Kurt Shintaku's Blog

UPDATED 2/6/2008:
Oops.  This was supposed to be posted on the ‘other’ blog.  In Windows Live Writer it’s so easy to post that I accidentally posted draft content destined for one blog on to another.  My apologies.  In any case, I’m going to leave this up here nonetheless and just cross-post the same content. 

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ORIGINAL CONTENT:
Someone noticed that I drive to customers with my Zune connected to an FM transmitter.  Yep.  It’s with me pretty much wherever I go.  My old 30GB model is more than enough too.  Although the 80GB is cheap enough that I might consider getting it… just because.

For the most part, I’m not listening to music though.  I’m listening to audio podcasts while I’m driving.  Here’s a sample of some of the audio stuff I subscribe to daily and the corresponding RSS feed that I use for my Zune.  (All of these are available just by searching through the Zune Marketplace, so you really don’t need the RSS URL but just in case you want it…):

• American Casino Guide
  http://americancasinoguide.libsyn.com/rss
• Five Hundy by Midnight – the Original Las Vegas Podcast
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/FiveHundyByMidnight
• ESPN: Pardon the Interruption
  http://sports.espn.go.com/espnradio/podcast/feeds/itunes/podCast?id=2406595
• HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher
  http://www.hbo.com/apps/podcasts/podcast.xml?a=2&podcastmediaid=06e06295-d182-43a4-868f-c3e1ccffbb8b&podcastname=Real%20Time%20with%20Bill%20Maher
• PBS: The McLaughlin Group
  http://www.mclaughlin.com/library/rss.asp
• Xbox Live’s Major Nelson
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/MajorNelsonZune
• GFW Radio – Games for Windows’ Weekly Podcast
  http://www.1up.com/flat/Podcasts/cgwpodcasts.xml

While I walk our dog though, I watch videos on the Zune’s large & pretty 240×320 screen.  Here’s a list of some of the video podcasts I subscribe to:

• G4TV’s Attack of the Show – Around the Net
  http://www.g4tv.com/dailynut/podcasts/15/The_Daily_Nut.xml
• Ask a Ninja
  http://www.askaninja.com/ipod/rss
• Onion News Network
  http://feeds.theonion.com/onn/mrss
• BlipTV’s PlayDigital
  http://playdigital.blip.tv/rss
• NBC Meet the Press with Tim Russert
  http://podcast.msnbc.com/audio/podcast/MSNBC-MTP-NETCAST-WMV.xml
• National Geographic’s Dog Whisperer
  http://podcast.nationalgeographic.com/dog-whisperer

It’s official, the Windows Server Launch registration for Los Angeles is officially closed as of today and we are at maximum capacity.  We currently have more than 7,000 people registered.

This makes it larger than the Microsoft Management Summit, the Microsoft Sharepoint Conference, and the Microsoft Office Developer’s conference COMBINED.  It puts it in the same realm as TechEd & the Professional Developer’s Conference as an event and it’s gonna be the biggest thing I’ve ever seen run here in Los Angeles – that’s for certain.

(Hope you got in on time, because for once, there’s nothing I can do to get people in.  It’s managed by our Redmond marketing team and I have no influence on their activities.)

First Honolulu gets a branch of Microsoft Research Labs… now Cambridge, Mass!

Microsoft to open first East Coast research lab in Cambridge
Kendall Square center expected to debut in summer, study intersection of computers and social science

By Robert Weisman
Globe Staff / February 4, 2008

Microsoft Corp., building up its long-term research capability at a time when other corporate research powerhouses have scaled back, is set to disclose today that it will open a laboratory at its new offices in Cambridge this summer.

The Microsoft Research New England lab, to be led by veteran Microsoft researcher Jennifer Chayes, will focus on the intersection of computer science and social science, and seek to tap into the expertise of academic researchers in the

Boston area and worldwide. It will be the company’s sixth research center and its first on the East Coast.

"If you look at the future, people are going to be interacting online," said Chayes, 51, whose own research interests range from mathematical models of social networks to algorithmic game theories of Internet business. "We really want to be a facilitator for this new field on the boundary of computer science and social science."

…

CONTINUED AT:  http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/
2008/02/04/microsoft_to_open_first_east_coast_research_lab_in_cambridge/

The SoftGrid hands on labs are now available online through TechNet!  This is more than just pictures & documents to read:  These a fully provisioned virtual machines hosted in our datacenter that enable you to remotely install and manage a Softgrid environment from the server to the client to the sequencing workstation.  You can follow the instructions of the lab to get a good understanding of how everything works and you can FREEZE the lab at any time to save your place, and continue later either at another location or after a few days if you’re busy.

And its available at no cost to you.

These labs are an excellent way to get some hands-on experience with packaging, publishing and troubleshooting applications in SoftGrid without the need for any on-site infrastructure. If you are interested in application virtualization, you need to check this out while it’s available.

VISIT:  http://blogs.technet.com/softgrid/archive/2008/02/01/microsoft-application-virtualization-hands-on-labs.aspx

Yep.  Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is a big fella alright.  Practically filled up my USB drive keychain and it’s 2GB in size total with both x64 & x86 versions.

• Windows6.0-KB936330-X86.exe – 556,905KB
• Windows6.0-KB936330-X64.exe – 893,539KB

And yes, that means I’ve got the release software.  It’s on my keychain on a USB drive with about a 10MB/sec transfer rate.  So if I leave my keys lying around accidentally while I’m on site, you’ll know what to do.

Now if you look at the size of the download and the sheer number of Windows Vista users out there… combined with the ‘uproar’ that occurred when Xbox Live’s datacenter was ‘overcapacity’ and couldn’t maintain the load of the millions of people trying to access the same servers at the same time and the constant anger we get whenever someone has to resort to SHA Hashes & community distribution methodologies like Bittorrent to get the same stuff that’s too difficult to get from our distribution servers because they might be undercapacity for the particular job in question…

… I think it should be obvious why they’ve held off on making Windows Vista Service Pack 1 available to the public.  Instead it’ll be a gradual rollout after the download infrastructure has been sized for the upcoming demand.

Client and server operating systems help provide customers with increased efficiency, performance and security.

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 4, 2008

What:
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) was released to manufacturing today and will start being available to customers in March, starting with Microsoft Volume Licensing customers. Windows Server 2008 was also released to manufacturing today and will be available for purchase to new customers on March 1. Microsoft Volume Licensing customers with active Microsoft Software Assurance coverage or an Enterprise Agreement will be able to download the server software toward the end of February as part of the joint Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 Heroes Happen Here launch event.

Where:

• http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/default.aspx
• http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/
• http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/feb08/02-04WS2008.mspx

How:
Windows Vista SP 1 includes quality improvements that help enhance reliability, security and performance. Windows Server 2008 builds on the success and strengths of past server solutions and helps give organizations a solid foundation for their information technology (IT) infrastructure. Organizations using Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 together can see a number of improvements for IT professionals, including benefits in security and manageability, overall system performance, and streamlined planning and deployment.

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For more information, press only:

Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, (503) 443-7070, rrt@waggeneredstrom.com

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.

Do you want to watch YouTube videos from your Windows Mobile device?  It turns out it’s easy.

There’s a site that’s specifically designed to enable this very facility called http://www.ytpocket.com. And yes, this works on both WM Professional (aka Pocket PC) and WM Standard (aka Smartphone), and it’s completely free.

Try it out:

1. From your Windows Mobile’s Pocket Internet Explorer:
   Go to http://ytpocket.com.
2. Click the Install TCPMP on your device – pick Pocket PC or Smartphone version of the software.
3. Install the software to the device.  It will work installed on Flash or Memory.
4. Click the link to install the lin to install TCPMP Flash Video plug in.
5. Open TCPMP from the Programs menu.
6. Go to Options then Settings then select the Field Assocations page from the list and ensure you’ve got both Flash Video & MMS Protocol checked.
7. Go back to http://ytpocket.com.  From the SEARCH field, search for the videos you’re interested in and the result set will allow you to click on them and play them back full screen in TCPMP.
   Or go to http://ytpocket.com/browse.php and browse based on the traditional, "Most Recent", "Most Viewed", etc. etc.  These are all selectable using the drop down list box.

Ironically, the Silverlight Windows Mobile version of Soapbox/MSN Video has yet to be released.  I hope they’re working over time on this because there hasn’t been much movement on the Soapbox from in a very long time.

First all, if you own a Zune and you listen to a lot of podcasts, you probably won’t want to miss this desktop software update for the Zune.  It purportedly has a lot of podcasting related fixes.  (I know that occasionally I’ll get certain podcasts registered twice in the desktop Zune software. 

Personally, I use my Zune primarily to listen to podcasts, and podcasts alone.  (I’ve only recently really started to load up more than a gigabyte of music on my 8GB flash-based device.)  In fact, I should probably do an entry highlighting the IT related podcasts I listen to as some point.

The software update’s available here:

Zune Desktop Software 2.3 Download
DOWNLOAD: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7313338

I discovered this interesting tool that got created because metadata was apparently getting lost in the past with versions of the desktop software prior to 2.1.  It shouldn’t be run unless you have bad metadata in your songs. (Instructions here:  http://support.microsoft.com/?id=945319)

Zune Media Collection Reset tool
DOWNLOAD:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=105882

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WHAT GOT UPDATED
<taken from http://forums.zune.net/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=125458>

Here’s the list of fixes in this update:

• Fixed top crashing bugs submitted by users
• Fixed bug where Zune software thinks the device memory is full (but isn’t)

Key Marketplace fixes

• Allow users to view top music videos in marketplace
• Misc improved error messaging including splitting sign-in issues into 4 separate errors for customer and support benefit
• Resolved most cases where retrieval of subscription download history stalls
• Better handling of accounts that have expired credit cards
• Podcasts with spaces in their name can now be subscribed to
• Marketplace no longer blocks explicit content purchases when parental controls are set to allow
• Points balance label is now updated when user purchases new points

Key Player UI fixes

• Allow zooming in/out (2x, 4x, fullscreen) during video playback to prevent stretched playback
• Ability to switch Zune to GDI mode through command-line parameter

Key Podcast fixes

• Allow subscriptions to podcasts larger than 10MB
• Fixed some parsing errors that prevented some podcasts from syncing to the device
• Fixed bug where podcasts were unsubscribing themselves

Key Setup fixes

• Fixed numerous bugs affecting build to build upgrades
• Improved installation for users accessing from corporate networks
• Fixed driver uninstall failures
• Included device 2.3 firmware in client download
• Failure in creating system restore point no longer blocks client installation

Key Sync fixes

• Fixed issues with reverse sync
• Fixes issues with sync meter UI showing incorrect information as to what is on the device
• Fixed issues using wireless sync with multiple devices to the same PC
• Fixed a few different issues setting up wireless sync
• Device is no longer being reported as full even after deleting large file from device
• Device content is no longer being turned into guest content when it shouldn’t be
• Content with bad metadata now shows properly so it can be removed from device
• Turning off “autolaunch when a Zune device is connected” no longer prevents “Sync Now” from working from a wirelessly connected device
• Podcast bookmarking is now transferred/saved to the device
• Wireless sync connection continues to work after rebooting host computer
• Unsubscribe podcast from device now works properly
• Changing album art in the client now updates the device as well
• Duplicate tracks are no longer synced to the device twice

Key Xbox Streaming bug fixes

• Xbox Streaming now monitors the rip folder if user changes default location
• No need to reinstall client to fix Xbox Streaming when upgrading from XP to Vista

Key Infrastructure fixes

• Vista x64 customers can now get to web help from error messages
• Client no longer crashes if database is corrupted

Key Library fixes

• Changes in pictures or video metadata made outside client will now get updated in the library
• UI is now smoother during file groveling
• When a track is added to an album we will now always update the track on disc
• User can now update album art for marketplace tracks
• ‘Unknown Artist’ metadata is no longer written to files when writing out user edit of album name
• Renaming  an artist now more reliably keeps the change
• Two different copies of the same album no longer get duplicated down to one when it shouldn’t
• Access violation no longer occurs when checking song properties in the burn list
• Multi-disc albums imported from iTunes no longer show in the client as a single disc album
• Thumbnails for video content now extract on XP properly

(Found on Pocket PC Thoughts.  Sorry for the topic theft, Jason & company)

This is one of my top 5 favorite applications for Windows Mobile.  Hands down, it’s certainly one of the perfect translations of book/reference material to a mobile device I’ve ever been privy too.

DOWNLOAD: http://mobile.zagat.com/windowsmobile.htm

Instead of flipping through pages trying to compare restaurants, all you have to do is:

• Search based on city, cuisine, or ratings
• Sort the list like an Excel spreadsheet
• Mark restaurants as favorites
• Download updates to the restaurant database regularly over your cell connection
• Find the restaurant on a map over your cell connection
• Keep not just one city – but ALL of Zagat’s cities available in your Windows Mobile device

NEW IN VERSION 6.0!

• New & improved interface makes it easier than ever to find the perfect spot
• New recent list lets you quickly return to establishments you recently viewed
• Easier registration and setup gets you on your way faster
• Transfer your subscription when you upgrade devices more easily than ever

I’m sorry about posting all these videos but this is just too funny not to share.  Darth Vader apparently prankcalled our Support phone lines and this is the recording.