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:

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

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/

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.

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

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

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

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?

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?

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!

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

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.

Performance

Well-executed industrial design is one thing, but it’s of little use without the performance to back it up. Fortunately Samsung didn’t skimp in this area – the Series 7 is FAST. Like, crazy fast. In my fundamentals test it outpaced almost every laptop in my inventory, particularly in the sleep and wake tests. In those areas it’s so fast that for me, it effectively served as my “instant on, instant off” solution:

• Sleep (sleep button clicked to power down): Less than 1 second
• Wake (power button pressed to desktop): Less than 1 second
• Start up (power button pressed to desktop): 21 seconds
• Shut down (no apps open; shut down clicked to power off): 11 seconds

The other area where I found the Series 7 to excel was battery life. Whereas many Windows 7 slates (and laptops, for that matter) conk out after a few hours of use, I got well over 5 hours of real-world use time off of a single charge. That’s really impressive stuff for a PC that’s this thin and light.

One other feature worth noting is Samsung’s proprietary touch login system. This tool overlays a numeric touch login panel over the normal password scree so you can log back in to your PC very quickly. It’s less secure than typing your password in every time (I should note that you always have to log in with your password on boot), but much, much faster. It’s up to you if you’re willing to make that tradeoff.

Final Thoughts

The Samsung Series 7 is a really nice slate PC. Maybe the best one yet. It’s an excellent choice for anyone who needs a touch-centric device today and a really positive herald of what’s to come.

Source: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/windowsexperience/archive/2011/09/01/hands-on-with-the-samsung-series-7-slate-pc.aspx

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

Growth of IE9 on Windows 7 is really just a reflection of how the web experiences we all enjoy get better when using
a browser and operating system designed to put those experiences front and
center.  Pinning
sites like Facebook in Windows 7 is become increasingly popular among our
IE9 users.

The good news is, more and more sites are adding this
capability every day.  Recently popular travel search site, Kayak, implemented
pinning and a dynamic Jump List for IE9 and Window 7.  Kayak does a really great
job of allowing their customers “to easily compare hundreds of travel sites at
once, in one comprehensive, fast and intuitive display.”  We think it gets even
better in IE9 when you can pin Kayak right to your Windows 7 desktop.  Customers
can now access “My Trips” and “Kayak Favorites” directly from the Jump List,
giving customers the ability to check out existing ticketed travel and find new
low fares from their city quickly.  Kayak is also helping to spread the word
about their IE9 features via a notification on their site, which is pretty
cool.

Check it out.  Pin Kayak to your Windows 7 taskbar today along with your
other favorite
sites.  And, if you haven’t already made the move to Internet Explorer 9 on
Windows 7, try it by visiting www.beautyoftheweb.com.

Roger Capriotti
Director, Internet Explorer Marketing

Source: http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/08/31/internet-explorer-9-reaches-20-usage-share-worldwide-on-windows-7-approaching-30-in-the-us.aspx

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

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.

This reference allows administrators to easily find existing group policies and implement them with relative ease.

All in all GroupPolicySearch is an extremely handy reference with the added coolness of being hosted in the cloud on the Azure platform .

Without going into too much detail – People have identified that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 does have a console built-in. This console is hidden (prob because its just built on top of CoD 4/WaW tech or for dev purposes) but can be unlocked using an injector tool to trick the game into letting you use it.

So what’s wrong with this? Well  MW2, with IWNet was never deployed to allow people to customize servers using console commands. It was meant to be a fair, basic and straightforward player matching system. By throwing console access into the mix the server host is able to change settings on the fly and thus radically change the game for anyone connected to his server.

If you go on youtube and have a hunt around you will see a raft of videos depicting servers where people have what would usually be unattainable “perks and abilities” (e.g. unlimited ammunition and flight)… Not to mention the ability for the server to switch between field of views and game modes at whim.

So today after learning about this hack for the first time, went exploring to see the mayhem for myself. Upon entering a hacked server everything appears routine but its quickly evident things are not normal – the biggest problem being that kills are worth about 5,000,000 xp a piece – thus ranking you to the highest rank (70) at the drop of a hat.

Now I know that most people are familiar with this by now, and most people feel cheated out of their rank… You are lead into what you would think would be a legitimate server you found through IWNet only to find you are ranked up against your choice….

…So how do we get our old rank back?

Well, this is where Windows (Vista/Se7en) comes in handy – provided you have system restore enabled.
Ill run over it very quickly since it isn’t exactly hard. (Close steam down first)

1. Navigate to your steam directory (for me: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam)
2. Open User-data folder and then the folder with in that (numbered string). Within that folder will be a folder named 10190 – Back this up!.
3. Right click on this folder and select Restore previous version, navigate through the dates to a time/date that’s appropriate (just before you were duped by hacked servers) and select the restore button. (If the restore button is not available you can simply double click on the the correct folder in the list (opens new window). Replace everything in the original 10190 folder with the contents of this restored folder – make sure you replace everything *rather important*
4. Navigate to the CoD MW2 main folder (for me: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\call of duty modern warfare 2) and do the same as step 3 but for the players folder
5. Re-open steam and launch CoD MW2 Multi-player – This should upload your backup to the cloud and overwrite previous stats – Play a round and complete it to make sure everything is sync’ed accross.

Hopefully you can understand my (probably needlessly complicated) instructions – I know I managed to get my previous rank back to normal.
I would advise however, if you do search for games on IWNet, have a look at players before rounds begin – make sure its not full of prestige 10 players or look for irregularities such as 18 people in a 3rd person cage match.
If you have any questions/comments post em’ blow – I’m tired, time for bed

Patrick Squire – Post originally from here (for all those sites that just rip our content off)

The glitch is to do with the retail version only (as far as I know) and happens In Act II after you finish the gulag mission, where you get rescued by helicopter/rope  after rescuing price from the prison.

Just as you clip on a cut scene would usually display, but for some reason the game crashes with the following error.

ERROR: Could not find zone ‘dcburning.ff’

If you check your C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\call of duty modern warfare 2\zone\english (This directory will vary based on your OS/Language) The file exists – so what gives?

Truthfully, I don’t know either but the only fix is to rename or delete dcburning.ff and then validate the game on steam (Right click on Modern Warfare 2 – Hit properties > Click local files tab and select verify integrity of game cache) . The validation will fail and then download the file again -this time allowing your game to run correctly.

Any questions, please ask.

Using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Before you run the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool, make sure that you have already purchased Windows 7 ISO download from Microsoft Store and have downloaded the Windows 7 ISO file to your hard drive. If you have purchased Windows 7 but have not yet downloaded the ISO file, you can download the file from your Microsoft Store Account. [Jabez: If you purchased the boxed set, just create an ISO from the CD by using ImgBurn, and follow the steps below.]

To make a copy of your Windows 7 ISO file:

1. Click the Windows Start button, and click Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool in the All Programs list to open the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool.
2. In the Source File box, type the name and path of your Windows 7 ISO file, or click Browse and select the file in the Open dialog box.
3. Select USB to create a copy on a USB flash drive or DVD to create a copy on a DVD disk, then click Next.
4. If you are copying the file to a USB flash drive, select your USB device in the dropdown list and click Begin copying. If you are copying the file up to a DVD, click Begin burning.

Source: Microsoft’s site.

Just like they did for Vista, Microsoft are giving away free copies of Windows 7 as a “thank you for testing”.

After the Vista beta was complete, testers got the opportunity to download a Vista image to use with the CD key they were given. While this is still the case, Microsoft are giving away a few boxed copies as well .

The survey is up on connect now – sooo… If you were a Windows Se7en Technical BETA tester jump at the opportunity to get yourself a copy on Microsoft.

Oh, And I am pretty sure its open to Anyone on the Beta – not only to those who submitted bugs like the Vista Beta