Kurt Shintaku's Blog

What happens when you let 9 science fiction authors have access to Microsoft Research & the technologies the researchers are developing?

They write a book of science fiction short stories, of course.

[taken from Microsoft News’ article]

To the casual observer, the kind of technological breakthroughs Microsoft researchers make may seem to be out of this world.

Their research is a blueprint for the future of technology, in areas such as – but not limited to – computer vision, artificial intelligence, real-time speech translation, machine learning and quantum computing. So it’s only natural that their work can inspire others – especially those who write about other worlds.

On Tuesday, Microsoft releases an anthology inspired by the work Microsoft researchers are doing. “Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft,” is available to anyone as a free download.

“The idea was to bring authors in to expose them to what some people might think is science fiction. In a way, you could say the world of Microsoft Research turns science fiction into science fact,” says Steve Clayton, chief storyteller at Microsoft. “We didn’t show them a piece of technology and ask them to please write about that. We showed them technology and introduced them to a group of people, and then asked them, what did it spark in your mind as ideas, where did it inspire you to think the technology may go?”

The stories are based on meetings with the research scientists who are working on the most cutting-edge areas of research.

“All of our product teams look over the horizon, but probably more in the one- to two-year realm, whereas Microsoft Research has a bit more license to look at the realm of anywhere between one and 10 years,” says Clayton. “It gives them more opportunity for things that might seem like flights of fancy, but ultimately do become science fact.”

…

Read more on Microsoft’s News page:

• NEWS: ‘Future Visions’ anthology brings together science fiction – and science fact
  http://news.microsoft.com/features/future-visions-anthology-brings-together-science-fiction-and-science-fact/

Download your own copy of the book here:

• DOWNLOAD: Future Visions – Where Fact & Fiction Collide
  (Available on Amazon, iBooks, & Kobo)
  http://news.microsoft.com/futurevisions/

[The following is a guest post from my friend & coworker, Chandler Bootchk, a Principal Office 365 Technology Specialist in Southern California]

Outlook is one of the most widely used applications in the world.  In recent years Microsoft has expanded access to its beloved features by making versions of the software available on mobile platforms and enriching the capabilities of the clients for Windows, Mac and the browser. 

With so many users, it’s no wonder there’s a lot of ideas about how to make Outlook even better.  Our customers and even internal employees of Microsoft often want to share those ideas but it hasn’t been clear how to do that until now.

The Outlook Suggestion Box is the place to submit your feedback.  Leveraging the powerful UserVoice platform for product management, the Outlook Suggestion Box enables Microsoft engineers to gather customer feedback and product ideas in an organized manner so that your voice is actually heard instead of lost in a sea of emails, Yammer posts, etc. 

Click here today to signup and have your voice heard.

For folks with new Surface Books, some have discovered that the SD card slot doesn’t completely envelop the card itself, meaning that regular SD cards will “stick out” of the Surface Book from the side.  This has caused some to seek accessories that fit the shortened profile of the slot.

SOLUTION:  Custom fit SD cards & adapters
Thanks to MacBooks – especially the 2010-2014 MacBook Air 13” models – a few 3rd parties have stepped up previously to produce SD cards & adapters that are designed to fit into “shortened slots” like that within the Surface Book.

Here’s a few:

• BASEQI aluminum microSD Adapter
  ($25, Amazon.com)
  This is a shortened adapter that fits into the Surface Book’s SD flash card slot nearly completely that specifically accepts ‘microSD’ flash cards.  Perfect for the individual that’s already made investments in 256GB microSD flash cards and wants to reuse them in their Surface Book.
  Made of aluminum, the adapter is sturdy & sticks out just a little bit – enough for your fingernail to pull the adapter out of your Surface Book.
  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WQVK754
• Transcend 256GB JetDrive Lite 130 Storage Expansion Card
  ($160, Amazon.com)
  This is a high capacity, high performance expansion card, and the 130 series is designed to fit the profile of a shortened .9” SD card slot in a Surface Book.  There are also other storage sizes from 64GB to 128GB to fit other people’s budgets.
  The benefit of these full sized SD cards is the performance:  Max Read: 95MB/s, Max Write: 60MB/s.  This is of course quite a bit above that of the fastest microSD cards.
  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WGARJIS

As part of Microsoft Azure being the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider (CCSP) you can now migrate your Red Hat subscriptions to Microsoft Azure.

For any subscriptions that migrate, you will continue to maintain your direct relationship with Red Hat even when your subscription benefits move to Azure. We are also announcing the immediate availability of integrated support between Microsoft and Red Hat. We are collocating Red Hat and Microsoft support teams to offer a uniquely higher quality enterprise support experience.

In order to register your existing or newly purchased Red Hat subscription for Red Hat Cloud Access, you must follow the steps outlined in this page. You can also learn more about how to prepare your images to deploy into Azure on this page. With this announcement, you can start running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure, today!

Read more here:

• AZURE BLOG: Red Hat Cloud Access now available on Azure!
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/red-hat-cloud-access-now-available-on-azure/

(Recorded November 2nd, 2015)
This session will highlight the importance of adoption, guide attendees through a basic adoption framework, and provide best practices, real customer examples, and relevant resources to help drive rapid and sustained adoption of Skype for Business. You will leave this session with the tools needed to execute a successful rollout and maximize Skype for Business ROI.

To obtain the templates referenced in the video, email sfbadoption@microsoft.com.

• VIDEO: Skype for Business: Maximizing End User Adoption and ROI
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1mx-lL8lrw

With the Skype for Business, Bandwidth Calculator, you can enter information about your users and the Skype for Business Server OR Lync Server features that you want to deploy, and the calculator will determine bandwidth requirements for the WAN that connects sites in your deployment.

The accompanying User Guide describes the recommended process for estimating your WAN bandwidth needs for Skype for Business OR Lync client real-time traffic. The User Guide will be updated periodically with new information and modifications.

PLEASE NOTE: This download is also applicable to Lync Server 2010 and 2013 deployments

• DOWNLOAD: Skype for Business, Bandwidth Calculator
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19011

Sometimes when you disconnect the screen on a Surface Book & reattach it in its reverse/tablet position to the keyboard base, the Surface Book will still not recognize that the screen is attached – and thus the ‘detach’ buttons won’t work. 

At that point there is seemingly no way to detach the now-reversed screen from the keyboard base.

SOLUTION: POWER + VOLUME UP
Hold down POWER + VOLUME UP for 22 seconds.  This is usually the Boot-to-BIOS procedure, however if you keep holding the buttons down, the BIOS will appear and then shut off and reappear.

This procedure resets the hardware’s recognition of the keyboard’s state. The detach button & on-screen detach should work fine now.

This session will provide Sysadmins with tips, tricks and real world experiences on how best to approach Windows 10 for their organization.  Bring your questions and your own experiences and we will do our part in making sure you leave with the information and tools to best deploy Windows 10. 

Speaker Bio: Yong Rhee
Yong is a Windows Premier Field Engineer, who helps educate, deploy, maintain best practices and troubleshoot Windows Clients and Servers out of Irvine, CA.

Meeting Schedule:

• 6:00 PM – 6:15 PM Eat and Greet
• 6:15 PM – 6:30 PM Welcome
• 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM Speaker – Yong Rhee
• 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM Round table Q&A (bring your Windows 10 questions)
• 8:30 PM – 8:45 PM Closing Announcements

Date/Time:
Nov 12, 6:00PM

Location:
Microsoft Playa Vista
13031 W. Jefferson Blvd, Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90094

Registration:
http://www.meetup.com/socalpfedays/events/225934396/

For those of you who are SharePoint jockeys:

This meeting’s presentation will cover a range of general workflow best practices, while also demonstrating a number of cloud connectors available in Nintex Workflow, that enable integration from SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint Online to nearly all popular cloud services.

• Date/Time:
  Nov 18th
  6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
• Location:
  Outsource Technical
  2 Corporate Plaza
  Newport Beach, CA
• Registration:
  http://www.meetup.com/OC-SharePoint-User-Group-OCSPUG/events/226399172/

Speaker: Tom Castiglia
Tom has been building document management and workflow solutions for more than 20 years, and he recently sold his prior company, Hershey Technologies to Konica Minolta, where he now works as Microsoft Practice Director. Tom has also been active in the local technology community, as a founding board member for both the San Diego .NET User Group and the San Diego SharePoint Users Group. Today, he focuses on workflow solutions for SharePoint using Nintex and he was recently recognized by Nintex as a "virtual Technical Evangelist" (vTE).

Have you had problems getting Windows Live Writer installed on Windows 10?

I’ve been both upgrading machines from Windows 7 & 8.1 to Windows 10… and I’ve also been installing brand new machines with Windows 10.  Along the way, I discovered that Windows 10, often if installed NEW, won’t install Windows Live Writer correctly. 

The problem is that repeatedly, it insists on attempting to install .NET Framework 3.5… and fails.  Most people would think to simply look for the installation executable on Microsoft.com and install it from there, but on Windows 10, .NET Framework 3.5 is supposed to be an installable feature within Windows 10 itself.  If you go to CONTROL PANEL – PROGRAMS & FEATURES & click “Turn Windows features on or off” (in the left hand column) it should display the following dialog box:

Fair enough, right?  Just check off .NET Framework 3.5 and away we go, right?  NOPE.  For some reason, this fails without any explanation.

SOLUTION: DISM OFFLINE INSTALLATION
It turns out that the problem is that the .NET Framework source files aren’t available directly from your machine and you need to some how get them.  There’s two ways to get .NET Framework 3.5 installed – both involve having the Windows 10 installation media. 

1. INSTALLER TOOL
   The easy way is to download the .NET Framework 3.5 Offline Installer tool and plug in your Windows 10 installation media. (likely a USB drive)  Run the tool and it will instruct you to point to the location of your installation media (D:, E:, etc.) and it will tell you if the right source files are available.  Press install and it will execute a DISM command line instruction that will install .NET Framework 3.5.

   
    

2. COMMAND LINE
   Alternatively, you can execute the command line instruction on your own if you’re comfortable with that.
    
   Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /source:F:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess
    
   Where, F: is your installation media.

At this point, you should be able to install Windows Live Essentials either over the web or from the full download.

WINDOWS LIVE ESSENTIALS INSTALLATION:

• WEB/ONLINE INSTALLER:
  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/essentials
• DOWNLOAD/OFFLINE INSTALLER:
  http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe

————–

Taken in large part from the following threads/posts:

• http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_install/how-to-instal-net-framework-35-on-windows-10/450b3ba6-4d19-45ae-840e-78519f36d7a4?page=2
• http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_stranger/archive/2015/07/24/installing-windows-live-writer-on-windows-10.aspx