Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Today, we have released a preview of Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1 that allows you to create content for the release candidate of Silverlight 2.

This Service Pack provides you with all of the functionality you had with our earlier Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview. Besides allowing you to create new projects for WPF, Silverlight 1, and Silverlight 2 RC, we are also exposing new platform functionality like Font Embedding / Subsetting for Silverlight 2 projects. More on this new functionality in future blog posts.

One thing to note, which is different from how we handled releases in the past, is that Expression Blend 2 SP1 Preview will install on top of Expression Blend 2. This will not be a side-by-side installation. This service pack is also an evolution of Expression Blend 2.5, so there will be no future Expression Blend 2.5 releases.

You can find more information on the FAQ page we have created for Expression Blend 2 / SP1.

BLOG:
http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2008/09/25/expression-blend-2-sp1-preview-released.aspx

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3AE4DC3A-61AA-41F4-A9B8-4334A76FA447&displaylang=en

Whoa.  This is a cool paper.

• Database Maintenance for Microsoft^® SharePoint^® Products and Technologies
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=111531&clcid=0x409 

I only found it because of this blog article, “SQL Index defrag and maintenance tasks for Search” that goes over various tasks to keep Sharepoint Server 2007 moving.

My goal for this was to follow the recommended SQL guidelines while minimizing the impact that these maintenance jobs have on Crawling and Queries.  We know from the SQL Monitoring an I/O post that Search is extremely I/O intensive .  As it turns out so is all of the regular maintenance that SQL recommends, so finding the right balance between the two is an interesting scheduling task.

…

http://blogs.msdn.com/enterprisesearch/archive/2008/09/02/sql-index-defrag-and-maintenance-tasks-for-search.aspx

Honestly, this is all database stuff that’s over my head but I assume that you Sharepoit & SQL Admins know what to do with this information.  And there’s a lot of it.

This is crazy.

• Wii Controller Setup for pptPlex slideshows
  http://www.officelabs.com/projects/pptPlex/Pages/wii_controller_setup.aspx

…so I guess if you own a Nintendo Wii, and really want to use the controller as your Powerpoint slideshow controller, this is how to do it.  It’s tricky however, and not really that easy to set up so reader beware.

Near as I can tell, the device connects via Bluetooth and requires some extra lighting on the projection screen.

Using a REAL Wireless Mouse
Me personally? I use this:

• GO PRO 2.4GHz GYROTRANSPORT Air Mouse Presenter 512MB
  http://www.gyration.com/p-70-go-pro-24ghz-gyrotransport-air-mouse-presenter-512mb.aspx

It’s super portable and it shows up on Woot every so often too.

The folks at the Outlook team blog wrote a wicked tutorial for people that have no idea on how to send out emails to large groups of people without having all those people appear on the To: line.

Email blasts that go out to each recipient individually is called Mail Merge and it’s a somewhat hard to understand capability within Outlook 2007.

So check out this tutorial.  It’s well worth the 5 minutes.

LINK:
http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2008/09/23/mail-merge-how-to-send-a-personalized-e-mail-to-many-people-at-once.aspx

The latest version has a number of cool new features, not to mention some bug fixes.  Here are a few of the new features available:

• Process Tracking enables identification of applications on your machine that generate network traffic.
• Re-designed capture engine improves data capture on high-speed networks.
• Find conversations feature allows you to isolate data in the same network conversation.
• Parsers for over 300 protocols.
• Much more!

The first big feature for this release is easily Process Tracking.  Now you can identify rogue applications sending network data.  View all the processes on your machine generating network traffic (process name and PID).  Use the conversation tree to view frames associated with each process.

The second big feature is Conversation filtering/finding.  To quote the NetMon team: 
“Many of our users found conversation tracking to be difficult to use as the view grew hard to manage, and it was difficult to correlate the frames they were seeing with the conversation nodes in the tree. Now, you can quickly isolate frames in the same network conversation.  Just right-click on a frame and select a conversation to track, and you will see all the frames in that conversation. View TCP streams, HTTP flows etc.”

Check out more at the Netmon Blog.

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f4db40af-1e08-4a21-a26b-ec2f4dc4190d&DisplayLang=en

Ah.  The future of desktop administration and technology:  MDOP 2008 R2 is here.  If you’re a desktop tech that hasn’t gotten up to speed on MDOP, you’re already behind the eight-ball:  I suggest you start doing your research around MDOP because this is a major component of Microsoft’s strategy over the next few years.

MDOP 2008 R2’s newly revised released components include:

• Application Virtualization 4.5
• Asset Inventory Service 1.5
  You can now directly compare/contrast your actual licensing data with your collected software inventory.
• Advanced Group Policy Management 3.0 (AGPM)
  AGPM administrators now have the ability to customize the permissions that are set on production GPOs controlled by AGPM. AGPM also has Enhanced Tracking which allows customers to use AGPM for compliance with branch specific regulations.  AGPM 3.0 is now compatible with Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista SP1 and 64-bit machines.

Additionally, most components of MDOP 2008 R2 (App-V, AGPM, DEM, & DaRT) will be available in 10 different languages including Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Dutch (App-V only), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Russian.

It’ll be available sometime this week for customers with volume licensing agreements with Microsoft off of http://licensing.microsoft.com. (App-V is already available)

Are you using Microsoft Office Project Standard to its full potential?

Are there advanced functions and features you wish you knew better?

Microsoft and Project Solutions Group (PSG) are offering a Project Learning Series. In this series, our Microsoft Project instructor will share the application best practices and give you hands-on advice for getting the most out of your project standard investment including tips on tracking resource utilization, linking multiple projects, calculating project costs and an entire section on creating the best reports.

In addition,  you will enjoy a session to discuss how the world’s best run companies enhance resource planning and demand management using Microsoft Project Server and Portfolio Server.  See effective demand vs. capacity planning, enterprise resource utilization and resource management dashboards.

Come for one session or spend the entire morning and see all 3 sessions.

This learning series is designed for intermediate to expert Microsoft Project Users, Managers, Project Managers, Resource Managers, IT Managers, Technology Executives, IT Directors, and all Business and Technical Decision Makers.

Date:
Thursday, Oct 23rd

Location:
Microsoft
3 Park Plaza
16th floor
Irvine, CA 92614

Schedule:

• 9:30AM – Registration & Networking
• 10:00AM – 11:30AM Microsoft Project Professional Tips & Tricks
• 11:30AM – 1:00PM Luncheon Session:  Strategic Resource Planning & Demand Management
• 1:00PM – 2:00PM Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services & Project Server 2007 Integration

Registration:
http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=131552

Hey!  New beta!  And this time we finally added a font toolbar!  Yay!  Now if we could just get table copying correct…

Here’s what you can expect to find in this beta:

Image and video publishing enhancements

• Insert videos from Soapbox and YouTube
• Upload videos to Soapbox and YouTube
• Image cropping and tilting
• Additional border styles for images (such as reflection and rounded corners)
• Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
• Support for centering images

Blog authoring enhancements

• Spell Checking in more languages: Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portugal), Serbian-Cyrillic, Serbian-Latin, Spanish, and Swedish
• Auto Linking
• Smart quotes/typographic characters
• Word count

Experience improvements

DOWNLOAD:
http://download.live.com/writer/

BLOG:  Windows Live Writer Beta: Now Available for Download
http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D85741BB5E0BE8AA!1533.entry

Join our two-part Desktop Deployment: Planning, Deploying, and Managing Office 2007 Labcast to learn about new tools and technologies to deploy the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. 

During these sessions, you will receive practical technical information and proven techniques to help simply your 2007 Office deployment.  Click here for more information about the 2007 Office labcast series.

Part 1 of 2 – Topics covered include:

• Deploying the 2007 Microsoft Office system with the Deployment Workbench
• Add the 2007 Office system to the Deployment Workbench
• Perform multi-language integration
• Learn about the Office Customization Tool (OCT)
• Use SMS 2003 for 2007 Office system deployment

Part 2 of 2 – Topics covered include:

• 2007 Microsoft Office system Planning and Migration Tools: Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM)
• Install and configure OMPM
• Perform a scan on a user system
• Convert documents with no issues to the new file formats
• Managing the 2007 Microsoft Office system with Group Policy
• Import the new Group Policy Administrative Templates for the 2007 Office release
• Use Group Policy to configure the Default File Save options in the 2007 Office release
• Use Group Policy to configure the Default File Save options for Office 2003 (to support a mixed Office environment)

REGISTRATION:
Register soon – capacity is limited because of the usage of virtual machines.

Part 1 – Click a date and time to register

• October 21, 2008 at 9:00 A.M. (Pacific Time Zone)
• October 21, 2008 at 1 P.M. (Pacific Time Zone)
• October 14, 2008 at 9 A.M. (Central Time Zone)
• October 14, 2008 at 1 P.M. (Central Time Zone)

Part 2 – Click a date and time to register

• October 23, 2008 at 8:30 A.M. (Pacific Time Zone)
• October 23, 2008 at 1 P.M. (Pacific Time Zone)
• October 16, 2008 at 8:30 A.M. (Central Time Zone)
• October 16, 2008 at 1 P.M. (Central Time Zone)

Put virtualization in your hands, and your plans.

Attend this FREE event that lets you touch, talk about, and experience Microsoft® virtualization solutions in a setting that’s focused on you.

Find out all about virtualization.
You will get a day of intensive experience with a well-designed virtualization strategy—one that can help you control costs, improve service levels, and drive agility. You’ll see solutions built on:

• the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™ technology
• Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007,
• Microsoft Desktop and Application Virtualization

And you’ll learn how you can run multiple operating systems on a single machine for benefits from the data center to the desktop.

Start with Microsoft virtualization experts.
Begin your day with 300-level technical seminars:

• Session I: Server Virtualization and Management
• Session II: How Microsoft Builds Dynamic Data Centers
• Session III: Understanding Virtualization at the Desktop Level

Then dive into hands-on labs and learning opportunities.
Spend the afternoon with experts and technology partners in our Solutions Pavilion. See an end-to-end virtualization solution built from start to finish.

Take virtualization home with:

• A free* one-year evaluation software copy of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
• A free* copy of Understand Microsoft Virtualization from the Desktop to the Data Center by Mitch Tulloch
• Vouchers for certification courses and exams
• And of course a  free* T-shirt

For information on other hands-on virtualization events around the United States, visit www.getvirtualnow.com/usevents.

Date/Time/Location:
Oct 10, 2008
Hyatt Orange County
11999 Harbor Blvd.
Garden Grove, CA

Doors open at 8:00 A.M.
Seminars start at 9:00 A.M.
Solutions Pavilion open until 3:45 P.M.

Registration:
http://www.getvirtualnow.com/usevents