jasnell has an interesting observation: “If InfoPath does for XML and Web services what Excel did for Spreadsheets, bravo to Microsoft, good job.”

Clemens Vasters seems to really dig InfoPath … some good quotes:

“On the surface, InfoPath is “just” a forms editor that allows you to build editable Forms for XML Schema, Web Services and Databases very quickly. From a technology perspective that’s very cool in itself, but the way InfoPath hides all of that behind its UI will simply make you say “Well, yes, that’s how it should be”. It’s really a no-nonsense data-capture and data-presentation centric variation of what could have been yet another feature of FrontPage that few people would have ever noticed, just because it’s UI is so simple. It’s all Office.”

Microsoft just released beta 2 of SPPS 2.0.

The Beta includes Office InfoPath integration, but I don’t have an Office 11 beta to test it against :-(

SecurityFocus: “Evidence obtained by German hardware site tecChannel suggests a list of software installed on an XP machine is sent to Microsoft when users run Windows Update.” (via BoingBoing)

I’m not really surprised by this, because technically this is how I thought Windows Update works. However, I’d have to read MSFT’s privacy policy for Windows Update to actually get a handle on what they intend to do with this information, but at least they are encrypting the data before it hit the wire.

Everything is coming up XML for Microsoft this year …

I don’t know about you, but I think the hype machine out west has me under a spell, because I am starting to feel giddy when I think of the future business user of Office 2003 creating InfoPath docs that are passed around by Exchange, integrated into the enterprise workflow via BizTalk and spit out into digestible chunks to SharePoint.

Oh, the productivity ;-)

Dubbed ‘Information Rights Management’ in the upcoming Office relesae, which is described as a ” … persistent file-level technology from Microsoft that allows the user to specify permission for who can access and use documents or e-mail messages, and helps prevent sensitive information from being printed, forwarded, or copied by unauthorized individuals…”
(via Microsoft Watch and Slashdot)

Jon Udell on the 10 things you need to know about InfoPath (aka XDocs)

Matt Williams of Micosoft says, “DUDE! Sharepoint is not a weblogging tool!” (via Scripting News)

However, as I mentioned back in November that SharePoint Team Services could be used as a Weblogging tool and that many Office users didn’t even realize that have it.

“The software giant is set to announce at a conference in San Diego that XDocs will officially be called InfoPath.”

“InfoPath will use XML to allow office workers to create electronic forms that will automatically share data with other documents and back-end business systems.”

“Microsoft is hoping to corner a share of the XML-based content management software market. Market researcher ZapThink, based in Waltham, Mass., estimates the value of the market for XML-based content management software at more than $11 billion by 2008.”

Scary. In the which OS are You? quiz, I came out as Windows XP.