Microsoft to Stop VB6 Support?

Author: George Porzuc
Ok folks -

I have heard that MS is getting ready to stop support for VB6 is this correct? I have a product that uses VB6 as the base and need to know if we need to do a rewrite to .NET – already have some issues with COM+ not working any longer… and help would be apprecitated.

Thanks
George Porzuc
george@desksync.com
www.desksync.com

Looking for good people?

PartnerPoint has partnered with the Microsoft® Students to Business (S2B) team again to drive awareness of their incredible service to our members. The Microsoft® Students to Business (S2B) team helps you locate qualified entry-level and internship candidates with Microsoft skills for your business. See more here:

http://www.partnerpoint.com/Communities/S2BProgram/tabid/542/Default.aspx

TripIt.com, a very cool travel site

You may have recently received an email invite from me to join and connect to me thru a new site called TripIt (www.tripit.com) . Although I think the social networking aspect of TripIt is pretty cool, and I would like to connect to you if you want, I am more impressed by their technology. This is an impressive application.

If you are like me and travel a lot, you understand how difficult it is to organize, and make readily available, your travel itinerary, especially if your trips include multiple flights, cities, hotels, etc. It is just difficult. This site does it perfectly.

All you do is send a copy of any confirmation email you have, from your airline, hotel, car rental, or travel site like Travelocity to plans@tripit.com. It figures out who you are, parses the appropriate information from the email, and creates a beautiful iternary for you, and in seconds.  Here is a sample which I created by simply forwarding Southwest confirmation emails from previous trips:

Another cool feature is the “TripIt To Me” feature.  If you want to retrieve any part of your itinerary while on the road, simply send an email to plans@tripit.com with a specific keyword in the body, and TripIt will decipher the request and return the info via email.  For example, an email with “get trip” sent will return your entire trip itinerary in seconds.  Here is a Wallet Card Command List they provide:

So, its these features that excite me the most.  The social features are nice as well but pale a bit in comparison to the above technology.  You can share trip details with others, view their trip info if they invite you, see who will be in the same place while your there, see who has trips coming up and to where, and see how much other people travel… all nice, but not earth shattering.

Thks!

New SEO Webcast Series

PartnerPoint is now offering a new series of webcasts on Search Engine Optimization designed specifically for Microsoft Partners. These webcasts are designed to give you valuable training and tips you can apply immediately to your web properties which should improve your site traffic and lead flow.

David Foreman

PartnerPoint’s SEO partner is Interactive Limited, LLC. Interactive Limited’s founder and CEO Dave Foreman will be the instructor for the new SEO series of webcasts.

In addition to being responsible for PartnerPoint’s SEO and SEM strategies, Dave has been focused recently on working with Microsoft partners to help optimize their web properties performance. In addition, Dave has been asked by Microsoft to speak at Several Partner Events around the topic of Search Engine Optimization.

The first in this series have been scheduled and our open for registration. You can register or learn more here:

www.partnerpoint.com/NewsBlogs/SEOWebcastSeries/tabid/924/Default.aspx

Thks!

A.M. Best eFusion Webinar – Value Centric E-Commerce

Here is a link to a webcast that I was part of for A.M. Best on Value Centric E-Commerce in the Insurance Industry, thru my work with our DoublePositive company.  I think the content is good, and I am very impressed with the tool they used to present this recorded webcast.  It is a service called YuDu (www.yudu.com), and creates a great after-the-fact presentation of a recorded webcast.

http://publishing.yudu.com/Atxa7/EFusionWebinar3EC/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=

New LinkedIn Applications Announced

Well, I got the formal notification from LinkedIn today that they have launched their eagerly awaited Applications, and I thought I would let you know in case you had’nt heard.

LinkedIn Application Sample Screen Shot

I LOVE the idea of having more ways to customize our presence on LinkedIn, similar to what we can do on FaceBook, and I really hope they extend this funtionality to their Groups since our PartnerPoint Group is getting so much usage these days (over 100 active discussions going on now).

I must report that as of this morning, I have been unable to get any of the Applications to work on my profile.  I am hoping that it is simply an issue of the third party Application vendors servers being hammered with traffic since LI just made the announcement, but we’ll see.  If there is an issue, I am sure it will be fixed quickly since they have made the annoucement public.  I have read some blogs from users that seem to suggest others are getting them to work fine, so maybe its just my old 8088 PC acting up.

I plan to add many of the apps on my profile and play around with them a bit, so if you’d like to see them in action before you add them, feel free to send me a connect request.

Here is the email annoucement I got this morning:

Dear Brian,

Today we’re announcing many more ways to interact with your network on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a new way to create projects and collaborate, share information, customize your profile, or gain key insights, the new LinkedIn Applications deliver.

Click here and you’ll be able to add applications that enable you to:

Work collaboratively with your network.

• Box on LinkedIn: Share files and collaborate with your network.
• Huddle on LinkedIn: Private workspaces to collaborate with your network on projects.

Share information and keep up to date with your network.

• Amazon on LinkedIn: Discover what your network is reading.
• TripIt on LinkedIn: See where your network is traveling.
• SixApart on LinkedIn: Stay up to date with your network’s latest blog posts.

Present yourself and your work in new ways.

• Google Docs on LinkedIn: Embed a presentation on your profile.
• SlideShare on LinkedIn: Share, view and comment on presentations from your network.
• WordPress on LinkedIn: Promote your blog and latest posts.

Gain key insights that will make you more effective.

• Company Buzz by LinkedIn: See what people are saying about your company.

Get started by clicking here to visit the Application Directory and add any of the applications listed above.

Regards,
The LinkedIn Team

New PartnerPoint FaceBook Widget – Point Partners to PartnerPoint :->

We have added a cool new feature to your Facebook account if you have added our PartnerPoint Community Application .  If you haven’t added this yet and are curious, you can click on the previous link to learn more.  We have about 2,200 member installs to date.

This new feature will now show a PartnerPoint icon in the box that comes up when you send someone a message thru FaceBook.  It looks like this:

If you click this link, and then click “Attach”, it will append a PartnerPoint image to the bottom of your message.  If you are sending a message to someone in the technology sector who you think may benefit by our services, please consider adding this as a simple way to grow awareness.  The more active members we have, the more Microsoft and our other Vendor Partners will listen to us.

Though I do recognize the self serving nature of this request, it is a pretty cool app that utilizes the Viral strength of FaceBook, and its completely optional obviously…

As always, I’m eager to hear your thoughts, comments, complaints, and compliments.. :->

Brian

Recipricol Link Update

We recently asked our members to consider adding a link to our community on their websites, and the response was overwhelming.  I would like to thank all of you that participated.  It is greatly appreciated.  As promised, I have added a link for each of you on our new Member Spotlight page which you can see here:

http://www.partnerpoint.com/PartnerPoint/MemberSpotlight/tabid/509/Default.aspx

If you paticipated and dont see your company listing, I apologize and just let me know and we’ll get it added.  Also, I wanted to provide the newly updated link design here for those of you that had problems with the last version we provided.  It looks like this:

And here is the appropriate code:

———————————————————-

<table cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”0″ width=”150″ bgcolor=”#ffffff” border=”0″>
    <tbody>
        <tr>
            <td align=”center” colspan=”2″ cellpadding=”2″><a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.partnerpoint.com”><img height=”36″ alt=”PartnerPoint | An Online Community of Microsoft Partners – Find Microsoft Partners” width=”150″ border=”0″ src=”http://www.partnerpoint.com/portals/0/images/logo_link.gif” /></a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td align=”center” rowspan=”2″ cellpadding=”2″><img height=”1″ alt=”" width=”41″ src=”http://www.partnerpoint.com/portals/0/images/spacer.gif” /></td>
            <td align=”center” cellpadding=”2″><img height=”1″ alt=”" width=”109″ src=”http://www.partnerpoint.com/portals/0/images/spacer.gif” /></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td cellpadding=”2″><a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.partnerpoint.com”><font face=”Tahoma” color=”#e97e17″ size=”1″>An Online Community<br />
            of Microsoft Partners</font></a></td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

————————————————————

Thks!
Brian

PartnerPoint – An Online Community of Microsoft Partners

LinkedIn Upgrades

As you are probably aware, LinkedIn has released quite a few new features lately.  One new set of features was the upgraded Group functionality that we have been eagerly awaiting.  It is a great start for sure, and I hope they continue to upgrade it (For example, I wish it was easier to tell what was new since my last visit, and I hope they include these new Discussions in the searching capability).

Our group is quite active on the new Group Forums. Over 2,900 of our members have joined our LinkedIn Group, and in the first week since the launch, we have 19 different “threads” going already.  You can see our group here:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2393&trk=hb_side_g

Also, I ran across a great blog from the LinkedIn Team, with a good video explaining some of the new features in their new release… you should check it out:

http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2008/02/whats-new-at-li.html

Thks!
Brian

PartnerPoint – An Online Community of Microsoft Partners

Partner2Partner Email List & Marketplace launched

Based on requests and feedback from our FaceBook members, we have created and launched our Partner2Partner Email List and Marketplace.  This will allow our members to send messages to other members, with us moderating the process.  All members can submit a message for other members.  We will combine messages and forward to the group on a regular basis.  Also, all messages are kept on our Marketplace for exposure to visitors to our portal as well.  You can view the Marketplace and submit your message here:

http://www.partnerpoint.com/PartnerPointHome/Partner2PartnerMarketplace/tabid/731/Default.aspx