GeeksWithBlogs
There are 44 entries for the tag
GeeksWithBlogs
As mentioned in a previous post, I have been accepted to speak at VMworld2011 the week of August 29 in Las Vegas. Since that time I have been working on my presentation with my speaking partner and VMware SE Jeff Szastak. We have submitted the first draft of our deck in for comments and gotten some good feedback. I have now begun to incorporate those changes in to the deck as the final version is due in early August. I am excited to be going to this conference for the first time and especially so...
I wanted to take a moment and jot down some of my initial impressions on the announcements coming from the Apple hype machine today at the keynote. Not being able to attend - largely due to it selling out in two hours - made me especially bitter that Apple would not allow the event to be streamed live. Steve said during the keynote that if they sold more tickets he didn't know where they would hold it. Considering it takes place at Moscone West, the smaller of the two centers, try moving it across...
I get this all the time in IE and it really gets frustrating. I see it for inline video using Silverlight in IE. I get the error that I need the most current version of Silverlight to see the video. When I tell it to install Silverlight it tells me the latest version is already installed. Logic loop! Anyone know how to kill this? Feel free to shout out in the comments below. Technorati Tags: IE9,Silverlight,EmbeddedVideo...
Geeks With Blogs has been given the opportunity to host a blogger’s lounge at MS TechEd 2011 this year. I highly encourage anyone who loves to blog about technology, Developer or IT Pro, to head on over and introduce yourself. I have been blogging off and on (as life and time permit) with this group for a long time now and you couldn’t find a better bunch of guys that are passionate about both community and technology and their site really supports this. Be sure to say hi to Jeff and John. They are...
Microsoft announced at 1:40pm PST yesterday that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have officially been “Released to Manufacturing” which is to say all the bits have been finalized and signed off on. You can read announcements here, here and here. And, of course, all over the twittersphere. Bits hit TechNet +, volume licensing download sites and MSDN on August the 6th. I can now rebuild my laptop for the last time (until that Windows 8 beta is released). Congratulations Microsoft. Some critics...
I have had the good fortune to test both the Palm Pre and Apple iPhone 3Gs. In my day job I am an architect with responsibilities over messaging and mobility – hence I get to try a lot of new devices in order to evaluate their applicability for our enterprise users. One thing I have come to regard as a universal truth is that ranking mobile devices is almost a waste of time. They are so subjective depending on the personal habits and preferences of the person using them. There are some things that...
Well, the annual feeding frenzy known as the WWDC keynote is now over. There was a lot of good information presented on both Snow Leopard and the iPhone. It was pretty demo-heavy as well – better if you see it in person than if you are at home waiting for the next great tidbit of information. One thing I found interesting were the OS X active users statistics shown at the opening of the keynote. Now, perhaps I missed it – feel free to correct me if I did – but they make it come off like they sold...
Ah, I love it! All of the tension of the Palm Pre vs. the Apple iPhone on one page. I wonder if this was intentional or just sheer coincidence? I will be following it live like many others. I will also be getting a Palm pre in the coming days to play with and of course, a review to follow. I will be curious to see if Apple outright calls out the Palm Pre in the keynote. Do they do a straight-up comparison a la OS X vs. Vista...
Microsoft is accepting submissions for the waitlist for the Office 2010 Technical Preview. This is an especially great opportunity if you are already running Exchange 2010 in the lab and want to see how using Outlook 2010 will enhance the experience with things like mail tips, conversation view and universal inbox. The preview is slated to kick off in July. If you attended TechEd 2009 this year, you get priority seeding in to the preview. Sign up in one click at the TechEd event site with your login...
I am sitting in the auditorium waiting for the keynote to start. I am curious to see if there are any surprise announcements or if it is just a re-hash of all the recent public announcements. Rumor has it they may announce VS2010 beta 1. I am sure they will highlight Office 2010 and Exchange 2010 – but to what degree I am not sure. My hotel was a big disappointment – but I picked it and was tricked by the flashy website so I have no one to blame but myself. I feel like I am staying at a Moroccan...
I am going to be blogging the sessions I attend at TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles right here on my humble blog. They will be almost exclusively messaging and mobility related - ‘cause that’s how I roll! I will also tweet as much as I can (I only have two arms) under @ntpro. You can also follow general TechEd 2009 tweets by searching hash tags #teched and #tela09. Great blog post from the team the runs the hands on labs (HOL) at TechEd. Three days away – it is almost time. Technorati Tags: Twitter,tweet,Exchange...
The only bad thing I have noticed as a result of running the RC1 (7100) build of Windows 7 is some strangeness in the Aero UI. This is on a Dell e4300. About 3 times over the last 48 hours, my window frames go to hell. I can press where the minimize, maximize and close icons should be and they behave correctly, however the corner is a blurred mess as is the rest of the window frame. I am using the video driver which Win7 installed so I may have to try the Dell version. When I went to install it,...
So I am trying to sketch out some mailbox server scenarios for my Exchange 2010 design. I think I am leaning towards iSCSI or perhaps direct-attached SAS drives, but since I am doing virtualized Exchange servers, I don’t think I can load all the storage I need in to the ESX chassis. That leaves me with iSCSI. I am looking at three models to ‘standardize’ on for the business: Config 1: 1Gb mailboxes x 1000 mailboxes max = 1Tb database Config 2: 1Gb mailboxes x 500 mailboxes max = 500Gb database 3Gb...
Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the e14 Ignite training in Dallas on the latest version of Exchange server (Exchange 2010) about to get released to beta. As I rushed from the airport to the training, I was stopped to sign the NDA which prevented me from blogging about all the great things I was sure to learn. As expected the training was phenomenal and with the official release of the beta I can now blog about the public details of the enhancements. Here are some of the ones that I am...
Then look no further than Evernote. I had heard about this app for awhile and even had it languishing on my iPhone never to be used. Then I started to look in to it as I tried to find something that would let me merge notes from my Mac and my Windows virtual machines. Not only is it cross-platform, but you can synchronize all of your notes over the internet between desktops, laptops and mobile devices. It is much more than a note taking app, with the ability to make web clippings and translate the...
As soon as I got my mitts on the M3 build of Windows7 at the PDC last year, the first thing I tried was to run it in Fusion on my 15 inch MacBook Pro. It ran just fine sans one little thing – I could never get it to recognize the Marvell Ethernet adapter. Wireless worked fine, but for what I do at work wireless means a constant VPN connection and that was a pain. I did some searching, found one person that had it working on an older MacBook with a different Ethernet chipset. Once the new beta 1 build...
My apologies for being tardy with the follow up post on my Nokia E71 experiences. Its amazing how work tends to take over your life at points and keep you from the things you truly love – spending time with your family or writing blog posts. Thanks for the reminder emails some sent me that I promised to pen this. Before I get started, there has been some other follow-on Nokia news. First Nokia is rumored to be working on the E75, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard version of the E71. It offers a 2.4” screen...
Went to an amazing demonstration of Windows 7 today. The UI changes are very nice. Although they still stick to the mostly tired start menu on the right > start > programs, the taskbar UI has been given a complete make over. It is hard to describe the changes in words, but once you see it, you will immediately understand. Things like new alt+tab live preview and switching (even amongst tabs in IE), hot color highlighting, aero peek, applications grouping, JumpStart and other things. Unfortunately,...
I just got a 30-day demo of the new Palm Treo Pro with Windows Mobile Professional 6.1 to test out. I will add this to my current pending reviews in the next couple of days. Any questions? Specs: Unlocked GSM device – not available from a carrier at the moment Platform Microsoft® Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional Edition Processor Qualcomm® MSM7201 400MHz Display 320x320 transflective color TFT flush touchscreen Radio HSDPA/UMTS/EDGE/GPRS/GSM radio Tri-band UMTS – 850MHz, 1900MHz, 2100MHz Quad-band...
Having not ever been to the PDC before, only TechEd (x9), MEC (x2) and WWPC (x2), and I am curious to attend my first one. I have also never been to LA before so this should be a double mint of traveling pleasure. I hope I see some celebrities eating ice cream at a sidewalk cafe like in the magazines my wife always reads! :) Plus I love me some Mexican food and there has to be some good stuff in LA! I started up the TweetDeck filter for PDC and there is a lot of traffic and a good buzz going already....
For the past three weeks I have been testing the new Nokia e71 and Apple’s iPhone 3g. Both phones are well built and deliver as promised in almost all areas. Below I will give a few tidbits about my experiences with each one. I am also at the same time working on deploying Microsoft’s System Center Mobile Device Manager (SCMDM). This will not come in to play with either of these devices though. Although they have licensed and support Exchange ActiveSync, SCMDM will only support devices running a...
Everyone is streaming in trying to find the optimal seat. After four hours of waiting in line, I don’t care where I sit just as long as I am sitting. There are large plasmas all over the place which is good – from my vantage point, Jobs is going to be a dot. Huge applause – Al Gore is here in the audience. From my seat: More cheesy pre-show music … 10:01 AM PST Still waiting, people still streaming in. Whomever was in charge of the herd\logistics should be shot. Microsoft owns them in this regard...
Waiting in line for the keynote. Kind of a “cattle call” experience. At least we get moved around every hour or so. People started lining up last night. I woke at 5am and headed over and ended up being about 1000 back, wrapped three thirds of the way around the block. It isn't easy standing amongst the faithful either. I heard about 100 Windows jokes in the span of an hour. Every story I heard told was always punctuated with ‘well you should see when I ran it on windows’ or ‘that would bring NT to...
As I was looking over the main feed and wishing I could be a fly on the wall when D'Arcy takes back that PCMCIA card - I noticed there are a lot of Microsoft MVPs blogging on this web site. Now, I know the measure of the man is not MVP membership, but by and large these people are very bright and know their stuff. Out of the top 13 posters by volume, only five of them are not Microsoft MVPs. And there are a ton (technical unit of measurement) more on the list. Jeff, you have quite a community here....
For a few days now there have been some posts concerning the new Microsoft community site for IT Pros, TechNet Edge. I decided to give the URL a try today and saw some of the framework is in place. I was hoping for something more along the lines of Channels 8,9,10 and Mix - fresh, energetic and design forward. I will hold judgement until the release, this could be a comp, but apparently IT Pros are people that hang out in a graffiti ridden park ... we might be "on the edge" but are we "edgy"? Long,...
I just found out that I passed the beta for 70-238 (Pro: Deploying Messaging Solutions with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007). I had previously passed the beta for 70-237 (Pro: Designing Messaging Solutions with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007). Unfortunately, as detailed here, I did not pass 70-236 (TS:Configuring Exchange Server 2007) and I did not get a chance to take it in beta due to some scheduling conflicts. I don't think there is any sub-designation for passing just the IT Pro tests but not...
I have been tagged as part of the "Five Things You Don't Know About Me" meme making its rounds in the blogosphere. You get "tagged" and then you tell five things about yourself others may not know. Once you are finished you "tag" five other bloggers and on it goes. My friend Kevin has tagged me so here goes: Like Kevin, computing was not my first career choice. I was a talented artist as a youth and not knowing much about how to make a living as an artist I decided I would become an Architect. Like...
Even though the support wizards at Zune told me it wasn't compatible, I had a hunch it had more to do with me trying to install the previous version of ZuneSetup (the one that wasn't Windows Vista compatible) than the version of Vista I was using. Sure enough, in the comments and through my own confirmation I found this to be false. I re-imaged my laptop with a fresh install of Windows Vista Enterprise and ZuneSetup 1.2.5511.0 installed like a champ. My only complaint now is that I cannot authenticate...
As I posted yesterday, Zune finally released its Windows Vista compatible client. I had called Zune support two times previously and had gotten credible support. However, this was terrible. After gleefully downloading the new update, I would launch ZuneSetup and then I would be told "No Zune Software Updates Available." I rebooted, tried it a couple of times again, always getting the same result. I am running Windows Vista RTM Enterprise edition. After totally stumping the level one technician who...
Although my prediction last year could be seen as a jinx, I am going to go out and predict, again, that the Buckeyes will tear Texas a new two-step. The team looks impressive and the offense is absolutely loaded with stallions. Of course, one game isn't a tell-all, but things looked good. I was a bit disappointed that as many mentioned, after scoring 28 points in the 1st quarter, the Bucks seems to go on cruise control. I have been longing to see the bucks throw up a 65-12 score on someone like all...
Just a moment ago I had posted that I didn't like the fact that Live Writer didn't allow you to post to "groups," more than one blog at a time. Well, after I published that post the post remained on the screen and I simply switched accounts to my second blog and hit publish again. Now that is just as good
I took a dim view of one of Mary Jo’s blog posts a while back where she questioned the fact that there was no time line available for the successor to Vista – despite the fact that Vista hasn't even been released yet – or despite the fact that she and the press crucify Microsoft when they then announce any delay to that time line. Now its more of the same. MySpace.com recently suffered a service outage due to a power failure in the area where its data center is located. Enter today’s...
After this post, I continued to try to work with Vista for another week before I finally reloaded my XP SP2 image. I did find out that the reason for the slowness in browsing as mentioned in item #4 is most likely attributed to the web caching appliance the networking team uses. Let’s just say it isn't ISA Server 2004 (learn about ISA Server 2006 which rocks even more)! I just loaded the IE7 beta 3 build on the same XP SP2 image and it is running very well so far. The UI seems more streamlined...
I got my stickers in the mail the other day from Jeff Julian. Thanks Jeff! Got it slapped on my laptop and thought I would post some pics of it. Jeff did a great job getting these vinyl die-cut stickers. They look amazing...
I recently blogged about problems I was having getting Office Communicator installed in the latest build of Vista. After a couple more things went south on me ( a lot in part to trying to get the Cisco VPN Client to work) I went back to Windows XP SP2. If you can believe it (I have never seen this happen before) installing Virtual PC SP1 totally hosed my wireless networking adapter. I tried everything including removing the device, re-detecting it, re-installing the driver, etc. Finally I decided...
A friend of mine just reminded me that I promised to get a review of my new Treo 700w up on the blog. I promise within the next seven days it will be up. Thanks for the reminder
I got this from Eileen Brown’s blog. It is a service that maps where your blog readership comes from. Like her, I had no idea I was so widely (geographically) read. You can see the thumbnail version of the map on my left sidebar (below the advertisement) and click on it for a larger version. Pretty nifty! ...
Jeff – since Monday, the issue has not repeated itself. Thanks for the fix
I blogged previously about all the cool new features in Office 12. Now that I have finally gotten to install the technical beta and kick the tires, here is a shot of the new To-Do Bar from Outlook. One of the better new additions to Outlook
Okay, so I am not retiring to blog anytime soon either. My blog is worth $5,645.40.How much is your blog worth...
I am curious Jeff, and this is by no means a slam as I love geekswithblogs.net (and I love the free part too)! If I subscribe to an individual poster’s blog (like yours or mine) FeedDemon dupes every post. If I subscribe to the aggregate feed, then this doesn't happen . . . I understand posts get duped if they are re-posted; but this happens to every post. And I know, at least I am not re-posting all my posts . . . any ideas? And again, the site rocks...
Don't say I didn't warn you — and, yes, I know the odds of this being an urban legend are pretty high . .
I blogged about the beginning of the four-part series here. Get part two here