Its the first day of the SharePoint Conference 2008 and I am missing quite a bit by not being there.  After reading my daily SharePoint blog posts and news, a few buzz worthy news items are brought to my attention:

• Microsoft SharePoint Online by Microsoft Online Services

  Based off of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Online is familiar and easy to use, and it enables collaboration within the applications your users already know.  Additional features that are included: Single sign-on capability, Forefront anti-virus scanning and web form / phone based Teir-2 support for IT Administrators.  The service offering will be provided in two flavors: Standard and Dedicated.  If you would like to sign up for the beta, register here.  Another site that points to this page is MOS Beta.In addition to Microsoft SharePoint Online, they have just introduced Office Live Meeting 2007, Exchange Hosted Services, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Office Communications Online

• Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint

  We have all been looking at ways to integrate Silverlight into SharePoint, Microsoft has just answered that question, with this new offering.  “This Blueprint provides a helper assembly and sample Web Parts that are built by using the helper assembly to access SharePoint data sources from a Silverlight application. The helper assembly includes a wrapper class that hosts Silverlight and acts as a Web Part. Developers can build additional Web Parts on Silverlight by using the Blueprint, or they can modify the helper assembly themselves. SharePoint Products and Technologies and Silverlight are supported by Microsoft, but the Blueprint bits are not supported. They will instead be made available as shared source.”

  • MSDN Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint - lists what is the blueprint and what is offered by Microsoft
  • Silverlight for SharePoint Blueprint - explore the 6 different samples that are available for you; included are videos, code walkthroughs, visual studio solutions and setup instructions
  • Codeplex Microsoft Software-plus-Services Blueprints - a series of open source frameworks and workflow-based guidance packages. As a starting point for both architects and developers who are building real solutions,, each Software-plus-Services Blueprint includes source code and/or utilities, guidance, structured step-by-step workflow-based guidance and tools delivered within Visual Studio 2008
  • Channel9 Software Plus Services Blueprints wiki
• Flickr SharePoint Conference 2008 Pictures - if like me and you could not attend the SharePoint Conference, then why not feel like your there by checking out all the pictures that are being tagged with spc2008

Last week was very hectic for me as I was attending the Heroes Happen {Here} toronto event (sold out) and the Toronto Code Camp (700+ registrants).   I was also fortunate enough to contribute to both events:

• Heroes Happen {Here} Canadian Community site

  the designed by me (Kanwal Khipple) with the help of Muhsin Shahid. Mark Zanoski assisted with content and Bill Brockbank helped out tremendously with the server configuration and administration.  You can read about it @ Share Your Experiences at Heroes Happen Here Events!!

• Toronto Code Camp - I was tasked with creating a PowerPoint template for all the presenters to use.  If there is a request to see the template, I will share it

That’s all for now, this month, we will have another contest, weather web part and even some SharePoint branding samples.