Posted by: kurtsh | June 9, 2006

BETA: Office 2007 Beta 2 available

Office 2007 Beta 2 is available for everyone to sign up and download.
 
 

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Posted by: kurtsh | June 9, 2006

WEB: Finding the cheapest gas in your area using Windows Live & MSN

MSN & Windows Live has provided some really great information about gas prices in your area.  Basically enter your zip code, and it’ll list out all the gas prices of the gas stations in your geography.
 
Alternatively, you can do what I do:  Set up your home page to be the Windows Live page, (http://www.live.com) which is a RSS reader that will show you article summaries of as many web sites as you configure.  One of the things you can do is install and run a "Microsoft Gadget" in this page.  This is a bit of code that queries databases on the Internet to display information relevant to you.
 
One of the Gadgets that’s out there is a Gas Prices gadget.
 
For those of you using Windows Vista Beta 2, you can take this gadget and install it to your desktop.

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Posted by: kurtsh | June 9, 2006

INFO: Audiobooks on CD

I put up a list of Audiobooks on CD that I’m fond of.   I’ve had discussions with a variety of you about Audio CDs that you listen to on the car ride to work, and if you haven’t looked into these, check them out:
 

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Posted by: kurtsh | June 9, 2006

BETA: Virtual Server “Virtual Machine Manager”

We made available the "Carmine" Beta a.k.a. "Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager".
 

Virtual Machine Manager provides centralized management of Windows Virtual Machine infrastructure. Virtual Machine Manager enables increased physical server utilization, centralized management of virtual infrastructure and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by the administrator and end users.

 
 
Web site and Beta Signup:

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Posted by: kurtsh | June 9, 2006

VIDEO: “The Making of the Halo 3 Trailer”

If you went to E3, you know we released the Halo 3 trailer there and officially announced what was probably the worst kept secret in the gaming world:  That Halo 3 was coming to the Xbox 360 and that we are well along to making what will likely be the greatest, most epic game Microsoft has ever created – the final chapter in the Halo Trilogy. 
 
And they’ve pulled out all the stops.  The Bungie team, unlike previous versions of Halo, has been given what seems to be, a tremendous amount of time to make sure that the game exceeds expectations.  Everyone knows that this is the crown – the Everest – the omega product for the XBox 360:  If it doesn’t consume all of the XBox 360’s power, capabilities, and fan base, no game will.  Not Grand Theft Auto 4, not Too Human, not Gears of War.
 
Bungie did a cool thing:  They’re not just building a historic game… they’re documenting the creation.  This is the first of hopefully what will be many insights into the Halo 3 development process.  They explain what the heck happened in the trailer (which was very interesting to me considering that I didn’t understand everything) and they even show clips of stuff that WASN’T in the trailer. 
 
Here is the videos in various resolutions:

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Posted in Multimedia

Posted by: kurtsh | June 8, 2006

BETA: Windows Vista Customer Preview Program

Microsoft has formally unveiled our publicly available Windows Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP), which will provide the broadest access yet to pre-release test versions of Windows Vista. Customers can now download Beta 2 bits for free or order a DVD for a cost-of-goods sold price.
WARNING:  The DVD offer will sell out for certain so please order it ASAP if you would like it.
 
Below is the link to where you can get the most current information on Windows Vista:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready
 
Key things to note on the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP):
– The Windows Vista Customer Preview Program allows developers and IT professionals who do not have access to pre-release versions of Windows Vista through other channels to obtain the code and begin their testing. Also as part of the CPP, technology enthusiasts can obtain Beta 2 and begin testing the various consumer scenarios Windows Vista enables.
– Non-technical consumers should wait until Windows Vista becomes commercially available to begin using the operating system. Participants in the CPP program should keep in mind this is beta code and should only be used on test machines – not on main PCs in a home or PCs in a production environment in the workplace.
– This broad availability of Windows Vista pre-release code represents a significant milestone in the development of Windows Vista and the feedback we receive from testers will help us to further refine certain areas of the product as we move closer to the final release.
 
For those who aren’t aware of the dates, we are on track for business availability of Windows Vista in November 2006 with general consumer and new consumer PC availability in January 2007.

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Posted by: kurtsh | June 8, 2006

HUMOR: Corporate IT Haikus

The boss is coming!
He’s checking on the project
All must look busy
 
What can I blame now?
Evil Computer Spirits
That will buy some time
 
The code will not run
I check the code, recompile
Sigh, it still crashes
 
I am a bad tech
No matter what the complaint
I blame Microsoft
 
My job is a sham
I don’t know what I’m doing
But they still pay me
 
I am sorry sir
Our program is full of bugs
Get the new version
 
What did I do wrong?
Was it something I said wrong?
I hate layoff blues
 
I hate this project
Maybe I can delay this
Until quitting time
 
Bonuses are not!
Stock options vest in four years?
I’ll be gone by then…
 
 
 
 
[originally taken many years ago from Punkie’s Computer Haiku site… may it rest in peace]

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Posted in Entertainment

Posted by: kurtsh | June 7, 2006

RELEASE: XBox 360’s new console software

It seems that everyone and their mother has copied the XBox 360 news posting about the bazillion and a half features we added to XBox 360’s console.  Instead of rehashing the same story everyone else has been posting (you can read the features list here: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/news/2006/0605-springrelease-features.htm) I thought I’d comment on the 5 features that I think everyone SHOULD pay attention to.
 
  1. DOWNLOAD MANAGER
    While this may seem lame, the 360 was unable to downlaod anything while you did something else like play a game or listen to music.  It was literally unable to multitask these two tasks which was lame as hell.  The Xbox team heard the feed back and made the process multi-threaded… and thank god they did because if they hadn’t, I’m sure Sony or Nintendo would have had something better.

    Now you can cache up 6 downloads at a time and download that 150MB Halo 3 trailer, the Fight Night Round 3 demo, and the Theme for Kameo, all while you play Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter multiplayer.

  2. SETTING CONSOLE THEMES
    A theme is a ‘skin’ that sits atop the UI of the Xbox360 console.  You can make your console’s UI look like anything you want using these downloadable themes.  I right now have a "Halo 3" theme loaded on my Xbox360 so when I turn it on, the console screen doesn’t look anything like the normal Xbox360 screen.

    The problem was that it used to take an act of congress to be able to change your theme.  If you didn’t know where or how to change your consoles theme, you were screwed because it was hidden way into the UI.  Hell – I work for the company and I couldn’t figure it out.  Now it’s very easy to find in the System blade of the console screen.

    I consider this important because it’s really a nice feature and I don’t think anyone was using it because no one could figure out how to get to the config screen for it.

  3. AUTO-CHANGING ONLINE STATUS
    If your XBox360 screensaver kicks in, your online status automatically gets set to "Away" so that people know you’ve stepped out and are away from the console.

    Before, people would IM you and try to invite you to games, not knowing you were eating dinner or in the bathroom.

  4. PERSONAL GAMER PICTURES
    I don’t think anyone understands why this is important.  It will be possible using the XBox 360 Vision Camera accessory coming this fall, to take your own photo and post it to Xbox Live account’s personal gamer photo.  This way people aren’t looking at a comic or an avatar when they see you online.  They’ll actually see your face… but this will be restricted initially to just your "friends".  In other words, the general public will see a totally different photo/gamer picture by default.
  5. MUSIC PERSISTENCE
    When you switch from the game to the console and back, your music continues to play from the Media Player in Xbox 360’s console, without interruption.  It was REALLY annoying playing a game or listening to some music in a game, then having someone IM you, and have the music suddenly STOP.

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Posted by: kurtsh | June 7, 2006

INFO: Word 2007 new feature – “Contextual Spelling”

"Contextual Spelling" is a new feature of Word 2007.

Contextual spelling allows you to have correctly spelled words highlighted when they are incorrectly used in a sentence.  For example:

– They’re goes my hero.
– My friend spend two weeks in Colorado.
– I bought a pear of shoes.
– We’re loosing the game.

Note that all of these sentences have perfectly spelled words in them – they’re just incorrectly used.

Word 2007 can highlight these issues.  It produces a blue squiggle under words just like red squiggles mean an "incorrectly spelled word" or a green squiggle means a "grammatically incorrect phrase". 

 
Note that this feature is NOT turned on by default.  To turn on:
–> Word Options | Proofing | Use Contextual Spelling (check box).
 
There’s a full description of Contextual Spelling here at the Office Blog:

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Posted by: kurtsh | June 7, 2006

RELEASE: Microsoft releases new fonts for Office 2007 & Windows Vista

With the release of Beta 2 for Windows Vista and Office 2007, some folks have noticed our recent inclusion of a new set of fonts that we’ve created.  There’s a fairly involved commentary about them here: http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/182. 
 
Instead of rehashing the same discussion that everyone else is having about these fonts, (there’s a video from Channel 9 that goes over most of the fonts – http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=146749) I thought I’d comment about Microsoft Typography in general.  A lot of people don’t even know about Microsoft Typography – it’s a group of folks within Microsoft that are their own little dev team of creatives that are considered to be at the forefront of typography – the study and creation of typefaces and fonts.
 
This might not seem like a big deal to you but it’s incredibly important to computers overall.  People forget how important fonts are when it comes to personal style as well as readability and overall attitude toward an interface or a written page.  Everyone knows someone that fit these bills:
 
– The guy that can’t figure out how to use anything except Times Roman
– The girl down the hall that has to use Comic Sans for everything she writes
– The guy that bold faces everything , overuses CAPITAL LETTERS and uses 4 different colors in his email
– The girl that has to use Lucida Handwriting or some weird unreadable script
– The guy that writes everything in Courier New
… fonts tell us a lot about the author that chooses them
 
I remember back in 1998, I got the chance to chat with a guy named Frank Artale, a Microsoft General Manager for Windows NT 5.0 (what eventually became Windows 2000) and an all around good guy.  Everyone liked Frank – he was a former Southern California SE like myself back in the late 80’s so SoCal always enjoyed having him.  He had just taken on a larger job role in the Windows Product Group that included, among other things, responsibility for the Microsoft Typography team.
 
I sat there eating lunch with him and he told me that he was told by some higher ups that he was responsible for this Typography group.  Not knowing anything about Typography, he decided to pay them a visit and see what the group was like.  When he got to their end of the building, they were all in a conference room with a the lights off staring at a projection of someone’s laptop.  On the screen was a letter "G" and everyone was just looking at it in silence.
 
Frank, not knowing what was going on or what to do, simply followed along and stared right along with everyone else.  Then, one of the people near the laptop reached over and clicked on something with the mouse.  A little dot appeared on the character "G" making it a little rounder. 
 
Suddenly, everyone in the room squealed.  Some said in an outburst, "THERE WE GO!" and others high-fived each other.  The lights went on, some folks started up conversations, and people seemed genuinely elated.  Frank – wide-eyed at this point – quietly slipped out of the room, shaking his head.  He told me that he figured it’d be best to just leave these folks to do their jobs because he didn’t know a damned thing about what was going on and until he did, he wasn’t gonna screw with them.
 
It made me get interested in seeing what was going on with our Typography group back then and I learned that they have their own web site at:  http://www.microsoft.com/typography.   They also participate in conferences and events that are oriented around fonts and typography like http://www.typecon.com and http://www.atypi.org/06_Lisbon.
 
Oh, by the way, a bunch of these fonts are downloadable here, if you own Visual Studio.  They’re licensed only for use by folks that own VS.
 
EPILOGUE:
The last time I checked, Frank had moved on to work for Veritas but I see now that he created Consera, a software company that HP acquired.  He’s since then moved on to work as a BizDev guy for XenSource, a Virtual Server/Microsoft Hypervisor competitor (as well as a VMWare competitor) that uses open source software.  Sometime I’ll write about the time a group of Partners/Consulting organizations formally asked Frank about making the Registry more accessible and better documented.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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