HDR Panorama on Samos, Greece

HDR Panorama

Since I live in Lucerne, I have been taking a lot of pictures from the mountains; I'll post some of the panoramas I created here. The first was taken on Rigi, Queen of the mountains. The second one was taken on Melchsee-Frutt.

Unexpected Error

This morning I wanted to quickly look up some information in a web application and was greeted with this message:

"Unexpected Error
The process did not complete. Details should follow.
An internal error doesn't allow to continue this process"

That's it. No contact information or any other way to report this issue. Calling the helpdesk does not help either because I don't even know the name of this application as the URL just contains three letters "SMT" and - frankly - I don't really care how that application is called.

But what really bothers me is the fact that the developer (and architect) of this system settled for unexpected errors to happen, instead of catching them and leading the user to a useful message where they could report the issue and get help.

Note to developers: Nobody blames you if there are bugs in your piece of software. But you haven't done your job if there are any unexpected errors not handled as professionally as we expect the rest of your system to be.

Why did Microsoft cripple Groove?

I'm currently trying to use Microsoft Groove 2007 as a collaboration tool to gather requirements. What I like about tools like Groove is:

- You can open and edit an entry without having to start an additional application (like word, excel)
- You can copy and paste pictures (screenshots) directly into an entry
- You don't have to save and re-attach changed files
- You can work offline
- Groove works inside and outside of our network out-of-the-box
- We have (as a Microsoft Gold Partner) 100 licenses available

What I don't understand about the current offering is that a lot of tools available in the last version have been removed:

The following tools and toolsets are no longer available for adding to new or existing workspaces: Contact Manager, Discussion, Document Review, Outliner, Task Manager, Text, Tic-Tac-Toe, Web Links, Welcome Page, Advanced Project Toolset, and Mobile Workspace for SharePoint.

(Source: Microsoft Office Groove Help)


There is also a large set of other features that have been removed:

Co-editing of Word documents.

Presenting of PowerPoint slide shows.

File viewers in the Groove Files Tool.

Outlook Calendar integration with the Groove Calendar and Groove Meetings tools.

Launching Netmeeting.

Sending an Outlook email thread to a Groove workspace.
(Source: Microsoft Office Groove Help)

There is a button to browse online for additional tools; but the webpage you are directed to, doesn't contain any tools. Even for adding custom tools, the only option seem to be forms - but the Infopath forms integration is very limited.

Now I do understand that Microsoft wants to streamline it's offering, but this seems like crippling an existing application into oblivion. What is the problem of offering different ways to do the same thing? I see that presenting PowerPoint slide shows conflicts with Microsoft Office Live offerings - but if users already pay for a Groove license, why can't they use that feature in the application they already work in? There are also a lot of similar services available in Sharepoint; but there I need to be online (except when using Groove to sync Sharepoint files - note the irony) and I always have to start external applications to do anything. It seems to me, that Microsoft bought Groove to make it disappear.

Panorama in HDR

I just came back from Kite-Surfing in Fuerteventura - and here is my favorite picture:

It is my first panorama in HDR; hope you like it. The hotel was the Melià Gorriones near Costa Calma.