infoTECH Feature

July 06, 2010

Find Technical Resources with Microsoft Desktop Player

By Lance Whitney
Looking for the latest Microsoft (News - Alert) webcasts, white papers, and other content to assist you in your role as an IT pro or developer? You may find a helping hand in the form of Microsoft's Desktop Player, a tool released by the company this past April.
 
Available as an online Website and an offline application, the Desktop Player aggregates a list of useful resources that cover a variety of Microsoft technologies, including Windows, Office, SharePoint, Exchange, Visual Studio, and .Net. The tool lets you find webcasts, videos, white papers, blogs, and other content designed to inform and educate you about the Microsoft products you use and support.
 
The Desktop Player provides different search parameters to help you track down the right resources. You first choose whether you want to find content for IT pros or for developers. You then select the product or technology that interests you, whether it's Windows, Office, or one of the others listed above.
 
If you wish, you can narrow down your role even further. If you're an IT pro, you can specify your role as a server admin, enterprise admin, or database admin. If you're a developer, you can indicate whether you're a web developer, database developer, or Windows developer.
 
You can also zero on a specific focus as the object of your investigation. IT pros can choose evaluation, deployment, or support, while developers can select research, implementation, or maintenance. Further, you can type a word or phrase to narrow your search even further, though I would advise keeping your searches more general to start.
 
In return, you'll see a list of different resources that you can read or watch to learn more about your chosen topic. Webcasts and podcasts play right within the Desktop Player, so they're quick and easy to view. White papers pop up as downloadable PDF files. You can also find links to miscellaneous webcasts, case studies, and other related content. Even further, a news section points you to a list of relevant blogs, which I found quite helpful.
 
And there's more. Enter your zip code in the settings for the Desktop Player, and the tool can find local resources for you, including Microsoft evangelists, events, and user groups. You can save your search queries and bookmark items for future reference.
 
The online and desktop versions of the Desktop Player are virtually the same-I didn't see any differences in one over the other. I tried both versions to trigger searches for resources on various Microsoft products. I didn't find a tremendous amount of content, even when I kept my searches general. But the content I did find was useful and relevant.
 
If you support or develop for some of the core Microsoft technologies, I think you'll find the Desktop Player a helpful tool and definitely worth taking for a spin.
 

Lance Whitney is a journalist, IT consultant, and Web Developer with almost 20 years of experience in the IT world. To read more of Lance's articles, please visit his columnist page

Edited by Juliana Kenny
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