However before I went I blogged up with all this goodness…

• The best way to enjoy Facebook chat Windows Live Messenger, the Beta Refresh and Facebook
• The best way to enjoy email Why Google is not a business platform
• The best way to help your operators with SCOM Thoughts on OpsMgr: SCOM Operators Basics SuperFlow
• The best ways to virtualise IE6 Excellent paper on IE6 compatibility with Windows 7
• The best album cover for a while Hurley by Weezer
• The best way to Attend meetings in your cowboy hat
• The best way to enjoy the future Breaking: IT Pros have a future with the cloud
• The best of the best of the best The book that stuns everyone in the office
• The best wishes It’s my birthday soon, please can I have this
• The best features Little things in Windows 7 still make me smile
• The best Geek poetry
• The best not very new thing Another not-very-revolutionary feature: Gmail does “undo send”
• The best way to get started with the best Microsoft Online Services Setup Accelerator

I can’t say it was the best week, but it wasn’t far off.

Facebook chat is now integrated with Messenger and it’s done in slick and trustworthy way.

The first thing you see if you already have it installed and the links setup is this following box appear at the top of the social stream.  There’s no automatic assumption made that you want to chat with your Facebook friends, some apps might do that but Messenger is built to keep your trust.  If you don’t already have FB integrated you can do the same thing through Tools > Settings… hit Alt first.

The next thing you get is choice over what you want to share with Facebook, one obviously being chat.

Hit Connect with Facebook provide your logon deets and your golden!  Now in your Messenger window you’ll start to see the online status of your Friends when they’re on Facebook or using any other application that enables Facebook chat.

I’m finding I’m actually using Facebook chat where I didn’t use it before and there are always more people online for me to talk to, oh yeah and I get alerted when new people are online through a little slice of toast popping up in the bottom right of my screen that tells me the difference between my messenger and my Facebook friends…some are both obviously and if they’re connected to both at the same time Messenger takes the load because it’s a richer experience.

You can get the loveable refreshed beta here.

This was originally posted to Underbelly where we talk about cool webby stuff and things like that.

Google's Business Model is based on advertising, not on creating business applications.

BPOS Rocks: Why Google is not a business platform

Thoughts on OpsMgr: SCOM Operators Basics SuperFlow

It’s on Maarten Goet’s blog, he’s a SCOM MVP and knows far too much about System Center Operations Manager.  The superflow tool he’s talking about here is your perfect resource for training your operators.

If you’ve got some applications that rely on IE6 (like the British government) and you need to go Windows 7 (EVERYONE NEEDS to go Windows 7! ) and IE6 compatibility is slowing you down or bloating your deployment project costs, or if it’s a show stopper, then this papers got great advice.  It covers solutions like:

• MED-V which is part of MDOP
• XP mode (which no longer needs a processor capable of virtualisation)
• Terminal Servcies

And it weighs up the pros and cons of each, the licensing considerations, system requirements and just about anything you can think of.  I’m currently building a list of essential reading and learning for desktop deployment and this just made the list.

If you can think of any other creative ways of doing it, let me know.

Get the whitepaper: Solutions for Virtualising Internet Explorer

Weezer have released a new album, Hurley that I’ve added to my download list.

1. Because it has a picture of Hurley from Lost on the front cover (I’m not a LOST fan but I like the thought)
2. Because my Windows 95 CD had Buddy Holly by Weezer on the CD and I love it.  By the way I love Ninja Tuna by MrScruff which is in Windows 7.

Hurley by Weezer via Uncrate

I know it’s silly but it made everyone on the conference call laugh.  I just attended a meeting like this having just attached a LifeCam HD Cinema to my laptop and used it with the Communicator 14 beta….a warning to those messing with their webcam software perhaps?  Yeeehhaawwww

Ok it might not be breaking news but it sometimes feels like it.  The cloud is here to stay and yet I know it scares some people.  It’s kinda like moving from DOS to Windows, some people back then thought that all these GUIs would make it easier for people to use PCs and they wouldn’t need the techies so much.  That didn’t turn out to be true and it won’t for the cloud.  Sure it meant some skills transition but That’s a good thing good IT Pros know how to keep their skills up to date.

We’ve just released a micro site with some nice info to get you started in this brave new world through TechNet and the above image is of some of the stuff there.  Time to put the cloud to work.

So not only that but in the UK you’ve got myself and @deepfat showing you where there’s ground to be broken.  How can we help more?

Today I went to grab a copy of the Windows 7 resource kit that I reserved from the learning center to read on holiday.  It has since been used as a dumbell, a door stop and has as a booster to help a colleague feel taller.  It might be heavier than my baggage allowance.  Still it’s a good resource…who out there considers it invaluable…I do!

I’ll actually be reading and reviewing the new Step By Step book for Outlook 2010 on hols.

Veyron 16.4 Super Sport on Cool Hunting

I’ve been using Windows 7 for almost 18 months now and the little things still make me very happy.  That’s an important thing to remember because people love this OS for it’s simplicity, deploying it will make them feel better.  I love the way the folder icons tell you what’s going on.

In the example above the first tolder has nothing in it, the second files, the third sub folders.  I can see it at a glance and it makes me happy.

I love this, as found by James via Reddit

Gmail’s undo send feature is being talked up all over the web right now.  Why.  It’s revolutionary of course.  WRONG.

Outlook has done this for YEARS, all that’s happening is that a delay is introduced.  To do this in Outlook 2010:

• Go to Options > Advanced
• Scroll down to Send and receive and remove the tick from Send immediately when connected

You can leave it there, or configure the time between send and receives by clicking the Send/Receive button.  Now stuff will sit in your Outbox (from where you can stop it sending by editing it) until the next send and receive which you can obviously start.

One of the best things about BPOS and Exchange Online is how simple it is to setup and what makes it even easier is the guide that takes you through it.  The guide is totally customised to your setup too, which I think is a neat way of walking you through.  What’s more you don’t need to have BPOS to access the guide, so if you want to see how to set it up before you sign up walk this way…

Microsoft Online Services Setup Accelerator

Shawn Stussy’s d’man when it comes finding cool retro stuff.  I’m loving the idea.

Shawn Stussy’s Blog: August 2010

This week my boss caught me enjoying too many Chai Tea lattes (above).  You might be interested in how we work around, it’s a bit like this.  You can’t see the fancy dress stuff on the other side of the room in this shot…

• Resources for BPOS and Exchange Online are useful
• Scenarios where BPOS is brilliant helps put the tech into context
• Great looking Media Center remote for WP7 is an amazing sign of what’s to come with WP7
• Multiple email addresses and BPOS Exchange Online explains how one BPOS subscription can accept email from multiple domains
• Business Productivity Online Standard Suite Deployment Guide helps with deployment of BPOS
• Stunning list of game titles for Windows Phone 7 shows how XBOX Live on Windows Phone 7 ROCKS!!
• Manually configure Outlook 2010 for Exchange Online (BPOS) because sometimes you need to and it’s not that obvious
• 6 Steps to real enterprise email with BPOS that’s all it takes to setup Exchange Online.  Six simple steps.

Online Services TechNet library – this library contains details of lots of differnet aspects of BPOS, including how to get your Exchange Online accounts to work with your mobile device (no not just Windows Mobile!).

The BPOS team blog – contains lots of tips and tricks (including the oft missed requirement for iOS 4.0.1 or higher on iPhone, it’s required because iOS 4 has some niggles with Exchange)

BPOS Live at TechEd NA – A great panel from TechEd on BPOS with some nice twitter q’s.  The sounds a bit ropey but it’s still worth the watch.

Online Services Forums – Ask questions and get help from Microsoft and the community

Email, the Lowest-Hanging Fruit of the Cloud – A great article about why it’s good to use cloud based Email

Domain and User Setup – Keith goes through how to configure your domain and setup some users on BPOs

You’ve realised that Email is low hanging fruit in the cloud tree

Email is really easy to move to the cloud.  There are lots of distinct units (mail boxes) that mean the impact on testing and a gradual rollout to BPOS is simple to do.  Not only that but there’s the high availability and low cost of management, you don’t need to patch or any of that stuff and you don’t need to buy the tin.  You also don’t need to get in with both feet.  Your cloud solution (or at least BPOS) can coexist with on premise (dare we say private cloud?) meaning you get to do this as you feel comfortable with it.

Your internal customers are used to email delivered from the cloud too, in fact they probably expect it – especially the younger members of your staff.  They’ve grown up with services like Hotmail, Yahoo! mail, Gmail and the likes so they expect their email to always be there, to never go down, to never require maintenance, to have huge storage capacity (25gb is the default with BPOS).  This is an example of where the consumerisation of IT is driving your users expectations.  BPOS represents the best first step to the cloud.

You’ve out-grown your existing Exchange environment

Coexistence in Exchange means you can add to your existing Exchange infrastructure by connecting to BPOS.  That means you get your GAL extended into the cloud and it all feels seamless for your users.  There are times when you need to deploy new Exchange 2010 boxes internally but they are reducing.  Compliance could be a major turn off but in the case of BPOS that’s not the case!  SOx and the likes are supported by BPOS they aren’t by many other providers.

Storage is a big thing here.  How much storage do your on premise Exchange users get?  The 25gb offered by BPOS could be an expensive thing to grow to for all your customers, if you needed to buy the spindles and platters.

Again it goes down the cost of tin and maintenance, there are times when you’ll want to scale out your Exchange infrastructure but it now should be ROI costed against BPOS.

You’ve acquired a company on another system

I love this one.  Your company bought another company, again, without thinking about how to integrate the IT systems.  Email just works right?  Well…er..er…

We’ve seen Exchange Online used for just this scenario quite a lot.  You have to get people onto your email system yesterday, it’s imperative to keep the newly acquired business functional, profitable and (possibly) to show them who’s boss.  The ability to integrate Exchange Online rapidly with your existing structure, you can do it in about an hour if the DNS gods are shing on you and the wind is in the right direction, is superb.  They need access to your GAL, they’ve got it, they need to start receiving email @contoso.com , they’ve got it.

Not only that but all their mail can be in brought over too so they don’t loose their archive of 10 year old email Exchanges that they intend to use to justify that pay rise.

You need to move from another Internet based mail system

Same solution as above, mailboxes can be imported.  That is super cool for moving from one provider to another, if they had an outage recently because they can’t really scale and don’t really have an enterprise ready solution.  In fact this scenario applies to moving off of other in house email systems.

Asside: I once helped move from a green screen email system to a gui based one.  Email volume tripled overnight and the reason was it became more usable.  Unfortunately that solution didn’t scale, but it delivers a bit of sage advice.  Be sure what you move to can scale beyond what you currently consider the norm.

You use SBS and you’ve outgrown your 75 user limit

SBS or Small Business Server includes Exchange and it’s all a small business needs to get started.  However there’s a limit of 75 users and a tighter limit on the disk space you have installed in your box (that’s a physical limit not an OS limit).  If you need more than 75 mail boxes or you need more space than you have in that box Exchange Online is for you.

SBS and Exchange Online have been used in other interesting places too, for example the two work really well for project offices.  Everyone on the project only really works on the project but they need to be able to deal with email at a higher level.

You’re company has expanded into a new country and mail’s slow

This is another of my favourite scenarios, mainly because a friend of mine has been hit by the crippling situation that is SLoooooooooooooooW email.  She’s just started work at a new company, the company is actually new to UK and it’s main offices are in India.  Things are not so good from a reliability perspective and a speed perspective.  For example they have on premise Exchange in India (where everyone is in the same building) but have a slow link out the Internet.

When something is sent internally it’s instant, when it goes to her it can take a while, especially when it’s a 10mb Excel doc.  When she checks her email it has to cross that little tiny pipe to get back to her, whilst she’s waiting.

This could be solved by Exchange Online.  If her company set up Exchange Online for her she’d be able to take advantage of her fast home broadband connect when she’s connected to the Exchange Online servers.  Sure the files would still have to cross a tiny pipe but not whilst she’s waiting.  Her experience would be better…in fact she might not be quitting next week.

In fact there is more to BPOS than just email, Sharepoint provides the perfect solution to this problem when it’s in the cloud.  The ability to place a large file somewhere, or a report or just some info, and to only have to manage one place is astounding.  When it’s in the cloud with BPOS it’s even better for people working remotely because you don’t need to worry about your network links.

You have a short term need for extra people with email

You need 100 seats now.  You’ve got a massive sales drive hitting the ground and you need 100 new call handlers with email access like it was yesterday.  BPOS can do that, you don’t need to wait to buy the tin, build it, connect it…none of that.  You just do it.  And when it’s done, as long as it’s been over a year you unsubscribe those seats and if it’s not you begin your cloud migration because you just proved that cloud email works.

Summary

I wrote this because cloud based email is worth thinking about.  IT Pros need to be questioning when they can move to the cloud and Emails the easy way.  I’d really love to know what you think, which is what the comments are for.  Have I missed any scenarios that you think we all need to be considering?

Here’s more on BPOS by me you should signup for BPOS and start trying it out today too.

I’m pretty sure that everyone knows that I’m a Windows Media Center geek, amongst other things, in fact I’ve blogged on the subject at TheDigitialLifestyle.com for a number of years.  Well I love the idea of this.  Being able to control my recording schedule from my soon-to-be-in-my-hands-Windows Phone 7 device.

It’s a great project by Nial this, because he’s already got BigScreen remote which uses Silverlight, so it’s just a simple case of code reuse and some skinning with Silverlight.

This will be installed as soon as it’s released.

Sneak Peek : byRemote native(?) client for Windowsphone 7 + Windows 7 Media Center – Windows Live

Firstly it’s really easy to receive email into one account from different addresses.  For example, say I want to collect emails sent to admin@simon-may.com and have them go to my normal mail address.  All I need to do (as the administrator of my BPOS account) is go to the Admin Center and edit my user account for the mail account where I want to receive the mail.  If I then scroll down I can add any unused alias at any domain that I’ve got associated with my account.  A great example of this would be to add the .co.uk domain if you normally use only the .com domain for your org.

Nothing here for your end user to do to receive this mail.

That’s only half the story though…what about sending?

That’s where things become more tricky.  The BPOS team blog has the answer though in the form of distribution lists.  Essentially what you do is create a dist list and allow one user to manage the list, then they can send and receive from it…it’s not super simple though which is a shame.

Well recommended to any IT Pros thinking about deploying BPOS.

Download details: Business Productivity Online Standard Suite Deployment Guide

I’m stunned at the list of games titles we released today that will be coming to Windows Phone 7, it’s very complete, covering all the gaming bases…but some of favourites:

• Guitar Hero 5
• Assassins Creed
• Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst *
• Castlevania (that’s retro!)
• Earthworm Jim (ditto!)
• Fruit Ninja (ala iPhone fame)
• Halo Waypoint
• Splinter Cell Conviction
• UNO
• Zombies Attack! (gotta love the undead)
• Zombies!!!! (gotta love even more undead)

One of the titles we’re calling out is Crackdown 2.  In this version there’s integration with Bing maps so you can defend your own home, or major building in your town…or your Data Center!  There’s much more info in the Presskit and at the Windows blog.

• 6 Steps to real enterprise email with BPOS will help you get started with BPOS, more on BPOS this week
• Tech·Ed 2010 is coming #TEE10 will fill you in on TechEd Europe 2010
• When to use i.e. and e.g.  will help you out with good explanations and examples and is funny
• Blog Wrap Up Creator (a tool by me) will create posts like this in a single click
• SharePoint Saturday will give you something to do on a Saturday in Birmingham
• Windows Intune Update Management will help you understand Windows Intune some more
• Gingerbread porridge will make your tummy feel nice and we all like that.

Love the look of these found by Steve

This however results in you having a separate profile within Outlook so it’s not quite what I wanted.

This is what you need to do to add an Exchange Online mailbox to an existing Outlook profile in Outlook 2010 (the basic steps are universal):

1. Close Outlook
2. Open Mail32 (32-bit") from Control Panel
3. Click E-mail Accounts… and then New…
4. Select E-mail Account and click Next on the wizard
5. Select Manually configure server settings or additional server types and Next again
6. Select Microsoft Exchange or compatible service and Next again
7. Now fire up your browser of choice, IE nach, and log into your Outlook Web Apps.
8. Look in the top right and you’ll see Options, then select About and copy the name next to Mailbox server name
9. Go back to the mail settings dialogue and paste the name of your Exchange Online server in Server and your full Exchange Online email address in User Name
10. Click the More Settings… button in the lower right and select the Connection tab, tick Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP and click Exchange Proxy Settings…
11. Next you’ll need the address of the mobile device URL for your region which you’ll enter in the first field, then click OK a couple of times to get back to the wizard

Done, if you start Outlook you’ll find your new account is available for you

I’m just starting to learn my way around BPOS so I thought I’d move all the mail for my domain, simon-may.com, over to it and enjoy all the benefits of real enterprise level email (like really, really good sync, calendaring, tasking and the like).  I have to say, it was a very simple setup…in fact that surprised me.  Essentially 6 steps and I have Exchange running for me with all it entails.

1. Signup for a trial of BPOS or use a partner if you’d like to help you manage it
2. Make a simple change to your DNS records to verify ownership of the domain
3. Enable inbound messaging within BPOS and change your MX record with your DNS service
4. Create a user (the trial includes 20 users with 25GB mailbox each)
5. Sign in to Outlook Web Access (which is basically Outlook and useable wherever you are)
6. Send a test email to kick the tires.

Done.  That is it.  The longest thing was waiting for about an hour for my DNS records to propagate.

And that’s me off of Gmail

I’m pretty psyched to be going to my first ever Tech·Ed and having checked out the behind the scenes video above I already know it’s going to be great…a full week of talking to IT Pros about our best tech and learning stuff too.  There’s so much Ed at Tech·Ed (Ed being education obviously) that’s its hard knowing which sessions to hit, I recon the Cloud Computing & Online Services session looks cool, so does Management and Windows Server, and Phone and … ok it’s all cool.  The BOF sessions sound fun too.

This really appealed to me, not because of the IE but because it reminded me of my classical Latin class where I learnt this.  It wasn’t as fun as Oatmeal.

Every week I write a simple wrap up of all the things I’ve posted during the week you can subscribe to them here.  Creating it can be slow going if I’ve posted tons of stuff and copy and pasting all the links creating some spiffy text to flow around it and that sort of thing can be a pain.  So I decided to automate it.

I wanted to be able to use Windows Live Writer to create the post so that I had maximum flexibility and a really great editor to be able tweak the post in.  I’m currently using the Windows Live Writer Beta from the Live Essentials Beta, which really is the best blogging tool available and it has super cool plug-in framework.  I went looking for a way of getting those posts and producing the wrap-up post but there weren’t any plug-ins out there.

So it was time to do some digging into what resources are available for creating plug-ins.  The Windows Live Writer SDK came up containing a bunch of useful APIs, there are three really: Application (for manipulating the Application), Content Source Plugin (which really is used to do stuff inside a post) and the Provider Customization API (used to customise how WLW works with different blog engines).

I went directly for the Application API.  Also just so you know, I’m not a very good coder.

The Application API is what’s used to poke stuff into WLW, essentially it’s how the Blog This stuff in IE works.  I have an idea, an API, now what…err…..I grabbed Visual C# Express 2010, a free download and tried to remember how C# works (I’m a VB guy and any chance I get now I move my botched programs skills to C#).  Express is great for having your first play with code.  The next thing I did was to work out how the UI was going to work, I wanted it to be really obvious how to use this thing.  I thought about 2 calendars and some text boxes and a REALLY big button.

I created a WPF form and found the calendar control.  Then I started to read up on it and found out that it’s possible to use it to select a date range…brilliant, I only need one calendar control which is far less clutter.  A couple of text boxes and a button and we’re done.

I’m not going to go through all the code but Windows Live Writer MVP Scott’s Live Spaces page guided me through what I needed to do.

Essentially the core of the code is this:

wlwapp = new WindowsLiveWriterApplication();
((IWindowsLiveWriterApplication2)this.wlwapp).BlogThisHtml(textBox2.Text, BuildHTML);

All I’m doing is creating a new instance of the wlwapp and passing it a prepopulated string of HTML called BuildHTML.  That kind of begs the question, where does BuildHTML come from?  The answer is that I use SyndicationFeed (part of .net 4) to read my blogs RSS feed and poke it into Build HTML.  It’s very simple stuff as you can see… I’ve also been very lazy and not renamed my TextBoxes or any other controls oops…

XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(textBox1.Text);
                    SyndicationFeed feed = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader);


                    ///parse the feed items
                    foreach (var item in feed.Items)
                    {
                        
                        ///check that the item is within the range we want
                        if (calendar1.SelectedDates.Contains(item.PublishDate.Date))
                        {
                            BuildHTML = BuildHTML + "<li><a href='";
                            //within each item we look for the link
                            foreach (var link in item.Links)
                            {
                                BuildHTML = BuildHTML + link.Uri.ToString() + "'>";
                            }
                            BuildHTML = BuildHTML + item.Title.Text +
                                "</a></li> ";
                        }
                    }
                    reader.Close();

There’s not much more to this application really other than the fact that I’ve published it (Project > Publish xxx in Visual C# Express 2010) to the internet and that built me an install on my server to publish and maintain the application.  This simple tool will save me 1 hour a week from here to eternity.  If you do it once, great, if you do it twice, automate.

Check out my tool at its application page.

Sharepoint?  On a Saturday?  In Birmigham? yep I’m up for that!  Sharepoint Saturday has been a big success across the pond and it’s coming to the UK and it’s looking like a super line up.  Myself and Andrew Fryer (aka @deepfat) will be on hand to talk about stuff – it will be more learn about stuff in my case – along with a superb cast of speakers.

You can and should sign-up just here  and when you do make sure you tweet it with #spsuk!

The Intune team are producing some really handy little videos on how to “tune” various aspects of Windows Intune, that is how to get the best out them.  This latest video explains how to get more from update management, filtering which updates are visible to your clients.

The Windows Intune Team Blog

Following on from my appearance in the TechNet flash, my blog post, the comments and the subsequent fame for being a lover of obscure porridge flavourings I’ve got a great update!

Great New Flavour Found!

I’ve tried and tested this and it’s awesome…not as super awesome as peanut butter but still that a heck of an accolade.  Porridge with a crushed ginger biscuit, left a few minutes and wow!  It’ can’t be described better than Drynet said himself:

Crunched up Ginger Biscuits sprinkled over the top and gently folded in to maintain their crunchiness. Little pockes of spicy explosions to wow the taste buds.

• One love for OneNote shows how good a personal productivity tool OneNote is
• Getting to know Windows Intune part 2 shows how to use more of Windows Intune
• User Account Control explained really well shows you why its a good idea and what it’s really doing
• Porridge flavours shows you I’m a porridge geek
• Travel Coffee Maker shows you I’m a coffee geek
• IE9 Platform Preview 4 shows you that Chrome is far from revolutionary (along with this video from @andspo)
• Learn more about Windows XP video shows you that Windows XP is as older than DVD and streaming video
• Getting to know Windows Intune shows you what Intune is all about
• The Goonies 25th Anniversary Collector’s Edition shows you that I know how to do the truffle shuffle
• Team night out shows you that softies know how to kick it!

A couple of super cool features of OneNote 2010 that you might not realise are super cool till you try them:

OneNote can sync notebooks to Office Web Apps and that does two very cool things for you.  The first is that you can access that notebook anywhere, any time in the browser.  Cool sync feature number two is that if you’re using multiple PCs, like I do every day, then that notebook will stay in sync across multiple PCs.  Synctastic!

OneNote can create outlook tasks so when you take notes in a meeting they can instantly become part of your task management system.  A powerful use of this is when someone sends you an email with lots of tasks in it, copy and paste it to OneNote covert them to tasks.  Deleting the task in OneNote leaves that task in your Outlook.

Lets take a look: Malware protection

To understand how malware protection works I infected my own machine.  Not with anything scary but with the eicar test virus, always a handy call.  When I say I infected it I don’t really mean that, what I actually did is started to download it and within a second – before the bits had started to land on my PC the anti-virus engine, which is based on Forefront so you know it’s enterprise class spotted it and let me know – as the user.  It took less than 5 minutes for the console to flag the hit and only a couple of seconds more for the alert email to hit my inbox (see part six for this über admin feature).

On the console I could see that I had malware to follow up, which computer had taken the hit and what it had done to stop it.  Another neato feature is that Intune makes it really easy to findout about the malware from the Microsoft Malware Protection Center.

Firewall management comes in the form of policies to manage Windows Firewall delivering the ability to control connections that can be made and blocked to the PC and even to control what the user is shown when the firewall stops a program from accessing the network.  Further more it’s possible to control the firewall exceptions for specific applications letting you stop any computers in a group with Virtual PC installed allowing access to your network, for example.

Knowing which computers have had an infection is really handy so you can know which ones to go fix and how much better is it knowing before the user calls you…you could call them…that would be good service wouldn’t it?

Lets take a look: Firewall

This ability to go down to detail on the firewall is great, but the fact that it uses Windows Firewall reduces the footprint that you need to manage on a client.  Policies can be combined, applied to groups and again a computer can be a member of more than one group.  That gives you very nice control of the Windows firewall.  There’s not much more to say about this really…it’s a critically important security mechanism and handled simply.

Lets take a look:  Remote Assistance

Remote assistance is one of the most important offerings of Windows Intune offering simple, easy to use, request based remote control to help your users through their darkest hour.  They deleted the pictures of their kids and they don’t know what the recycle bin is.  And it’s 2 in the morning.  And you’re on call.  Familiar?  Surely not.

Firing off a remote assistance request sends an alert to the console, and if you have alerting setup for it, off to your email inbox.  With that you can view and take control of your users desktop to sort out their emergency.  What makes this nice is that the console gives you a one stop shop to resolve the query.

Under the hood we use a great component called Easy Assist to establish the connection and you know you’re getting quality kit here because it’s part of our Live Meeting product and Microsoft uses it too.  That’s provenance for you.

One question I’ve already been asked about this is why can’t I just take control of the users PC without them having to start things off.  The obvious answer is security.  Giving the user control of the request allows them to make sure they don’t have something confidential on screen when the administrator takes control or sees the screen.  It’s better for your users.  All they need do is open the Windows Intune Center on their PC and select the link to start request remote assistance, they can cancel it if they fix their problem too.  You’ll get an email as the administrator if you’ve setup the alerts too.

Lets take a look: Software Inventory, Licensing and Reporting

Want to know what’s been installed well Software Inventory is where you’re headed and the inventory is pretty comprehensive.  What’s great is that it there’s a “category” grouping so you can easily sort the inventory by that column and see what different types of security software are installed.  From there it’s a single click to see which computers it’s installed on.  There’s a great video on the Intune blog that gives you a 2 minute intro to the feature.

Software Licensing is a way to have Windows Intune automagically compare your estate to your license files like you’d get if you have an EA.

Reports is the place to go to find out what’s really going on though license wise.  From here you can generate a report that allows you to understand exactly what software is deployed and if you’ve got licenses entered it will show your license status.  All isn’t lost though if you don’t have an EA and this is were someone could add amazing value with this tool..the reports can be exported to CSV and with a little tinkering you could create an Excel file that cross references your licenses.  Value add, right there.

Lets take a look:  Alerting

It’s better when you get alerted to something as it happens before your user calls you and complains.  Intune does this for you.  This is an excerpt form the email I got when I infected my PC with EICAR, it took about 5 minutes for me to get the mail in total.

This gives me all the info I need to know what’s happening, it got followed up with a “follow-up” actions email and a resolved email.  Alerts are managed through the Administration panel and they exist for all sorts of things, even corrupt file systems and repetitive crashes of Office 2003.  The alert types are predefined but you can enable and disable them and you can specify the recipients who need to know about stuff.  Requests for remote assistance come in the same way.

The end…but wait there’s more

That’s a very brief, 2 post overview of Intune.  There’s more too it, but it doesn’t get much more complex than this, and the simplicity is why I really like this product.  You’ll be up and running with it in hours, not days.  I’ve got some more posts on this in the pipeline but here are the top resources for the beta right now:

Right now you should apply to join the beta – but remember we want people to try this out, we only have 10,000 places available and they’re filling up fast, but we want people with at least 5 computers to deploy to.  You should also check out the official Windows Intune blog too for more.

USER Account Control… but I’m an ADMIN! by Paul Adams

One of the things about starting out at a new company like Microsoft is that you get a reputation.  At the start you’re not 100% in control of that and the little things you do tend to get you noticed.  In my case the one member of my department caught me in the act of adding something to my porridge.  Nothing much in that you’d think…but she’s the editor of the TechNet Flash news letter (which you should subscribe to immediately).

I have a confession.

I add peanut butter to my porridge.

There, that’s it, I’m now peanut butter porridge boy…brilliant!  The best thing about this is that we’ve started to receive suggestions about what I should put in my porridge.  Oddly, in my opinion, no one has asked if it’s crunchy or smooth…it’s smooth and where possible it’s Jif (because choosy moms choose Jif).

And so to experimentation with the flavours….

Nutella

I quite like nutella and it works rather well.  It achieves the same gooey consistency as peanut butter 5 minutes into it’s melting cycle but it’s not as satisfying.  It’s also no where near as good for you as a peanut butter – which is actually good for you.

Honey and Banana

Yeah it’s ok.

Cinnamon

Makes it taste like a McDonalds cinnamon donut, which is all right in my book but it’s still can’t unseat the king of porridge!

The winner is still smooth peanut butter in my eyes, but if you’ve got more suggestions then I’m always on the lookout.

I love good coffee, what geek doesn’t.  I’m also short on time and when running out the door one of these would rock.  Also the big thing with these is that it’s dishwasher safe…most of those travel mugs aren’t.

Note to people looking to buy me presents – this colour is good.

Travel Coffee Maker | The Office Stylist

It’s here, the fourth and final preview of IE9 (Beta coming next), on time, as promised.  Web devs should be using this to test sites and to make sure they’re using mark up that flows for all browsers, if your creating a site now you should be testing with the IE9 preview.  Why?

Performance is awesome, people want to use this browser.  Heck people are even without an address bar!

The latest preview is at IEtestdrive

Learn more about Windows XP

On VHS tape.

Yep, Windows XP is so old we actually distributed promotional VHS tapes for it!  That means it was released before DVDs went mainstream.  That’s some old stuff right there.  I don’t even own the technology to play this thing!

I know we all know it’s time to move on, but it’s just one more thing to mention to the hold outs.  This will be added our techno-relics table soon…

Managing the Windows PCs in your business is essential if you want to have happy users and want to reduce the threats posed by missed updates, malware and other hassles.  It’s also a huge bonus when you know exactly what software is being used in your business (and that you’re licensed for it!) and I’m sure it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling when you get to help out a user without having to leave your desk.  Normally you need a server infrastructure to get the best of all this.

Wouldn’t it be brilliant if you could manage all the PCs in your business without having deploy and manage a server infrastructure to do it?  Well that’s where Windows Intune steps in to help you out.  It’s our new cloud based management solution (currently in Beta) that allows you to manage all the PCs in your business from a console that runs in your web browser and sits in the cloud.  No infrastructure needed.

The key things that Intune does for you functionality wise (and there are what I’d call bonuses, BIG bonuses in addition):

• Gives you control over the patches and service Packs that are applied to your PCs
• Provides centralised malware and antivirus management
• Allows you to react to user problems more quickly with centralised alerting
• Reveals insights into what software is installed in your business simplifying migrations and licensing
• Enables simple remote control of client PCs
• Understanding of the hardware you have in your business

So what are the bonuses?  How about Windows 7 Enterprise and Software Assurance?  That’s a heck of a bonus no?  That means that every PC that you install Intune on and pay  for will always have the right to have the newest Windows version in line with the Enterprise SKU…and that means you get security features like BitLocker.  That in my eyes is a heck of a bonus.

Who’s it good for

If you don’t have any PC management in your organisation and you’re small to mid size, in my opinion Windows Intune is a no-brainer.  From day one of using Intune you’ll have a better understanding of your Windows client environment than you’ve ever had.

If you’ve got other PC management in place (that doesn’t have the power of System Center), you are small to mid size and you maintain infrastructure for it you should evaluate Windows Intune, it could save you a fortune.

If you don’t have software assurance then you should consider Windows Intune so you can keep your stuff up to date.

If your remote people have lots of issues that prevent them getting inside your network through your VPN then you should consider Windows Intune because you can manage that PC the second there’s an internet connection.  Great if you enforce minimum requirements like having a minimum malware signature level before your users can connect.

If you’re providing a managed PC service for your customers then its awesome once you get your head around direct billing.  If you’d like to know more about this let me know.

Finding the sides

Windows Intune isn’t supported on servers and whilst it’s got a fairly comprehensive feature set for managing PCs it’s not got the granularity required by large organisations yet and before doing a large deployment you’ll need to think about networking.  Other than that, there aren’t really any, you can technically manage as many clients as you like.

So, lets take a look at some of the highlights of what Windows Intune has to offer and no I’m going through this step by step – there are videos for that.

Lets take a look: Updates

Windows Update is our biggest cloud service, in fact it’s THE biggest cloud service out there, there a millions upon millions of users getting updates from the service every day.  Windows Update provides a fire hose of updates direct from source (yep that’s us) for every supported version of Windows and Office and more.  Some businesses like a little more control over the fire hose which is why we provide a product called Windows Server Update Service for large businesses.  WSUS gives them the ability to control what updates go to what PCs allowing them to create groups of PCs to receive the updates first to make sure they don’t encounter issues such as incompatibility their Line of Business (LOB) applications.  The problem with this is that the WSUS server is inside the business network so clients can’t get those updates if they aren’t connected and also it requires infrastructure which smaller business might find costly to deploy.

Welcome Windows Intune.

Windows Intune adds a level of control to that fire hose, a more directed hose nozzle in if you will, allowing the administrator to identify the specific updates to allow and creation of groups of machines to target for specific updates.  Just like you’d do in a test environment to ensure your LOB applications play nice.

Inside the console, which is available once you have your account, you find that it’s split into the different aspects that Windows Intune manages.  Selecting Updates is the rather obvious way to manage updates and from here the Update Status panel shows you how many updates you have to approve and so on.  Updates are split into Critical, Security, Definition Updates (we’ll do this in part 2), Service Packs, Rollups and Mandatory.  This last section basically contains the updates necessary to manage a PC with Intune, you see we use the Windows Update service on the PC to keep things in check, neat eh…no extra load for a software update agent.

Updates can be approved or declined meaning that they will be blocked from installing.  When an update is approved or declined the flag is set against a particular group of machines giving you some granularity of control…and it’s possible for a single machine to be a member of more than one group.  Another very handy feature is that the properties of each update include detailed information about behaviour, severity of the problem being patched and deeper detail such as KB articles.

In part two I take a look at Intune’s Malware protection, Firewall and Remote Assistance and then we’ll take a look at Alerting, Software and Hardware reporting and licensing.  Subscribe to my blog so you don’t miss it.

Right now you should apply to join the beta – but remember we want people to try this out, we only have 10,000 places available and they’re filling up fast, but we want people with at least 5 computers to deploy to.  You should also check out the official Windows Intune blog too for more.

This is all kinds of awesome.  The Goonies 25th Anniversary Collector’s Edition via Uncrate.

• Voice activated cars because you talk to yourself so why not have someone listen
• Back to the Future–the hover board lives! because they really are very cool
• The largest photo on earth care of Silverlight, Azure and Sony. because you NEED 1 billion pixel photography in your life baby!
• Apple boo boo? Try a band aid because it’s fun
• Kinect for Xbox 360  because it’s the most fun you can have jumping about like a loon unless your Steveb
• Why VHDs are ace because they’re virtual and hard and disky
• Bring on the wooden phone because organic based resin has the potential to do more than you can even think about right now
• Microsoft Certification Videos because I’ve interviewed the last guy and not the rest and that’s the effect of certifications

Next week I’ll have stuff on the Intune Beta (no I will have it this time) and some other stuff.

MyFord Touch Preview July 2010 from Cool Hunting shows just how much like KIT you can make your car these days.  I wish we had this in the UK.

We all love the 80’s but is there anything better than a Back to the Future hover board.  No.  So here one is.  Working.  With laser guidance.

Dornob has the skinny: The Future is Back: Real-Life, High-Tech Hoverboard Design

I love my Sony camera and I’m intrigued that Sony made the only kit up to this job.  Just like Microsoft Made the only software up to the job.  Above is a still taken from the unbelievably deeeeep and immersive panoramic photo from Budapest that broke all records.  It’s amazing, go look.  Also it’s hosted on Azure and delivered in Silverlight.

70 Billion Pixels Budapest – The largest photo on Earth – created by 360world.eu

Or plaster for us British folk.  Simple solution, fun.  Not compatible with Windows Phone 7 (or any other phone on the market)

[via: Apple Bumper | The Office Stylist and available to buy from Antenn-aid on Etsy]

VHDs are a file based format as opposed to the traditional sector based format.  This is very cool because it allows “offline servicing” for the OS, which means that you can service the VHD without it being booted.  This is cool because say you have a demo environment and you want to update a driver all you do is mount the VHD and use DISM like this:

DISM /Image:V:\ /Add-Driver /Driver:M:\Drivers /recurse

to add the driver, then on next boot it’s done.  Simples.

More complicated is what’s going on under the hood, but essentially a VHD will consume less disk space than the same disk in a sector based format as each unique file is only stored once in the VHD format.

Throw your brilliant VHD tips our way in the comments…

How would you like a phone made of wood?  How about a PC?  How about anything, like this helmet?  Technaro a German company that makes plastics from a wood has a product called ARBOFORM that is made from  100% renewable materials and works just like a plastic.  So even wooden components like printed circuit boards are possible.

[via: Dornob]

When I first started out one of the things that I did to get real world understanding (as opposed to at an Academic institution which is invaluable too but very different) was to get stuck into getting Microsoft Certified.  Back then MCSE was my goal and I did it entirely through self study, reading and doing.  That was on NT4 and I upgraded everything to 2000 through a single (and really hard!) exam.  Since then I’ve been doing BETA exams, 254 questions in one sitting was a bit much though, and kept things current.  Things have changed a bit now but getting certified is really valuable. 

The videos we’ve produced and put up on landthegig.com are very extreme but I’m pretty sure I’ve interviewed a couple of these guys….

Microsoft Certification Can Open Doors

How do you view certs?  Nice to have, essential or something entirely different…

As usual this is my weekly wrap up of all the stuff I’ve posted to my blogs over the past week, a week where I was at a massive internal conference that was super awesome (you won’t believe what this picture is)  All the following were pre-posted, so nothing overly topical but some fun stuff, like mad-as-a-bag-of-frogs coffee and some really good pointers to great office resources.

• Tools to help you deploy Office 2010
• Have you ever seen a cooler watch?
• Why all Exchange ActiveSync experiences aren’t the same…
• Confused about deploying Windows 7? Try this…
• Ten principles for good design
• Office 2010 Compatibility
• How to Take Full Advantage of Your Solid-State Drive
• Maple Bacon Coffee
• Windows Azure Platform Appliance great vid

What’s on the cards for this week….InTune (hopefully), more on Windows 7 deployment and a little BPOS and probably some random stuff as well as some Atlantan thoughts and the usual helping of off topic fun.

• You don’t know what addins are out there…there’s a tool for that. 
• Don’t know if you VBA code is compatible it 2010…there’s a tool for that. 
• Want it in your standard image…there’s a tool for that. 
• Want to customise what lands on a client…there’s a tool for that. 
• Want help planning deployment…there’s a tool for that. 
• Want someone to get your coffee whilst you deploy Office 2010…you might have to do that yourself!

Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Tools

I’m pretty sure this is the coolest watch ever created….more so than the TAG Monaco…

Horological Machine No4 Thunderbolt on Cool Hunting

Why all Exchange ActiveSync experiences aren’t the same… and how to know what you’re getting

Lots of people are looking at how they should go about deploying Windows 7 in their organisation, a few I’ve seen first hand are struggling to understand how to migrate.  One of the major steps in planning your deployment is probably to build a proof of concept to see just how easy it is and just what the pitfalls are in your organisation.  Have you thought about your application compatibility, are you making the most of things by deploying Office at the same time?

Our Springboard Series resources around Building a Proof of Concept came up in meeting the other day and there really is some great stuff in there.

I’ll be back looking at some of the fun around various aspects of a deployment soon, but if you want a specific question answered then post a comment and I’ll try – or if you want to keep your identity secret because you work for a criminal mastermind in his secret-but-very-expensive volcanic layer filled with retro furniture then drop me an email using the form.

Dieter Rams’ 10 principles of good design.  Five is important.

1. Good design is innovative.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest.
7. Good design is long-lasting.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.

Ten principles for good design via David Airey, graphic designer

[image from Arch Tonic]

You’ve never heard of the thing before and you don’t know who the vendor is and you don’t have the time to do a full background check to make sure it works.  Then you do your deployment and that supery dupery add-in tanks.  Finally you have to roll that persons install back and they stick as a thorn in your side for years and you can’t explain away not having hit your target for 100% deployment.  Familiar?

Well we’ve got you an answer… 

Take a look at the Microsoft Office 2010 – Compatibility Resource Center we’ve got tools for inspecting VBA code and a tool that helps you to findout what Add-ins are actually running in your business.  Cool stuff… oh yeah and a list of Add-ins that have been tested.  Nice stuff.

Very handy little guide form Lifehacker here on how to get the best out of an SSD.  I’ve just ordered one for my “demo beast” laptop and it should help my VMs fly…interesting ideas around hibernation in this guide…not something I’d thought of but very useful.  Should be quite nippy on an SSD.

How to Take Full Advantage of Your Solid-State Drive

[image from flickr.com and kawanet]

I like maple syrup.  I like bacon.  I like coffee.  Not so sure about the 3 together…

Maple Bacon Coffee on Uncrate

The Azure appliance we announced a WPC is generating quite a few questions and a fair bit of interest.  It’s a really interesting bit of kit but it’s a very niche offering right now but you guys want know it’s all about right?  In this Channel 9 video Steve Marx give a nice explanation, head to 7:30 for a little info on where Hyper-V fits in…

Introducing the Windows Azure Platform Appliance

Very nice retro digital watches…Cool hunting has the deets

Raised by Wolves x Furni Digital Watch on Cool Hunting

One thing that’s helped me get to know people here is the Outlook Social Connector: Get your social updates in Outlook

PDC10 is happening in Seattle this year, getting attendees closer to the dudes who make the cool stuff

What ever you do WAIK me up before you go go if you’re looking into deployment its the starting point…sorry for the puns awsome as @marcholmes described them!

Azure in a box is some info and thoughts on why containers are cool

What am I doing here… still not too sure, but it’s fun!

Brilliant video from top race drivers on why your really need a top team behind you Lewis & Jenson, one car, no team

Walk the tube because it’s healthier and you get less black snot!

I finally have a blue badge… enough said there I think

Water Walking Ball because all evangelists must learn to walk on water and this seems like a great hack.

The man’s done it again, how does James find this awesome stuff….

Bat(man) On Fire | Tenniswood Blog

Take a look at the Outlook blog for more info.  Remember though protect your identity online and make smart choices.  Also check out this video all about it.

Microsoft PDC10 | October 28 — 29

This time I’m going to give you some tips for using the step-by-step deployment guide to get you started. The guide is simple stuff, I’m not going to go through it line by line, but it gets you from install to deployment in a couple of hours. It’s almost all you need if you’ve only got a couple of handfuls of clients to deploy.

I love a virtual environment, so I created 3 VMs to use with the step-by-step (ooh baby) guide:

• Technician
• Reference
• Target

…and on the first, Technician, I installed the WAIK. You could always use physical boxes but where’s the fun? Then I came to the fun - trying to do this in a virtual environment. One of the key steps in this zero to hero guide is that you need to get the answer file you create (the WAIK shows you what to do) onto a removable drive. Why a removable drive? Well Windows 7 setup looks at any removable drives for an answer file to guide it through install.

Removable storage…oo er… that’s a bit tricky in a Virtual PC world. No you can’t even use USB device pass through and use a physical UFD (USB flash drive) since the option to connect a device isn’t available on a VM with no OS, which is what you’ll be using as your Reference PC for a start.

So how do we get that answer file onto removable media in a VM? The answer comes in the form of VFD (virtual floppy disks) and scripts which Ben Armstrong has documented on his blog. One thing is that you’ll also need a .vfd file for your disk…the way I created this was to use Hyper-V manager on a Windows 2008 R2 server (Action > New > Virtual Floppy Disk…) but there are lots of other ways.

All you need to do is:

• Download Ben’s scripts (I used the VB script)
• Open a Command prompt on the machine running Virtual PC
• Use cscript to run the VB script like this
  •  Cscript /vm:”my vm’s name” /action:vfd /floppy:”e:\blank.vfd”
• In your VM you need to format the vfd
• Copy your autounattend.xml to the floppy
• Back in your command prompt
• Disconnect the VFD from the technician VM with
  • Cscript /vm:”my vm’s name” /action:disconnect
• Use the first cscript sample above again, but change to the reference VM
• Make sure you have an ISO for the Windows 7 DVD connected
• Start your reference VM
• Marvel as Windows 7 installs without you having to do anything

If you’re new to deployment you might be thinking something like “I’ve created an answer file now so haven’t I got an automated deployment?” I guess the answer is yeah… but no.

What you’ve got at this stage is an easily repeatable deployment. From now on every time you want to build a Windows 7 machine it will end up with the same stuff on it sure. It won’t have ALL your stuff on it and it’s still really labour intensive. At this point to do your deployment you’d still need a DVD and a USB key, feet (or a good wheely chair) to get between PCs and lots of time. You could stop here if you only needed to hit say 10 or so machines but more than that and you’ll get bored.

TIP: If you’re in the UK, there’s a couple of gotchas with answer files…The code used for UK layouts isn’t en-UK as you might first guess, it’s en-GB (cy-GB for Welsh). If you use en-UK you’re fine automated install will get stuck on the first screen. There’s a second part to this gotcha too, you’ll need to leave Components\WindowsPE\Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE\UILanguage set to en-US , but don’t worry everything will work out and you’ll have a UK locale everywere.

The rest of step 2 is pretty easy to follow…and so to step 3…

There’s a minor problem in the step-by-step guide here, that you need to fix, or it won’t work…oops! (you get a 0xc000000f error when booting the WinPE disk). Easy to fix though. Work through to the end of step 3 bullet 3 and then go to c:\winpe_x86 or whatever name you used, and copy winpe.wim to the ISO\sources folder and rename it to boot.wim. That’s it, all fixed!

The 5^th bullet in step 4 says to burn the WinPE ISO you create to a CD, kinda obviously you don’t need to do that, you just need to get the ISO file off the VM. A simple way I like to do this (if I don’t have networking available) is to have a USB key inserted into my host PC and just attach it to the technician VM (USB > USB Mass Storage Device) copy the file to the key, then release it and copy it to the host.

Finally mount the ISO from your host onto your reference VM and boot it. Immediately hit SHIFT + ESC then on the black screen, hit DEL, then in the BIOS change the boot order to boot from CD first.  That’s an extra little tip, if you need to boot from a CD or ISO in Virtual PC when you see the progress bar showing the VM loading do the above and you can access it’s BIOS.

That’s it for now, my longest post so far, and more to come.

I see this doing something very special in cloud terms, and I see it as a redefinition of private cloud (has anyone actually got the definition right yet?…we have!).

There are tons of ways this solution could be used, I particularly like the “data control” aspect, having the container on your own soil removes any confusion around geo-location and gives you a nice warm fluffy feeling of safety.  You could use it for performance testing too (of specific aspects, not all).  The solutions intended for the really big boys, like the first customer, Ebay, who need to scale to hundreds or thousands of servers.

You can find out more about Windows Azure Appliance in this Chanel 9 vid and I’ll be getting into some of the topic of how you manage Azure with the rest of your enterprise soon.  How do IT Pros out there feel about Windows Azure Appliance – personally I think its a tidy solution.

[Image from roblisameehan on Flickr – NOTE: none of these as an actual Windows Azure Appliance, it’s just to remind you what containers look like]

We (eek I can say we!) have a group of fantastic tools that help with deployment on Windows and if you’ve not really looked at Windows deployment since Windows XP you’ll be needing the same kind of refresher that I’m doing. Even if you’ve deployed Vista you need to take a look at the latest tools.

Note: Important note here, I’m skipping bit. I’m skipping out the bit where you’ll have planned the ass off of your deployment – I’ll come back to it – but for now I’m skipping the Application Compatibility stuff, I’m skipping the bit where you make sure you know what you’ve got in your company.

So let’s take a look at the tools, what do you have to play with. WAIK up!

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) is a really good place to start and can be downloaded from here. There’s a whole bunch of features packed into the WAIK and it’s an essential first step in terms of tools. I’m not going to go through a list of each tool, that’s kind of boring at this stage, but the documentation is the rocket to moon in terms of getting started with deployment.

This is where we have a step by step guide to doing your first deployment (install through imaging to deployment) – more on this in the next post, including the tricks to do it using Virtual PC so you can play in your own sandbox without annoying the other kids. There’s also the full documentation for every entry possible in the unattended answer file which is now a single XML as opposed to the old multiple text file stuff we used in the deployments of yore.

Ok, that’s it for now…go download the WAIK, next time I’ll impart some tips for playing with the step by step guide in a VM environment.

This is a superb video of just why it’s critically important to have a great team behind you.  Be brilliant at what you do, rely on and be appreciative of the value those around you add.  Reminds me of most IT Pros.

Via James: Tenniswood Blog

Sometimes all I seem to do is reblog James’ finds… oh well, very nice.

Walk the tube | Tenniswood Blog

Hi, I’m Simon May, I’m a new part of the IT Pro team in the UK – I’m an IT Pro Evangelist – to give me my full title. It’s our job to help UK IT Pros understand Microsoft’s plethora of technology and make the most of it. So what does that mean for you? Well it means that we’re here to help by introducing you to new tools and techniques and to get you testing, deploying, managing Microsoft technologies and getting the types of results you need.

Previously I’ve worked in banking, healthcare and energy, written about Windows, helped seed and inspire communities and I hope fixed hundreds of peoples PCs and worked with a few people who are reading this – drop me a line please. I’ve fixed virus outbreaks, rewired data centers, made it possible for people to shop quickly (sorry can’t tell you how) and helped doctors and nurses get the latest info on their patients before caring for them. Mostly I’ve had fun.

Okay, Okay, let’s talk about the job title, Evangelist. Lots of people have asked me about it and all I can say is it’s the coolest title and job in the world (to me). Basically it means I explain the world Microsoft to IT Pros.

I’ll be here and there, mainly here, sometimes there introducing new stuff and explaining current stuff and helping you get off the old stuff…cough…IE6…cough…XP…. But it’s not all about work.

Almost as much as I love being an IT Pro community I love our (I can say OUR now) consumer focused technology so I’ll be talking about that too probably, although I only get to see what everyone else gets to see, there’s no inside track here.

Follow me on twitter and say hi and you might as well subscribe to my main RSS feed (it’s not just tech stuff).

One for @Deepfat, he’d love this…Water Walking Ball, via Uncrate

The end of manned space missions feels like another step back but photo’s like this are a nice side effect.  Unemployed Astronauts from Gizmodo, via James Tenniswood (king of design cool)

The guys over at Download Squad just blogged this and the name says it all.  It’s the ultimate task scheduler and get stuff done app for geeks.

This is some super cool packaging, superb typography and very fine humour.  Wish it were real…

No Weight Gain Chocolate | David Airey, graphic designer

I just can’t believe the size of this HD display 6800+ ft.  Massive.  More here:

http://3rings.designerpages.com/2010/06/30/daktronics-hd-video-board-lights-up-the-n-f-l/#axzz0sQyLVQLX

OK, I don’t actually believe I’m going to change the world, I’m not six.  I am however going to join a company who’s products I like a lot and who’s people have inspired me.  Things here might change, I have a plan or two up my sleeve.

The above image is courtesy of the magnificent @gapingvoid aka Hugh MacLeod, genius business card cartoonist.  I hope he won’t mind me using it, his work can be found here my favourite product is his wine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYjFoCIfyAU&feature=player_embedded

swissmiss | Andy Murray Tennis Street Magic.

What I remember most about LEGOs – The Oatmeal.

I really want this stamp!

We “Like” You! | The Office Stylist.

Cool Wall Mirrors: Aviator Style | The Office Stylist.

Never the less, this is a superb option and very simple:

Set Up a Foolproof and Fireproof Automatic Backup Plan.

You’ll be seeing photos from me here and from others here on TDL and their own blogs, Ian’s already posted.  We videoed most of the sessions too and Garry will be posting them sometime soon, there’s about 5 hours of footage to edit to something watchable so it may take some time.  Ian got some superb material for the podcast too and he’ll be releasing that in an upcoming podcast, although probably best to check out his post for details.

Thanks to everyone who made it, you made the day superb and just like Pete Brown said it’s the community that makes Media Center what it is.

I had some great conversations and got to see some really cool stuff.  We had Amulet devices there with their awesome voice control remote for Media Center – seriously folks this is amazing – it’s the best thing I’ve seen for Media Center since TunerFree MCE and it was just so impressive.  Passive showed off their super high end Evolve units which just look stunning and have B&O amps built in - they gave us a glimpse at building really robust Media Center PCs and a vaguest hint at some of their clientele.  I wish I could count myself among that select group.

Andrew Edney gave us a look at WHS Vail and Andrew Cherry gave us a great intro to building apps for Media Center and Garry showcased how simple it is to build Windows Phone 7 apps with the Windows Phone 7 SDK and other free tools.  I’ve got no excuse, I need to build a remote IP camera app for both…must get to that.  Pete Brown gave us a superb insight into what it’s like running a community like TGB, basically I think we all felt the love…not least because everyone left with at least a USB stick and one guy left very happy with a SONOS S5 and another with a ZuneHD and 10 more peeps left with Xtreamers courtesy of Tranquil and another 12 people got DVBLogic licenses!!

Pete gave away some great Zune originals art work too, which I’d personally have loved for my office, but that’s one of the downsides to not being in the audience.  We also got free Pizza courtesy of the NxtGenUg.

Ok without further ado, here are some of the best pictures I took of the day (yep there are lots), they’re uploaded to Windows Live SkyDrive with Windows Live Photo Gallery – if you can’t see them then join the Digitiallifestyle.com Windows Live Group although everyone should be able to see them.

More next year.  Looking forward to reading the other guys thoughts, if you attended let us know about it in the comments…we’ll be getting out a survey soon too…

Backyard Theatre via Lifehacker

Kinect is the new name for project Natal.  I just can’t wait.

One feature that I love, in these days of privacy worries, is how simple to manage sharing is.  A slider from lots of sharing to none.  Simple.  Yet I can also share with individuals, perfect for sharing that killer presentation (or that photo of the BBQ in the comedy apron that you only want attendees to have).

Just noticed something else neat.  When a folder or file is shared with individuals by email it gets a different icon…this is private, everyone and specific people respectively.

Adidas Cantina 2010 « Whitezine | inspire Create and Share.

I really love the Multitouch Support that they say is going to be added to Photo Gallery – I think it’s the best application in a tool set ALL of which are essential!  I also really like the facial recognition feature that should make tagging up photo’s a whole lot easier.

Wave 4: What’s New in Windows Live Essentials – LiveSide.net.

There are other features, but Sarah does a great job of explaining them On10 here: One-time Passwords, SSL and More: New Hotmail Focuses on Security | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10.

This has got me thinking, I’d be really interested to see what people have got installed in their bathrooms in the way of tech.  I’ve seen at least one very cool Media Center install in the past, but I’d really like to know what people are doing.  I’ve got a bathroom to remodel in 3 months!  So throw some links to your installs in the comments.

Via Dornob.

Home Opener: Huge Garage Door Hides Whole Plane Hangar | Designs & Ideas on Dornob.

I thought the black version was good, but now I’m all about the white version.  I’ll be getting me one these, it;s stunning and will look super in our all white office!

The Arc Keyboard: White | The Office Stylist.

All I need now is a nice WiFi photo frame with HD res…