Whatever...

Error code 80072efd MSN Messenger

Jay Kinker — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:51:32 GMT

Simple solution for me: Allow MSN at Anti Virus

I upgraded MSN yesterday and it worked well. When I rebooted my laptop today it stopped working!

When I searched for the error code, I got huge list of pages with variety of solutions like registry changes and all sorts of setting which was not required at all (at least for me). So I choose to write my solution.

I am using Vista Ultimate 64 bit

Microsoft Help on MSN

New updated website for Microsoft MVP

Jay Kinker — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:07:26 GMT

Microsoft announced the new updated public website for MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional):
www.microsoft.com/mvp

The site is designed to help people understand the MVP Award Program and the exclusive nature of the MVP Award. Offered in nine languages, the new pages feature a fresher design, and simplify the user experience while addressing the key questions that site visitors ask.

One improved way to the MVP Award Program!

Microsoft with IIS Search Engine Optimization

Jay Kinker — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:27:22 GMT

Yes, now its Microsoft getting into SEO. Personally, I have not been a big fan of SEO initiatives and the action that is going around it. Following article is what I agree: http://societrends.com/2009/05/07/seo-is-todays-snake-oil/

Having said that, we still have to keep our customers happy and IIS SEO Toolkit can make developers life easy. Some of customization we do today for achieving SEO requires multiple third party utilities and in the end becomes miserable to maintain.

Executive Summary

Microsoft recently announced the IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit Beta – a free toolkit that helps Web developers, hosting providers, and server administrators improve their sites’ relevance in search results by recommending how to make them more search engine-friendly. The SEO Toolkit Beta is available for installation via the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta.

Additional Information & Resources

The IIS SEO Toolkit can:

· Improve the volume and quality of traffic to Web site from search engines

· Control how search engines access and display Web content

· Inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing

The IIS SEO Toolkit includes three modules that integrate with IIS Manager:

· Site Analysis, which suggests changes that can help improve the volume and quality of traffic to your Web site from search engines;

· Robots Exclusion, which makes it easier to control and restrict the content that search engines index and display; and

· Sitemaps and Site Indexes, which can help inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing.

The IIS SEO Toolkit Beta can be installed with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta.

· For more information, visit: http://www.iis.net/extensions/SEOToolkit

· For more information on the Microsoft Web Platform, visit www.microsoft.com/web

· To follow Microsoft Web Platform on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mswebplatform

Windows Azure Management Tool (MMC)

Jay Kinker — Sun, 17 May 2009 12:21:30 GMT

Available immediately from Code Gallery, download the Windows Azure MMC. The Windows Azure Management Tool was created to manage your storage accounts in Windows Azure and makes it simple to help debug, create, and explore your storage solutions. In our testing, this tool has been invaluable to us to inspect messages in our queues.

debug, create, explore…

Developed as a managed MMC, the tool allows you to create and manage both blobs and queues. Easily create and manage containers, blobs, and permissions. Add and remove queues, inspect or add messages, or empty queues as well.

Features

· Manage multiple storage accounts (makes it easy to manage all your accounts)

· Easily switch between remote and local storage services

· Manage your blobs

o Create containers and manage permissions

o Upload files or even entire folders

o Read metadata or preview the blob contents

· Manage your queues

o Create new queues

o Monitor queues

o Read (peek) messages

o Post new messages to the queue

o Purge queues

* The current release does not work with Windows 7 due to a bug in the underlying PowerShell version. All other OS versions should be unaffected.

Free Microsoft Software for Students : Microsoft DreamSpark

Jay Kinker — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:49:13 GMT

Isn’t this amazing? Students can now download Microsoft development products for free!!!

A fantastic initiative by Microsoft to enable students with development tools at no cost! The initiative was announced by Bill Gates at IIT, Delhi, India.

Bill Gates announced this first in February for US and few other countries. By end of this year the program should cover most major countries.

DreamSpark is a program set up by Microsoft to provide students with software design and development tools at no charge. The program was originally directed at college students, but now it has been expanded to include high school students.

Free softwares/products includes:

- Visual Studio 2008 (Professional Edition)

- SQL Server 2005 (Developer Edition)

- Visual Studio 2005 (Professional Edition)

- Many more…

List of developer tools available to students at no charge:

http://www.dreamsparkindia.com/dreamspark/GetDreamTools.aspx

Students should check http://channel8.msdn.com for regularly posted updates to see when Microsoft DreamSpark will be available to them.

DreamSpark Portal:

http://www.dreamsparkindia.com/dreamspark/

Microsoft News Release:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-18GSDPR.mspx

FAQs:

http://www.dreamsparkindia.com/dreamspark/FAQ.aspx

Is Microsoft focused? Why is it involved in so many areas?

Jay Kinker — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:40:40 GMT

This is one of common questions that I get during my presentations/conferences. We see MS with OS, Office line of products, Server/middleware products, designer products, games, etc. In addition to that, MS is also competing with enterprise like Google and Oracle on multiple avenues.

At high level, it looks amazing to me. Anyone would agree that having developed and delivered these kind-of stack of products is itself an achievement. And delivering world class products and competing with market leaders is itself a challenge.

Coming back to the question – Is Microsoft really focused? My answer for most products would be yes. MS started and were focused with their operating system and OS related applications. But once you have successfully delivered, what’s next! They started with products that helped Microsoft users to be independent. We see MS office stack and applications that helps IT guys to create and manage their network. To enable Microsoft users to be able to use MS products and technologies, MS had to come up with some effective development tools, languages, environment for MS users to develop their own products that run on MS platform. MS helps its partners/users to develop MS based applications and MS gains customers as application users! Both parties get benefited with this approach.

Talking specifically about SQLServer – I think this is one of great decisions and investment. RDBMS is need of application development. Can you imagine an enterprise application without database! When you are developing MS based application, many times development life is easy if you have tighter integration with RDBMS. Both dev environment and RDBMS from same vendor makes this possible. At this same time, MS itself needed some kind of RDBMS for its own need of data persistence. One example could be BizTalk Server, which is very tightly integrated with SQL Server and use it for data persistence.

I am not sure what the aim of getting into gaming zone is and how virtual reality and AI is helping MS.

As a whole, Microsoft is excellent example of how an enterprise can/should evolve, grow and remain as market leader.

Cost cutting... Is it being done correctly? Who to blame?

Jay Kinker — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:10:22 GMT

Every time recession hits market we start seeing so many people loosing jobs. This happens across business domains.

Every single person; from a clerk to the CEO, everyone know that such rough phase is going to come periodically irrespective of what business they are in. What kind of planning is done by the leaders (CEOs, VPs, …) to handle those situations? I see very less enterprise globally who manage their good-bad phase without (or minimal) people layoff. Who is to blame for this? Let me ask another question – Who takes the most credit for all or most business success?

I understand that everyone does business for profit. My only problem is that business houses start firing people too early. Instead, I feel they must take additional measures. I don’t think head count could be one of top factors that save lot of money for an enterprise.

Examples:
- You can save much more by using better technologies, solutions, and processes than what you save by firing people.
- One business trip of 1 top executive in many cases could cost more than a month’s salary of an employee who is fired.

I am not one of top executives who are involved in taking enterprise wide decisions and business strategies but from where I see – I clearly see major gaps. I know it may be simple to write but definitely not simple to implement.

Many times its pure situation due to which layoff is done; but many times I also see people loosing jobs because of their leaders.

Free elearning courses from Microsoft

Jay Kinker — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:56:00 GMT

Does anything come free from Microsoft...!!
Fact is that MS has been taking such initiatives from years. For example there are good investments from MS towards WebCast, Communities and news group, MSDN, etc which has always been free.

At this point I noticed couple of good free courses:

- Clinic 5135: Introduction to Developing with Windows® Presentation Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005
- Clinic 5136: Introduction to Developing with Windows® Workflow Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005
- Clinic 5137: Introduction to Developing with Windows® Communication Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005
- Clinic 5230: Developing Enhanced Web Experiences with Microsoft® ASP.NET AJAX Extensions

Important Annoucement for MS BETA testers

Jay Kinker — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 03:05:00 GMT

Effective, October 31, 2006, Microsoft Beta (http://beta.microsoft.com) will be retiring. All new programs will now use the new Portal, Microsoft Connect (http://connect.microsoft.com). If you are interested in becoming a beta tester for a program, go to http://connect.microsoft.com. Select Available Connections and to view and apply to programs accepting nominations to participate, you must be signed into Windows Live ID to view these programs. Hotmail ID also works in here. From the list of Available Programs, select 'apply' to sign up for a program.

If you are a new Connect user, you will have to agree to the Terms and Conditions and fill out the registration form.