Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Ed Bott posted an nice article on a replacement “network activity” indicator for Windows 7 that actually blinks when inbound or outbound data is coming or going.

One question I hear often from Windows 7 upgraders (more often than I would have expected, in fact) is, "What happened to the old network activity indicator?" It’s true: the Windows 7 designers got rid of that little icon in the notification area that flashes to indicate that your network adapter is busy. One of the key design goals of Windows 7 was to make Windows "less noisy," and the Windows design team paid especially close attention to pop-up messages and other potential distractions in the lower right corner of the screen.

Personally, I don’t miss that flashing icon. But if you want it back, you can download a tiny utility written by Igor Tolmachev. It’s called, not surprisingly, Network Activity Indicator for Windows 7:

It uses a mere 1.3 MB of RAM and does exactly what it promises.

Update: In response to a question via Twitter, yes, this works with 64-bit Windows 7 editions as well as 32-bit (x86).

[Taken from Ed Bott’s blog]

Earlier this year Microsoft introduced the technical preview program for Microsoft Office 2010, the next version of Microsoft Office and related products, which are designed to deliver the best productivity experience across the PC, phone and browser; help people work better together; and give them new capabilities to bring their ideas to life with text, video and images. Following the successful technical preview program, during the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) Microsoft has unveiled public beta releases of Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, Office Web Apps for businesses and Office Mobile 2010. For more information and to download the beta products see http://www.microsoft.com/2010. See also these related downloads:

• Microsoft Office 2010 (Beta) Filter Packs
• Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Language Pack
• Office 2010 (Beta) Administrative Templates and OCT
• Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 Beta (64bit) and for Outlook 2010 Beta (32bit)
• Microsoft Project Professional 2010 Beta (32-bit) and Microsoft Project Professional 2010 Beta (64-bit)
• Microsoft Project Server 2010 Beta
• Microsoft Visio 2010 Beta (32-bit) and Microsoft Visio 2010 Beta (64-bit)
• Visio 2010 (Beta) Viewer
• Groove Server 2010 Beta (Manager and Relay)
• SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta
• Presentation Companion 1.0 [Beta]
• Microsoft Office Web Apps (Beta)
• Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 Database Tool (Beta)
• Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V (Beta)
• Office 2010 KMS Host License Pack
• Access Database Engine 2010
• Microsoft Office 2010 ScreenTip Language (32-bit) and Office 2010 ScreenTip Language (64-bit)
• Office 2010 Help Files: Office Fluent User Interface Control Identifiers
• Office 2010 Reference: Office Fluent User Interface XML Schema
• 64-bit Client Installation of Office 2010

Wow.  If you own licensing for the “System Center Server Management Suite” (either Enterprise or Datacenter) with Software Assurance, you will be receiving AT NO CHARGE the Opalis Technologies we acquired from Opalis Software.  Details are documented here –  http://www.microsoft.com/pathways/opalis/ – however this is the net of it:

The Opalis subsidiary will grant licenses for Opalis technology to existing Microsoft customers licensed for System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) and Server Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD) with active Software Assurance. The grant will include use rights for the Opalis Integration Server, Integration Packs, and Process Catalogue software and the right to manage server devices licensed for SMSE or SMSD.

As of today, these grants will be made at no additional license cost to Microsoft customers. Microsoft reserves the right to make changes to this grant plan. Please see below as to how to provide customers with access to Opalis software.

Q:   How can an SMSE or SMSD customer access their Opalis license grant?
A:   An Opalis order can be initiated by emailing your account team for more information on how to proceed.  Upon order approval by Opalis, customers will receive an email with license keys, login instructions and link to the Opalis software download site. Additionally, existing SMSE and SMSD customers will be contacted directly, via Microsoft Connect, to inform them of how to access their Opalis grant

(We seem to be in a generous mood.  In an unrelated offer, we also decided earlier that we’d be giving all customers with Terminal Services CALs on Software Assurance licensing for App-V for Terminal Services again, AT NO CHARGE.)

We are happy to announce the release of the Cross Platform Audit Collection Services for Operations Manager 2007 R2. This feature extends the existing Audit Collection Services and Cross Platform features in R2 to include UNIX and Linux Event auditing.

Cross Platform Audit Collection Services allows you to collect events from UNIX/Linux servers and have Operations Manager 2007 R2 ACS collect them in the same way the Windows events are collected. Reports can then be viewed to show the collected events (the reports are included with the Cross Platform Audit Collection Services installer) .

Three downloadable components are required for Cross Platform Audit Collection Services:

• System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Updated Management Packs
• Cross Platform Audit Collection Services Management Packs
• Cross Platform Audit Collection Services Installer

For Cross Platform ACS to function, the existing R2 Cross Platform Management Packs were updated. They are not required for normal Cross Platform operation, only for Cross Platform ACS. These Management Packs can be downloaded from within the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Console or directly from the link above.

Note: With these updated MPs, Language Packs have been introduced (versus full MPs containing all languages as was the case with the Release of R2). If you are using a localized version of Operations Manager, you will need to download and install the English Updated Management Pack and any Language Pack that you require.

The logic as to which events are to be collected for each of the UNIX/Linux Servers is included in the Cross Platform Audit Collection Services Management Packs. There is a UNIX ACS Management Pack that is required by all the platforms, as well as individual Management Packs for each supported Platform (for example, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11). These Management Packs can be downloaded from within the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Console or from the link above.

Note: The Cross Platform Audit Collection Services Management Packs are currently only available in English.

Finally, the Cross Platform Audit Collection Services Installer needs to be downloaded and installed. Cross Platform ACS should be installed only on Operations Manager Management Servers that actively monitor the UNIX/Linux Servers. Also, an ACS Collector needs to be configured and the ACS Forwarder on the Management Server needs to be enabled. The RMS should not act as an ACS Collector/Forwarder. For more information on best practices and how to install Cross Platform ACS, check out the Deployment Guide. The Cross Platform Audit Collections Services Installer can be downloaded from the link above.

Note: As with the Cross Platform ACS Management Packs, the Installer is currently only available in English.

For more information on installing and configuring the Cross Platform Audit Collections Services feature and installing the included report, refer to the Deployment Guide (available on the download page with the Installer).

The documentation can be access directly via the following links:

• ACS Release Notes and Deployment Guide: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee873221.aspx
• ACS Managment Pack Guide  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee873234.aspx

[taken from the blog]

Ever wish Windows 7 just automatically throttled your power utilization by changing power plans depending on whether you were connected to A/C power?

• DOWNLOAD:  PowerPlan 7 v1.2b (32-bit & 64-bit)
  http://powerplan7.com/

Power Plan Assistant is a smart power plan management application, designed specifically for Microsoft® Windows® 7 operating system. All the editions of Windows® 7 are fully supported (when 64-bit operating system is detected, the native 64-bit binaries will be installed automatically). There are no installation prerequisites – everything is included in this compact package.

Power Plan Assistant allows a user to:

1. Switch between the Windows built-in power plans (all power plans, including custom plans, not just 2 of them, as it is when operating via system Power icon);
2. Easily observe which power plan is currently active (dynamic application icon in a taskbar notification area changes in accordance with an active power plan, does not matter where it has been changed – in a Control Panel, system Power icon or in the Power Plan Assistant itself);
3. Instantly power off the display on user’s demand (why wait at least one minute for it to be powered off, wasting the energy?). The display can be waked up then by pressing any key or moving the cursor;
4. Switch the power plans automatically:
   – to ‘Power Saver’ (to preventively save the energy if the battery level goes low);
   – to ‘High Performance’ (on plugging in);
   – to ‘Balanced’ (on plugging out).

Every Power Plan Assistant’s setting is user-configurable, i.e. user can enable or disable it, either permanently or for a current session only. Even the balloon messages and the notification icon appearance/behavior can be customized. When application is started, please refer to ‘left-click’ actions menu and ‘right-click’ settings menu, where you can view/modify all the available settings.

Celestix and Microsoft invite you to attend our Lunch-N-Learn network security briefings at Microsoft meeting centers.

While you enjoy a catered lunch, Celestix’ Richard Hicks, North America’s only Microsoft MVP for Forefront security will brief you about Microsoft’s new Threat Management Gateway for total web security and Unified Access Gateway (UAG ) for secure access and application publishing for remote users.

You’ll also see a demo of Celestix’ new generation appliance platforms for TMG and UAG that Celestix has packed with industry-leading features for high performance and for saving you time and money.

DATE/TIME:
January 21, 2010
11 am to 1 PM

LOCATION:
Microsoft Irvine
3 Park Plaza
Suite 1600
Irvine California 92614

REGISTRATION:
http://www.celestix.com/corporate/events/lunchnlearn/

Whenever a computer running Windows suddenly reboots without displaying any notice or blue screen of death, the first thing that is often though about is a hardware failure. In reality, most crashes are caused by malfunctioning device drivers and kernel modules. In case of a kernel error, most computers running Windows do not show a blue screen unless they are configured to do so. Instead these systems suddenly reboot without any notice.
WhoCrashed shows the drivers which have been crashing your computer with a single click. In most cases it can pinpoint the offending drivers which have been causing misery on your computer system in the past. It does post-mortem crashdump analysis and presents all gathered information in a comprehensible way.
Normally, debugging skills and a set of debugging tools are required to do post-mortem crash dump analysis. By using this utility you do not need any debugging skills to be able to find out what drivers are causing trouble to your computer.

Note
Note that WhoCrashed cannot be always 100% sure about the drivers which are responsible for crashing your computer. Because all kernel modules run in the same address space, a kernel module is able to corrupt another. Also, a driver may be able to cause problems to another driver which runs in the same device stack. So keep in mind this software is not guaranteed to identify the culprit in every case but most often it does.
WhoCrashed relies on the Windows Debugging Package (WinDbg) from Microsoft. If this is not installed, WhoCrashed will download and extract this package automatically for you.

DOWNLOAD:  WhoCrashed 2.00 (Windows 7 and below, x86 & x64)
http://www.resplendence.com/downloads

One of the things that I love is the ability to quickly add new search providers into the Internet Explorer instant search field.  Normally, I search using Bing.com but there are times when I want specific searches of certain Internet databases like eBay or Amazon.  Or maybe I want to search using Google without them tracking me using their nefarious cookies & Google Analytics tentacles.

This is a great list of about 100 providers that can be added to your Internet Explorer search field provided by Tredosoft.  All it takes to add one of these to your Internet Explorer configuration is to simply click on the provider in the list and it gets added.

Here’s a sample of some of the big name providers that they’ve listed that might be interesting:

• Amazon
• BBC News
• Blogger
• del.icio.us
• Dictionary.com
• Digg
• eBay
• Flickr
• Food Network Recipes
• IMDB
• MSDN
• MySpace
• Oxford Dictionary
• Technorati
• Slashdot
• Yahoo Shopping
• Youtube
• …

If you’re interested in adding any of these, visit:

• LINK:  Tredosoft’s Extra Internet Explorer Search Providers List
  http://tredosoft.com/internet_explorer_7_search_providers

One item that isn’t listed is Scroogle, the Google anonymizer that allows you to search using Google’s index however prevents Google from tracking your searches uniquely to you.

• Scroogle
  Add the following URL to the Search Results field in http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx.
  http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=TEST

If you’re interested in attending the Consumer Electronics Expo 2010 in Las Vegas, NV on Jan 7th (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s keynote is on the 6th in the evening so come early if you want to see some interesting announcements) there’s a $100 discount available.

FREE ACCESS TO THE EXPO & 1000’s OF EXHIBITORS
I believe this means that Expo access, which is usually $100 in registration fees, is essentially free.  Either that or if you partake in some of the other CES functions, you’ll just get $100 off.  This coupon expires on January 2nd, so it won’t work if you try it the day of the event.

• COUPON:  $100 of Registration to CES 2010
  Use code CES31 at http://cesweb.org

EXPO HOURS
If you’re planning on attending the expo, here’s the hours from the web site:

• Thursday, January 7: 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
• Friday, January 8: 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
• Saturday, January 9: 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
• Sunday, January 10: 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

MAPS & STUFF FOR YOUR TRIP
And before you go, be sure to grab and print this map of Las Vegas’ hotels and the Shuttle schedule:

• MAP:  Las Vegas Hotels & Shuttle Schedule
  http://cesweb.org/docs/2010_CES_Shuttle_Map_for_CESweb.pdf

Also, don’t forget to grab and print THIS map also of the Las Vegas convention center and the show layout of the booths

• MAP:  CES Show Locations in Las Vegas Convention Center
  http://cesweb.org/docs/2010_CES_Show_Locations_Map.pdf

WHERE’S MICROSOFT?
We’re there!  We’ll be in Central Hall Booth 7144 showing our latest consumer products… Windows 7, Xbox 360, Zune, IPTV, Windows Phones, etc.

• CES Exhibitor Entry: 
  http://myces.bdmetrics.com/CDT-6277803/Microsoft-Corporation/Details.aspx

THE “STEVE BALLMER KEYNOTE”
The biggest, most highly attended keynote of the event is the Steve Ballmer/Microsoft keynote.  This year, it’s at the Las Vegas Hilton, kicking off at 6:30PM.  This of course means that if you want to see it in person, you’ll need to get in line probably closer to 12 Noon otherwise you’ll probably get sent to one of the overflow rooms which simply shows you the keynote on a TV screen.  Yeah.  It sucks.  I’ve done it before.

• CES Keynotes:
  http://www.cesweb.org/sessions/keynotes.asp

PARTIES
Don’t ask.  I don’t know what we’ve got planned.  And even if I did, I have no power to get you in so don’t bother trying to contact me about it.

Joshua Allen wrote a very clear and well-thought article entitled “HTML5 vs. Silverlight: Which Will Win?”… a topic that I’ve heard more than a couple times in the past month.  This question also of course comes up in reference to Flash as well.

However besides going over the logic (or rather illogic) of this debate, Joshua concludes with an interesting comment about what sort of people this question generally comes from:

“…those who argue that HTML5 will supplant everything else tend to be companies who have nothing else. If you only sell hammers, you might as well try to convince people that there are no such things as screws. And you can drive awareness for your newly-incorporated hammer store by telling tales of intrigue and conflict between hammers and screwdrivers. But the fact that these arguments are often couched in conspiracy theories or ideology, suggests that they are primarily opportunistic marketing ploys, and not motivated by pragmatic technical reality.”

READ MORE:  “HTML5 vs Silverlight:  Which will win?”
http://visitmix.com/Opinions/HTML5-vs-Silverlight-Which-Will-Win