Kurt Shintaku's Blog

I had to take care of some family matters for the past couple weeks.  I’m gonna start cranking out the posts really soon.  A lot of it will be retread of what you probably already know… reorg… Nokia… 8.1… blahblahblah.  But I have a few things that haven’t been shown yet.

Windows 8/8.1 support coming, among other changes.

Today we also announced the beta availability of Microsoft User Experience Virtualization 2.0 (UE-V 2.0) and Microsoft Application Virtualization 5.0 SP2 (App-V 5.0 SP2), two critical components from Microsoft’s Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) that give business customers access to all of their desktop and internal line of business applications, as well as personalized Windows environments from anywhere. UE-V 2.0 and App-V 5.0 SP2 will ship as part of a future version of MDOP but are available in beta versions now for download and support the Windows 8.1 Preview.

• UE-V 2.0: Allows users to switch devices without reconfiguring their applications or settings. The beta adds support for Windows 8 and 8.1 applications, including Windows Store apps and customized line of business apps. It provides enhancements to how settings and applications sync across devices, including giving users more flexibility and control of their individual sync settings.
• App-V 5.0 SP2: Gives IT pros the ability to deliver virtually any application, anywhere to users for a more flexible, integrated and powerful experience across virtualized applications. This beta builds on Microsoft’s long history of providing virtualization solutions for our customers, enriching the user experience by enabling virtual applications to behave as if they were locally installed on a device.

Read more here:

• BETA: Microsoft App-V 5.0 SP2 & User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) 2.0
  http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/business/archive/2013/06/26/teched-europe-european-businesses-choose-windows-8-amp-ue-v-app-v-betas-released.aspx

In case you missed the 3-day developer conference, Microsoft’s BUILD 2013, all the sessions have been recorded for playback over the Internet.

The session for each session is viewable and the PowerPoint should be downloadable as well.

At Build, we’ll share updates and talk about what’s next for Windows, Windows Server, Windows Azure, Visual Studio, and more. Build is the path to creating and implementing your great ideas, and then differentiating them in the market. Join us for three days of immersive presentations delivered by the engineers behind our products and services, while networking with thousands of other developers getting the first look at what’s next.

• VIDEO: BUILD 2013 session recordings
  http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013?direction=asc#tab_sortBy_day

Whoa.

In a landmark deal announcement for Xbox 360 and Time Warner Cable customers, we’re excited to share a new partnership that will deliver up to 300 of the most popular live TV channels to Xbox 360 for Xbox Live Gold members. This deal, which will bring more live channels than any other experience on Xbox 360, will offer Time Warner Cable subscribers with an Xbox Live Gold membership  the ability to watch their favorite shows from right from their Xbox 360 — including favorites like AMC, BBC World News, Bravo, Cartoon Network, CNN, Comedy Central, Food Network, HGTV and more. And unlike any other platform, you’ll be able to control your entertainment using your voice via Kinect for Xbox 360.

Read more here:

• Xbox Announces Landmark Deal with Time Warner Cable to Bring More Live TV to Xbox 360
  http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/ent-time-warner

We’ve released version 3.1 of the Microsoft Product Portfolio, a.k.a. the OnePager.

The Product Portfolio is a hierarchical view of either all of Microsoft products & services or the ENTERPRISE view of our products and services.

Both are available as .PDFs or, if you’re a customer of mine, please contact me and I will provide the Visio diagram source for your editing.

Here’s the most recent changes:

• Additions
• Both views:
• Backup & Recovery Manager under Windows Azure on the Core Infrastructure tier
• All-up view:
• Outlook.com
• Changed:
• All-up view:
  o    None
• Both views:
• Changed “Integration | Service Management” to Azure BizTalk Services on the Integration services tier
• Removed
• Messenger

Download the .PDF files here:

• DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Products Portfolio – All-Up View – Ver 3.1
  http://sdrv.ms/12vOI4a
• DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Products Portfolio – Enterprise View – Ver 3.1
  http://sdrv.ms/1aVgq23

Personally, I’m sort of on a kick to help amplify coverage of any Microsoft event that has objective reporting.  So these are a few sites that I think are doing a good job of live blogging/covering the BUILD 2013 Conference going on right now in San Francisco sans the snark. 

Peeps listed below?  You’re doin’ it right!

• The Verge – Tom Warren
  “Live from the Microsoft Build 2013 keynote”
  http://live.theverge.com/live-microsoft-build-2013/
• Windows Phone Central – Daniel Rubino, Sam Sabri
  “Microsoft Build 2013 Keynote Live blog”
  http://www.wpcentral.com/build-2013-keynote-live-blog
• Tom’s Hardware – Marcus Yam
  “Microsoft Build 2013 Keynote Day 1 Live Blog”
  http://new.livestream.com/toms-live/microsoft-build-2013-day-1
• LifeHacker – Angus Kidman
  “Build 2013 Live Blog: All The Windows 8.1 News”
  http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/06/build-2013-live-blog-all-the-windows-8-1-news/
• MarketWatch – Rex Crum
  “Recap: Microsoft’s Build conference keynote”
  http://blogs.marketwatch.com/specialreport/2013/06/26/live-blog-microsofts-build-conference-keynote/

YAY!  ABC News just launched on Windows Phone!

This app provides the ABC News experience beyond what the web alone provides by not just formatting the content for your Windows Phone’s screen and eliminating advertising (except for ABC’s own show ads) but also providing:

• Award-winning coverage in story, video and slideshow formats
• Live video & blogs for key events – including the Hourly News Pop, a video summary of up to the minute news published every hour
• Trending stories to see what everyone is talking about
• Breaking news alerts (Notifications on your Windows Phone)
• Pin your favorite shows and sections for easy access:
• Good Morning America
• World News
• Nightline
• 20/20
• This Week with George Stephanopoulos
• U.S., International, Politics, Investigative, Health, Entertainment, Money, Technology, Sports and Travel
• Tap & Share or use SMS, Facebook, Twitter or email

The live video is cool, especially the Hourly News Pop.  Note: I don’t know that the app has listed in the on-Windows-Phone app directory yet so load the app from the link below.

• DOWNLOAD: “ABC News” for Windows Phone
  http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/abc-news/02307067-9b8b-44c6-b2ce-500810da63ff

Welcome to Build Week
This week at San Francisco’s Moscone Center we will host developers and press from around the world for three days of immersive content, hackathons and demos during our annual Build Developer Conference. It all begins at 9:00 am PDT on June 26^th.

Microsoft’s senior executives and top technical leaders will tell the Microsoft Platform Story through keynotes, supported with some incredible Microsoft product news, partner app announcements and compelling demos to show developers what they can do on our platform. We’ll go to the bare metal with over 160 deep technical sessions and around-the-clock hackathons. All of this delivered by the Microsoft Engineers and Evangelists behind our products. 

Get Involved and tune in…
If you are not attending Build:

• Our Channel 9 Community will broadcast keynotes, top sessions and interviews live throughout the event
• Developers and other customers will be able to submit their questions online.
• Updates and announcements can be found on the Microsoft News Center.
• All remaining sessions will be made available on-demand within about 24 hours of presentation time.

• WEBCAST: BUILD 2013 keynote & key sessions broadcast, June 26th, 9:00AM PDT
  http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013

Cloud Spectator, an independent research organization that monitors IaaS solution providers, recently ran tests across 5 major Virtual Machine hosters/IaaS providers.  Take a look at the comparisons of vendors for the following categories in this research report, published June 5th, 2013:

• Performance
• Price/Performance
• CloudSpec benchmark

Excerpt:

• “On average, the highest-performance provider over the test period is Windows Azure, and the lowest-performance provider is Amazon EC2. The difference in performance: Windows Azure scores 3 times higher than Amazon EC2 on average.”
• “Windows Azure, the highest-value provider in this scenario, provides 5x more value than on average throughout the 5-day test period than the lowest-value provider, Rackspace.”

This is extremely telling.  And now, software developers with MSDN subscriptions can get access to the highest performing IaaS cloud solution on the market at no additional cost to them using their MSDN-granted Azure credits.

• RESEARCH: Cloud Server Performance: A Comparative Analysis of 5 Large Cloud IaaS Providers (.PDF)
  http://www.cloudspectator.com/cloud-server-performance-a-comparative-analysis-of-5-large-cloud-iaas-providers-3/

Ignite Online provides technical training for IT Professionals on the new Exchange, Lync, Office and Office 365. These guides feature new product capabilities and cover topics such as design, deployment and management of these technologies.

• Office 2013
• Office 365
• Exchange Server 2013
• Lync Server 2013

TRAINING: “Ignite Online” for Office & IT Professionals
http://officeignitelabs.cloudguides.com/