I’d have to disagree with the original thesis, I don’t think that documents are on their way out.  I do however think that the way that information is generated is changing – documents however will still be around for portability and as a storage container for the objects for which they consist of.

I’m pretty certain that we’re going  to continue to have separate, partitioned documents stored as files that consist of images, information and other forms of media on a particular topic.  This container will be saved as a document with a particular format dependent on what the file’s purpose is (presentation, image, technical specification, memorandum, etc.) primarily for portability and to separate the content (perhaps as a  matter of record).  

While it might seem that Office Online will eventually open up an online Word editor and Google Docs continues to bolster their online editor, both of these systems require an account within the identity management store (either Microsoft or Google) to access the documents.

Lack of  identity federation alone will be part of the reason that documents continue to persist.  Many large organizations are struggling to collapse their domains and identity stores to a single system, federation is probably the last thing on their mind.  Why is Federation of identity important?  Merely for the reason that if you are not able to access the data the you seek in a Wiki page on someone else’s system, more than likely you’ll request the information be sent in a document through a means such as e-mail.

Furthermore without a specified document type, how will different applications be able to differentiate their files from any other?  Perhaps the applications will be intelligent enough to read through definition files and figure out which files are editable by their schema.  This in itself would be quite processor intensive for the document browser to read through all definition files – it becomes even more difficult in a client server environment over a WAN.

Additionally, as Spence mentions over in his blog entry, you’re going to have to have some way of versions maintained – Wiki’s can’t really do that for something like a Visio diagram or a mindmap, can they? Not quite – or at least not yet.  Last I checked each version of a Word document, even in the new DOCX format on SharePoint requried a complete copy be stored in the version history, not just the delta.

I agree that it would be more helpful to have Wiki’s for document collaboration, but this information eventually needs to be published to some format that can be sent to another party. However for Wiki’s to be useful for that document collaboration, hopefully they’ll become more flexible and have greater support for things such as MindMaps, Technical Diagrams and Specifications, and images.

Additionally, consider this – without a document to pass along to another party, how am I going to open up my portal and Wiki system to the world? How am I going to maintain a source as authoritative? If I publish my document out in a format that can have an iFilter reach into it, then it can be parsed by a search engine. Additionally, it can have some sense of non-repudiation and authenticity if it’s signed with a digital certificate.

Bottom line of my rambling, I don’t think it’s the end of documents anytime soon. I do think that they’re going to be re-engineered a bit more to be more flexible. Pretty cool what happens when you open up a docx or pptx using WinZip to see it’s text based innards.

Perhaps it would work on my Google Apps domain that I have setup for personal e-mail, right?  Unfortunately the iCalendar file (ics format) was not readable by the Google Calendar on my first attempt.  Doing a little Googling, I came across several articles that stated compatibility issues between Microsoft iCalendar reminders and other non-Microsoft iCalendar systems.

So that led me to download the iCalendar object, open it in Outlook and then save it to yet another iCalendar object, slightly reformatted which then apparently could be imported into my Google Calendar.  “Huh?”

Reading through the IETF RFC 2445, I pondered whether or not Microsoft is following the proper format to provide a well formed iCalendar object.  From the looks of it they are, however I’m perplexed as to why the Google Calendar is incapable of importing the object without having it reformatted through Outlook first.  Is it due to the fact that it’s looking for the PRODID field which looks to be missing?

The initial iCalendar reminder form Microsoft:

BEGIN:vCalendar
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:vEvent
DTSTART:20090127T173000Z
DTEND:20090127T183000Z
UID:1032396521
DTSTAMP:20090104T205527Z
DESCRIPTION:Thank you for your interest in Microsoft Events. We w
ould like to remind you of the following event: TechNet Webcast:
How Microsoft Does IT: Designing, Developing, and Deploying Share
Point Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Level 300). \n\nPlease revi
ew the information below.\n\nEvent Code: 1032396521\nEvent Name:
TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Designing, Developing, an
d Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Level 300)
\nStart Date: 1/27/2009\nStart Time: 9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific
Time (US & Canada)\nEnd Date: 1/27/2009\nEnd Time: 10:30 AM (GMT-
08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)\n\nPlease click on the followin
g link for more information regarding this Event https://msevents
.microsoft.com/cui/r.aspx?r=1300308275&c=en-US&t=4. We look forwa
rd to seeing you at the Event!
SUMMARY:Live Webcast - TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: De
signing, Developing, and Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publish
ing Portals (Level 300)
PRIORITY:3
BEGIN:vAlarm
TRIGGER:P0DT0H15M
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Reminder
END:vAlarm
END:vEvent
END:vCalendar

What I received upon exporting from Microsoft Outlook 2007:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Microsoft Corporation//Outlook 12.0 MIMEDIR//EN
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-MS-OLK-FORCEINSPECTOROPEN:TRUE
BEGIN:VEVENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
CREATED:20090104T205909Z
DESCRIPTION:Thank you for your interest in Microsoft Events. We would like
    to remind you of the following event: TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does
    IT: Designing\, Developing\, and Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publishi
    ng Portals (Level 300). \n\nPlease review the information below.\n\nEvent
    Code: 1032396521\nEvent Name: TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Desi
    gning\, Developing\, and Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Porta
    ls (Level 300)\nStart Date: 1/27/2009\nStart Time: 9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pac
    ific Time (US & Canada)\nEnd Date: 1/27/2009\nEnd Time: 10:30 AM (GMT-08:0
    0) Pacific Time (US & Canada)\n\nPlease click on the following link for mo
    re information regarding this Event https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/r.a
    spx?r=1300308275&c=en-US&t=4. We look forward to seeing you at the Event!
DTEND:20090127T183000Z
DTSTAMP:20090104T205527Z
DTSTART:20090127T173000Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20090104T205909Z
PRIORITY:1
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Live Webcast - TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Designing\,
    Developing\, and Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Leve
    l 300)
TRANSP:OPAQUE
UID:1032396521
X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//E
    N">\n<HTML>\n<HEAD>\n<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server ve
    rsion 08.00.0681.000">\n<TITLE></TITLE>\n</HEAD>\n<BODY>\n<!-- Converted f
    rom text/plain format -->\n\n<P><FONT SIZE=2>Thank you for your interest i
    n Microsoft Events. We would like to remind you of the following event: Te
    chNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Designing\, Developing\, and Deployi
    ng SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Level 300). </FONT></P>\n\n<
    P><FONT SIZE=2>Please review the information below.</FONT>\n</P>\n\n<P><FO
    NT SIZE=2>Event Code: 1032396521</FONT>\n\n<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Event Name: Te
    chNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Designing\, Developing\, and Deployi
    ng SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Level 300)</FONT></P>\n\n<P>
    <FONT SIZE=2>Start Date: 1/27/2009</FONT>\n\n<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Start Time:
    9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US &amp\; Canada)</FONT>\n\n<BR><FONT SI
    ZE=2>End Date: 1/27/2009</FONT>\n\n<BR><FONT SIZE=2>End Time: 10:30 AM (GM
    T-08:00) Pacific Time (US &amp\; Canada)</FONT>\n</P>\n\n<P><FONT SIZE=2>P
    lease click on the following link for more information regarding this Even
    t <A HREF="https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/r.aspx?r=1300308275&c=en-US&
    t=4">https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/r.aspx?r=1300308275&c=en-US&t=4</A
    >. We look forward to seeing you at the Event!</FONT></P>\n\n</BODY>\n</HT
    ML>
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:2
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGER:-PT15M
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Reminder
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Is it just me or is there some variance between the two iCalendar objects?  The Google iCalendar specification for formatting of an iCalendar object merely requires:

BEGIN: VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:< [enter ID information here] >
(other header information goes here)
BEGIN:VEVENT
(event details for individual event)
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
(event details for individual event)
END:VEVENT
END: VCALENDAR

Any thoughts on why the variance of the objects would cause an issue for the first ICS to not be importable, but the second could be after being processed by Outlook 2007?

At a minimum, remember to signup for the event to hear Spence on SharePoint

MSDN Webcast ICS
Outlook 2007 MSDN Webcast iCalendar ICS file

Now Playing: Coldplay – X & Y – Swallowed In The Sea

So without further adieu, SharePoint Dan in its infancy (maybe a year from now I’ll do an update to show how it’s changed…)

But what do the colors mean?

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

What’s in your Website?  Websites as graphs

Now Playing: Sir Simon Rattle/City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – Stravinsky: Firebird; Petrushka, etc – The Firebird – Ballet (1910 version): Lullaby (Firebird)

After a little more investigation, and looking at Intel’s G965 Express Chipset tech documents, it appears that Dell’s documentation is lacking as the chipset will support 8 GB of RAM and will support various quad core processors as well.

So what did I do?  I upgraded from my Intel E8400 Core 2 Duo Dual Core 2.13 GHz Processor to an Intel Q6600 Core 2 Duo Quad Core 2.4 GHz Processor.  Oh, and for kicks, I upgraded from 4 GB of RAM to 8 GB of RAM and installed Windows Server 2008 x64 Standard Edition as the core operating system.  Needless to say, it’s screaming.

What’s next on the shopping list?  Samsung SpinPoint F1 750 GB 32 MB Cache SATA II hard drives… it’s time to ramp up the space that’s available to work with Virtual Machines.

Where does these lead me?  Basically it provides a decent platform to be able to actual do some real testing and code development for a few different things that have been mulling around in the back of my head for the past few months.

We’ll see how this ends up working out… I think I might prolong procurement of any Mac products for the foreseeable future.

So a quick visit over to Virtual Boxes web site (http://www.virtualbox.org) and a little download magic and I was off and running setting up my first Virtual Machine using Sun’s software.

Needless to say, my first impression is that while it may not have all the fancy features that VMWare Workstation has or Microsoft Virtual PC, its small footprint makes up for it as it blazes ahead.

Additionally, it’s cross platform nature allows you to quickly and easily take a virtual machine from one platform (Mac OS-X) over to another quickly (Windows XP) without the need for exporting a machine or going through a laborious process to bring it across.

I’m sure that I’ll find some bugs in it over the next few days, but I thought it would be interesting nonetheless to try it out for the sake of being vendor neutral in the realm of virtualization.

Needless to say, "like whoa!" as Keanu would say…

Now Playing – The Crystal Method – Vegas – High Roller