SYN; SYN-ACK; ACK; It's that simple. : TechNet Features

Happy Earth Day from TechNet Magazine

chriskil — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:23:00 GMT

In honor of Earth Day, TechNet magazine has released an online-only edition, with articles around reducing energy consumption in the data center and other ways you can do more with less.

Check it out at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/default.aspx.

Chris

FIN

More Frequent TechNet Home Page Updates

chriskil — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:32:00 GMT

Regular visitors to the TechNet home page might have noticed that we've been making more changes around the content we feature.

Previously, we were featuring a variety of blogs at the top of the page, but we realized that the chance of a blog post intersecting with your needs today wasn't as large as we would have liked. So, we've changed that area to be more topical and up-to-date with today's concerns.

Top-of-mind right now is Security and Windows 7 - keep an eye on the space and let us know if the links we put there are useful for you.

Chris

FIN

Speaking of security, make sure you've patched/scanned for the Conficker Worm

chriskil — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:53:00 GMT

Just in case you had not heard, Microsoft is offering a $250,000 USD reward for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet.

We have a resource-packed page on the Security TechCenter about the Conficker Worm to help you stay safe or get your machines clean.

Chris

FIN

Knowledge Base articles move to TechNet and MSDN

chriskil — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:44:00 GMT

Microsoft is moving its Developer & IT Professional primary support content (also known as Knowledge Base – or KB - articles) from http://support.microsoft.com Web site to MSDN and TechNet, respectively. This move is to ensure that Developers and IT Professionals will see support information in the places they would most likely to be looking for it – and so that other, relevant or associated information can be more easily exposed alongside it.

With this shift, you’ll see a number of changes:

· All http://support.microsoft.com Web sites that provide support for IT Professionals and Developers will now be directed to MSDN or TechNet.

· The initial implementation begins on February 17, 2009 with the pilot launch of 20 support articles (KBs) in English and Japanese. When the team is satisfied that major search engines are picking up these changes in search results (which should be no later than February 28, 2009), we will than add more than 55,000 articles in Chinese-Traditional, Chinese-Simplified, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian and Spanish.

· Security/hotfix articles will not move to MSDN and TechNet immediately, although all IT Professional and Developer content will eventually move to MSDN or TechNet.

The ability to search Premier Online, the MVP portal or PartnerSource/ CustomerSource does not change as a result of this change.

New TechNet Support Page - http://technet.microsoft.com/ms772425.aspx

chriskil — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:02:00 GMT

It's been a busy summer of labor here at TechNet, and the fruits of our labor are now ripening and ready for harvest.

First off the vine: our new Support page at http://technet.microsoft.com/ms772425.aspx

We heard that you wanted an easier way to search just for Knowledge Base (KB) articles, so right up top, is a search box scoped just to KBs. Give it a spin.

The TechNet Forums are becoming an even larger treasure trove of troubleshooting and support information, so we have put links to the top traffic forums and grouped them by product type.

We've also added links to popular support and troubleshooting tools you might not be aware of, a Security Bulletin feed and a Service Pack Feed (http://services.social.microsoft.com/feeds/feed/tn_service_pack) to help you stay up-to-date.

Stay tuned for some more exciting changes!

Speaking of TechNet/MSDN search...

chriskil — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:41:00 GMT

I did a post a few weeks ago about search scoping using the TechNet/MSDN search engine to highlight how we are continually improving our search engine for TechNet and MSDN.

Chris Slemp has an interesting post on the results of asking 12 IT Pros and Developers to use the TechNet/MSDN search for 12 days.

He has links in his post so you can tell us what we should improve next.

Check it out.

FIN

From 3.5 million TechNet Search Results to 9 in Four Easy Steps

chriskil — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:09:00 GMT

TechNet and search.

Hey, we know you mostly use Google to look for things on TechNet and hit the back button to go back to Google if you didnt' find what you were looking for, and that you do this over and over and over until you find what you're looking for. It's not very efficient, is it?

The next time you're looking for something on TechNet, try our site search. It's much improved lately as we've increased our index coverage and dramatically increased search keywords.

Here, I'll show you how to go from over 3.5 million search results to 9 without ever having to leave the site.

Start with the search box, which you'll find in the upper right-hand corner of every page on TechNet (and MSDN):

Now let's type in a pretty generic search term, "Windows Server". Notice all of the pre-populated search keywords that appear. We now have over 2 million and we will continue to add more as we analyze search phrase traffic patterns. This should help you quite a bit in forming your search query:

Let's stick with our generic search term for the time being and just hit Enter to see our search results:

Over 3.5 million - which isn't very helpful. But, you'll see that we have links allow you to refine the search results by topic and source. They're like adding additonal search terms without having to type them in. Let's click on the refinements by topic for "Windows Server 2008", "Windows Server", "Windows 2000 Server" and the source refinement for "Support: Knowledge Base & Forums".

That made a huge difference - we're down to 47 results:

Now, let's add one more keyword to our search string, "downloads", and see what we get:

Nine (9) results without ever leaving TechNet!

Sharp-eyed readers will also note the RSS badge on every search results page - you can subscribe to search results, and your RSS reader will deliver up new items as they get indexed and added. This is a great way to stay on top of a particular product or technology.

The next time you need to search our site, try using our search keywords with search refinements - you might just find what you were looking for much faster than bouncing in and out of the site.

FIN