Kurt Shintaku's Blog

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.

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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

A co-worker recently wrote up the procedure for moving Terminal Services CALs from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008.  I thought I’d post it just in case there are some that might want to see it.

You need to ensure you have your licensing information handy when you call them.  If any of the Terminal Services CALs were purchased through Microsoft Open then you will need the Open licensing authorization number and the licensed number for the CALs. 

If the CALs were purchased through Microsoft Select then you will need the Enrollment number.  Since they are SA I’m guessing they were purchased through Select or as part of the EA.

Once you have the 2008 Terminal Server installed and the 2008 Terminal Server licensing server installed you need to call the licensing clearing house:  (888) 571-2048

The process entails deactivating the 2003 licensing server and reactivating it then installing only the CALs, (all but the 30 you want to move over to the 2008 license server),  that you want to remain on the 2003 licensing server.  Then you will activate the 2008 licensing server and install the upgraded 2008 Terminal server CALs.   This is done while on the phone with the Licensing Clearinghouse.

I know it sounds like a lot of messing around but the actual process shouldn’t take more than 30-40 minutes.  

Microsoft Licensing Clearinghouse phone number – (888) 571-2048
Open 24 hours a day  7 days a week.

SharePoint Administration Toolkit 2.0 is Now Available!

[Cross-posted from Zach Rosenfield’s blog.]

I’m excited to announce that the second version of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit is available for download! As I said back in April, we would be offering regular updates to this toolkit with new features and functionality for both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services v3.0. With this release we added functionality to address some of the challenges associated with running a highly available and/or geographically disperse MOSS 2007 deployment—particularly aimed at synchronizing user profiles in the Shared Service Provider (SSP). Let’s look at these two areas:

High Availability
In order to provide a highly available Shared Service Provider, your deployment needs two identical SSPs available at all times. While this is easily done with search (each SSP has its own crawler and can create their own index)—keeping user profile data in sync is a bit more involved. You can see detailed instructions on running a highly available environment on Microsoft TechNet:

Geographical Replication
If your company is geographically disperse, you may not want to have a single MySite farm serving your users worldwide since some users may experience significant lag in response times depending on WAN bandwidth and traffic characteristics. Instead, it may be better to have several SSP farms located around the globe. Just like in the highly available environment, this configuration would require that user profile data is kept in sync.

Since synchronizing user profiles is something available in the MOSS 2007 product, some of you might wonder what we’ve done in the toolkit! Well, if you’ve ever tried to use the User Profile web services to achieve synchronized profiles—you’ve noticed it’s a very involved process with lots of code (and therefore a lot of room for mistakes). In this release, we’ve built a supported tool for scheduling partial or full replications of any number of your user profile attributes:

For a full overview of features and instructions see the official Microsoft TechNet articles for MOSS 2007 and WSS v3.0.

The download links for the SharePoint Administration Toolkit v2.0
x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F8EEA8F0-FA30-4C10-ABC9-217EEACEC9CE&displaylang=en
x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=263CD480-F6EB-4FA3-9F2E-2D47618505F2&displaylang=en

Zach Rosenfield
Program Manager, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

How Microsoft IT Manages Physical Security through Strategic IT Convergence

The purpose of World Wide Security Operations is to protect Microsoft’s assets in a manner consistent with corporate culture. Through the strategic deployment of security systems, Corporate Security is improving the way that they protect Microsoft assets, information, and employees. The goal of this story is to describe the MS and partner "secure by design" technologies that support access control, monitoring solutions, and incident response and real-time communication solutions.

Technical White Paper | PowerPoint Presentation

Products & Technologies

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
• Microsoft MapPoint 2006
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
• Microsoft Office Communicator 2007
• Remote Desktop and Terminal Services
• SQL Server 2005
• 2007 Microsoft Office system

To learn more about how Microsoft does IT, please visit us!

LINK: www.microsoft.com/technet/itshowcase

Annnnnd just like the Microsoft TechEd 2008 DVD kits, the Microsoft Management Summit DVD kits are still shipping, just in case I didn’t mention this before.

It’s a TWO disc set of DVD’s that showcases all the highlights of the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas this year.  Here’s a quick run down of some of the things they went over:

Recent Microsoft product releases which will be covered in detail during MMS 2008 include:

• System Center Operations Manager 2007
• System Center Configuration Manager 2007
• System Center Data Protection Manager 2007
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007
• System Center Essentials 2007
• System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007
• System Center Capacity Planner 2007
• Desktop Optimization Pack for SA
• Windows Server Update Services 3.0

In addition during the event there will be early looks at some releases due to ship during the coming year, including:

• System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1
• System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2
• System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1
• System Center Mobile Device Manager

…and a ton of hands-on-labs.  Kit price is $250.

(As usual, if you’re a customer of mine, and you’re interested in a kit, let me know and I’ll see if I can get one comped for you.)

LINK:  https://shop.ecompanystore.com/mseventdvd/MSD_productdetail.asp?EventID=70873&TYPE=Microsoft+Management+Summit+2008

Oh yeah.  The Microsoft TechEd 2008 DVD kits are shipping.  5 days of sessions and keynotes.  5 DVD’s of presentations, Live audio & synchronized Powerpoint recordings, hands-on-labs, and virtual machines.  On a really thick kit of discs and stuff.

The original site is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2008/default.mspx

For a taste of some of the keynotes and presentations given, there are online versions of some recordings.  Take a look at them at:

• LINK:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/events/teched/cc561184.aspx

One session that I recommend taking a look at just for sheer yuks is Laura Chappell’s session on network forensics and detecting hacking probes of your network.  Laura’s somewhat famous for being so smart, she’s a little odd and in that way, very entertaining.  If you view her other Wireshark University sessions you’ll undoubtedly hear about how she “optimizes” hotel networks with crappy bandwidth connections whenever she goes traveling on her own or what web site is the “worst” when if comes to design and bandwidth.

• VIDEO:  http://mfile.akamai.com/14853/wmv/
  microsofttec.download.akamai.com/14853/
  TechEdOnline/Videos/08_NA_ITP_techtalk_132_low.asx

Yep, this is the best resource for getting up to speed on all the stuff you missed at TechEd 2008.  Kit price is $195.  (And as usual, if you’re a customer of mine, let me know and I’ll look into getting a kit ‘comped’ for you.)

• LINK:  https://shop.ecompanystore.com/mseventdvd/
  MSD_productdetail.asp?EventID=70878&TYPE=Tech%B7Ed%202008

Our Solution Specialist for Information Worker technologies, Ralf Weber put together this document of issues that an organization should anticipate having if they install Outlook 2003 over an existing installation of Office XP.  It was done in tandem with several other technical resources and was so good that I thought it should be shared:

1. Upgrading to Outlook 2003 without upgrading the rest of Office limits Outlook functionality in the following ways:

• Users cannot use Word as their Outlook email editor which also means:
• Users lose the ability to right click on a signature and choose a different one
• When selecting a different email account the signature won’t change to the one assigned to the new account
• The Outlook editor has fewer autocorrect features than Word and lacks auto text and other useful tools
• Users cannot use the MailMerge feature where it involves Outlook, especially users can’t:
• Start MailMerge from within Outlook
• Use Outlook contacts as data source
• Merge to email
• The Office envelope capability is not available.
• This is the email header that is displayed in Word, Excel and other Office programs when users click the envelope button or choose the File | Send to | Mail Recipient
• Users can still send documents as attachments
• Users won’t be able to select a Contact and choose Actions, New Letter to contact.
• Minor problems can occur with the Office Assistant
• I.e. when one Office application turns the Assistant on, and another one turns it off

References:  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ork2003/HA011402521033.aspx,  http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2003/upgrade.htm

2. Double efforts for Updates, Patches and Service Packs

• Upgrading just Outlook means twice as much work when applying patches and service packs, as users need to apply patches for two (or more) versions. Users many need to repair Outlook 2003 after installing patches for older Office applications.
• Due to the tight integration of the Office applications updates for Office XP can reinstall Outlook 2002 bits. This results in Office XP needing to reconfigure itself each time Outlook 2003 is active.
• Detect and Repair may be more difficult and requires media for each version of Office

References: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2003/upgrade.htm

3. Other known issues

• Error Message: "Excel could not start the e-mail program" when you users use the Send To command in Excel 2002, this occurs if
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 is the mail client AND
• Users try to send the workbook as the body of the message to the recipient.

References: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;828509

Keith Comb’s got this posted before me while I was in Charlotte.  Dammit Keith!  Your Fu is too strong.  I guess I’ll just have to rip off your post text then.  <grin>

<taken from Keith Combs’ Blahg>

Chris Henley just released a new screencast on his “Blue” blog.  This time our master storyteller has created a screencast on Windows PE.  In the screencast Chris shows you how to get up and running in 17 minutes on a topic that’s a bit tricky the first time you do it.  Chris has more information in the subject in his blog post at http://blogs.technet.com/chenley/archive/2008/08/27/custom-win-pe-images.aspx.  There’s a direct link there to the video in case you want to download it and watch it offline.  If you are lazy like me, you can run the Silverlight version just below.

http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2008/08/27/windows-preinstallation-environment-pe-screencast-build-a-custom-bootdisk.aspx

In a nutshell, one of the single most important, money-making elements of ‘search’ involve direct highly accurate consumer purchases.

They allude to this in the PressPass announcement:

“Microsoft’s search strategy is focused on three key areas: delivering the best results, simplifying key tasks and innovating in the business model. For commercial search, this means simplifying how consumers research and purchase online. Work is ongoing to ensure that Live Search delivers across all these categories, building on recent progress including the acquisition of Multimap and the decision to open a European Search Technology Centre this financial year.”

Here’s the full article for those of you that missed it:

Microsoft to Acquire Greenfield Online Including Its European Subsidiary Ciao, a Leading European Price Comparison and Shopping Site

Acquisition of Ciao will expand Live Search offering in Europe.

LONDON — 29 Aug 2008 — Microsoft Corp today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Greenfield Online Inc, owner of Ciao GmbH, one of Europe’s leading price comparison, shopping and consumer reviews sites, in a move that will further extend Microsoft’s search and e-commerce services in Europe. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will commence a cash tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of Greenfield Online for $17.50 (US) per share in a transaction valued at approximately $486 million (US).

Ciao is a comprehensive source for intelligent shopping on the web, combining consumer reviews and ratings from a multimillion-user-strong online community with up-to-date price information from thousands of online merchants. It currently has more than 26.5 million unique visitors per month (source: comScore Inc, May 2008) across seven countries, who so far have generated more than 5 million product reviews.

The acquisition signals a further milestone investment for Microsoft in Europe and will see Microsoft increase its European commercial search capabilities as part of its intent to make Microsoft Live Search the premier destination for consumers looking to research and purchase goods and services online, as well as enable merchants to drive greater online sales.

Ciao’s technology platform, online community and extensive merchant relationships will be integrated within the Live Search platform to deliver a richer, more rewarding experience for both advertisers and consumers.

In a related transaction, Microsoft has secured a buyer for Greenfield Online’s Internet survey solutions, a business that has been the cornerstone of Greenfield Online since 2001. Both transactions are expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2008.

"Ciao’s success has been led by a team of talented people who took a unique combination of intuitive technology and the insight that comes out of their passionate consumer community to become one of Europe’s leading shopping comparison sites,” said John Mangelaars, vice president, Consumer and Online, Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa. “This makes the company a fantastic asset to the future of our search offer. Integrating Ciao’s capabilities into Live Search will provide a strong launchpad for our commercial search offer in Europe and enhance our e-commerce offering on MSN."

Microsoft’s search strategy is focused on three key areas: delivering the best results, simplifying key tasks and innovating in the business model. For commercial search, this means simplifying how consumers research and purchase online. Work is ongoing to ensure that Live Search delivers across all these categories, building on recent progress including the acquisition of Multimap and the decision to open a European Search Technology Centre this financial year.

Commenting on the announcement, Albert Angrisani, president and CEO of Greenfield Online, said, "We’re proud of the community that we have helped to establish, and we’re looking forward to exploring the new opportunities, technologies and relationships that Microsoft and the Live Search platform can unlock. Like Microsoft, we are passionate about delivering a great end-to-end commerce search experience. Today’s announcement will significantly accelerate our ambition and will deliver real benefit for consumers and merchants across Europe."

Upon close of the agreement, the Ciao business will report to Rajat Taneja, general manager for Worldwide Commercial Search at Microsoft.

LINK:
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/presscentre/pressreleases/WebShoppingEuroPR_29082008.mspx

<taken from Bloomberg>

Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp., the world’s biggest software maker, agreed to buyGreenfield Online Inc. and its subsidiary Ciao GmbH for about $486 million in cash to add price- comparison sites in Europe.

Greenfield shareholders will get $17.50 a share, Microsoft said today in a statement distributed by PRNewswire.

LINK:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9KxZWFi8UFI&refer=home

If you haven’t been to http://www.mojaveexperiment.com recently, you may want to check it out.

The “Mojave Experiment” has a new home – a brand new Microsoft Silverlight website with an HTML down-level experience.

New elements on the site include:

• Interactive “Video Cloud” with new “Mojave” footage
• Six “Mojave” Demo Videos – See what they saw!
• Information about our upcoming events
• Improved list of Windows Vista Facts

In a few days, we’ll also be doing some other things.  If you want a heads up on the general themes, take a look at http://windows.com/vistafacts and you’ll get a good idea of what to be expecting.

Here’s a video that might be interesting to you as well: