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One of my pain points as a SharePoint “administrator” is having to deal with deployments of solution packages to my environment without the best change management. This means that I often see packages making their way in to the environment without any thought given to keeping the package in case it needs to be reapplied at a later time (Note: I’m not the only one who controls what goes into the environment).

The solution? I whipped up a Windows application so download one, several, or all of the solution packages currently stored in the farm configuration database.

I have posted the application to CodePlex @ http://spsolutiondownloader.codeplex.com/.

The application must be run in the context of a Farm Administrator (i.e. right-click, Run As…) on a server in the farm for which you wish to download the solution package(s) from and requires the .NET Framework 3.5.

I would love some feedback from the community as to whether or not this useful. I have some other little apps in mind I could put together with the proper motivation.

Microsoft recently recently released/pushed out a new add-on for interacting with Netflix, allowing for the viewing of “instant” movies from within the Media Center 10ft. UI.

One quirk that you may run into is that videos are not playing after installation. You might need to break out the keyboard, as Silverlight will have opened a dialog behind the Media Center window asking you to enable protected content. Once that hurdle is crossed, it should be smooth sailing.

Netflix in Windows Media Center

[Microsoft Windows: Netflix in Windows Media Center]

[via Hacking Netflix]

Today marks the official release of SharePoint Designer as a free product offering from Microsoft.  While overall, this announcement can certainly be considered a good thing by the SharePoint community (who doesn’t like free stuff?), as a SharePoint “administrator” it makes me cringe. It is a good thing all of us have “locked down” SharePoint Designer in our respective environments.

You did remember to lock down, didn’t you?

[Download]

All I wanted to do was access a particular KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940958).  However, Microsoft has other plans for me.  Apparently I’ve chosen the most popular KB of all time.