Kurt Shintaku's Blog

MSN® Direct for Windows Mobile® Technology Preview

• Available for download today.
• Get up to the minute news*, weather and stock info directly on your Smartphone home screen
• No waiting for web pages to load.
• No typing urls.
• Updates automatically.
• It’s simple to install and fun to use!

MSN Direct does all this and much more.
(*news includes:  Top Stories, World news, Sports news, Entertainment news, Business, Travel, Tech, Health, even News of the Weird.)

MSN Direct for Windows Mobile is ready for a Technology Preview.  It is a Windows Mobile Standard Smartphone application that connects to our information service and delivers the information that you care about – and it updates automatically – and you never have to enter an URL, or wait for a web page to load.

What type of info can I get?
Weather,  Stocks, Top Stories, World news, Sports news, Entertainment news, Business, Travel, Tech, Health, even News of the Weird.

How to install:
Go to http://phone.msndirect.com from your PC or your phone and install the Tech Preview!

We no longer provide slipstream media for Office releases.
(Couldn’t remember if I posted this before so here it is.  I was surprised by this info so I thought I’d share it.)

From the recently released 2007 Microsoft Office System Service Pack 1 White Paper (Page 27)

Design Changes for 2007 Office System Update Deployment

The Setup architecture for clients that run the 2007 Office system has changed significantly from past versions of Microsoft Office. Design changes affect the way that updates, including service packs, are deployed. Significantly, Microsoft Office no longer supports the Administrative installation source that can be updated. This means that administrators can no longer deploy updates by using a slipstream technique; updates must be chained in the deployment via the Updates folder.

Updates for the 2007 Office system now require the use of a local installation source so that each client has a local set of source files. Therefore, client patching is the recommended method for managing these updates. During the initial installation of the product, the source files are copied to the local hard drive, and then the actual installation uses that set of files as the installation source. Because the set of files located in a hidden folder (MSOCache) can become damaged, it may be necessary to access the original installation source to repair the MSOCache folder. To minimize the need for repairing the local installation source in this scenario, the 2007 Office system SP1 client packages provide full replacement of files being updated. There is additional information concerning this scenario in the 2007 Office Resource Kit at http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/8295626a-4570-4b7f-91e3-717fe6b81f961033.mspx (Required local installation source for the 2007 Office system). 

Here’s a link to the full paper:
http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=AM102512381033

Yep.  You read that right.  Interesting ‘eh?

Visual Basic 6.0 at long last, goes completely out of support on April 8^th, 2008 and that means no more support or fixes for that development environment.  (Bear in mind, it was released in January 1999)

Here’s a few other products going out of support you might be interested in:

• Microsoft’s Java Virtual Machine went completely out of support on December 31^st, 2007
• Commerce Server 2000 goes completely out of support on April 8^th, 2008
• Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack ‘Zero’ goes completely out of support on January 8^th 2008 (i.e. must upgrade to at least Service Pack 1)
• Office 2003 Service Pack 2 goes completely out of support on October 14^th, 2008 (i.e. must upgrade to at least Service Pack 3)

Additionally, here’s a few products that are dropping into "Extended Hotfix Support" so the best you’ll be able to get are security hotfixes for them moving forward:

• SQL Server 2000 goes to Extended Hotfix Support only on April 8^th, 2008 (i.e. only security fixes, no functional, performance, or stability fixes will be produced)
• Commerce Server 2002 goes to Extended Hotfix Support only on July 8^th, (i.e. only security fixes, no functional, performance, or stability fixes will be produced)

For more information on Product Support Lifecycle:
If you’re interested in more information about expiring support or general lifecycle dates for Microsoft Products, go to:  http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle

Irvine and Los Angeles

You are invited to attend a 1-day technical introduction designed to deliver practical, hands-on information about managing your infrastructure with Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager 2007. This workshop will be led by a Microsoft Management Technical Specialist covering the following topics:

• Introduction to System Center Operations Manager 2007
• Common Monitoring Scenarios
• Monitoring more than Microsoft
• Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) Overview
• Hands on Labs

With this new release, Operations Manager will:

1. Proactively manage business critical IT services, including distributed applications, the supporting infrastructure and hardware, and end-user service delivery.
2. Reduce the complexities of managing your IT environment by providing a monitoring solution that is designed with ease of use in mind.
3. Provide a highly reliable infrastructure by leveraging Windows Server and SQL 2005 clustering for high availability and through agents that automatically failover to a secondary management server if connectivity to the primary server is lost.
4. Include management packs with prescriptive knowledge developed by the application and OS development teams at Microsoft and verified in production deployments to improve monitoring, troubleshooting, and problem resolution for more than 50 Microsoft applications and Windows Server components.

Audience:
This hands-on lab is for IT Professionals in job roles like infrastructure specialists, network administrators, directory administrators, management specialists, storage and data administrators and client support. This technical hands-on workshop is limited to 30 attendees.

Time: 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Registration begins at 8:30 AM
(Breakfast, lunch and parking included)

Dates:
February 5, 2008
Microsoft Irvine
3 Park Plaza Suite 1600
Irvine, CA 92614

February 19, 2008
Microsoft Los Angeles
333 South Grand Ave. Suite 3300
Los Angeles, CA 90071

Registration:
These sessions are reserved for invited customers only.  Please contact me if you’re a customer of mine with interest in attending.

Los Angeles

This is a two-day workshop which will provide in-depth, technical walkthrough in a small classroom setting where participants learn through lecture and hands-on demonstrations.

This workshop will be led by a Microsoft Management Technical Specialist and Microsoft Management Partners. This course offers a significant amount of hands-on exercises that will assist your organization in becoming proficient in the skills that are needed to work with Microsoft Configuration Manager. It is recommended that you have prior experience with the product or its previous version SMS 2003 to get maximum benefit from this course.

Key topics include:

• System Center Overview
• ConfgMGR Architecture
• Advanced Installation scenarios
• Patch Management (integration with WSUS)
• New functionalities
• Wake on LAN software distribution
• Desired Configuration Monitoring
• Planning for OS Deployment
• Reporting (Asset Intelligence)
• Scripting

Audience:
This workshop is intended for System Center Administrators and Systems Integrators who are responsible for configuring and managing one or more sites and all supporting systems. This technical hands-on workshop is limited to 30 attendees.

Time: 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Registration begins at 8:30 AM
(Breakfast, lunch and parking included)

Date:  March 11-12, 2008

Location:  Microsoft Los Angeles
333 South Grand Ave.
Suite 3300
Los Angeles, CA 90071

Registration:
Registration is limited to invited Enterprise customers within Southern California. 
As usual, please contact me for registration details.

In case there’s any confusion, Windows Server 2008 (with or without Hyper-V) is available for download off of Microsoft Volume Licensing’s web site (MVLS) at https://licensing.microsoft.com.

From the ‘old’ style download page, select ‘Windows Server Enterprise’:

Numerous versions will be listed. 

Clicking on Windows Svr Ent 2008 32-bit x64 English Disk Kit MVL DVD results in this web page:

And here’s a snapshot of the MVLS Download Manager that kicks in once you initiate the download for the 1793MB 32-bit .ISO/.IMG file:

Effectively responding to legal discovery requests and meeting the demands of regulatory compliance continue to be top priorities for executives across many industries. Failing to produce relevant electronic evidence can lead to severe penalties—so many companies are seeking to expand records management to include any data, and not just data formally identified as a record.

Please join Microsoft for the Ready for E-Discovery Summit at the Westin Hotel in Pasadena on Wednesday, March 12.

We’ll look at the important factors to address in an effective strategy for e-discovery, including:

• Retaining the information necessary to help meet legal obligations and business needs.
• Defining and separating what is needed and required from what is not.
• Developing policies and business rules that can be applied to electronic and paper documents.
• Managing information retention in systems with mixed content.
• Addressing the full information life cycle.

Agenda:

1. Registration/Networking
2. Introduction
3. What Is E-Discovery?—Helen Bergman Moure
4. How Does E-Discovery Impact IT?—Hitachi Consulting
5. Q&A/Close

Please see the registration site for detailed agendas by city.

Seating is limited, so please make plans today to learn how Microsoft can help your organization with E-Discovery by registering online. Use Event Code IRVEDISCO for the March 12 Pasadena event.

Date/Time:
March 12, 2008
7:30 A.M.–10:30 A.M.

Location:
The Westin Hotel
191 North Los Robles Avenue Pasadena, CA 91101

Registration:

• ONLINE:
  http://microsoft.crgevents.com/ediscoverysummit/
• EMAIL: 
  Register by email at ediscovery@microsoft.crgevents.com with Event Code IRVEDISCO for the
  March 12 event.

Must… get… plug in!  (Heck, now I have to go get a Netflix subscription too!)

Imagine having your Windows Media Center up on your big screen TV, and being able to click through all the Netflix movies available. 

Now imagine selecting a Netflix movie for rental, and then clicking on a big "WATCH NOW" button that enables you to watch the movie over your Internet connection before it even hits your doorstep through the mail.

Granted, not all movies are available with "WATCH NOW" capability since they have to be specifically streamable from Netflix but for the ones that they’ve been able to post so far, this is a great start for a consumer-on demand experience that can be used by ANY PC user with ANY Internet connection.

If Netflix keeps up with the Jones’ and manages to get some serious content available for "WATCH NOW", this could be the next big thing in terms of on-demand availability.

Next up:  HDi content.  Also known as HD DVD menuing & interactivity.

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.anpark.com/index.php/2008/02/10/new-vista-media-center-plugin-mynetflix-beta/

LINKS:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2008/02/10/1507403.aspx 
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/11/mynetflix-beta-vista-media-center-plugin-released/

Y’know the Sidekick or the Hiptop?  That ‘fliptop’ PDA phone that became famous amongst young folk, and made the front page of all the fashion rags for being blinged out by Hollywood stars?  Yeah that one.

Well, we’re gonna acquire them.  Why?  Well, here’s a list of reasons why:

1. THE ‘NEW’ CONSUMER FOCUS
   Danger is decidedly a consumer device and service company and from what I understand, in the same way that we let the Xbox & Zune groups grow organically and on their own with minimal interference, we intend to do the same thing in building a stronger consumer-oriented mobile devices group.

   Some in the company might tell you that ‘we’ve always had a consumer focus’ but personally, I think that’s like saying, Paris Hilton has always had a brain.  After all, it’s not much good unless you demonstrate that you know how to use it. 

   Here’s a short list of the things that the Windows Mobile product group has focused on over the past few releases:
   – Rights Management protection for Exchange-based email
   – Certificate Registration for S-MIME support
   – Group Policy integration for lockdown & restricting the UI
   – Real time Device ROM & Flash card encryption
   – Windows Update for security patching Mobile Devices
   – Office Mobile for compatibility with desktop Word, Excel, & Powerpoint
   
   Meanwhile the browser, the media player, the Today page, the SMS/MMS messaging functionality… all that stuff has gone untouched. Real friggin’ consumer oriented ‘eh?  Don’t get me wrong – this is really important technology for corporations and I’m really glad that they’ve incorporated into the platform to ultimately compete with Blackberry, but it sure as hell ain’t consumer-oriented.  So to the folks in the product group:  Don’t ever go trying to say that any of our focus in the mobile space has been even remotely consumer-oriented.  It hasn’t been.

2. SERVICE-DELIVERY MODEL
   Danger’s value isn’t so much in their device design, although laypeople might think so.  It’s really in their mobile services-revenue model and you can tell when you go to their web site:  You really can’t find any photos of the Sidekick/Hiptop anywhere because that’s not the emphasis of their company.

   Danger provides online services to their handset users that are oriented around ‘social networking’.  Stuff that goes beyond lame peer-to-peer MMS video/photo transmission and SMS texting.  Things like mobile Facebook sites, shared contacts/calendars/document repositories/photos/favorites/lists amongst friends, on-the-fly event invitations for adhoc party planning, multi-party photo/video transmission feeds…. you get the picture.  These are areas that I personally don’t believe Apple’s iPhone has investments in… but equally important is that I don’t think Apple understands these areas in the same way that Danger does.  While Apple’s definitely a great consumer company, it goes far deeper that just fit-and-finish which is essentially what has propelled the iPod & the iPhone to prominence.  It’s cultural & ever changing – almost like fashion. 

   And it’s clear, they’re very far away from attaining that level of flexibility and agility, being that their orientation from day one was clearly not around the device’s networking capabilities with a lack of video transmission, GPRS networking, very poor email support, etc.  These are all fundamental to being an agile device.

   Danger also has preexisting relationships with mobile operators in providing services to T-Mobile, Cingular, BoostMobile, and other providers.  And it’s marketing engine is clearly targeted at the core of the youth market.  I suspect one of their limiting parameters has been the lack of capital to combat the vaunted iPhone marketing engine.  Now, that’s not so much of a problem for them.

LINK:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-11Acquisition.mspx

I’ve gotten a few emails from a couple of my customers asking how to get access to the ‘old style’ download area of the Microsoft Volume Licensing web site (MVLS).

1. HOW TO GET TO THE ‘OLD’ DOWNLOAD SCREEN
   It’s actually so simple, you’ll probably just shake your head.  Simply click the link for Product Downloads in the center of the VL home page that I’ve circled below in GREEN instead of clicking the link in the sidebar that I’ve circled in RED. 

   And how were you expected to know this?  Beats the heck out of me.  I had to figure it out on my own as well so trust me when I say, I’m on your side – and you’re not alone.

Now if you don’t know what I’m talking about regarding ‘old style’ and ‘new style’, you probably don’t have MVLS access for your company (the access permissions on https://licensing.microsoft.com to download Enterprise deployable versions of our products under your company’s Select or Enterprise Agreement) or you’re a new user to MVLS. 

This is what the "OLD" download site looks like:

And this is what the "NEW" download site looks like:

• FRUSTRATED?  I UNDERSTAND.
  There’s a separate organization that Microsoft that uses to manage the https://licensing.microsoft.com web site and get new content posted.  Both you and I know that the new download system isn’t as good as the old one simply because stuff is missing on the new site – and the old one was pretty weak but at least we all, over time, learned how to use it and the software’s always there.  For those of you that have been using the site for a while, you probably find yourself guessing what title a given Microsoft product’s filed under because there’s little rhyme or reason to the naming conventions.  Like "Windows Vista Business" vs "SA Windows Vista Enterprise" or "System Center Operations Manager" vs "Operations Manager 2007".

  (Speaking of inconsistencies, I’m kinda proud to say that I was responsible for getting MVLS to post bootable .ISOs of our operating systems on the site back in the Windows 2000 days.  You may recall a time when you had to actually burn your own stupid bootable CDROMs because MVLS wouldn’t post bootable versions of our OS’s.  Meanwhile we had .ISO images posted of eval versions of our software off of Microsoft.com – go figure.  Trust me when I say – the Windows product groups were just as ticked as we were.  It’s a long story.)

• QUESTIONS ABOUT MVLS
  Anytime you have questions related to using the MVLS web site, you should mail mvlshelpa-AT-msdirectservices-DOT-com or phone 866 230 0560.