Misc

Apple Announces ActiveSync iPhone OMG!

Chris Haaker — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:48:51 GMT

In a move sure to make many an ITPro squeal with delight, Apple announced today that the iPhone will soon be enterprise-ready by licensing ActiveSync from Microsoft and adding remote lock, remote wipe and other requested features. Sign up for the Enterprise Beta program here.

The iPhone will offer full Exchange support, thanks to licenses from Microsoft. The iPhone will also get enterprise-friendly security features, including remote wipe, support for Cisco IPsec VPN, certificates, identities, and WPA2/802.11x support. "Enterprise customers will be pretty excited," says Schiller.

Scha-wing! Now, let's slice another $100 off of the price and we will be in business!

Technorati Tags: Apple,iPhone,ActiveSync,Squirt

The Quality of This Site

Chris Haaker — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:22:25 GMT

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. PS This is not a manufactured post submitted in an attempt to keep my post numbers up ...

Microsoft TechNet Briefings in Second Life

Chris Haaker — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:20:41 GMT

Some Microsofties are starting to offer TechNet Briefings in Second Life at the Microsoft Ampitheatre. Michael Murphy has the straight scoop at his blog. Personally, I would like to see more of this type of thing. It add an interesting twist to keep the community engaged over the typical mass-Live Meeting webinar. Those are only a step-up from reading a book. Now and again, you will get an exceptional presenter that engages you or a fantastic demo. I tried Second Life once and found it hard to pick up but I am sure with more practice I would get better. Companies like IBM have been using SL for fostering community for its virtual workforce and consultants for quite some time now.

Here is the brief on the Microsoft briefing:

Group Notice From: RobinG2 Proto

Saturday Feb 23 Noon - 1pm SLT (PST) at the Microsoft Island Amphitheater for Part 1 of a 3 Part Active Directory Primer Series with Michael Murphy of Microsoft TechNet.

Part 1:

AD Logical Components

We’ll take a look at the basic AD components; Domains, Forests, Tress and Organizational Units.

We’ll examine the function of each component, how they can be organized to create a comprehensive directory services structure forming the basis of your network Authentication and Authorization Chain.

Technorati Tags: TechNet,TechNet Briefings,Microsoft,Second Life,IBM,Virtual WorkForce

Microsoft SkyDrive Now Bigger and More Widely Available

Chris Haaker — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:25:29 GMT

Windows Live SkyDrive today made two announcements:

You've made two things clear since our first release: You want more space; and you want SkyDrive where you are. Today we're giving you both. You now have five times the space you had before — that’s 5GB of free online storage for your favorite documents, pictures, and other files.

and

SkyDrive is also available now in 38 countries/regions. In addition to Great Britain, India, and the U.S., we’re live in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

They also threw in some bug fixes and improved the speed and reliability. They are so sure of what they have accomplished that they removed the beta tag. So I guess they are not going the route of GMail, which is still in beta.

Technorati Tags: SkyDrive,Windows Live,GMail

Beta Invites for Xobni

Chris Haaker — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:10:41 GMT

After checking out Xobni for a couple of days I have been extended five beta invites. Leave an email addy in the comments and I will send them out to the first five. If I receive more I will post an additional request. Also, sign up to be on the beta wait list by clicking on the badge in the left-hand column and it will go to get me more beta invites to hand out. I will post a further review soon, but so far it has lived up to its billing and is pretty sweet. I just don't know how to tell my wife she is only ranked #10 by the software of the people I email. I wont tell her today! It might spoil our ten year anniversary. Thanks for ten awesome years honey!

Technorati Tags: Xobni,Anniversary,Tin

Spread the "Love"

Chris Haaker — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:45:00 GMT

Phishing attacks are nothing new and you can usually spot them in your email with half of your brain tied behind your back. You've seen them - bad grammar, syntax and spelling. The obvious links to knock-off URLs. The pleas from Nigerian-Kings-in-hiding. Today in my GMail I received a note from Hallmark that I was the recipient of a e-card. Now, Valentines Day was a week ago so this seemed suspicious, but my mother is not above sending these cute little e-cards every once in a while so I took a look. "Click here" it tells you, but prior to clicking, I always hover on the link to see the source URL. Where do you think it went? Not to Hallmark I can tell you!

This is a simple, but effective step in determining if the email or link you receive in an email is legitimate. While not foolproof, it goes a long-way to determining what might happen when you click on a link. Running Windows Vista with User Account Control turned on to prompt for a user name and password with administrative privileges is also huge in controlling the effect something like this would have on your system should you decide to click on the link and accept the download of "love.zip." Its no news that people across the intertubes have endlessly complained about UAC (even the Mac commercials pan it) but it is a small price to pay to what happens when on your computer. Like it or not, the Windows platform is the most highly targeted OS for attacks. Practice the digital equivalent of "safe sex" when you are online.

Technorati Tags: love.zip,Hallmark,phishing,GMail,Virus,Vista,UAC,User Account Control

Lenovo Consumer ThinkPads

Chris Haaker — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:20:20 GMT

I love Thinkpads. For the Windows or Linux-based laptop IMO there isn't a better combination of performance and features around. They are rock solid and well thought out. It was with great sadness when I was forced to change from a Thinkpad Tp60 to a Dell Latitude D620 as a result of a job change. Now I have noticed that Lenovo is coming out with some consumer-oriented laptops that look absolutely stunning. If they carry over on the same performance, reliability and thoughtfulness of design they will be sure to be tremendous. Oh, and the price has to be right. Their business models tended to be on the pricey side. Consumer versions will need to carefully marry all of the above to sensible pricing. Check them out here in a great company blog that focuses on why they design Thinkpads they way they do.

Technorati Tags: Thinkpads,Lenovo

A Cornucopia of Scripting Resources for the IT Pro

Chris Haaker — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:15:45 GMT

I hate to script. There I said it. I am a GUI-lover. That being said, I also know the power of scripting and automation can be a tremendous time-saver. That's why I try to script whenever I can. And here are some killer resources for the scripting IT Pro.

Script Center All-in-One Script Center All-in-One features over 160 scripting-related articles collected in a single .CHM file. This collection features all of the Tales From the Script, Office Space, and Scripting Clinics columns, plus much, much more. And if that's not enough, then download the Hey, Scripting Guy! and Sesame Script archives as well.
Sesame Script, 2005-2007 The complete collection of Sesame Script, the beginning scripting column published each month in the TechNet Script Center. All the columns published in the past two years (through the September, 2007 edition) have been collected in a fully-searchable help file, with individual topics arranged by category.
Hey, Scripting Guy! Archive: Volume 2 (2004-2007) The first three years of the Hey, Scripting Guy! column (give or take a month) gathered together in one fully-searchable archive. This HTML help file includes all the text, graphics, and hyperlinks for well over 800 Hey, Scripting Guy! columns.

Technorati Tags: IT Pro,Scripting,Automation,Hey,Scripting Guy,Sesame Script

TechNet Edge: Framework is Up

Chris Haaker — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:35:07 GMT

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, can you whip up something killer for us IT Pros?

Technorati Tags: TechNet Edge,TechNet,Channel8,Channel9,on10,Mix

SyncToy Beta 2 Released

Chris Haaker — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:50:35 GMT

Microsoft's most awesome power toy for keeping many a file synchronized with your USB drive or laptop has been updated. SyncToy Beta 2 has been released and is full of all kinds of updated goodness. The UI remains largely the same, but it looks like a lot of our feedback has been incorporated in to the new edition. If you are upgrading be sure to read the warning during the install. Make sure you have freshly sync'd beforehand.

Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment: Drive letter reassignment will now be detected and updated in the folder pair definition.

True Folder Sync: Folder creates, renames and deletes are now synchronized for all SyncToy actions.

Exclusion Filtering Based on Name: File exclusion based on name with exact or fuzzy matching.

Filtering Based on File Attributes: The ability to exclude files based on one or more file attributes (Read-Only, System, Hidden).

Unattended Folder Pair Execution: Addressed issues related to running scheduled folder pairs while logged off.

Folder Pairs With Shared Endpoints: Ability for folder pairs associated with the same or different instances of SyncToy to share end-points.

Command line enhancements: Added the ability to manage folder pairs via the command line interface.

The SyncToy engine has been rearchitected to provide scalability and the ability to add significant enhancements in future releases.

Sync engine is also more robust insomuch that many single, file level errors are skipped without affecting the entire sync operation.

Sync Encrypted Files: Sync of Encrypted files works when local folder and files are encrypted, which addresses the common scenario involving sync between local, encrypted laptop PC folder and remote, unencrypted desktop PC folder.

64-Bit compatibility

Folder pair rename

Sub-folder Exclusion Enhancements: Descendents creates under excluded sub-folders are automatically excluded.

Folder Pair Metadata Moved: Folder pair metadata removed from MyDocuments to resolve any issues with server-based folder pair re-direction setup.

Removed combine and subscribe actions.

Technorati Tags: SyncToy , Sync data