Kurt Shintaku's Blog

If you don’t know what this is, don’t worry about it and just ignore this post. Otherwise, enjoy this photo we took internally of Master Chief and Bill Gates.

Hollywood… here we come!

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Posted in Entertainment

Posted by: kurtsh | August 26, 2005

NEWS: Microsoft Santa Monica is MOVING

Microsoft as you probably know is located at 2700 Colorado Ave, Santa Monica and we’ve been here for over 5 years.

As of February 20th, 2006 we’ll be moving to a new location in Downtown Los Angeles.

Our new address will be:

Wells Fargo Tower
333 S. Grand Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90071

33rd Floor (Customer)

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | August 26, 2005

WEB: Add-ins for MSN Search Toolbar

Check this out. It’s a site dedicated to add-ins for the MSN Search Toolbar.

http://addins.msn.com/

This is where I believe we’re going to really see some uptake in MSN’s Search Toolbar and MSN Search in general. If you look at the site, you’ll notice how easy they’ve made it for people to develop their own plug-ins and add-ins to the toolbar and in Microsoft tradition, we’re going to advertise these homegrown add-ins right on this web site. This will be a fantastic way to get the things people want added into the toolbar.

One add in that we can anticipate seeing is an add-in that will help people mitigate phishing (or criminal’s way of sending people links in email or instant messaging that makes them believe they are visiting a legitimate web site that looks like www.wellsfargo.com but really sends them to www.pleaseenteryourcreditcardinfohere.com to steal your personal information by duping you into entering it in under the auspices of "checking your account information".

The anti-phishing add in should be available in a few weeks.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/25/HNmsantiphishing_1.html

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | August 25, 2005

RELEASE: AVIcode .NET Management Pack Operations Edition for MOM2005

AVIcode .NET Management Pack Operations Edition
Do you have a need to monitor web services? ASP.NET driven web sites? .NET applications? Boy have I got a MOM2005 Management Pack for you – and it’s free! (Obviously it requires Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 first and foremost)

Targeted to systems’ operators responsible for monitoring system health, AVIcode’s .NET Management Pack Operations Edition provides a consolidated view of all applications featuring simple health status indicators within the MOM 2005 Operator Console. It also provides quick identification of faulty application components and performance hotspots, as well as manual or automatic routing of alert notifications to the appropriate application support team.

Feature List:

Real-time Error & Bottleneck Detection:
– Provides .NET application health monitoring
– No code modification needed to capture
– Handled and unhandled exceptions
– Performance degradation issues
– Monitors for events in
– ASP.NET applications
– Web Services

Detailed root-cause information
– Collects the complete call stack at the moment of failure
– Reports execution time for calls to OLEDB, ODBC, SQL, Oracle, Web Services, and .NET Remoting
– Consolidates events into alerts based on unique root cause

Enterprise Security
– Pushes information to administrators without compromising firewall security

Service Level Agreement Information
– Allows definition of SLA performance threshold settings

OPERATIONS EDITION: (FREE) http://www.avicode.com/licensegenerator/registerbasic.aspx

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Posted in Release

Posted by: kurtsh | August 25, 2005

RELEASE: MOM2005 Server Performance Advisor 2.0 Management Pack

Server Performance Advisor 2.0 Management Pack
Microsoft just released a management pack for Microsoft Windows Server 2003, also known as Server Performance Advisor 2.0. Server Performance Advisor (SPA) 2.0 collects performance data and generates comprehensive diagnostic reports that give you the information you need to analyze problems and develop corrective actions.

You can download the SPA management pack at:

DOWNLOAD: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82632729-3263-4254-9332-1f51815c55fb&displaylang=en

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Posted in Release

Posted by: kurtsh | August 25, 2005

RELEASE: Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 Discovery Kit

The SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Discovery kit – a set of 6 hands-on lab documents – just went live on Microsoft.com at the following location:

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Discovery Kit

DOWNLOAD: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=03607516-cbec-4724-b4a4-aa7f09304ba5&displaylang=en

Please note that there is a lab focusing on how to use the SQL Reporting Pack! Here’s an excerpt from the download page:

Overview

The SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Discovery Kit includes a series of discovery labs that go beyond learning about a particular component of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to understanding visional portal site solution, how to deploy Web applications that integrate tightly with the portal site environment, how to use SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services to track and analyze portal site usage, and lastly, how to customize the portal site user interface.

There are 6 labs in the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Discovery Kit. The lab manuals includes a description of the business scenario that is addressed by the lab, the teaching objectives of the lab, step-by-step instructions, dependencies for each lab and the expected amount of time needed for the lab assuming a basic familiarity with Windows SharePoint Services and limited SharePoint Portal Server 2003 experience.

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Posted in Release

Posted by: kurtsh | August 25, 2005

RELEASE: How to enable your copy of “Windows XP Professional N” to be Windows Media enabled

I’m just posting this because this if funny as all heck. Do you remember how the European Union forced Microsoft to create a "Windows Media-less" version of Microsoft Windows XP Profesionnal?

Well, I think by now it’s well known that no one’s actually BUYING the Windows Media-less version of Windows much to the chagrin of the EU that actually thought they were "improving the choices of consumers" by eliminating one of their choices. (Doesn’t sound very bright does it when you actually write it down in words does it?)

So lo and behold, just in case someone actually does buy this thing, we’re provided a special 30MB package that includes all the components necessary to allow 3rd party applications that require Windows Media components to run. In other words, this package turns WinXPPro "N"… into normal retail WinXPPro.

Or something like that.

DOWNLOAD:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2ab49f45-0f03-4736-9b11-fe4b5b3cb712&displaylang=en

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Posted in Release

Posted by: kurtsh | August 25, 2005

RELEASE: Outlook 2005 Junk Mail Filter Update for August 2005

This optional update provides the Junk E-mail Filter in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with a more current definition of which e-mail messages should be considered junk e-mail. This update was released in August 2005.

INFO: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/902953

DOWNLOAD: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7BA267BB-BAA8-4682-8D73-B73CB5BA4A04&displaylang=en

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Posted in Release

Posted by: kurtsh | August 25, 2005