Posted by: kurtsh | January 11, 2006

EVENT: Rights Management Services for Professional Services Webcast

Join us on Tuesday, January 24, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time for a live demonstration of how Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) and Liquid Machines can help your firm establish strong controls on regulated and confidential information such as client data, contracts, personnel information, or other sensitive material.

Liquid Machines extends the Windows RMS platform to provide support for applications beyond Office 2003, including Adobe Acrobat, and automatically protects emails and attachments based on corporate-defined policies. 

This presentation will show how Liquid Machines and Windows RMS can help to solve your firm’s information control and regulatory compliance challenges:

*  Intellectual Property Protection – Control access to and usage of sensitive data such as client information, contracts, and project information

*  Secure Collaboration Zones – Establish “virtual walls” between contract analysts, clients, accounting and billing staff, and internal personnel

*  Corporate Governance & Sarbanes-Oxley – Establish enterprise-defined information usage policies that ensure employees, officers, and directors maintain the confidentiality of information, and protect data from access and modification by unauthorized users to ensure segregation of duties

 

(This is a webcast and thus, is virtual and location-independent)

 

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Posted in Event

Posted by: kurtsh | January 11, 2006

NEWS: Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows ME will no longer be supported on June 30, 2006

On June 30, 2006, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows ME (and their related components) will transition to a non-supported status.  After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide any incident support options or security updates.  Microsoft is not offering a Custom Support Agreement for these products.

Additional information on Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows ME can be located at: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean1.

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | January 11, 2006

NEWS: Windows XP SP1 – Transitioning Out of Support – September 17, 2006

On September 17, 2006, Windows XP Service Pack 1 will transition out of its supported lifecycle.  After this date, customers will no longer receive support for Windows XP SP1.  To continue to receive support and no-charge security updates, customers must migrate to Service Pack 2.   At this time, a Custom Support Agreement for Windows XP SP1 is not offered to any customers.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by: kurtsh | January 11, 2006

RELEASE: Palm Treo 700w… running Windows Mobile 5.0

This is a big deal:  Palm released their Treo 700w PDAPhone that runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0.  Verizon Wireless has an exclusive agreement to sell this new Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone to their customers and it’s selling like hotcakes.  I’ve seen Verizon Wireless employees walking around with their new personal 700w devices.  It’s the "XBox360" of wireless phones.
 
Why?  Well, there are a lot of obvious reasons, but then there are also a lot of not so obvious reasons:
 
  1. PALM DESIGN
    There’s no way around the fact that this phone’s got a great, well tested, well studied design.  For some reason or another, our other partners haven’t really been able to put together a design that is palatable to both consumers and enterprise customers.  This thing not only meets the criteria of both, it’s got serious cool factor as well.  Palm just straight up makes great designs.  This ensures end-user acceptance.
  2. VERIZON NETWORK
    Make no mistake – the fact that this is on Verizon Wireless is huge.  Verizon’s got the fastest wireless network in the US – clocked at 700kbps over cellular – and it’s also got the best cellular coverage.  Good coverage + good bandwidth = VERY good start.  This ensures performance and usability.
  3. MICROSOFT SOFTWARE
    Sorry Palm, but it has always been our forte that Windows Mobile has addressed the basic needs of Enterprise customers.  Centralized management.  Security & Encryption.  Integration with corporate mail.  Similar UI to desktop software.  Blackberry-like EMail Delivery.  Custom programmability.  Remote "data erasure".  This stuff might not be that important to consumers but it’s an absolute must for Enterprise customers.  This ensures an audience with corporate customers.

I already own a Samsung i730 Pocket PC Phone and I love it.  Really – I do.  But I went out and ordered one of these babies the moment it was made available to us.  I simply love the form factor and if a geek doesn’t have his toys, what does he have?

URL:  http://vzwshop.com/treo700w/

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Posted in Release

Posted by: kurtsh | January 11, 2006

BETA: Windows Vista February CTP

There’s a limited number of people that can get into the Windows Vista CTP Beta through Bink.Nu’s web site credentials (as a user group) by going to:
http://microsoft.order-4.com/windowsvistabeta/ … use Technical Beta Nomination code: 85894

Here’s some of the details:
http://bink.nu/Article5808.bink

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Posted in Beta

Posted by: kurtsh | January 10, 2006

NEWS: Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For

Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2006:
 
#42 is a certain company near and dear to my heart.
 
What’s also interesting is that there are 7 companies from Washington state’s Pacific Northwest in the survey:
9. REI, based in Kent (ranked 45 last year)
29. Starbucks, Seattle (11 last year)
42. Microsoft, Redmond (57 last year)
46. Nordstrom, Seattle (88 last year)
48. Perkins Coie law firm, Seattle (47 last year)
63. Russell, Tacoma (unranked last year)
87. Washington Mutual, Seattle (unranked last year)
 

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | January 9, 2006

HOWTO: Capture/Record Macromedia Flash Streaming Video

Question:  "How do I capture/record a streaming video that’s done using Macromedia Flash?"
 
This is the question that many people have asked me in some form or another, the most common format of this question is, "How do I capture a video from <website>.com… because I’ve searched my Internet Cache for the .SWF file or the .FLV file and I’ve come up with nothing?"   Some online video sites now use the less efficient & less capable Macromedia Flash format for delivering video content and up ’til now, Flash Video has been so minimally used that there have been virtually no tools for the end user to use to record the video and its associated audio.
 
Tonight I just decided to just hash it out and write a quick tutorial on how to record any Flash video you see on the Internet into a Windows Media .WMV file that you can then save and archive for your own offline playback. 
 
(Note the following was done on a 2.0Ghz Pentium M laptop in a hotel room Internet connection
 
1) DOWNLOAD REPLAY SCREENCAST ($19)
Replay Screencast is a low resource video capture program that records both the 30 fps full color video you’re seeing on the screen as well the stereo audio being sent to your speakers.  And please don’t pirate it – pay for it.  Applian, the company that makes the product deserves your patronage.
 
2) CONFIGURE AUDIO/VIDEO SETTINGS
Set the "Audio device" to the audio adapter on your machine.  
Set the "Audio recording line" to the channel that the audio is outputting to – usually "Wave Out Mix" or something like that. 
Set the Video frames per second to 30 and the bit rate to 750KBps.  This isn’t at all optimal but heck, all we want is a file right now right?  We can tweak this later for file size and bandwidth consumption but for right now, let’s just make sure we get the content. 
Set the "Smoothness" to 50 and select the "High Motion Video" radio button.
 
3) SET VIDEO RECORDING REGION
This is where it get’s a little tricky.  Basically, you need to open up the window in which you plan to playback the video in question.  For example, if you were to go to say, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6905089586228877019&q=sushi, you can initiate playback and press the pause button.  (This is actually good because the video will buffer in the background while you are doing other things.)
Now back on the Screencast Setting menu, set the "Video Recording Region" to the "Screen Region" radio button. 
Now, click the crosshairs that you see next to the words, "Screen Region".  Your mouse will turn into the cross hairs… move the crosshairs to the upper left hand corner of the video window in your browser and click the LEFT mouse button. 
Now drag the mouse to the bottom left hand corner of the video you wish to capture (a rubber band will appear) and click the RIGHT mouse button.
You should see that the values for "Top left" and "Bottom right" are now filled in on the Screencast Settings dialog box.
Click the OK button to close the Settings window – you’re done.
 
4) RECORD VIDEO
Press "Record" in the Screencast window.
Click the browser window that has the video in question and start the video by either pressing PLAY or UNPAUSING the video.  Stay in the context of the browser to maximize foreground performance.
When the video is done, press STOP in the Screencast window.
 
…you’re done.  You should have a file labeled something like "Replay Screencast 2006-01-09-02.49.wmv" in your recordings folder with a brand new recording of the Flash that was streamed to you.  The file is a full digital fidelity encoding that is streamable from a Windows Media Server and/or playable offline from your own PC.
 
I’ve found that this tool and method produces excellent results as long as the video capture window doesn’t exceed 800×600 (which you really shouldn’t have to do anyway) and this is just because of the required processing overhead of running both the Windows Media libraries as well as Flash Player.  A good rule of thumb is to make sure that the Flash video is playing back in the original dimensions it was recorded in.  (Since you can’t get any better fidelity than that) 
 
To do this in in some players:
– Click the Down arrow
– Select "Original Size"
 That’s it.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Posted in Multimedia

Posted by: kurtsh | January 9, 2006

NEWS: HD-DVD consortium comments on BluRay

BetaNews sat down with HD-DVD expert Mark Knox to talk about Sony’s Blu-Ray vs Toshiba’s HD-DVD spec.  It’s fairly long:
 
For those of you that can’t be bothered to READ the article itself, here’s the Cliff Notes:
 
1) CAPACITY
HD-DVD will be 30GB.  Sony admitted that Blu-Ray will only be 25GB mostly.
 
2) PLAYER PRODUCTION
HD-DVD has been churning out production units successfully.  BluRay has been suffering from production problems because of the accuracy needed for the blue laser and the purported, increase storage.
 
3) DISC PRODUCTION
Because of the new laser in BluRay, discs must be thinner and are more prone to production problems, meaning fewer discs off the production line will be functional.  Additionally, duplication accuracy will be diminished in BluRay for commercial movies.  HD-DVD uses the same relative technology as today’s DVDs resulting in no increase in errors.
 
4) MENUING
HD-DVD uses iHD, a menuing system based on DHTML which is a lightweight definitive specification that can be guaranteed to be implemented on every HD-DVD player.  BluRay requires the usage of a flavor of Java called JEM that because of the varied implementations of Java on future players, it will be impossible to guarantee that a BluRay disc’s menuing system will run on all players.
 
5) STUDIOS
There are more studios signed up for BluRay than for HD-DVD however Fox Studios has demanded a higher level of DRM protection than what is available in the BluRay or HD-DVD spec that BluRay has caved in to, while HD-DVD has not.  This means among other things HD-DVD will enable people to play their movies through copies on Home Video Servers, Portable Media Players, Home computers, etc. while it is extremely unlikely that BluRay will.
 
6) RELEASE DATE & COST
HD-DVD will definitively release their player through Toshiba at $499 and $799 in March 2006.
BluRay is supposed to release their first player in May 2006 through Pioneer at $1,800 however it is very likely that that release date will slip.

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | January 7, 2006

COMMENTARY: MSN Spaces in China

This isn’t really a comment from me but rather the comment from MSN Spaces program manager Michael Connelly on the issue in the news about MSN taking a Chinese dissident’s space down by order of the Chinese government.
 
———————-
<taken from Michael Connelly’s MSN Space blog site>
As I have described in a previous post, there are two main ways we moderate content on Spaces:
  • Through the “report abuse” link at the bottom of every space.  If you see inappropriate content, such as pornography, or out-right illegal content, like hate-speech or child pornography, let us know and we’ll investigate the problem and take appropriate action.  Our main filter we use is, is this blog adhering to our Code of Conduct?
  • We ban a set of “naughty” words from blog entry titles, so those who are maturity-challenged don’t use the F word all over the place, and show up in search results and the updated spaces list, spoiling the party for everyone.
This system has been what we have been using since we launched Spaces, and we have not changed our practice, nor gotten more aggressive in the way we moderate.  It’s been working for us, and for the Spaces community.
 
We are an international service, and we work hard to comply with the local laws (for illegal content) and local cultural norms (for inappropriate content) in all the markets we operate in.  So, when using our two moderating techniques, we are cognizant of what market the content is published in.  There are certain rules we have that generally apply to all markets: for instance, no pornography.  We just didn’t want to go there with MSN Spaces.  But, there are other guidelines that are more market-specific.  For instance, the “middle finger” is a very obscene gesture in some areas, and is deemed culturally inappropriate, while in the United States, you would be hard pressed to see any photo of a bunch of college kids where one of them isn’t flipping the camera the bird.  No harm, no foul.  We don’t want to rule out the middle finger in all markets, so we just do it in the ones where it’s beyond the pale.  And, even in the markets that don’t approve of the middle finger, we give the poster a friendly warning about the image, as opposed to taking the site down immediately.
 
In China, there is a unique issue for our entire industry: there are certain aspects of speech in China that are regulated by the government.  We’ve made a choice to run a service in China, and to do that, we need to adhere to local regulations and laws.  This is not unique to MSN Spaces; this is something that every company has to do if they operate in China.  So, if a Chinese blog on MSN Spaces is reported to us by the community, or the Chinese government, as offensive, we have to ask ourselves: is this blog adhering to our code of Conduct?  In many cases, the answer is “yes, this site is fine”.  But, in some cases, the answer is “no”.  And when an offense is found that actually breaks a national law, we have no choice but to take down the site.
 
A very similar issue was raised in the blogosphere in regards to how Google tackles this problem: a really good discussion on Slashdot ensued, it’s worth a read if you have some time.
—————————————–
 
 

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Posted in Commentary

Posted by: kurtsh | January 6, 2006

NEWS: DirecTV and Microsoft make love connection

Las Vegas — At last night’s keynote, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates outlined his vision for the connected home of the future. As expected, Windows Media Center is one of the centerpieces of the software giant’s plans. A new partnership between Microsoft and DirecTV alluded to last night by Gates and confirmed tonight at DirecTV’s press conference here at CES is good news for owners of Windows Media Center PCs.
DirecTV and Microsoft have signed a long-term agreement that will tightly integrate DirecTV’s programming with PCs running Windows Media Center edition, the Xbox 360, and some portable devices. Most significantly, HTPC owners will be able to forego usage of DirecTV set-top boxes, as their PCs will be able to function as a DirecTV receiver. This includes all of DirecTV’s high-definition content, which makes this the first time DirecTV’s HD programming will be available without using a receiver.
Here’s what the partnership means: Xbox 360 owners will be able to access DirecTV programming from their console. That’s another step in the direction of making Microsoft’s new console a home entertainment hub in addition to a place to play games. Using a DirecTV set-top box, subscribers will be able to view images, watch movies, and listen to music on their TVs, streamed from their PCs. That’s similar to what Verizon has planned for its FiOS customers.
Along with that, HTPCs will be able to be record DirecTV programming and transfer it to supported portable devices. In addition, the DirecTV set-top boxes will include a USB port so that owners of some devices (those carrying Microsoft’s new PlaysForSure designation) will be able to download recorded content directly to their portable video players.
It’s a big move for Microsoft, as it gives Windows Media Center Edition and the upcoming Vista—which will have MCE functionality rolled into some of its seven different versions—full HD support. Currently, Windows MCE is limited to over-the-air HD content, meaning that subscribers to DirecTV, Comcast, and other services offering HD can’t reap the full benefit of the programming with an HTPC.
Connecting your TV and PC is a big theme at CES this year. Intel has a significant portion of its exhibit area devoted to Viiv and prototype Viiv-enabled set-top boxes. Microsoft has a gigantic Vista display and is preaching the media center gospel. Major PC manufacturers such as HP, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway, and others all have HTPCs featured prominently in their exhibits. Getting DirecTV to play nice with Windows may go a long way towards bringing the HTPC into the mainstream.

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Posted in Computers and Internet

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