Look closely at the far left of this image:

• The computer is the original IBM PC (1981).
• The monitor looks like one of those new color monitors (a whopping 16 colors).
• The box is from Windows 3.0 (1990)
• The installation media is 5¼" floppies

Ahhh...those were the days.

The amusing point -- this image was grabbed from the screen during an installation of SQL Server SP4 (2005).

The latest article in the IntranetJournal.com series on SharePoint is up. This month, the beginnings of a how-to:

Developing a Custom Web Part, Part 1

Stay tuned!

I am honored to join the ranks of bloggers at http://www.mindsharpblogs.com -- the home of Bill English, Todd Bleeker and others. If you are new to SharePoint, this is a must-see site.

Mindsharp's FREE Deleted Items Document Library Custom List Template
Todd Bleeker

WOW!!!!

Robert Bogue has written an article titled Troubleshooting Web Parts and Deployment that discusses STSADM and WebPart CAB files. Very helpful for WebPart developers and administrators. Thanks Rob!

Mike Fitzmaurice has the most definitive list of new items.

The latest article in my series on IntranetJournal.com has been posted.

Reading and Writing RSS with SharePoint
A popular request for intranets is inclusion of current news or sports headlines. Microsoft addressed this request in its Online Web Part gallery with some Web Parts that display content from MSN. These Web Parts provide the basics from a single provider. On today's Internet, there are many other choices for information. This month, I will review a few different solutions for including part of this vast information on a SharePoint site.

Sometimes, it seems that the .MDB file will live forever. I recently had to convert some DDL so it would work against the Jet data engine. (Jet does not use ANSI SQL.) In the depths of the MSDN archive was a very useful reference series: Fundamental Microsoft Jet SQL for Access 2000. This page links to two more -- titled Intermediate and Advanced.

If you are using active generation of templates, here is a build script that invokes CodeSmith:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="unicode"?>
<project name="nant" default="compile" xmlns="http://nant.sf.net/schemas/nant.xsd">
 <property name="CodeSmith" value="cs.exe" />

 <target name="compile" depends="genruntime" description="Compile entire solution">
  <solution solutionfile="src\project.sln" configuration="release">
   <webmap>
    <map url="http://localhost/ProjectWeb" path="src\ProjectWeb" />
   </webmap>
  </solution>
 </target>
 <target name="genruntime" description="Generate O/R Classes for the runtime library">
  <exec program="${CodeSmith}" basedir="tools\codesmith" workingdir="src\ProjectWeb.Runtime">
   <arg value="/t: Templates\ClassGenerator.cst" />
   <arg value="/ps: ORClasses.xml" />
  </exec>
 </target>

This script was influenced by Mike Roberts' article How to setup a .NET Development Tree. (Thanks Mike!) I use a property to alias the CodeSmith command (cs.exe) because I kept thinking csc (which compiles C# code).