Unified Communications @ Microsoft

Today we launched in IE8 Beta 2 in English, German, Simplified Chinese and Japanese, and then follow with another 21 languages in mid-September.  You can download IE8 Beta 2 now at http://ww.microsoft.com/ie8.

Here are my 5 personal favourites:

· Accelerators - Highlight an address, click the blue button and hover over “Map” or try Right Clicking a Page and Choosing Translate with Windows Live. Check out the new IE Gallery that has cool accelerators and slices from Digg to FaceBook to Ebay

· Web Slices - Visit Live Search, search for “Seattle Weather” (or major city relevant to your region), hover over the rich search result and click the green button.  Click it to add a Weather Web Slice to your Favourites Bar.

· Search Suggestions - Go to your Instant Search Box (top right) and type a search to see search suggestions in action.

· Navigation - Use the new Smart Address Bar to quickly find sites you’ve visited before.  The Smart Address Bar searches your history, favorites AND feeds for pages that match what you’re typing.

· Security:  IE8 has the best security features in the market today from its updated Smartscreen phishing and malware filter to domain highlighting to the industry leading cross-site scripting filter so I feel my machines, my identity and my family will be safer on the Internet.

Enjoy !

Just a quick post here.  I get asked quite a lot where people can download a copy of the 'Devil Does UC' videos can be downloaded from.

Microsoft UC video for small screens
Microsoft UC Video for big screens
Microsoft Roundtable for Small Screens
Microsoft Roundtable for big screens

Enjoy

Chris Rothwell (Office Client PM) and I are forever arguing about which is better (in a joking way of course) ..... Outlook Web Access or Outlook client.  I of course preach the merits of OWA while he waxes lyrical' (is that right?) about the offline capable client that is Outlook.

Well today I managed to use some UC technology to get one over him by IM'ing Jasmin from Inferno to 'take a pop' at him while he was on the phone to her.  Simply but affective use of multi model communication I think !

More importantly though .... it's Jasmin's birthday today ....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY !

As the product manager for UC in the UK I attend a lot of conference call which I need to follow up in some form.  Luckily for me,  I now have my own PA

The guys and girls at POST CTI have a lot of telecoms experience and noticed that one of the things that was missing from OCS 2007 was the ability to record a call,   so they set to work putting something together Live-PA,  a bot you can add into an existing call to record it!.  If you can drag and drop (which most people can) then you can record the meeting :-).

A few people have already started to blog about it (http://unified-communications.blogspot.com/2008/07/postcti-live-pa-intelligent-call.html) but if you would like to know more information then feel free to contact John Maguire, Project Manager at PostCTI.  His IM and email address is  john.maguire@postcti.com.

No,  this isn't the start of a joke!

Believe it or not,  many people around the world that use PCs don't know the different between Windows and Office,  my mum included, and one of the things the IW (Information Worker) team I am in has thought about several times is how do we help educate people?  We we posed this question to this year work placement students and these are two of the great explanations we got back. 

“The CD player”

A PC is like a CD player – when you buy it, you don’t get any music with it and have to buy that separately. Programs, like Microsoft Office, are like CDs – you buy them according to your own taste and can then play them on the CD player.

“The fishbowl”

A PC is like a fishbowl. On it’s own it doesn’t do anything. You first of all need to add water – water is like Windows. Once you’ve got water, you can then add fish (fish represent the programs you could add to a computer).

Anyone got any other analogies?

We had our end of year company meeting today followed by a BBQ during which I ate far too much.   However my eating habits is not the important thing I wanted to talk about,  it was actually two demos by Steve Clayton of DeepZoom (previously SeaDragon I believe) technology being implemented on the web.

What 'Deepzoom' does is allow anyone over the web to zoom into high res images such as a map or the scanned pages of a book just like they were sitting there in front of you.  We have now integrated this technology into Silverlight and here are two brilliant examples of the combined technologies in action

Deepzoom and Local.live.com - This is best experienced using a mouse with a scroll wheel.  All you need to to is hover over the area you want to zoom in on and scroll 'forward' with the scroll wheel.  As you zoom in you will notice it downloads the image pretty quickly,  sharpening the image as it does.  Pretty amazing stuff !

Hardrock Memorabilia - Now this one really is VERY cool.  Hardrock have been taking photos,  some very high resolution,  of their memorabilia so they can share it with everyone else on the web.  The principle is the same with this as it is with the link above but here they have a few cool examples of how you can use high resolution images and stream them over the web.  Two things I recommend you looking at on this site

Bo Diddley Guitar - Zoom in on the far left 'bolt' (I am sure there is a proper name for this piece of the guitar but I dont know what it is).  You can see the reflection of the guy taking the photo.  Also you can see a fingerprint on bit where you strum the guitar (again - I am sure it has a name)

The hi-def stamp - This one really is cool.  Zoom in on the stamp on the envelope to reveal pictures of a number of Hard Rock Cafe locations, zoom in on the picture 3 down 2 across. Zoom in on the image underneath the left most Hard Rock Cafe to show the four suits worn by the Beatles. In the middle of the picture there is a photo frame with figures of the four Beatles.  Zoom in finally once more to see the detail on the figures.  This really is impressive and if you zoom out now by scrolling your scroll wheel down you will see just how far you zoomed in!

Two pretty powerful demos I am sure you will agree and a good reminder for me as to why I work at Microsoft,  we do indeed come up with some cool and innovative technology !

*To be spoken in a low, slow,  cinema trailer voice

It was a tale of Freedom,  of love,  of sacrifice,  of a PBX that was about to be ripped and replaced.  Standing in the way was one man,  Dan Wilson,  on a mission to save the PBX by promoting keystrokes not crowbars !

This little short movie made me chuckle this morning ... with a few strange looks from my workmates.  Don't want to give away to much about it but it includes such classic quotes as

• "Wide air quotes"
• "I am going to stop talking through this thing and put on my pants"
• "S.U.O.A.D" or "Sweet Use Of Acronyms Dan/Dude"

I highly recommend grabbing a spare 15 mins and some headphones and watching this short film .... very funny and informational at the same time :-)

Yes,  you read correctly ..... fancy the opportunity to spend some of Microsoft money?

I realise this might have nothing to do with the world of Unified Communications but sometimes its worth just breaking with the 'norm' when there is a good reason .... especially when it gives you the opportunity to spend Microsoft's money for a change.

Microsoft have been working with the NSPCC for a number of years,  in particular helping with the running of the Microsoft UK Challenge event which takes place every year,  we also run a number of other internal events .... one of which is the '5K Fun Run'.  As part of my new found desire to go to the gym once in a while,  I have also signed up for the 5K Fun Run and we are looking for more sponsors so please pop along. 

So how do I get to spend Microsoft money? For every £1 you donate,  Microsoft will match that donation so the more people that donate and the more money they donate,  the more of Microsoft money they get to spend.... simple as that !

Wish me luck (I completed 5k in 31 minutes today so at least I know I can do it) and if you can spare a little time and money to sponsor us all that would be even better :-)

Ok,  so its not maybe your typical business decision that needs to be made quickly but it IS a prime example of how presence and instant messaging can be far more effective than the telephone or email in the right situation.

Given the unusually nice weather that we are currently having and the desire for me to make the most of it,  a few of my friends and I decided to have an impromptu BBQ at my house tomorrow.  On checking the weather though at around 4pm I soon learned that we might have a little bit of rain on the way :-s.

With this in mind,  I started talking to the chief organiser of BBQs (thanks Emma) and within a few seconds we managed to pull in the rest of the attendees for this all important evening meeting of Microsoft employees.  Literally 15 minutes later we have a time, food, drink and chairs organised for a 6.30pm start (thats 1.5 hrs away).

This would have taken days to do over email and the chance of getting everyone on the phone at the same time would have been minimal (I could see at least two people in conference calls).

I hope the BBQ rocks as much as OCS did in helping us organise it !

When you rip out the old telephone system and put in a new one,  there is normally some hardware that needs to be moved which could come in the form of cabling or perhaps telephone devices.  Picking a Unified Communications system that doesn't require 'rip and replace' can save you this grief and could stop accidents like the ones below.

You have been warned ! ;-)

As I have already mention on my blog,  we are in the middle of a '3 nights only' tour for PS Exchange Unplugged which so far has taken us to Cambridge and Manchester.  After the 'smoking shuttle' incident on the last Exchange Unplugged Tour I didn't think there was anything worse that could happen .... it appears I was wrong.

It all started when Paul Brombley unfortunately took a turn for the worse and Julian and I stepped in to do his OCS session towards the end of the day.  He took us through the setup of his portable OCS environment on the shuttle but unfortunately we could get access to it so we went to plan B and decided to use the internet connection (which had been ropey all day) and use our corporate accounts for the demo.  This was all looking good until 10 minutes before we needed to go on when we realised the internet had 'died' and wasn't coming back to life anytime soon ..... PANIC !!!!!!!!

It was at this point that the resourceful and 'we will not give up' ethos of Julian and I kicked in and we decided we were not going to be beaten by the technology. 10 minutes later the both of us were back on the internet and connected to OCS and LiveMeeting ....... using our mobile phones and the local 3G connection!.  I will start with Julian's configuration because I think it's even more ludicrous than mine.  Julian had his Samsung Windows Mobile device configured with 'Internet Sharing' but because he didn't have his sync cable with him he had to resort to Bluetooth.  My connection was a little better with my PC connecting to a HTC Athena using a sync cable and then connecting to 3G/HSDPA with 'Internet Sharing' enabled again.  A pretty neat way to get onto the internet given we were in the basement of a hotel.  With a few minutes to spare,  Julian and I were signed into Communicator and LiveMeeting ready for our session.

We start our session and I explain the situation to the attendees in the room using a diagram similar to this one,  this diagram would you believe it looks better than the original :-).  Its at this point we start the demos with fingers, legs and everything else crossed.

Julian starts and IM session with Steven Hutchinson from Tayside Fire & Rescue and seconds later escalates to voice ... after a short pause we hear Stevens voice over the speakers .... phew !.  Julian then escalates to video and after a short pause again Stevens face comes up on the screen along with Alasdair from Tayside Fire & Rescue (they are on a Microsoft Roundtable).  The little 'warning triangle' appears at this point to say the bandwidth isn't perfect and after a few seconds the resourceful RTC Audio and RTC Video codec makes a few changes ... everything settles down and a after a brief introduction from the guys from Tayside,  Julian continues with this 'pitch'. 

Now I thought this would be enough but Julian,  a seasoned 'demoer' of OCS in extreme conditions,  decides he wants to push it a little further and I raise my eyebrow as he starts to explain that you can conference other people in and proceeds to drag Neil May from POST CTI into the video call too.  A few seconds later,  Neil May's face appears on the screen and Neil,  Julian,  Steven and Alasdair start to have a quick conversation.  While this is all going on I have a big smile on my face as I really was amazed and proud of OCS and its ability to take on the challenge of such terrible network conditions and still deliver a great demo .... the next time I have the 'QoS discussion' with anyone,  I am going to point them in the direction of this post and simply tell them that 'QoS is optional,  not required'.

After the event I had a flick through the feedback forms and I think 'Andy' summed it up quite well with the comment 'Very impressive & something I will recommend'.   Well done OCS,  well done Windows Mobile,  well done Steven,  well done Alasdair, Well done Neil and Well done Julian .... indeed a proud day for Deakin !

The middle of last week I went away to New York with a few friends for a four days and as such my mailbox didn't get the attention it normally does.  I must admit that I did still sync me email in the morning while recovering (if you want a list of good bars in New York let me know) but this wasn't in order to reply to an emails .... just to delete the ones that were FMI (For My Information).

This is all well and good but when I came into work on Tuesday,  I was met by a considerable pile of email to the tune of around 290 emails (its worth noting at this point that I am not a member of any distribution groups so all of these had my name in the email directly) which needed to be processed while dealing with new emails and IM that were coming in during the day.  How can one fix this problem you might ask yourself ?

Last Thursday I was at a location with no internet connection which has oddly enough enabled me to get on with a lot of work.  Without all the emails and IMs coming in for the last 8 hours,  I managed to sort out my mailbox to a more manageable 91 unread emails (its below me 100 email target - yah!),  only checking my phone for emails once an hour to see if anything new and important has come in.  As you can see in the image,  I had 32 emails sitting in my outbox ready to go when I got home.

So is offline the new online?  I certainly is for the odd day where you return from holiday and need to catch up on email.  I am seriously considering putting an 'Offiline Day' in my calendar once a month so people know I am working on the emails they sent 30 days ago but have not replied to yet :-)

Why don't you give it a try and let me know how you get on!?

Just after the the OCS launch,  the UC team in the UK embarked on the Exchange Unplugged Tour 2007 that saw us travel to 9 venues during 3 weeks on the road seeing nearly 1000 attendees.

Well,  similar to any good rock and roll tour,  we have decided to do a few more dates to our tour and the 'bus' will again be on the road during the month of March.

Reserve front row seats for your team at the Microsoft Exchange Tour Unplugged for Government.  Discover how the latest unified communications technologies can help you to deliver integrated voice, data and web communications that: help reduce your carbon footprint, meet your Gershon and CSR07  efficiency targets, make mobile and flexible working easier; contribute to real estate rationalisation and address other key challenges on the government agenda.

Microsoft's Unified Communications Experts will take your team through a rich agenda covering Exchange 2007, Office Communications Server, Live Meeting, the Nortel Alliance, Compliance for Public Sector and how Unified Communications will drive Transformational Government. Your team will learn how to map out the upgrade and see how Exchange Server enables your organisation to operate securely anytime, anywhere.

If you are public sector customer,  sign yourself up for one of the following 'gigs'.

 12^th March – Cambridge Garden House, Cambridge

13^th March – Arora International, Manchester

20^th March – Cardinal Place, London

See you on tour ! .... again :-)

Back at the tail end of last year,  Microsoft in the UK did two product launches for OCS,  one in Vinopolis and one at the IP07 show in Earls Court.

We have attended IP07 for two years now (it was called IP06 before just in case that isn't obvious) and this year we are also planning to attend the UC 08 event which incorporates 'VoIP for Business' which many of you will always be aware of.

Given that I now have a bit more time on my hands than I did in October last year,  I am going to try something a little different for our stand and therefore the creative minds of Microsoft and Imago are putting together something a little special,  an opportunity to experience Unified Communications how you would be using it in your day to day life.

I don't want to give away any more information for now .... that may come later .... so for now is probably best to tell you a little bit more about what UC08 is all about.

Unified Communications '08, Incorporating VoIP for Business is relevant for professionals with the following job titles working in organisations of all sizes and in all sectors and will give these professionals an opportunity to see all areas of Unified Communications from a number of vendors.

- CIOs, Business Managers and Technical Directors

- Sales and Marketing Directors, line of business managers

- IT Directors, IT and Network Managers and Communications Managers

If all of this sounds like your sort of thing,  then pop along to the registration site and get yourself a pass.  If you come along to the Microsoft stand be sure to get my attention and say hello !

Last year I went to an event in Newcastle at The Sage that was run by the guys at CodeWorks where Rob Gray,  Chris Rothwell and I talked about how Microsoft use and enable Collaboration and Communication.  A great time was had by all (well the three of us at least) and the discussion continued long into the night accompanied with a few drinks.

The guys are CodeWorks are running another event at the same venue from the 21st to 23rd of May which I am glad to say is being sponsored by Microsoft as well as a number of other organisations.

I for one will be attending this event and see it as an opportunity to speak to people about technology, ideas and the future (as the tag line suggests) .... something I have not done in a while since and plan to rectify !

If you come along ... come find me and lets talk !