Background:
Lync for Android and iOS were launched recently. However, automatic sign in does not work for Lync/Lync Online (Office365).

Problem:
Using Lync client on PC and Mac, it signs in fine; however, when trying to sign onto Lync using Lync Server or Lync Online, it fails to sign on.

Solution:
As part of setting up the domain in Office365, it is missing a few CNAME records for Lync.

Add the following 2 more CNAME records into the DNS of your domain:

I stumbled across a quirky issue today which was causing scheduled TFSBuild jobs to fail with the following error: “Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host”. When executing the build definition manually I could not reproduce the issue; the build would run through without any errors.

After a bit of searching it turns out there is a small bug in IIS 7.5 (introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2) which prevents TFS downloading files larger than 2MB over a slow network connection; IIS will expire the idle connection time-out and disconnect mid-transfer.

Installing KB981898 from Microsoft Support will fix this bug and allow TFS builds to run-through without any issues.

-Patrick

If you are just like me, who has a Blackberry with your emails hosted on Office365, this is for you: BES is coming to Office365 very soon!

Details as following:

Oct 2011: Blackberry Business Cloud beta starts
Jan 2012:Blackberry Business Cloud goes public

Are you excited just like me? Read here for more information: http://richfrombechtle.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/office-365-blackberry-beta-available/

With the release of Windows Phone Seven Mango (7.1) the other day I was really keen to get it installed as soon as possible on my HTC Trophy. Unfortunately my carrier had not yet approved it (and to the best of my knowledge; still hasn’t). Fortunately the WP7 no-do download trick still works and it allowed me to download and install Mango before it was approved by my carrier.

Essentially this trick prevents the Zune software from checking if my mobile carrier has approved my phone (IMEI?) for the update.

Note: This trick does not work with all devices – e.g. the Samsung Omnia is still yet to get approved at a top level.

1. Start Zune
2. Turn off Data connection and Wifi on the Phone
3. Connect the Phone with the PC (USB)
4. Start the update search in Zune
5. About 3 seconds later, disconnect your PC from the internet (Turn WLAN off/Disable your network adaptor).
6. Zune finds “MANGO”-Update. Press OK.
7. Connect to the internet again and install the update

Good Luck.

Microsoft’s been pushing HTML5 hard to developers, giving them another option to develop application on top of Windows. However in my opinion, the HTML5 implementation is still far from being useful. I’ve been developing xaml based apps for quite some time and I have to say that along with expression blend, it’s powerful. Developers will stick with xaml unless they come from a web background. Please don’t get me wrong, I for one agree that the combination of HTML5, Javascript and CSS3 is a must learn for all developers. We should spend time on building HTML5 sites, but not for building Metro apps.

Source: http://channelm.net/blog/2011/09/20/html5-for-metro-just-another-option/

Phew! We’re all back from BUILD and focused on our next milestone. It is fair to say we had an awesome time showing everyone Windows 8 in depth and all of our speakers and Microsoft attendees are unbelievably appreciative for the warm reception you gave the product. We know it is early still–a developer preview–and there are lots of questions. We’re going to be answering them in new posts as we focus on using the Windows Developer Preview (WDP) as a baseline–so if you haven’t been running it, consider it sort of like a prerequisite for many of the blog posts.

Boot is the sort of effort that gets no respect. It is either too long or all the work to make it nice and pleasant hopefully goes unnoticed since you never want to boot your machine. I remember a meeting many years ago where Bill Gates said (paraphrasing) “Boot is a one-line function call that computes a constant yet takes forever: fBoot = SystemBoot()” At the same time it seems like everything boots these days—phones, TVs, cable TV boxes, even my TV remote boots. In building Windows 8, we set out of take advantage of some new technology and revisited some old assumptions to totally rethink the boot experience. We also wanted to make it more accessible and better suited to devices without keyboards. Of course, we also did a lot of work to continue to minimize reboots altogether, but this post is about what happens when you do boot. Billie Sue Chafins authored this post. She is a long time program manager who spent many years on user interface design, and in this release she helped us to focus on the boot experience (in addition to the Metro style app sharing contract which you can learn about from BUILD here).
–Steven

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/20/reengineering-the-windows-boot-experience.aspx

Bing is famous for having a different background picture whenever someone browses to Bing. However today onwards, when browsing to Bing using a HTML5 supported browser, it will show a video in the background.

What do you think? Waste of bandwidth?

Source: Bing Blog at http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2011/09/23/something-new-on-the-homepage.aspx?form=pgbar1

Folks! Good news for the consumers of Windows, and bad news for anti virus vendors.

In the next version of Windows 8, anti virus application will be integrated together with Windows Defender, which is used to block spyware and protect from slow performance due to certain applications. However, Windows Defender will be extended to include anti virus in Windows 8.

This would potentially means that, there is not necessary to purchase and install a third party anti virus software like Norton, McAfee or Sophos anti virus.

In the Windows XP and older era, consumers and businesses would purchase firewall applications for all PCs, until Windows XP SP2 introduces both incoming and outgoing monitoring, purchasing firewall application becomes an optional item for enterprise customers.

With integrated anti virus in Windows 8, would this further decrease the profit and growth of major security vendors out there?

What’s your thoughts?

If you are wondering where can you download the Windows Server 8 Developer Preview, it is only available for MSDN Subscribers for now.

Many are reporting the downloads to be very slow, however, if you have a MSDN subscription that method is reportedly faster right now.

Interestingly, Windows 8 dev preview expires on 3/11/2012 4:59PM. Does this mean we’ll see a beta sooner than we thought?

Windows 8 Developer Preview just launched a few hours back, and here are the links:

Direct links:

• Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64) (4.8GB)
• Windows Developer Preview English, 64-bit (x64) (3.6GB)
• Windows Developer Preview English, 32-bit (x86) (2.8GB)

What are you waiting for? Start the download and give Windows 8 Developer Preview a test drive!

Today in the Windows 8 Blog, Microsoft talked about the integration of Hyper-V embedded into Windows 8. The company plans to offer Hyper-V with Windows 8 when it launches, allowing consumers to create virtual machines on their desktops or laptops without the need for third-party software, like VMware.

Hyper-V will likely be available only in the Professional or Ultimate edition of Windows 8, although edition information has not been released, and will require the machines they run on to have a 64-bit version of Windows 8. In order for machines to support and run Hyper-V correctly, the minimum requirement for RAM will be 4GB, but more will definitely be needed for better performance. Hyper-V will be able to support both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of operating systems. Microsoft does state in their blog that users will be able to run 3 or 4 VMs with 4GB of RAM, but will require more RAM if users wish to run more VMs on the same machine.

The VM Console will be able to support a single monitor view with 1600×1200 resolution in 32-bit color. Windows 8 will also launch with native ISO and VHD support, allowing users to create virtual machines directly from an ISO file.

Windows 8′s feature list is really starting to come together and we can expect some further exciting announcements next week at the Microsoft BUILD conference in California. Neowin will be live from the event between September 13-16.

Microsoft included a video demonstration of Hyper-V support on their blog, which can be found here.

Credit: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-confirms-and-demonstrates-hyper-v-in-windows-8

It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a new Windows 7 slate, which is why I
was so interested to check out the brand-new Samsung Series 7 Slate PC, which
Samsung debuted today at the IFA conference in Germany. Samsung was cool enough
to give me sneak-preview of the Series 7 about a month before today’s launch, so
what you’re reading today are my thoughts on the almost-finished version. My
unit came with a full-voltage second-generation Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM
and a lightning-fast 64GB SSD. When it hits store shelves in early October
you’ll be able to get one for $1299. There will also be a model with the same
specs,minus the Bluetooth keyboard and dock (more on that later) for $1099, and
a full-loaded version with a 128GB SSD  for $1349.

Look and Feel

The Samsung Series 7, much like the ASUS EP121 that I looked at a few months back,
is a pure-slate device. It’s super thin and light, measuring only 13mm thick and
weighing in at just a hair over 2lbs. Like all Samsung products it’s solid
without being bulky and well balanced without being heavy. It’s 11.6” across and
sports a 16:9 aspect ratio with a 1366 x 768 HD resolution, which puts it on-par
with most 11-13” widescreen laptops. It’s responsive and comfortable to use in
widescreen mode, and that extra screen width comes in very handy when browsing
the web in landscape mode.

In the box with my Series 7 came three accessories – a dock that has a
headphone jack, HDMI out and USB, a Bluetooth keyboard (which Samsung
thoughtfully made exactly the same width as the PC, so when you carry them
together they just “fit”) and a WACOM intelligent pen for taking notes. The
inclusion of these accessories makes the Series 7 extremely versatile and
equally good as a portable slate and a desktop PC. I used the PC as a pure touch
device when watching video and browsing the web (making use of the on-screen
keyboard when I needed to type in URLs), as a tablet-with-pen when scribbling
down notes in OneNote in meetings and brainstorming sessions, and as a docked
PC-with-keyboard when at my desk. The latter two modes were my favorites – I
found the pen very responsive and fluid and the “docked” setup as good as a
traditional laptop when sitting at my desk. The Bluetooth keyboard connects
almost instantly so there’s no annoying lag between when you fire up the PC and
when you can get to work.

All together, the PC plus all of the accessories and power cord weigh less
than 4lbs, making it an ideal travel companion. For comparison that’s a few
ounces less as my Lenovo ThinkPad X220, and about the same weight as my Toshiba
Portege R830.

Read the rest of this entry »

This month we hit some pretty important milestones in the IE business.  IE9
has now passed 20% usage share worldwide on Windows 7 as of the
last day of August.  In the US, IE9 closed out the month at 28% share on
Windows 7.  IE9 was built to take advantage of the unique capabilities of
Windows 7 and it’s great to see more and more Windows 7 users picking IE9 as
their browser of choice to get them to their favorite sites.

Source: Net
Applications, August 2011 (latest mainline browsers compared).

Read the rest of this entry »

Pro Tip…

Recently I purchased a shiny new HTC Trophy Windows Phone 7 Device… I have been fairly happy with the operating system overall (Even if it is the first release) however recently I managed to stumble across a missing feature of the Bing Maps application, Directions.
The feature isn’t missing per say it’s just hidden to people from particular locales (e.g. New Zealand for me)

To enable the feature (and actually make the application useful) do the following:

1. Open the Settings menu on your phone
2. Select Region & Language
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select “Browser & Search Language”
4. Set value to English (United States) or English (United Kingdom)
5. Exit out of Settings and open your Maps application – you’ll see a new icon in the bar at the bottom (Looks like an arrow) – Select this and enter your Start and End points
6. You’re good to go

I Don’t know why Microsoft decided to exclude some countries – especially since navigation works fine in those countries if you use a different locale. Either way – it fixes the problem without any real headaches.

Patrick

Microsoft Online Services launched in Malaysia a month or 2 months back. This means that Malaysia companies can finally use Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, Live Meeting and Office Communicator hosted on Microsoft’s data center.

Before we talk further, it’s always about the cost which entices the readers/bosses. Let me do a quick $$ breakdown:

(Sorry – the following will be in Ringgit Malaysia.)

SME (50 users)

- Decent System Administrator: RM3000 (monthly), or RM36,000 (yearly)
- Server hardware (with server redundancy, with license for 50 users): Rm15,000 (one time)
Total: RM51,000

For Microsoft Online Services (with Exchange, OCS, Live Meeting and Sharepoint)

- Rm33/user/month x 50 users x 12 months = Total: RM19,800

As you can see, Microsoft Online is a cheaper alternative to maintain your own IT infrastructure.

This is just a rough estimation.

What do you think?

For more information about Microsoft Online Services, you can click on this link.