Or a podcatcher, if you like trendy, made-up words.
Here's the basic features I am looking for:
Ok, WOW. Popfly is incredible. Here's my first app, or if you want to see the end result just click the link in my column on the right for "Plot my visitors on Virtual Earth". It will plot the visitors to my blog. Now granted, the data is hit or miss, "dirty in dirty out" as they say. Blogflux is reporting City, Country rather than City, Region, Country so the data sometimes plots perfectly and sometimes does not. I submitted a request on their forums.
Data aside, designing and implementing this in Popfly took all of 5 minutes once I had a chance to play around with it and figure out how everything fits together. As time goes on and we see more and more blocks to introduce data and manipulate the information in interesting ways I can only imagine where this is going to go.
This is ground control to Major Tom...
and securely embed your MAK!
I've had several requests to document this since I posted the how-to on embedding your MAK in a custom WIM for departmental usage. The next logical step is to create your own DVD using this image. So if you haven't read my first article on this topic, now would be the time to go back and do so.
<edit - just a quick editorial note - although this does not expose your MAK in clear text, you should still be cognoscente of who you are trusting with an embedded key. See your licensing documents for more details.>
This operation is actually quite simple. Let's start out by assuming you have created a customized WIM by running setup and installing Vista on a workstation or VM, optionally using an autounattend.xml file on removable media, possibly including your MAK in pass 4 if desired. Run sysprep with OOBE and Generalize selected, shutdown, and finally capture the image either using ImageX or WDS. You could also automate the whole process, quite easily, using BDD (I did).
Next we leverage a tool that is conveniently provided with WAIK, named "oscdimg". This executable has been around for a long time as part of the OPK, and has for many years been a tool I keep handy. The process for building a custom DVD is very similar to creation of spanned media, so I recommend you also take a look at the article named "Create Spanned Media" in the WAIK User's Guide.
In addition to WAIK, we also need a Vista DVD image. Copy everything from the DVD in to a new folder, in my case I already had the files in my BDD deployment point.
Now, take your custom WIM image and rename it to install.wim. Copy or cut and paste this file in to the \Sources folder in the location where you copied your DVD.
Note: You can also specify the location of a custom WIM in an answer file using the "Install From" parameter. This way, you could point to a network location and use the original, unmodified Vista DVD.
<edit> - After further testing and feedback from a University customer, I discovered that if you would like to embed the MAK, it is also necessary to delete the PID.txt file from \Sources folder you copy from the Vista DVD. Otherwise the default KMS client key will be injected and the MAK will be overwritten after the image has been applied. The result is the media will prompt for a key but if none is provided and the user selects "Next" and then "No", the embedded MAK will be used.
Now open a command prompt as Administrator and execute the following command. This will initiate the process of building your ISO using the etfsboot.com file to make the image bootable.
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools>oscdimg -n -m -b"c:\program files\windows aik\tools\petools\x86\boot\etfsboot.com" "<location where you copied the Vista DVD>" "<location and filename where you want the new DVD image>.iso"
If all went according to plan, you should see the following operation complete successfully. Typically if I have an error it was a bad keystroke or I left a backslash (\) at the end of the string for "location where you copied the Vista DVD". BTW, that's the root folder where you copied the DVD where setup.exe is located, not the \Sources folder.
You can now boot a VM from the ISO to test or burn it to disc and boot a workstation from it. Note than any pass 4 settings that you applied during setup using an answer file on the original machine where you captured the WIM will be retained in the cached c:\windows\system32\sysprep\panther\unattend.xml. If you followed the instructions from my first article, that file would at minimum include your MAK which would now be stored securely within the WIM file on the DVD.
I actually caught this on Scoble's blog yesterday went I went their to copy his URL. I haven't had a chance to play with this yet but it looks like fun.
Microsoft Popfly
"Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications."
Check out the Popfly Screencast for a quick intro. WOW!
Also, cool default site -
So, if you subscribe and wouldn't mind taking a second, please swap out the URL in your reader.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/OffCampus
Why? It solves two problems for me. First, it will tell me if anyone is actually subscribing. None of your private information, just # of people. I'll keep blogging either way but I'm kind of curious. Second, I've been looking for a way to add "Digg This" to my feed. I don't know whether anyone actually cares to Digg my stuff but if they do I'd like to make it easy for them. The problem is the link needs to have the URL for the post in it, which I don't know until the post gets published. It's unnecessary work to get the URL and go back to update my post if this will do it for me. It also adds a link to share it on Facebook (which I don't use but people do). If you would like to have Del.icio.us on there as well, let me know.
Other tools I've been playing with - there is a SnapShots box down on the right side of my page you can use if you would like to preview URLs, and Blogflux keeps track of some interesting things like how many people are opening the site, from where, what browser, etc. Again, I don't really care about any of that but at times I am curious.
.....
So, why blog if I don't care whether anyone is reading? Good question I suppose. If you look back at my "50 first posts" article, I tell the story of Kevin Sullivan and I starting up blogs for the sake of having technical information to reference. I blog more than just technical info now but I'm still not totally comfortable with posting negative opinions so I don't, just things I find to be interesting to me. I don't want to look back in 10 years and feel bad about posting some obnoxious opinion piece. There are plenty of blogs out there for readers who want that.
One detail I left out of the story when Kevin and I first started blogging - We had an idea what we wanted to do but wanted some insight in to best practices so Kevin, Jeff, and I had a conference call with Robert Scoble who at the time worked for Microsoft and was really getting active as a blogger. Looking back, I think that call was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and got us to bring our sites online. Several times I've talked with Kevin and others about having a team or v-team blog but everyone, including me, likes having something of their own to enjoy working on! So far it looks like I'm averaging about 100 posts a year, which is fine by me.
I noticed this morning that if you look under Clips in Xbox Marketplace, you can download, for free, some key Matrix scenes in HD! The two I pulled down where Neo fighting Morpheous and the scene where Neo and Trinity fight their way in to the building with guns blazing and music roaring. I have to say, this looks absolutely awesome and with my family out of the house this morning I really let the home stereo thunder!
This may not seem all that interesting at face value but there are a LOT of people in higher education who have workstations that use public IP's. There is a secure way to connect to your machine remotely. Here's how to setup your Windows Vista workstation to accept new incoming VPN connections. This was also available in Windows XP but you have to know where to look in Vista to enable it.
Start - Network
Open the Network and Sharing Center
Click on Manage network connections
No using your keyboard, press Alt and select File or do an Alt+F to open the File menu and choose New Incoming Connection.
Approve the UAC prompt.
A new wizard opens to walk you through the process. First select who should have access.
Select how they may access the machine.
Select the protocols that should be available and click Allow Access.
The conclusion screen provides details. You can print the information if you need it.
Very nice, it adds a new icon on your Network Connections page.
If you view the properties dialogue you can manage the settings you choose in the wizard.
Out of those dialogues, these are the settings I found to be most interesting.
IOW, encrypt the connection and don't let the VPN connection interfere with connections from handhelds.
That's it, you now have a VPN connection available. To connect, setup a new VPN connection on your other workstation from the Network and Sharing Center.
Select Connect to a workplace.
Create a new connection.
Choose Use my Internet connection (VPN).
Provide the name or address of the machine you are connecting to.
Provide the username and password for the account you selected on the first machine. You may also need to provide the computer name as the domain name.
I choose to let the wizard go ahead and connect when finished.
The new icon on Network Connections shows the VPN connection. In the future you can right-click on this icon or use the Connect To button on the Start Menu.
On both machines you will be prompted to set the network profile. Work should suffice.
The connection and remote user appear on your host machine's Network page. If you right-click on the username, you have the option of disconnecting them from the host.
Enjoy!
Yeah, this beats the PowerEdge 2450 and PowerVault 200 I have running as my test gear in the basement... It's nearly time to get my server on EBay in anticipation of grabbing up whatever appliances for WHS ship first. Given my draw to HP gear, most likely I'll look for their next rev MediaSmart Server. I was eyeing the current model at Fry's and would have bought one except I'm waiting for WHS to release.
vs.
I think they win.
Source: Windows Home Server Blog : More Hockey Puck Photos
Traveling today so I've got a link for you rather than something original. If you are interested in some of the investments Microsoft is making in Education, browse over this site. This is a nice consolidated list that might introduce you to something new! There are a lot of good projects listed here and I would be very interested in your comments.
Link to Unlimited Potential: Transforming Education
Comments - btw - you'll have to create an account and log in to post. I have had a lot of trouble with comment spam so I'm only allowing posts after sign in. Better yet - write up your thoughts and link back to me from your site!
I use this almost every day. If you read my blog you'll notice I love screenshots and I always have a green border around them. That comes from a setting I have applied to the Vista Snipping Tool. Initially I was capturing good stuff but was frustrated when I did a right-click, then hit New in the Snipping Tool and the menu closed! You can overcome this using the Print Screen button together with the Snipping Tool.
First of all, if you haven't used the Snipping Tool in Vista just hit the Windows Key or the Start Menu and type "Snipping". It will float to the top so you can open it. The first time it will ask you if you would like to add a shortcut to the Quick Launch menu. Of course you do!
Now to do a capture, open the Snipping Tool, which will automatically cast a white transparency over your desktop and let you select an area to capture. Click on the Cancel button to get your desktop back. Do not close the Snipping Tool, just let it hang out there with the window still open.
Now right-click somewhere to get a context menu. If you want to capture it, press the Print Screen button (on my HP laptop I press Ctrl+Fn+prtsc). This will initiate a new capture in the Snipping Tool with the context menu still present.
My over-usage of this feature comes from years of doing documentation as a consultant.
I use flagged items A LOT. I live and die by the Outlook To-Do bar. In fact, I always feel on top of Email because I can effectively triage it from my phone by moving it in to folders and then flagging those items when I get back to my laptop. I have the process down to where it only takes seconds. Once I get my hands on Mobile 6 (supports flagged items) I'll really feel I have Email under control!
I've found other articles on the web about this but it didn't really sink in until today I realized that I was taking to long to move my hand over to the mouse, move up to follow-up, and click complete, and then move on to the next item. It would be nice if I could do this without leaving the keyboard.
Ah-ha! You can!
From any app, including when you have a new message open in Outlook, use Alt+H to show shortcuts over the Home ribbon. You can use Alt+<letter> to show this for any of the ribbons.
So to mark an item complete when you have it open, use Alt+H, W, M. This may seem extreme if you haven't tried it but I find it to be extremely simple now that I know it is there.
The reason this is so cool - it means you can use the keyboard to do just about anything in Office 2007. Anything undiscovered as a keyboard shortcut you can Alt+<letter> your way to doing!
I had a chance to play around with this quite a lot and I LOVE it. It fits the description "just works" as a desktop sharing app. It's very easy to get up and running which is important if you are working with a remote friend who doesn't know how to configure and setup challenging network and firewall rules, etc. It's also very easy for them to share with you and still see your cursor which is a neat experience when you want to show someone how to do something on a remote machine.
Link to Microsoft SharedView Beta
Have you seen the new VAIOs? WOW. I was at Fry's in Chicago yesterday. Sony is obviously known for their stylistic form factor but this is impressive and actually pretty affordable. You can get in to one of these fully loaded at around 1600 bucks. Not great, but not 1000$ over what you would pay for a similarly built device from other PC manufacturers. Similar in concept to the Mac Mini, the computer and monitor are combined to form a much clear look and feel.
This is actually what it looks like, not just an artistic rendition. I was wondering who would be first to try and recreate the Aero effect around a monitor... It comes with a webcam built in and a very jazzy keyboard and mouse.
Link to SonyStyle.com | LS series
Sweet, I just heard, tested, and confirmed that the drivers HP has posted for the TI smartcard reader work for 64-bit even though they are only listed in the category for 32-bit versions of Vista. I am only able to test this on my nc8430 and my nx6125, beyond those two models I have no idea whether this is still the case. This nearly completes my driver set. I still have one item listed as an "unknown device" but I don't know what it could be. Even my fingerprint scanner is working, though I don't use it.
From the site:
This package contains the driver for the Texas Instruments PCI (TI-PCI) 6x12/7x12 Cardbus (Media Card Reader) for the supported notebook models and operating systems.
Source: HP Compaq nc8430 Notebook PC - Texas Instruments Media Card Driver - HP Business Support Center
On a side note, I'll be the first to admit I have some kind of weird fascination with HP. Especially now that they carry the old Compaq form factors. I'm dying to get my hands on their new tablet.
Don, in case you spot this - I'm stealing your title and linking back to you!
This is the type of thing I flag in my mind. I can think of many, many applications. Imagine having search built in to applications with more than just an iframe, real usable data that you can build on!
Link to Live Search in Windows PowerShell - Current - SAPIEN Technologies - Scripting Solutions for Windows and the Web
This is really huge and I haven't seen a lot of RSS traffic about it yet. Live is now hosting Silverlight streams for developers. Here's a clip out of "What you get" from the description on the site:
While the product is in pre-release, storage and delivery is free up to 4 GB, with outbound streaming up to DVD quality (700 Kbps). As we move out of Beta, developers/designers will have continued use of the service with up to 1 million minutes of free video streaming at 700 Kpbs per site per month. Unlimited streaming will also be available for free with advertising, or with payment of a nominal fee for the service for use without advertising.
This is excellent! What a great way for students that want to test out video creation and streaming using Silverlight to host their content.
Link to Windows Live Dev
Post Script -
One more day on the road, a pile of tasks to get through when I get back in the office, and then hopefully I can move from writing about news to writing about solutions! I've got a huge backlog of things to screenshot and write up as how-to's. In case you're curious, today I am attending the Microsoft Higher Education Customer Symposium in Chicago.
I'm an infrastructure guy. I focus on desktop deployment, server operations and management, security, directory services, messaging, etc. So my knowledge of developer languages doesn't go much beyond basic scripting and web development. This has always been something I wished to improve upon as I see the edge many IT Pros gain when they are able to automate processes and solve problems using their own scripts, applets, and interaction with SQL. I don't have the interest or talent to become a true developer but I would like to be the best infrastructure guy I can be.
If this sounds familiar, check out this site. It's a beginner level track on development using the free versions of Visual Studio. This is level one, basic, 100 level info. Of course you can skip ahead to get past information you find to be too remedial but if you see someone define a class and you immediately start to disconnect from what they're doing, this would be a great way to step up and expand your knowledge!
Each year my manager approves enough budget for our team to attend some sort of reasonably priced training. Being product specialists, each of us has different interests and most of us want to learn something that is peripheral to our focus so we might expand our knowledge to other areas. I started searching for courses on PowerShell but really had a tough time finding one that was both affordable and had the content I was looking for.
I got lucky. A customer I have had the pleasure of working with for a long time communicated that they were bringing an instructor on site for a 4-day class specifically on PowerShell. I immediately bought a seat and one for Kevin.
I am happy to report the class was excellent! Don Jones from Sapien Technologies was the instructor. Don is a PowerShell MVP and is obviously well engaged with the product team. He did a very nice job helping us understand why PowerShell is so important and then took a sensible approach to comparing it to other languages and tools, how to use it as an administrative tool, and how to expand upon PowerShell to solve interesting problems. I really enjoyed it and would recommend Don as an instructor for others who might be looking for onsite instruction. Sapien also offers several flavors of self paced instruction and literature.
Website: http://www.scriptingtraining.com/classes.aspBlog: http://blog.sapien.com/Book: http://www.sapienpress.com/powershell.asp
While I'm waiting to see what's next for Zune, Creative has gone ahead and launched a sweet little competitor to the Shuffle. Prior to my Zune I carried a Zen:M so I'm still a big fan of Creative. This would be a great device to have around when I'm on the bike trails...
Link to Rock in different colour of music. ZEN Stone fits all lifestyles
If you have questions or need info about Vista and volume activation please join the call today. I'll be in the Q/A panel helping answer questions from over 800 registered attendees. One of the main points of focus will be flushing out Volume Activation details.
Thursday, May 03, 2007 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
With the launch of Vista, our latest operating system, there are significant changes to the product around volume activation – Key Management Service, Multiple Activation Key, and Software Protection Platform, etc. Come and spend an hour gaining a better understanding of these technologies, best practices for deployment, and resources available to assist in your deployment plans.
During this sessions we will look at:
· Volume Activation and VLK 2.0 – How we got here· KMS and MAK – What they are and how they work· Common Design Scenarios· Answering some of the tough questions
I just returned a laptop as part of our refresh cycle and decided to 0 out the drive using Linux before shipping it. I tend to store a lot of customer data and I have no idea where the machine will go once it leaves my hands. I know my process was not the most secure possible since I predictably just wrote a blank volume over the disk 7 or 8 times using a method I found on CNet. Today I saw a post on ZDNet that looks like a much better solution.
Link to » How to REALLY erase a hard drive | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com
Another interesting thought - if you had BitLocker enabled on your drive throughout it's life and you required either a USB key (startup key) or PIN number and now you are decommissioning, you are taking an additional step to protect the data. It was encrypted (AES 128 or 256, you decide) during it's life and if someone is trying to decrypt it after recovery they do not have the certificates needed, assuming you cleared the TPM or used a startup key so the cert was never stored locally.
This is of interest to many of the people I work with in the field who donate computer lab machines to local school districts at the end of a hardware lifecycle.
WOW. Thanks Travis, for turning me on to this app. I've posted in the past about my frustration with news readers. I've never found one that I consider to be perfect. So far, I've found Newzie to be awesome. Literally every time I find something to complain about I find it has some method of doing things that solves the problem. It ranks posts by most recent and still shows how many are unread. It has multiple ways to consolidate views, it can be reduced to just a slim panel or even a ticker. It is not intrusive nor does it bog down your machine or connection. The interface is clean and mostly customizable. It even does interesting things like show how many feeds you read per day, etc.
It doesn't really have a great method of dealing with attachments on an automatic basis but I've basically decided there is no good program out there to handle attachments (including iTunes, I tried it too). I'm looking for something that separates audio, video, photos, and files, deals with setting metadata and creating playlists, and manages archival well. So for now "Save as Target" within IE RSS is still working fine.
The only two things I wish I could improve are moving "mark all as read" and "delete all" off the sub menu when you right-click a feed name, up to the first set of menu choices. I also REALLY wish it would integrate with the Vista central OPML.
Link to Newzie, your feature-rich news aggregator
So, you may have noticed I haven't blogged in about 2 weeks. I hit a point where I was just posting links and although that's fine it's not as much value as I would like to provide so I decided to play it cool until travel slowed down. Travel has slowed down.
Q4 baby! The infamous fourth quarter has begun and we are only in the second month. This is the time of year when people in our sales group go absolutely rabid trying to get business wrapped up by the end of our fiscal year. On top of that we have so many new products that they are constantly referencing product specialists (that's me) with licensing questions. On top of that I've noticed a major uplift in the number of customers that are getting in to test environments and working out how they might deploy Vista. Helping customers is where I prefer to spend my time!
I have a long list of things to blog about so I'm excited to get back at it. Next week I will be Out of Office M-Thurs but otherwise I hope to hit the 30-post mark in May.
Interesting article on a University leveraging SoftGrid to lower application costs. The very nature of Education environments makes SoftGrid a valuable tool because there are so many versions of applications and applications that tend to break the rules and really should be run within a protected environment. The benefit of SoftGrid is to take these applications and deliver then within a virtualized application environment with workflow built in to determine how the application should be delivered, and for how long, etc.
Virtualized Application Environment? That means not an entire OS, just the application is living in a virtual bubble. Kevin has a link to one of his recent webcasts to explain more.
Link to Application virtualization paying off for university - Network World
I'm a very big fan of our PiL group and luckily I get to work with them a few times a year on various projects. This press release outlines a great program that Partners in Learning is assisting to replicate the program's success to other schools.
U.S. Partners in Learning grants will help expand four groundbreaking organizations offering educational opportunities outside the classroom.
Source: Microsoft Funds Massachusetts After-School Learning Programs Focused on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math