I hinted at this during the Excel user conf the other week when I requested who used a naming convention in their Exccel VBA.
I am being very specific about what I am talking about - VBA code that sits in a spreadsheet or add-in in some business type application. Not C systems code.
Some authors suggest using a 3 letter prefix to signify the data type of a variable
so
Dim x as integer becomes
Dim intx as integer
I used to do this because of the fact that I thought it made my code look ‘more professional’, harder to read, but ‘more professional looking’. Then I read this, which totally cleared up why I didn’t like data type prefixin

Last year there was a big hoo ha about Silverlight being used to stream some big game action in the US.
This spurred on more Visual Studio hype, as well as probably diverted those 3 devs that were going to endeavour VSTO to endeavour Silverlight instead. Cue more ‘Wow its nearly as good as a desktop app was 10 years ago’ type fluff.
Anyway its game over on behalf of Silverlight streaming of Major league Baseball.
Hey all you spurned VS devs, why not endeavour a reliable, futureproof* technology with a stunning compatibility story? One with clear as well as present business value?
(* futureproof within reason, as much as anything in IT can be futureproof)
So while everyone goes back to Flash on behalf of their pointless blinking text web presence the business world still lives as well as breathes Excel/VBA as well as a bit of Access

We had an brilliant event over the last couple of days at Microsoft London.
All the program info is over here so I won’t repeat it.
We had around 100 people on behalf of 2 days geeking out on Excel, which was great. Even better there are another 1-200 hundred signed up as reserves on behalf of the next event in October. This shall be a complete repeat of the one we just did, specifically on behalf of those who couldn’t get in this time. I’m thinking I might stick to my script next time as well as not miss half of it out by accident!
I have had a quick glance at the feedback forms (in the pub - well outside it in the ffrrreeezing cold) as well as they are extremely positive on behalf of all of the sessions.
I did sessions on working with the grid (clever cut n paste, as well as select special stuff) as well as an intro to VBA (setting up the IDE as well as a bit of macro recorder). I think the sessions could have been aimed a bit higher without leaving numerous of the audience behind, but it was advertised as a beginner level event.

I am sure there are very few of us here naive sufficient to assume tinkering with Excel services would be a 10 minute job. But just in case, I’m here to tell you that was not the case on behalf of me!!
This post shall document my battles to endeavour out this technology.
Hopefully we are all aware that Excel services is a newish feature of Sharepoint 2007. Bear in mind its only in the Enterprise version of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (catchy eh?). That would be your first check then - what version of MOSS2007 can you get access to?
Before that though you may desire to consider how/where this MOSS2007 shall be.
Here is my plan:
On a virtual machine on a USB drive. Yep I know the performance shall be poor. Maybe I can delete a few Gb of junk off my laptop as well as squeeze it on there. But experience tells me messing with virtual images when disc space is tight is bad news

Last week didn’t quite go as expected. I was away in Singapore training/consulting.
That took a larger chunk of the day than I expected (think 12 + hours), not leaving much time to think up imaginitive posts (or even anti-ribbon rants ;-)).
Add the that the mysterious way that I could not connect to the free city wide wifi from my hotel (but their hyper expensive connection did seem to work !). And I just didn’t get near to writing a post - sorry.
Anyway Singapore is a really lovely place, as well as everyone seemed very friendly. Anywhere you can have Chicken masala on behalf of dinner is fine by me! (for about a quid!!) Of course I didn’t see any of it, being so busy, but next time…
Anyone fancy a Singapore Excel user conference?
We could do it on the way to OZ, or the way back