Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Much lore revolves around Microsoft’s past.  For those that have never been to our corporate location in Redmond, WA, Microsoft’s campus has a place called “Building 92”, also known as “The Commons” where we house a variety of fun things like our company store, more than a dozen restaurants, our company library, cellular carrier outlets for all 4 major phone vendors, a bike shop, etc.

“THE FOUNDER PHOTOS”
One of the things they have there is the Visitor Center, which is sort of like what used to be the Microsoft Museum.  It’s one of my favorite places because they have so many old memories of the computing industry from the past that has shaped our present today.  A classic is a photo they have on display of the early employees or “founders’ of Microsoft – the one everyone is familiar with.  What’s special however about the display however is that they did two things:

• They identified all the people pictured in the photo.

• They took another photo of what they look like today.

For those paying attention, you’ll notice two differences in the photos from “then” & “now”.

1. Bob Wallace is missing from the ‘now’ photo.
   Sadly, Bob passed away in 2002.  Employee #9 at Microsoft, Bob was known for having engineering a solution for printing software manuals from the fledgling Microsoft back in the day.  He was a leader of the Shareware movement of the era and went on to create the highly popular PC-Write word processing software.  (God – I remember that program so fondly as being on every Shareware floppy in the known universe.)
   Bob Wallace, 53, Software Pioneer, Dies:
   http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/26/business/bob-wallace-53-software-pioneer-dies.html?sec=&spon=
2. Miriam Lubow was not in the original ‘then’ photo.
   Who is Miriam Lubow you may ask?  Microsofties remember her as the original matriarch of Microsoft.  In a company of geeks, she kept the company operational with her common sense, for example, making sure Bill remembered to eat and wear a clean change of clothes to business meetings.  Miriam sadly passed away soon after this photo was taken in 2008.
   Miriam Lubow: 1935-2008: Microsoft loses the ‘Mama’ of its early years
   http://www.seattlepi.com/business/373123_lubowobit01.html

There’s also a cutout with ‘the founder’s’ signatures on it:

I have quite a few photos from my last trip so I think I’ll post a few more things about our campus that I think people would be interested in reading about.

Microsoft Hohm is a free online application that helps you save energy and money. With Hohm you can better understand your home energy usage, get recommendations to help conserve energy and start saving. As with any recommendation product, Microsoft Hohm will provide increasingly more accurate and relevant suggestions for energy conservation as our users contribute home energy input and feedback. One of the objectives during our beta period is to refine our tool and further increase the value our product can offer to you.

Hohm uses advanced analytics licensed from Lawrence Berkeley Labs and the Department of Energy, to give you personalized energy saving recommendations. These recommendations are tailored based on your specific household circumstances including home attributes and use of appliances and systems. You will also be able to compare your energy usage with that of others in your area. In this beta version, the Microsoft Hohm team will learn from its users and communities and will make improvements to the site and analytics.

• DOWNLOAD:  Microsoft Hohm
  http://www.microsoft-hohm.com

This is pretty insane.  It’s a 70Gpixel shot of Budapest using a combination of Silverlight, Microsoft Deep Zoom, and Windows Azure, Microsoft’ cloud computing offering.

Panoramic photography is the new buzz, getting worldwide recognition as we speak. Audiences love its immersiveness—the way it transports you into places never visited or inaccessible by any means other than your computer screen Gigapixel photographs are capable of displaying environments and artwork in unprecedented detail. The gigapixel photographs of two paintings (by Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar and Rippl-Rónai József; courtesy of the Hungarian National Gallery) recently displayed on our website resulted in 10,000 unique page views within a week—such is the magnetism of extreme detail. We are all about promotig this technology locally as well as internationally. We wanted to make a statement—a professionally challenging one with substantial entertainment value to boot. Hence the of making a high definition spherical panorama.

• VIEW:  70 Billion Pixel shot of Budapest using Silverlight, Deep Zoom, and Microsoft Windows Azure
  http://70gigapixel.cloudapp.net/index_en.html

Microsoft recently introduced the new “Enterprise CAL Suite” for volume licensed businesses, a special per user or per device ‘mega-license’ that permits the usage of a massive number of Microsoft technologies at one extremely attractive cost.

For those of you that are into saving licensing costs for software, this has to be one of the most attractive deals out there for customers looking to consolidate licensing, support, and maintenance under a single umbrella.

The following is a chart that ‘simplifies’ what is available in the Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite for 2011:

• http://www.microsoft.com/calsuites/en/us/
  default.aspx

WHY IS THIS SIMPLIFIED?
This is a ‘simplified’ chart because it actually lists two additional “suite” products WITHIN the Enterprise CAL Suite itself.  I repeat:  That’s TWO SUITES, within the SUITE.  These are:

• System Center Client Management Suite, which contains:
  • Operations Manager for Clients
  • Data Protection Manager for Clients
  • Service Manager
• Forefront Protection Suite, which contains:
  • Forefront Client Security
  • Forefront Protection for Exchange
  • Forefront Security for Sharepoint
  • Forefront Security for Office Communications
  • Forefront Online Protection for Exchange 2010
  • Forefront Threat Management Gateway Web Protection Service

RESOURCES
For more information about these products, check the following web site:

• Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite Capabilities Overview
  http://www.microsoft.com/calsuites/en/us/capabilities/default.aspx

For a DETAILED view of every license in the Enterprise CAL Suite as well as an explanation of each license’s function, download this 12 page document:

• ECAL Suite Component Product Grid
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/9/4/294CCF3F-674C-47B6-B53F-886319C2CC85/CAL%20Suites%20Datasheet%20-%20Wave%202010.pdf

Microsoft® cloud services means freedom for your financial institution. Freedom to access the technology you need, wherever and whenever you want it. Freedom to take advantage of the latest technology as a capital expense or an operational one. Freedom to focus on running your business—not running your IT systems. Freedom to make full use of the same Microsoft technologies you already know and trust, on a  pay-as-you-go model—on-premises, off-premises or a combination of both—for a single department or an entire global organization.

Twenty million businesses and over a billion people use Microsoft cloud services.

We, and our partners, are committed to delivering a broad set of enterprise-ready products and services that build on what you already know.

• WHITEPAPER:  Microsoft Cloud Services for the Financial Services Industry
  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/msfinancial/docs/CloudComputingFinancialServices.pdf

Earlier this month we announced the availability of Express Studio 4. At that time we made the free version of Expression Encoder 4 available on our website.

Today we are pleased to announce that Expression Encoder 4 Pro is now available for purchase from the Microsoft Store for only $49.95.

If you purchased a retail version of either Expression Encoder 3 with IIS Smooth Streaming or the full-featured Expression Studio SKU, you can upgrade to Expression Encoder 4 Pro for FREE!. Find out how here.

Expression Encoder 4 Pro contains the full feature set of the product and gives you the following additional functionality not available in the free version:

• H.264/AAC Encoding
• Additional decoders for input types (MPEG2, MPEG/TS Splitter, Dolby Digital (AC3), MP4 and H.264/AAC)
• Live IIS Smooth Streaming Support
• Unlimited Screen Capture
• Digital Rights Management (PlayReady) Integration

Our training partner Quicklearn is announcing the availability of new online training on BizTalk Server 2010.

This is a series of self-paced online training courses that include hand-on lab experience and instructor support. It really allows you to take control of your learning experience and choose the pace and time to do it without having to travel.

Starting next month, Quicklearn will be offering diverse online training courses ranging from BizTalk Developer Fundamentals to specific experts topics such as Business Rule Engine (BRE) and Business To Business with EDI.

You can test drive these online training session with the free sample available today:
Updating Your Skill to BizTalk Server 2010.

This new product we’re coming out with, “Aurora” is notable because it’s truly the future of Small Business computing IMHO.  It’s sort of like a combination of:

1. Today’s Small Business Server
2. Windows Home Server
3. Active Directory
4. Microsoft Online Services

Introducing Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora”
Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora” is a new edition of Windows Small Business Server that introduces cross-premise functionality, providing small businesses with on-premise file and print, security, backup, remote access, and identity management services, combined with optional off-premise services.

Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora” has been specifically designed based on the best practices of a small business. It is highly tailored in both deployment and administration, and has specific management dashboards and wizards to enable easy management. While it doesn’t t provide the flexibility in platform installation options that traditional Windows Servers may, it makes it cost efficient for small business to deploy and host effective IT solutions. Rather than requiring customers to identify, purchase, install, and manage multiple products or technologies, Windows Small Business Server Solutions bring these technologies together into a single-server installation and management experience – reducing time to deployment, and cost of management.

Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora” is a new edition of Windows Small Business Server that introduces cross-premise functionality, providing small businesses with on-premise file and print, security, backup, remote access, and identity management services, combined with optional off-premise services.

A Cross-Premise Small Business Solution
Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora” incorporates best-of-breed 64-bit product technologies to deliver a server environment well suited for most small businesses. The product technologies include:

• Server Operating System: Windows Server 2008 R2 product technologies provide the core foundation of Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora”. Windows Server 2008 R2 is the most flexible and robust Windows Server operating system to date.
• Network Monitoring and Protection: Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora” monitors its own health status and the status of client computers running Windows XP, Windows Vista®, Windows 7, and Mac OS X version 10.5 and above. Health status notifies you of issues or problems related to computer backups, server storage, low disk space, and more.
• Flexible Storage: Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora” Drive Extender is a technology that simplifies server storage management. It enables you to easily expand the server’s storage capacity using internal and/or external hard drives of varying sizes and types, and it helps protect your data from many silent hard drive data errors.
• Database: The optional Small Business Server Premium Add-on includes a licensed copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard technologies and Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 R2 Standard Edition for Small Business, providing customers and partners with a comprehensive data management and analysis solution.

WeGotServed.com has a nice video posted about Aurora:

Microsoft® SharePoint® is one of the most successful Microsoft server products. Most people know this product primarily as an environment for collaboration and document sharing. Many people will also know it to be a platform to build websites, while others see it as a portal.

The fact is that SharePoint provides a central location for people to work from. It brings together all required user functionality. This white paper examines the combination of SharePoint and the Microsoft BizTalk® Enterprise Service Bus Toolkit (BizTalk ESB Toolkit), in order to achieve a manageable overall solution for universal access to all relevant information and business processes.

• WHITEPAPER:  ESB for SharePoint
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=46bee956-db15-4398-8517-f706fd2765ba

The recordings included in this download are:

• Introduction
• Planning, Design, and Deployment
• Upgrade and Migration
• Demand Management
• Portfolio Strategy
• Timesheets and Statusing
• Reporting, Part 1
• Reporting, Part 2
• Administration
• Operations
• Development/Extensibility
• Conclusion

The recordings above represent a total of 8.5 hours of valuable recording available at your fingertip that you should all watch (5.5 hours of presentation and 3 hours of product demonstrations).

Each module is conveniently delivered using a Silverlight player that gives you the ability to view the presenter and the slides as the same time as well as give you a chapter breakdown and full transcription of presentation. Please note that the primary goal of the Ignite content was to enable technical readiness prior to launch, focusing specifically on what’s new with respect to EPM 2007, hence we highly encourage you invest in training for a successful implementation of this exciting release of Microsoft Project 2010.

You can view video presentations of each Ignite training module on the Microsoft Project 2010 Ignite Online Recordings page in the Project 2010 web site. PowerPoint slides used in the training can be downloaded at the following location: Microsoft Project 2010 “Ignite” training slide presentations. For additional technical information referenced in the slides, see the Project Server 2010 TechCenter (TechNet) or the Project 2010 Resource Center (MSDN). For more information about Project 2010, see the Project 2010 Web site.

• TRAINING:  Microsoft Project 2010 “QuickStart” Training (1.8GB)
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=22e41121-46d9-40e0-bf05-25a9859dcb84
• DOWNLOAD:  Microsoft Project 2010 “QuickStart” Presentations (30.9MB)
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=CD9F97C4-BB88-4B8E-B69A-62921B63FB18&displaylang=en