Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Join us for the fourth annual SCU, a one-day globally available technical event featuring Microsoft product gurus and community experts.

The 2015 event will include two full breakout tracks to allow for more speakers, topics and content.  The live event will be centered at the Irving Convention Center, with a live-streaming broadcast for all virtual attendees and simulcasts. Don’t miss out on this cosmic experience of knowledge and community interaction.

(Side note:  Take a look at the presenters list.  Holy mackerel, it’s like a who’s who of the System Center ecosystem.)

DATE:
February 4th, 2015

LOCATION:
Irving Convention Center
500 West Las Colinas Boulevard
Irving, TX 75039

More event details to be released soon at:
http://www.systemcenteruniverse.com/

Prepare to have your childhood relived.

Last summer, a team of excavators, archaeologists, filmmakers, and video game fans unearthed the industry’s biggest secret. And today, exclusively on Xbox One and Xbox 360, you can see the story of the biggest buried not-quite-treasure in gaming: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600.

The new documentary “Atari: Game Over” tells the real-life tale of one of video game’s biggest urban legends: that, in 1983, Atari dumped thousands of unsold copies of the notoriously bad E.T. video game in a New Mexico landfill.

• Read the announcement here:
  http://news.xbox.com/2014/11/ent-atari-game-over-available-today
• Xbox Video access:
  http://video.xbox.com/movie/atari-game-over/4b8575c6-bd05-48e8-92c9-c61ba57e8025

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/