Posted by: kurtsh | March 4, 2005

BETA: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition CTP Feb 2005

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition – Community Technology Preview February 2005
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (SQL Server Express) is the next version of MSDE 2000. It is a free, easy-to-use, lightweight version of Microsoft SQL Server 2005. To obtain additional information about SQL Server Express, click here.
 
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition – Community Technology Preview February 2005 is unsupported pre-release software.
 

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Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by: kurtsh | March 1, 2005

WEBCAST: .NET Unwrapped Webcast Week

The .NET Unwrapped webcast series which included 14 topics focused on helping Financial Services companies with the Windows Platform and .NET was completed earlier this month.  The series was attended by over 1,612 developers, architects, technical & business decision makers as well as many SI’s and ISV’s:

  • Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture
  • Microsoft in Financial Services – Kick off session
  • Patterns and Anti Patterns in SOA
  • Migrating Applications from .NET Framework 1.1 to .NET Framework 2.0

The entire webcast series was recorded and is available on demand:
http://www.microsoft.com/seminar/events/series/msdndotnetunwrapped.mspx

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Posted in Training

Posted by: kurtsh | March 1, 2005

WHITEPAPER: Building Connected Systems: .NET and the Windows Platform in Financial Services

Building Connected Systems: .NET and the Windows Platform in Financial Services

This new White Paper includes an in-depth view of the Microsoft Platform and how .NET can be used to quickly develop and deploy enterprise level applications for an interconnected world.  The document includes a drill down into the .NET Framework, Tools, Applications Services, Orchestration, the usage of Portals, Host Integration, Smart Clients, Smart Devices, Systems Management and the road to the future with the .NET Framework version 2.0 and Visual Studio.NET 2005.  In the Fast Fact section of the white paper (beginning on page 29) you will find what the Analyst community is saying about .NET (Gartner, Forrester, Meta, The Middleware Company, Object Watch, and the Waters Group).  In the Customer Experiences section (beginning on Page 31) you will find twenty-five live implementations of .NET and the Windows Platform in Financial Services (Allstate, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CitiGroup, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, NASDAQ, Reuters and many more).

The White Paper is available at:
http://www.financialdevelopers.com/assets/Building%20Connected%20Systems%20in%20Financial%20Services.pdf

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Posted in Document

Posted by: kurtsh | March 1, 2005

DEVELOPER: Financial Services Newsletter for Developers

The Winter Edition of the Developer Connection is now available. This edition has an Interoperability theme – Interoperability is a key value that is enabled with the Microsoft Platform with our goal being to help customers and partners leverage their existing investments in IT while they develop and deploy new features for their user community.

In this edition we feature several examples on how .NET/Windows can interoperate with J2EE/WebSphere, provide an update on mainframe interoperability via Host Integration Server (HIS), provide an update on the WSE 2.0 SP2 that was recently released, highlight a great case study from Allstate Insurance that leverages interoperability via Web Services to quickly deliver a new customer facing policy management solution, and provide an update for customers on the latest events from Microsoft.

Subscribe to the new electronic version of the newsletter by going to:
https://profile.microsoft.com/Regsysprofilecenter/subscriptionwizard.aspx?wizid=4b15c3f0-7c79-422c-9820-2ec0e3815144&lcid=1033

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Posted in Tools

Posted by: kurtsh | March 1, 2005

TOOL: Bluetooth Remote Control for Smartphone

http://msdn.labtech.epitech.net/remotecontrol/

Bluetooth Remote Control for Smartphone

This is Bluetooth Remote Control for Smartphone, a Remote Control software using Native Bluetooth Transport without ActiveSync.

With this software, you will be able to control remotely applications like Winamp, the Windows Mixer, the Windows Media Player, PowerPoint and others…

Here is what you need to use this software :

  • An installation of the Windows XP Service Pack 2
  • A Bluetooth enabled Smartphone 2003 (like the Orange E200/QTEK 8080 and maybe the E500)
  • A Bluetooth radio on your laptop/desktop supported natively by Windows XP (which is detected by the Windows XP Control Panel)

For now, the desktop installer does not provide an automatic installation for the Smartphone client, so you’ll have to install it by hand. You’ll find a .cab file in the installation directory. Also note that your Smartphone will ask you twice on the first start about software modules that are not known, just answer yes. (This is for the main executable and a satellite native DLL)

For now, this software is free. This software is provided "as is" and I cannot be held reponsible for any damage done to your installation that could be the result of an incorrect manipulation of the software. Just the usual 🙂

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Posted in Tools

Posted by: kurtsh | February 28, 2005

NEW: MSN Record Service for WinXP Media Center Edition

MSN Remote Record service was released for users of XP Media Center Edition (XP MCE) 2005.  MSN Remote Record lets you schedule your Media Center to record TV shows from anywhere you can access a computer with an Internet connection.

http://tv.msn.com/tv/signup/?redirect=http%3a%2f%2ftv.msn.com%3a80%2ftv%2fguide%2fDefault.aspx%3f

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Posted in Tools

Posted by: kurtsh | February 25, 2005

EVENT: SQL Server 2005 Roadshows — Coming to a City Near You

Coming Anaheim, April 26!

Get the facts about migrating to SQL Server™ 2005 in one information-packed day in a city near you! SQL Server experts from Scalability Experts, DevelopMentor, and Hitachi Consulting will present practical, real-world information in three tracks–administration, development, and business intelligence. You can find answers to specific questions in the Ask the Experts session. You’ll come away from the Get Ready for SQL Server 2005 Roadshow with a clear understanding of how to implement a best-practices migration to SQL Server 2005 and how to use SQL Server 2005’s new capabilities to improve your database computing environment.

The cost for each Roadshow is ONLY US $99 and includes a full-day filled with highly technical content from some of the best in the industry, a 1-year PASS membership, a 1-year subscription to SQL Server Magazine, meals throughout the day, an attendee bag, a free "Get Ready for SQL Server 2005 Roadshows" T-shirt and much, a $100 off coupon to the 2005 PASS Community Summit and much more!

For full details or to register, visit: http://www.windowsitpro.com/roadshows/sqlserverusa2/

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Posted in Event

Posted by: kurtsh | February 25, 2005

Major performance fix for Terminal Server scalablity

Major performance fix for Terminal Server scalablity

Taken from http://www.brianmadden.com/content/content.asp?id=312.

I’d like to share a recent experience I had with respect to a migration project from NT4 (MF 1.8) to Win2k (MF XP). I’m presently engaged in a project for a large Fortune 500 insurance company that is in the process of wrapping up their migration. (I know.. NT4 is unsupported, blah, blah.. Anyway, the line of business that I’m contracting for had serious performance problems on the new server build that the enterprise team delivered. Despite the fact that we used to run ~100 users per server on the old quad 500 Mhz/2GB RAM servers, we we’re having significantly worse performance on Windows 2000/MF XP using Quad 1.4Ghz/2GB RAM servers. That frankly didn’t add up, and the enterprise folks in the Citrix group simply said, "Nothing can be done. The spooler service just doesn’t scale as well on Windows 2000." The Microsoft and Citrix engineers that are onsite for this client agreed–a typical response IMHO. Somehow it just didn’t make sense to me that hardware that was three times as powerful would perform worse just because it was Windows 2000, so I began scouring the Internet for anything related to the spooler service with high utilization. Obviously it took me a little while to get through the thousands of articles on this topic since it’s one of the most frequently reported issues in Terminal Server environments. Anyway, I ran across this Microsoft KB article that turned out to be EXACTLY what was causing our degraded performance: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=840371

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | February 25, 2005

Microsoft collaborates with leading HIV doctors & scientists

Microsoft Collaborates With Leading Doctors and Scientists, Using Advanced
             Machine-Learning Techniques to Optimize HIV Vaccines

BOSTON, Feb. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Microsoft Research has pioneered promising new ways to combat one of humankind’s most deadly viruses with advanced software typically used to analyze large computer databases and complex digital images, or to separate spam from legitimate e-mail.
    (Photo:  NewsCom:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO )

    Today at the 12th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), Microsoft Research will show how medical researchers can use machine-learning, data-mining and other software techniques to comb through millions of strains of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to find the genetic patterns necessary to train a patient’s immune system to fight the virus. The first of these vaccine designs are currently undergoing laboratory testing.
    Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) researchers David Heckerman and Nebojsa Jojic are the first to use algorithms similar to those in Microsoft Corp.’s database and anti-spam software to uncover hidden patterns within the genetic mutations of the virus and the immune system of the patient. The researchers,
in collaboration with doctors and scientists from the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle and Australia’s Royal Perth Hospital, plan to exploit these patterns to create improved vaccine designs that pack more HIV-fighting genetic markers into vaccines. Microsoft researchers Christopher Meek and Carl Kadie and Jojic’s brother (and former Microsoft Research intern), Vladimir, also contributed to the project.
    "Microsoft has helped us make a tremendous leap forward in our efforts to halt a virus that has already killed nearly 30 million people worldwide," said Simon Mallal, professor and executive director of the Centre for Clinical Immunology and Biomedical Statistics at Royal Perth Hospital and Murdoch University. "Microsoft Research’s contributions enabled us to filter patient data 10 times faster than any previous research technique we’ve used and produced vital clues about the building blocks of a vaccine — clues that were all but impossible to find in our growing stockpile of medical data."
    "The potential for these vaccines is a powerful example of how computer science is transforming medical research and other areas of science," said Dr. James Mullins, professor in the UW Department of Microbiology. "These Microsoft Research technologies weren’t initially conceived as medical research tools, but they may prove to be critical to the ongoing battle to slow down or halt HIV and other deadly viruses."

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-23-2005/0003070052&EDATE=

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Posted in Health and wellness

Posted by: kurtsh | February 24, 2005

TOOLS: Optimizing your Windows XP network connection

I normally wouldn’t post tweaks like this on the blog but these changes can be so revolutionary to your network performance that I thought I’d plug these two free tools for you to use.

The first is a patch that takes WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2 workstations and ups the simultaneous outbound TCP connections to 50.  Currently, WinXPSP2 is limited to 10 which can drag your performance down.  You can get the patch and instructions here:
http://www.evilkoala.org/download/tcpipcon.zip

The second is a wizard-based tool that optimizes any WINDOWS XP workstation’s TCP connections.  These are very well explained in 8 easy steps and will make the process painless.  I personally have seen some dramatic improvements in just simple web surfing after using a tool like this.  You can download the tool and the instructions here:
http://www.evilkoala.org/download/TZConnectionBooster26.zip
 

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Posted in Tools

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