Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Microsoft was announced as the 1st company in over a decade to be issued Triple-A credit rating for it’s newly issued bonds.  Why is Microsoft getting into the bond market?  Watch this FT video for some insight:

Microsoft issues Bonds

Microsoft in landmark issue
By Richard Waters in San Francisco and Nicole Bullock in New York
Published: May 11 2009 17:48 | Last updated: May 11 2009 21:47

Microsoft passed a significant milestone in its financial history on Monday as it turned to the bond market for the first time to raise cash.

The landmark long-term debt issue signals a further break with the company’s traditionally conservative stance towards its balance sheet and the culmination of a six-year process since it began to adapt its financial strategy to the increasing maturity of its business. The software company set out on Monday to establish three benchmark bond offerings, with maturities of five, 10 and 30 years. These are expected to raise $3.75bn. Details of the pricing were set to be announced later in the day.

…

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b4567b4a-3e48-11de-9a6c-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=e8477cc4-c820-11db-b0dc-000b5df10621.html?nclick_check=1

Today, Bill Veghte announced Office 2010 at TechEd 2010 here in Los Angeles.  And it would appear that some of that Hollywood glitz rubbed off on him when he was last down here in Los Angeles.

• Office 2010:  “The Movie”
  http://www.office2010themovie.com/index-hd.html
• Office 2010:  The Blog
  http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/

Among the things you can get from the aforementioned site is the sign up/registration page for Office 2010’s Technical Preview.

The Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview is a limited, invitation only program which will provide you with the opportunity to experience early, pre-release versions of Office 2010 which will include the following applications:  Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Communicator 2010, Access 2010, InfoPath 2010 and Publisher 2010.

By registering you are signing up to be considered for the Technical Preview Program, you will be waitlisted for consideration to be invited into the Technical Preview Program. We will notify invitees in early to mid July.

REGISTER:
http://microsoft.crgevents.com/office2010themovie

Hmm.  Maybe it’s time for me to break out my ‘Clippy’ costume again, ‘eh?

So much for Skybook.  A while back, before we started working on a Facebook client, I used to use Skybook, the one Windows Mobile client for Facebook available, on my Samsung i760 Pocket PC.  Now, with the release of Microsoft Facebook for Windows Mobile, I suspect that either Skybook’s gonna get the hook, or it’ll get all sorts of new features to beat out our client.  One thing’s for sure:  I’m glad Skybook’s got some competition.  It really hadn’t evolved much at all and the support was lacking on it, despite it working for what I needed it to do. 

PROJECT QH IS BORN
The original code name for our Facebook client was “Project QH”, and we’ve been using it internally for about a year, or at least since late-2008.  It’s gone through a lot of changes but I think we finally have a multithreaded tool that everyone can be proud of.  It’s not perfect but it performs very well and doesn’t crash your device or eat up gargantuan amounts of memory… unlike other products.

You’ll also notice that it works on both 6.0 & 6.1 devices as well as being available for both form factors:  Smartphone & Pocket PC.

New from Windows Mobile: a Facebook application for your phone! Download the new Facebook application for Windows Mobile and:

• Send messages to any of the people in your Friends list.
• Take pictures and videos on your phone, then upload them right to Facebook.
• Send messages or call people in your Friends list.
• Manage your profile and post anytime, anywhere.

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/downloads/facebook.mspx

“Ask the Experts”
at the Irvine Microsoft Technology Center

June 2009

In this tough economy, you need to do more with less, work smarter, and plan better.  “Ask the Experts” is designed to give you an opportunity to engage directly with Microsoft Architects and Technical Support Engineers on a wide variety of technologies and solutions.

This event is designed to allow free unstructured flow of questions and answers between attendees and experts in an casual setting. Subject Matter Experts from broad technology areas like SharePoint, Unified Communications, Application Platform Tools and Processes, SQL Server and Business Intelligence, Identity and Access management, Virtualization, Systems Center, Server and Client Deployment will be available to discuss your technical issues, potential solutions, and answer development and architectural questions.

In addition, you will have the opportunity to tour the Irvine Microsoft Technology Center, including the Envisioning Theatre and our Services Labs.

Why should you attend?

Have you ever wanted to ask a Microsoft expert anything at no cost to you?

1. Do you leverage your Microsoft technology investment to its full potential?
2. Are you equipped with the necessary knowledge to lead your organization in technology for the next five years?
3. Do you want to learn how to implement a KPI solution for your environment?
4. Do you want to learn how to enable collaboration through Unified Communications providing conferencing, presence and voice?
5. Do you have questions about how to deliver next generation Business Intelligence capabilities to your customers?
6. Could you benefit from a better understanding of how to manage your infrastructure with System Center? How about managing Virtualization environments with VMM?

These are just a few of the potential questions and topics that “Ask the Experts” can discuss with you. Come meet the Microsoft team and take advantage of this unique opportunity to interact one on one with today’s industry leading experts in Microsoft technologies.  In just a few hours, you will have the ability to arm yourself with sum of  the knowledge necessary to lead your organization in technology and processes for years to come.

Location:
Microsoft Irvine
3 Park Plaza
Suite 1600
Irvine, CA 92614
949.263.3000
Click here for directions

(Parking will be validated and food will be served)

Registration/Date/Time:
For registration details, date, and time, please contact me if you are a customer of mine to ensure your entry!

All attendees will be eligible to participate in a xBox 360 raffle!

Now downloadable as a beta, Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 makes it easy to install and run many of your Windows XP productivity applications directly from a Windows 7-based PC. It utilizes virtualization technology such as Windows Virtual PC to provide a Virtual Windows XP environment for Windows 7.

Windows XP Mode provides a 32-bit Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (SP3) environment pre-loaded on a virtual hard disk. Client virtualization software, like Windows Virtual PC is a pre-requisite to use Windows XP Mode.

BETA DOWNLOAD:
(Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions available)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0e8fa9b3-c236-4b77-be26-173f032f5159 (445MB)

Now don’t get this confused with “Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V”.  This is “Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2” which is a separately installable product that:

1. Gets installed on a server without any additional operating system
2. Is NOT Windows Server but rather the hypervisor element alone for managing Virtual Machines that are installed on top of it
3. Costs absolutely no money.  100% free. 

The product exists because not everyone is licensed for “Windows Server 2008 R2” and thus doesn’t have the ability to use the Hyper-V technology within it.  This provides our high performance hypervisor to individuals that only have the licensing for:

• Windows Server 2003
• Windows XP/Vista
• Linux (non-Windows operating systems)

———–
[taken from the download page]

Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 R2 is a stand-alone product that provides a reliable and optimized virtualization solution enabling organizations to improve server utilization and reduce costs. With the addition of new features such as live migration and expanded processor and memory support for host systems, it allows organizations to consolidate workloads onto a single physical server and is a good solution for organizations who are consolidating servers as well as for development and test environments.

By having the ability to plug into existing IT infrastructures Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 enables companies to reduce costs, improve utilization and provision new servers. It allows IT professionals to leverage existing patching, provisioning, management and support tools and processes. IT Professionals can continue to leverage their individual skills and the collective knowledge of Microsoft tools, minimizing the learning curve to manage Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. In addition, with Microsoft providing comprehensive support for Microsoft applications and heterogeneous guest operating systems support, customers can virtualize with confidence and peace of mind.

Note: This is a pre-release version of Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 R2 and not intended to be used in a production environment.

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fdac7be8-1847-4839-991d-f84be95a33a0&displayLang=en  (1.2GB)

A customer asked our support engineer, “How can we get usage statistics from Sharepoint?”  (Sharepoint Server 2007 or Windows Sharepoint Services)  The question is sort of broad, but does reflect an important function of Sharepoint.  After all, how otherwise would you know if anyone’s using the portal implementation that you worked so hard to bring up?

The easiest way to implement some level of usage reporting is to leverage the inherent capabilities of Sharepoint:

• You can take ANY Sharepoint site and tack on the following appendage and get stats:
     _layouts/1033/usageDetails.aspx
  
  For example, http://sharepoint/sites/personalsite/
  _layouts/1033/usageDetails.aspx reveals:
• Sharepoint Usage Reporting can be configured following these instructions:
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262541.aspx
• Sharepoint Designer can delve into Sharepoint Stats as well:
• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101741361033.aspx

There are a number of 3rd party solutions as well:

• Additionally, there is a tool out there from the famous MAPIlab guys that provides richer stats:
  http://www.mapilab.com/sharepoint/statistics/
• Nintex Reporting also provides richer reporting on usage:
  http://www.nintex.com/Nproducts/Reporting.aspx
• And there are lots of 3^rd party, generic web server stat products out there.  The famous WebTrends has Sharepoint Integration – Mike Gannotti writes about it here.
  http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/mikeg/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=1b3bbb8f%2D4b5a%2D4f72%2D94c4%2D94cb80bc3866&ID=1293

Some of you know that you can get a discount on eBay BuyItNow purchases made using PayPal by first finding the item through http://Search.Live.com.  This discount is a “rebate” that is automatically stored up in an escrow account at http://cashback.live.com and release to your personal bank acocunt after 60 days.

This is a notoriously great way to purchase gifts and other items through eBay (especially during Christmas since these monies can really total up and you don’t really care when the rebate hits your bank account.

The problem is that the percentage rebate that you get can vary depending on the date you try to use it.  It’s been as high as 30%, and it’s been as low as 5%.

Well, someone created a “cashback” level notification service that automatically notifies you via eMail of when the cashback percentage for eBay exceeds a certain percentage.

Check it out!

• LINK:
  http://www.abevoelker.com/livesearch/

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the next version of the Windows Server operating system from Microsoft. Building on the features and capabilities of the current Windows Server 2008 release version, Windows Server 2008 R2 allows you to create organization solutions that are easier to plan, deploy, and manage than previous versions of Windows Server.

Developing upon the increased security, reliability, and performance provided by Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 extends connectivity and control to local and remote resources. This means your organizations can benefit from reduced costs and increased efficiencies gained through enhanced management and control over resources across the enterprise.

Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2

1. Powerful Hardware and Scaling Features
2. Reduced Power Consumption
3. Hyper-V™ in Windows Server 2008 R2
4. Increased Desktop Management Efficiencies
5. Easier and More Efficient Server Management
6. PowerShell 2.0
7. Ubiquitous Remote Access
8. Improved Branch Office Performance and Management
9. Simplified Management for SMBs
10. The Strongest Web and Application Server To Date

[taken from http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/2/1/f2146213-4ac0-4c50-b69a-12428ff0b077/Top_10_Reasons_to_Upgrade_to_WS08R2.doc]

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/R2-Download.aspx

REVIEWER’S GUIDE:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/E/3/6E3E4529-27E3-48EC-B7E7-1A93242D3AE1/Windows_Server_2008_R2_Reviewers_Guide_(BETA).doc

How to Leverage Online Communities to Foster Innovation and Intimacy

Date: Friday, June 5, 2009
Time: 10:00am Pacific & Arizona
(11:00am Mountain; 1:00pm Eastern)
Duration: 60 minutes

As the recession continues, more professionals are going online to interact with peers and colleagues, to share insight and information – forming online communities bound by mutual interest.  Large and small organizations see the value of these online communities but often find it difficult to know how to tap into their potential power. In a recent Technographics® survey*, Forrester Research reports that 51% of US online adults are willing to participate in online company forums.  Understanding how online communities are formed and work can bring tremendous benefit to your organization.

This interactive IDEAcast hosted by Microsoft will discuss ways you can leverage online communities to gain insight, build stronger relationships and drive product improvements and innovation – both internally with your employees, and externally with your customers.

• Microsoft Senior Online Marketing Manager Marc Sirkin will discuss some principles and elements of a good online community, where online communities fit in the larger social strategy, and how to measure success and effectiveness. Marc will share his experience launching and managing Microsoft’s CIO Network, a private, invitation only online community designed specifically for CIOs. Sponsored by Microsoft’s own CIO, Tony Scott, the Microsoft CIO Network has 1,200 members, and is quickly developing as an effective membership program and communications vehicle for driving engagement with this influential audience.
• You will be given opportunities to share your thoughts and questions before, during and after the webcast through Facebook and Microsoft LiveMeeting.

*North American Technographics® Media and Marketing Online Survey, Q2 2008, Forrester Research, Inc.

Social media’s increasing influence in the Enterprise can be a source of untapped opportunity for organizations that choose to embrace it and potential threat to those that choose to ignore it. Join this webcast today to learn how to leverage the power of online communities.

Who is this webcast for?
Managers and Executives in Business Functions Interested in Social Networking (Sales, Marketing/Corporate Communications, Engineering, Operations, Product Management, Innovation, Human Resources, Finance)

Cost:
$0 + Your time and engagement

Interested?

• Please contact me if you’re a customer of mine, for instructions on how to register.
• Listen to our last IDEAcast on the Top 5 Ways to Create an Effective Enterprise Social Strategy with Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research

Speaker:
Marc Sirkin is a Lead Social Networking Strategist focused on building business to business communities in the Enterprise Marketing group at Microsoft.  Since 2001, he’s held executive and senior level marketing roles focused on helping large international organizations benefit from digital marketing. Marc’s unique ability to develop strategic marketing plans that connect directly to measurable business results has helped him launch and refine online communities and web based community applications that have resulted in millions of dollars in donations, and lifelong customer relationships in the non-profit sector. As part of Microsoft’s Worldwide Enterprise Partner Group, he’s helping to develop emerging social and online community models that are focused on driving tangible business results through the use of social marketing strategies and tactics. Marc is a popular blogger and speaker who has contributed to a variety of conferences including WOMMA, NTEN and DMA.