Barnaby's Canadian IT Pro WebLog

New Blog URL's

2007-06-01T23:11:00Z

For those of you that are still subscribed to this blog with your RSS reader, you might want to point to one of the two places that I'm now blogging:

For work : http://on10.net/blogs/bjeans/

Personal: http://barnabyjeans.ca/blogs/barnaby

See you over there.

Barnaby

Kick Back, Relax, Play some XBox

2006-07-14T21:50:03Z

As an IT Manager or IT Professional you probably spend a lot of time under pressure at work. So when the time comes to relax you probably want to make the most of it.

So as a test, we want to find out if you are interested in getting together (virtually) every couple of weeks to interact with the TechNet team (Barnaby, Rick, Bruce, Damir) over a more social and relaxing medium – XBox Live.

Damir has just put up a post on the CanITPro blog (http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro/archive/2006/07/14/441850.aspx ) to gauge interest in doing an XBox Live gaming night every couple of weeks. If you are interested leave us a comment either here or on the CanITPro blog and let us know what your gamertag is so we can add it to our friends list. If there is enough interest we will setup a regular night and let you all know.

Here's my gamer card:	And here is Rick's:

See you on live,

Barnaby

Changing Blogs...

2006-03-02T23:24:52Z

I think Bruce says it best in his blog post:

For all of you wondering if I had disappeared from the planet, you may be pleased to know that I am simply moving blogs.

Based on your feedback the Canadian IT Pro team is amalgamating our efforts and our blogs in to two new spaces:

The Canadian IT Pro Blog

http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro

The Canadian IT Managers Blog

http://blogs.technet.com/cdnitmanagers

You told us that you want to connect with the team, but that we could make your lives easier by consolidating the blogs and providing separate technical and manager / architect information. You informed us you wanted more guest bloggers from the community and industry. You shouted from the roof tops you wanted more.... so I ask you to add the new blogs to your favorites and RSS readers and I look forward to meeting you all there.

I will still be posting here occasionally, but you will find me spending most of my time on the Canadian IT Managers blog.

See you there.

Great x64 Resource (and he's in Canada)

2006-02-01T07:34:01Z

After I published this blog post, I was pointed to a great resource from one of our MS MVP's The "Unofficial x64 FAQ" is maintained by Charlie Russel who is one of our MVP's living out in B.C.

If you are trying to figure out how to get Windows working with the latest devices, check out the site.

Great work Charlie.

TNX: TechNet Exchange Event (Toronto)

2006-02-01T06:54:00Z

WOW! What an amazing event. I spent most of today in the John Bassett theatre at the Metro Toronto Convention Center watching Damir and Rick deliver an excellent set of sessions on Communicating and Collaborating.

For anyone out there that was unable to attend the session, and is looking into mobility solutions, you should keep an eye on the CanITPro Blog for the slides and audio versions of the sessions. Rick and Damir skillfully walked the audience through the steps required to configure Exchange, SharePoint, ISA, and Windows Mobile 5 to provide the end user with an environment to allow them to work collaboratively regardless of whether they were in the office or on the road. They even managed to throw in some adhoc, realtime, Instant messaging with one of the User Group leaders in Montreal. Talk about keeping it interesting and interactive.

A lot of the technology that they showed was stuff that as Microsoft employees we take for granted. The ability to launch Outlook and Office Communicator without having to VPN back into the work network is a great boost for productivity, not to mention, ease of use for the user.

I will be uploading all the photos of today’s event (yes I was the guy with the flash, sorry) to my Flickr account over the next couple of days, but here are a few to get you started.

The rest of the photos will be here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnaby_jeans/sets/72057594057232847/

I hope you enjoyed the event as much as I did.

MSN Messenger 8 Beta invitations

2006-01-27T16:13:00Z

This one is for the Canadians out there. If you are interested in trying out the MSN Messenger 8 beta, just leave me a comment here with your email address, where in Canada you are, and if you have been to any of our events.

Right now I have 10 invites to share, so first come first served.

Canadian IT Professionals blog

2006-01-23T22:51:57Z

Back on December 16th, 2005 we launched the Canadian IT Professionals blog to complement the Canadian IT Managers blog. The Canadian IT Professionals blog is designed to give Canadian IT Pro’s a central place to stay current on all things Microsoft and IT Pro related.

If you haven’t already subscribed in your RSS reader, here is the link .

If you have topics that you would be interested in discussing on the blog, or if you would like to be a guest blogger, please leave a comment on one of the blog posts.

Security and critical updates are available on ISO-9660 CD image files from the Microsoft Download Center

2006-01-11T23:33:00Z

According to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913086 Microsoft is now making Security and Critical updates available as an ISO image.

If you have many machines to update, but aren't using a centralized update management solution, you may want to check this out.

Enjoy

Tags: [Microsoft]

Thank you Canada

2005-12-16T17:04:00Z

After 5 weeks of touring across the country and delivering presentations in 10 different cities, all I can say is WOW! The Canadian IT Pro's and Developers are great.

As Damir mentions in his post "It has been an amazing five weeks..."

For those of you that were not able to attend every session that you wanted to, the slide decks are now posted at http://www.microsoft.ca/launch2005, additionally, the audio recordings of the Database Track are also available (look for my earlier blog posts on this).

Finally, make sure to stay connected to TechNet by signing up for the TechNet Flash Newsletter http://www.microsoft.ca/technet/flash.

I look forward to see you all again on my next tour across the country.

Tags: [Microsoft] [Launch2005] [SQLServer]

Content for Canadian IT Managers

2005-12-08T01:55:00Z

As I am sitting here in Winnipeg on the last stop of the SQL Server / Visual Studio Launch Tour, I have been thinking more and more about how to provide meaningful information to the IT Managers as well as the DBA's, Administrators, and Developers that we see at our events.

One of the things that my team has done is to launch the Canadian IT Managers Blog which will focus more specifically on the types of issues that are of interest to the Canadian IT Manager. To date we have talked about both technology and business topics which hopefully you will find interesting. If there are topics or suggestions that you might have, please post a comment and let us know what you would like to hear about.

Consider this your personal invitation to head over and take a look.

http://blogs.technet.com/cdnitmanagers/default.aspx

ISA Client for 64-bit runs a short beta program

2005-12-07T20:06:00Z

From Volker Will's blog:

The ISA Server Team will release an update to the ISA Server 2004 Firewall Client. As part of the development process, they are running a short beta program to collect valuable feedback.
Highlights:

Support for the Microsoft Windows Vistaâ„¢ operating system (builds 5231 and later).

Support for the the 64-bit versions of the Microsoft Windows operating systems.

If you are interested in joining this beta program, please follow these instructions:

Go to http://beta.Microsoft.com

Sign in using your Passport account details

On the home page, click the link below the welcome message ("If you were issued a Guest ID by Microsoft, you can sign in by clicking here")

Enter the Guest ID: ISAFWC_x64

Choose "Survey" on the left side of the page

Complete and submit the survey.

[Via VolkerW's WebLog]

Launch 2005 - High Availability Podcast

2005-11-29T08:26:00Z

Here is the third of the Launch 2005 audio recordings. This was recorded live on November 22nd as part of the Launch 2005 activities in Vancouver.

If you were not able to attend the Architecting for High Availability Session, download the mp3 version to hear what my colleague Damir Bersinic had to say. The session runs about an hour and twenty minutes.

Tags: [Microsoft] [Launch2005] [Podcast] [SQLServer]

Update: changed mp3 link to microsoft.com media server

Launch 2005 - Managing and Monitoring SQL Server 2005 Podcast

2005-11-29T08:23:00Z

Here is the second of the Launch 2005 audio recordings. This was recorded live on November 17th as part of the Launch 2005 activities in Victoria.

If you were not able to attend the Managing and Monitoring SQL Server 2005 Session, download the mp3 version to hear what you missed. The session runs about an hour and a half.

Tags: [Microsoft] [Launch2005] [Podcast] [SQLServer]

Update: changed mp3 link to microsoft.com media server

Launch 2005 - Business Intelligence Podcast

2005-11-29T08:20:00Z

Here is the first of the Launch 2005 audio recordings. This was recorded live on November 8th as part of the Launch 2005 activities in Toronto.

If you were not able to attend the Delivering Business Intelligence Session, download the mp3 version to hear what you missed. The session runs about an hour and ten minutes.

Tags: [Microsoft] [Launch2005] [Podcast] [SQLServer]

Update: changed mp3 link to microsoft.com media server

Standardize on the Office Open XML document format

2005-11-22T02:39:00Z

Today we announced that we are putting forward the Office Open XML document format to Ecma with the intention of making the formats an ISO standard.

The official press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/nov05/11-21Ecma.mspx

Brian Jones, a program manager in the Office team has a great write-up on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/11/21/495466.aspx

I think one of the key comments is around what this means to open source developers: (from the press release)

Finally, Office Open XML is open because the license for Office Open XML is open to anyone. We are expanding the language of the current royalty-free license to specifically enable developers who work only with open source licensing to also be able to work with Office Open XML. This will enable any customer or technology provider to use the file formats in its own systems without financial consideration to Microsoft.

And this: (from Brian Jones)

I'm not a lawyer, but from what I can see, this "covenant not to sue" looks like it should clear the way for GPL development which was a concern for some folks.

As someone who talks to the open source community this should help clear the way for broader adoption.

Tags: [Microsoft]