Search results matching tags 'networking', 'internet explorer', and 'World Wide Web'

The Glass is 10% Full

Keith Combs — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 08:00:00 GMT

Do you ever look to the past to see what the future holds? You should. I cut my computer teeth long before most people. My computer heritage goes back to my diapers. Dear Dad was a career IBMer and I was playing with IBM Selectric typewriters and dictaphones long before most people had ever seen Lotus 1-2-3. During a recent discussion with Rodney Clark, a rising Microsoft executive and the leader of my org, I found out he and I have very similar roots in that regard. His Dad was also a career IBMer. We both have technology in our genes.

The passion for technology was ingrained in me at a very early age. Hugh MacLeod talks about the rebirth of Microsoft in "The Microsoft Question" blog post and why he keeps an eye on us. He makes a lot of good points and gives the "Scoble Effect" a lot of credit. I think the core for a lot of the rebirth he describes is passion.

Have you ever seen Steve Ballmer on stage talking to Microsoft employees at our annual sales and technical pilgrimage? Talk about passion. His passion is strong enough to focus the troops in a direction, for months. When you watch the channel9.msdn.com videos produced by Scoble, Charles and Rory, you see passionate Microsoft people.

Successful companies hire passionate people. Passion also means not resting on your laurels.

So back to my original question... Do you look back? Should successful companies and people look back? I think they should. It's especially refreshing to look back at the progress that's been made over the past 15-20 years. Just look at Windows. See the history of Windows at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx. While you are at it, take a look at the Internet Explorer history. Some would say IE helped Microsoft rise from the ashes.

When I rewind, I think about Windows 3.x and the integration work I used to do with the Novell Netware 3.x of that era. Anyone remember Network Courier or Microsoft Mail? I still remember running my first COBOL compile with Microfocus COBOL on a personal computer. I was in heaven. Sure beats a 3270 emulator and CA Abendaide.

Last week I was in Las Vegas. We had just announced Microsoft Office 2007 had RTM'd and I knew the Windows Vista announcement would be coming soon. I am totally energized about all of this and had an absolute blast demonstrating the products. I was also working with some other Microsoft veterans of plus ten years. All of the veterans were super stoked. New products will do that.

Interesting enough, almost as soon as we announced the Windows Vista RTM, my brain had already placed the check mark next to Windows Vista and was on to what's next... Exchange Server 2007, Longhorn Server, Virtualization management, network management, etc.

Are great companies reborn? Or do they hire passionate people who want to change the world? Are passionate people ever satisfied? Is Microsoft done? What else is left to do? I think the answer is obvious...

The glass is 10% full.

Got a phat internet connection? Download Windows Vista Beta 2 now!!!

Keith Combs — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

So I missed the date by a few hours, but you can help us bring the internet to it’s knees by downloading Windows Vista Beta 2 today!!! Ok, depending on your connection, maybe not today but hopefully shortly there after. After the download is complete burn the .iso image to DVD and you’ll have a shiny new operating system to test.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/preview.mspx and decide if you want to order the DVD kit or download the bits right now.

As you can see, this is a rather large download so you’ll need to be patient with it. It might make more sense for you to simply order the DVD. The price will vary by region but to give you an idea, it’s $6 for the DVD, $4 for shipping and some taxes for me here in sunny 100 degree Texas. That’s slightly over $10 if you want to conserve bandwidth.

UPDATE: Well, we’ll hardly bring the internet to its knees when we get these. I was going through the process of trying the download for myself (so I could share your pain), and I got the lovely message to the right (click the thumb for better detail).

You can’t really read it, but it has bad news. I basically says our data center is a bit busy right now.

Now I’m really going to try to download the whole thing to see how long it takes. With my 15meg connection, it should take about an hour. Place yer bets.

Windows Vista Beta 2 download registration

Keith Combs — Sat, 27 May 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Well I got all excited… I was poking around on the MSDN developer site and noticed they have this enticing link to become a member of the Windows Vista Beta program called the Windows Vista Beta Experience. The link takes you to a site where you can pick your country. Of course I looked for the country of Texas and to my horror it wasn’t listed. So I picked the United States and ended up at http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/enus/. On that page they have a registration link that takes you to http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/enus/register.aspx.

Ok, we are finally through the “experience” and down to the meat of the issue. I started going down this path to see if we’ve actually offered Windows Vista Beta 2 for download. Just below the download button is the following statement:

“The Windows Vista Beta is not yet available. The Beta Experience newsletter will inform you about the availability of the Windows Vista Beta.”

The download capability is expected to happen around June 5, 2006. Signup and we’ll see.

I ended up also clicking on the ORDER button and purchased a copy of the Office 2007 Beta kit. $4.95 plus $2 shipping brought my USD total with taxes to $7.52. Of course I could get this for free internally (and already have), but I also like to see what type of process we are using with our customers. It indicated 2–3 weeks for delivery.

UPDATE: I received my Office System shipment yesterday (6/2/2006). Pretty fast eh?

When I find that you can download Windows Vista Beta 2, I’ll let you know. I have also pinged the TechNet team to see if TechNet subscribers have a way. No promises, but I’m working on it.

Cheers

Feed Your Habit

Keith Combs — Thu, 18 May 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Somebody has been doing some very nice work on microsoft.com. Take a close look at http://www.microsoft.com/rss/default.aspx. We’re starting to get our act togethor on the plethora of content you can suck into your machine via RSS.

We have all kinds of nice little categories for developers, IT Pros (the most stressful job in the world), home users, etc.

And of course, you’ll find this blog sprinkled across some of those categories.

What I didn’t see was a category for podcasts and screencasts. Ok, nobody is perfect. Enjoy!!!

Windows Vista App Compat Readiness Labs @ TechEd06

Keith Combs — Thu, 04 May 2006 07:00:00 GMT

An unique opportunity to get one-on-one time with our Windows Vista application compatibility experts during the Windows Vista Readiness Applications Compatibility Labs at TechEd 2006. Bring your own Applications to test and troubleshoot and/or try out our self paced labs to test and catch up on the exciting new enhancements and opportunities Windows Vista has to offer – all in a single room.

Windows Vista Readiness Labs TechEd06

June 12th – 16th, 2006

Room 108, First Floor

Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC)
415 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02210

Application Developers (ISV and IT) are invited to the Windows Vista Readiness App Compat labs at TechEd06!

Use our test application to learn about changes that could affect applications in the Windows Vista environment.
Bring your Applications to the Vista Readiness Lab and have our experts assist in evaluating and debugging compatibility issues in your app.
In a single HoL session you will understand how to setup, run and uninstall scenarios for Vista and learn more about new features like UAC and how they can impact applications.
Spend 1:1 time with our Vista App Compat experts – learn how to fix your applications directly from Microsoft Development teams and experience the enhancements and opportunities Vista has to offer.
This is a great opportunity to learn about the (ACT) Application Compatibility Toolkit that would help enterprises to evaluate upgrade and deployment to Windows Vista options while reducing testing and other costs to a minimum. Additionally, ACT can be used by developers to learn about areas in their applications that need to be addressed.

How would you solve this security problem?

Keith Combs — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Steve Riley sent me an email message about a post on his blog. He needs feedback from all of you on how to solve a challenging problem. The challenge revolves around using public computers or kiosks to access your corporate data. If we all used smartcards, and all machines had smartcard readers, then we’d have a nice multi factor auth system. However, smartcard utopia doesn’t exist.

You can read a nice description of the problem at http://blogs.technet.com/steriley/archive/2006/04/20/425824.aspx.

So what would you like a two factor authentication system to look and act like? Give Steve some good feedback at the post linked above.

My solution would be to create a smartcard emulator on a USB flash “drive”. Securely store the certs on the device. USB is a pretty prevalent port on machines, at least more so than anything else I can think of. Would that work?

Blitzkrieg of security offerings coming. Confused?

Keith Combs — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 08:00:00 GMT

Most people are probably familiar with the military term, Blitzkrieg. According to Wikipedia, it means “lightning war”. Of course I’m not talking about previous military wars but instead I am referring to the war against viruses, worms and other malicious exploits in the various operating systems and web browsers on this planet. Well, let the Microsoft blitzkrieg begin.

This week, Microsoft announced a number of changes to the product lines we have coming that will combat the bad guys. Unfortunately, with the number of announcements and tools it can get confusing on what you’ll get, when you’ll get it, and how much it will cost. The good news is that some of my favorite tools will be free.

Branding

Personally, I’d consolidate all of the tools into one brand. I’m not sure what the brand would be. What do you think? The “Security Center” in Windows XP is pretty straight forward but catchy it ain't. I like the Windows Defender name. It’s catchy and conveys a sense of proactive spirit. How about Microsoft Nuke? Ok, maybe not. I’m sure that we’ll eventually do some consolidation in this space. It would seem that Windows Defender and Windows Defender Professional or Windows Defender Enterprise might work. If you are a home user, download Windows Defender for Windows XP. If you buy one of the home SKUs for Windows Vista, it comes built in. If you are a volume licensing customer, you get the central reporting and control of the Pro or Enterprise product. Keep in mind I’d put all of the security related stuff (Firewall, automatic updates, virus, malware, spyware, root kit detection, etc.) under the brand so that our customers would know where to look for changes to properties and settings. Maybe the Microsoft Security Center isn’t soo bad after all, eh? Just brainstorming here…

Where do I get free training?

The answer is of course TechnetBriefings.com. My team will begin delivering live seminars on all of the security technologies in April. We’ll clarify the security offerings on the Windows Server System products, Windows XP and Windows Vista client platforms.

Kai Axford is leading the content development so you know it’ll be stellar. If you don’t know Kai, he’s a Microsoft Security Specialist and won a Microsoft Chairmans award for his efforts in the security space last year. He’s also a Greenbay Cheesehead but don’t hold that against him. Our plan is to cover the server and client products and offerings. This is likely to include the new ISA Server 2006 stuff, Antigen for Exchange, Futuresoft technologies, etc. We’ll have a ton of kewl demos so be sure to come to the live event if possible. Of course you can always see us do webcasts as well.

For more information on the live events we’ll be delivering, see http://www.technetbriefings.com/. That site has our current seminar descriptions for Windows Server 2003 R2 and Exchange Server 2003 SP2. We’ll update it soon with the Q4 content outlines and abstracts.

Where should I look now?

In the meantime, lets take a look at some of the offerings that got announced or updated. It would be prudent to look at the matrix of offerings so we can compare features. You’ll notice on this chart that Windows Defender doesn’t do virus protection or removal. I would change that. If you want virus protection and/or removal, we’ll have the Windows Onecare Live and the Windows Live Safety Center. The Onecare Live service will be a more robust service offering scheduled scans, backups, tune-ups and added protections. See the OneCare Live press release on pricing and the promotions running through the end of April.

Most of you are familiar with the Malicious Software Removal Tool. It’s been around for a while and of course has been updated several times via the Microsoft Update servers. You could of course run it right now. Good doggie.

On the business side of the offerings, you’ll see the Microsoft Client Protection programs. Like many of the goodies above, it is also in beta testing. If you want to signup for the beta, go here. There is a nice little FAQ on the site but unfortunately, pricing and licensing has not been announced. Stay tuned for that.

Summary

As you can see, Microsoft continues to invest in a number of technologies and services to combat the bad guys. Our army of products and services are coming. It’s a full on blitz and by the looks of things, calendar year 2006 is going to be good for consumers.

I’ll do some demos soon on these technologies and by all means let me know if you have any questions. If you are in the southern states, come see me at one of my events. Otherwise, keep your eyes on this blog and webcasts I deliver.