Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The Los Angeles/Orange County Lync Users Group is targeted at IT Pros and Developers interested in Microsoft Unified Communications. Our goal is to provide the LA/OC area with technical and business information relating to Lync Server, Exchange Unified Messaging and other components related to Microsoft Lync.

Please register on our webpage at http://www.meetup.com/L-A-O-C-Lync-Users-Group/events/208754042/

Meeting Details

Oct 15th, 2014 3:00PM – 6:00PM PST

The Los Angeles/Orange County Lync Users Group will be conducting their next meeting Oct 15th, 2014. This meeting will include two sessions, the first session will cover Lync with SDN and Wi-Fi.  The second session will dive into an Office 365 Solution Review.

Industry Experts will be on site to deliver these presentations and help answer any questions related to Lync Server.

Food, beverages and additional door prizes courtesy of the Lync Users Group and our sponsors.

Location:

Microsoft Corporation Playa Vista Office
13031 West Jefferson Blvd
Playa Vista, CA 90094

In case you missed the Windows 10 Technical Preview launch on Sept 30th, here’s the recording:

On Sept 30 Microsoft had a media briefing to begin the process of educating enterprises and businesses about the core design of Windows 10, which will be available broadly in late 2015. This video describes how businesses can evaluate the software starting now. (FOR CONSUMERS: the exciting features will be revealed in 2015!)

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INTRODUCING WINDOWS 10
For folks that need something a little quicker, here’s a 4 minute.

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DOWNLOADING THE WINDOWS 10 TECHNICAL PREVIEW
If you want to download the bits, here’s the download instructions:
(You’ll need to sign up for the Windows Insider program)

• Download Windows Technical Preview
  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso

RESOURCES FOR THE WINDOWS 10 TECHNICAL PREVIEW
Take advantage of resources designed to help IT professionals get the most out of the preview experience.

• Announcement of Windows 10 on the Windows blog
• What’s new in Windows 10 for business
• Frequently asked questions
• Try it out: Windows 10 Technical Preview for Enterprise
• Forums for the Technical Preview for Enterprise IT pro

Based on the timeframes given by Terry Myerson, Windows 10 will be released “later in the year,” meaning 2015. 

More specifically, during his speech during the launch of the Windows 10 Technical Preview, he stated that the Windows 10 Developer Preview will be released at the BUILD Conference in April 2015 (38:50), meaning that the launch/release of the final product will definitely be after this date.

Plan accordingly!

Meet Sway, the newest member of the Office family!

Today we’re introducing a brand new app to the Office portfolio. Sway is a new way to create a beautiful, interactive, web-based expression of your ideas, from your phone or browser.

• Blog post
• Video
• Garage Series episode

Sway is now in Preview, and you can request an invite at Sway.com.

The new Office 365 Customer Success Center is up and running.

The Customer Success Center is a resource where folks responsible for Office 365 deployments and management can read and research on:

• Scenarios
• Adoption
• Deployment
• Communities
• Partners
• Resources

Learn how to get the most out of Office 365, quickly get your team onboard, and drive adoption!

• LINK: Office 365 Customer Success Center
  http://success.office.com/

Microsoft is releasing important driver/firmware updates for Surface Pro 3 today (Sept 9^th) that may address some of the issues users have experienced.  These updates will be available via Windows Update ~10am, PST and for download shortly thereafter.  The following updates will be listed as “System Firmware Update – 9/9/2014” within the Windows Update History:

Note  When Surface updates are provided via the Windows Update service, they are delivered in stages to Surface customers. As a result, not every Surface will receive the update at the same time, but the update will be delivered to all devices. If you have not received the update then please manually check Windows Update later.

• Surface Pro UEFI update (v 3.10.250.0) improves system experience and enhances overall system stability, including Wi-Fi.
• Surface Pro Embedded Controller Firmware update (v 38.6.50.0) enhanced support for system performance and user experience, including adjustments to the thermal tuning.
• Surface Pro System Aggregator Firmware update (v 3.9.350.0) increases the overall system reliability and compatibility with a Surface cover.
• Surface Integration driver update (v 2.0.1102.0) enhances user experience, including Wi-Fi stability.
• Surface Wi-Fi and Bluetooth driver update (v 15.68.3055.107) improves Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth reliability and system stability, and significantly enhances the user experience.

Users can update immediately by going into PC Settings, Update and Recovery, select the box for “Check for updates from Microsoft Update”.

In case you hadn’t heard, for a limited time, (from now until Oct. 6) if you purchase a new Surface Pro 3 through the official Microsoft Store you will receive a free one year subscription to New York Times Crossword.  This is $39 value.

The NYT Crossword app is special.  It enables the player to:

• Handwrite their answers into the crossword using the Surface Pro 3 stylus
• Circle their writing and have it converted to text
• Play the actual crossword published in the NYT that day
• Go back and download archives of the NYT crossword from the past month

So if already have a Surface Pro 3 from the store… congratulations!  Download the Windows 8 app and start wracking your brain on “what the heck is a 7 letter word for ‘donut’?”

(If you don’t have a Surface Pro 3 from the store, you can still download and play NYT Crossword mini-puzzle for free daily)

• New York Times Crossword Windows 8 App
  http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/nyt-crossword/18fde24c-e748-482a-b2c1-e5a877e017b5
• Also available: New York Times Crossword Windows Phone App
  http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/nyt-crossword/5d4d6f3f-9091-414c-a417-4fd95209cf54

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Original post:
http://blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2014/09/08/buy-a-new-surface-pro-3-and-get-a-free-one-year-subscription-to-nyt-crossword/

Seriously.  I’ve been out fishing, zip-lining, wine-tasting, hiking, and doing a number of other wonderful activities with my family while on vacation.  We’re also starting a new school year for my son and with the new fiscal year kicking in here at Microsoft, I haven’t had the chance to post in a while… obviously.

Yeah, I know.  Weak sauce.  But I’m planning on getting back on the horse this next week.  See you then, if not sooner.

* Yes, that’s a photo of the ONE fish I caught.  Actually, it wasn’t even me.  It was a little 8 year old girl in the same pontoon I was in… but we’ll keep that a secret between you & me, okay?

Admittedly, until recently, something I’ve struggled with is using OneNote for my Todo lists. 

Until recently I still typed “notepad” into a command line to quick jot ideas down.  It was easy to get things I needed to remember down in text this way.  The problem is that I’d often forget about the notes and if I rebooted my laptop or closed the notepad window, I’d lose everything with no hope of data recovery, since Notepad doesn’t autosave.  OneNote seemed like the perfect solution but frequently getting to a Todo list in OneNote amongst all my pages was laborious & frustrating.

THE SOLUTION:  KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS TO ONENOTE PAGES
I learned how to create shortcuts into specific OneNote pages and that has revolutionized my life.  Anywhere in Windows, I now use “CTRL-ALT-X” and it immediately takes me to my Todo list in OneNote – the same Todo list that’s synced across my tablet, my PC and my phone.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Open OneNote.  Select a page you want to link to.
2. Right click the page tab and select the “Copy link to page” menu item.
1. If your Notebook is synced to OneDrive, what you just copied is a bunch of text representing two links: 
   One for the ONLINE OneDrive version of your OneNote page (which begins with https:)…
   the other for the LOCAL OneNote page (which begins with onenote:)  Paste the link into NotePad and you’ll see something like this:
   
   https://skydrive.live.com/edit.aspx/Documents/Personal%20^5Web^6?cid=0000000c7f7e038d&id=documents?&wd=target%28DDDDDD.one%7c3B150456-0000-AAAA-CCCC-0CFDA610DEF4%2fTodo%7cA6C6B3E3-6E7F-4B51-ZZZZ-A699E861FA01%2f%29
   onenote:https://d.docs.live.net/00da410c7f7e038d/Documents/
   Personal%20(Web)/DDDDDD.one#Todo&section-id={3B150456-DA48-48FE-A2C2-0CFDA610DEF4}&page-id={A6C6B3E3-0000-0000-AAAA-A699E861FA01}&end
   
2. Copy the section that begins with “onenote:”, as underlined above.  Do not copy the “&end”.
3. Switch to your desktop. 
4. Create a shortcut & paste the OneNote page hyperlink into it.  Name the shortcut something like “Todo list”.  Click Finish.
5. Right click on the Shortcut icon you just created.  Choose properties.
6. Click the “Shortcut key” textbox.  Press the keyboard shortcut you’d like such as “CTRL-ALT-X”.
7. Click Ok.

That’s it.  From now on, anytime you need to enter a Todo item, you can hit CTRL-ALT-X and it will take you to your OneNote Todo page.

A coworker, Lee Reese, passed this on to me.  It’s a humorous explanation of what the cloud is at differing levels of control.  For those that don’t get the differences between PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS: