Rob Costello

Office 2010 – The Movie

robcost — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:33:55 GMT

Awesome work MS Marketing!!! This is what all tech ad’s should be like…

Mobile twittererer? Try Twikini

robcost — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:10:20 GMT

I’ve been exploring a more synchronise communication tool lately that you may have heard of, it’s called Twitter.

The one thing I’ve struggled with is the need for a mobile client, but I think I’ve found the answer, it’s a nifty little Windows Mobile app called Twikini. It’s simple yet has all the features you need for tweeting on the go.

Highly recommend you check it…

http://www.trinketsoftware.com/Twikini

Live Mesh for MacOS & Mobile

robcost — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:34:45 GMT

Noticed on Nick’s blog we now have Live Mesh clients for Windows Mobile and MacOSX. Check out his full post here…

Live Mesh: MacOS, Windows Mobile | www.nickhodge.com

Or to get your mobile meshing straight away use your phone browser to go to

http://m.mesh.com

Technorati Tags: Live Mesh

OCS 2007 R2 Announced

robcost — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:43:42 GMT

Ok, I know I’ve not blogged much lately and this post is a couple weeks behind, but it’s worth noting for historical reasons at least. :)

On October 14 we announced at VoiceCon in Amsterdam the upcoming release of OCS 2007 R2. For the full announcement check this out…

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-14OCSR2PR.mspx

I’m really excited about this release, I’ve been involved with it early and can see we’ve really added some great new features that will really enable companies to reduce costs and empower users.

The Dial-in Conferencing and Response Group features are fantastic enhancements to our existing Voice capabilities and I can’t wait to see the impact this product has on the market in the coming years.

Really exciting stuff! :-)

Technorati Tags: OCS 2007 R2,Voice,Dial-in Conf,Response Group

Photosynth is cool

robcost — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:33:25 GMT

How cool is Photosynth!?!?! We come out with some cool technologies sometimes, and this is definitely one of them.

Share this post :

Daylight Savings Changes - October 2008

robcost — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:01:07 GMT

It's that time again, when Daylight Savings changes need to be applied. Please read the guidance below and make sure you don't get caught out...

In October this year, we will again be experiencing Daylight Savings changes in Australia. These changes can have a significant impact on business performance if not dealt with proactively. These effects can range from the incorrect time display on the clock, to calendaring problems, to financial and reputation loss if business critical services fail.

Daylight saving now commences on the first Sunday in October and ends on the first Sunday in April in Australia Eastern (New South Wales, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania) and Central (South Australia). This change affects Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office Outlook and other Microsoft, third party and custom applications. Please find below some of the key things you need to know.

What is the impact of Daylight Savings changes?

Effects can range from the incorrect time display on the clock, to calendaring problems, to financial and reputation loss if business critical services fail.

The 5^th of October commences the second window of time zone harmonisation for this year, however, we expect a greater impact in October as the change is 21 days difference, whereas the adjustment earlier in the year was only 7 days.

What is affected?

- All Microsoft Windows PC, server and mobile devices in the affected time zones must be updated to ensure accuracy of internal time zone tables and correct operation of the system clock.

- Microsoft Office Outlook calendars may need to be adjusted. Client and Server-based tools are available to automate this service.

- Microsoft, third party and custom applications which schedule events at future dates should be reviewed to ensure they will operate correctly during the extended daylight saving period. Previously scheduled events may also need to be adjusted.

- Microsoft recommends that all PC and server systems are updated regardless of location to ensure consistency of operation.

What do I need to do?

Thorough planning and testing for these changes is critical to ensure the change results in minimal user impact, so to help customers prepare Microsoft has developed the Australia 2008 Daylight Saving Planning document which details the nature and impact of the DST changes, along with planning guidance to avoid user impact.

What if the systems have been previously patched?

Where servers, workstations and mobile devices have been added to the infrastructure, organisations will need to audit their environment to ensure all systems are patched according to the organisation’s Daylight Savings Plan.

Where the environment does not have a consistent Daylight Savings Time (DST) patch level, appointments may have been created with a mix of correct and incorrect DST transition dates. Furthermore, Microsoft recommends customers update all systems to ensure consistency of operation, even if none of your systems are in the affected time zones.

Planning for Daylight Savings changes

Microsoft has revised the Australia 2008 Daylight Saving Planning Guide with learnings from the April transition and additional considerations for the October transition. Download the guide and update your daylight savings plan.

Share this post :

BlackBerry Client for OCS 2007

robcost — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:53:34 GMT

How cool is this, now there's a OCS mobile client for Blackberry's.

Check it out here...

BlackBerry - BlackBerry Client for use with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

Share this post :

OCS 2007 Edge Planning Tool

robcost — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:51:11 GMT

Great new tool to assist in planning OCS Edge deployments. Check it out here...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=149E5DD5-EAAE-46B6-AFBA-01C31E88A275&displaylang=en

Here's the blurb...

The Edge Planning Tool asks questions about your proposed or current edge server deployment. The tool uses your answers and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices to generate the following reports:

Settings that you can use to configure your certificates, DNS services, and firewalls

Custom documentation for configuring your edge servers, reverse proxy, and next hop server

A comparison of your answers to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices

Share this post :

Exchange and Virtualisation

robcost — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:46:45 GMT

A lot of people are talking about the updated support policy on virtualisation support for Exchange 2007. If you missed it check it out here...

Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments

Share this post :

Long time no posts

robcost — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:24:46 GMT

So things have been pretty crazy of the last couple of months, hence the lack of blog entries. Things have calmed down now, sort of, so hopefully I'll find more time for talking to the world... or anyone that will listen. Personally a lot is going on, new house etc, you can catch up on that here... New House = Lots of projects.

When I say things have sort of calmed down, I mean I've been away for 5 weeks, in Seattle for work for a week, then off on holidays for the last 4 weeks.

Well now I'm back on deck, so expect to see a few more posts popping up.

Share this post :

Ninja's

robcost — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 02:59:00 GMT

Only 24hrs in the US till I saw this...

What's this twitter thing about?

robcost — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 02:38:00 GMT

I'm trying to get my head around Twitter. I'm all signed up if anyone wants to follow me, not that I'll have much interesting going on, but if you want my site/name is http://twitter.com/robcost. Let's see if I can get it working hey.

Long time no blogs

robcost — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 02:33:00 GMT

So things have been pretty crazy of the last couple of months, hence the lack of blog entries. Things have calmed down now, sort of, so hopefully I'll find more time talking to the world... or anyone that will listen. Personally a lot is going on, new house etc, you can catch up on that here... New House = Lots of projects.

When I say things have sort of calmed down, I mean I'm now in Seattle for work this week, then off on holidays for the following 4 weeks. If I find anything interesting to blog about during this time I will, but I'll more than likely just be blogging photo's of the trip to my personal site... http://krudler.spaces.live.com/.

Virtual Machine Library

robcost — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:05:45 GMT

How cool is this, ever wanted to find all the Virtual Machines we have for download for you to try out Microsoft products like Exchange, Biztalk, Vista, ILM etc etc. Well here is the one address you'll need to find all our VHD goodness...

http://www.microsoft.com/vhd

Technorati Tags: Virtualisation

Hyper-V lab up and running

robcost — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:15:00 GMT

I wrote this a couple weeks back but forgot to post it...

I've been pretty flat out the last couple of months, so haven't had much time for blogging and being a nerd at home, but I finally found some time to rebuild my lab at home to run on Hyper-V on a new machine. I bought a bunch of hardware a few months back to upgrade my existing machine, and it just sat there.

My new lab machine is running Windows Server 2008 Core with Hyper-V on the following hardware:

Intel Quad-Core Q6600
8GB RAM
Gigabyte GA-
7 SATAII drives (1x250GB for OS, 2x500GB mirrored for VM's, 4x1TB RAID5 for "data")
ThermalTake Armor Case (it's huge!!!)

Had some fun getting Server 2008 Core up and running, as the drivers that come with the Gigabyte GA- are not signed, so had to go hunting for WHCL drivers for the onboard RAID controller. Once that was installed then run though I was off to the races. Configuring Server Core is easy if you follow the Step-By-Step guide here...

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/library/47a23a74-e13c-46de-8d30-ad0afb1eaffc1033.mspx?mfr=true

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2008,Server Core,Home Lab,Hyper-V