Today I set up a SharePoint site offered free to me for three months by an Internet Service Provider. This is a newer Microsoft technology offering for businesses designed for use for internal file sharing, event scheduling, communication, collaboration and discussion, and many other features typically found in a company Intranet site.

Microsoft talks about it this way on their website: Microsoft SharePoint “provides a single, integrated location where employees can efficiently collaborate with team members, find organizational resources, search for experts and corporate information, manage content and workflow, and leverage business insight to make better-informed decisions.”

After using it for a day, my initial reaction is that it is not very intuitive to use and administer. This is typical of Microsoft products coming from a Mac user experience. It also seemed to run sluggishly. I am not sure if that was a function of the shared server environment, bandwidth issues or an innate problem of the software.

Another issue I experienced was that I could not figure out how to customize the interface to look more like how I would want it to look – personalization. I’d like to change colors, add a logo, etc. Even the “help” files did not adequately address this. It looks like I will need to download a manual and start reading that.

I noticed Microsoft is using “AJAX” style editing features, and “web parts” for customizing the layout, what features and parts to display, etc.

Overall, I can see Microsoft is trying to stay on the cutting edge, and adapting some “Web 2.0″ features that the “Open Source” world are using quite heavily.

More later.