REDMOND, Wash. — May 21, 2013 — A new vision for the future comes to life today as Microsoft Corp. unveils Xbox One , the all-in-one gaming and entertainment system created for today and the next generation. At Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash., the company showcased how Xbox One puts you at the center of all your games, TV, movies, music, sports and Skype.

See the full press release at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/May13/05-21XboxPR.aspx.

Lots of information at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xboxone/what-it-is.

By now you’ve likely heard about the tornado disaster today. Oklahoma City isn’t that far north of Dallas/Ft. Worth. Today an EF5 hit that area and destroyed the lives of thousands of people. Nature is a powerful force and it seems the radical nature of our weather it getting more and more extreme.

I’ve seen tornados up close and personal. I was literally at the genesis (Lake Worth) of the tornado that hit downtown Ft. Worth a few years ago. It wasn’t my first brush with one. They are a fact of life and nuisance in the south.

I have seen many pictures and videos of twisters. The one from today below is particularly scary because it shows the before and after. One of the schools destroyed is in the foreground at the beginning of the video. The storm chasers that shot the video had the good sense to not publish the school getting destroyed. It is gut wrenching but clearly demonstrates why we keep a careful eye on the sky and weather reports this time of year.

A lot of people lost their lives today, over twenty were children. I can’t even imagine. Say a prayer for the families.

[UPDATE] Thankfully, fewer people were killed than first reported.  It breaks my heart to watch the stories. Clearly there were many heroes in the midst of the destruction. Many of them teachers.

This document provides customers with the necessary guidance to develop solutions for a Microsoft private cloud infrastructure in accordance with the IaaS PLA patterns that are identified for use with the Windows Server 2012 operating system. This document provides specific guidance for developing fabric architectures (compute, network, storage, and virtualization layers) of an overall private cloud solution.

Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38817.

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Management Pack provides comprehensive service health information for your Exchange organization. The Exchange 2013 Management Pack is engineered for organizations that include servers running Exchange 2013. The key feature of this management pack is user focused monitoring. The simplified dashboard focuses on the user experience and makes it easier for you quickly determine exactly what your users are experiencing.

• Simplified dashboard The dashboard of the Exchange 2013 Management Pack has been simplified and refined into the following three categories:
  • Active Alerts Provides a list of all outstanding alerts in your organization.
  • Organization Health Provides an overview of the overall service health in your organization.
  • Server Health Provides an overview of the health of individual servers in your organization.
• User focused monitoring Exchange 2013 introduces a monitoring and recovery infrastructure called Managed Availability. Managed Availability focuses on the user experience. All Exchange 2013 components have built-in monitors that detect problems and attempt to recover the service availability. Any issues that can't be recovered automatically are escalated to the Exchange 2013 Management Pack as an alert.

Got get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39039.

Kerberos authentication provides a highly secure method to authenticate client and server entities (security principals) on a network. To use Kerberos authentication with SQL Server, a Service Principal Name (SPN) must be registered with Active Directory, which plays the role of the Key Distribution Center in a Windows domain. In addition, many customers also enable delegation for multi tier applications using SQL Server. In such a setup, it may be difficult to troubleshoot the connectivity problems with SQL Server when Kerberos authentication fails.

The Kerberos Configuration Manager for SQL Server is a diagnostic tool that helps troubleshoot Kerberos related connectivity issues with SQL Server. It can perform the following functions:

• Gather information on OS and Microsoft SQL Server instances installed on a server.
• Report on all SPN and delegation configurations on the server.
• Identify potential problems in SPNs and delegations.
• Fix potential SPN problems.

Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39046.

Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) has published a series of great courses covering Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1 over the last several weeks. This content has been so well-received that we’ve asked Senior Technical Evangelist Symon Perriman and Senior Program Manager Justin Incarnato to host a two-hour “MVA Live Q&A” session exclusively for our MVA community. This is an incredible opportunity to get answers to your System Center questions! This is a free session and open to anyone interested in Microsoft System Center 2012.

For more information and the registration links, head on over to the Microsoft Virtual Academy at https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/liveevents/Live-QA-System-Center?CR_CC=200211913.

I can see it already.  A remake of the classic “The Final Countdown” with drones instead of Tomcats.

The Nokia Lumia 928 will be available on May 16th at VerizonWireless.com and at your local Verizon Wireless Store for a price of $99 after a $50 mail in rebate. Also, a new 2-year service agreement is required.

As a sweet bonus – for a limited time – buyers of the Nokia Lumia 928 will get a $25 credit for Windows Phone apps and games with the purchase of the phone.

For more information, head on over to the Nokia blog at http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/05/10/introducing-nokia-lumia-928-bringing-pureview-to-verizon/.

I really wish this device was available on ATT last month.  Oh well, you win a few, you lose a few.  Looks like a sweet phone.

Last summer Sean Jr. and I witnessed a hawk swooping down and grabbing a Texas Spiny Lizard from the flower bed next to us.  This was mere feet from us and as you might imagine, seeing nature in action like this left an impression on Sean and I. He’s five years old. 

The hawk likely never saw us because we were blocked by a large Red Oak on his approach, and I am sure he was very focused.  It freaked Sean and I out, in a good way.  We just looked at each other in awe.

Well tonight I was out in the back yard checking the pool and I looked up to see the mysterious hawk.  I eased back into the house and grabbed my camera.  Light was dissipating fast. I managed to squeeze off a couple of ok shots with my Canon G11.

Now I need your help identifying our friend.  Anyone know what type of hawk this is?  It looks very much like an owl with that round head.  I see it flying daily as I walk my dog Elvis down the street and back. It has a very cool delta shaped tail.

Here’s another pic with the flash.  Makes him look pretty mean.  I am sure he is not happy I am interfering with his lizard hunt. I am not sure I like that much.  We are fond of the Texas Spiny Lizard.

Do any of you have an idea what type of hawk this is? 

Make Windows Azure Your Datacenter! This Jump Start will help you understand how you can use Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, such as Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks, to migrate, extend, run, manage and monitor common workloads in the cloud. The jumpstart will be led by Microsoft Lead Azure Technical Evangelist David Tesar and Azure Group Technical Product Manager David Aiken. Get ready for a live online interactive experience highlighting the latest and greatest via numerous scenarios and demos all while answering questions from the audience.

For more information and to register for this free training event, head on over to https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/liveevents/Windows-Azure-for-IT-Professionals?CR_CC=200206717.

http://www.lamborghini.com/en/models/special-and-limited-editions/aventador-lp720-4-50-anniversario/overview/

This document provides a practitioner’s perspective and contains a set of practical techniques to help IT executives protect an enterprise Active Directory® environment. Active Directory plays a critical role in the IT infrastructure, and ensures the harmony and security of different network resources in a global, interconnected environment. The methods discussed are based largely on the Microsoft® Information Security and Risk Management (ISRM) organization’s experience, which is accountable for protecting the assets of Microsoft IT and other Microsoft Business Divisions, in addition to advising a selected number of Microsoft Global 500 customers.

Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38785

This poster illustrates and explains the new world of identity and authentication in Office 2013 and Office 365. Two scenarios illustrate how identities are provisioned and how those identities are authenticated completely in the Microsoft cloud or in a hybrid (on-premises and Microsoft cloud) topology.

Go get the poster @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38193

Since many other operating system vendors are also adopting this MIT-developed authentication protocol, Kerberos Version 5 will increasingly become a centerpiece of enterprise-level interoperability. Kerberos provides secure user authentication with an industry standard that permits interoperability. The Active Directory domain controller maintains user account and log-in information to support the Kerberos service.

Want to learn more?  Be sure to bookmark the Kerberos Survival Guide on the TechNet WIKI at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4209.kerberos-survival-guide.aspx. 

Test Lab Guides (TLGs) allow you to get valuable hands-on experience with new products and technologies using a pre-defined and tested methodology that results in a working configuration. When you use a TLG to create a test lab, instructions define what servers to create, how to configure the operating systems and system services, and how to install and configure any additional products or technologies. A TLG experience enables you to see all of the components and the configuration steps on both the front-end and back-end that are required for a product or technology or for a multi-product or technology solution.

Sound interesting?  Check them out at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1262.test-lab-guides.aspx.

In order to do a blog real justice, I am a firm believer you really should want to have a conversation with the internet community, and put some serious energy into it.  It’s been a privilege to be a Microsoft spokesperson for many years and I hope I earned your respect.

But it had to take a back seat. My wife Nacheska and I discovered in late 2011 she had a stage four Gliosarcoma brain tumor. Needless to say this was terrible news. Survivability for this type of cancer is practically nil. There are rare exceptions, but really really rare.

Nacheska passed away on March 29, 2013.  She is no longer suffering. The quality of her life the past year and half was pretty good. As good as it could be under the circumstances.

Over forty years of professional dancing helped her in many ways. She had some miraculous recoveries from the various surgeries and episodes. She spent quite a lot of quality time with everyone in our family and I am extremely thankful for all of the support from them, our friends, customers, the medical community and the first responders here in Southlake, Texas.

I will write more about Nacheska. I shot some excellent video of her last fall.  It was a beautiful time of year, and it was really good to see her healthy, happy and in her element, dancing!

My family and I are healing.  It’s going to take some time but we are all getting back in the saddle again.  I still have some pretty big tasks to settle various aspects of her estate, but I promise some high quality blogging soon.

On the bright side, I’ve changed some habits and as a result have dropped forty pounds. Fruit and vegetables are good for you!  Who knew?

Anyway, I thought I should at least tell you where the hell I’ve been and why.  As I said on twitter, I’m back.

Now this is a simulator and it is for sale at Costco, if you can afford it.

This guide is the third edition of the first volume in a series about Windows Azure. It demonstrates how you can adapt an existing on-premises ASP.NET application to one that operates in the cloud by introducing a fictitious company named Adatum that modifies its expense tracking and reimbursement system, aExpense, so that it can be deployed to Windows Azure. To illustrate the wide range of options and features in Windows Azure, this guide and the code examples available for it show a step-by-step migration process that includes using Windows Azure Web Sites, Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, and SQL Database. Together with useful information on developing, deploying, managing, and costing cloud-hosted applications, this guide provides you with a comprehensive resource for moving your applications to Window Azure.

Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29252

Microsoft is looking for great student research on the future of cybersecurity policy. If you have conducted or plan to conduct such research, read on for information on how you can win a $5,000 cash prize for your research in our Cybersecurity 2020 essay contest. 

Get the full details at http://blogs.technet.com/b/security/archive/2013/03/21/cybersecurity-2020-student-essay-contest.aspx.

See the official rules and information at http://www.microsoft.com/security/gssd/contest.aspx.

I want to thank the folks at Bing for the smile today.  Very Cute. Because he can see the nude beach. LOL

Shelby America is making a limited run of the Shelby 1000 with 1200 horsepower.  Seems like they should call it the Shelby 1200 if you ask me but what the heck.  I don’t see any information in product area at http://shelbyamerican.com/shelby1000.asp or the press release at http://shelbyamerican.com/news.asp but I am sure their marketing folks will figure out this web thing soon.

In the meantime, head on over to http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/22/2013-shelby-1000-unleashes-its-1-200-horsepower-ahead-of-ny-show/ for the early press release and photos.  Photo above courtesy of the fine folks at autoblog.com.

I wonder what jamming the pedal on 1200 horses feels like. Hold on to yer butts.

Pandora® is a great app for people who love music and want to expand their musical horizons. Simply enter the name of one of your favorite artists, songs, composers or genres and Pandora will create a custom station that plays similar music. You’ll hear many of your favorite tunes and discover new artists and tracks.

Use thumbs-up and thumbs-down to personalize your stations even more — it’s a music lover’s dream. If you’re already a Pandora listener, your Windows Phone app will sync automatically with Pandora on the Web so you can listen to all of your stations without interruption — or create new ones from your phone.

Experience ad-free Pandora when you listen on your Windows Phone through 2013. Only Windows Phone has Pandora with no ads and no monthly streaming limit…for FREE. Windows Phone brings you the Pandora you love and gives it a unique Windows Phone twist, allowing you to pin your favorite stations to the Start screen, or see what’s playing by glancing at your Pandora Live Tile. Take your favorite personalized radio service to a whole new level with Windows Phone!

See the Download @ http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/pandora/de2df279-485d-49bb-b53e-3f6a2a9401c1.

Here’s the latest from the Office IT Pro Blog.  In this episode hosts Jeremy Chapman and Yoni Kirsh answer your questions about a user-based Office service, how identity and services are provisioned, where data and passwords are stored and what the user experiences look like. They also catch up with cybersecurity expert and author, Mark Russinovich, to discuss the cloud security model.

See the full post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_resource_kit/archive/2013/03/20/the-new-office-garage-series-identity-activation-data-access.aspx.

Group Policy tools use Administrative template files to populate policy settings in the user interface. This allows administrators to manage registry-based policy settings.  Looking for the admin templates for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012?  Here they are.

Go get em @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36991.

Supported operating systems: Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2012.

Use Jetstress to verify the performance and stability of a disk subsystem prior to putting an Exchange server into production. Jetstress helps verify disk performance by simulating Exchange disk Input/Output (I/O) load. Specifically, Jetstress simulates the Exchange database and log file loads produced by a specific number of users. You use Performance Monitor, Event Viewer, and ESEUTIL in conjunction with Jetstress to verify that your disk subsystem meets or exceeds the performance criteria you establish. After a successful completion of the Jetstress Disk Performance and Stress Tests in a non-production environment, you will have ensured that your Exchange disk subsystem is adequately sized (in terms of performance criteria you establish) for the user count and user profiles you have established. It is highly recommended that the Jetstress user read through the tool documentation before using the tool.

Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36849

There is a fascinating article at http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/19/4120548/calm-before-the-swarm-domestic-drones-are-here that covers the topic of drones, current and future usage scenarios.  You should read it.  You should also watch their video.  Excellent information you should absorb and think about.

I tried to get their video embed code working but it doesn’t work well.  Be sure and watch it.  It’ll freak you out.  Trust me.

As you are probably aware, Microsoft Research has a TechFest each year on our Redmond Campus.  The TechFest site has a plethora of information on the activities taking place this year.  You won’t get to see and hear about everything.  Some stuff is obviously secret.  But we are sharing some pretty cool stuff.  When you have time, be sure to checkout the following areas:

• Projects - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/events/techfest2013/projects.aspx.
• Videos - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/events/techfest2013/video.aspx
• News - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/techfest2013/news.aspx

And of course, there are a number of other areas on the grid like this new thing called Facebook.  Here are some related resources:

• TechFest microsite: http://research.microsoft.com/techfest2013
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/MSFTResearch (hashtag: #MSRTF13)
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftresearch
• YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/microsoftresearch
• Microsoft Research blog: www.insidemicrosoftresearch.com
• Next at Microsoft blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/
• Microsoft Research on socl: http://www.so.cl/#/profile/Microsoft-Research

This is an excellent resource tool.  Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34798.

What does it mean for online content to “go viral”? An analysis of almost a billion information cascades on Twitter news, videos, and photos has produced the first quantitative notion of whether something has indeed gone viral, thereby enabling further research into topic experts, trending topics, and viral-incident metrics.

See the original post at http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/dl.aspx?id=185452&l=I with links to several video formats.

Can someone lend me a few mill?  http://www.laferrari.com/en/

Back in the early days of Microsoft, our mission was to put a PC on every desk and in every home — an ambitious goal for the time. Behind that was the conviction that computer technology had the innate capacity to enrich peoples’ lives. The trick was applying it in a way that made sense, solved a problem, or generally made life better.

When dramatic technology changes are on the horizon, just describing a possible future isn’t enough – sometimes you have to show it and let people experience it themselves. Over the years, Microsoft has created immersive showcases that show how future technologies could shape our world – first through the Microsoft Home, which opened its doors in 1994, and later through facilities like the Envisioning Lab, which explored possibilities for the workplace of the future.

See the rest of the blog post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2013/03/01/step-inside-the-microsoft-envisioning-center.aspx. Check out the following video. I was shocked at how much this looks like my home. Grin.

“I have a 250GB hard drive. When I look at the properties of the drive, it tells me that I have 75GB free and that 175GB are in use. However, when I add all my files together, I only see 150GB in use. That is a difference of 25GB. Where did my space go?”

Ever have a similar question in your mind?  Sure you do.  Robert explains many of the mysteries in the blog post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2013/03/01/where-did-my-space-go.aspx.  Nicely done Robert.

The Halo franchise is an award-winning collection of properties that has grown into a global entertainment phenomenon. To date, more than 50 million copies of Halo video games have been sold worldwide. As developers prepared to launch Halo 4, they were tasked with analyzing data to gain insights into player preferences and support an online tournament. To handle those requests, the team used a powerful Microsoft technology called Windows Azure HDInsight Service, based on the Apache Hadoop big data framework. Using HDInsight Service to process and analyze raw data from Windows Azure, the team was able to feed game statistics to the tournament’s operator, which used the data to rank players based on game play. The team also used HDInsight Service to update Halo 4 every week and support a daily email campaign designed to increase player retention. Organizations can also take advantage of data to quickly make business decisions.

See the full case study at http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=710000002102.  This one is pretty interesting. Grin.

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 27, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today announced worldwide availability of a major new update to its Microsoft Office 365 services for business. Microsoft’s most complete Office cloud service to date has new features and offerings tailored to the needs and budgets of small, medium-size and large organizations. In addition to updated Microsoft Lync Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online services, business users can now get the rich Office applications they are familiar with, on up to five devices, delivered as an always up-to-date cloud service. Office 365 features enhanced enterprise social capabilities with SharePoint and Yammer today, and Lync-Skype connectivity for presence, instant messaging (IM), and voice by June. The new Office 365 service is available today in 69 markets and 17 languages and will be available in an additional 20 markets and 16 languages in the second quarter of this year.

See the rest of the press release at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Feb13/02-27OfficeCommercialGAPR.aspx.

Internet Explorer 10 is available worldwide in 95 languages for download today. We will begin auto updating Windows 7 customers to IE10 in the weeks ahead, starting today with customers running the IE10 Release Preview. With this final release, IE10 brings the same leading standards support, with improved performance, security, privacy, reliability that consumers enjoy on Windows 8, to Windows 7 customers. MORE

I am a fan of great notebook screens.  I have some of the best on the market.  Needless to say, the Google Pixel launch caught my eye.  Here’s a pic of the pix with links to the relevant information.  Looks a lot like the Retina Mac.

Anyone buy one yet? It’s only $1449 for the 64GB model. See http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixel/. That is probably the most expensive screen on the market.  I’ll pass.

A couple of days ago HTC announced a sweet looking smartphone they call the HTC One. This looks like a nice handset but I am anxious to see if they’ll take the form factor and create a Windows phone.  With a Quad core and 64GB of memory, I should be able to run some hyper-v virtual machines, right? Grin.

See http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one/ for all of the information and specs on the phone.

Engadget just released the results of the Readers Choice Awards for 2012 at http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/20/winners-2012-engadget-awards-readers-choice/. 

As you can see, the Microsoft Surface RT won Tablet of the Year.  Kudos to the Surface team.  Nicely done!

You’ll also notice Nokia nailed the Smartphone of the Year award for the Lumia 920.  Sweet!

I’d like a Mars Rover scaled down to chase the armadillos with.  Can I get it with the net option too? Tired of those critters messing up my yard.

The goal of this document is to present an overview of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) virtual smart cards (VSCs) as an option for strong authentication. It is intended not only to provide the means for evaluating VSC use in an enterprise deployment, but also to provide the information necessary to deploy and manage.

Go get the guide @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29076.

Jeremy Chapman, resident deployment guru for Microsoft, is launching a new blog series on Office they are calling the “Garage Series for IT Pros”.  In addition to providing a wealth of information on deployment, it looks like they are going to do some crazy stuff like jump out of a perfectly fine aircraft.  No thanks. Grin.

See http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_resource_kit/archive/2013/02/20/new-office-new-garage-series-for-it-pros.aspx for the announcement and video.