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Yesterday at Tech Ed IT Pro 2008 in Orlando we announced some of the enhancements we’re making in Internet Explorer 8 to help IT Professionals deploy and manage IE8 within their organization. We wanted to share those with the IT Pros on our blog.

Over the last year we’ve surveyed over 2000 IT Professionals to understand their concerns and priorities for deploying and managing desktops and software within their organization. We learned that IT Pros have a lot of things to worry about – more than 30 different concerns came up. However, some topics arose considerably more frequently than others. Here are the top ones:

• Deployment and implementation of new technology
• Managing updates and upgrades
• Application compatibility
• Security of data, network and systems

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/06/11/what-s-coming-in-internet-explorer-8-for-it-professionals.aspx

Yesterday at Tech Ed IT Pro 2008 in Orlando we announced some of the enhancements we’re making in Internet Explorer 8 to help IT Professionals deploy and manage IE8 within their organization. We wanted to share those with the IT Pros on our blog.

Over the last year we’ve surveyed over 2000 IT Professionals to understand their concerns and priorities for deploying and managing desktops and software within their organization. We learned that IT Pros have a lot of things to worry about – more than 30 different concerns came up. However, some topics arose considerably more frequently than others. Here are the top ones:

• Deployment and implementation of new technology
• Managing updates and upgrades
• Application compatibility
• Security of data, network and systems

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/06/11/what-s-coming-in-internet-explorer-8-for-it-professionals.aspx

Microsoft seems like the most unlikely company to ship products that really support Enterprise 2.0. After all, the company is the poster child for packaged software.

But everything the company is saying here in Orlando at TechEd 2008 is consistent with the idea that IT has to support the linchpins of complex, agile, multivariate organizations. And Microsoft is giving IT professionals the tools to support mobile information workers, social networking, cloud computing and virtualized environments.

Full Article – http://blogs.eweek.com/epiphanies/content/enterprise_20/previewing_windows_server_2008_r2_1.html

At the request of its SharePoint and Office product development teams, Microsoft ‘s Office Labs operation has created and is testing a prototype of an internal social network that can provide employees with feeds and updates about their colleagues.

Chris Pratley, general manager of Office Labs , is slated to disclose details of the prototype — called TownSquare — Thursday at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. He spoke to Computerworld about the project, which was launched in January and has already been used by about 8,000 Microsoft employees.

With a layout that is strikingly similar to Facebook.com’s (in which Microsoft invested $240 million in October 2007), TownSquare is fueled by enterprise news feeds that use Web services to query SharePoint for public information, such as promotions and company anniversaries, about an employee.

Full Article – http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/11/Microsoft_testing_prototype_of_Facebooklike_social_network_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/11/Microsoft_testing_prototype_of_Facebooklike_social_network_1.html

At Apple’s annual WWDC event, held today, Steve Jobs announced a new software+services product: MobileMe. Offering to synchronise emails, contact, and calendar data, the new service seems just like Windows Live. Except cooler (check out the screenshots) and also coming in at a fairly hefty $99 a year.

Firstly Apple announced a whole range of web-based applications to complement the existing desktop applications. There’s an email application in the browser, which from the screenshot looks very clean. Hotmail team take note. Contacts also synchronise between devices, similar to Windows Live for Windows Mobile if you are running that.

Full Article – http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/06/09/apple-announces-windows-live-rival-we-re-jealous.aspx

At Apple’s annual WWDC event, held today, Steve Jobs announced a new software+services product: MobileMe. Offering to synchronise emails, contact, and calendar data, the new service seems just like Windows Live. Except cooler (check out the screenshots) and also coming in at a fairly hefty $99 a year.

Firstly Apple announced a whole range of web-based applications to complement the existing desktop applications. There’s an email application in the browser, which from the screenshot looks very clean. Hotmail team take note. Contacts also synchronise between devices, similar to Windows Live for Windows Mobile if you are running that.

Full Article – http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/06/09/apple-announces-windows-live-rival-we-re-jealous.aspx

On Monday, June 9, 2008, Apple hosted its annual developer show, the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), in San Francisco. As with the March 2008 event at which the company announced its iPhone 2.0 software platform, the WWDC keynote featured Apple CEO Steve Jobs as well as two underlings, Scott Forstall, the senior vice president of iPhone software, and Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of product marketing. While the March event focused solely on the features of the iPhone 2.0 software platform, which will run both on original generation iPhones as well as second-gen (and awkwardly named) iPhone 3G devices, this week’s event was split between three topics: iPhone 2.0 software for developers, iPhone 3G, and MobileMe, Apple’s replacement for the .Mac online service.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/iphone3g_preview.asp

With electricity prices continuing to skyrocket and processors getting ever hungrier for power, it was only a matter of time beforeMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT) chimed in with claims that its latest software can cut energy bills. A Microsoft white paper released this week asserts that Windows Server 2008 can cut power consumption by 10% compared with Windows Server 2003 out of the box, and much more if running virtualized.

Microsoft compared power consumption between two installations on the same server with two dual-core processors and 4 GB of RAM, one running Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition with SP2 plus hot fixes, and the other running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, with a hard drive formatting in between.

The company found that Windows Server 2003 used as much as 10% more power despite only being able to deliver 80% of the maximum throughput as its successor. Microsoft attributes these improvements partially to power management features that Windows Server 2008 has enabled by default, like the automatic adjustment of processor performance based on workload.

Full Article – http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208403193

Over the last two years virtualization.info has been constant in repeating that support is the most challenging issue in any virtualization project.

Some companies are working hard to make their support policy more virtualization-friendly, while others are not even near the minimal level of commitment that the customers are demanding.

Today Microsoft makes a further step to simplify the process with the launch of a Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).

Full Article – http://www.virtualization.info/2008/06/microsoft-launches-server.html

The second chapter of Apple’s iPhone era is almost ready to begin, and it’s already clear that things will be a little different this time around.

Few people who pay even scant attention to the technology industry could claim to be shocked by the introduction of a faster iPhone earlier on Monday by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Apple has sold 6 million iPhones since June 2007, Jobs said, and will likely sell a few more once the new model arrives on July 11 with a faster networking chip, GPS capabilities, and a software upgrade that’s an IT manager’s dream for a mobile device.

From a features point of view, the new model delivers on what iPhone customers want and need. Yes, you still can’t do mobile messaging, and I still don’t think you can do cut-and-paste, which is just bizarre. But Apple has added just about everything else people have asked for or complained about in iPhone 1.0: faster networks, secure access to corporate e-mail, precise location-based services, and third-party applications.

Full Article – http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9964230-37.html

Today, the Windows Home Server Team has announced the availability of the Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 Release Candidate for download on Microsoft Connect. You can read Charlie Kindel’s post announcing today’s release on the Windows Home Server Team Blog.

Microsoft Connect: Windows Home Server

Power Pack 1 for Windows Home Server contains numerous bug fixes – including the data corruption issue – as well as many new enhancements to Windows Home Server many users will enjoy:

• Support for PCs running Windows Vista x64 editions
• Backup of Windows Home Server Shared Folders
• Easier, enhanced remote access capabilities
• Better energy efficiency
• Improved performance
• Chinese and Japanese versions

I’m currently running the Power Pack 1 Release Candidate on my HP MediaSmart Server and enjoying new functionality Power Pack 1 adds to my Windows Home Server. I recently added several harddrives putting my storage at 1.1TB. Having more storage allows me to utilize Folder Duplication for my Shared Folders. I also have 1 drive setup specifically for backups of my Shared Folders. I utilize my Shared Folders for quite a bit of data storage so I really appreciate having this functionality to ensure the data is safe (on top of Folder Duplication). Having more storage also lets me store my CompletePC Backups from my Windows Vista PCs on my Windows Home Server as well – but I will talk more about this in a later blog post. I am also enjoying the ability to backup my PCs to my Windows Home Server running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 with the Windows Home Server Connector that now runs on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. On top of data storage and backups, I utilize my Windows Home Server for remote access when traveling as well.

Your testing of the Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 Release Candidate is very important to the Windows Home Server Team. They will not ship the final release of Power Pack 1 until the community validates their work in Power Pack 1.

Remember – Power Pack 1 is a Release Candidate and is not the final version – essentially it’s a beta. If you choose to run the Release Candidate on your main Windows Home Server (aka your “production” Windows Home Server) you should make a backup of everything prior to installing the Power Pack 1 Release Candidate.

To leave feedback for the Windows Home Server Team – you can head on over to the public Windows Home Server Forums. Make sure you file any bugs you find with Power Pack 1 on Microsoft Connect.

The next version of Windows SteadyState has been released.

Windows® SteadyState™ is now available. (Windows SteadyState was formerly known as Microsoft® Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP.) Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet café, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them. Windows SteadyState is easier to download, set up, use, and maintain than Shared Computer Toolkit.

Download – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d077a52d-93e9-4b02-bd95-9d770ccdb431&DisplayLang=en

Microsoft made available to select testers on June 5 the near-final Release Candidate (RC) 0 of SQL Server 2008.

As of Friday, Microsoft had released the latest test build of its database to TechNet Plus and Microsoft Developer Network(MSDN) subscribers only. The new build wasn’t on the private Connect test site. (Not sure if availability has changed since then.)

Full Article – http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1434

This guide helps you design Windows Firewall with Advanced Security settings and rules that meet your goals for network security. This guide answers the “what,” “why,” and “when” questions. The Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Deployment Guide answers the “how” questions.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e4a6d0d6-c8c3-414a-ad61-abce6889449d&DisplayLang=en

As the 2nd part in our Windows Live Wave 3 series, we’re taking a look at the new header UI that Microsoft is working on. It was almost exactly a year ago that we started talking about the Wave 2 UI, which saw the removal of the Flair. This next change is just as noticeable.

Full Article – http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/06/05/windows-live-wave-3-new-header-ui.aspx