Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Three words:  Big… Top… Points.

“The Future.

Delicious.”

Looking to transform the way you manage your desktops? Using Microsoft Application Virtualization will enable applications to run without the need to visit a desktop, laptop, or terminal server. Since applications are no longer installed on the client there is minimal impact on the host operating system or other applications.

Join us for a half day as you’ll learn how to improve PC manageability, accelerate and simplify desktop deployments and migrations, and enhance change management.

Lab seats are limited! Register today!

Workshop topics include:

• Overview of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance
• System requirements for Microsoft Application Virtualization
• Microsoft Application Virtualization client overview
• Microsoft Application Virtualization management console overview
• License tracking and enforcement with Microsoft Application Virtualization
• Packaging and deploying applications with Microsoft Application Virtualization               
• Questions & Answers

Audience:
This hands-on lab is for IT Professionals in job roles such as infrastructure specialists, network administrators, directory administrators, management specialists, and client support. This hands-on workshop is limited to 15 attendees.

Date/Time:
November 13, 2008
9:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Registration begins at 8:30 AM
(breakfast and parking included)

Registration:
This workshop is invite only and requires a registration code to attend.  If you are a customer of mine, please contact me if interested and I will provide the appropriate information to you.

And the other shoe just dropped.  Xbox 360 Arcade Edition is now officially $199 per unit.

For the casual gamer, this is huge news.  For just $199, they can get a console that can:

1. Play Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero 3, the two largest rhythm games on the market
2. Watch TV shows & High Definition movies from the world’s largest existing on-demand High Definition video library
3. Rent movies from NetFlix’s on-demand library
4. Play or compete against others over Xbox Live in Madden 2009, Halo 3, and Grand Theft Auto 4 – the top 3 games in console gaming
5. Look forward to major releases this Holiday Season such as Gears of War 2 & Guitar Hero World Tour

LINK:  http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/sep08/09-03Xbox360PriceDropPR.mspx

For those of you who have the vaunted Blackjack II (Sweet, sweet device) you’re in luck.  Looks like they released the Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM for it a couple days ago.

Here’s a list of items updated in the… uh… Update:

• Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 (AKU1.0.1)
• Pocket Internet Explorer, 7.11
• Microsoft Voice Command v1.6.19
• Microsoft Office Mobile (including One Note,)
• TeleNav & MobiTV capable
• Modified UI with updated text & icons in several areas
• Enhancements to improve call quality (Qualcomm patches)
• Fixed, Several Bluetooth improvements for BTCK ‘including Peiker, Nokia, Audi, BMW, and others
• Fixed, Several Bluetooth issues relating to BTHS Jabra, Motorola, Samsung, and others
• Fixed, BT audio routing
• Fixed, Audio playback issue /w certain applications
• Fixed, Video Calling problems
• Added, Track Wheel speed values
• Added, Sliding Media Pane
• Added, Phonebook Access Profile (PBAP) for Bluetooth
• Added, Leap year calendar patch for wallpaper
• Added, Integrated BMW iDrive Patch
• Removed, Good Messaging Application

DOWNLOAD:

• WinXP – http://ars.samsung.com/customer/usa/jsp/faqs/faqs_view.jsp?SITE_ID=22&PG_ID=557&PROD_SUB_ID=558&PROD_ID=957&AT_ID=132706
• WinVista – http://ars.samsung.com/customer/usa/jsp/faqs/faqs_view.jsp?SITE_ID=22&PG_ID=557&PROD_SUB_ID=558&PROD_ID=957&AT_ID=132707

Have you ever had to managed non-domain joined agents?  If you have you know you need to obtain certificates en-masse to deploy to new machines.  Before today, this was a big headache for large numbers of machines that were non-domain joined.

Now there’s the CertGenWizard.exe.

CertGenWizard.exe is a wizard tool which will take your CA information as input (it isn’t required if you are running the wizard on the box with the CA), take in the computer names (has to be FQDNs), and send out a request for the certificates you need.  Now, you no longer have to fill out the Certificate Request form or enter parameters or connect to the web enrollment service.  Once the certificates are approved, there is a Retrieve button in the CertGenWizard which will allow you to retrieve the certificates that you have requested.  On top of the personal certificates, the wizard will retrieve the root CA certificate.

The biggest benefit to this tool is the added ability to request multiple certificates at once.  If you have 100 non-domain joined agents that you need to set up cert auth for, you can simply request all 100 machine certificates at once, retrieve them all, and manually bring them over to your other machines. 

Once you have brought them to your other machines, CertInstaller.exe is a second tool that will install the certificates into the local machine store of your computer and run MOMCertImport.exe for you.  Note: Install OpsMgr Agent FIRST and then run the tool!

DOWNLOAD:  http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/attachment/3110628.ashx

LINK:  http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2008/08/22/obtaining-certificates-for-non-domain-joined-agents-made-easy.aspx

The Edge Planning Tool asks questions about your proposed or current edge server deployment. The tool uses your answers and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices to generate the following reports:

• Settings that you can use to configure your certificates, DNS services, and firewalls
• Custom documentation for configuring your edge servers, reverse proxy, and next hop server
• A comparison of your answers to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices

LINK:  http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2008/08/29/248.aspx

The Sharepoint Best Practice Series are consumable and actionable guidelines based on real-world experience from Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) and the product team.

They are aimed to help our SharePoint customers and partners avoid some of the common SharePoint deployment pitfalls and keep their SharePoint environments available and performing well. The SharePoint Customer Team, part of the core product team dedicated to providing real-world feedback inwardly and outwardly, has put this guidance together working with a number of teams within Microsoft.

The SharePoint Best Practices Resource Center on TechNet highlights the different best practices for IT Professionals and Developers and helps you navigate through the resources. IT Professional topics include Operational Excellence, Team Collaboration Sites, Publishing Portals, Search and My Sites. Developer topics include Common Coding Issues, Using Disposable Objects, Search SQL Syntax Queries and Customization Best Practices. We will continue updating and publishing new Best Practices based on real-world experience.

LINK:  http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/08/29/announcing-the-sharepoint-best-practices-series.aspx

That was quick.  Looks like a beta of PowerShell Plus v2.0 is out. 

In case you didn’t catch on to PowerShell v1.0:

PowerShellPlus Professional is a powerful interactive scripting environment designed to help administrators and developers learn and master Windows PowerShell. Unlike most of the basic script editors on the market today, PowerShellPlus features a powerful interactive console, an advanced script editor and a comprehensive learning center. PowerShellPlus Professional Edition is built on the backbone of PowerShellIDE, the first PowerShell application to offer a very rich graphical user interface.

• Interactive PowerShell Console
  The PowerShellPlus Console allows you to work interactively with PowerShell from a feature rich Windows UI. This integration makes working with PowerShell faster and easier to use than ever before.
• Advanced Script Editor
  The advanced debugger and script editor lets you build and test complex PowerShell scripts, try one line PowerShell commands from an embedded console window, and sign your script with a security certificate … all from a single workspace.
• Comprehensive Learning Center
  The Comprehensive Learning Center helps you experience PowerShell by example. Short tutorials guide you through basic concepts at your own pace. The Comprehensive Learning Center also includes dynamically created help topics from currently installed PowerShell CmdLets, Snap-Ins and WMI objects.

LINK:  http://www.idera.com/Products/PowerShell/

(taken from the Powershell blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2008/08/25/powershellplus-v2-0.aspx)

Ina Fried wrote an interesting post on her blog at Beyond Binary.  Admittedly, while I try to rarely write about ‘other’ companies, this had me raising my eyebrows about Google Chrome’s Omnibox:

<taken from Beyond Binary – Ina Fried’s blog on CNET>

“The auto-suggest feature of Google’s new Chrome browser does more than just help users get where they are going. It will also give Google a wealth of information on what people are doing on the Internet besides searching.

Provided that users leave Chrome’s auto-suggest feature on and have Google as their default search provider, Google will have access to any keystrokes that are typed into the browser’s Omnibox, even before a user hits enter.

What’s more, Google has every intention of retaining some of that data even after it provides the promised suggestions. A Google representative told CNET News that the company plans to store about 2 percent of that data–and plans to store it along with the Internet Protocol address of the computer that typed it.

In theory, that means that if one were to type the address of a site–even if they decide not to hit enter–they could leave incriminating evidence on Google’s servers.”"

• CNET:  Google’s Omnibox could be Pandora’s box
  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10031661-56.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.0

In a few months, we’re going to be releasing Internet Explorer 8 which, because of its adherence to strict Internet standards, is frankly going to ‘break’ the end user experience for a lot of web sites which do not comply with these standards… and this potentially includes your organization’s public Internet web site(s).

I ask that in preparation of this, you PLEASE read the information below to protect your Internet properties and potentially mitigate any issues that your customers may have with reaching your web sites.  The information below is designed to help you properly test and resolve any issues on the horizon.  If you have further questions about this issue, please feel free to contact me.

————————

Internet Explorer 8 Site Compatibility

Consistent with our efforts to promote further interoperability across the Web, Microsoft will be releasing Internet Explorer 8 to render content in its most standards-compliant way by default.  Giving top priority to Web standards interoperability allows us to help web developers and designers drive toward the ideal of “write once, run anywhere”, freeing up more time to innovate rather than modify content for different browsers.  This commitment also addresses several development and design pain points from previous Internet Explorer releases.

However, browsing with this default setting may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended.  This creates a call to action for site owners to ensure their content will continue to display seamlessly in Internet Explorer 8.  As such, we have provided a meta-tag usable on a per-page or per-site level to maintain backwards compatibility with Internet Explorer 7.  Adding this tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to render content like it did in Internet Explorer 7, without requiring any additional changes.

We are encouraging site administrators to get their sites ready now for broad adoption of Internet Explorer 8, as there will be a beta release in the third quarter of this year targeted for all consumers.  To learn more and get started, please follow the step-by-step instructions located at the following link:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=120024 .

Additional Resources

The following links provide additional information you may find useful:

• Internet Explorer 8 main site:  http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8
• Internet Explorer Team Blog:  http://blogs.msdn.com/ie
• Internet Explorer Developer Center: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/default.aspx
• Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit (for web designers and developers): http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/default.htm
• Microsoft Interoperability Principles:  http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx