• Windows Home Server - Outlook 2010 now supported! Details HERE

    The Office Maven had now released a completely new version of Windows Home Server Outlook add-in with full support for Microsoft’s new Outlook 2010. WHS Outlook is a Windows Home Server add-in that integrates the Microsoft Outlook software with the Windows Home Server Console application – but wait, there’s actually alot more to it.

    WHS Outlook allows a single installation of Microsoft Outlook to be shared by up to 10 different client PC’s via the Windows Home Server Console (remember user CALs to stay legal etc). Using the Remote Access features of Windows Home Server, you can even gain full access to all of your Microsoft Outlook e-mail, contacts, calendar, etc. from anywhere in the world.

    Features & Changes:

    • Added Outlook 2010 support
    • Added Internet Calendar via WebDAV support
    • Added SharePoint site integration and SharePoint list support
    • Added “Sounds” command to the settings menu
    • Improved: “Send Attachment (to client)” feature
    • Improved: WHS Outlook Graphical User Interface re-sizes to fill entire console
    • Improved: WHS Outlook Connector now gives tray notification messages for reminders
    • Improved: WHS Outlook initialization and architecture
    • Fixed: “Switch Profile” functionality
    • Fixed: Problem with opening URLS on the client that contained a pipe “|” character
    • Fixed: Many other fixes, enhancements, and miscellaneous code improvements

    Screenshots




    WHS Outlook - WHS Console access WHS Outlook - Single-Sign-On WHS Outlook - remote access home page
         



    WHS Outlook - Web Site access - Settings WHS Outlook - Web Site access - Open Items WHS Outlook Settings - Advanced Settings



    WHS Outlook Settings - Remote Desktop Connectivity WHS Outlook Settings

    Share Calendars

    WHS Outlook can automatically setup your Windows Home Server as a WebDAV server allowing you to publish and consume Outlook calendars as Internet Calendars directly on your very own Windows Home Server. Second, WHS Outlook now supports SharePoint site integration allowing you to use SharePoint's "Connect to Outlook" feature from within WHS Outlook so that you can access all of your SharePoint Lists (i.e. shared calendars, contacts, tasks, etc.) from within Outlook. WHS Outlook takes care of all the dirty details for you behind-the-scenes allowing you to focus on getting your work done instead of having to spend time configuring your home server.

    For more information: Calendar Sharing in WHS Outlook - Part 1: WebDAV Publishing & Internet Calendars

     

    "Send Attachment (to client)"

    This feature of WHS Outlook has been completely rewritten to provide better integration with Outlook 2007 and 2010 (it works with Outlook 2002 and 2003 as well). When accessing the "Send Attachment (to client)" command from any e-mail message that contains attachments, you are now presented with a dialog box that lists out all of the e-mail message's attachments allowing you to select which of the attachments you would like to send over to your client computer:

     

     

    "Sounds"

    The "Sounds" command brings up the standard "Sounds and Audio Device Properties" Control Panel applet (opened up to its Sounds tab) allowing you to add, remove, or change the sounds being used by WHS Outlook.

     

    Improved Console Exerience

    When running WHS Outlook via the WHS Console it now re-sizes to fill the entire size of the Condole window giving you even more room to work in Outlook within the limited confines of the Console.

     

    A Quantum Leap Forward

    To date, most Windows Home Server add-ins fit into the administrative and media-centric user-interaction space. WHS Outlook differs that it actively provides a productivity platform.  WHS Outlook offers a wealth of new and improved functionality but the first thing you’ll notice about WHS Outlook (when used with Microsoft’s new Outlook 2010 software) is the new and much smoother user interface and overall seamless integration.

    The new version of WHS Outlook works with Outlook 2010, 2007, 2003, and 2002. However, the new calendar sharing features will only work with the newer Outlook 2010 and 2007 versions.

     

  • Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server Capacity Planning Tool Released - Get it HERE!

    A quick one - I recommend anyone about to deploy FPE to take a look at the new PFE 2010 capacity planning tool to ensure you  have correct capacity (memory and CPU) on the server roles before going live!

    It can be downloaded here

  • BingTweets?? Get all the details HERE!

    bingtweets Recently, the Bing Search team announced a new service that’s a mashup of the Bing search engine and Twitter: BingTweets. Through a partnership with Federated Media and Twitter, the site integrates real-time search results from the micro-blogging service with the traditional results from the Bing “decision” engine.

    When you go to BingTweets, you’ll see two separate sections on the site – a larger window on the right for Bing searches and a thinner sidebar on the left where Twitter search results appear. To begin a search, you simply type your query in the Bing search box just as you would when performing a typical search. Once your results appear, you’ll notice that the Tweets column is updated too with Twitter search results containing your keyword or search terms.

    Even better, the Twitter search results update in real-time! The tweets in the sidebar are constantly in motion as new results are posted to the service, so you don’t have to refresh the page or column to see the latest. That’s already a notch above Twitter’s own engine at search.twitter.com where you’re forced to click the “refresh” link when new tweets are available.

    BingTweets manages to top Twitter’s “trending topics” section, too. Twitter’s trends section features a handful of the top words, phrases, and hashtags being posted on Twitter – often getting diluted with spammy marketing hashtags and other silly tags a group of folks thought it would be fun to promote. BingTweets does trends a little differently…and arguably better, if you ask me.

    They’ve divided the trends into different categories like People, Places, and Products as well as a “Popular Now” category, which is more like Twitter’s own trends. Also, the topics within each section are presented in a tag cloud style so hotter topics with more tweets are larger and fading topics with less tweets are smaller. This is useful for knowing exactly which topics are trending up and down.

    It’s interesting to compare BingTweets with Twitter trends, too, since they don’t feature quite the same info. For example, the hashtag #iranelection is still showing as a trending topic on Twitter but it wasn’t on BingTweets. Alternately, BingTweets featured two variations of “All Star Game” (last night’s big Major League Baseball event) but Twitter does not.

    Finally, a box at the top of the BingTweets page lets you share your search results either through tweeting a link to that BingTweets page or on other social media services via a “Share This” button.

    As with everything Bing, the best experience is currently US based (just set your Bing location prefences to United States) however a Europe wide rollout is planned to arrive "shortly" 

     Watch this space for updates..

  • The Win7 Success Story - 100 million+ copies and still selling out around the world!



    Ten days after Windows 7's October 22 launch, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said:
    "Certainly we’ve seen initial sales be fantastic. The first ten days were bigger than the first ten days of XP or Vista or any other Windows launch that we have done."
    All Things Digital's John Paczkowski responded with Well, What Did You Expect Him to Say? Windows 7 Is Selling Poorly?. Needless to say, similar pronouncements by Steve Jobs about iPhones/iPods/Macs/OS X would've resulted in a media frenzy of epic proportions.

    During the first month, Windows 7 sprinted past the total market share of all versions of Apple's OS X according to Internet metrics vendor Net Applications.

    Six months after its launch, Windows 7 has sold more than 100 million copies, becoming the fastest selling OS ever. The OS claimed a 10% share of the PC market in February (Macs included). Not surprisingly, Windows revenues have grown 28% in the last quarter, as reported by CFO Peter Klein during last week's earnings announcement.

    Interestingly, Apple's clever Mac v/s PC advertising seems to have run its course. "I'm a PC" is in! Along with the laptop hunter ads, it proves clever advertising isn't the exclusive domain of one company. InfoWorld's "Save XP" campaign has faded into oblivion (along with its infamous desktop computing expert, and his alterego).

    Using Windows 7 is a pleasure. The user experience is top-notch. The performance is unquestionably better than its predecessors. Nobody's having driver issues. Everything just works. And writing about Windows flaws doesn't sell any magazines or boost pageviews for tech publications.
  • Ever had an Exchange Disk Performance Issue? Try This..

    http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/archive/2010/04/22/etw-storport.aspx

    A fantastic new way in Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 to gather information on how your server is performing with your storage…