If, like me, you're getting this message when trying to click a hyperlink within Outlook 2007 (on Vista RC1): "This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator." Take a...

This question has been put to me a couple of times so I thought I'd share my findings. It's not that uncommon a scenario; perhaps you want users to be able to submit a partially completed form or perhaps there are multiple roles involved in the completion...

As rebrandings go, it's unlikely to win "Most innovative product rebranding of the year" but Microsoft Expression Web Designer has been renamed to Microsoft Expression Web. Microsoft Expression Web is our professional web design tool to create and modify...

I'd be pretty pleased with myself if I ever made it onto that list so I'll bet Eileen's feeling pretty smug at the moment . Congratulations Eileen and thanks for linking to my Live Writer source code plugin . I've also managed to tidy up my tag cloud...

Jonathan very kindly mailed me and pointed me at ZoomClouds which would have done exactly what I wanted. Rather than using the Technorati API they use a Yahoo API ( the content analysis API ) and their own content analysis tool to automatically generate...

Last week I think I started to suffer from "Blog widget envy". Everywhere I looked there were location widgets, tag cloud widgets, "Today I'm feeling ...." widgets, "Listening to Genesis, Invisible Touch" widgets. Okay, so I was less envious of the latter...

To be honest, for me, I'm not sure any day was meant for running. It's like really, really hard work and I'm not sure I'm cut out for it. In a vain (either meaning of the word) attempt to lose some weight I started running a couple of years ago (actually...

Holiday season is over and that must mean it's time for the events season to kick off again!. We've got a few events lined up for September at various venues. Here are the direct links; The Web : Designing and Developing Compelling Sites and Applications...

Due to popular demand I added C++ language support to my source code format plug-in for Live Writer . The downloads now have C++ support included. tags: live writer , c++ , source code , code , format , plugin

I have to confess that I didn't plan to install Live Writer - I was quite happy with blogging from Word (which works really well) - but a couple of people commented on how good it was so I succumbed and tried it out. The instant I saw the "Web Layout...

In my last couple of posts ( here and here ), I've been talking about the goodness that is Word content controls. In particular in my last post I talked about a quick and dirty VB application I built to allow me to manipulate Word documents, attach Custom...

In my last post I referenced an excellent blog post on modonovan’s blog which talks you through how to use Word Content controls to map to custom XML. This is a really powerful concept – particularly for generating documents on the server – as there’s...

I really like the concept of content controls in Word 2007 for a couple of reasons; robustness and data-binding. They give you very granular control over which areas of a document can be modified, what content is allowed and whether those areas can be...

Microsoft Office System DevCon Videos Actually they’ve probably been there for a while and just escaped my notice. My bad. I was lucky enough to attend the conference back in March and then I was part of the UK Office DevCon in June where I delivered...

For certain fields in my application, I want to set the input mode (usually to numeric – eg for the distance, final mileage and date fields numeric makes most sense). This makes a *big* difference to the experience on the SmartPhone so take the time and...

My business mileage application serialises a variety of data (eg journeys entered, known journey distances etc) to XML which I wanted to store in a sensible location. To keep things nice and simple, I chose to store the XML files in the same location...

While I often feel like throwing my mobile phone across the office for various reasons, it was only last weekend that I realized it had become something of a sport. The UK Mobile Phone Throwing Championships are being held on 20 th August in London. It...

The feedback tool lets you tell us what you like (and don’t like) about Office 2007. You can provide comments and add a screenshot if you like by simply clicking on an icon in your Taskbar.

It saved me a bit of time at least. Back to my SmartPhone application for tracking business mileage . I’d written the client. I’d created the database. I’d done the stored procs. I’d crafted a web service (or two in fact, one to submit the data and one...

Wow, it seems like only a couple of days ago I installed the June CTP (but then I have been on holiday in Scotland and I’ve got the midgie [warning: potentially offensive language to the faint of heart] bites to prove it) but already the July CTP is available...

For those of you who joined us in Canary Wharf on Tuesday evening to see Ian , Paul and me talking about Excel Services, Forms Server, SharePoint and server-side document generation, I thought I’d post the resources links from my slide deck here. (The...

Another one of my “learnings” from developing a CF 1.0 application (which I have to say is working a treat) relates to navigation. There is no tab order property for controls in a CF 1.0 application so if your UI develops “organically” as mine did (haphazardly...

A recurring conversation I have on MSN Messenger goes along the lines of: MikeO says: Hi - SmarterChild - says: Glad to see you again, MikeO! We haven't chatted in weeks... Hope you've been well! MikeO says: Yes thanks - SmarterChild -...

Technorati Profile

I can’t see it on the MSDN website yet but if you missed out on the various Roadshow dates we’ve run over the last month or so we’re putting on one last and final one at the Microsoft Campus in Reading on the 3 rd August. Keep an eye on our upcoming events...