SharePoint 2010 and Azure

• General Site (link)
• Case Studies - see company links under case study section of site
• Sharepoint and Azure: Collaboration in the Cloud PowerPoint (link)
• SharePoint and Azure Development Primer (link) 

SharePoint 2007 Administration tools

There are multiple free and paid tools available for SharePoint administration. Most commonly used free tools are - SPAdmin Toolkit by Microsoft and Sushi hosted at codeplex. There are some strong SP admin solutions provided by vendors such as AvePoint, Quest and Metalogix . 

Here is a list of commonly used SP Admin solutions you might find useful - 

Free Solutions

By Microsoft (SharePoint administration toolkit)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cd2d09a7-1159-4d40-be1c-8efab1345381&displaylang=en

By AvePoint
http://www.avepoint.com/sharepoint-monitor-docave/

At codeplex;
Developer and Administrator tools
http://spdat.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=20336

At codeplex
Timer job administration tools
http://sptimerjobadmin.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=28475

Miscellaneous

http://eb.net.nz/blog/post/2008/08/03/System-Administration-Tools-for-SharePoint.aspx

Paid Solutions 

By AvePoint
http://www.avepoint.com/sharepoint-administration-docave/

By Quest
http://www.quest.com/sharepoint/administration.aspx

By Metalogix
http://www.metalogix.net/Company/News/ByYear/2009/Metalogix-Simplifies-and-Automates-SharePoint-Management-Tasks/

By Bamboo Solutions
http://store.bamboosolutions.com/ps-103-5-bamboo-sharepoint-administration-suite.aspx

 

By Axceler
http://www.axceler.com/downloads/controlpoint.html

By Idera
http://www.idera.com/Products/SharePoint/

SharePoint Online and Office 365

SharePoint Online and Office 365 Microsoft Office 365 delivers the power of cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes, helping to save time, money and free up valued resources. Check out this video

 

http://office365.microsoft.com/en-US/online-services.aspx

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/Videos.aspx?VideoID=29 

 

Office 365 Integration Coming To Windows Phone 7

Microsoft Learning Training Is Now Available on YouTube

Microsoft Learning Training Is Now Available on YouTube

Visit the Microsoft Learning YouTube channel

Training and Certification Offerings from Microsoft for the Cloud

Training and Certification Offerings from Microsoft for the Cloud:

Most IT professionals and developers will need to gain new skills to support cloud computing. Microsoft is ready to help with new and updated cloud-related certifications and training. Learn more.

Read the full article »

Rich Controls and Themes in Silverlight Toolkit

Rich Controls in Silverlight Toolkit

Silverlight Toolkit is a Microsoft project offering many rich controls, components, and utilities that can help us to enhance our Silverlight UI (User Interface). As we want to create a very attractive UI for SharePoint, it is convenient to get familiar with its features.

Here are steps to see the controls in action and to change the values for many of their properties.

1.  Select Start | All Programs | Microsoft Silverlight 4 Toolkit April 2010 | Toolkit Samples and your default web browser will display a web page with a Silverlight application displaying a list of the controls organized in ten categories as follows:

§  Controls

§  Data

§  DataForm

§  Data Input

§  DataVisualization

§  Input

§  Layout

§  Navigation

§  Theming

§  Toolkit

2.  Click on a control name under the desired category and the right panel will display the control with different values assigned for its properties, creating diverse instances of the control. For example, the following screenshot shows many instances of the Rating control under the Input category.

      Click on the buttons shown at the bottom of the web page and you will be able to see both the XAML and the C# code used to create the sample for the control

Themes in Silverlight

Themes are:

§  Bubble Creme

§  Bureau Black

§  Bureau Blue

§  Expression Dark

§  Expression Light

§  Rainier Purple

§  Rainier Orange

§  Shiny Blue

§  Shiny Red

§  Twilight Blue

§  Whistler Blue

Click on Theme Browser under the Theming category and you will be able to select one of the themes shown in the previous list to preview the look-and-feel of many controls.

See sample Silverlight tool kit from http://www.silverlight.net/content/samples/sl4/toolkitcontrolsamples/run/default.html

Silverlight Toolkit includes 11 themes that allow us to change and improve the overall look-and-feel for our   Silverlight UI.

SharePoint 2010 training

SharePoint 2010 training developed by the product team https://www.sharepointignite.com/ . It is free.

Silverlight benefits with SharePoint 2010 and to setup development environment for Silverlight application.

This article shows you overview of Silverlight benefits with SharePoint 2010 and to setup development environment for Silverlight application.

Benefits of Integrating Silverlight with SharePoint

§   Silverlight RIAs can offer a rich user experience. You can take full advantage of the rich visual capabilities offered by Silverlight and include them in a SharePoint site. For example, you can offer an interactive balanced scorecard with animated graphs, rich navigation capabilities, and context menus.

§  Silverlight supports Smooth Streaming technology, which lets you host and deliver HD video from your IIS servers, including SharePoint.

§  Silverlight 3 has Out-of-Browser (OOB) feature. OOB lets you install and run your Silverlight application out of the browser on the local machine. By surfacing the OOB application on the start menu or desktop, you give a user a more desktop-application-like feel. You can also detect your online status and respond accordingly—for example, caching data locally. The OOB features in Silverlight 4 have expanded this capability to allow your OOB applications to run with full trust and instantiate COM objects.

§   Silverlight feature allows Silverlight controls to communicate with other running Silverlight controls. This means that you can create complex applications that work together as single applications.

§  SharePoint 2010 contains a number of Silverlight features out of the box. A Silverlight Web Part lets you add a Silverlight application to your SharePoint site simply by adding a Web Part and setting the path to the Silverlight application’s .XAP file.

§  Efficient applications: As you can work with the power offered by the client, you can process data without the need to make requests to the server all the time. This way, you can create load-balanced solutions.

§  Access to the Client OM (Client Object Model): When you have to access data and services offered by the SharePoint 2010 server, you don't need to create your own complex infrastructure. There is no need to add additional layers. Lots of the processing can be pushed down to the client.

§  Leverage your existing Silverlight knowledge, components, and applications: You can build new capabilities quickly from existing Silverlight components and applications, integrating them with SharePoint 2010.

Development Environment Setup for Silverlight:

1.     Download the files and installed it in below order.

Application's name	Download link	File name	Description
Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b3deb194-ca86-4fb6-a716-b67c2604a139	Silverlight4_Tools.exe	Install Silverlight 4 Tools in order to create Silverlight 4 applications in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE, using XAML and C#. It will co-exist with previous Silverlight SDKs (Software Development Kits). This new version of Silverlight Tools also includes the WCF RIA Services package.
Silverlight 4 Offline Documentation (in CHM format)	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=B6127B9B-968C-46C2-8CB6-D228E017AD74&displaylang=en	Silverlight_Documentation.EXE	This is Silverlight 4 official documentation.
Expression Blend for .NET 4	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=88484825-1b3c-4e8c-8b14-b05d025e1541&displaylang=en	Blend_Trial_en.exe	This tool will enable us to create content that targets Silverlight 4 and to create rapid prototypes with the Sketch Flow tool.
Silverlight Toolkit (Updated for Silverlight 4 compatibility)	http://codeplex.com/Silverlight	Silverlight_4_Toolkit_April_2010.msi	This toolkit provides a nice collection of Silverlight controls, components, and utilities made available outside the normal.

2.     Once the installations have successfully finished, run Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer 2010 (or later).

3.     Select File | New | Project. Select Visual C# | Silverlight under Installed Templates in the New Project dialog box. You will see many Silverlight templates, including Silverlight Business Application and WCF RIA Services Class Library, as shown in the following screenshot: