Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

In the IT world its hard not to like Microsoft, especially when you consider the competition and other alternatives that many of us have been burned by in the past. However, to the people outside the IT world, Microsoft is not as grand as it appears. The following article from Fortune is the most succint piece of Microsoft factual bashing I’ve seen in well over a year. Pretty entertaining, unless you own shares:

“Pick up a newspaper or magazine lately, and you’d think the roof was about to fall in at Microsoft. Revenue growth, once routinely more than 30%, is barely into double digits. Vista, its new operating system, formerly called Longhorn, is a year behind schedule and won’t be out until late 2006. Its efforts to beat Google in search and Apple in music have yet to bear fruit. Many of its new businesses, like Xbox, are not making money yet. In Asia piracy and the free Linux operating system have forced it to do what was once unheard of—cut prices. Some critics say that Microsoft is becoming the IBM of its generation—a hugely successful company that is getting itself in trouble by allowing years of success to go to its head.”

Ouch. I guess one point they come short of making is that Microsoft is trying to grow out of the software maker and is now trying to “conquer” the media, entertainment, business solutions and nearly every other piece of the puzzle. By stepping on the toes of former partners in each segment it enters, it may ruin the goodwill it has with its partners whose business its now threatening. All is fair in business.

I’ve blogged about this before but I just have to mention it again as its a real time saver, especially for some of you running your business from your cell phone. This little utility works on across the Windows Mobile platform (PocketPC, SmartPhone) and allows you to set a schedule on which your phone is automatically switched on/off. No more remembering to turn your phone off at night, or forgetting to turn it on until lunch the next day.

Here are some cool features:
* Save the battery on your device by turning off your phone and Bluetooth at night.
* Save money by preventing your device connecting to the Internet at unwanted times (for example: sending and receiving email).
* Stop unwanted calls in the middle of the night or during meetings.
* Turn your phone on and off at a scheduled time for each day of the week.
* Turn your phone off during Pocket Outlook calendar appointments (whether Free, Tentative, Busy or Out-of-Office)*.
* Turn your phone off for a specified length of time or until a certain time is reached.

It will cost you about $10 but well worth it.

Looks like some worth-while news are coming out of the MVP Summit after all: Office 12 will have native PDF support. This is one of those things that I doubt anybody would say “Why, Adobe Acrobat works so well” mostly because every time I accidentally hit a PDF link my system slows down to a crawl while that pos loads. I’ve actually gone as far as using an excellent Firefox plugin to open PDF files as text.

Ranting aside, its very interesting to find out how they decided there would be a need for PDF interoperability within Microsoft Office:

Currently, on our OfficeOnline site, we are seeing over 30,000 searches per week for PDF support. That makes a pretty easy decision 🙂

Pretty cool, as I always say, they are listening folks you have to demand the features you want to see. If you’re unhappy with what you have now you can either voice your opinion to make it better or you can just switch to another OS where you’ll eventually face the exact same issues. We, as users/developers/consumers/system administrators, need to demand the product that works the way we do. And if that happens to be in PDF its your lucky day 🙂

In an interview with Bernard Ourghanlian from Microsoft France revealed that there are plans to come out with Microsoft Windows XP SP3. The service pack is planned for release after the release of Windows Vista and there is a slight hint that the new service pack may bring some features of Windows Vista back.

“There will be a Service Pack 3 for Windows XP,” Bernard Ourghanlian, technical and security director at Microsoft France, confirmed, revealing that Microsoft’s OS is set for another major update.

This may be a very interesting business opportunity for a lot of you out there in the IT world. If the XP SP3 is as big of a hassle as SP2 was, then there may be a business case for going to the new operating system outright as labor rates may overshadow the upgrade license fee for something that will be neccessary at some point.

In a very humorous note, the CNet site where this article was actually published had a snappy comment: “I thought Vista was the SP3” 😉 Made my day.

I’ve been playing around with it and so far I’m impressed. There is a pretty good document for system administrators that has been updated with the SP2 content. The best part: advanced extranet configuration. Before SP2 there was one way to publish the SharePoint to the external users and if anything changed SharePoint complained. The new SP2 release however allows for the following:

Organizations who want to implement extranet deployments for Windows SharePoint Services often use a reverse proxy and load balancers to protect and manage access to the virtual server front ends. This type of advanced extranet configuration could alter the protocol, host header, or port of the request before it reaches the server running Windows SharePoint Services. Several functions within Windows SharePoint Services generate links and e-mail messages based on the protocol, host header, and port of the request as it is received by the server running Windows SharePoint Services. If the protocol, host header, or port were altered, the wrong URL would be returned to the client.

Sold yet? If not, check out the other additions:
* Support for IP-bound virtual servers
* Support for advanced extranet configurations
* Kerberos authentication enabled by default
* Support for Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0
* Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 64-bit implementations

I have to hand it to Bink, he can find a good story. You know how they say “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” – well apply that to a few German professors drinking out with their students and you come up with a really bad example of how technology can be applied. These folks created an intelligent beer mat (stay with me here) that calls the bartender when it starts running low. Talk about utility.. no more getting up, no more waiting for beer to arrive after you’ve run out, no more problems… Its the JIT inventory control system applied to beer.

Jen, say hello to your birthday present! I wonder if it can be programmed to scream “No way am I walking around Epcot sober” in front of children 🙂

Over the last few days a number of Microsoft Office updates have been released in form of Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2. I won’t pretend to talk about something I don’t know so I’ll just talk about Outlook: New phishing bar. All I can say is: about the damn time guys. This protection is available right now and you can take a look at it on the left. Just be careful because in order to enable this you will need Outlook 2003 SP2 and the latest Outlook Junk Filter update. Once both are installed the protection is enabled automatically as you can see on the left. There is also a “phishing” bar that pops down when you open a message that is suspected to have phishing in it. Unfortunately, thanks to ExchangeDefender I have never received a phishing email so I have nothing to test and demo this with.

Here is Microsoft’s description:

SP2 contains a new Phishing Protection feature to be used with the Outlook Junk Email Filter. Phishing is the luring of sensitive information through e-mail, such as passwords and other personal information, by an attacker masquerading as someone trustworthy. Phishing attacks can result in a user divulging sensitive information, including financial information, that can result in a loss of privacy or money. Phishing e-mail is hard to identify, because attackers make their e-mail appear genuine and often mimic recognizable e-mail sent out routinely by legitimate organizations such as banks and credit card companies.

SharePoint SP2 has also been released and there are quite a few new features. According to Susan Bradley this is also SBS-ready although I am not sure why that had to be explicitly defined (SharePoint Team Services is SharePoint is SharePoint is SharePoint). I guess people doubting this just haven’t installed SBS 2003 SP1 which explicitly required SharePoint SP1 to be installed. Something is news every day I suppose…. and considering that take a look at the brief overview of what will be provided with SharePoint SP2 in Windows R2.

I am posting the following against my better judgment, having owned an HP Ipaq phone in the past and been remarkably disappointed by the marketing P’s: Price, performance, promotion. Too expensive, too many reboots, too many lies about it being a useful phone. While I know people that continue to reboot it and hang up on people by continued use, I can’t ignore the Blackberry killer form-factor this will have for a lot of people. I talk to professionals in different segments every day and while they are impressed with my gadgetry they do put it and Blackberry through the, pardon the foul expression, pissing match: “mine is smaller”, “mine is lighter”, “mine just does what I need” – but when I show them all the features they just have to have it. Well, this new device, the HW 6510 and 6515 will soon be available from Cingular with an outdated operating system, smaller screen but the design that will fit most peoples pocket.

Here are some of the features:
* Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz for enhanced global use
* Integrated QWERTY keyboard for easy response to email, text, and instant messages
* GPS location capabilities via integrated GPS receiver with separately purchased GPS navigation application provides driving directions at your fingertips
* Microsoft® Windows Mobileâ„¢ 2003 Second Edition software – Phone Edition
* 64MB RAM / 64MB ROM
* Integrated Bluetooth for use with various headsets, car kits and other accessories
* Integrated Secure Digital (SDIO) and Mini-SD slots for greater storage and expansion
* Optional 1.3 mega-pixel camera, with video capabilities

I won’t be buying it, but if you need a more compact device that will still let you write mail on the go, this may be worth a second look. The signup for Cingular is open here.

This announcement drew a large applause at the SMB Nation so you should check it out. Short notice, I’ll post the link to the replay after its done (but you can find this and previous webcasts at http://www.mssmallbiz.com)

Just a quick reminder about the LiveMeeting session for Small Business Partners scheduled from 10:30 – 11:30 am PST today entitled: “The NEW Single SKU Solution for Small Businesses!”

Description: For years the Small Business Partners have been asking for a way to help make acquiring the core Microsoft software products that Small Businesses use easier to buy and sell. Your requests have been answered. Join us for this 60 minute session to learn all about the NEW single SKU offering for Small Business customers that every Small Business Partner can sell! To make things even better, not only does this offering make it easier for you and your customers, it also makes it more affordable as well.

Registration available at:
http://www.msreadiness.com/WS_abstract.asp?eid=15003036

According to John Westworth the Microsoft Office 2003 SP2 will be coming out today. It looks like he’s right, the Office servers have been behaving funny as if they are trying to stress-test them 🙂 Here are some details:

– Improved Security – SP2 includes an enhancement to Outlook to help prevent “Phishing.” Outlook has also improved the handling of “Junk” email. Junk messages are now rendered as plain text, preventing HTML information from being viewed inadvertently. Links are also now disabled in “Junk” email messages with SP2.

– Improved application stability – SP2 includes numerous fixes and enhancements for Office applications and servers based on customer and partner feedback as well as extensive internal testing.

– Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 – Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 have been updated to include support for the upcoming releases of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005.

Keep an eye on it..

Update: Just noticed that a buddy of mine, Brian Kruse is blogging. Way to go Brian!