So, we’re finally getting around to defending ourselves against those infantile Apple ads which, let’s be frank, contain a lot of half-truths and outright lies.  However, they’ve gone unanswered and as Chris Matthews will tell you, if you leave a charge unanswered long enough, it becomes “truth”.

Here is our first “retort” to take back the argument over Microsoft products and what they will enable people to do.  It follows on the Mojave Experiment, where unassuming folks were shown a “new” Microsoft OS code-named “Mojave” and asked to compare it against what they thought Vista was like.  This was pretty smart as it showed how people have had their perceptions manipulated by Apple and others.

Forthwith:  Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld at the Shoe Store – our attempt at re-connecting with our audience.

Video: Shoe Circus

What do you think? Is this as clever as Mojave?  Does it set the stage for taking back our turf from Apple?

Via Randy Drisgill’s blog, this sage advice (as if you needed it, right?) on themes, master pages how SharePoint works to confound modifications and why you shouldn’t make any changes outside of your dev environment:

Disabling Themes on Master Pages

Turns out, the key to having SharePoint NOT apply the theme automagically is to have a master page that is NOT customized (unghosted). If you apply your custom master page from a Feature instead of customizing it with SharePoint designer, SharePoint will no longer add the meta tag and thus will not load the theme.

Word.

Just picked up this tip that you’d think would be common knowledge, but it isn’t.  And it’s pretty cool.

Say you’re having issues with Outlook – it’s not connecting or is intermittent.  What do you do?  We all know we can click the Outlook icon in the task tray, but have you tried holding down the CTRL key while doing the same?  You get two new items in the context menu:

Notice them?  Connection Status… and Test E-mail AutoConfiguration…

The first menu item brings up a dialog that provides a listing of all the server connections Outlook is maintaining for you and the status of various activities:

Test Email AutoConfiguration brings up a really handy utility for validating your connection to Exchange Server (or any other POP3/SMTP server for that matter):

All this troubleshooting magic is courtesy of the CTRL key.  Who knew?

Late-breaking news:

The SharePoint product team has announced that MOSS is now supported on SQL Server 2008.

I won’t rehash their content – hit the site and get it firsthand.  For those in the field, there are more than a few compelling features that would support a migration from SQL 2000 or 2005 – a big one is encryption, however there are of course some common-sense caveats to that.

Get them here.

I could relay the yadda-yadda on the virtues of applying the SPs, but I figure that’s being done to death out there already by more capable folks.  Ok, I’ll toss this bit of verbiage in:

1. SP1 advances the art of application development

The new ADO.NET Entity Framework feature in SP1 offers developers a model-based paradigm and a rich, standards-based framework for creating data-oriented applications shared across multiple applications and platforms. The separation of presentation, data, and business logic used in concert with a single data model will enable developers to spend less time writing plumbing code and more time refining business logic.

2. SP1 makes data-driven programming easier

SP1 offers developers support for ASP.NET Dynamic Data, which provides a rich scaffolding framework that enables rapid data-driven development. Since ASP.NET takes care of creating the presentation layer, a fully functional Website is output and ready for customization without the developer writing a single line of code. Furthermore, with ADO.NET Data Services, Web developers can create RESTful Web 2.0-style applications that have better server scalability and improved caching support.

3. SP1 is the fastest and easiest way to deploy Windows applications

With the .NET Framework Client Profile, a small subset of the Framework that powers client applications, developers can offer their end users a dramatically streamlined and rapid application download experience. In addition, improvements in SP1 result in dramatic reductions in cold start times, allowing developers to serve a broader set of customers with varying hardware profiles.