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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
I love Entourage; it’s a show that is shown on America’s HBO. A show that, as my Pop’s says, is a great for “brains out” time…
Anyway I was watching last nights episode and I had to pause it… No not at the scene when they are in the Hustler shop on West Sunset Blvd.
But this one…
Yup your right… It’s a Motorola Q
Man I love spotting product placements. Especially ones that are cool products like the Q!!!
Talking of cool products… Listen out...(read more)
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
I love Entourage ; it’s a show that is shown on America’s HBO. A show that, as my Pop’s says, is a great for “brains out” time… Anyway I was watching last nights episode and I had to pause it… No not at the scene when they are in the Hustler shop on West...(read more)
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
I love Entourage ; it’s a show that is shown on America’s HBO. A show that, as my Pop’s says, is a great for “brains out” time… Anyway I was watching last nights episode and I had to pause it… No not at the scene when they are in the Hustler shop on West...(read more)
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
The London Girl Geek Dinner short film has just been released. Here is an exclusive first look at it prior to it going on FourDocs. It was filmed about a month ago by Angela Saini of ITN who was just fantastic at both directing the video and setting everything up. I hope you enjoy the video and feel free to let anyone else know about it!
I hope to see other short video's and films from the girls over at BlogHer after the conference. :)
The next London Girl Geek Dinner is to be announced at a later date... it is looking like some time around the end of August/ First week of September. If you want to get updates of our next event feel free to join the mailing list on www.londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk or syndicate with the rss feed on the site!
PS: Many thanks to Angela for doing the film for us and for her support and also to Ian Forrester of www.geekdinners.co.uk for his ever constant support for the girly geek dinners!
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
Do not, under any circumstances, buy an Evesham Laptop.
They are a truly awful company with poor quality laptops and an even worse excuse for customer services.
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
This is a question that often comes up during conversations between meetings of people who hold different views of which platform is best. When looking at any such vulnerability statistics I think it's important to consider that a single vulnerability can take down a system / business / someone's privacy hence viewing them in isolation is a fool's game.
It's a little bit like saying that one firewall's better than it's rival simply because it has a greater throughput - of course it's vitally important to consider "what is the firewall actually inspecting? How well does it understand what normal traffic looks like for my network"" rather than "how much can it inspect in a given time period?"
Jeff Jones has posted a really interesting piece analysing the vulnerability counts for RedHat and Microsoft platforms.
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
I received a mail last night telling me that all of the product documentation for Exchange Beta 1 was closing down and would no longer be available. Yikes. All of my current demos are on Beta 1 code...
The good news is, that I registered for the Beta 2 bits a few weeks ago using the Microsoft Connect and blogged about the documentation for Beta 2 the other week. So I've just got a little bit of work to do with the new builds (out soon) so that all my demos look as slick as my Beta 1 demos... But as I've just upgraded my main machine to Vista Beta 2 this morning and I'm at the bemused stage, I'm not sure that anything is going to be all slick for some time yet. Watch this space...
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
Amazons Message Queue Service looks very interesting? I'm not that clued up on all this stuff, but there's definately a trend appearing - we can already rent processing power through hosted grid computing networks, so why not rent the computing power to handle messaging?
In case you've not come across the concept of message queues, they're basically a tool to assist distributed computing. This is an area that is interesting me and more these days. I've been working on projects recently where two or three machines aren't really enough, and the prospect of being able to simply add more commodity machines to do more work is an extremely attractive one. Message queues are one technology that can play a big part in this kind of system since they allow separate programs running on separate machines to collaborate without worrying about all the communications overheads (working out which node should receive the message, waiting for responses, detecting ports being blocked, etc). The queue abstracts all that stuff, and more.
You can take your pick of vendor provided message queue implementations (MSMQ, OSMQ etc), but it's really interesting to see someone like Amazon offering a service to do this out of the box, no hardware puchases required.
Amazon's implementation looks nice and simple - just four methods! I guess there will be limits to the application of this service though. Firstly, using machines on an external network could present complications with both security and performance. Is HTTPS available? Would this slow things down even more? Sending messages over the web will be slower than to local networks, so I guess this technology is suited to problems that involve several disconnected networks. The 256K per-message limit might rule out some kinds of application also, such as web spiders and multimedia applications.
Still, and good to see Amazon do something cool with all that infrastructure!
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
Amazons Message Queue Service looks very interesting? I'm not that clued up on all this stuff, but there's definately a trend appearing - we can already rent processing power through hosted grid computing networks, so why not rent the computing power to handle messaging?
In case you've not come across the concept of message queues, they're basically a tool to assist distributed computing. This is an area that is interesting me and more these days. I've been working on projects recently where two or three machines aren't really enough, and the prospect of being able to simply add more commodity machines to do more work is an extremely attractive one. Message queues are one technology that can play a big part in this kind of system since they allow separate programs running on separate machines to collaborate without worrying about all the communications overheads (working out which node should receive the message, waiting for responses, detecting ports being blocked, etc). The queue abstracts all that stuff, and more.
You can take your pick of vendor provided message queue implementations (MSMQ, OSMQ etc), but it's really interesting to see someone like Amazon offering a service to do this out of the box, no hardware puchases required.
Amazon's implementation looks nice and simple - just four methods! I guess there will be limits to the application of this service though. Firstly, using machines on an external network could present complications with both security and performance. Is HTTPS available? Would this slow things down even more? Sending messages over the web will be slower than to local networks, so I guess this technology is suited to problems that involve several disconnected networks. The 256K per-message limit might rule out some kinds of application also, such as web spiders and multimedia applications.
Still, good to see Amazon do something cool with all that infrastructure!
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
Just finished watching a webcast on Enterprise Single Sign-On integrated with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004
and Microsoft Host Integration Server 2004 . If you havent already seen that or arent familar with how SSO works and how AD and password synchronization can be used together with SSO, then check this out. Its really well presented with good demos. Since the transcript and PPT are also available if you dont have time to watch it all, then read the transcript. The SSO management story has improved a good deal in BTS 2006 and this should make the solution even more compelling. It should also be interesting to see how far they have progressed in linking this with ADFS and MIIS now. 
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
Just finished watching a webcast on Enterprise Single Sign-On integrated with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004
and Microsoft Host Integration Server 2004 . If you havent already seen that or arent familar with how SSO works and how AD and password synchronization can be used together with SSO, then check this out. Its really well presented with good demos. Since the transcript and PPT are also available if you dont have time to watch it all, then read the transcript. The SSO management story has improved a good deal in BTS 2006 and this should make the solution even more compelling. It should also be interesting to see how far they have progressed in linking this with ADFS and MIIS now. 
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
Well, not quite, but it makes for a catchy headline J
We’ve partnered with XenSource to be able to provide an optimised Linux experience in our Virtualisation environment that will ship just after Longhorn Server. If you *have* to (or want to) run something on Linux, we want to make it simple and easy and compelling to do that on our Virtualisation technology.
And if you can’t wait until then, remember that our (free) Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition R2 can run Linux today already, supported! Just go and download it at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualserver
More on the news is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jul06/07-17MSXenSourcePR.mspx
Also note, that we’ve recently also made it easier and more cost effective to run multiple Windows Virtual machines on a single box: With Windows Server Datacenter Edition, you can num run as many virtual machines as your heart desires!
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/news/bulletins/datacenterhighavail.mspx
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
Well, not quite, but it makes for a catchy headline J
We’ve partnered with XenSource to be able to provide an optimised Linux experience in our Virtualisation environment that will ship just after Longhorn Server. If you *have* to (or want to) run something on Linux, we want to make it simple and easy and compelling to do that on our Virtualisation technology.
And if you can’t wait until then, remember that our (free) Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition R2 can run Linux today already, supported! Just go and download it at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualserver
More on the news is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jul06/07-17MSXenSourcePR.mspx
Also note, that we’ve recently also made it easier and more cost effective to run multiple Windows Virtual machines on a single box: With Windows Server Datacenter Edition, you can num run as many virtual machines as your heart desires!
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/news/bulletins/datacenterhighavail.mspx
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
Among the fairly modest enhancements to the Microsoft Bluetooth stack in Windows Mobile
5.0 is a new unified system for assigning virtual COM ports. Previously this was only
exposed to the user via OEM provided plugins. Very often you were limited to a single
incoming and outgoing port. The Pairing process on Windows Mobile 5.0 now does a service
discovery and allows the user to choose which services they wish to use, when "Serial
Port" is ticked in the list you can then use the new interface on the "COM Ports"
tab to create a virtual COM port for the device.
All of the settings are stored in the registry so that you can also programmatically
query what ports are setup and to which devices they map. The magic happens at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Bluetooth\Serial\Ports
This key contains a multi-string value containing all of the available COM ports on
the system. This should have been setup by the OEM so that it does not contain reserved
COM port identifiers. For example on my iMate K-Jam this value contains:-
COM6
COM7
Below this key there will be a key for each device setup with a virtual COM port,
the key will be named with an 8 byte hexadecimal device id (16 characters). This contains
values with settings for the port such as Encryption etc. The most useful is "Port",
a string value containing the COM port name e.g. "COM6". Each device can have only
one virtual COM port assigned, so if you run through the "New Outgoing Port" sequence
for the same device it will overwrite your previous settings. The pairing information
for the device is stored in a similarly named key under:-
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Bluetooth\Device
You can query the values under the device key (again 16 chars for the device id) to
retrieve the device name and class of device. When you retrieve paired devices with 32feet.net using
BluetoothClient.DiscoverDevices it reads this information for you into a BluetoothDeviceInfo
instance.
This new mechanism means that rather than using the awkward RegisterDevice method
for registering a virtual COM port (InTheHand.IO.Ports.BluetoothSerialPort in 32feet.net)
you can configure the settings through the registry in such a way that they are visible
to device user and don't conflict with other ports.
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
I can’t wait to tell you this, so I’m sitting with my finger on the submit button, ready for my blog when I’m allowed to tell you this...
We’ve acquired WinInternals – the guys making all the cool and very useful tools on www.sysinternals.com - including this BSOD screen saver J that I’ve just downloaded and installed on my Vista Box – you know, the things we have to do to remember the old days when computers used to crash!
If you have not yet seen their (our!) tools, have a look. There are bound to be something in there for every IT Pro to make life simpler.
http://www.winternals.com/ has the details...
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
I can’t wait to tell you this, so I’m sitting with my finger on the submit button, ready for my blog when I’m allowed to tell you this...
We’ve acquired WinInternals – the guys making all the cool and very useful tools on www.sysinternals.com - including this BSOD screen saver J that I’ve just downloaded and installed on my Vista Box – you know, the things we have to do to remember the old days when computers used to crash!
If you have not yet seen their (our!) tools, have a look. There are bound to be something in there for every IT Pro to make life simpler.
http://www.winternals.com/ has the details...
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
I think that there were other acquisitions that went by today but this one interested me most;
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+buys+Windows+utility+software+maker/2100-1016_3-6095376.html?tag=nefd.top
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 from
The list of the screen captures (we call them "MSDN Nuggets" in the UK) that I made around Windows Workflow Foundation has grown a little today in that we've published a bunch more material to the UK MSDN site.
There's now around 15 or so videos on Workflow Foundation (plus a bunch more on other topics!) so I thought I'd list them all out here. It's worth saying that around the first half of these are significantly older than the second half and were made on different versions of the technology but the general idea of the topics involved should be ok as Workflow has been great in not changing radically from CTP to CTP.
It's also worth saying that I've learnt things about Workflow as I've gone along so if you spot glaring errors then let me know.
Here's the list and the suggested running order;
01 Workflow Foundation Hello World
Watch