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If you read this blog, you know about the TechNet Wiki I helped start a while ago. The wiki represents many kinds of awesome. The best of which is the people who care enough about technology, and the wiki, to contribute content. The wiki has been nominated for an internal Microsoft Engineering Excellence...

If you are in IT, and you haven't yet defined exactly what "social" means in your IT environment, best of luck to you catching up. See what they had to say at the CIO Summit: http://aka.ms/CIOSOC

The information on the TechNet wiki is written by IT Pro/Devs for IT Pro/Devs. Why is this important? In the words of a satisfied user: "Over 70% of the articles in TNWiki are real-world scenarios. That's exactly what I need in my job." read the complete interview at Interview with a Wiki Ninja...

Increasingly, you don’t need a GUI to get your IT Pro job done. Everything you can do in the GUI, you can do in PowerShell. This is even more true in Windows Server “8” Beta. Not just because there are >2300 cmdlets. Now, you don’t even need mstsc.exe ( Remote Desktop Connection...

Hyper-V PM Eric Bahna recently recorded a video demo of the new Hyper-V Windows PowerShell cmdlets in Windows Server "8* Beta . The complete demo is about 21 minutes long. Windows Server 8 Hyper-V PowerShell Demo Uncut For convenience, I also made three shorter versions currently available...

In Brain Rules for Meetings John Medina tells us: "you've got 30 seconds before they start asking the question, "Am I going to pay attention to you or not?"" This advice holds true for new UIs as well. If you have installed the Windows Server "8" Beta , and you come upon the new Metro UI in the course...

Bill Laing's blog post today announces Windows Server 8 Beta availability . Some other tidbits to add to your IT Pro reading list include: Download Windows Server "8" Beta http://aka.ms/wdjd5y Win8 Keyboard Shortcuts http://aka.ms/hlagp4 Free-as-in-beer version of Hyper-V Server...

The business case for changes to the TechNet Wiki is complex. On the "fit for purpose" side of the equation, I try to explain the numbers thusly: 1. There are orders of magnitude more readers than contributors 2. There are orders of magnitude more contribute-once users than there are contribute...

According to our IT Pro customer feedback the number one dis-satisfier is finding the technical information they need. When they find technical content from Microsoft, they general review it favorably. Finding it is the chief frustration. I was taught that one strategy for improving performance is...

Ninjas in lore specialize in not being seen. However, here is a group of community supporters inside Microsoft who are building community around the the TechNet wiki . Inside Microsoft, the employees working on this are called TechNet Ninjas. They are not so much into the hiding. They have a blog . ...

IT Pros have longed asked for a way to understand “what changed in this information that you just updated”? A change log. The diffs. On the TechNet Wiki you can see this by using the History tab. Example, we just updated the Hyper-V: Update List for Windows Server 2008 R2 . It us around 2k words, in...

Recently, I claimed to be mini-microsoft, and Spartacus . No one believed me My point was, on the internet, no one knows you are a dog… Unless you are part of the Technet/MSDN community!! As of today, if you click on the username of folks you see blogging/tagging/participating in the wiki/forums/galleries...

Like a lot of people in technology, I call myself an auto-didact . This means I like to fool myself into believing that I am largely “self-taught.” It is part of the mythical life of Americans in particular that the individual can succeed as a lone-wolf. I say mythical not in the sense that it doesn...

There is a new feature on the TechNet Wiki. Push a button, generate a Table of Contents (TOC) for your article. Before: Click Edit, add [toc] and then save After: Check it out, let us know what you think.

The TechNet wiki shows two RSS feeds: Home (for the home page) TechNet Articles (for the TechNet *WIKI* articles – both new and updated) There is also a feed for a tag in the the tag cloud: I use Outlook 2010 to feed each of these into a folder . I then write filter rules on the folders to show me stuff...

Some folks on the TechNet Wiki have started a wiki topic to assist IT Pros in Japan who may have to do some unplanned server take-downs. Check out http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/windows-server-emergency-management-resources.aspx and add your useful links for: Backup/restore...

Wouldn’t it be great if you had a visual representation of all the event IDs for a service, let’s say for example the Microsoft Windows Active Directory Domain Service, and when you clicked on one of the IDs, you could “drill down” into more info on that event? Let me wiki that for you . Kudos to colleague...

The TechNet Wiki now has a Bing translator widget on each page, no charge. Free-as-in-beer. Enjoy.  享受。 Nyd.  Appréciez. Genießen. Απολαύστε. Godere. お楽しみください。즐길 수 있습니다. Ciesz się. Disfrutar. Keyfini çıkarın.

You can find some common TNWIKI tags at: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/wiki-common-tags.aspx Internet pundit Clay Shirky said “The Only Group That Can Categorize Everything Is Everybody.”   The idea behind a tagging taxonomy, or “tagsonomy” as it is implemented on the...

There is a new page on the TechNet Wiki “ What's Considered Quality Technical Content ?” that offer you the opportunity to help define the metrics the community will use to judge “quality” attributes of technical content. It is easy to sign up and contribute on the TN Wiki . Pile on!

IT Pros have long asked for a “change log” on technical information from Microsoft. For example, the Vi rtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Guide to Operations Manager Integration shows this right up font: For decades now inside Microsoft TOC has stood for Table of Contents. In this new age of “good enough...

Hackers, such as the one that posted this YouTube video “ How to Hack any Hotmail, ” are going after your Hotmail account in increasing numbers. NOTE: You SHOULD NOT click on links on video pages, especially this one, as they often do bad things . In this case, the link downloads malware...

Most web pages you find print out all the extra crap in the “gutters” ( there is a appropriate feature name if ever there was one…), like this: On the TechNet Wiki , we figure you just want the information please, thank you very much. So, when you print from IE your TNWIKI page looks like this: We hope...

Colleague Jim Holtzman is doing a very interesting (and helpful) thing over on the TechNet Wiki . Typically, when you look on TechNet or MSND for something like router (or any hardware really) setup instructions, you find an article that aims to serve the widest possible audience, and therefore does...

Please check out a proposed new innovation for IT Pro content “Customer Feedback Requested: Canonical Topic TOC” at: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/customer-feedback-requested-canonical-topic-toc.aspx We'd like to know your reaction and feedback. What's missing...