SharePoint MySites can be a good place to store data unique to individual users, but since they are usually provisioned only when a user first visits their MySite, we often need to check ahead of time whether the MySite exists. One way to solve this problem is to create a simple user control that checks whether the current user's MySite exists, and provides the URL if it is found.

There are a number of other rating solutions out there for SharePoint 2007, but we didn't find quite what we were looking for - an item rating feature with simple inline interface that was flexible enough to be used in out of the box and custom web parts. We were looking for functionality pretty similar to the rating feature in SharePoint 2010. Essentially, we created a custom field type, made use of an existing jQuery star rating plugin, and used web services to store the ratings in the list item as well as user's MySite.

Last year, I had the pleasure of helping deliver a new product for a local legal electronic discovery company with a great team using a strict SCRUM development model. We evaluated several Team Foundation System 2010 work item templates, and selected the (then in Beta!) Scrum for Team Systems V3 template built by EMC Consulting. This posting reviews the main pros and cons we experienced with the template.