Eileen Brown's WebLog

More on Windows mobile 6 (Crossbow)

That's so typical... I blog enthusiastically about my new toy and the announcement on mobile 6, then Jason goes and hits the web with an excellent (and long) post showing you all of the amazing features of mobile 6.    Nice post Jason... you should have Evangelist in your job title - you can certainly talk the talk!

Short post today - I'm all conferenced out and I'm looking forward to getting my skis on in Whistler tomorrow where there's over 9 metres of snow this season.  Skiing in Europe?  no chance!

Windows mobile 6

Bummer, I wanted to blog about this yesterday as I was chatting to Loke Uei and Jason and they told me that the news was out there.  Unfortunately I was far too busy hassling Jason about my funky new mobile device

(the i-mate SPL), then building it, syncing it and drinking wine - and I forgot...

Anyway - On Monday we'll announce Windows Mobile 6, formerly code-named Crossbow, at the 3GSM trade show in Barcelona.   There is built in support for Windows Live instant messaging and e-mail, so you can get Live Mail messages pushed down automatically to the device.

So I've just built this phone and now I need to go and hassle Jason to play with the next new build - now that this one is not under wraps any more.  So Jason, can I now have a copy of windows mobile 7 (or whatever it's going to be called?)

 Please -  I want to play with some more new stuff...

How we deployed Office 2007

I've always been amazed at how well we do large scale deployments.  Any deployments that I've been a part of have been beset with various challenges, and after the project was over, all of us were keen to get away from the pain as soon as possible.  I was impressed at how smoothly the Office 2007 deployment went internally, and even more impressed that we're comfortable enough with the deployment to write about it in a white paper format

 The white paper is available to view or download from our TechNet site. The associated Webcast and TechNet radio broadcast on the same topic are also available.   There's even a PowerPoint presentation on it's way too (released to the web next week).

So after looking through the white paper - I think we need a step by step guide on "how".  So that everyone can modify our "best practices" to suit their organisations - and a sizing tool to modify the hardware accordingly of course!...

Unified Communications - where's mine?...

Hmm,

Day two of our technical conference and I'm irritated.  The sessions so far have been really good, the opportunity to chat to the people in the product team is always great.  I get to hear what's going on at the moment and what we're doing in the future - especially in the Unified Communications area.  Office Communicator Server 2007 which will shortly go to public beta (mail me if you'd like to be considered for the private beta by the way.  You need to have the sort of environment that meets the criteria, and be have the sort of organisation that would be prepared to work closely with the product team).

So what's bothering me?

I've just been listening in to a session on the future of Unified Communications - a high level overview about what's coming up this year.  The Office RoundTable video was shown (see it on Soapbox by the way), then demoed live in the room.  I saw RoundTable in use (3 or 4 guys in the room next to the auditorium) then I saw a new device - an intelligent phone that totally integrated with Office Communicator.  And that's where I started to get annoyed.

I'm now all fired up about how amazing these devices are, and I want to rush out and start demoing these toys at events.  Honestly, you'll have your socks blown off by how amazing these devices are and how collaboration and unified communications all fits together.  But they're not yet available to us outside corp...

So now I've got to start hassling the chaps over at the Unified Communications team, groveling and begging for these devices too, so I (and everyone else in the field) can demo at events.  Otherwise - we need to get hold of a technical video showcasing just what's coming up in the future.

But I wish I didn't get so excited about the great stuff that's coming up in the near future stuff if I can't get my hands on it for ages.  Grrr...

Technical Readiness and PowerPoint

I'm out in Seattle all this week for our technical conference (TechReady).  We run this event twice a year for the Presales tech guys, the technical account managers, consultants, architects, and people from the services business.  We're here to get up to speed technically with what's happening this year, new server product announcements, strategy, competition and the opportunity for the field to meet up with the product teams. There are about 7000 people from the field and about 1000 presenter, lab proctors, product team guys and internal IT folks.  There are a hell of a lot of muffins here too!

I've spent the weekend with the IT Evangelists from the worldwide team, Jeff and Michael (who stumped Steve Ballmer with a brilliant question about Daylight Savings in Australia a few minutes ago), and Rick, Rodney and Damir from Canada.  It's also a great opportunity to talk about what works well (blogging, and user groups) and what isn't working (programs that haven't been tested with the IT Pro's and, although they may work for the Developer audience, fall really flat for IT Pros).  I've got my hands on a Zune (GET ONE!) and am now wondering what to do with my gift of a SPOT watch.  Steve had a brilliant idea and has given his watch away to anyone who will come over to Seattle and collect it.  I need to think of a challenge that's a little bit different and can be achieved through this blog.  What do you think? 

I'll be commenting on the new stuff as the week progresses - when I'm not in a session of course!...

Old books - new software

I don't know if you've seen what we've been doing in the UK with the British Library.  We've been working with them on their project to digitise books and have developed an app that uses wpf which allows you to turn each page of the book and read it as though you were actually there in the library with your cotton gloves on.  Abhishek has a bit more information.  I like the fact that you can zoom right in to see the text and display a commentary on each page as you're looking at it.

This application is designed to run on Vista, although it does run on XP.  Here's a screenshot of  Alice's adventures underground which is captivating to flick through.  The folios from Leonado da Vinci are also amazing - especially the diagram of scuba gear (glad the kit has come on a bit since then though) 

I'll blog about the infrastructure and all the technical bits behind it soon.  Have a look at the application here...

Trial download of Antigen for Exchange

Ooh, this caught my eye, and with our focus on security in the UK recently this is nice and timely .  We've released some trial software so you can test out Antigen for Exchange and Antigen spam manager.  Don't forget to have a look at the quick start guide too (and focus on the configuring section to get the best performance and scan intervals).

Also, did you know that If you've bought Forefront Security for Exchange Server to protect Exchange Server 2007 you are also licensed to use Antigen for Exchange, Antigen for SMTP Gateways, and Antigen Spam Manager to protect your Exchange Server 2000 and Exchange Server 2003 environments.  So you're not compromising any part of your messaging infrastructure whilst you migrate..

So you have no excuses not to download it -as it's free...

Exchange server 2007: loads more resources

This blog post is for me - to remind me what to talk about at the TechNet roadshow next week.  Essential reading whilst I'm on the flight over to Seattle today for our internal technical conference next week.  So I've downloaded them and will read them on the flight - until my battery runs out...

TechNet Articles

Getting Started with Exchange Server 2007: Server Roles

New Performance and Scalability Functionality

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Live Webcasts

High Availability and Clustering in Exchange Server 2007 

How Microsoft IT Designs Its 64-bit Exchange Server 2007 Infrastructure 

Introduction to the New Exchange Server 2007 Administrator Interface 

Exchange Server 2007 Transport and Routing Architecture 

Introduction to Windows PowerShell Scripting in Exchange Server 2007 

Giving Administrators More Control in Exchange Server 2007 

Improvements to Calendaring in Exchange 2007 

Virtual Labs

Introduction to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Web Resources

Exchange Server 2007 Preview Site

All Exchange Server Webcasts

Exchange Server 2007 TechCenter

I think the battery will go l finish these though!...

Old to new reference guides

Oh heck - why didn't I find these months ago when I was scrabbling around trying to work out where the new commands were in Word and PowerPoint.

One thing everyone agrees on is that the new ribbon interface in the 2007 release is quite a bit different to before.  But if you're struggling to find where some of your favourite commands have gone, there are the command reference guides.
Word 2003 to Word 2007 command reference guide
Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 command reference guide
PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 command reference guide

They're interactive too, so you don't need to struggle any more like I did...

People and problems

I often get asked why I answer all emails sent to me through my blog.  Often these mails are not related to my technology (sometimes they are so far away I don't know what the heck they mean).  Sometimes the question scares me too much I want to respond with:

"Run setup.exe, click repair, then when everything has been restored STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD!"

"Leave it to the techies.  Leave it ALONE!"

"Why the heck did you do such a stupid thing in the first place?"

I get mails from people who have disabled their XP firewalls and have allowed full HTTP access to their machine, messages from people who have uninstalled their anti virus to see if their machine performs better.  Sometimes I want to yell at the computer.  But I answer them all, as positively and as helpfully as I can.

Why?

Because these people have found my blog after searching for a decent answer on the web, or to try to get any answer.  Often their mails tell me I'm their last hope.  But they bothered to write the mail to me, and they always politely ask me to respond. Sometimes they actually call me (thanks to Robert's encouragement),  my cell phone number is the first thing that you find when you search on my name and that little thing makes people feel a little bit better about Microsoft.  We're there, we're human and we actually do want to help.  Even when it's outside of our technology area, even when we don't get a thank you or ever hear from them again, we're still there.

So Hugh's Blue Monster actually applies to all Microsoft staff.  (Steve's team and my team will be wearing the T-shirts very soon - photo opportunity eh Steve?)  We do need to change the world.  And if changing the world means responding to every email sent in through our blogs, and helping our customers resolve their issues, then we're changing the world email by email.  And that's got to be a good thing don't you think?...

The evolution of the video clip

I'm amazed at co-incidences and how often that they happen to me.  Often 2 totally unrelated incidents happen that are portentous because they refer to the same thing.

On Saturday, Jon sent me the link to this really really old video that we did about Windows 386, and now, the first thing I read on Larry's blog today is the history behind the video which makes it all that more connected really.  James showed me a couple of old Windows 95 videos the other day (wonder if they're on Soapbox yet?) So different to the types of videos that we're releasing nowadays (The devil does Unified Communications and uses Roundtable for example. 

Video: UC Roundtable

We've come such a long way...

Lots of SDK's

I noticed that we're ramping up with our release of software development kits.  There's one for SharePoint 2007 (with the additional benefit of getting an enterprise content management starter kit - whatever that is!).  We've also brought out an SDK for WSS 3.0 and Project 2007.  These slot in quite nicely with the release of the Lotus notes migration templates I blogged about last week.  Your developers can take the original templates and modify them, or else they can develop customised applications from scratch using these SDK's.  So all in all, its a good time to have a look at these tools, with the focus on Sharepoint and getting up to speed. 

Eweek have a great write up on the tools as well as links to the Wikis (Wikis are such a great community idea) where you can share best practices about Sharepoint (click on the Add new community content to contribute).

.. it won't be long before we get the Office SDK, along with the rest of the bunch and we'll be seeing neat custom built app's and add-ons for this version too.  Bring them on...

Let's start Talking Microsoft again

The team have had loads and loads of challenges with our Talking Microsoft blog that we started in the summer (explained here), but we've finally worked stuff out, and are ready to publish our backlog of videos.

The aim of Talking Microsoft is to give a perspective of how Microsoft works here in the UK.  The videos are shorter than those on Channel 9 (10 - 15 minutes long), and we'll interview all different types of people in their role, talking about their daily lives and why they work here.  We want to give you an flavour of some of the amazing range of people who work at Microsoft UK.  James has been coerced into doing the interviews - he has a natural engaging, non threatening style and enjoys being behind the camera much more than in front of it. 

I'll let you read all about it over on his blog, but meanwhile, Christine Betts gives a wonderful interview here.

And if you think there's someone in Microsoft UK who we should go and talk to - leave a comment over on the blog and we'll put them on the to do list...

From passion to profession

 Yesterday at Microsoft in the UK I think we held a first for a product launch

5 user groups in the UK - Nathan Winters - Messaging and Mobility, Nick Swan - SharePoint, Arthur Pounder – Unified Communications, Jim Moffat - Groove user group (site under construction) and Rod Gordon – Office held a joint EVO user group community launch.  Microsoft UK hosted the event, provided the room, teas, coffees and lunch, but the agenda, demos, speakers and content was all User Group led and delivered.

We had 270 people turn up on a day when the UK had some snow which normally grinds the country to a halt.  The room only seats 240 but we piped the content into an overflow room and most of the attendees stayed right to the end.  Everyone who was left at the end of the day (200+) all said they would want to do another session like this in the not too distant future.  We had actually closed the registration tool just after Xmas as we knew we couldn’t get any more in to the room, which was amazing when you consider that we didn’t advertise this event until till early in December.

We had:

• 5 user groups presenting on different technologies working together demonstrated fantastic cross group working which is something we internally could learn from.
• Everyone loved the independent feel and content (though some still thought that they had come to a "Microsoft event")  We've obviously got some work to do on positioning this as an event "run by users for users" when we advertise the next event.
• There were real world stories told well in an open and honest style.  I think that this had huge value to the user group attendees and certainly something we will encourage the user groups to do for the next event in a few months time)
• This event raised lots of awareness for the user groups which meant that they had lots of sign ups at the event.  A big percentage of attendees weren't aware that these groups existed.
• The UG leads and supporters put a HUGE amount of effort into preparing their slides and demos – all unpaid and carried out in addition to their day job.
• We had 9 speakers (I think but I lost count)
• A well know UK journalist and consultant (Jon Honeyball) presented the keynote and added a context and importance to the event itself.
• We found plenty of Microsoft people who were around at break and lunch to talk to the attendees, do Q&A and things like that 

So what did we learn?

• We need a Vista user group – that part of the content was very light.  Does anyone want to volunteer to create one?  Get in touch with me if you're keen to do this...
 

So all in all I feel really great about the event and we will follow up with our support of these user groups in the future.  There are lots of people I need to thank but it was the UG leads who really deserve the praise. They've turned their passion for technology into their profession at work, and are keen to share it with others.  Fantastic...

So will we do it again? - YES!...

Daylight Savings Time - what you need to do...

Ali is having a total nightmare with the changes to Daylight Savings time in the US and mailed me for help, so I started digging around for information.  We'd mentioned DST in our last TechNet newsletter (register here by the way).  Here's what we said...

"Finally, we're only a couple of months away from Daylight Saving Time (DST). DST starts three weeks earlier this year under the new Energy Policy Act passed by US Congress in August 2005. While the change applies to U.S. and Canada, it may impact customers based outside North America. Several Microsoft products are affected so updates to these products are being developed and tested. Some of them are currently available, with the remainder scheduled to be released from December 2006 through early March 2007. Find out how to prepare for changes in DST in 2007."

Well, this isn't really enough information to help you get everything up to date.  Ali had been receiving differing information from different contacts throughout Microsoft.  So I asked my mate Paul, who had blogged about a similar issue with BlackBerry's the other day.  And he did some digging too and came up with a huge amount of resources that you need to be aware of.

As Paul says:

"Outlook is looking like it's going to be a pain in the butt.  The problem is that when you apply the Windows Operating System Update for DST 2007 you will have Outlook calendar appointments off by 1 hour during the DST Change periods.

The solution requires three things to be in place for Outlook calendar items to be updated properly.

1. The Operating System update to change the time zone information.  928388 or 914387 (available now).
2. The Exchange Server 2003 Update for CDO.  926666 (available now).
3. The Outlook Time Zone Data update Tool and the Exchange Time Zone Update Tool. (not released yet).

If all of these patches and tools are not used together, then there will be calendar inconsistencies.  If you install update 928388 or 914387 for the operating system without doing anything else, users are notice that the meetings during the DST change periods are ahead by 1 hour.  This is expected behavior without installing the Exchange server hotfix 926666 patch and using the Outlook or Exchange tool to rebase the appointments that are in the DST change period. 

The Outlook tool is due to be released in January 2007 through the Microsoft Download Center that can update calendar items in Outlook to accommodate the changes in DST during the Extended DST period. This program is called the Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft® Office Outlook® (Time Zone Data Update Tool).
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, the newest version of Outlook, has the ability to automatically detect the DST change and prompt the process that updates a person’s calendar to conform to the new daylight saving time rules. However, the Time Zone Data Update Tool contains enhancements that improve upon what is available in Outlook 2007and should be run instead of the out-of-the-box Outlook 2007 experience."

This isn't the definitive way to solve all of your problems, but its a heck of a long way down the road to a solution.   

P.S.. We've been kicking around the idea of changing DST in the UK for years now, so by the time you've sorted this out, we may have decided to implement, and you'll have to go through all of this again.  Oh happy days...