Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Wheee!  3 new free apps for my Zune HD!

If you know me, you know I don’t go anywhere without my ZuneHD.  If I’m driving to work, I’m listening to my ZuneHD.  If I’m going to customers, I’ve got my ZuneHD on.  If I’m blogging… yes, right now… I have my ZuneHD on.  So it’s uber-cool to have a few new little timewasters available on it… totally free.

• STOPWATCH – Simple ,easy to use stopwatch with lap splits and a countdown timer mode
• SOLITAIRE – Play the quintessential single player card game anywhere you go.
• LABYRINTH – Lead your marble through a world filled with a variety of challenges.

To get them, just run the Zune Client and click on MARKETPLACE – APPS and you’ll see them available for download.

The Get On the Bus Tour is back and we’re taking our 10-city road tour to the East Coast toward New Orleans and Tech-Ed 2010. Register for a tour stop near you, where we’ll dive deep into both Windows 7 and Office 2010, and present specific learning paths for the latest Microsoft Certifications. All at no cost to you.

• Charlotte, NC
  Thursday, June 3, 2010
  Hilton Charlotte City Center
  222 East Third Street
  Charlotte, NC
  (704) 377-1500

FREE SOFTWARE!
We are giving away 50 copies of Windows 7 Ultimate for the first 50 Get On the Bus event attendees through the door at EVERY STOP! Don’t miss your chance to win a copy of Microsoft’s newest software offering – register today at www.thebustour.com.

LINK: http://MicrosoftBusTour.com

ChangeBASE and App-DNA are Microsoft partners that have tools to assist you in detecting and resolving application incompatibilities. Both partners provide free testing for application compatibility—simply upload the app, it runs the test and sends a report back that tells whether it’s compatible or not, and if not, where the problems are. This is a simple, quick service that can be used to get an almost immediate snapshot of how compatible an application is with Windows 7.

App-DNA
App-DNA has enterprise class software that can help:

• Save months in application testing costs alone
• Automate application virtualization for App-V and XenApp
• Quickly help consolidate and optimize infrastructure and server farms helping to significantly reduce your data-center power consumption

http://www.app-dna.com/

ChangeBASE
ChangeBASE AOK is a software company that has developed a suite of automated, highly innovative applications that hugely improve the time, quality, consistency, and cost of the test, remediation, and ongoing management challenges that companies face as they begin the process of migrating their applications from one operating system or deployment environment to another.
http://www.changebase.com/

[Shamelessly stolen from Major Nelson’s blog]

Halo: Reach will be available in standard, Limited and Legendary editions when the game launches this fall. Full details on the contents of the Limited and Legendary editions are below:

Halo: Reach Limited Edition – $79.99 (USD)
In addition to the game disc and manual, the Limited edition includes:

• Game disc housed in recovered ONI ”black box”
• An exclusive Elite armor set for use in multiplayer modes
• Artifact bag containing Dr. Halsey’s personal journal and other classified documents and effects that unravel long held secrets from the “Halo” universe

Halo: Reach Legendary Edition – $149.99 (USD)
The complete “Halo: Reach” collection. In addition to the game disc, manual, and the complete contents of the Limited edition, the Legendary edition includes:

• Noble Team statue expertly crafted by the artisans at McFarlane Toys. Individually molded, hand-painted and individually numbered, this statue is a must-have for any serious “Halo” fan
• UNSC-themed custom packaging
• An exclusive multiplayer Spartan armor effect

The standard edition of Halo: Reach will have an estimated price of $59.99 USD.  The two special editions will be available only while supplies last . Until then, I’ve posted some high rez pictures of some of the items mentioned above.

In other Halo news, Bungie’s latest Halo: Reach ViDoc, titled Carnàge Carnivàle was also released today. We’re only a few short days away from the Halo : Reach multiplayer beta which starts May 3rd. As a reminder, you will need your Halo 3: ODST game disc to participate in the beta.

Please visit http://www.microsoft.com/security/about/sir.aspx to view the latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR), volume 8, and previous volumes. SIR Volume 8 covers July 2009 to December 2009. SIR provides in-depth perspective on changing threat landscape including:

• Software vulnerability disclosures and exploits in both Microsoft and third-party software
• Malicious software and potentially unwanted software
• Mitigation Strategies for Protecting Networks, Systems, and People

SIR v8 offers insight and guidance on cyber defense and highlights are captured in the blog.

Threat Assessment for United States – SIR V8

We released Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010!

• DOWNLOAD:  Silverlight Runtime & Development Tools
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=177508. 

The tools will install:

1. Silverlight 4 RTM Developer Runtime
2. Silverlight 4 Tools RC for VS 2010
3. Silverlight 4 SDK RTM
4. Silverlight 4 Tools RC Package
5. WCF RIA Services RC

Note that this is the RC release of the Silverlight 4 tools. With these tools you can start developing Silverlight 4 applications using Visual Studio 2010.  If you are not familiar with what’s new in SL 4 check out Tim’s blog here: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/11/18/whats-new-in-silverlight-4-complete-guide-new-features.aspx

If you haven’t already downloaded VS 2010, you can get the free Express version from here:

• DOWNLOAD:  Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition
  http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appid=VWD2010.

If you are a MSDN subscriber you can get the full version here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/download

Expression Blend 4 enables you to create websites and applications based on Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4, and desktop applications based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 3.5 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and WPF 4.

The final versions of both Silverlight 4 and .NET 4 have been released! To coincide with this, we are releasing a release candidate version of Expression Blend 4 that you can use to target them.  Download everything you need below:

• .NET Framework 4
• Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate

Expression Blend provides support for prototyping, interactivity through behaviors, special Silverlight functionality, and on-the-fly sample data generation.  Expression Blend includes new behaviors that are quickly and easily configured. To support the development of line-of-business (LOB) applications, Expression Blend introduces support for Views and ViewModels.

Find out more about what’s new in Expression Blend 4 RC.

There are two things that you really need to know about this release.

• First, if you are doing Windows Phone development, you should not use the Expression Blend 4 RC. We will have an update for you soon with updated components, but in the meantime, please use Expression Blend 4 Beta.
• Second, this release of Expression Blend 4 targets the final versions of Silverlight 4 and .NET 4, you can share your creations with the rest of the world. You no longer are limited to only sharing your creations in source code form or for private testing.

As always, we love to hear from you. Please feel free to comment below or use our forums here.

– The Expression Blend Team

[parts of this post stolen from the Expression Team blog]

The HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 is an automated, downloadable tool that provides quick and helpful sizing guidance for “best-fit” HP server and storage configurations running in a Hyper-V R2 environment. The tool is intended to assist with the planning of a Hyper-V R2 virtual server deployment project. It enables the user to quickly compare different solution configurations and produces a customizable server and storage solution complete with a detail Bill of Materials (BOM) that includes part numbers and prices.

The HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 allows users to create new solutions, open already existing solutions, or use other types of performance data collecting tools, such as the Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool (MAP), to build rich Hyper-V R2 configurations based on HP server and storage technology. The tool allows rapid comparison of Hyper-V R2 characterizations using various HP server and storage choices.

• DOWNLOAD:  HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2
  http://g3w1656g-vip.houston.hp.com/sb/installs/Hyper-VR2_Sizer.zip

The System Center Configuration Manager team would like to announce that the following has been released and available for download:

Configuration Manager 2007 R3 Beta
This is the official Beta release for Configuration Manager 2007 R3.
Yesterday at the Microsoft Management Summit, Brad Anderson announced during his keynote the release of ConfigMgr07 R3 Beta. Power management is at the core of the R3 release, it addresses the need that many organizations have to monitor and reduce the power consumption of their computers. ConfigMgr07 R3 Power Management leverages the power management features built into Windows to apply relevant and consistent settings to computers in the organization. There are three major components to power management in ConfigMgr07 R3:

1. Monitoring and Planning: Power Management collects information about computer usage and power settings for computers in the origination. Reports are provided to allow the administrator to analyze this data and determine optimal power management settings for computers.
2. Enforcement: Power management allows the administrator to create power plans which can be applied to collections of computers. These power plans configure Windows power management settings on computers, and different power plans can be configured for peak and non-peak working hours.
3. Compliance: After applying power plans to computers in the organization, the administrator can run reports to validate that power settings were correctly applied and to calculate power and carbon footprint savings across collections of computers.

In addition to power management, ConfigMgr07 R3 will provide customers with enhanced scale and performance support (scale to 300K managed clients per hierarchy, delta AD discovery, dynamic collection updates), as well as enablement of further capabilities for operating system deployment. A full list of the R3 features can be found on Microsoft Connect at the “What’s new in R3” post.

Navigate to Microsoft Connect today and download the ConfigMgr07 R3 Beta. Please review the Release Notes before performing any installation and the help (chm) file for specific deployment and supportability guidance.

Feedback and Support:

• All registered Open Beta users can submit bugs and make product suggestions using the Feedback tools provided on Microsoft Connect. This feedback is triaged daily by members of the Product Group. It is your feedback that helps drive feature changes and improvements. See the help link on the ConfigMgr MSConnect homepage for more instructions.
• Newsgroups are a great way to post questions and receive general support for specific R3 related questions and answers.

If you experience any issues with the download or the ConfigMgr Microsoft Connect site please contact, sccmtap@microsoft.com

Regards,
The Configuration Manager Customer Team

 Christophe Fiessinger’s Blog had a post on it that went over an immense number of Project 2010 specific resources.  Here’s a sample:

Microsoft Project 2010 Resources and Content – April 2010

With the imminent virtual launch of Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project and Project Server 2010 on May 12th (http://www.the2010event.com) we wanted to remind  you what key Project 2010 resources are available today depending on your role (Business Decision Maker, end user, IT Professionals, Developers etc…) A popular medium for this release are interactive content such as videos and webcasts (see the two links below).

For instance today you have access to:

• All the recorded sessions from the last Project Conference 2009 in Phoenix, 110 hours of content
• Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) webcast series introducing key 2010 capabilities: 11 hours of content
• IT Professional webcast series presented by expert consultants from Microsoft Consulting Services who have been working with customers on 2010 beta deployment: 8 hours of content
• Developers, Developers, Developers webcast series as announced by Jan this week a total of 17 webcast so about 18 hours of content will be delivered by the end of June
• Project 2010 Ignite Video Interviews – I’m 2010 Ready, Are you? – 5 hours of content

In summary you have access to about 150 hours/6 days of Project 2010 content today!

…

For more information from this post, go to:
http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie/archive/2010/04/14/microsoft-project-2010-resources-and-content-april-2010.aspx