Ramblings from another nerd on the grid
Office Web Apps gives users a browser-based viewing and editing experience by providing a representation of an Office document in the browser. When a user clicks on a document stored in a SharePoint document library, the document opens directly in the browser. The document appears in the browser similar to how it appears in the Office client application. The Web app also provides many of the same editing features as an Office client application.
Office Web Apps provides this representation of an Office Word document, PowerPoint presentation, Excel workbook, or OneNote notebook using native browser objects such as HTML, JavaScript, and images. Each document type is handled differently depending on the Office Web Apps services started and whether the Office Web Apps Feature is activated.
Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=515dd67e-3ff6-4f0d-bc45-cfc8ba742055.
Many companies invest a good amount of money trying to protect their resources by adding more software, additional layers of protection and also by enhancing policies and procedures to enforce security. However, many companies do not realize yet that many of those security goals can be accomplished by correctly configuring the Windows operating system and taking advantage of the built in security features. The goal of this article is to give you the core foundation on Windows Security and how to take advantage of Windows operating system security capabilities to achieve company’s security goals. This survival guide it’s yours, feel free to enhance it with your insights around this subject.
Full article courtesy of Yuri Diogenes @ http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/windows-security-survival-guide.aspx.
Pretty impressive feature set. I definitely want to see this one up close. See Sammy’s info site at http://galaxytab.samsungmobile.com/.
Next Wednesday we launch the “Talk TechNet” show. Keith Combs and I are the hosts and each week we’ll have a guest on the show that is a subject matter expert on some facet of Microsoft products and technologies. We are starting off the show with twice weekly episodes on Wednesday and Friday and we’ll quickly move to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday format.
For our inaugural show on 1/26/2011 we invited Jeremy Moskowitz. Jeremy is a wonderful speaker on many of the Microsoft products and has strong skills with Group Policy. Be sure to checkout his site at http://gpanswers.com.
This is a live show and you are invited to call in with a question on the subject for the day. In this case we’ll be talking about Group Policy. Think of this like a sports talk show for IT Pros.
We’ll be creating a landing page for the show at technet.microsoft.com soon. As soon as it’s available I’ll update you here on the location. Each show will be live. Replays will be available in a variety of formats within forty eight hours. We’ll also have an RSS feed if you want to subscribe with your player or smartphone.
Be sure to tell all of you friends and colleagues on Twitter, Facebook, etc. You can follow Matt on Twitter via @matthewhester or Keith via @Keith_Combs. Talk to you next week.
Next Friday is Talk TechNet Episode 2. Matt Hester and I are the hosts and each week we’ll have a guest on the show that is a subject matter expert on some facet of Microsoft products and technologies. We are starting off the show with twice weekly episodes on Wednesday and Friday and we’ll quickly move to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday format.
For our second show on 1/28/2011 we invited Jason Sandys. Jason is a Microsoft MVP and SME on the management product System Center Configuration Manager. Jason is a Managing Consultant for Catapult Systems and blogs about infrastructure topics.
This is a live show and you are invited to call in with a question on the subject for the day. In this case we’ll be talking about SCCM. Think of this like a sports talk show for IT Pros.
Broadcast Date: 1/28/2011 Show Time: 9am PST Length: 60 minutes Registration Link and Details: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032475537&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US.
Broadcast Date: 1/28/2011
Show Time: 9am PST
Length: 60 minutes
Registration Link and Details: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032475537&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US.
Be sure to tell all of you friends and colleagues on Twitter, Facebook, etc. You can follow me on Twitter via @Keith_Combs. Talk to you next week.
The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) is an agentless, automated, multi-product planning and assessment tool for quicker and easier desktop and server migrations and upgrades. MAP provides detailed readiness assessment reports and executive proposals with extensive hardware and application information, and actionable recommendations to help organizations accelerate their IT infrastructure planning process, and gather more detail on assets that reside in their current environment. MAP also provides server utilization data for Hyper-V server virtualization planning; identifying server placements, and performing virtualization candidate assessments, including ROI analysis for server consolidation with Hyper-V. Learn more.
MAP is one of the tools provided by the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and Security Compliance Manager provide tested guidance and automated tools to help organizations plan, securely deploy, and manage new Microsoft technologies—easier, faster, and at less cost. All are freely available, and fully-supported by Microsoft. Learn more.
For home users and users with a few computers to migrate, use the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to understand the readiness of your computer for Windows 7.
The MAP Toolkit includes the following components:
Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=67240b76-3148-4e49-943d-4d9ea7f77730.
Are you an expert on all facets of deploying Office 2010? If so, you’re a rare bird. If you are like the rest of us, you are probably looking for help. The Office Resource Kit (ORK) is an invaluable resource for planning and deploying this product. It has four major sections described as follows:
Go get the 475 pages @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b4917d33-441a-4dd2-8255-9fa599bae3db. And don’t forget the Office tech center at http://technet.microsoft.com/office. This is a wonderful site chalk full of great information.
The System Center Service Manager – Exchange Connector connects Service Manager to Exchange for processing incoming emails related to incidents and change requests.
The emails can update the incident action log or change the status of an incident to resolved or closed. Incoming emails with special keywords allow a change request reviewer to approve or reject a review activity and activity implementers can mark activities assigned to them as completed. The SendEmail solution allows analysts to send messages to users via email from the console.
Feature Summary This release is compatible with Service Manager 2010 SP1. It contains the final set of features for this version, including
Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=0b48d1f1-434a-4ee6-8017-fc13f4c16785.
Press release at http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/01/25/intel-teams-with-william-black-eyed-peas-front-man. Be sure to check out his shoes. I’m thinking they are Sandy Bridge powered or something.
See http://technet.microsoft.com/talk for the radio show launch page. In this area of TechNet you can see the coming lineup of guests and topics we are booking. Feel free to send me ideas of people you want me to try and get on the show. Registration is open for the first four shows and I’ll have the entire month of February live very soon.
I’m still making some decisions on the RSS feeds for those of you that want to subscribe with a Zune, Windows Phone, iPad, iPhone, iPod, or other player. Most likely I’ll just provide a .MP3 feed initially and add .MP4 later if we start shooting video.
Talk to you very soon!
For anyone hosting a “radio show”, those words are certainly music. Yesterday Matt Hester and I hosted the first Talk TechNet show. Our guest was Jeremy Moskowitz and we had a great time chatting it up online and on the phone. Attendance of the show was very good and I wanted to thank all of you for attending and being a great audience.
Here are some observations of mine, as well as some feedback that came in on the evaluations we received:
“I actually had a question answered. This webcast just helped my project move over a hurdle.”
More information
I’ve been putting together a number of locations you will want to be aware of. We have a landing page, blog and twitter account as usual. Here are their locations and the intent of each.
That’s it for now. Talk to you tomorrow on the next show. The topic is System Center Configuration Manager with Jason Sandys.
Is this an automobile or a jet? You owe it to yourself to checkout the wonderful gallery on autoblog.com. Swoosh!
If you are feeling exotic http://www.paganiautomobili.it/.
THINK
Talk TechNet is all about discussing topics and trends in the world of IT Professionals. In this show we’ll have guest Amy Babinchak. Amy is a Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) MVP five years running. Amy is President of Harbor Computer Services and an international speaker on SMB security. Call in and join us for what promises to be a lively 60 minute session. Get some burning questions answered.
Register now @ https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032476334&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US if you are going to use a PC and LiveMeeting.
We know you are stuck in the ice. Call in from your car. Phone: (800) 227-8104 PIN: 4684
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Encoder4SP1_WhatsNew.aspx
Obviously this guys hasn’t spent much time in Texas or Florida in the spring. Otherwise he’d realize he is in danger. Hold that mic up real high. Not! And for the record, the other day was my first experience with Thunder Snow.
Porsche Boxster S Black Edition. Great for Texas winters and summer nights. Slightly less than a Superbowl ticket.
Registration at https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032476754&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US.
Dial-in number = (800) 229-0449 pin 5877
The all new Camaro ZL1 with 550 horse's. See http://www.chevrolet.com/camaro-zl1/. Available “early 2012” so even if you make Santa’s Nice list this year, you won’t have one in time for the next Dallas ice storm. I wonder what this baby is going to cost. I’m thinking pretty much the same price as a Corvette.
Head on over to the IE homepage or directly to the download area. I certainly like the changes and features that have been improved since the Beta. Much better experience for me.
Anyone remotely interested in gaming will appreciate the work Sony is doing in their XPERIA Play device. I was all gung ho when Sony first came out with the XPERIA but that wore off in a few seconds after I actually got to hold and feel their first generation phone. I never bought one. It just didn’t feel like it was worth the money they were asking for it. Hopefully this device will reverse that. Can’t wait to see it up close and personal. I hope someone builds a Windows Phone that is similar.
Now you have a nice desktop to go with all of your Hello Kitty gadgets!!! Go get it @ http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/f/2/7F2F0382-FAA4-4CBE-B567-AB49ED8A3F24/LacyHearts.themepack
Perfect for that rad new Quad Core Calpella laptop. Grin.
Ok, now that we’ve had our fun with that, back to Mass Effect 2.
We run fun contests from time to time. Some are harder than others. The entrance barrier for this one is pretty easy. Submit an entry about your Windows 7 experiences and thoughts to the community. The community votes and the best story wins!!! Share a business or personal success. Or write about a cool and innovative feature.
Prizes:
Contest Period: 11/23/09 to 02/23/10
Get started: Click http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9702395. If you haven’t already joined the Windows 7 Community there, you’ll be asked to create an ID. It’s pretty painless. After that, checkout the contest description and rules. The contest is pretty simple. Tell a good story and the community votes. Good luck !!!
See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971767 for more information.
Sometime today I should have a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge in my hands to evaluate for a few weeks. I can hear it already. My honey is going to take one look at it and say, “Let me try that”. Then I’ll never get it back. Look for first impressions this weekend if it arrives today. Look for depression if it doesn’t.
Looks interesting from the front. Not sure about the side or rear. See http://cr-z.honda.com/introducing-the-cr-z-sport-hybrid-coupe/.
Meeting Topic: SharePoint 2010 Overview for IT pros & Information Workers
Topic Description: SharePoint 2010 represents a significant change in features and capabilities from previous versions of SharePoint. In this presentation, Jeff will go through a quick review of the capabilities and features found in SharePoint 2010 and the Sku’s that will offer from Microsoft. The remainder of the time will be spent in hands-on demonstrations of these new features and demonstrate how Microsoft is poised to increase the productivity of today’s information worker.
Location Microsoft's Las Colinas Office LC1 Building (Right Tower) 7000 State Highway 161, Irving, TX
Speaker: Jeff DeVerter has been working with SharePoint since 2003 which is early in the “v2” product line. He has been involved in the following disciplines within SharePoint: System Planning and Architecture, SharePoint Governance and Taxonomy, SharePoint end user development, SharePoint Security Planning and Implementation and SharePoint Training
Jeff DeVerter remains very active and respected in the greater SharePoint community maintaining an active SharePoint Blog and is a sought after public speaker. Recent speaking engagements include: Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, Microsoft Impact Conference, SharePoint Saturday Events in Chicago, Dallas, and San Antonio, and Many online screencast events
Our Sponsor this month is Rackspace! (www.rackspace.com) We are the World's Leader in Hosting and Cloud Computing. All we do is hosting. And we do it better than anyone else in the world. We've set the standard for Cloud, Managed and Email Hosting with our world-class support, expertise and diverse solutions for customers of all sizes, kinds and needs.
Cost: Rackspace is paying for the pizza but please RSVP to help predict the amount of food needed. RSVP: http://events.linkedin.com/DFW-Pro-Feb-Meeting-SharePoint-2010/pub/199846
Agenda: 6-6:30: Dinner and Networking 6:30-7:00: Announcements, and Business meeting 7 - 8:30: Presentation and wrap up
Website: www.dfwitprofessionals.com
The FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and 5.1 enables popular application frameworks that support FastCGI protocol to be hosted on the IIS web server in a high-performance and reliable way. FastCGI provides a high-performance alternative to the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), a standard way of interfacing external applications with Web servers that has been supported as part of the IIS feature-set since the very first release.
CGI programs are executables launched by the web server for each request in order to process the request and generate dynamic responses that are sent back to the client. Because many of these frameworks do not support multi-threaded execution, CGI enables them to execute reliably on IIS by executing exactly one request per process. Unfortunately, it provides poor performance due to the high cost of starting and shutting down a process for each request.
FastCGI addresses the performance issues inherent to CGI by providing a mechanism to reuse a single process over and over again for many requests. Additionally, FastCGI maintains compatibility with non-thread-safe libraries by providing a pool of reusable processes and ensuring that each process will only handle one request at a time.
x64 version @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=16cc6b0a-c93b-4b07-af21-b47f5874df66
x86 version @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=227219aa-6aec-4b80-a9fa-76f811ee9e84
Not sure who is running IIS 6 but there you go anyway.
Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology - this guide enables you to rapidly and accurately select which Microsoft virtualization technology or technologies to use for specific scenarios. There are several different forms of virtualization that need to be understood as a basis for making the right technology choice. This guide addresses the decision steps that need to be taken in order to select the best virtualization approach for specific application requirements. The most effective decision points in the sequence are presented for determining which virtualization technology should be used. When considering virtualization for multiple applications, you should iterate through the entire process individually for each type of application.
This guide has been updated to include Windows Server 2008 R2.
Go get it @ http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=160799. See the rest of the Infrastructure and Planning Design Guides at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/ee382254.aspx.
Submit an entry about your Windows 7 experiences and thoughts to the community. What are you looking forward to in Windows 7? Share a business or personal success, or cool and innovative feature. Your fellow community members will vote, so may the best story win.
It’s going to be interesting tomorrow on the streets in Dallas. I’ll probably make a couple of errands first thing in the morning then hunker down for a snow ball fight. Merry Christmas everyone !!!
Come learn about the great new features in Windows Server 2008 R2 with a focus on the benefits for IT Administrators. This session will cover many new features included in Windows Server 2008 R2 that improve the cost of ownership and IT administrator improvements. This overview session will cover the improvements to Active Directory, Windows PowerShell, Power Management, Group Policy enhancements, Scalability, Server Core enhancements, Windows Server Web application platform, and new Remote Desktop Services features and capabilities. You will also learn about Direct Access and Branch Cache- features enabled by using Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 together.
Location Microsoft’s Las Colinas Office LC1 Building (Right Tower) 7000 State Highway 161, Irving, TX
Speaker: Kevin Saye is a Senior Technical Product Specialist at Microsoft. His focus is on Windows Server and he covers enterprise customers in Microsoft’s South Central District, which includes: Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Kevin has had a long career as an Enterprise Architect. He has experience architecting and implementing many infrastructure technologies including: UNIX, AS/400, Oracle, Netware and Active Directory. He is versed in many development technologies, including both Microsoft (.Net, C++, VB) and Java.
Kevin’s passion is around enabling IT organizations to realize the full potential with Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies.
Cost: Free but please RSVP to help predict the amount of food needed. RSVP: http://events.linkedin.com/DFW-Pro-Jan-Meeting-Introduction-Windows/pub/181691
Agenda: 6-6:30: Dinner and Networking 6:30-7:00: Announcements, and Business meeting 7 to 8:30: Presentation and wrap up
Give a ways: Books, Software, Shirts and more
Quinn Devery posted the following information about the meeting that happens this Thursday evening.
“We’re really excited about the upcoming event sponsored by Clear. They will be doing product demos onsite at Microsoft and they’re going to run a promo just for our group that you can’t get on the website. Make sure to RSVP and come hear about the 4G WiMax and then see it in person March 4th. Don’t forget Clear will also be raffling a Notebook the same night so you don’t want to miss this event. We’ll have free pizza for those that RSVP so make sure you click on Attending for the event. We would appreciate it if you click interested even if you can’t make it so others can see the event and take advantage of the offers Clear will be giving all attendees.” RSVP at http://events.linkedin.com/DFW-Pro-March-User-Group-Meeting-Clear/pub/223911.
“We’re really excited about the upcoming event sponsored by Clear. They will be doing product demos onsite at Microsoft and they’re going to run a promo just for our group that you can’t get on the website. Make sure to RSVP and come hear about the 4G WiMax and then see it in person March 4th. Don’t forget Clear will also be raffling a Notebook the same night so you don’t want to miss this event.
We’ll have free pizza for those that RSVP so make sure you click on Attending for the event. We would appreciate it if you click interested even if you can’t make it so others can see the event and take advantage of the offers Clear will be giving all attendees.”
RSVP at http://events.linkedin.com/DFW-Pro-March-User-Group-Meeting-Clear/pub/223911.
If you read my blog then you probably read the blog post on the 4G testing I did with Sprint. I now have the 4G+ Mobile USB card from Clear and did some testing Saturday while I was over in Irving, Texas. The picture above is just one of the speed test results. I was getting 4MB down, 1MB up pretty consistently from the On The Border restaurant near Fry’s at McArthur and I-635. They have 4G coverage there which isn’t yet present at my home in Southlake. I’ll test in Seattle again in a few weeks.
As for the promotion Clear is going to have at the March 4th meeting this week, the rep said the following, "CLEAR will be offering “FREE Equipment” with purchase of service that day at the event. We will also be raffling a net book as well. Plus giveaways, etc.”
I replied back to that email and asked if that means all equipment and all plans. When I have a concrete answer, I will update this blog post. Sounds like there are going to be some cool prizes and a nice promotion. If you were considering a 4G device, go to the meeting and hear all about Clear’s 4G rollout and plans. Should be interesting. Wish I could go but I have a schedule conflict. If I can change that I’ll be there.
This isn’t the 2011 Honda CIVIC. It’s a Porsche 918 Spyder. I want one.
FIM 2010 is now available in the download area for TechNet subscribers. If you don’t have a subscription but want a discount, see Matt’s blog on how to save 28%.
If you have no intention of purchasing a subscription, no worries. We have a downloadable evaluation version of the Microsoft® Forefront™ Identity Manager (FIM) 2010 client and server components. FIM 2010 offers a comprehensive solution for managing identities, credentials, and identity-based access policies across heterogeneous environments.
Users can create their own security and email distribution groups and decide who to include in those groups. They can reset their passwords without calling their help desk. IT Pros can use FIM to manage certificates and smart cards. FIM embeds self-help tools in Outlook so users can manage routine aspects of identity and access. FIM also gives IT professionals rich administrative tools and enhanced automation, and delivers .NET- and Web Services–based extensibility for developers.
Get the FIM eval @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=22731a2a-5b0f-4c6b-846a-e53588117981.
Information security is a very dynamic field: legislation keeps changing, technology keeps evolving, and the attacker community continues to be more sophisticated. This turmoil has forced security practitioners to think creatively to address some very difficult problems. Much of this innovation has been locked away within corporations as they have made isolated progress on issues like security metrics, security risk management frameworks, and security policy.
In order to address this discrepancy, Microsoft commissioned a whitepaper series to share key security innovations. Whitepaper topics came from participants in Microsoft’s CSO Council - a semi-annual gathering of security executives from leading global organizations who serve as advisors to Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group.
Our goal is to share practices “from-the-trenches” that address some of the toughest problems in security. After numerous interviews, discussions, and debates with these thought leaders, a collection of effective practices emerged. While much remains to be done, we hope these papers fuel the discussion and help facilitate further sharing in the field of IT security.
Go get em @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2ab57b5c-8c4f-4b8c-a260-0fe77b5b713f.
The Microsoft Office 2010 Resource Kit provides information about new features and changes in deployment strategies for Office 2010. The documentation is intended for IT professionals who plan, implement, and maintain Office installations in their organizations. New and updated content will be published on a regular basis.
The basic Setup architecture in Microsoft Office 2010 is the same as the architecture introduced in the 2007 Microsoft Office system. The Setup architecture streamlines all aspects of installing, customizing, and maintaining Office. The Setup program unifies and manages the complete installation process. This includes customizing users' Office configuration, deploying multiple languages at the same time, and applying software updates to new installations. This article contains an overview of the Setup architecture, setup sequence of events, language-neutral design and deployment of multiple languages, customization methods, required local installation source, and updates process.
The Setup architecture helps administrators manage areas such as the following more efficiently:
Get the Office 2010 Reskit .chm @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=e6dcc787-4653-49da-aeef-564a64dd4ac5.
Need a camera that shoots 1,052 frames per second at 1080p resolution? Well, if you’re trying to stop action a bullet or a NASCAR race, this baby has your number. No, it isn’t exactly a compact digital camera, but it is six figures. $118,000 to be exact. Full specs and hardware porn at http://www.visionresearch.com/index.cfm?sector=htm/files&page=camera_HD_new.
This thing makes my new Canon G11 look like a spec of dust. I feel so inadequate now. Grin.