Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Unless you were living under a rock, the other week there was quite a hubbub created over a blog post that Microsoft Corporate VP of Communications made that shined a light on some statistics that helped put matters of Microsoft’s relevance to the technology industry into perspective.

With media pundits blinded by the glitz, glitter, and flash of Google, or the purported dominance of Apple especially with the recent market cap parity between it and MSFT – as if that actually meant anything tangible – many have resorted declaring Microsoft as an “afterthought” or “irrelevant” in both today & tomorrow’s industry.

Microsoft VP Communications decided to release a few “let’s get back to reality” factoids to wake folks up – particularly the media elite – about the unquestionable definition of strength within an industry.

• Original post for Microsoft VP Communications, Frank Shaw.
  POST:  “Microsoft by the numbers”
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-by-the-numbers.aspx
• Great point-by-point analysis of the “numbers post”.
  POST:  "Decoding Microsoft’s fantastic passive-aggressive numbers post"
  http://tcrn.ch/aAAihA
• Solid commentary from Paul Thurrott on the stats Microsoft CVP Frank Shaw revealed.
  POST:  "Microsoft, Beyond the Numbers"
  http://bit.ly/dbbp0h

[taken from Scott Guthrie’s blog at ASP.NET]

We have been working on a new flavor of IIS 7.x that is optimized for developer scenarios that we are calling “IIS Express”. We think it combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server with the full power of IIS.  Specifically:

• It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 10Mb download and a super quick install)
• It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio
• It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, Media Support, and all other IIS 7.x modules
• It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support
• It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all)
• It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all OS platforms

IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk.  It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios.

VS 2010 Integration

We are enabling IIS Express so that it can be easily used with Visual Studio 2010. You’ll be able to configure VS 2010 to use it instead of the ASP.NET Web Server as the default web-server on ASP.NET Projects.  Like the ASP.NET Development Server today, you won’t need to register a site or virtual directory to use IIS Express. It will support the same usage-model as the ASP.NET Development Server today – just with more feature support.

When you press F5 to run an ASP.NET project, Visual Studio can automatically launch IIS Express and use it to run/debug the application (no extra configuration required).  Like the ASP.NET Web Server, IIS Express will show up in your task-bar tray when running:

You can right-click and click “exit” on the icon above to quickly shutdown IIS Express.  You can also right-click and pull up a list of all sites running with it, as well as the directory location and .NET versions they are running under:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two cool things to notice above:

1) The “Test Site” we are running, as well as IIS Express itself, live under the c:users[username] folder on disk. This enables non-administrator usage of IIS Express and sites – and enables a bunch of scenarios not possible with the full IIS today (including the ability to run IIS Express in both a locked-down enterprise environment as well as a locked-down school shared computer environment).

2) The “Test Site” we are running above using IIS Express supports both HTTP and HTTPS access.  IIS Express automatically installs a “self-signed certificate” and enables URL ACLs and SSL Certificates for ports so that developers (running as non-administrators on a machine) can use SSL without needing to elevate their accounts or setup any additional configuration.  This enables you to configure secure pages within your applications (like Logon forms) for SSL and run/test them at development time just like they’ll work on your real web-server.

IIS 7.x Feature Set

IIS Express is as easy to run and use as the ASP.NET Web Server you are familiar with today.  But because IIS Express is based on the IIS 7x codebase, you have a full web-server feature-set that you can use.  This means you can build and run your applications just they’ll work on a real production web-server.  In addition to scenarios like SSL, you can take advantage of the IIS 7.x URL Rewriter module, Media Extensions, Dynamic Compression, Advanced Logging, Custom Security and other rich modules now available.

In addition to supporting ASP.NET, IIS Express also supports Classic ASP and other file-types and extensions supported by IIS – which also makes it ideal for sites that combine a variety of different technologies.

This book provides an overview of the Microsoft Office 2010 suites and information about how to get started with Office 2010. The audience for this book includes IT generalists, IT operations, help desk and deployment staff, IT messaging administrators, and consultants.

The content in this book is a copy of selected content in the Office 2010 Resource Kit technical library (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303401(office.14).aspx) as of the publication date. For the most current content, see the technical library on the web.

DOWNLOAD:  Getting Started with Microsoft Office 2010 (258 pages)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=860761e2-ce6a-408d-a52d-67f8e6a9388e

The PoC kit has been updated to include RTM, including pre-sequenced Office 2010 with App-V. 

So if you’re looking into Application Virtualization with productivity tools, this is a good opportunity to work with our latest and greatest in a fully sequenced App-V package.

• WEBSITE:  Building a Technical Proof of Concept
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ff603537.aspx
• DOWNLOAD:  Proof of Concept Toolkit – with pre-sequenced Office 2010 RTM
  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9728107

Microsoft has developed the Productivity Hub to help support your ongoing end user training efforts.

The Hub is a SharePoint Server site collection for 2007 and 2010 that serves as a learning community and is fully customizable. It provides a central place for your training efforts, and includes training content from Microsoft’s core products. Microsoft also provides ongoing and updated content packs.

The Hub uses SharePoint Server’s social networking capabilities, such as blogs and discussion groups. In addition, it offers the Coach program, a change management feature to help you train end users to self-help, reducing the burden on your training and IT staff. The Coach program impacts productivity in a collaborative and positive way.

The 2010 version of the Productivity Hub includes a quiz feature, a section called ‘Get it Done’ that offers training for tasks such as email management and collaboration, and also features Silverlight. There will be a non-Silverlight version of the 2010 Hub delivered in late June.

The 2007 Hub contains 2007 content only (v2) with 2010 content added in v3 (to be released in June 2010). You can also add 2010 content packages to your current Hub. Watch for more document on migration from your 2007 Hub to your 2010 Hub.

What the Productivity Hub is:

• Format: Pre-loaded SharePoint site collection, optimized for Web 2.0 functionality and easily deployed within SharePoint Server 2007 or SharePoint 2010 environment, depending on version
• Content: Convenient end user productivity training in a variety of formats (documents, videos, podcasts, etc.). Receive free quarterly updates of content that you will learn about through the Productivity blog.
• Blog: The Productivity blog offers tips and tricks for end user productivity. Use it as is, or your training staff can use the posts as their own to help them get started in running an internal blog.
• Train the trainer: Includes IT/Manager section to aid with deployment of the site collection, and guidance to develop the Coach program
• Products: Office 2007 and Office 2010 (including SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint 2010), Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8, Project, Visio, Live Meeting, and Communicator

You can also download additional content packages that expand the training materials you can make available through the Hub.

DOWNLOAD:  Productivity Hub 2010 for Sharepoint 2010/2007
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=4aaa9862-e420-4331-8bc3-469d7bae0ff1

Are you on Windows 7 and like the Bing homepage images? You can have the best of them as wallpapers for your desktop!

Here’s the 3 sets of Themes that the folks at Bing have produced to allow you to rotate through their background imagery.  I hear they’re working on a web service for something similar to avoid having to download the theme packs entirely but we’ll see how that goes.  In the meantime, grab these great high resolution images for free.

• DOWNLOAD:  Best of Bing Theme Pack 1
  http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2009/10/22/bring-a-little-bing-to-your-windows-7-desktop.aspx
• DOWNLOAD:  Best of Bing Theme Pack 2
  http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2010/04/07/add-more-bing-to-your-windows-7-desktop.aspx
• DOWNLOAD:  Best of Bing Theme Pack 3
  http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2010/06/03/best-of-bing-3-is-here.aspx

Save the Date for SharePoint Conference 2011, the premier worldwide conference dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies being held October 3-6, 2011 in Anaheim, California.

SharePoint Conference 2011 will be the conference to learn more about Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010, the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the internet. Learn how to apply the latest best practices for building and deploying solutions on the platform and find out how customers and partners are embracing cloud-based services to create value for their organizations.

Registration will open Spring 2011. Add yourself to the keep me notified list to stay up to date on all conference announcements at www.mssharepointconference.com.

We hope to see you in October 2011!

The UK MSDN Flash developer newsletter contains great short technical articles written by UK developers both inside Microsoft and in the broader developer community.

This eBook pulls together these great articles in one place. There are thirteen articles in this second edition covering Python, Inversion of Control, Behavior Driven Development, Silverlight and more.

You might also want to check out the first edition of the UK MSDN Flash eBook covering 2008 but still contains lots of relevant information.

READ MORE AT: http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2009/12/08/free-msdn-flash-ebook-of-the-best-13-technical-articles.aspx?qstr=CR_CC=&CR_ID=

So this is pretty cool.  Did you know Bing Maps can create “treasure maps”?

Summarized from Geek.com:

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been being smart about competing with Google: they realize they might not necessarily have the smartest search algorithms, but they can present their own results in unique ways that Google isn’t doing.

Bing’s latest addition applies this strategy in a wonderfully cool way. In an attempt to pare down a street map’s inherent convolution, Bing Destination Maps has introduced the ability to sketch your location.

The program’s in beta right now, so it’s a bit slow to load, but once it does, all you do is type in an address and Bing will sketch out an overview of the area you’d like to explore, but without any of the labyrinthine information overload of a city grid.

You can choose from four styles: Sketchy, European, American or Treasure. Treasure, of course, is the coolest one.

Read more: http://www.geek.com/articles/news/bing-destination-maps-adds-cool-treasure-map-sketch-feature-2010064

The newest Bing Map App to enter the Bing Maps Gallery uses Facebook APIs to pull in your friends from Facebook. Also, effective today, the Bing Maps preview I discussed in my blog post, “Bing Maps Adds Map App Ratings, Map Overlays and More” is no longer a preview, but is fully supported greatness for the world to see. All the features such as Bing Map App ratings, ICE Photosynth Panoramas, map overlays, etc. can now be viewed on the Bing Maps site (Silverlight 4 required).

My Friends – Finding your Facebook friends just got a heck of a lot easier. The new My Friends map app lets you view all of your friends right in Bing Maps! Fire up the new application, log in via Facebook Connect, select “Allow” to allow Bing Maps to connect to your profile (to get your friend list) and any of your friends who have listed a “Current City” in their profile will have their profile picture pinned to the map. Look at where all of your Facebook friends are at any given time! Clicking their picture will show you their picture and status. We also have the de-clustering algorithm in place so if you have a number of friends in one place it will spin their photos into a circle and tether them back to the location with a line. This is a great new way to watch your Facebook friends move around the world…especially if you’re friends with me! Finally, you can write directly on someone’s Facebook wall from within in Bing Maps. Ah, the power of APIs.

[taken from http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2010/06/11/bing-mapping-your-friends-with-facebook-map-app.aspx]