I am on vacation this week. I will start posting pictures tomorrow of where and we will see if you can figure it out.

Cheers!

Source - http://www.philoking.com/2008/02/20/i-think-i-have-a-few-readers-like-this/

Cheers!

What do you want to know about in June when we switch content again? Should we continue talking about Windows 2008? IIS 7? Vista SP1? The next version of SBS?

I suspect that we will have at least a brief discussion about that today and I would love to take your feedback to my team....send me an email or comment here....

Cheers!

Wow.

I took advantage of some hardware issues and hectic travel to take a break from blogging but I didn't expect it to be 3 weeks. It is amazing how easy it is to relax (be lazy...) and stay relaxed (stay lazy...). A lot has happened in the past few weeks.....

Vista SP1 and Windows 2008 RTM were announced...

We made an offer for Yahoo! (please accept!)...

All kinds of interesting political stuff happening....

The list goes on.....

Wow.

All of that stuff has been blogged and re-blogged. I don't think I can add anything new so I won't be going back and posting much about those things. But I will be posting some of my own Vista SP1 and Windows 2008 experiences soon.

This week I am in Irving, Tx for a team meeting. It is nice to be back home. Tomorrow, my fellow presenters and I will be reviewing the content we will start delivering in two weeks at the big launch activities. I will be one of the first to deliver at the New York Launch event on March 4th. The event is already "sold out", so you won't likely be able to get into that one, but there are others scattered across the US. In fact, here is a list of all the places I will be over the next few months that you can still get registered for....

March 6th   - Harrisburg, PA

March 27th - Spokane, WA

April 1st      - Seattle, WA

April 8th      - Anaheim, CA

April 16th    - Anchorage, AK

April 28th    - Boise, ID

May 6th       - Portland, OR

May 13th     - San Diego, CA

Whew!   After that we switch to new content (I don't know what it is yet) for the month of June before wrapping up the fiscal year on July 1st. We normally go dark for July and then start new content again in August. Keep an eye on the TechNet Event site for content summaries, locations and dates.

Cheers!

I recently did an interview with Anatharam Chadalavada, A Microsoft IT Senior Program Manager on how "Microsoft IT uses Visual Studio Team System to Measure Software Code Stability".

What the.....!?!?!?

Yeah, yeah, yeah......more developery kinda stuff. But it sounded interesting to me so I offered to do it. One of these days I may actually install Visual Studio and write a "Hello World!" app.....

The interview focuses on a particular tool called the LOC or Lines of Code counting tool. You can find a version of the tool for Visual Studio 2005 here. What made this interesting to me is that based upon the numbers of lines of code, you can somewhat predict what the error rate might be and associate a cost with it on how long and what resources would have to be committed to resolving those issues.

The interview and past interviews can be found at the TechNet Radio site. Or, you directly grab the interviews below --

Microsoft IT uses Visual Studio Team System to Measure Software Code Stability

WMA Version

MP3 High

MP3 Low

Cheers!

I know this is short notice, but I want your feedback. This morning I will be doing my  first video interview. It will be with Russ Humphries, a Sr. Product Manager in our Security Technologies group. I will be interviewing him about BitLocker technologies. The one question I have heard over and over while speaking to customers the past few weeks is "Why isn't BitLocker included with Vista Business?". I will be asking that question.

What would you ask him?

Cheers!

Solid State "hard drives" are starting to get a lot more press these days. I ran across this article a few moments ago. The promise of solid state drives has been a long time coming. I used battery backed RAM on my Apple //gs 20 years ago. I loaded the OS and my BBS in a whopping 8 megs of RAM (I had an OctoRam card) which was kept live all the time with a few AA batteries. The speed with which my BBS came up from RAM vs reading from the 5.25 floppies or even my SCSI drives was amazing.

Do any of you have a solid state drive now? I would be interested in hearing some real life experiences with them.

Cheers!

Mary Jo Foley has reported that we are "lifting the ban" on Virtualizing these two editions of Vista. I see this as a good thing for consumers and IT staff who want to do testing with less expensive versions of the OS. It also provides for some uniformity across the platform.

I like it...

How about you?

Cheers!

No...I don't have a secret method of BitLocking a single partition. But my buddy John Baker posted about a tool that will reconfigure your machine for BitLocker if you decide to implement it after you have already configured your hard drive as a single partition. I am performing a Complete PC of my laptop right now and will attempt the tool once I am complete. I will post my results when done...

*** Updated 1/21 *** The BitLocker Drive prep tool worked exactly as promised. It only took about 5 mins total to prep my drive. Then of course it is still a matter of walking through the BitLocker wizard to actually encrypt it. I have about 50 gigs in my OS partition. It took about 20 minutes to encrypt the whole thing.

Cheers!

I have been meaning to ask my audience if they use Twitter and explain to me why. I was also going to ask for reasons why *I* should become a Twitterer or Twittite or what ever you call someone who Twitters. I have had that post in my drafts folder now for months. Today, I ran across a blog post by Louis Gray where he asks the question and does it a lot better that I would have.

I broke down and set up a FaceBook account some months ago and still struggle with why. I find MySpace more to my liking because my "friends" are mostly people that I have known for years and years. I met many of those people back in the 80's and early 90's when I was heavily involved in BBSes and BBS chat systems. Unlike Scoble and many other much higher profile bloggers, when my work day is done, I don't typically spend my free time poking around Facebook, MySpace, or other social networking functions. I have hobbies that have nothing to do with computers and technology and I like it that way. One exception - I leave my IM apps open quite often, but I have been using IM apps for 10+ years now and they have an obvious use to me.

Go read Louis' post because he frames it pretty well and I have the exact position that he has. Then let me know if you use Twitter and if you think it would benefit me or the community to be involved.

Cheers!

Short notice I know, but I want to get this out there. I am delivering Part 1 of an 8 part series on Exchange this afternoon at 1pm Pac. This is the Intro to Exchange session. We will review the Exchange roles, why Exchange is 64 bit only, and then spend the rest of the time talking about and demoing new features in OWA, AutoDiscover, and Transport Rules. You can sign up at the link below --

Exchange 2007 in Depth - Part 1 of 8 - Introduction

I am also delivering part two of the series on Friday also at 1pm Pac --

Exchange 2007 in Depth - Part 2 of 8 - Deployment and Migration

Bonus! -- I use my home Exchange server for the demos so you get to see a real (albeit small and relatively small load) server in production. I am at Exchange 2007 SP1 so you will get to see some of those features in action as well.

Cheers!

First....a big thank you to everyone who posted comments...including the most recent comment by Scott Lum. He is a marketing manager for online communications at Microsoft and is also one of the people I started interfacing with to communicate your feedback to the webcast team. The feedback you are providing is being pushed to the webcast team and they are receptive.

Next....Scott let me know of a couple of blogs you might be interested in for providing feedback on webcasts --

Technet Webcast Blog - Currently Dormant....BUT! If we drive enough traffic over there we can fix that!

MSDN Webcast Blog - Much more active!

Let's check out these blogs, provide some feedback and see if we can make some change happen!

Chris

So I have this nice Sony HD video camera that I want to start using for video interviews. In fact, my first video interview will be a week from Friday. I have already taken a number of videos with the camera and used the Sony software to convert the Sony AVCHD format to MPEG. Now I am wondering how to get that video posted to my blog simply and easy. I would like to retain it in HD format if possible but if shooting in 4x3 standard def makes more sense then I guess I can downgrade the video for now.

I have never really posted video to the web so....

What would you do?

Cheers!

Interested in taking a look at a new solution accelerator? You can sign up to join the beta for the Windows 2008 Server Security Guide and be one of the first to preview this solution accelerator and its components. One of the goals of this solution accelerator is to supply IT professionals with best practices and automated tools to help strengthen the security of servers running Windows Server 2008.

The guide is now in Beta release, and is available for your review on  Microsoft® TechNet. Check out the Executive Overview by clicking here.

Cheers!

For that matter.....Do you even like Microsoft Webcasts?

My team is on a conference call right now and we are discussing webcast attendance and how to get more people to attend. All of us are raising some interesting questions but we are on the inside and may not have an appropriate perspective. I want to know what you think about our webcasts and what you want from them. More Demos? Less Demos? Different topics? How deep should we go? Are they discoverable? Are they too long or too short? Guest speakers? I am just throwing things out there.

You tell me -What do you want in a webcast?

Cheers!

Here is the Office 2003 SP1 Policy Reference link. And here is the Office 2007 Policy Templates and Office customization too link.

Cheers!

For those of you that attended my Santa Rosa Technet event, here is the link to the most current Group Policy Spreadsheet. This only cover through Vista RTM and does not have any updates for Windows Server 2008 or anything coming down the pipe in Vista SP1. I will ask around to see if/when the spreadsheet will get updated though I suspect it will simply get refreshed at the same link.

***Update**** Here is a link to the Windows 2003 SP1 Group Policy Spreadsheet.

Cheers!

Raul commented on my previous BitLocker Post with a question that I felt compelled to make into a post.

"I had a quick question about the key for BitLocker to unlock your computer, when you have it on your flash drive, if you make it a hidden folder can the computer still read it and log you into your computer without it locking you out?"

The Bitlocker key is not in a folder on the USB drive, it is in the root. However, the file itself can be marked as hidden. If you do this though, it can not be read during startup and you will not have access to the drive. You would then need to put the USB memory stick into another machine, mark the key file as *NOT* hidden, then unlock the original machine. I verified this by testing it out on my demo machine.

I seem to recall someone asking me if it was ok to mark the key file as READ ONLY. In fact, when BitlLocker prompts you to write the key to the USB device, that file is actually marked as read only. This provides basic protection against someone opening the file, accidentally hitting a random keystroke or the delete key and munging the BitLocker key. Though it is simple enough to remove the read only flag and make changes. Don't do it.

Cheers!

Oh yeah!  Another question from my event....

"What versions of Windows Mobile does the Windows Mobile Device Center support?"

I knew we supported WM5 and WM6 because I have used both version with it. We actually support Windows Mobile 2003 and later though which is great news for people with older devices.

Cheers!

First, let me start off by saying that my event yesterday was in Saratoga, Ca. Not San Jose. Not Cupertino. Not Santa Clara. It was Saratoga.

Second, I found a very small bar that does Karaoke and went last night. The bar is Woodham Sports Lounge and was located by our concierge, Melissa. Not only did she run a great registration desk for us but she helped me find the karaoke bar. The bar is tiny, but had decent sound and a fair number of regulars. I sang twice - "Black Coffee in Bed" by Squeeze and "How Much I Feel" by Ambrosia. Good Times.

But I guess you are really reading this post because you want to know about BitLocker. I had some great question at the event on BitLocker. In fact I fielded too many questions which threw me off schedule, but I hope I at least answered most of the questions the crowd had. One questions that I opted to verify was - "Does BitLocker ship in they Vista Business Edition?". I thought it did but opted to check first. Turns out, BitLocker only ships in the Ultimate and Enterprise editions. I personally think it is silly that it does not ship in the Business edition, but I don't make the rules on what features ship with what products.

So....to that end, my pledge is to ping the product group and ask them why it isn't in the Business edition. I will post the results here when I have them.

There were also a series of questions around the partitioning requirement for BitLocker --

Why do we need at least two partitions?

What are the partition size requirements?

Those answers can be found in detail at the Technet BitLocker Drive Encryption page. But, in short....

At least two partitions are needed because there are pre-startup authentication system integrity checks that must happen outside of the encrypted environment.

It is recommended that the SYSTEM partition be at least 1.5 gigs in size to accommodate WinPE, the boot files, and other files that are related to system setup or updates. The remaining partitions can be any size we need for our environment.

One question that I am surprised did NOT come up was around the type of encryption used to protect the keys. The chart below give a break down of that.

Finally, I would recommend reading the BitLocker FAQ on the Technet site. I know a lot of our FAQ pages are pretty lean, but this one is quite good.

Cheers!

There have been some funny spoof videos over the years, but this is one of the best. It is also the single most star studded video (that I have seen us do). And it is long! Clear the next 7 minutes.....and laugh out loud...it's good for you!

Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft (video) - istartedsomething

Cheers!

I met Robby Sparks and his wife Misty when my wife and I traveled with a group to the UK. At that time I didn't know that Robby was a science fiction fan. Not long after moving to Washington, Robby emails me and asks for my mailing address. I didn't think anything of it at the time and didn't think about it all when some weeks later I received a small manilla envelope in the mail. Inside was Volume 1: Issue 6 (Summer 2006) of APEX - a quarterly Science Fiction and Horror magazine.

I have been a sci-fi/fantasy/horror reader since I was a kid and figured it was something I signed up for somewhere or that it was a promotional copy sent to me. The mag sat for a day or two and then I started thumbing through it. I read a few of the short stories and started hitting a few of the web sites for the authors and assorted other places advertised. Then I stumbled upon one of the short stories and recognized the name - none other than Robby Sparks!

Apparently Robby is now helping promote APEX and also branching off into acting and directing because he recently posted a short movie to YouTube entitled - The Door of APEX - which he wrote and stars in. His wife Misty did the camera work. The basic premise is a man sees troubling images and wants to know why so he goes to see a psychiatrist. I will leave it at that.....

Btw.....the image of the man that flashes at the beginning of the video is the covert art from the issue above that he was published in.

Robby.....remember me when you become famous!!!

Cheers!

I have recovered.....almost.

My wife and I had some people over to the house New Year's Eve. I believe the last person left around 4am. That by itself would not have that much impact on my recovery. However, we were in Florida for a week just before New Years (3 hour time zone shift) and I have enough problems sleeping at home much less on the road. Add in our almost 24 hour awake time making connections getting home from Florida the day before the New Years Eve party and I was in pretty sad shape till this morning.

I am also hopelessly behind on email. I am spending today catching up while building out some demo machines for the new content we are delivering starting next week. In glancing at email it seems there are a number of support related questions which I will likely convert to blog postings throughout today and the weekend.

The Technet Live Events team is starting delivery of new content next week. I will be in San Jose, Ca on Jan 8th then on to Santa Clara, Ca on Jan 10th. I round out my "tour" of California on Jan 15th in Los Angeles. Of course "Los Angeles" is a big area to cover so to be more specific, I will be in Century City.

We are going to be doing two sessions - The first on BitLocker and I will being doing some Live Bitlocker encryption and decryption on multpile partitions. Pretty cool stuff and will be refelctive of what I am using on my own corporate laptop. Teh second sessions will dive into Network Access Protection (NAP) and the new Network Policy Server (NPS) in Windows Server 2008 (btw....NPS is our implementation of RADIUS.....plus some BALCO approved application boosters).

I am also looking to do Karaoke on the evenings of Jan 8th and 10th. If you are interested in having a night out you are welcome to join me. I may even have to revive the Karaoke challenge. More on that later.....

Cheers!

If you read my previous post and bothered to go out to the Robert Scoble's post which prompted it, you will see me kind of going toe-to-toe with Robert. In my own opinion, I think Robert just doesn't like being confronted much less being wrong which is why we have been going back and forth. I also think he has become such an Apple fanboy that he can't see past his Mac to understand that there are excellent products and features being delivered by lots of companies besides Apple.

But that is just my opinion.

I would like for you, the 12 regular readers I have - :) - to correct me if I am wrong.

If you want the short version, go read Scoble's post. Then read comments #5(me), #7(Scoble), #24(me), #28(Scoble), #32(Scoble), #39(me), #41(Scoble), #44(Me).

I would like to know if, in your opinion, it is me or Robert that does or does not get it.

Cheers!

Check out one of Robert Scoble's recent posts regarding connecting a MacMini to an HDTV. He runs through a list of cool things he now has because he connected the MacMini to a computer to his HDTV. There isn't a item in his list that we have not been able to do, and do very well, with a Windows Media Center PC for the last 5 years. He even makes mention that he has a Media Center but he apparently didn't understand what it was capable of or never actually used it else he would have known these things. he could have saved himself $700 if he just would have.....well......RTFM.

He then details why the PC connected to a TV "revolution" hasn't materialized yet. Each of his reasons (with the exception of the Dave Winer software....which I have not investigated) is actually invalid.

1. "Dave Winer's Software" - haven't seen it so I can't comment (***update*** - it appears Dave's software is Mac only)

2. $700 for a consumer device is too much - I agree with that. But there are $500 Media Center PC's on the market. They don't have the CableCard HDTV capabilities which does bump the price up but I would argue that HD has yet to saturate the consumer market enough to make it a high enough priority for most consumers. HDTV Sales maybe soaring but consumer understanding of how to make use of them is lagging behind. That will change dramatically over the next few years though and I believe we will see much higher adoption.

3. "It still seems a bit weird to connect a PC to a TV" - I was doing this with my Apple //gs 20 years ago. It was weird then. It hasn't been weird for at least 3-5 years now and certainly is not weird today. Every major retailer has a Media Center PC's for sale and most have one connected to big TV's in their electronics departments or displaying recorded content on a demo machine in the PC department. Just because you have to go to an Apple store to see a Mac do it doesn't mean that PC's haven't been able to do this for 5 years now.

4. "Too many people assume a TV is just for watching TV and haven’t considered doing anything else on it. Sounds like the cell phone market before the iPhone, huh?" - I don't really want to comment on the whole iPhone thing but I have to. Scoble seems to suggest that prior to the release of the iPhone, the everyday cell phone user didn't use their cell phone for anything except making and receiving phone calls. The every day American cell phone user has been sending text messages, posting to blogs, listening to music and browsing the web with their phones for years. Maybe not with the same flash and overpriced device that the iPhone provides us, but we have been doing it. Go outside the US and cell phones are used for purchase transactions, watching TV, listening to the radio, gaming, authentication and identification. When considering TV's, Windows Media Center, MythTV and other similar products have allowed consumers to use their TV's as a picture editor and viewer, movie player, Internet browser, stereo, personal video recorder, digital picture frame and more for years. I will be the first to admit that the everyday consumer has been a little slow to get on the bandwagon but the products are out there and people are using them.

I have been using Windows Media Center since it was in beta for the 2004 edition. When I lived in the San Diego area I started with MCE 2004 and a couple of WinTV-250 analog tuner cards. I very quickly added an over-the-air HD tuner to add HD recording capabilities for the local channels. For a brief period in SoCal that machine would (usually on Thursday evenings) be recording 2 analog channels and an HD channel at the same time. That would all be taking place in the background while I was browsing the web, listening to music, viewing and editing pictures I had stored on the Media Center from my digital camera. I am not much of a gamer these days but i did play some Quake and other games back then all while the Media Center did it's thing in the background.

Now that I live in Redmond, WA I am on the wrong side of a hill to be able to get OTA HD broadcasts so I have relied on my cable-company's HD-PVR to record HD content. But I am very close to investing in a system similar to what Keith Comb's posted about recently. I wouldn't even be making this investment if it weren't for the fact that I am on the wrong side of the hill and my existing Media Center is the same one I started out with in SoCal. That 5 year old hardware is a little dated now and can easily be re-purposed in my house for some other use so I am looking to build a new Media Center system. I am looking to put together a dual CableCard tuner system and ditch my cable company's DVR box so I can reduce the amount of hardware in the living room.

Cheer