It’s been a while since I blogged about another of my (not so) crazy Microsoft rumors. It’s also been a while since I’ve heard any kind of an update on Windows 8 timing. In that spirit — here’s the latest, plus the ground rules for those weighing how believable this information may or may not be.
Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP
Web Standards Update provides the much wanted HTML5 & CSS3 support to Visual Studio 2010 SP1. It brings VS 2010 intellisense & validation as close to W3C specification as we could get via means of an extension.
Link – http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a15c3ce9-f58f-42b7-8668-53f6cdc2cd83
How to map SkyDrive to a network drive
Tip of the day based on the recent SkyDrive update.
- In IE go to http://skydrive.live.com/ and login using your Live ID
- Go to SkyDrive -> My Files and note the CID in the browser
- In Windows 7 open Windows Explorer, and select Map Network Drive
- Enter the following \\docs.live.net@SSL\XXXXX (replace XXXXX with CID from above)
Microsoft BPOS users complain of new e-mail and dashboard outage
Reports began surfacing about a new Microsoft cloud outage on June 22 — less than a week before the company is slated to turn on its Office 365 hosted service platform.
Users of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) — its Google Apps competitor that will be superseded by Office 365 — are having e-mail issues. They’re also reporting that they cannot tell what is going on, as the Health Dashboard they rely on for updates also is not working.
Update Rollup 4 for Exchange 2010 SP1
Earlier today the Exchange CXP team released Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 to the Download Center.
This update contains a number of customer-reported and internally found issues since the release of RU1. See ‘KB 2509910: Description of Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1’ for more details. In particular we would like to specifically call out the following fixes which are included in this release:
- 2519359 Unable to Create a ‘Reply With’ Rule on Public Folders Even With Owner and Send As Permissions
- 2394554 Generating DSN fails if original mail uses non-support encoding charset.
- 2490134 Outlook 2007 does not deliver "Delayed Delivery" Messages against an Exchange 2010 Server in Online mode with any additional Transport loaded in the Outlook Profile
Download – http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26554
Introducing SkyDrive for the modern web
As officials have been hinting in recent weeks, Microsoft has relaunched and updated its Windows Live SkyDrive cloud storage service.
Microsoft is altering the SkyDrive user interface so that it is easier and quicker for users to see exactly what they’ve stored and how to access their files, photos and documents.
Microsoft’s Windows 8 client to include a hypervisor for virtualization
A year ago, when I blogged about possible plans by Microsoft to include a hypervisor in its Windows 8 client — and not just the server — I was told a lot of things. I heard it was impossible, that I was off-base, that it was nothing but a pipe dream.
Cut to June 20, 2011 — a few days after a new Windows 8 Milestone 3 (M3) build, No. 7989, leaked to the Web. While dissecting the latest bits, WindowsNow.com blogger Robert McLaws discovered that there is, indeed, a Hyper-V 3.0 in the Windows 8 client code base.
Hyper-V 3.0 coming to Windows 8
It has been revealed in a recent leaked build of Windows 8, that the operating system Microsoft currently code names Windows 8, contains Hyper-V 3.0 technology and a new virtual hard drive format called VHDX.
It has been assumed by several sites that the features have been a part of Windows 8 for quite some time, however due to the lack of 64-bit builds and more focus being placed on mainstream consumer features, they were yet to be picked up by enthusiasts.
Link – http://www.neowin.net/news/hyper-v-30-coming-to-windows-8
Firefox 5 released
Almost three months following Firefox 4’s release, Mozilla has posted final builds for Firefox 5 ahead of the official release date of June 21. The new accelerated release schedule Mozilla is using for Firefox development will see the next version of Firefox, Firefox 6, go into beta about two weeks following Firefox 5’s release.
The new release looks and runs very similar to Firefox 4, but it has a few changes under the hood. The official changelog will be made available here.
- Support for CSS transitions has been added
- The preference for "Do Not Track" has been moved to aid easier discoverability by users
- Improvements for canvas, JavaScript, and networking performance, and memory usage
- Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
- Improvements to spell checking for various languages
- Improvements to Linux desktop environment integration
- Performance improvements for background tabs
- WebGL fixes: a fix for cross-domain textures and a fix to address the memory stealing issue
Download links are available below:
- Windows (32-bit)
System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta
System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta empowers IT Pros to easily develop Runbooks for the System Center suite that interoperate with 3rd party systems to automate data center workloads.
Get Ready for a More Beautiful Mobile Web
If you’re a Web developer and want to see what your sites will look like on IE9 Mobile, you can download the Windows Phone developer tools today and try it out for yourself, since we include IE9 Mobile with the default emulator installation.
Is Apple really using Windows Azure to power iCloud?
Over the past month, I received a couple of tips claiming that Apple was a Windows Azure customer.
At first, I just dismissed the tips as nothing but a crazy rumor. Then I got more serious and started asking around, to no avail.
But once Apple launched the beta of its iCloud iMessage service, the Infinite Apple site, along with a few other blogs, analyzed the traffic patterns and found that Apple appeared to be using both Azure and Amazon Web Services for hosting.
Link – http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/is-apple-really-using-windows-azure-to-power-icloud/9687
Announcing the RC of the Windows Home Sever 2011 Windows Phone 7 Connector
Today we are pleased to announce the Release Candidate of the Windows Server Solutions Phone Connector for Windows Home Server 2011 (aka Integrating Windows Phone 7 with your WHS 2011 Server). The purpose of this Add-in is to enable Remote Server Management tasks and relay Media Streams for WHS 2011 including:
Debugger Canvas on DevLabs
Debugger Canvas is a new user experience for stepping through code in the debugger in Visual Studio Ultimate. It displays the code of each of the methods you step into on a canvas with call lines between them, helping you keep track of the bigger picture as well as the details.
Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2011/06/13/debugger-canvas-on-devlabs.aspx
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 Beta 1 Now Available
With MDT 2012 Beta 1, the feature improvements span all installation scenarios. For User Driven and Zero Touch installations, MDT 2012 Beta 1 fully leverages the capabilities provided by System Center Configuration Manager 2012. MDT 2012 Beta 1 is integrated into the new Configuration Manager 2012 console, which provides wizards for creating task sequences and boot images, and task sequence actions.
