Kurt Shintaku's Blog

This is a little hard to find.  Personally, I use Colligo Contributor against our SharePoint infrastructure here at Microsoft to manage files online/offline so I rarely have to do this sort of web-based file access.  (But that’s another topic entirely)

Today, I had to access a SharePoint doc repository and pull a bunch of files off of a folder hierarchy that was deep within a single SharePoint site.  If you’re in SharePoint 2010 (either Server or Foundation) and found it difficult to get the ol’ “Explorer View”… that’s because it doesn’t exist any more.  The product group took it out between 2007 and 2010.  GRRR.

Having some sort of Explorer view s important for obvious reasons:

• Multi-select documents using rubber banding
• Drag & drop files to-and-from from your desktop (again, ca
• Right mouse click a file for “Properties”
• Preview documents in Explorer pane

In order to get a similar “Explorer View” to access the files in the SharePoint document repositories in your sites, you need to:

1. Go to the site’s document repository (See below)
2. Click on ‘Library’
3. Click “Open in Explorer” to the far right. 
   It may be hidden so expand the browser window to reveal it 

We recently released a bunch of the Microsoft Press books that we have available for free in two new formats:

1. Amazon ‘Kindle’ (MOBI)
2. Barnes & Noble ‘Nook’ (ePUB)

Here’s the titles that just got published:

• Programming Windows Phone 7 by Charles Petzold (EPUB, MOBI)
• Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 by Patrice Pelland, Pascal Paré, and Ken Haines (EPUB, MOBI)
• Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner (EPUB, MOBI)
• Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 by Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker with the Windows Server Team at Microsoft (EPUB, MOBI)
• Own Your Future, Update Your Skills with Resouces and Career Ideas from Microsoft by Katherine Murray(EPUB, MOBI)

[taken from the Microsoft Press blog]

From time to time Microsoft Press has been pleased to offer free downloadable eBooks available as either PDF or XPS files. We are now very happy to announce that five of these same eBooks can be downloaded in two additional formats, DRM-free EPUB and MOBI. These new formats enable you to read these eBooks on ereaders such as Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, Sony Reader and Kobo eReader, as well as on iOS devices such as the iPad. Of course these files can also be read with ereading apps for the various devices (and other reading applications like Adobe Digital Editions) on netbooks, laptops, and desktop PCs. The key difference between these formats and the previously-offered PDF and XPS files is that the text is “reflowable,” meaning that it recomposes depending on the width of the screen (or as you resize a Window). For reading on Kindles, Kindle apps, or the Mobipocket readers for various devices, use the MOBI files. For reading on most other ereaders and ereading apps, including Nook, Sony, and iPad, as well as on PCs, use the EPUB files.

…

Sigh.  It turns out that Facebook will, by default, recognize your photo in other people’s photos and suggest that they tag you with your real name.

In other words:  If a friend has a photo with your picture in it, Facebook will automatically identify you by placing a square around your face based on other places you’ve been tagged, using facial recognition, and autosuggest that your friend tag you in the photo.  And as you get tagged more and more, the richer the photo recognition gets.  It’s self-perpetuating.

This is enabled by default and while I like Facebook as much as the next person I ain’t wild about this for variety of reasons.   Carnegie Mellon University did a study that concluded that this kind of technology used with Facebook can potentially end anonymity altogether.  Their comment about Facebook and privacy was telling:

Facebook also integrated facial-recognition technology into the social-networking platform to auto-suggest users to be tagged in photos. As all things privacy-related in Facebook, all users were included in the recognition database by default.

So… what do you do to prevent this?

TO DISABLE AUTORECOGNITION OF YOUR FACE IN OTHERS PHOTOS:

• Login to Facebook.
• Click the “Account” dropdown and select “Privacy Preferences”.

• Scroll to the bottom & click “Customize Settings” hyperlink.

• Scroll down to “Things others share” and click on the “Edit Settings” button next to “Suggest photos of me to friends”.
  A dialog box will appear.

• Look under “Suggest photos of me to friends” and ensure that the dropdown box is set to “Disabled”.

• Click “Okay” button.  That’s it.

Whoa.  Check this out.  A video that goes through all the stuff folks can anticipate with System Center Configuration Manager 2012.  Top to bottom.

System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Overview and Infrastructure: Module 1: Technical Overview

Explore the major changes coming in System Center Configuration Manager 2012 in this video. This video provides an overview of the product, showing how it empowers users, unifies infrastructure and simplifies administration.

This video is part of the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA). The MVA is a free program delivering structured learning paths for IT Professionals on various Microsoft products and solutions.

After watching this video, visit www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com, enroll in this course and take the self-assessment. For every module you take and every self-assessment you complete, you will be awarded points. These points build up to levels and the higher the level you achieve, the more opportunities you have to participate in MVA offers.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/system-center-configuration-manager-2012-overview-and-infrastructure-module-1-technical-overview

Nice.  Outlook 2010 integration & Web Password Reset credential mgmt.

Microsoft is pleased to announce the availability of Forefront Identity Manager 2012 R2 beta. Some of the key areas we’re enhancing with this release include:

• Credential management with web based password reset
• Historical reporting using integration to the System Center Service Manager data warehouse
• Greater ease of use through enhanced initial load performance, improved diagnostics and and enhanced load and scale performance
• Additional support for Microsoft Outlook 2010, and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010

To join the beta program and download the software, click here.

We are also pleased to announce that the Forefront Identity Manager Community Evaluation Program will commence on the 2nd of August with our first session. Community members are encouraged to attend and new members are certainly welcome. Community Evaluation Programs are a great technical resource for deeper understanding of Microsoft products and to connect with other users. With over 2000 people engaged in various CEP programs, you’re able to not only connect directly with key engineering resources from Microsoft, but also a broad community of like-minded users. Further details on the Community Evaluation Program for the R2 release of Forefront Identity Manager 2010 can be found here.

• Read more at:  Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 beta now available
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/forefront/archive/2011/08/01/key-improvements-in-forefront-identity-manager-r2.aspx

I bought an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 – Network adapter (Mini PCI-E). Why’d I do that? Because the adapter in the Samsung Series 9 is a little questionable:  The Bluetooth was unreliable and the range on the adapter wasn’t great, despite having replaced the original with another Broadcom adapter twice.

If you’re interested in doing the same thing, here’s the instructions on how to accomplish this:

1. Purchase a Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 – Network adapter (Mini PCI-E) for $19 each.  This is the cheapest that I was able to find the adapter at.  Other places sell it for as high as $60… the hell?
   http://www.macmall.com/p/Intel-Wireless-Networking/product~dpno~8355777~pdp.gdicdec
2. Replace the Broadcom WiFi Bluetooth adapter on your device. Be extra careful reattaching the antenna as it’s fragile and not easily replaceable… if at all.  TechRepublic has a photo of the adapter location on the unit here:
   http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/cracking-open-the-samsung-series-9-ultraportable-notebook/6235888?seq=50&tag=thumbnail-view-selector;get-photo-roto
3. Download & install the latest driver for the Intel® PROSet/Wireless WiFi Connection Utility (for Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6200 series):
   http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3227&DwnldID=19856
   (Note: You won’t need Bluetooth drivers as the existing Bluetooth drivers on your system should work just fine.)

EXTRA CREDIT: SETTING UP INTEL WIDI

Incidentally, if you want to enable your computer for Intel WiDi (Wireless Display technology that allows you to send your display to your home big screen/LCD television), here’s the web site on how to do this once you have the Intel Centrino 6230 installed on your computer. It’s similar to Apple’s Airplay.
http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wtech/iwd/sb/CS-031109.htm

The above will work for normal, non-protected content like YouTube, Hulu, or locally stored videos.  For playback of DVDs, Bluray, or rights protected streams like Netflix, you’ll need to enable WiDi protection by following these steps.
http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wtech/iwd/sb/CS-032474.htm

Like most companies today, you rely on your IT infrastructure to keep your business running. You need to find out about and fix IT problems before they lead to any downtime or loss of productivity and revenue. This becomes even more challenging when you depend on a combination of physical, virtual, and cloud resources to run a diverse mix of operating systems (Windows, Linux, and Unix) that support any number of critical business applications. Microsoft understands these challenges and is dedicated to helping customers address these issues.

System Center Operations Manager 2012 provides the solution to the challenges mentioned above by:

• Delivering flexible and cost effective enterprise-class monitoring and diagnostics while reducing the total cost of ownership by leveraging commodity hardware with standard configurations to monitor heterogeneous environments.
• Helping to ensure the availability of business-critical applications and services through market-leading .NET application performance monitoring and diagnostics plus JEE application health monitoring.
• Providing a comprehensive view of datacenters, and private and public clouds.

Here’s what’s new

• Rich application performance monitoring and diagnostics for .NET applications plus JEE application health monitoring
• Support for monitoring heterogeneous environments
• Integrated network device monitoring and alerts
• Simplified management infrastructure
• Common console across datacenter and clouds with customizable dashboards

Download the beta here.

For more information, visit the new Operations Manager 2012 beta page.

[taken from the SCOM blog]

Download the Lunch & Learn SharePoint Adoption Kit.
The Lunch & Learn kit contains all the materials you need to promote SharePoint within your organization. The kit includes instructions, templates, videos, quick reference cards and more to help you deploy an internal SharePoint resource site – a place to access SharePoint information and tools, and connect around the best part of the day: lunch.

•  SharePoint Webisodes
•  Show Me How Videos
•  Quick Reference Cards
•  Tips & Tricks PDF
•  Table Tent Template
•  Poster Template
•  Email Template
•  Best Practices PDF

Download this kit to show your team how SharePoint makes life, and lunch, a little better.

• DOWNLOAD: Lunch & Learn SharePoint Adoption Kit
  http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/iusesharepoint/pages/get-the-kit.aspx

Just noticed that they posted the session list on the SharePoint Conference web site.
http://www.mssharepointconference.com
/pages/sessions.aspx

There are 210 sessions to attend during the week long event.  This is a gonna be a whopper of an event.  Here are the pivots around the different sessions going on.

• Audience:
  Developer (36) IT Professional (33) Other (141)
• Level:
  100 (4) 200 (84) 300 (108) 400 (14)
• Capability:
  Communities/Sites (24) Composites (9) Content (47) Insights (25) Search (24)
• Tags:
  Access (3) Administration (45) Adoption (8) Architecture (7) Best Practices (88) BI (26) Claims Authentication (3) Cloud (17) Communities/Sites (15) Composites (9) Content (22) Customization (47) Data Services (2) Deployment (52) Developer (33) Development (35) Duet Enterprise (2) Enterprise Content Management (23) Excel (7) Governance (22) High Availability (10) InfoPath (7) Insights (25) Internet Business (25) IT Pro (31) Line of Business (7) Office 365 (11) Office Client (29) Office Web apps (4) PerformancePoint (12) Planning, Deployment and Adoption (8) Project (7) Scalability (25) Search (32) Security (10) SharePoint (185) SharePoint Designer (18) Social (16) Strategy (2) Tools (26) Upgrade (7) Virtualization (2) Visio (8) Web Content Management (24) Windows (1) Windows Phone (5) Workflow (7)

This is a repost – in it’s entirety – of a post from the GetThePoint blog.  I’m doing this because it’s THAT important to SharePoint Search Admins.

Please take the time to investigate this.  It’s a got a TON of fantastic info.

Have you been scratching your head about how to approach People Search for your SharePoint site or how to try enabling it again? You know you need to do this because a good Search tool is the mesh that helps connect all the disparate parties who contribute to your sites. But, how to proceed?

You might find this detailed and well-illustrated post interesting. It discusses how one might enable SharePoint Search, avoid pitfalls, and work around possible snags:  Troubleshooting SharePoint Search

Paul, the author, provides basic deployment steps for less-experienced administrators, presents a brief explanation for more advanced admins, and dives deep to suggest ways to work around difficulties, both known and more obscure. Suggested work-arounds cover the following topics, among others:

• The loopback issue where search crawling fails and results in an Access Denied error. The post gives two ways to fix this via a registry update: a quick way and a right way.
• Search problems with HTTPS sites. The post presents a simple solution, involving a one-line configuration update.
• Problems associated with Active Directory policies, namely those involved with enforcing proxy server and security settings (like those affecting trusted sites lists). The post presents several options for dealing with this.

Check it out! It’s a bit lengthy but worth the read if SharePoint Search is in your path