Kurt Shintaku's Blog

This one slipped by me.  Apparently, the MSN Screensaver now works on Windows Vista & Internet Explorer 7.0, although it’s totally unsupported.

It would appear that the group that original developed the product has ‘moved on’.  I’m trying to find out where we’re at with the product and I’ll post something as soon as I discover it’s fate.  In the meantime, check out the newly available download.  (Well… new as of May 2007)

For those that don’t know what the MSN Screensaver was, it was a beta product that simply showed content on the screen like RSS feeds and weather info from MSN that would appear whenever the screensaver was enacted.

MORE ON THIS HERE: 
http://msnscreensaver.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D6CF15C25AAC1EB5!329.entry#trackback

Nearly half of professionals across a broad range of industries have taken data with them-anything from documents and lists to sales proposals and contracts-when they’ve left a job. Download the "Information Security Survey on Internal Threats," and read about these key findings:

• More than half the respondents believe the competition is stealing their IP.
• Nearly a third of respondents believe more than half of their company’s data is at risk.
• Employees are turning to inefficient means of protecting electronic information.

Download report here by signing up at Liquid Machines. 
(Liquid Machines is a partner of Microsoft and experts on Digital Intellectual Property protection.) 

Um… hello?  Anyone heard of Microsoft Rights Management?  Rights Management is a really incredible technology that protects intellectual property by both encrypting it and restricting end-user usage.  It also allows users to "classify" content so that an appropriate usage policy is automatically applied to it and it can work on ANY file, email, or web page.

Microsoft Rights Management Services can:

• Encrypt Word, Excel, & Powerpoint documents and keep them encrypted even when copied to CDROM/USB drive
• Encrypt emails from Outlook, and prevent them from being edited or forwarded to others
• Encrypt web pages and keep them encrypted even when stored in IE caches
• Restrict emails/document/web page usage to prevent users from "printing", "sharing", "cut & pasting", "screen capturing", etc. data from the doc/page when being viewed
• ‘Timebomb’ or expire information so that it is unusable after a certain date/time
• Automatically protect data that is posted to Sharepoint sites
• Provide individual per user or per security group permissions on how information can be used
• Require data be ONLY visible/readable on corporate PCs on a corporate network
• Provide a log of who accessed a document and otherwise provide a trace of usage
• Apply all the same permissions to Acrobat PDF files, Project files, and other file times when a 3rd party like Liquid Machines is used.

Have you ever wanted a programmatic way of opening or closing the CDROM drive tray of a computer?  Better yet, wouldn’t it be funny to open the drive tray of someone ELSE’S computer?  Most people don’t expect their computer to move on it’s own. 

I’ve had this tool called CDOPENER since back in 1997.  (It used to be called "Coffee Cup Holder":  That’s a joke for your old timers.)  It’s essentially a set of three tools that when executed do different things re: the CDROM tray on a PC:

• Open the CDROM tray
• Close the CDROM tray
• Open then close the CDROM tray

Basically, if you push this out to a person’s computer and you have their CCM or SMS client configured to check for new software installs frequently (like every 5 minutes) in 5 minutes you can expect to hear that person’s CDROM tray open up on them.  Or better yet, open & close on them.

Try this a couple times on your own PC and tell me it doesn’t make you chuckle a little.

DOWNLOAD:  http://www.evilkoala.org/download/cdopener.zip

Microsoft is pleased to announce the Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference 2008 to be held from March 2-6, 2008 in Seattle, WA USA at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center. 

What You Can Expect:

1. Keynote sessions by senior Microsoft Executives
2. 60+ sessions across several diverse tracks  
3. Hands-on and Instructor led labs

WEB SITE
http://www.mssharepointconference.com/default.aspx

NOTIFICATION
In order to be notified of more information when it arrives, sign up for the Sharepoint Conference 2008 notification service by clicking HERE.

(Side note:  Look at the web site… notice anything interesting?  Yep.  They’re using SHAREPOINT to host the registration web site!)

Microsoft is pleased to announce that registration is now open for the Microsoft Office Project Conference 2007 to be held from October 28-31, 2007 in Seattle, WA. The conference aims to enable individuals and organizations develop better understanding of end-to end capabilities of Microsoft 2007 family of products and help them further advance their Project Management Potential. Participants can:

1. Learn about the end-to end capabilities of Microsoft Project 2007 family of products and develop deeper understanding of project management techniques and strategies using Microsoft Project 2007.

2. Connect with the Microsoft technologists who design our market-leading Project and Portfolio management applications as well as network and interact with Microsoft solution partners and other project managers.

3. Grow your Project Management potential and investments by leveraging best practices and business solutions developed on Microsoft EPM platform through discussions and sessions led by Microsoft professionals, industry leaders and project practitioners.

What You Can Expect:

1. Keynote sessions by Senior Microsoft Executives including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
2. Learn about the key solutions offered by Microsoft partners on Microsoft Project and EPM platform to power your business to the next level
3. Technical how-to’s for administration, deployment and configuration of Microsoft Project Server 2007 and Microsoft Project Portfolio Server 2007.
4. 90+ sessions across several business and technical/developer  tracks
5. Hands-on and Instructor led labs.

Register Today!
https://dynamicevents.emeetingsonline.com/emeetings/websitev2.asp?mmnno=230&pagename=SITE52841

Registration for the US Microsoft Project Conference is now OPEN! Take advantage of early bird special discounts on registration for the first 1000 participants! To learn more and to get started with registration, please visit www.msprojectconference.com.

I was browsing some tools the other day and stumbled upon these two at Voidnish.com.  Thought some of you might find them interesting.

• MAC Address Changer for Windows
  Have you ever been in a hotel that had "pay per hour" Internet access and wanted to use the same “Internet connection” between two people without paying twice?  Well, because of the way hotel routers map MAC addresses to Internet access, you can’t. But you can duplicate the MAC address of one person between two machines and swap the Internet connection back and forth if need be.  For some NICs, changing the MAC address is a pain because it’s not always exposed in the GUI of the driver config.  Here’s a tool that will change it for… well… just about any NIC you’ve got.
  http://www.voidnish.com/articles/ShowArticle.aspx?code=MacIdChanger
  (Works without modification under Windows Vista)
• Shell Tray Organizer for Windows
  Have you ever found that the layout of the icons in your system tray annoy you?  Now you can rearrange your system tray icons in the way you like them using this free tool.  Keep all your IM clients on one side of the bar, and everything else on the other, for example.
  http://www.voidnish.com/articles/ShowArticle.aspx?code=ShellTrayInfo
  (Requires "Compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2" to run under Windows Vista – set this under the Properties by right mouse clicking the .EXE and clicking on the Compatibility tab – but otherwise works fine)

An old friend of mine contacted me and said, "Hey – How do I get the CAB file for this one .MSI package?"  I need to just get the .CAB… not the whole .MSI file.

Good question.  The file she was looking at was for CommunicatorMobile_PPC50.msi – the installer for Windows Mobile’s version of Office Communicator.  Turns out… BFsurprise… we don’t have one posted.

WINRAR DOESN’T WORK
Insert technical ingenuity:  I seemed to recall that WinRAR would read .MSI files and I was right… it’ll read .MSI files and show you the manifest but it won’t extract the files correctly.  The parsing engine for .MSIs isn’t built into WinRAR so that’s shot.  At least I knew I was on the right track though.

ENTER "LESS MSIERABLES"
A guy named Philip came up with this tool called Less MSIerables, which does exactly what I think we all want:  A way of opening up .MSI files and extracting just the files we want out of them.  It reads the manifest and gives you a ton of data about the files included in the .MSI package.  And most importantly, it unpacks them all accurately.

The tool is free and can be downloaded from: http://blogs.pingpoet.com/overflow/archive/2005/11/16/14995.aspx.

For those of you without a Premier Support contract, this is an online method of getting access to hotfixes that are not readily downloadable.  We’ve had this link available for a while however it seems that it’s gotten some coverage recently so now that the cat’s out of the bag, I don’t think it’ll be bad to post it up here.

• PREMIER CONTRACT OWNERS:
  If you have a Premier Contract, you’re WAY better off simply using your Premier contract, i.e. calling your Premier TAM or going to the Premier web site.  In fact, because your login provides you with access to https://premier.microsoft.com, you have access to most every hotfix we produce and they’re available for direct download – no muss no fuss.  The Hotfix request method below requires that you submit a request and wait for a response via email from a Support representative. 

  If your company has a Premier Support contract, but you don’t have access to the Premier web site, you should contact the person in your organization responsible for being the Premier Support liason and ask to have your Windows Live account be given access.  It no additional cost to the company and adding your name to the access list simply provides access to all the great support resources of Premier like downloadable hotfixes, private support newsletters for individual products, private download servers for service packs and patches, support alerts, but not the ability to call in for support under the company’s expense.

I’ve read off of a few sites (I think Steven Bink’s site was one of them) that some folks are speculating that we made this available in response several hotfix collection sites being "created" on the Internet to allow people to publicly upload/download patches and hotfixes we don’t normally release to the public… and I suspect their correct but not in the nasty "nyah nyah nyah" way that they’re intending.

From what I’ve been told, there’s a large number of folks that are using ‘updates’ as a way of spreading malware, simply as disguising their trojan as a hotfix.  It’s like people that disseminate poisoned or fake prescription drugs:  People that can get the drugs one way, decide they’ll buy them from illicit sources instead, not realizing the potential danger.

So instead, we’re providing a way that people can get the hotfixes from the source – us – without having to trust a 3rd party and potentially hurt their machine.  Meanwhile, we keep track of these individuals through their email address so that we can notify them if the hotfix gets revised, or if we discover something wrong with the hotfix and have to ‘recall it’.

HOTFIX REQUEST: 
https://support.microsoft.com/contactus2/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1410&WS=hotfix

New Sharepoint related white papers have recently been published:

SharePoint Server 2007 Document: Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites — Under the Hood
Microsoft identified the following seven roles for developing role-based My Site templates after conducting a comprehensive research.

1. Sales Account Manager
2. Controller/Financial Analyst
3. HR Manager
4. IT Manager
5. Administrative Assistant
6. Customer Service Manager
7. Marketing Manager

This 63-page white paper addresses strategies for building templates for each role:
DOWNLOAD:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8248ab85-3ef7-4dd2-a5a6-2615683f6f6d&DisplayLang=en

Windows SharePoint Services Document: Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Under the Hood
This whitepaper describes the five basic design patterns in the context of how Microsoft actually used them for WSS applications:

1. Custom Forms – Creating custom look and feel that gives guidance for action at certain point in the business process (this includes only exposing the appropriate properties that are allowed to be modified or are relevant at a given stage)
2. Action Flow – Creating well-defined actions that lead to the right place for the right actor (for this, we need good navigation control that is sensitive to the action being taken and the actor taking the action)
3. Parent-Child Relationships – Creating a relationship between two or more SharePoint lists for lookup and reference
4. Workflows – Using SharePoint Designer to create a Windows Workflow Foundation-based business process
5. Dashboards – Using Web parts to create an unified view of scattered information throughout the site in one place

This 44-page whitepaper addresses building application templates for WSS 3.0:
DOWNLOAD:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C49A6B00-E0AA-4102-B585-B25CD3CBB383&displaylang=en

You are invited to join us for the next Southern California Microsoft Business Intelligence User Group Meeting. This session will focus on Microsoft’s business planning and forecasting application shipping later this year. Come learn how this application can be used to manage your organization’s planning and forecasting functions, integrate multiple account roll-ups into an enterprise view, customize your account relationships and more.

Pechanga Resort & Casino will share about their current BI environment and experiences using SQL Server 2005 Integration Services. There will also be an open forum, roundtable discussion on pertinent real-world BI issues/challenges.

Date:
Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Time:
12 Noon – 3:00 p.m.

Location:
Microsoft Southern California Orange County Office
3 Park Plaza, Suite #1800
Irvine, CA 92614

Parking will be validated and lunch will be served.

Agenda:

12:00-12:30  Registration and Lunch
12:30–1:30  Microsoft Forecasting and Planning: What It’s All About
1:30 – 2:00  Customer Case Study: Pechanga Resort & Casino
2:00 – 3:00  Roundtable Discussion

Registration:

Online: Please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/usa/events, and search on event id 1032344785
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344785&culture=en-US

By Phone: 1-877-673-8368