Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Sorry for the lackluster rate of posting.  I’m just getting back into the saddle after coming back from vacation/CES 2012.  I’m HOPING this weekend I can get at least somewhat caught up and start posting some timely news.

SAME TIME… EVERY YEAR
For those of you who’ve been reading this blog, you know that this happens EVERY YEAR around this time where everything gets backlogged because I have a mountain of email that appeared during my vacation and have to follow up on those before I start on the event notifications, news, and details.

For example, that post I made about the difference between Office 2010 from Volume Licensing vs Office 2010 from Office 365 was a question that came from a customer.  Hence the reason I just republished the research I’d done.

So, hopefully I’ll be able to get back on track in the next week or so.  It’s a little brutal but I think I’ll get there.  But until then, it’s gonna be a trickle based on reactive research and news.

A QUICK NOTE ON CES 2012
But I’ve got a ton of stuff to mention from CES 2012, which wasn’t as much of a bust as many would have you believe.  Here’s some stuff off the top of my head that I noticed:

1. ULTRABOOKS ARE REAL
   Not real in the sense that they exist, but real in the sense that people loved them.  There was a lot of attention being paid to them in all the booths that showcased them.
2. USB 3.0 IS GONNA RULE
   I’m sorry Thunderbolt.  There was very little attention paid to Intel’s connective medium versus USB 3.0.  Performance be damned, every Ultrabook I saw had a USB 3.0 port… and no Thunderbolt.  Every major peripheral manufacturer had a USB 3.0 highlight and I couldn’t find much at all re: Thunderbolt/Lightpeak.  The big one for me was a USB 3.0 Port Replicator/Docking Station from Targus which I’ll write a post about later.
3. MOTION CONTROL IS TRENDY
   Yeah, I know I work for Microsoft and we make Kinect, but that’s not my point:  Every TV booth had some sort of Primesense Motion Control sensor in it that provided an experience that sorta, kinda provided something like Kinect directly on TVs without an Xbox.
   … the problem was, the experience SUCKED.  No, seriously.  The response/reaction time was really slow, the recognition was horribly spotty, and the devices were of very poor quality.  These stations got a lot of attention but I think most walked away with a very poor opinion of the implementations.
4. NOKIA WAS HUGE
   Nokia’s Lumia 900 won the CNET Best of CES Smartphone, IGN’s Best of CES Smartphone, Laptop Magazine’s “Best of CES” Finalist, ZDNet’s BEst of CES Smartphone, Popular Mechanics “Editor’s Choice”.
   … there’s no question, Nokia’s launch in the US was a smash hit.  You couldn’t get away from the gravity of their launch.  And their booth was completely packed despite only having 3 phones on display.
5. BUSINESSES WANT WINDOWS 8 TABLETS
   Again, yeah, I’m an MS employee, but you have to take my word for it that every Windows 8 tablet/slate got a ridiculous amount of attention.  In fact, I found it surprising how minimal the reaction was to new Android tablet announcements.  I suppose it makes sense since, in fairness, Android is everywhere so as a result, not very interesting or buzzworthy.
   …that being said, it’s clear that Windows 8 touch control and Metro UI is was very compelling for attendees who seemed to consist a lot of business users.  The booth presentation was packed 7 layers deep – easily the busiest part of the Microsoft booth, even more so than Xbox 360/Kinect or Ultrabooks.
6. OLED TVs & 4K EQUIPMENT WAS THE VIDEO BUZZ
   The LG OLED 55” TV won Best of CES All around from CNET.  This was because the picture is EXTREMELY vivid… the colors were bright and deep, and the blacks were pitch black.  More so than anything I’ve seen.   And the display was half and inch think or something like that.  It’s thinner than a picture you might hang on the wall.  Crazy.  Also totally pre-production.
   The other thing was 4K.  4K is a TV display resolution that is twice that of HDTV’s 1080p.  There were a lot of demos but there’s not much content at all.  (YouTube has 6 videos in 4K resolution)  So I don’t know where this is going other than… it’s cool?
7. VEGAS IS HURTING.  BADLY.
   It seems to me that Vegas has had a massive drop in gambling, attendance, and visitors.  Just looking at the casinos in the evenings during the show seemed like an indicator.  The CES conference itself was the largest ever, however the number of people coming through to play in the casino seemed to be minimal.  I had this discussion with a lot of casino hosts, hotel employees, and taxi drivers and apparently the typical attendee just doesn’t play which is tough on revenue.

I’ll write more later.  I have a ton of stuff I brought back.

Some of you know that I take an annual vacation/pilgrimage to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to keep up with the latest in technological gadgetry.  This year I’ve personally taken quite a few first hand notes and live tweeted my week long stay there.  (My Twitter account is at https://twitter.com/kurtsh)

More importantly however, if you’re interested in what Law Technology News has to say about CES 2012 this year, they recently posted a summary at the link below that I thought you might be interested in.

• 2012 International CES Update for Legal Professionals
  http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1202538482337&_International_CES_Update_for_Legal_Professionals

A few quick notes about Mr. Doherty’s article:

• CELLULAR ACCESSORIES
  I found it surprisingly lacking in discussions about innovative cellular phone accessories which I would tend to believe would be important to many legal professionals, and there were a lot of interesting items on display at the show.  For example, the “Plantronics Voyager Pro Plus” headset has ‘ear detection’ which ensures that audio is routed to the paired headset IF AND ONLY IF the user is wearing it on their ear.  Otherwise, audio still plays back from the handset.
  http://www.plantronics.com/us/product/voyager-pro-plus
• MOBILE VOIP
  The show was chock full of mobile VOIP solutions for the ‘professional-on-the-go’ but there’s no mention of this, some of them were really amazing for the user that has multiple voice communications conduits.  For example, the “Jabra SPEAK 410” has audio for the mobile professional that is better quality than any Polycom tripod I’ve ever used.  It sounds great even playing normal MP3 music through it and the footprint is just a little bigger than a mouse. 
  http://www.jabra.com/na-us/headsetsolutions/pages/jabraspeak410.aspx
• ULTRABOOKS
  This surprised me.  A lot more attention was paid to Ultrabooks at the show than any other topic – and that included the OLED 55” TVs on display, yet there was barely a mention in the article.  The Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook impressive stats for example, can’t be understated.  It outperforms most Dell notebooks with a form factor, battery life, & price less than most machines today.
  http://ces.cnet.com/8301-33372_1-57353906/dell-finally-gets-into-the-ultrabook-game-at-ces-2012-with-the-xps-13/

This has come up in one of my customers so I thought I’d write a post on it:

There are technical differences, from an IT perspective, between the following software:

• Office Pro Plus 2010 for Volume Licensing
  (the traditional Office software downloaded/deployed by Enterprises from https://licensing.microsoft.com)
• Office Pro Plus 2010 for Office365
  (the special Office software that is provided by subscribing to Office 365 E3/E4)

The two are different MEDIA TYPES. (Sort of like the difference between MSDN vs TRIAL vs RETAIL vs VL)  VL & O365 media types offer the same product mix of Word, Excel, etc., (although it seems to be missing Publisher in the default install) however here are some key technical differences between the two:

Office Professional Plus 2010 for Office 365…

• … appears in Add/Remove Programs as “Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010”
  If “Office Professional Plus 2010 for Office 365” is installed on another system that already has ”Office Professional Plus 2010 Volume License Media” installed on it, TWO entries will appear in Add/Remove programs that both read, “Office Professional Plus 2010”.
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg702620.aspx
• … doesn’t use a traditional Volume License “Activation Key”.
  It won’t take MAK/KMS keys.  It’s a special media type that installs Office 2010 along with something called the “Office Subscription Agent”. The user is simply required to enter their Office 365 credentials (username/pwd) and the Agent reaches out over the Internet to verify the user account. (i.e. that the user is still subscribed to Office 365) Upon doing so it activates the local copy of Office 2010 for ONE MONTH.
• … will “connect to Office 365” monthly to validate that an active subscription for the user is still available.
  It’s a special version of Office that checks that the user still has an active subscription license once a month. If it can’t, Office 365’s version of OfficeProPlus2010 goes into “reduced functionality mode” and basically becomes a ‘viewer’ – i.e. no editing or creating new documents.
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg982959.aspx

HOW DO YOU INVENTORY FOR OFFICE PROFESSIONAL PLUS 2010 for OFFICE 365?
How does one figure out how many copies are deployed?  How do you differentiate between the desktops that have Office Professional Plus 2010 Volume Licensing Media, and Office Professional Plus 2010 for Office 365?

Right now this is the only way I know of:
Office Professional Plus 2010 for Office 365 runs two pieces of software to validate the install against their subscription.  Searching for the Office Subscription Agent (osa.exe) and/or the Office Subscription Agent Notifier (osaui.exe) would be indicators that the desktop is using the Office 365 media. 

Using a Desktop Management solution like SCCM 2007 R3 could pick up the existence of these executables on the desktop to inventory for Office Professional Plus 2010 for Office 365 in your environment.

Roee Adler of “Soluto” fame (if you don’t know what that is, you’re probably not a desktop IT guy) wrote a post that I thought was observant & insightful called, “The greatest trick Apple ever pulled was making you think it’s YOUR fault”.

Here’s a quote that seems to have ruffled some feathers:

"People who have a negative experience with an Apple product just suffer in silence, assuming it’s their own fault"

This thing got retweeted all over the Internet so I’m not even going to bother posting a larger snippet here.

• BLOG: The greatest trick Apple ever pulled was making you think it’s YOUR fault
  http://roee.co/2011/12/30/the-greatest-trick-apple-ever-pulled-was-making-you-think-its-your-fault/

Alaa Ajweh has written a very thorough post on how to install System Center Service Manager 2012’s BETA release.

Installing System Center Service Manager 2012 Beta Step by Step

Alright folks, the Service Manager has just been released! its time to give it a shot and see what the ins and outs of the products.

I’ve summarized the installation steps for you so you can use this guide to start right away with your lab (this isn’t intended for production environments, more thorough planning should take place). I suggest that you take a quick look at the release notes for SCSM 2012 here

As for the installation, remember the good old days when you had to patch Server 2008 to get the latest System Center (R2, R3 stuff), but Server 2008 R2 worked out of the box just fine because it’s a lovely modern OS? well, hate to break the news for ya, but those days are gone; you better get your Server 2008 R2 SP1 Server running and START PATCHING! (actually 2 Servers) here is what you need:

1. Go get Hotfix 2600907 for Server 2008 R2 here (needs a restart)
2. Get the Authorization Manager hotfix here (included in Server 2008 R2 SP1)
3. Get the Microsoft Analysis Management Objects (X64) which is required by the
4. management console so it can work with SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)
5. Install Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable Security Update KB971119 (no links?
6. yes! its in the Prerequisites folder of the SCSM Media, horray!)
7. Get .NET Framework 4 (for the Self Service Portal if you need it)

…

Read the entire post at Ajweh’s Blog:

• Installing System Center Service Manager 2012 Beta Step by Step
  http://ajweh.com/blog/?p=107

Here’s a list of things I’m not interested in seeing at CES 2012 this year:

3D anything.  Geezus.  The consumers have spoken with their wallets.  No one cares.  Photos, cameras, displays, glasses, laptops.  You 3D advocates just won’t give up, will you?

Blu-ray.  Attention Sony:  The world has spoken.  Everyone is going streaming.  No one is interested in buying a new media format, new TVs, or rebuying their DVD library.  See you on Xbox Live Video Marketplace or Netflix.

Wireless power.  After 5 years, prototypes are just not interesting.  If it’s not consumer purchasable at a reasonable price, I don’t care any more.

Near-field Communications (NFC).  Here’s a simple observation:  I can buy things right now with very little effort & a very high successful transaction rate using magstrip credit cards.  Why does anyone want to spend a ton of money on an infrastructure to do exactly what we already do with cheap plastic & wallet sized cards?

TV-embedded Set-top Boxes.  Hey LG, Samsung, and all you other clowns?  No one cares about your proprietary, rarely updated, alien-UI-sporting, sluggish, obscure set-top box technology.  Nobody bought it last year – no one’s going to buy it this year.  You throw this crap against a wall and seriously believe someone’s going to us it over an Xbox 360 or Apple TV, or WDLive or Google TV.  Here’s a hint:  They’re not… or I should say, they DIDN’T.

Cheap, Useless, Piece-of-Junk Tablets.  These disposable, craptacular tablets that have been coming out with marginal utility (and lots of bugs) for the same price as an iPad are not worthy of CES.   A fully-powered Android tablet like the Kindle Fire at $199 is a device matched with an appropriate price.  But $500 for an Honeycomb-based tablet?  Go fish, loser.

iPhone Accessories.  I’m avoiding most of North Hall like the plague.  I don’t, don’t, don’t care about headphones for iOS, jackets for iOS, batteries of iOS.  I could buy all that junk on eBay… but I don’t own an iPhone so I don’t care.

Sony Playstation Move.  C’mon guys.  Now it’s just sad.  Move on.  No pun intended.

Microcell.  Did anyone ever buy into this?  It sounded like a good idea… until the carriers revealed their master strategy for getting consumers to implement them.

That 55” OLED TV.  Why?  Because you can’t buy it that’s why.  It’s a prototype.  It’s out of their research org.  It’s not for sale.  There’s no announced availability date.  So it could be sexier that Salma Hayek:  I don’t care about it.

Cameras with no innovation.  I keep going to Poloroid & Canon, etc. and I never see anything that jumps out at me.  Casio always shows something interesting because they actually demonstrate some new technology that promises to make picture taking easier & better.  Not so much from the others.

Digital Photo Frames.  $100 for 7” diagonal?  With WiFi?  And SD flash memory slot?  Yawn.

eReaders.  All of them.  Or almost all of them:  If it doesn’t say “Kindle” somewhere on it, I’m not interested.

Are you an Official Xbox Magazine subscriber?  Then you may have noticed that this month’s issue (February 2012) has something conspicuously missing. 

The DemoDVD is GONE.

At first I thought that someone had ripped off my disc as my copies always came in plastic with a DVD along side the magazine inside.  But alas, Future, the publisher, has the decided to stop shipping the DemoDVD.  After 131 discs, that’s all she wrote.  SOB!

WAIT A SECOND.  I PAID TOP DOLLAR FOR THOSE DVDS.
Yeah, they know that.  As a result, they are providing all subscribers with 3 extra issues of the magazine to compensate for not having DVD’s any more.  Yeah, I know.  Kinda weak sauce.  But at least it’s something.  And they’ve spent the money in other ways to enhance the magazine.  For example:  The paper stock used in the magazine is noticeably thicker & stronger, and print is clearer and colors more vivid.

HOW TO GET YOUR 3 COMPLIMENTARY ISSUES OF OXM
To get your 3 complimentary issues of Official Xbox Magazine – IF YOU’RE AN EXISTING MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBER:

1. Login to the site http://www.oxmonline.com/customerservice
   You’ll need your email address that was used with your subscription and your zip code.  You’ll see the following frame.

   

2. Hit the Go To Redemption Page button.  This will lead you to this page:

   

3. Press the REDEEM NOW button.  You should see this final screen.

   

WHAT ELSE IS THERE?  HOW ABOUT DIGITAL VERSIONS OF ALL THE PAST ISSUES?
Another thing that they’ve introduced is they now have the entire back catalog of OXM Magazines available in .PDF form.  The WHOLE BACK CATALOG.  To get to it, here’s the URL:

• SECRET STASH of past issues of Official Xbox Magazine
  http://www.oxmonline.com/secretstash

Here’s the last issue posted from the holiday season:

• Holiday Issue 2011 – The special “13th issue” of the year
  http://dl.oxmonline.com/IssueArchive/OXM_2011_13-web.pdf

[NOTE 1/5/12:  There is a problem currently with downloading issues from 2008 and before.  I contacted OXM about it and hopefully they are working on it.]

Here it is… an actual discount offer for TechNet Professional Subscriptions – 15% off. 

If you’re in the market for TechNet Pro, you better take advantage of this.

This is a great opportunity to get access to full versions of software (for evaluation purposes only) with no time bombs or feature limits. Read the terms and conditions for the offer and make sure to use promo code TNFLA12.

(Note: You’re supposed to be a subscriber of the “TechNet Flash Newsletter” in order to take advantage of this deal.  To sign up for TechNet Flash Newsletters, go to THIS LINK.)

From now until February 29th, 2012 Microsoft TechNet Flash subscribers will receive a 15% discount on a new Microsoft® TechNet Subscriptions Professional (the “Offer”):

• The Offer is available to Microsoft TechNet Flash subscribers only. The 15% discount is based on the estimated retail price in USD; however, actual prices may vary by country, exchange rate and local taxes. Each individual acquiring a subscription in connection with the Offer (the “Subscriber”) is responsible for all related taxes.
• The Offer is valid only for a new twelve (12) month subscription to TechNet Subscriptions Professional and may not be combined with any other promotions, discounts or offers.
• The Offer is limited to one (1) per individual Subscriber and may not be used on volume license orders.
• To receive the Offer, the Subscriber must be a current TechNet Flash subscriber.

For details on your use rights for evaluation software, evaluation and testing usage scenarios and a list of product titles included with your new subscription to TechNet Subscriptions Professional, please visit: http://technet.microsoft.com/subscriptions and become familiar with the Microsoft TechNet Subscriptions Software License Terms, the TechNet Terms of Use, and the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

We’re pleased to announce the beta version release of updated product baselines for the Microsoft Security Compliance Manager (SCM 2) tool that are now available for download and review!

Available beta baselines are:

• Windows 7 SP1 Security Compliance Baseline
• Windows Vista SP2 Security Compliance Baseline
• Windows XP SP3 Security Compliance Baseline
• Office 2010 SP1 Security Baseline
• Internet Explorer 8 Security Compliance Baseline

SCM 2 enables you to quickly configure and manage your desktops and laptops, traditional data center, and private cloud using Group Policy and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager.

• Get the beta download from Microsoft Connect.
  https://connect.microsoft.com/site715/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=40298

After you import the beta baselines into SCM 2 using the Import Baselines Wizard, provide us with your feedback.

I have numerous Microsoft Internal, only “corporate” applications installed on my Windows Phone (as in “unlisted & not available to the public”) and for a number of reasons such as uninstalls, etc., I needed to reinstall several of them.

So the question is:

How do you reinstall applications that AREN’T publicly viewable on the Windows Phone Marketplace? (i.e. Unlisted applications)

HIDDEN & NOWHERE TO BE FOUND: “THE ZUNE DESKTOP CLIENT”
The problem is, since the applications are “MS Internal” as we call them, there’s no reference to them other than the original installation links for these apps.

Typically the installation links are for the Zune software and look like this*: http://social.zune.net/External/LaunchZuneProtocol.aspx?pathuri=navigate%3FphoneAppID%3Db63f3651-0875-e011…
(* See below for a discussion about an alternative installation link type)

The reasonable assumption is that if you go to the Zune Desktop client, you should be able to just reinstall the apps, right? NOPE.  When you go back to that link to “reinstall” the app, this is all you get:

(Notice that there’s no “reinstall” option/button.  So you’re stuck.)

HIDDEN & NOWHERE TO BE FOUND: THE ON-DEVICE & ONLINE WINDOWS PHONE MARKETPLACE
In the other locations where you would typically install software, there’s no indicators of how to get at these internal/unlisted applications you’d previously installed.

If you go to your device and visit the Windows Phone Marketplace (i.e. the MARKETPLACE app), there’s obviously no place to look for the app (because it’s an “internal”, Microsoft-only application, remember?) so I can’t just look it up on the phone to re-download.  And there’s no listing on the phone for “previously downloaded” or “currently purchased/owned applications” so that idea’s out the window.  (Interestingly, this was a feature of the Windows Mobile Marketplace back with Windows Phone 6.5.)

Now if you go to the Windows Phone Marketplace online, (i.e. http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/marketplace) you still won’t find the internal application because, again, there’s no public listing and no “special place” for those apps to reside.

(In case you weren’t counting, that’s THREE places to install applications from on the Windows Phone platform – and none of them have a place to reinstall previously downloaded applications – especially those that are internal/unlisted in the marketplace.  And not even the original link works.  [insert tech rage here])

SOLUTION:  YOUR ACCOUNT’S “APP PURCHASE HISTORY” ON WINDOWSPHONE.COM
It turns out there’s yet, a FOURTH place to download software from.  It’s located in your “account” on WindowsPhone.com.  There is an installation history located online for your phone (which you can’t get rid of near as I can tell) that lists every application that you’ve installed – free or otherwise.  This of course includes “internal/unlisted” applications.

Here’s how to find & reinstall those apps:

1. Login to https://www.windowsphone.com with the Windows Live ID you used for your Windows Phone.
2. Click “My Phone”.
3. Click “Account”
4. Scroll below to “App Purchase History”
5. Select the application that you’d previously installed and click “Reinstall” next to it.

———————–
A QUICK WORD ABOUT “APP INSTALLATION LINKS”:
Most links that I’ve seen for Windows Phone applications begin with http://social.zune.net… leading to the installed Zune Desktop Client on your Windows PC.

Recently, there is a new Windows Phone application installation link that I’ve seen that’s doesn’t depend on the Zune Desktop Client, and instead leads you to the Windows Phone Marketplace web site on the Internet.  It’s something like:

• http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/ad543082-80ec-45bb-aa02-ffe7f4182ba8.

This is important because as you can see below, there’s a LINK that says REINSTALL.  This is the only place I’ve seen this and while useful, only certain unlisted/private applications have this link available.  So if you have a link like this, you’re fortunate:  Reinstallation should be as easy as pressing the big RED “Reinstall” button below.