What Can You Do With Podcasting Kit for SharePoint (PKS)?:
- Listen and watch audio/video podcasts, anywhere on your PC or mobile device (Zune, SmartPhone, or any podcasting device)
- Share content by producing your own audio/video podcasts and publish them on PKS on your own.
- Connect and engage with podcasters via your integrated instant messaging program
- Find the most relevant content using the five star rating system, tag cloud, search engine and provide your feedback via comments.
- Get automatic podcast updates by subscribing to RSS feeds fully compatible with Zune and other podcasting devices
- Simple RSS feed based on a defined podcast series
- Simple RSS feed based on a person
- Dynamic RSS feed based on search results
- Play podcasts in real-time using Microsoft® Silverlight™ and progressive playback
- Retrieve instant ROI and metrics with the ability to track the number of podcasts downloaded and/or viewed, instant feedback via rating system and comments, and subscribers via the RSS feed
- Access the richness of SharePoint to extend the solution: workflows, community sub-sites, access rights, editorial and more
- Customize your own PKS User Experience
Now that you know what it does, why would you use it?
If you or your organizations are interested in podcasting, have SharePoint Server 2007 deployed and about to develop your own podcasting solution then look no further. PKS will save you time, reduce your risk of developing a solution ground-up, and of course will save you money. Moreover, you will find on codeplex a vibrant community of people, organizations and partners who are available to help you, and share with you their own experiences. We strongly recommend that you work with an integration partner for the deployment and maintenance of your own PKS environment. We have listed several partners that we know, but you could just ask your local partner or IT departement to help you out.
PKS is not a traditional Microsoft Product in a sense that it is distributed with its source code, using the Public License license and free of charge (if you already own SharePoint Server 2007). It is not supported by Microsoft, and we recommend that you ask your integration partner for such a support. Since the PKS’s code is distributed any partner who understands development for SharePoint 2007 will be able to deliver this support for you.
PKS Detailed Overview Slide Deck
Silverlight 2.0 Playback Demonstration (1 minute podcast)
Silverlight 2.0 Reliable Upload Demonstration (2 minutes podcast)
Filtering in PKS (39 second podcast)
Change Values in Taxonomy (2 minute podcast)
Add Your Own Categories (3:25 minute podcast)
I would have to say that Microsoft SharePoint could be considered the foundation of the product I work on at Microsoft, PerformancePoint Server 2007.
That being the case, I try to keep myself very aware of what’s going on in that space. Last night I got an email from Google advertising a new service that was available to me as a Google Apps customer. The Announcement read…
Greetings admins!
Today, we’re excited to announce the introduction of Google Sites as part of Google Apps.
Google Sites makes creating a team web site as easy as editing a document. You can quickly gather a variety of information in one place — including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and gadgets — and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, your entire organization, or the world.
As of today, Google Sites is enabled for philoking.com, which means your users can get started immediately. To help you announce this new offering to your users, we’ve included a template message below that you’re welcome to use.
It didn’t take long to realize that sounded a whole lot like SharePoint. Now Google has already been trying to take on Microsoft Office with cloud services like Google Docs, and to be honest it’s a pretty impressive product given the complexity of having an entirely web based spreadsheet solution.
So what does this new service offer exactly? Well I took some time to play with it and some of the highlights are as follows…
Google has 5 page types for your sites:
- Web Page allows you to create basic static content, you can format it with the basic Bold, Italic, Underline, Font Color options, define tables, insert links, images, Google Docs, Picasa slideshows, Gadgets, video and more.
- Dashboard allows you to create something similar to iGoogle on a page within the site, useful for a landing page, news, etc.
- Announcements duplicates the formatting function of Web Page, but adds in the ability to date thread them so you can use it like a calendar of sorts. Oddly enough I see no integration with Google Calendar which seems like a common sense fusion.
- File Cabinet is a file repository complete with subscription capability and commenting. I looked through the help and could find no documentation on file size limitations, for uploading or total storage.
- List is very much like SharePoint. You have 3 standard templates for Action Items, Issues and Unit Status, as well as attachments and comments, and a free form “Create Your Own” list feature which allows you to create a totally custom layout. Missing from this seems to be any raw url to access the list or any API to expose it as a data source of any kind.
The site itself is quite customizable, and in cases of cross geo teams who need to collaborate, even with actual Office documents, I can see it as a real competitor. The place it falls short, which is the majority of SharePoint installs in my opinion, is extensability.
There appears to be no actual API, no way to access web services to extend it with additional functionality and most importantly no way to use it as a data source for any other tools or products. I am sure that this is clearly on the Radar as this is only a beta and will probably continue to grow.
I did see a few performance issues and when testing it with Google Docs integration I saw some problems with formatting spreadsheets, especially with charts into your pages.
The bottom line is that this is one impressive piece of web coding. Cross browser it’s beautiful, the feature set is incredibly rich for a free product. The question I ask is:
How many are going to trust Google and “the cloud” with their data 100%. If you place your life in a site and it dies, the service is discontinued or whatever disaster you can dream up, having no access to the data and no traditional way to back it up or export it to another tool, that’s a pretty scary proposition.
If you would like to view my test site, you can access it here http://sites.google.com/a/philoking.com/testsite/lkists
If you would like to play with it, send me your Google ID and I will set you up access to modify it.
My co-worker found a scary little footnote:
Content you create with Google Sites may, if you choose, be read, copied, used and redistributed by people you know or, again if you choose, by people you do not know. Use care when including sensitive personal information in content you share, such as social security numbers, financial account information, home addresses or phone numbers.
From the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog:
I’m very pleased to announce that the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) 1.0 is now available at http://www.codeplex.com/AKS. The AKS, pre-announced a few months ago, provides templates, master pages, controls, and web parts along with technical documentation that enable designers and developers to advance the accessibility of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 based web sites and applications for people with disabilities, especially those who are vision impaired.
To reiterate the approach that we’re taking with the AKS, it is being developed as a set of building blocks rather than an end-to-end solution. We expect many SharePoint partners to take various pieces of the kit and integrate them into their respective product or service offerings while some customers will integrate particular components of the kit into their SharePoint deployment processes. Furthermore, HiSoftware and Microsoft will jointly establish and nurture a community of SharePoint site designers and developers that’s focused on accessibility advancement and standards compliance. There’s currently a web forum and an e-mail distribution list that you can join.
The 1.0 release was postponed by a few weeks in order for the technical documentation to be finished. We will provide details about the upcoming AKS 1.1 release very soon.
Please take a look at the AKS 1.0 and give us your feedback.
In the next year, Microsoft is intending to give away a new product dubbed “Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express.” If you are not familiar with the Express strategies at Microsoft, look into the Visual Studio initiative and be sure to listen to my Podcast with Dan Fernandez, Product Manager for Visual Studio Express.
The product will enable workers to see a collection of search results spanning databases, internal computer systems and the Internet. There will be a paid version that is more scalable, but the free version will offer small businesses capabilities that were previously very expensive.
“We really believe enterprise search is at a tipping point,” said Jared Spataro, group product manager for enterprise search. “We really think people will look back on this time as the time when search went from just being a consumer tool to one that businesses can harness.”
Look for a release candidate version Tuesday and the final version and paid version next year.
Beyond internal search, expect integration with Google News, Wikipedia and Businessweek as well as integration with Windows Live.com search engine.
The new products are a derivative of Microsoft Sharepoint Server.
