Kurt Shintaku's Blog

In case you haven’t been to them in a while, here’s the link to the Microsoft Technet IT Professional Forums:

• Microsoft Technet IT Professional Forums
  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/categories

What’s interesting is that a number of forums have been added in the past few months that may be of some interest to you folks.  Naturally they still have Exchange Server, Windows 7, Configuration Manager, BizTalk Server, Forefront, etc.  but did you know they have specific forums for the following technologies?

1. App-V General Sequencing
2. Microsoft Office 2010 Volume Activation
3. Microsoft Office 2010 Application Compatibility
4. Windows Performance Toolkit
5. Office Communications Server Certificates
6. SharePoint 2010 – Using SharePoint Designer and other customization
7. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
8. SQL Server Reporting Services
9. Virtual Machine Manager – VMware
10. Opalis v5/v6 General
11. Cross Platform Solutions for System Center

The Microsoft Security Response Center launched a Twitter account:

• Account: @MSFTSecResponse (http://twitter.com/msftsecresponse)

To quote the MSRC: 

“We will use this account to augment the content here on the blog. For example, we will use the account to rapidly respond to emerging issues while we are gathering information for a more complete blog post. In addition, we will also use the account as a way to push content to our followers quickly.

You probably will not see us responding to each reply or request that we get but we will be listening there and when we see emerging issues and trends, we will respond in a more general way to the entire community.”

If you’re a Microsoft-focused IT Professional, this is probably the one Twitter account from us you should bother to follow because while the tweet count will be low, when they post, you’ll likely want to know about them immediately.  For example, this was posted just a few hours ago:

“Advance notification: We will release 11 bulletins next week 5 Critical 5 Important 1 Mod addressing 25 total vulns http://bit.ly/c0fglv”

The Security Compliance Manager is the next evolution of the Security Compliance Management Toolkit (SCMT) Series. We’ve taken our extensive guidance and documentation and incorporated it into this new tool, enabling you to access and automate all of your organization’s security baselines in one centralized location.

The Security Compliance Manager provides centralized security baseline management features, a baseline portfolio, customization capabilities, and security baseline export flexibility to accelerate your organization’s ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.

Take advantage of the experience of Microsoft security professionals, and reduce the time and money required to harden your environment. This end-to-end Solution Accelerator will help you plan, deploy, operate, and manage your security baselines for Windows® client and server operating systems, and Microsoft applications. Access the complete database of Microsoft recommended security settings, customize your baselines, and then choose from multiple formats—including XLS, Group Policy objects (GPOs), Desired Configuration Management (DCM) packs, or Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP)—to export the baselines to your environment to automate the security baseline deployment and compliance verification process. Use the Security Compliance Manager to achieve a secure, reliable, and centralized IT environment that will help you better balance your organization’s needs for security and functionality.

Send any questions or comments to the development team: secwish-AT-microsoft-DOT-com.

For more information:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=113940

• DOWNLOAD: Security Compliance Manager
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=182512

Our regional Sharepoint Specialist write this list of links and products up for a customer of ours that talks about:

• What Development Best Practices & Guidance should be given to Sharepoint developers to ensure good development practices
• What Operational tools are available to monitor Sharepoint Servers for more than just uptime but also utilization & security
• What processes should be practiced from an operations perspective to continue to maintain a Sharepoint farm

DEVELOPMENT

• Developing SharePoint Applications:  This is our latest guidance on building custom applications in SharePoint.  It provides sample/reference projects and various best practices with various aspects of the development process.  (There is a CHM file in the download for this that is a great place to start.)
  SharePoint Design Basics: This gives some guidance on some of the fundamental challenges that developers will encounter when building SharePoint applications.
• SharePoint Server Developer Center: This is a great starting point for most of our documentation around SharePoint development.  This is just one of those sites that’s good to know for reference on how to accomplish various tasks.
• SharePoint Developer Training Site:  This site contains some really good training and learning materials on various topics related to SharePoint development tasks.  Includes webcasts, online videos, samples, and more.
• Development Best Practices Checklist (non-Microsoft blog post):  Checklist of general things to keep in mind when doing SharePoint development.
• 10 Best Practices For Building SharePoint Solutions: This article is specific to SharePoint solutions (which should always be used in SharePoint development).

UTILIZATION

• Enable Usage Reporting in SharePoint:  This is how to configure the usage report capabilities of SharePoint out of the box.
• Nintex Reporting 2008:  Tool from Nintex that provides various types of reports on SharePoint usage, trends, and system activity.
• Quest Site Administrator for SharePoint:  Tool from Quest Software which gives more detail in the usage and security of SharePoint
• Universal SharePoint Manager v2007:  Tool from iDevFactory that provides reporting on: Account Security Management, Environment Management, Sites Management, List & Item Management, User Management, and more.
• AvePoint SharePoint Monitoring & AvePoint SharePoint Report Center:  SharePoint Monitor provides a real-time, graphical topology of your entire Microsoft SharePoint environment, including all your servers and their functions, relationships, roles, services, and system health. It lets you explore your entire deployment, with search filters by Domain, Server Name, IP address, and Site Collection.

OPERATIONS

• Best Practices Resource Center for MOSS 2007:  This site helps with information to keep your system available and performing well.  Includes everything from planning to ongoing maintenance.  Look at the Operational Excellence section for ongoing best practices.
• Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer for SharePoint:  This tool will check for common issues and best security practices. The tool generates a report that can help you optimize the configuration of your system.

An Information Week Bank Systems & Technology Webcast:
Increasing Customer Retention and Growth with Microsoft Dynamics® CRM and Customer Effective

 Date: Thursday, April 15, 2010
Time: 9:00 AM PT / 12:00 PM ET
Duration: One Hour

Learn how you can improve your competitive advantage by increasing customer loyalty while improving efficiency, and developing more profitable relationships.

Firms are seeking a fast, flexible, and affordable solution that drives consistent, measurable improvements in every business process. See how FSIs can streamline business processes, reduce complexity and IT costs.  Microsoft Dynamics® CRM provides an easily customizable, scalable platform that integrates with current systems and allows firms to expose the infrastructure for the development of new products and channels.

Hear from industry experts how to gather consistent customer data in a single information repository for a better view of customers, including better understanding of each customer’s worth and better ability to enhance and cultivate profitable customer relationships.   Microsoft Dynamics CRM improves customer insights by providing the tools and capabilities needed to help financial services firms increase employee productivity, grow revenue, attract and retain profitable customers.

Find ways to deliver the right information to frontline staff and consistently enhance the customer experience across all channels of your organization.  Customer Effective helps financial services clients maximize their relationships using solutions based exclusively on Microsoft technology. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, they are Consultants and Solution Implementers serving midmarket and enterprise financial services organizations worldwide. Customer Effective delivers business process automation and collaboration solutions and has engaged in hundreds of Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation projects since the product’s release in 2002.

Registration:
https://www.techwebonlineevents.com/ars/eventregistration.do?mode=eventreg&F=1002183&K=CAA1ACc

Hewlett Packard.  God, you make me proud to have once been a former HP’er in Palo Alto.  Any other graduates of the SEED program out there?  Can I get a WOOT WOOT?

Damn.  This is so “in-your-face” fantastic is makes me giddy like a frickin’ school girl.  Built-in Camera:  In the front AND the back for photos or video conferencing.  USB-connectivity.  SD Memory Slot.   Flash compatibility.  Docked redirection to a flat screen.  Just imagine HP yelling at you:  “PWNED.  Now take your damned medicine before I hit you again so hard, your children will feel it.”

Do you manage a web site?  Would you like hands on tools that enable you to control how Bing exposes your web site to the world through searches?

This whitepaper “Bing Webmaster Center FAQ” provides answers to webmasters’ frequently asked questions regarding Bing webmaster tools, the IIS SEO Toolkit, robots and crawling, indexing, malware, sitemaps and more.

• Webmaster Center tools
  How do I start using Bing Webmaster Center tools?
  What does the authentication code do?
  How do I add the Webmaster Center tools authentication code to my website?
  Why does my website’s authentication fail?
  I’m not able to gain access to Webmaster Center with the authentication code used in a <meta> tag. Can you help?
  How can I find information about the status of my website in the Bing index?
  How can I tell which websites are linking to mine?
  What issues did Bing encounter while crawling my website?
  Can I access the Webmaster Center tools functionality through the Bing API?
  How does my website perform when people use Bing to search for specific words?
• Ranking
  How does Bing determine how to rank my website?
  How can I increase the ranking for a website hosted in another market?
  How do I relocate my website’s content to a new URL without losing my page rank status?
  Why isn’t my site ranking well for my keywords?
  How can I develop better keyword targets for my site?
  How important are inbound links? Are all inbound link equal?
  How do I get more high quality inbound links?
  Do inbound links from low-quality sites adversely affect Bing ranking?
  Why has my site’s rank for a keyword recently dropped?
  Will paid links or link exchanges get my site the top ranking as advertised?
  Do the optimization recommendations you give for Bing affect my ranking performance with other search engines?
• Crawling
  How do I submit my website to Bing?
  Is my robots.txt file configured properly for MSNBot?
  What is the name of the Bing web crawler?
  Why isn’t Bing fully crawling my site?
  Bing is crawling my site, so why isn’t it indexing my pages?

Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) directives in web page code
How do I prevent a search engine bot from following a specific link on my page?
How do I prevent all search engine bots from following any links on my page?
How do I prevent all search engine bots from indexing the content on my page?
How do I prevent just MSNBot bot from indexing the content on my page?
How do I use REP directives to remove my website from the Bing index?
How do I prevent all search engine bots from indexing any content on my website?
Which REP directives are supported in <meta> and X-Robots-Tags in Bing?
Which REP directives take precedence for allowing content to be indexed versus disallowing the bot access to content?
Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) directives in robots.txt files
How can I control which crawlers index my website?
How do I specify what portions or content types in my website are off-limits to bots?
Do Disallow directives in robots.txt block the bot from crawling the specified content?
How do I use wildcard characters within robots.txt?
How can I limit the crawl frequency of MSNBot?
How do I increase the Bing crawl rate for my site?
Can I point the bot to my Sitemap.xml file in robots.txt?
How do I control bots with directives for files and directories that use non-ASCII characters?

• Indexing
  How does Bing generate a description of my website?
  Why was my website removed from the Bing index?
  How does Bing index websites?
  Why is my website having trouble getting indexed?
  What are Bing’s guidelines for webmasters getting their sites indexed?
  How do I remove my website from the Bing index?
  How do I request that Bing remove a bad link to my website?
  If my website was mistakenly identified as web spam and removed from the Bing index, how do I get it added back?
  Why is the number of my indexed pages in Bing decreasing?
• Web spam
  What sort of content does Bing consider to be web spam?
  How do I report web spam that I find in search engine results pages to Bing?
  My website offers tax-related services. As a result, I use the word “tax” numerous times in my content. Could Bing consider my site to be web spam due to the appearance of keyword stuffing? When do I cross the line from acceptable use to web spam?
  Regarding backlinks in forum comments and link-level web spam, is it only a problem when the page linked to is not relevant to the conversation in the forum, or is this a problem for all backlinks?
• Malware
  …
• Sitemaps and mRSS
  …
• Web page coding for SEO
  …
• IIS SEO Toolkit
  …
• Miscellaneous
  …
• Blog
  …

WHITEPAPER:  Bing Webmaster Center FAQ
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=05bcf5b6-c0ea-4bef-b381-72434e826681

Visual Studio 2010 Reviewer’s Guide is a detailed document highlighting the new features and capabilities of the Visual Studio 2010 product.

You’ve got big ideas. You know the algorithms. The architecture’s up on the whiteboard, and you can imagine the user interface. 

And now, with Visual Studio 2010, you’ve got the tools to turn your ideas into solutions.

The new Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 simplifes the entire development process, from design to deployment.  New prototyping, modeling, and design tools help unleash your  creativity and bring your vision to life. Coding is faster than ever, since you can leverage existing code and skills to write applications targeting different platforms, including SharePoint® and Windows® AzureTM applications. What’s more, developers and testers will work better together and save time with integrated testing and debugging tools. You’ll fnd and fx bugs quickly to make sure your solution is at the highest possible quality.

Take a look at what’s been done, and see for yourself how  this edition can boost your team’s creativity to deliver quality 
applications through a more simplifed process.

• DOWNLOAD: Visual Studio 2010 Reviewer’s Guide (32.1MB)
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3afc2930-24c3-4a97-9850-aab507edb043

SQL Server 2008 R2 offers an impressive array of capabilities for developers that build upon key innovations introduced in SQL Server 2008. The SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Training Kit is ideal for developers who want to understand how to take advantage of the key improvements introduced in SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 in their applications, as well as for developers who are new to SQL Server.

The training kit is brought to you by Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism.

Overview and Benefits
The training kit offers the following benefits:

• Learn how to build applications that exploit the unique features and capabilities of SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2.
• Provides a comprehensive set of videos, presentations, demos and hands-on labs
• Contains new content for developers who are new to SQL Server.
• Contains new content for SQL Server 2008 R2.
• Contains all of the existing content from the SQL Server 2008 Developer Training Kit.
• Easy to download and install.

Intended Audience
The training kit is designed for the following technical roles:

• Developers who build applications for the Microsoft platform.
• Microsoft evangelists, technical specialists and consultants.

Contents
The training kit includes the following content:

• Presentations (15)
  • SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Overview Part I – SQL Server 2008 Review
  • SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Overview Part II – Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2
  • SQL Server 2008: Filestream
  • SQL Server 2008: Spatial
  • SQL Server 2008: T-SQL
  • SQL Server 2008: Date and Time Types
  • SQL Server 2008: SQLCLR
  • SQL Server 2008: Reporting Services
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Introducing Application and Multi-Server Management with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Working with Data Tier Application Projects in Visual Studio 2010
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Managing Change in Data Tier Application Projects with Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Querying Events in SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Designing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Event Models and Adapters
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Installing, Deploying and Maintaining the SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Runtime Engine
• Demos (24)
  • SQL Server 2008: AdventureWorks Racing All-Up Demo
  • SQL Server 2008: Spatial Demo
  • SQL Server 2008: Spatial Types
  • SQL Server 2008: Introduction to Filestream
  • SQL Server 2008: SQL CLR Nullable Types
  • SQL Server 2008: Programming with Filestream
  • SQL Server 2008: Reporting Services Web Application Integration
  • SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Date and Time Support
  • SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Table-Valued Parameters
  • SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Row Constructors
  • SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Grouping Sets
  • SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Merge
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Creating a Utility Control Point
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Enrolling a Managed Instance
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Creating Data-Tier Applications
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Data-Tier Application Deployment
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Managing Change in Data Tier Application Projects in Visual Studio 2010
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Querying Events in SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Advanced SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Event Queries
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Working with SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight CTI Events and Advance Time Settings
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Creating a SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Input Adpater
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Choosing a SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Development Model
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Using the SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Event Flow Debugger
• Hands-on Labs (13)
  • SQL Server 2008: How to build your first Web Application with SQL Server and ASP.NET
  • SQL Server 2008: Using Spatial Data in TSQL
  • SQL Server 2008: Using Spatial Data in Managed Code
  • SQL Server 2008: Using SQL CLR in SQL Server 2008
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Introduction to PowerPivot
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Introduction to Reporting Services Improvements
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Introduction to StreamInsight and Complex Event Processing
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Introduction to Data-tier Applications
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Creating and Deploying a Data-Tier Application
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Managing Change in Data-Tier Application Projects in Visual Studio 2010
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Querying Events in SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight using LINQ
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Working with the SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Samples
  • SQL Server 2008 R2: Working with the SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Event Flow Debugger
• Videos (35)
• SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Overview Part I – SQL Server 2008 Review
• SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Overview Part II – Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2
• Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight
• Demo: Real Time Analytics with SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight
• Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2 Application and Multi-Server Management
• Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services
• Introduction To SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight and Complex Event Processing
• Introducing PowerPivot for Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010
• Presentation: Introducing Application and Multi-Server Management with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010
• Demo: Creating a Utility Control Point
• Demo: Enrolling a Managed Instance
• Presentation: Working with Data Tier Application Projects in Visual Studio 2010
• Demo: Creating Data-Tier Applications
• Demo: Data-Tier Application Deployment
• Presentation: Managing Change in Data Tier Application Projects with Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 (Part I)
• Presentation: Managing Change in Data Tier Application Projects with Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 (Part II)
• Demo: Managing Change in Data Tier Application Projects in Visual Studio 2010
• Presentation: Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight (Part I)
• Presentation: Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight (Part II)
• Demo: Introducing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight
• Presentation: Querying Events in SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight (Part I)
• Presentation: Querying Events in SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight (Part II)
• Demo: Querying SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Using LINQ
• Presentation: Querying Events in SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight (Part III)
• Demo: Advanced SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Event Queries
• Presentation: Designing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Event Models and Adapters (Part I)
• Presentation: Designing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Event Models and Adapters (Part II)
• Demo: Working with SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight CTI Events and Advance Time Settings
• Presentation: Designing SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Event Models and Adapters (Part III)
• Demo: Creating a SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Input Adapter
• Presentation: Installing, Deploying and Maintaining the SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Runtime Engine (Part I)
• Presentation: Installing, Deploying and Maintaining the SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Runtime Engine (Part II)
• Demo: Choosing a SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Development Model
• Presentation: Installing, Deploying and Maintaining the SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Runtime Engine (Part III)
• Demo: Using the SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight Event Flow Debugger

DOWNLOAD: SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Training Kit (March 2010 Update 2)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=fffaad6a-0153-4d41-b289-a3ed1d637c0d

We’re released the Beta of Microsoft Expression Blend 4, which can be used for authoring applications for Windows Phone 7.

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.

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 the Model-View-ViewModel pattern.

Find out more about what’s new in Expression Blend 4 Beta.
Help us improve Expression Blend 4 Beta by reporting any technical issues. For more insight into Expression Blend, please see the Expression team blog.

• DOWNLOAD:  Microsoft® Expression Blend™ 4 Beta
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=6f014e07-0053-4aca-84a7-cd82f9aa989f