beta version, you can use the Windows 2003 R2.

File Attachment: WSS SP2 in R2 Walkthrough.doc (90 KB)