Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The Microsoft® Application Virtualization Dashboard helps you monitor virtualized software applications across your organization. The dashboard’s built-in charts, gauges, and tables let you track any APP-V dataset in near-real time, so you can easily stay on top of the usage, health, and compliance of all your virtualized applications.

The App-V Dashboard is designed and built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as the application platform by using Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5/4.6.  

Key Benefits

Benefits of the dashboard include:

• Actionable information out of the box. The dashboard comes with a wide range of valuable, built-in reports like top 5 applications used, top 5 users, applications never used, application usage for a specific user, system utilization, and many more.
• Near-real-time access to key information. The graphical dashboard lets customers view any App-V dataset in near-real time.
• Easy to build and configure. The dashboard’s wizard-based tools let customers easily create new dashboards in minutes. 
• Easy to customize. The dashboard can easily be customized to meet the needs of different departments and other groups. Any data set in the Microsoft Application Virtualization database can be presented on the dashboard, in chart, gauge, and table formats.  
• Flexible & interactive. Users can easily filter data and create ad hoc, custom views. Filters allow users to quickly drill down from high-level to more specific data.

How the Dashboard Works

The Application Virtualization Dashboard is designed to work with an existing Application Virtualization 4.5 or 4.6 infrastructure. The Dashboard queries the Application Virtualization database and uses the resulting data set to present key infrastructure metrics in a graphical format.

The Application Virtualization Dashboard uses SharePoint Web parts to manage and display data sets:

• Microsoft Dashboard Configuration Web Part. Use this Web part to create and modify the SQL queries that produce the data sets and the other properties that govern how the Dashboard displays the data sets.
• Microsoft Dashboard Viewer Web Part. Use this Web part to display the data sets. A Dashboard Viewer Web Part displays one data set at a time. The Application Virtualization Dashboard can contain multiple copies of the Dashboard Viewer Web Part at once, each copy displaying a different data set.

For more information, visit:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff424455.aspx

• BETA REGISTRATION:  Microsoft Application Virtualization Dashboard
  https://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=4531&InvitationID=%20appv-R2V3-XDJT&SiteID=14

Find out firsthand how to plan for, implement, and deploy the new wave in business productivity with the Launch 2010 Highlights events. Learn what an integrated platform means for the productivity of you and your people—across PC, phone, and browser.  You’ll also see how this latest wave of technologies provides a better experience. Explore tools that’ll help you optimize desktop deployment.

Here’s a sampling of what you can expect:

• See how Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 work together as an integrated platform.
• Get an introduction to the next wave of productivity via integrated platform demonstrations.
• Take home information on tools and resources that will help you plan by evaluating your current infrastructure.
• Learn about infrastructure decisions that pave the way for implementing a rich business productivity platform.
• Explore tools that can help you optimize desktop deployment.
• Additional products that will be highlighted at the event include Visio 2010, Project 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010.

Session Details:  Launch 2010 Technical Readiness Series – The Next Wave of Business Productivity

• 7:30-8:30am Registration and Continental Breakfast
• 8:30-9:00am The Future of Productivity… Today
  
  The next wave of business productivity provides the best experience across PC, phone, and browser. Learn how this latest wave of technologies provides revolutionary user experience and how it takes us into a future of greater productivity.
• 9:05-9:55am A Day in the Life in the Next Wave of Business Productivity
  
  Come and see first-hand how the next wave of products like Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Exchange Server 2010, Visio 2010, and SQL Server 2008 R2 can optimize the way you work every day. This session will introduce the next wave of technologies and include a demonstration that highlights how these solutions can be integrated to produce the best user experience across PC, phone, and browser.
• 10:00-10:20am Partner Presentation & Giveaway
  
• 10:20-10:30am Break
  
• 10:30-11:45am Planning for the Next Wave of Business Productivity
  
  Now that you’ve seen the technologies in action, what are the next steps that you should consider in making this a reality for your organization? This session will cover how you can plan for this next wave of technology. From project plan templates to Visio diagrams, we will show some of the best tools available today to plan for the next wave of productivity.
• 11:45-12:45pm Lunch and Partner Pavilion
• 12:45-2:00pm Implementing the Next Wave of Business Productivity
  
  Planning is the first step toward adopting the Business Productivity Platform. Come and learn more about the architectural considerations that must be made to implement the full productivity platform. We will examine the advances in administration as well as upgrade considerations for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, as well as SQL Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010.
• 2:05-3:20pm Deploying the Next Wave of Business Productivity
  
  The plan is in place, architecture has been documented and the day has come to deploy. In this session we will look at the tools and enhancements for deploying the Business Productivity Platform, focused particularly around desktop deployment including Office 2010, Visio 2010, and Windows 7. We will also look at deployment and migration of SharePoint sites. Learn more about the best tools and resources available to make your deployments successful.
• 3:25-4:10pm The Next Wave of Business Productivity Success Stories
  
  This session will highlight customers who are in the process of implementing and deploying this next wave of productivity – and realizing productivity benefits as a result.
• 4:15-5:00pm Evaluation and Giveaway Pick-Up
• 5:00pm Event Close

REGISTRATION:   Los Angeles/Costa Mesa – May 18, 2010
Technical Readiness Series – A full-day event featuring technical presentations as well as interaction with product experts, community and partners.

• Register for the IT Professional Track
  https://microsoft.crgevents.com/Register2010/TechnicalReadinessSeries_LACostaMesa/Register/Entry/PBPRO.aspx 
• Register for the Developer Track
  https://microsoft.crgevents.com/Register2010/TechnicalReadinessSeries_LACostaMesa/Register/Entry/PBDEV.aspx

If you’re a SQL Server Administrator, you really should make every attempt to make this event.  This thing is HUGE and the number of sessions being delivered are crazy… all focused on SQL Server.

DESCRIPTION:
“SQLSaturday is a training event for SQL Server professionals and those wanting to learn about SQL Server. This event will be held Apr 24 2010 at Golden West College, 15744 Goldenwest St, Huntington Beach, CA 92647-3197. Admittance to this event is free, but we do charge a lunch fee of 10.00 so that we can provide a lunch – not pizza! Please register soon as seating is limited, and let friends and colleagues know about the event.”

SCHEDULE:

• 08:45 AM
  Denny Cherry – Can I really consolidate my SQL Server database
  Mark Rosenberg- Beginning SQL
  Ravi Bodla – Overview of BI with Microsoft SQL Technologies
  Darrell Burns- Movin Uptown: Migrating from Access to SQLServer
• 10:00 AM
  Harold Wong – Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V
  Jim Bears-  SQL Design Patterns
  Jen Underwood – Business Intelligence w/MOSS 2010 and PowerPivot
  Andrew Karcher – SSRS – New Features in SSRS 2008 R2
• 11:15 AM
  Denny Cherry – Is Virtualization is a good choice for SQL Server?
  Kevin Stephenson – Locks, Blocks, Deadlocks and Isolation Levels
  Jen Underwood – Building Reporting using Analysis Services Cubes
  Chris Dickey – Fixing performance problems – Stuff happens
• 01:30 PM
  Lynn Langit – SQL Azure
  Mark Rosenberg – Optimizing Stored Procedures
  Shen Liu – Solving Slowly Changing Dimension Problem /w SSIS
  Ben Aminnia – SQL XML As a Document Repository
  Thomas Mueller – SQL Server resources – Roundtable
• 02:45 PM
  Sumeet Bansal – Accelerating SQL with Solid State Technology
  Diana Dee – How Indexes Optimize Query Performance
  Bob Abernethy – [Sponsor] – Strategy Companion and Microsoft BI
  Steve Hendricks – Ace the Interview
  Andrew Karcher – SoCal SQL Community – Feedback, Ideas, Questions?
• 04:00 PM
  Denny Cherry – SQL Server Clustering 101
  Benjamin Nevarez – How the Query Optimizer Works
  Carlos Bossy – Data Mining with Analysis Services
  Steve Hendricks – SQL Joins: Logical and Physical
  Stacey Braodwell – Targeting your Job

DATE/TIME/LOCATION:
Huntington Beach, April 24th 8:00AM-5:00PM
Golden West College, 15744 Goldenwest St., Huntington Beach, CA 92647-3197

REGISTRATION:
http://www.sqlsaturday.com/44/register.aspx

Microsoft Communicator 2010 Attendee is a meeting application that facilitates joining Communications Server hosted meetings.

• Join Meetings
  This applications allows users to join Communications Server hosted meetings they are invited to by providing a display name. The application allows the user to wait in lobby if required by the meeting organizer and get admitted only once the organizer approves.
  NOTE: This application joins the meeting as anonymous and does not let the user provide any credentials. Hence if the user installs this applications they join all Communications Server hosted meetings as anonymous user.
• Communication Modalities
  This application provides different communication capabilities while in the meeting. Supported communication modalities are IM, audio and video.
• Collaboration tools

This application also provides a set of tools for collaboration during the meeting. Examples of such tools are application sharing, screen sharing, sharing handouts, white board and present PowerPoint slides.

DOWNLOAD:  Microsoft Communicator 2010 Attendee (46.4MB)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=1772a5ad-9688-4861-8387-ec30411bf455

(Note:  Windows Vista & Windows 7 ONLY – No Windows XP Support)

The Bing Maps App Gallery serves up lots of cool map apps all in one place. There are 25 apps today, and more to come! Check out a few of the newest apps:

• New World Tour Map App
  Get a view of all the imagery updates we’ve published dating back to August 2009. And check out our latest Release of 6.2 million square kilometers of new intercontintental imagery. To check out the World Tour Map App, visit the Map Apps Gallery.
• Oodle Rentals
  There’s a new map app that helps people find a place to rent. Ooodle Rentals displays rental properties around the United States. After loading the application, enter a location in the search box and you’ll be zipped over to the respective location with available rentals popped right onto the map. As you navigate the map, the search results will dynamically change just as they do with native Bing Maps Search.
  
• Foursquare Everywhere
  It’s a new Bing Maps app that pulls Foursquare data into Bing Maps to visualize check-ins, tips, badges, and mayor coronations from Foursquare APIs. This application has gotten A LOT of buzz. See what everyone’s talking about! Foursquare Everywhere.

IDV Solutions releases Visual Fusion SaaS with Bing Maps
With Visual Fusion SaaS, organizations create an unlimited number of mash-ups and data visualizations within a Microsoft SharePoint Portal on IDV-managed servers. Visual Fusion SaaS lets users rapidly develop solutions in areas like physical security and asset management, situational awareness, retail analysis, and supply chain management.
Learn more about Visual Fusion SaaS.

Bing Maps Webcast Series: Powerful Solutions Across Your Organization
Join us in a series of three webcasts as we explore the ways you can use Bing Maps across your organization. Whether it’s Web sites to inform and engage your customers, business intelligence dashboards to enable smarter decisions, or asset tracking tools to efficiently manage fleets and other mobile assets-Bing Maps provides the mapping platform to help you realize your vision.

• Register today!
  (http://click.email.microsoftemail.com/?qs=cf281b5437534046895ba79bb78e0264704d63712e0a0c7eaffb3b377a9a9ed3)

Interesting article about the 10 largest data centers in the world… and Microsoft owns 4 of them.

The mega-data center has become a staple of our global technology infrastructure, serving as the backbone of the digital economy. The growth of the Internet is driving an enormous appetite for network capacity and data storage, creating a new class of data centers that can scale along with the Internet.

So who has the world’s largest data center? We’ve seen a lot of huge data centers in our travels, and have identified 10 that we believe are the largest found anywhere. These data fortresses range between 400,000 and 1.1 million square feet.

We should note that there are many apples vs. oranges comparisons in the data center world. For this list, we’ve considered single-building facilities that are dedicated to data center use. We have not included multi-facility campuses or mixed-use buildings where data center space co-exists with large amounts of third-party office space (i.e. big-city carrier hotels). We also have not included facilities that are not yet open for business.

• 9A. Microsoft Data Center in Quincy Washington
• 9B. Microsoft Data Center in San Antonio
• 6. Microsoft Dublin (Microsoft)
• 5. Container Data Center, Chicago (Microsoft)

Read more direct at:

• DATACENTER KNOWLEDGE:  Special Report: The World’s Largest Data Centers
  http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/special-report-the-worlds-largest-data-centers/

The Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Dashboard lets customers keep track of application and operating system deployments, security updates, the health status of computers, and IT compliance with key regulations—with an easy to use, customizable dashboard.  

The dashboard has a collection of key benefits for customers:

• Actionable information out of the box: the dashboard lets customers easily stay on top of deployments, security updates, client health, and compliance status.  Six default datasets provide customers with valuable information “out of the box”. 
• Near-real-time access to key information: the graphical dashboard lets customers view configuration manager metrics in near-real time.
• Easy to build and configure: wizard-based tools let customers easily create new dashboards in minutes. · Easy to customize: the dashboard can easily be customized to meet the needs of different departments and other groups.  Any dataset in the Configuration Manager database can be presented on the dashboard, in chart, gauge, and table formats.
• Flexible & interactive: users can easily filter data and create ad hoc, custom views. Filters allow users to quickly drill down from high-level to more specific data.

Some resources for you:

• The dashboard can be downloaded here.
• More information about the Dashboard can be found here.

[taken from the SCblog]

Unified, Regulated and Compliant:
Maximizing the Benefits of Microsoft Office Communications Server for Financial Services

Date: April 15th, 2010
Time: 10 am PT
Duration: 1 hour

Today’s regulatory environment poses challenges – eDiscovery, acceptable use policies, logging and archiving of messages, Instant Messaging tracking – that your firm must address. One way to meet this challenge is to deploy a Unified Communications server, but it’s no simple task to maximize the value and savings from UC.
Whether you are just starting to plan your deployment or already have OCS in limited production or pilot, join Microsoft and FaceTime to learn how your firm can benefit from Unified Communications without exposing yourself to compliance and security risk.

Attend this webinar and learn about:

• The myriad of regulations facing financial services firms today
• Key capabilities that help you maximize return on your OCS investment
• Getting complete visibility and reporting over employee use of UC and implementing specific acceptable use policies across all modalities
• Extending your current message retention architecture to accommodate regulatory and eDiscovery requirements for instant messaging
• How FaceTime integrates with Microsoft OCS, Active Directory and other existing network infrastructure technologies
• Key requirements of a highly scalable architecture for supporting corporate and mobile workers in a UC environment
• How to enable and maintain compliance for other Web 2.0 technologies that might already exist in your enterprise, such as social networking

Plus, get all your questions answered in a live Q&A session.

Speakers

• Sai Sireesh Pachava, Director & Global Head – Risk Mgmt & Compliance Solutions at Microsoft Inc.
  Pachava is responsible for developing and executing Microsoft’s strategy for Governance, Risk Management & Compliance industry solutions globally. He currently serves pro bono as the Co-Regional Director, PRMIA Seattle at non-profit PRMIA (Professional Risk Manager’s International Association).
• Eric Young, Sr Director Of Field Services, FaceTime
  Young has over 15 years of engineering support and client relations experience. He manages on-site and remote technical support for the FaceTime sales team, direct support for customers during implementation and deployment of FaceTime products, as well as all professional services consulting engagements for custom development projects.

Register today!

• WEBCAST:  Maximizing the Benefits of Microsoft Office Communications Server for Financial Services
  Register here:
  http://mkto-c0073.com/track?type=click&enid=bWFpbGluZ2lkPWZhY2V0aW1lQmV0YWN1c3QtMTAyNy0xMDk5LTAtMjUzLXByb2QtMTI3MiZtZXNzYWdlaWQ9MCZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEyNzImc2VyaWFsPTEyMjM0OTMzMzUmZW1haWxpZD1qdWFuc0BtaWNyb3NvZnQuY29tJnVzZXJpZD03NTg4NCZleHRyYT0mJiY=&&&https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=200557&sessionid=1&key=BA9F8E1798FA027B7948BB68F6C10112&partnerref=ffblast&sourcepage=register&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonu67OZKXonjHpfsX%2F7uQlXbHr08Yy0EZ5VunJEUWy2oYC

^— Not exactly the prettiest URL is it?  Sheesh.

Our regional database specialist, Ted Tasker, pointed me to the following freely available labs to help customers learn how to use SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services via virtual machines over the Internet.

• LAB:  Business Intelligence in Report Builder
  Auto-generate a report model in model designer, refine the model using model item properties, understand how model item properties affect end user reporting.
• LAB:  Authoring Reports Using SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
  After completing this lab, you will be better able to manage Reporting Services configuration, manage security roles, and configure reports by using subscriptions.
• LAB:  Business Intelligence Reporting Services
  After completing this lab, you will be better able to create a report using the wizard, create a List Report, work with reports and manage security.

For information on these labs and more, such as labs on Analysis Services, Integration Services, or more general SQL Server training, visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/vlabs-bi.aspx

UPDATE 12:35PM: 
Looks like we’re partnering with Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, and Sharp for KIN.  Cool.
TBReleased in May from Verizon.

—————

ORIGINAL POST:
This morning Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, took the stage in San Francisco to unveil KIN, a new Windows Phone experience created for a unique set of socially connected consumers. 

Across the Windows Phone family of products, Microsoft’s intention is to bring together everything that’s important to our users.  This vision guided our strategy for Windows Phone 7 and is now being brought to life for a new audience with today’s announcement of KIN. 

The result is two experiences that share the same underlying philosophy and design, but were created for two purposes – two kinds of audiences. 

While Windows Phone 7 is a multipurpose phone for a broad set of consumers, KIN is for a generation of people that live to be connected to their friends and their family. They get their news through Facebook and Twitter, and they can’t bear to be cut off from their friends. They connect, express and relate through technology, and this generation needs a phone to help them share their life moment to moment.

Microsoft saw a great opportunity to build a phone experience that spans hardware, cloud services and the PC to create something specifically for them, and unique to the industry. Compared to other platforms, KIN is the only phone that has the social elements infused in all aspects of the user experience.

KIN delivers breakthroughs throughout the product such as the Loop, the Spot, and the Studio:

• KIN Loop – The Loop is filled with your favorite people and the things you love – on your home screen, in real time. You tell KIN who and what is important, and it delivers the latest updates from your favorite people and places.
• KIN Spot – The Spot is the new way to share. Share almost anything – photos, texts, web pages – to almost anyone by simply dragging them to a “spot” on your phone. Since the Spot is always on your screen you don’t have to worry about opening new applications – it’s easy.
• KIN Studio –The KIN Studio is your KIN phone on the web.  Everything you create on your phone – messages, contacts, photos, videos – is also stored in the cloud and accessible from any web browser.  The content that’s important to you is automatically backed up to your own secure website and presented in a beautiful, visual timeline to make it easy to view and share with friends. And with all the storage you’ll need, there’s almost no limit on what you can keep.
• The KIN Camera – KIN takes amazing photos, even in low light. One click upload makes it easy to share your pictures, and because they’re backed up automatically to the KIN Studio, you can look at them online, in full size, whenever you want. Only KIN makes sure all your photos and video clips are stored online without taking up precious memory on your phone.

Come check out KIN and find out more about what it offers.

• LINK: KIN Web Site
  http://www.kin.com