Gmail is no more a BETA product

Google apps are out of beta tags. Gmail, Google calendar, Docs and Gtalk are out of beta versions. After more than five years Google removed the beta sticker from Gmail

The Official Google Blog now proclaims: Google Apps is out of beta (yes, really) . And Matthew Glotzbach, director of product management for Google Enterprise more or less spells out that the decision has been taken for marketing reasons.

Google is keen to sell Google Apps to business users.

Are you using Google products ? Awake

Retrieve list of assemblies from GAC

Did you ever want to retrieve a list of assemblies along with their version in Global assembly cache? This will be helpful whenever we make system wide patching or updating to understand what changes happened in GAC or in case if you are troubleshooting on some other client machine if you want the version info of set of assemblies in that remote box quickly

Then this utility is a must in your toolbox(DumpUtil.exe). This console line application gives us a dump like the following

Sample output text from DumpUtil.exe
...
System.dll (1.1.4322.2407)
System.Configuration.Install.dll (1.1.4322.573)
System.Data.dll (1.1.4322.2365)
System.Data.OracleClient.dll (1.1.4322.2312)
System.Design.dll (1.1.4322.2300)
System.DirectoryServices.dll (1.1.4322.2300)
System.Drawing.dll (1.1.4322.2327)
System.Drawing.Design.dll (1.1.4322.573)
System.EnterpriseServices.dll (1.1.4322.2326)
System.EnterpriseServices.Thunk.dll (1.1.4322.2326)
...

Related link: http://aravindrises.blogspot.com/2008/08/want-to-take-dll-backup-from-gac.html

Setting up an FTP server step-by-step

In windows 2003 FTP service is not installed by default

1. Click Start, point to Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs.
2. Click Add/Remove Windows Components.
3. In the Components list, click Application Server, click Internet Information Services (IIS) (but do not select or clear the check box), and then click Details.
4. Click to select the following check boxes (if they are not already selected):
   Common Files
   File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Service
   Internet Information Services Manager

configure FTP Server for anonymous access

1. Start Internet Information Services Manager or open the IIS snap-in.
2. Expand Server_name, where Server_name is the name of the server.
3. Expand FTP Sites
4. Right-click Default FTP Site, and then click Properties.
5. Click the Security Accounts tab.
6. Click to select the Allow Anonymous Connections check box (if it is not already selected), and then click to select the Allow only anonymous connections check box.

The FTP server is now configured to accept incoming FTP requests. Copy or move the files that you want to make available to the FTP publishing folder for access. The default folder is drive:\Inetpub\Ftproot, where drive is the drive on which IIS is installed.



Now share your FTP address to the users across internet, they can access files.

STSADM SilverLight viewer

Microsoft released a cool STSADM reference widget in SilverLight which will be easy to refer quickly.

Access the widget from here

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/dd418924.aspx
       

SPHttpUtility, a hidden gem

Recently we converted a Rich text field to a plain text field in a content type which resulted in raw html tags messed up with the plain text. There are lot of options to clean a html text to a plain text. We can use Regex, a custom approach etc.

But there is an OOTB way to do it which is hidden in SPHttpUtility class. It has a method called SPHttpUtility.ConvertSimpleHtmlToText which accepts an input html string and max length of input string. This class is specific to WSS Specific Rich text field as per the documentation. Specifying -1 to the max length property will make no maximum length.

We can use this method across the site to update all metadatas to clean up the html strings

This SPHttpUtility is coming in Microsoft.Sharepoint.Utilities namespace more information can be found in MSDN

Free EBook- Virtualization For dummies

Virtualization For Dummies, Sun and AMD Special Edition explains how virtualization works and how it can benefit an organization. The book covers the kinds of issues virtualization can address and how it addresses them.

Virtualization allows you, virtually and cost-effectively, to have two or more computers, running two or more completely different environments, on one piece of hardware. This technology promises to usher in an entirely new wave of hardware and software innovation. It is also designed to enable a generation of more energy-efficient computing
Download Virtualization For dummies

Wanna give a try to Sun's virtualization product then try Virtual Box, an open source technology which comes under GNU public license runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh & openSolaris.It supports a large number of guest operating systems.

Move site collections between content databases using Central Admin

We can use scripted commands to move site collections across the content databases that we all are aware of, Recently I came across an astonishing hidden feature in Sharepoint adminsitration toolkit. 

Batch Site Manager, is that tool which is a hyperlink you will see after installing the toolkit to the MOSS box. This feature should be capable of doing all bulk operartions such as moving, locking and deleting site collections across content databases in a single web application as per MSDN.

Open Central Administration

clicking over the link will open up a new screen as follows and probably you will not see any site collections in the list. You will need to start the statistics aggregation timer job by clicking over "Click here" hyperlink which will populate all your site collections in this page

provide the details such as Target content database, Temporary file location and the schedule to start the job etc.

Yes, it can even send an email upon completion/Failure. So fire and forget. you can see a sample mail 

I did not check this functionality with very huge site collection move activity, if any one carried out please let me know :)

for more information go here

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc508982.aspx