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August 2006 - Posts

Thursday, August 31, 2006 9:16 PM

Virtual server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta2 goes live - so does Virtual Machine Manager Beta 1.

I had a mail this morning which I think is worth sharing. And not to poke fun at the unwieldy names we come up with. Service Pack 1 for Release 2 of Virtual Server 2005 is now in beta 2. Why is this Service pack interesting ? Well, to quote from the mail,
Posted by jamesone | 1 Comments
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Wednesday, August 30, 2006 4:27 PM

Builds of Vista. And all I can say (for now) about RC-1

Here is some Vista build information Build 5456 was the June CTP (community technology preview) build Build 5472 was the July CTP. Quick arithmetic: they are 16 apart, lets add keep adding 16s Build 5488 Hmm, can't find this one. Add another 16 Build
Posted by jamesone | 2 Comments
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 10:42 AM

Virtual PC round-up

Three bits of news that I should mention although if you monitor the Virtual PC home page, you'll know all this already. Virtual PC is FREE. This will carry forward into the next version. The change was made in July, following the lead set by virtual
Posted by jamesone | 2 Comments
Monday, August 28, 2006 11:36 AM

Windows Marketplace now open ...

I found a reference to this on Ed Bott's blog according to what he say a couple of days ago the store has opened a few hours ahead of schedule. Ed describes getting to this page from the performance settings in Vista. It is also available from the Welcome
Posted by jamesone | 1 Comments
Monday, August 28, 2006 10:43 AM

DRM: is there a lesson in cricket's PR disaster ?

I think the world of the people I'm working with at the moment, and of my previous manager too. But it wasn't always so. Some of the people I worked with in the past showed me the that anything you say in e-mail can be used in evidence against you: I
Posted by jamesone | 2 Comments
Saturday, August 26, 2006 11:43 AM

Zune news. No FM transmitter (yet) it seems.

I'm going to stick my neck out and be (I think) the first Microsoft blogger to tell you where to get details of the Zune. It's widely known that Zune will have wireless functions and that means for the US market it needs FCC approval. Some people who
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Friday, August 25, 2006 11:46 PM

Blog spam

I've had enough. There are so many robot created spam posts to the comments to this blog - I've just removed 60 and accidentally removed one valid comment in the process - that I've made 2 changes. One is to cap posting at 7 days. The other is that I'm
Posted by jamesone | 2 Comments
Friday, August 25, 2006 7:13 PM

Vista - we're getting closer and closer.

Around the office loads of people have been saying the pretty much same thing... and before the management get nervous this has nothing to with it being "bonus season" right now. It's been " Have you tried the new build" . I haven't noticed this before
Posted by jamesone | 1 Comments
Friday, August 25, 2006 3:32 PM

In lieu of a cartoon of my own ...

I'm prone to "writer's block" -or as I call it the "tyranny of the blank sheet of paper". Starting a document or presentation, creating a photograph (as opposed to recording an event) or drawing a cartoon can impossible (I blogged about mind mapping which
Posted by jamesone | 0 Comments
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Tuesday, August 22, 2006 10:26 PM

Microsoft and open source. IE and Firefox

Here's Something I bet most people most people thought they'd never see. (Thanks to Information week ). We're making sure we help Firefox development. We have an Open Source Software Lab in Redmond - they have an interesting web site at http://port25.technet.com
Posted by jamesone | 0 Comments
Tuesday, August 22, 2006 2:13 PM

Putting Vista's index to work.

You can go straight to the blogcast if you don't want to read the text ... Last weekend I went with an old friend, David, and my daughter to watch the "Grand Prix Masters" which is now the only motor sport where the drivers are older than I am. There
Posted by jamesone | 0 Comments
Attachment(s): http://www.msblogcasts.com/jamesone/index-blogcast-2.wmv
Monday, August 21, 2006 8:46 AM

Feeling stupid Part II

I like the advice given by the conductor Sir Thomas Beacham about "Try everything once, except incest and country dancing", so Eileen didn't have to do much to persuade me to join her at the next Girl Geek Dinner in London . I'm not sure what to expect:
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Sunday, August 20, 2006 3:16 PM

Would Apple sue Scoble's new company ?* . Don't Google for Podcasts. And other stuff from my weekend reading.

Before I was working for Microsoft, I read Douglas Coupland's book "Microserfs" . I visited Redmond in1997 and was amazed how close it was to the book. Half a dozen pages in Coupland writes "WinQuote ... gives continuouse updates on Microsoft's NASDAQ
Posted by jamesone | 3 Comments
Friday, August 18, 2006 1:36 PM

Feeling Stupid (part 1)

Two quotes for the day I am the final silence The last electrician alive And they called me the sparkle I was the best, I worked them all .... and Roy : There's only two of us now. Pris : Then we're stupid and we'll die. The second is the from Blade runner.
Posted by jamesone | 1 Comments
Monday, August 14, 2006 4:12 PM

Interview with the MD

There are days I jump in with both feet. One of those was the day that Gordon Frazer was announced as our new MD. He seemed approachable, so I pitched him my idea to bring something like Channel 9 to the UK... wouldn't it be great to do the first interview
Posted by jamesone | 6 Comments
Monday, August 14, 2006 11:57 AM

X-box 360 and the "You tube of games"

Yes, the BBC got my attention with that headline too. Here's the official press release . This is the launch of XNA Framework, a custom implementation of the .NET Compact Framework for game development. Dan Fernadez has a great summary and a great collection
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Monday, August 14, 2006 8:09 AM

Windows Live Writer

Several of my recent blog posts have been made with a new Microsoft tool. Writer is branded as part of Windows live but it supports a range of blogging plaforms. It is can't do as much as Word 2007 with the blog post template and there are times times
Posted by jamesone | 0 Comments
Friday, August 11, 2006 3:37 PM

Vista Power plans - get exactly what you want

Back when beta 2 came out I read Scot Finnie's article on ComputerWorld "20 things you won't like about Windows Vista " . I was shocked: with a whole new operating system to aim at he came up with 20 really lame things. I took it as a sign that we'd done
Posted by jamesone | 1 Comments
Friday, August 11, 2006 12:09 PM

On current events

Eileen wrote Recently "Companies are still in the dark about Real Time Communications, some people view it as a waste of time and an invasion into their work time. " You can get a 14 day free trial of live meeting and this video shows where we're going
Posted by jamesone | 0 Comments
Wednesday, August 09, 2006 4:24 PM

Updates on a couple of Vista bugs.

I mentioned a few days ago that the Windows Media Player in Vista no-longer supports my smartphone. Here is the response I got back from the product team The [driver on the phone had ] “legacy” mode for versions of CE WMP older than [wmp10] and up-to-date
Posted by jamesone | 0 Comments
Wednesday, August 09, 2006 2:57 PM

A new trick for Vista

I mentioned recently that Windows Vista has some new features in Task Manager, and showed the resource manager tool. Task manager has some extra columns which it can show, one of which is the command line used to start an application. I've also mentioned
Posted by jamesone | 0 Comments
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Tuesday, August 08, 2006 5:03 PM

Not technical for once

A few oddments that I wanted to blog: technical content, it will resume shortly. (1) Spam (occasionally) works . I posted in how not to be read things you should do to make sure people don't read you. I don't think the person who mailed me a link to a
Posted by jamesone | 1 Comments
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Monday, August 07, 2006 4:48 PM

Short cut keys in Windows Vista

One of the things I tried ages ago was pressing the Window key and each other key on the keyboard. Call me strange if you like. Under build 5472 of Vista on my Toshiba I got clumsy and hit [Window] [Pause] (they're next to each other). It opens the Windows
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Monday, August 07, 2006 3:51 PM

Free LCS exam voucher ....

I clean forgot to blog about this on my return from tech-ready. I blame the jetlag... Last year I helped with the work around the release of the Live Communications Server Exam - I mentioned this exam a while back , and thankfully I passed the beta so
Posted by jamesone | 10 Comments
Monday, August 07, 2006 12:43 PM

Vista’s Scheduling and Defrag

One of the things that is new to Windows Vista is the Scheduling service. Out has gone the old AT service and in has a come a new Task engine with more features than you can shake a stick at. In the current Beta builds of Vista there are still a few things
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Friday, August 04, 2006 4:22 PM

This week’s cartoon

Some complaints about Microsoft are valid, Some aren't. Anyone can get Microsoft Beta software. Developer ? Sign up for MSDN. IT Pro ? Sign up for TechNet. The new TechNet direct is a bargain. It gives you all the software and information you need for
Posted by jamesone | 2 Comments
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Friday, August 04, 2006 12:25 PM

The one minute guide to Microsoft anti-malware

One of the best sessions I went to at Tech-Ready last week was one which didn't deliver what it advertised. Billed as "Anti-Malware technologies in Windows Vista" it morphed into a tour of what we we're doing in this area. What surprised me was that I
Posted by jamesone | 0 Comments
Wednesday, August 02, 2006 5:37 PM

Thoughts on the beta life of Vista and 2007 release

Like Darren I've updated from to build 5472 of Windows Vista and I've also updated to the "Tech Refresh" build of office 2007. These interim builds can be "two steps forward, one step back" - 5456 was faster than the Beta 2 build (5384) but some things
Posted by jamesone | 2 Comments
 
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