Over the last few days, I was experimenting with ways to create a snazzy looking dashboard using MOSS 2007 . Among the various options, I found a pretty cool option using XCelsius (Thanks Will, for the pointer). I downloaded the trial version to see how...

Store Managers, District Managers and HQ can benefit greatly from reacting to business conditions on the fly. They need to be aware of changing business conditions and be able to see how the business is reacting, understand what changes need to be made...

I work with several virtual teams and each one of them has a collaboration site built on WSS. Each of the teams have calendars for meetings, deadlines and other team events. I find the Link to Outlook option extremely useful in such cases, to help me...

Impulse buying can account for a significant percentage of all supermarket purchases (I've seen different research reports peg it between 20% to 60%. One of the latest reports puts it closer to 20% See article ). Market Basket Analysis enables retailers...

The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) announced that it has launched the SOA Blueprint for Retail project, a program that will provide retail businesses with specific guidelines and best practices for implementing a service-oriented architecture...

Data Mining is frequently described as "the process of extracting valid, authentic, and actionable information from large databases." In other words, data mining derives patterns and trends that exist in data. These patterns and trends can be collected...

Retailers have been exploring several technologies for proximity marketing within the retail store. This has ranged from using Text Messaging to using RFID. I came across an interesting technology (Thanks Marty :) ) that I thought bypasses the challenges...

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. 3D printing is achieved using additive processes, where an object is created by laying down successive layers of material. With the possibility...

I develop and manage an internal portal based on Sharepoint for our team. One of the form libraries uses data published via InfoPath Forms. My users requested that they be able to launch the Infopath form without really going to the form library, but...

1.        Department Store Chain Speeds Reporting, Saves $600,000 a Year in Technology Costs : Florida-based Stein Mart, a large department store chain, wanted faster data reporting and new analysis capabilities. It switched...

I’ve been getting the feeling that my family is getting pretty geeky with being in close proximity to Microsoft, when my wife and I started communicating via email and IM ... at home :). It took on a new level when my seven year old daughter sent me this...

I'm working on building a Media Center pc for myself , but havent gone very far with the process as yet 'cos of a busy schedule. I hope to complete building in March ... yeah its a looong time :). I've currently got: WinTV -PVR-250MCE NTSC Ahanix D5 Media...

I just setup my dev box for developing Sharepoint Webparts (after having to rebuild my box due to a hard disk crash) and documented the steps that I went through. The machine that I do development on does not have Sharepoint installed. I copied...

The Connected Consumer: Profiling Change and Behavior in Today's Economy May 16, 2012 2:00pm ET/ 11:00am PT Retailers are experiencing a tectonic shift in the balance of power towards consumers. Armed with mobile technology and ever more information,...

This is an excellent whitepaper for understanding the challenges and solution for Supply Chain Collaboration as implemented by the Entertainment and Devices (EDD) division in Microsoft. EDD leverages a complex supply chain of over 300 partners, suppliers...

The Dashboard spy listed a pretty interesting Dashboard on Retail Store Operations . You can see a demo of the dashboard at CLICK HERE . Dashboard/Portal/Workbench information from Microsoft: Store Workbench Solution for the Retail Industry ...

Last weekend, I crewed on the Madrugador , a CAL 40, for the Winter Vashon Regatta around Vashon Island . Working with me on Spinnaker and Jib trim I met, Maurice Prather , THE Sharepoint -Blogger. Then & there began my education on sail trim, tide...

I met up with BrightWork today to evaluate their solution BrightWork MSF . The solution provides templates/webparts for Sharepoint to help organizations manage project management processes using the Microsoft Solutions Framework .

Ive been setting up a Sharepoint demo and found the following useful iFilters for PDF and ONE files. If you want to search through the content in PDF files using Sharepoint, the iFilter at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2611 would...

Here are Vic Miles (Industry Technology Strategist within Microsoft’s Retail Industry Team) perspectives on the Microsoft Build conference highlights and what it means to the retail industry: (Thanks for sharing, Vic) 1. An innovation bridge -- Tablet...

At the NRF 07, I got a chance to look at the OTTO Store Application, a virtual store built using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 and the .NET Framework 3.0 components: Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, and Windows CardSpace...

Several years ago I worked on a demo that used MapPoint for scheduling. The concept was to import a list of contacts/customers into MapPoint and plan a route with my hotel/office as the starting point and end point, and the contact addresses being the...

I found a pretty interesting tool called DateLens that is an excellent user interface for Outlook calendars. Its great for working with monthly, weekly or yearly calendars. The joint research between the university of Maryland and Microsoft Research can...