Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Lots of ‘goings-on’ right now with Windows Phone.  Keep an eye out this season!

• All Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 devices to get Windows 10? – http://www.inquisitr.com/1614230/microsoft-all-current-lumia-phones-will-get-windows-10/
• Windows Phone survives hacking competition – http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/388401/scitech/technology/who-survived-this-three-way-hackathon-android-ios-or-windows-phone
• Softcard mobile payments app comes to Windows Phone – http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/11/softcard-app-for-verizon-now-enables-windows-phone-mobile-payments/
• Windows Phone and Windows app stores collectively pass half a million apps – http://apprtize.com/windows-store-windows-phone-store-collectively-cross-half-million-apps-mark/
• Developer achieves 15 million downloads on Windows and Phone – http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2014/11/13/passionate-windows-developer-rudy-huyn-shares-how-he-obtained-15-million-downloads/
• Luna games hits 5 million downloads – http://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/60312/lunagames-hits-5-million-downloads-on-windows-phone/

Apps:

• Movie maker comes to Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 – http://apprtize.com/microsoft-launches-movie-creator-app-windows-phone-windows-8-1/

Taken from the Microsoft Office IT Pro Network on Yammer:

We recently announced plans to bring the productivity of Word, Excel and PowerPoint to Android tablet customers with the Office for Android tablet Preview. There’s still time to join the Preview, and we’ve created a new group on the Network so you can access product information, screenshots and have direct interaction with the product team even if you are not a part of the Preview.

• To join the Android Tablet Preview, click here.
• To join the Android Tablet Preview Group on this network, click here.

I’d also like to welcome all the new members who have joined the Office 365 Network and are excited to get their hands on Office for Android – we are excited, too! Be sure to read the Day One Guide for tips on getting started here. If you’re new to Yammer, check out the Day One Group to connect with other new members and learn the basics of Yammer.

Let us know if you have questions as you settle in. We’re glad to have you on the Network, and are happy to help!

http://blogs.office.com/2014/11/06/bringing-office-everyone/

Are you a BizTalk user, interested in Enterprise Service Bus, Business Orchestration & XML-based Data Transformation?  Then Integrate 2014 may be the conference for you… and it’s happening in Redmond, WA in December!

WHAT IS INTEGRATE?
Integrate 2014 is a Global BizTalk Summit that will be held in the Microsoft Campus, Redmond WA between December 3-5, 2014. The event was organized by Microsoft team over the past 2 years, but this year the baton has been passed on to BizTalk360 to organize and execute this event along with some core partners. This event is a key milestone for the Microsoft product group as they are expected to release some important product announcements, their vision and roadmap for the coming months.

• LOCATION:
  Microsoft Campus, Redmond, WA
• DATE:
  December 3-5, 2014
• COST:
  $999

REGISTRATION:
http://www.integrate2014.com

So my friend and coworker, Chandler Bootchk, put together something we call a curation of Office 365 resources. 

It’s basically a summary of video trainings, overviews, and other “fundamental” references available for Office 365… with all the other stuff filtered out.

Take a look see here:

• BLOG: Office 365 Fundamentals
  http://aka.ms/365fundamentals

Are you a road warrior that owns a Surface Pro 3?  (Or 2 or 1 for that matter)

You may want to check out this Microsoft Surface External battery and Car adapter from a 3rd party.  Prices range from $205 for a 26000mAh external battery to $464 for a 52800mAh mondo sized external battery.

There is also a series of car adapter accessories.  There is a standalone car adapter to charge your Surface Pro 3, and there is a separate car adapter to charge the external batteries they sell AND simultaneously charge your Surface Pro 3.  These are roughly ~$110.

• Microsoft Surface Pro 3 (and 1 & 2) External battery and Car adapter
  http://www.mikegyver.com/Surface-Battery-Car/

There was a Steve Ballmer AMA on Reddit yesterday that largely went unreported.

• We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of ’77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything!
  http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2m7cmt/
  were_steve_ballmer_harvard_college_class_of_77/

I was busy all yesterday so could only read the thread after the fact.  Here’s some questions that were answered:

• Steve- what financial metrics/valuation did you use to value the Clippers? Anything more than I want it at any price?
• Were you involved with the decision to make .NET open source? What were the motivations behind the change in strategy?
• Steve – What do you think is the most common frustration that CEO’s of large companies face that the average person is unaware of?
• What is something that surprised you being the CEO of Microsoft?
• Steve, First off, thanks for coming to Harvard and meeting with a bunch of different groups (I was lucky enough to see you three times: in CS 50, in your meeting with the Sports Statistics group last night, and earlier today in Allston). Just some questions:
  1) What are you thinking before you go out and give a talk in front of a bunch of people? You’re always so hyped up and energetic throughout, and I’ve always wanted to know what’s going on through your mind (if anything at all).
  2) I know a good amount of people that compare you to Mark Cuban. What’s your take on this comparison?
  3) What do you think of basketball’s player efficiency rating?
  4) Do you know Chris Paul’s twin brother Cliff?
  5) Why didn’t you pick my name in the raffle for the Xbox Ones?
• Steve – if you could play H-O-R-S-E against any 3 people in the world, who would you play against?
• How important do you think are MOOCs (or MOOCs providers like EDX) to the future of CS education and making the world better, since more than 99.9% of people can’t go to Harvard?   As a personal example, I am, for now, still intellectually unable to go to Harvard (or MIT), but after completing Introduction to CS from MIT part 1, part 2 and (almost) finishing CS50 (from Harvard), I changed in my local university from Electric Engineering to CS. Unfortunately they still have the old thinking like "you put an input and get a specific output" from programs, but, hey, better than engineering.
• What are elements of Harvard student culture that you like and dislike?
• To Steve, what advice would you give a young entrepreneur. I want to give my friend some advice but why not ask the best?
• Do you prefer SCRUM or another type of SW development?
• Moores law.  How long do you think it will last (and/or be relevant)?  What will be the biggest benefit of more available computing power in the next ~10 years or so? And where will it be utilized (home/data centers/cloud/science/skynet)?

There’s a tier of email between “important” and “junk” that we call “clutter” – stuff that’s simply lower priority but not junk mail – that acts as a distraction within your inbox.  Our announcement today addresses this for Office 365 users:

Today we are beginning the roll out of Clutter to Office 365 business customers, which brings the power of Office Graph to your inbox. Clutter is designed to help you focus on the most important messages in your inbox. It uses machine learning to de-clutter your inbox by moving lower priority messages out of your way and into a new Clutter folder. Ultimately, Clutter removes distractions so you can focus on what matters most.

Clutter is rolling out now to First Release Office 365 users, with deployment to standard users next month.  Read more about Clutter here:

• BLOG: De-clutter your inbox in Office 365
  http://blogs.office.com/2014/11/11/de-clutter-inbox-office-365/

A few weeks ago, a bunch of announcements were made at TechEd Europe.  Here’s a round up of some of the Office 365 bullets:

• Data Loss Prevention now included in SharePoint Online/OneDrive for Business (as well as Exchange Online)
  http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/28/expanding-data-loss-prevention-dlp-sharepoint-online-onedrive-business-windows-file-share-office-clients/
• Mobile Device Management now part of Office 365
  http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/28/introducing-built-mobile-device-management-office-365/ 
• OneDrive to provide unlimited online storage for Office 365 users
  http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/27/onedrive-now-unlimited-storage-office-365-subscribers/ 

We announced a ton of news around .NET.  Here’s a quick bulleted list by Scott Hanselman that I’m shamelessly stealing:

• We are serious about open source and cross platform.
  • .NET Core 5 is the modern, componentized framework that ships via NuGet. That means you can ship a private version of the .NET Core Framework with your app. Other apps’ versions can’t change your app’s behavior.
  • We are building a .NET Core CLR for Windows, Mac and Linux and it will be both open source and it will be supported by Microsoft. It’ll all happen at https://github.com/dotnet.
  • We are open sourcing the RiyuJit and the .NET GC and making them both cross-platform.
• ASP.NET 5 will work everywhere.
  • ASP.NET 5 will be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Mac and Linux support will come soon and it’s all going to happen in the open on GitHub at https://github.com/aspnet.
  • ASP.NET 5 will include a web server for Mac and Linux called kestrel built on libuv. It’s similar to the one that comes with node, and you could front it with Nginx for production, for example.
• Developers should have a great experience.
  • There is a new FREE SKU for Visual Studio for open source developers and students called Visual Studio Community. It supports extensions and lots more all in one download. This is not Express. This is basically Pro.
  • Visual Studio 2015 and ASP.NET 5 will support gulp, grunt, bower and npm for front end developers.
  • A community team (including myself and Sayed from the ASP.NET and web tools team have created the OmniSharp organization along with the Kulture build system as a way to bring real Intellisense to Sublime, Atom, Brackets, Vim, and Emacs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Check out http://www.omnisharp.net as well as blog posts by team members Jonathan Channon
• Even more open source.
  • .NET Framework 4.6 and its Reference Source source is being relicensed under the MIT license, so Mono (and you!) can use the source code to the .NET Framework.
  • There’s a new hub for Microsoft open source that is hosted GitHub at http://microsoft.github.io.

Read the full post here as well as Scott’s references for more information:

• BLOG: Announcing .NET 2015 – .NET as Open Source, .NET on Mac and Linux, and Visual Studio Community
  http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AnnouncingNET2015NET
  asOpenSourceNETonMacandLinuxandVisualStudioCommunity.aspx

UPDATED APRIL 2015:
The Work & Play bundle is now $149.  Post modified to reflect the new price.
——————–
ORIGINAL POST NOVEMBER 2014:
We announced the “Work & Play” bundle, a set of 1 year Microsoft Subscriptions that get you:

• Office 365 Home ($99 value)
• Xbox Live Gold ($59 value)
• Xbox Music Pass ($99 value)
• Skype Unlimited World + Wifi
  ($150+ value – NOT AVAILABLE SEPARATELY)

All for just $149.

WAIT – “SKYPE UNLIMITED WORLD + WIFI”?
It’s that last one – Skype Unlimited World + Wifi – in the bundle that I’m blown away by.  We NEVER offer this:  This provides unlimited voice calls to any phone number around the world for a year.  If you’re an International Skype user, (or you’d LIKE to make International phone calls without worry about toll charges) you know that you can EASILY use $149 of Skype voice calls.  If you’re a business traveler, you should know that you can EASILY use $149 of Wifi access on Gogo Inflight or any other Internet service.

How good a deal is this?  Well, basically if you don’t use Skype to call people around the world or you travel and use Wifi Services in hotels, airports, and coffee shops and business lounges, this is potentially a ridiculous money saver.

SO THAT’S SKYPE, BUT WHAT ARE ALL THESE OTHER SUBSCRIPTIONS?

• Office 365 Home ($99 value)
  This provides the user with the ability to download and install the entire Office Suite on up to 5 of your computers for 1 year with all upgrades during that time being no additional cost as well as UNLIMITED online storage via OneDrive to backup or share your files:
  • Windows – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote
  • Mac – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook
• Xbox Live Gold ($49 value)
  This subscription enables Xbox users to play multiplayer online games against other human opponents as well as two FREE games every month to be downloaded for Xbox 360, 1 free title for Xbox One, discounts on all sorts of other games.
• Xbox Music Pass ($99 value)
  My personal favorite:  Xbox Music Pass gives you unlimited streaming & download access to the entire Xbox Music catalog.  All the kids music your kids want without paying a dime more.  All the comedy albums you can listen to at no additional charge.  The Billboard Top 100 all downloadable at the drop of a hat.

Go get it at a Microsoft Store near you!

• Microsoft Work & Play Bundle – $149 (UPDATED 4/6/15: Was previously $199)
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/workandplay/Overview