The TechNet Australia Blog : News

Daylight Savings changes in Western Australia – prepare now!

Deeps — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:16:39 GMT

Daylight Savings time changes can have a significant impact on business performance if not dealt with proactively. Effects can range from the incorrect time display on the clock, to calendaring problems, to changes in business critical services that are time dependent. This year, Western Australians rejected by referendum a proposal to extend their trial of daylight savings. As a result there will be no daylight savings in WA this year or for the foreseeable future. The time change was scheduled for 25 October, but will no longer occur.

We encourage customers to review their preparedness for these changes. See the Australia 2009 Daylight Saving Planning Guide.

New Social Bookmarking on TechNet and MSDN!

Deeps — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:56:00 GMT

We have launched a preview of our Social Bookmarking application on TechNet and MSDN for you to start using. Social Bookmarking is a way to store your bookmarks on the web, share your bookmarks with others and explore bookmarks stored by other users.

Some of the new features to look forward to in the official launch (early September) is:

Subscribe to Tags or People: Find a tag you want to follow? Or a fellow bookmarker that bookmarks really good stuff? With the new app, it will be easy to get an RSS subscription for that tag or person (as in, click the orange button).

Browse & Find Users: Search or browse to find people by their display name (e.g., mine is "johmar") and other criteria.

Import Tools: Recognizing that a lot of people already have favorites saved in their browsers or in other social bookmarking sites, the new app will provide a tool for importing your favorites from Microsoft Internet Explorer and from Delicious.

Bookmarking Widget: If you have your own blog or other website, our new bookmarking widget will make it easy for people to bookmark your pages directly to their social bookmarks on MSDN, TechNet, or Expression. You'll get traffic from Microsoft when your bookmarked page is published in "social feeds" on our global sites.

Start previewing today and send in your comments to the Social Bookmarks Discussion Forum.

Come speak to us at the TechNet Lounge at TechEd next week to learn more.

Dont Forget about Earth Hour 2008!

Deeps — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:52:00 GMT

I will be taking part in Earth Hour 2008 and so will Microsoft Australia. We will be turning off our computers, lights, monitors etc before we leave for the weekend. Remember to turn off your lights at 8pm on Saturday night!

There is also a Facebook Footprint Calculator which is the official WWF Earth Hour Facebook Application.

Check out the Zerofootprint Calculator, official partner of the World Wildlife Fund's Earth Hour event! Join a global community and switch of your lights for one hour on March 29th, 2008. You can sign up to be part of Earth Hour from inside the application!

The Zerofootprint Calculator helps you measure your environmental impact. This application takes just one-minute to complete, but will allow you to calculate how many tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) you emit through your travel, diet, and home.

Install the application to measure your environmental impact, find ways to pledge to reduce it, get offsets, and access daily green tips. All of this will help you green your lifestyle!

Free Wireless at Sydney Libraries

Deeps — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:54:23 GMT

Got this from Lifehacker. Good news for those taking laptops into Sydney libraries, you will be able to use the free wireless service.

The libraries offering Wi-Fi are:

Customs House, 31 Alfred Street, Circular Quay
Glebe, 186 Glebe Point Road, Glebe
Haymarket, 744 George Street, Sydney
Kings Cross, Level 1, 50-52 Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross
Newtown, 8-10 Brown Street, Newtown
Ultimo, Level 1, Ultimo Community Centre, 40 William Henry Street, Ultimo
Waterloo, Waterloo Town Hall, 770 Elizabeth Street, Waterloo
Surry Hills Library Link, Northcott Centre, Belvoir Street, Surry Hills
Town Hall Library Link, Level 1, Town Hall House, 456 Kent Street, Sydney

Let us know if you have similar wireless offerings in your city.

Watch Bill Gates last day at Microsoft

Deeps — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:15:26 GMT

Hope everyone had a great beak over the holidays.

For those who didn't know the Consumer Electronics Show is happening at the moment over in Las Vegas. Bill Gates was speaking at the Keynote and he showed a video of his last day at Microsoft. Guest stars include George Clooney, Steven Speilberg, Jay-Z, Bono, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Al Gore to name a few.

Plus our own Nic Fillingham (well kind of he's an aussie living in Singapore now) interviewed Bill Gates about the state of consumer electronics at CES. Nice brown jacket Nic...

Have a look at what Microsoft is doing at CES plus watch the Keynote.

Foxtel HD Blog

Deeps — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:43:00 GMT

I've been a subscriber to Foxtel for a while now, primarily for the sports and news channels. So the announcement of Foxtel HD got me pretty excited especially when all my friends in the UK are already watching the football in HD. Its great to see Foxtel HD will support both 720p and 1080i HD formats.

Looks like Patrick Delany has set up a blog to keep you up to date with the latest developments. Dont forget to "Meet the Pixels"

Gartner's top 10 Strategic technologies for 2008

Deeps — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:23:00 GMT

Gartner has come up with their top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2008 and there is no surprise Green IT is topping the list at number 1.

1. Green IT
2. Unified Communications
3. Business Process Management
4. Metadata management
5. Virtualization
6. Mashups
7. The Web Platform
8. Computing fabric
9. Real World Web
10. Social Software

Read the full article here

Siemens and Microsoft team up to drive in-car applications

Deeps — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 01:24:00 GMT

Siemens VDO and Microsoft are teaming up to develop in-vehicle communication, information, entertainment and navigation products. The first product, to be built by Siemens VDO based on the MS Auto software platform, is expected to go into production in 2009, faster than usual in the automotive industry.

Read the full article here

The operating system will be running a version of Windows CE. The EcoDrive system can measure carbon dioxide emitted from the vehicle plus let drivers know if their driving style is eco-friendly or not! Another opportunity is to track how fast your kids may be travelling in their car, if they are speeding the system will send you a txt message. So that means you would call them on their phone and let them know "Slow down!!!! and stop talking on your phone"....

Paramount and Dreamworks Animation choose HD-DVD

Deeps — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:34:00 GMT

Just as I was losing hope for HD DVD...

Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc said on Monday they will release their next-generation DVD titles exclusively on HD DVD ahead of what they say could be the biggest holiday season ever for DVDs.

Paramount had sold titles in both the new high-definition formats -- HD DVD and Blu-Ray -- but settled exclusively on HD DVD after deciding that it offered better quality, lower-priced players and lower manufacturing costs, Kelley Avery, president of Paramount Home Entertainment, told Reuters.

Paramount's first releases under the exclusive HD DVD program include "Blades of Glory" on August 28, and the summer blockbusters "Transformers" and "Shrek the Third," due for release later this fall.

Im sure Transformers and Shrek the Third will really help HD DVD sales. Read the full article here

Holographic Storage offers 300GB of storage on a standard disc

Deeps — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:27:00 GMT

The worlds first Holographic Storage devices will be launching soon. Initial storage will be around 300GB on a single disc and could offer 1.6Tbytes on a single disc within 3 years.

The product being launched by InPhase is the Tapestry 300R drive and media, which has a capacity of 300Gbytes and a transfer rate of 20Mbytes a second. The first-generation product is write once, read many, and a single drive will cost about £9,000. One disc will cost about £90. By way of comparison, an enterprise-class tape drive costs about £15,000 and a mid-range tape drive costs about £2,000.

InPhase expects to develop and release three generations of drives and media. From the initial specifications outlined above, it hopes to move to a second-generation device in 18 months to two years, which will provide 800Gbytes of capacity and a transfer rate of 80Mbytes a second. A third system with 1.6Tbytes of capacity and a transfer rate of 120Mbytes a second should be available in three to four years.

Full article here

Speaking of storage I went to my local Blockbuster the other night and tried to find some HD-DVD titles only to see only 2 titles compared to a shelf full of Blu-Ray, come on HD-DVD!

Wave your hands to control your TV

Deeps — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 07:12:00 GMT

Two engineers from the University of Wollongong, Australia (UOW), have developed a box that will replace your TV remote control. You’ll just have to wave your hands to control your electronic gadgets. Their box contains a camera that recognizes your hand signals and translates them into electronic commands for your TV and other gadgets. Apparently, the controller’s built-in camera can recognize seven simple hand gestures and work with up to eight different gadgets. The researchers say that their device is 100% accurate under normal lighting conditions and could be on sale within 3 years.

Read the full article at ZDNet Blogs

Thumbs up :)

Worldwide PC shipments up 12% - IDC

Deeps — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:26:00 GMT

Worldwide PC shipments grew by 12.5% in the second quarter of 2007 (2Q07), according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) returned as the fastest growing region with volume increasing more than 20% from the same quarter one year ago. A competitive market in the United States also helped boost overall growth with other regions expanding in line with or slightly behind forecasts. Channel expansion and competition for the consumer and small business segments added to the trend toward Portable systems as key market drivers.

Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) continued to accelerate with Portables growth at about 50% and with the Greater China region being a primary contributor to the regional total as vendors prepared their channels for summer promotions. In addition, nearly every country in the region posted double-digit year-on-year Portables growth.

Got a new PC lately? Interesting to see Apple growing their market share in the US.

Read the press release here

Live Earth, The Concert for a Climate in Crisis

Deeps — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 03:08:00 GMT

On Saturday, 7/07/07, MSN is sponsoring Live Earth, The Concert for a Climate in Crisis. This 24-hour global event will feature more than 150 of the world’s top bands performing on all seven continents, with concerts in Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Istanbul, London, New York, and other cities around the world.

8 steps to Windows Server 2008 planning

Deeps — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 04:31:00 GMT

Computerworld article outlining 8 important steps to plan for Windows Server 2008 in your organisation.

'For data center managers, nothing spells "doom and disaster" quite like a server infrastructure change. Whether it's a new virtualization technique, an upgrade to network access-control software or new command line parameters -- enterprise server management is a daunting proposition.

But what if those changes occur all at once? That's the scenario with Windows Server 2008 (WS2008). Formerly known as Longhorn, WS2008 is set to be released later this year. Just this week, Microsoft made available the Community Technology Preview of the operating system, which includes installation and some other options in addition to what's available in the Beta 3 release.'

Read the full article here

MIT researchers complete wireless electricity test

Deeps — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 05:31:00 GMT

"MIT research team juices up a 60-watt light bulb using "WiTricity"

The day may be coming when PCs, cell phones and many other devices will be run without a battery or electrical cord.

Last week, an MIT research team announced that it had juiced up a 60-watt light bulb using "WiTricity," the name it has given a wireless electricity source it is developing.

The team generated the WiTricity using two copper coils, one attached to a power source. The power coil emitted a field of magnetism to the unpowered coil, stimulating it to generate a current that powered the light bulb from seven feet away, said Andre Kurs, a graduate student in MIT's physics department who worked on the project."

Read the full article here

Sounds really interesting!