Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Richard and Greg talk to Richard Hicks about ISA Server, including 2000, 2004, 2006 and the upcoming Threat Management Gateway product. The discussion also explores dedicated ISA hardware.

Richard Hicks is a Senior Sales Engineer and Product Specialist for edge security solutions at Celestix Networks, Inc. Richard has been working with Microsoft ISA Server 2006 and its predecessors for over 12 years. Richard has designed and deployed network security solutions using ISA for SMB’s, military and defense organizations, and Fortune 100 companies around the world. Richard is an MCSE and MCITP, and is Microsoft Certified in Proxy 2.0, ISA Server 2000, ISA Server 2004, and ISA Server 2006. Richard currently lives and works in beautiful, sunny Southern California.

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.runasradio.com/default.aspx?showNum=96

Have you ever wished you could edit the LiveMeeting recordings using Windows Movie Maker?

Or maybe you wanted to distribute a LiveMeeting recording to portable media devices like Zunes as a podcast?

Recording Converter for Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 (LM2MOVIE) is a tool for Office Live Meeting 2007 customers to convert recorded meetings in High Fidelity Presentation (HFP) format into single movie files. The converted movie files can be integrated with a customer’s existing learning management system, and edited by using a video editing tool such as Windows Movie Maker, and then viewed on portable devices.

A few comments about LM2MOVIE.EXE:

• Getting a conversion to look the way you want it to may take several attempts with different settings.  This is not a perfect science.
• Video editing in general takes some effort; you may have to use command line arguments against LM2MOVIE.EXE to get the results looking to your liking.
• The resulting file is streamable but it is not recommended for efficiency purposes.  If streaming is necessary, you should re-encode using Windows Media Encoder however be aware that this will possibly degrade the picture quality.
• LM2MOVIE defaults to 5 frames per second which allows for a very quick conversion and should work well for most meetings. But that is going to look very choppy if there is animation on the screen (mouse movement, talking head, etc…).  This is editable using the command line.
• Flash, Shared Notes & Q&A are not supported in this version.

And finally, this tool is a unsupported.  Don’t go calling Premier.  They’ll go, “What?”

DOWNLOAD: (1.17MB)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101215971033.aspx

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA103525021033.aspx

LAS VEGAS — Feb. 10, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today disclosed a detailed road map for its enterprise search products, including the introduction of FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST Search for Internet Business.

FAST Search for SharePoint, a new search server that will add the high-end search capabilities of FAST ESP into Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, will be available as a part of the next release of the Microsoft Office system. For customers who are interested in the product, Microsoft also announced ESP for SharePoint, a special offering that allows customers to purchase high-end search capabilities today, with a defined licensing path to FAST Search for SharePoint when it becomes available.

“These two new products offer compelling, new choices for our customers,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, general manager for the Office Business Platform Group at Microsoft. “FAST Search for SharePoint will combine high-end search with the broad portal, collaboration, content management and business intelligence capabilities of SharePoint. And FAST Search for Internet Business will deliver search capabilities tuned to drive more revenue through Web sites.”

“We now have the largest team of engineers and researchers in the world dedicated to enterprise search,” said Bjørn Olstad, Microsoft Distinguished Engineer. “They’re passionate about search and committed to pushing the limits of what’s possible. Today’s road map announcement is significant because it not only discloses what’s next from Microsoft, but it also provides a framework for delivering continuous innovation in the future.”

A New Choice in Business Productivity Search
Businesses of all sizes have historically been forced to choose between powerful, high-end search platforms or more mainstream, out-of the-box infrastructure solutions. FAST Search for SharePoint gives customers a new choice: a search server that integrates the high-end search capabilities of FAST ESP into SharePoint Portal Server. By enhancing SharePoint’s portal, collaboration and content management capabilities with sophisticated search, FAST Search for SharePoint will enable a whole new range of business productivity applications.

A Powerful Platform for Building Search-Driven Web Sites
FAST Search for Internet Business will extend FAST ESP and will provide a flexible platform for building engaging, search-driven Web site experiences. The product will be available in beta in the second half of this year and will feature new capabilities for content integration and interaction management, helping enable more complete and interactive search experiences.

“With companies generating terabytes of data in the course of their daily operations, information has become the lifeblood of business,” said Rita Knox, Gartner Inc. “The ability to find and retrieve information that’s buried in back-office file servers or scattered across unstructured caches of content to identify a business trend, qualify a sales lead, answer an urgent customer query or identify an internal expert is an indispensable business capability.”

Microsoft partners are also looking forward to being able to provide customers with a great range of enterprise search solutions.

“Microsoft’s new road map means businesses will have the ability to deploy a companywide enterprise search platform that is fully integrated with their existing collaboration, productivity and business management solutions,” said Jørn Ellefsen, chief executive officer at Comperio AS. “That’s a compelling package and one that will spur greater adoption of high-end search capabilities with all the opportunities this generates for partners like us.”

Members of the press can find more information about news and activities at the FASTforward’09 event, and view online demos and keynote addresses, at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/fastforward.

WMSnoop is a tool for analyzing Microsoft® Windows Media 9 Series Video files on a frame by frame basis. This tool is used by advanced streaming professionals to optimize encoding and production techniques. WMSnoop provides analysis graphs of frame size and averaged file bitrates enabling power users to tweak their encoding pipeline to deliver optimal results.

WMSnoop can be used to detect where the Microsoft® Windows Media Encoder is inserting key frames into a streaming file and where the bitrate of a file may be spiking due to high motion.  By pre-filtering, tweaking encoding settings or changing production techniques, a production professional can optimize the quality of the encoded output. WMSnoop provides a very low level method of verifying the effectiveness of different processes.

WMSNoop is being offered as a free download for a limited time.

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.sliq.com/default.asp?view=wmsnoop

REQUIREMENTS:

• Operating System
  Windows XP  English (any)
  Windows 2003 Server (any)
  Windows 2008 Server (Validation Pending)
• System Configuration
  2.0Ghz or higher processor
  1GB RAM
  DVD or CD drive
  50MB of available hard disk space
• Other Software Required
  Microsoft Windows Media Player 11
  .Net Framework Version 2.0
  Windows Media Format Runtime Version 9.5

Please join us for the 7^th annual Microsoft Enterprise Developer and Industry Solutions Conference 2009 where you will learn about solutions in Microsoft technologies relevant to the Financial Services and Health & Life Sciences industries, as well  as hear about the latest advancements in major industries such as media, communications, retail and hospitality. This two day event will be held in New York City on May 5^th and 6^th.

Contents are tailored for developers, architects, business decision makers, and technology decision makers in large enterprise organizations a clear roadmap of the Microsoft development platform. We will  give specific examples of real world solutions using the best of breed technology to bring you from where you are today, to where you will be tomorrow. This is the only conference that will show case enterprise customer solutions directly from the mouth of developers that work in the enterprise industry space as well hear from Microsoft and their partners on topics such as Cloud Computing, Application Lifecycle Management and User Experience.

Who Should Attend?
Developers, Architects, Business Decision Makers, CIOs, CTOs, Development Managers and Technical Decision Makers

Products
Azure Services Platform, Microsoft .NET, Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 and Microsoft ASP.NET

Accommodations:
For your convenience, a block of rooms has been reserved at the Marriott Marquis at a rate of $359. You are responsible for your own reservations which can be made by calling (212) 398-1900 or 1-800-843-4898 to receive the discounted rate. Be sure to reference the Microsoft Enterprise & Developer Industry Solution Conference

Tuesday, May 05, 2009 9:30 AM – Wednesday, May 06, 2009 5:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Welcome Time: 8:00 AM

Location:
Marriott Marquis
1535 Broadway
New York New York 10036
United States

Registration Options

• Event ID:
  1032402510
• Register by Phone
  1-877-673-8368
• Register via Internet
  http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032402510&Culture=en-US

You’re invited…

Get Ready: SQL Server 2008 and Business Intelligence Solutions
Join us for two one-day instructor-led training events that will help you get ready for SQL Server 2008. We’ll show you how to get more value from your SQL Server 2008 and Business Intelligence investments.

Day 1 – Get Ready: SQL Server 2008 Enriching Your Data Platform
Retail Price: $149 or $99 with RSVP code

• What’s new in SQL Server 2008
• Business benefits of upgrading
• Reasons and benefits for consolidation and virtualization
• Understand consolidation strategies
• Tools for monitoring
• Tools for optimization
• Putting it all together for your business

Day 2 – Get Ready: SQL Server 2008 Building Business Intelligence Solutions
Retail Price: $149 or $99 with RSVP code

• Business Intelligence solutions

Creating an end-to-end Business Intelligence solution
Data transformation solution with SSIS

• Data analysis solution with SSAS
• Reporting services solutions with SSRS
• Managing a BI solution – MOSS and PPS
• BI solution best practices review

——————-

DATE/TIME:
March 5-6/Microsoft Irvine (9AM-5PM)

REGISTRATION:
Event details and registration www.unitedtraining.com/GetReadySQL
Register Now!

Save $50 by using RSVP code SBIMS
You pay just $99 per day, or $199 for both days

Learn from BI experts who are authors and consultants from Hitachi Consulting.

If you’re an Enterprise customer of mine, I am in possession of lots of Windows 7 Beta DVD’s and am willing to hook you up if you contact me with your mailing address. 

Inside is simply a bootable copy of a Windows 7 32-bit beta install DVD, ready to use.  And before you ask, no, I don’t have 64-bit copies.  The minimum requirements are:

• 1 Ghz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
• 1GB of system memory
• 16GB of available disk space
• Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB of video memory for Aero support
• DVD-R/W drive
• Internet access

Note:  You’ll still need to register with http://technet.microsoft.com/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx in order to acquire a product key.  Additionally the beta will expire on August 1st, 2009.

First come, first served!

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: (1192MB)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e464e255-cdd5-44b2-84e6-3233eae3f356&DisplayLang=en

OVERVIEW:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=F81A38D2-A152-4DDE-96E6-2AA184FDF9B7&displaylang=en

My Phone is a free service, built into the operating system, enabling consumers to easily access, manage and back up the personal information on their phones to a password protected Web portal.  Once synchronized, the consumer can easily back-up and restore mobile phone data. 

Microsoft® My Phone syncs information between your mobile phone and the web, enabling you to:

• Back up and restore your phone’s information to a password-protected web site
• Access and update your contacts and appointments through your web account
• Share photos on your phone with family and friends

Initially, Microsoft My Phone will first be available in limited, invite-only beta to Windows Mobile 6.x customers.

LINK:
http://microsoft.com/myphone

ARTICLES:

• Microsoft Prepping MobileMe-Type Service Called ”My Phone”
  Brighthand, Ed Hardy, February 6, 2009
  http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=14868&article=Microsoft+My+Phone
• Microsoft’s New Mobile Strategy
  BusinessWeek, Peter Burrows, February 6, 2009
  http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/02/for_the_past_fe.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_tech_beat
• Microsoft SkyBox 2.0 Will Let You Change Your Phone’s Ringtones, Backgrounds and Apps Remotely
  Gizmodo, Matt Buchanan, February 6, 2009
  http://i.gizmodo.com/5145796/microsoft-skybox-20-will-let-you-change-your-phones-ringtones-backgrounds-and-apps-remotely