Outlook Gets Social with LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace

In November 2009, we announced both the beta of Microsoft Office 2010 as well as the Outlook Social Connector. The Outlook Social Connector brings together communications history, contact information, and professional and social networking information into the Outlook experience.

We are continuing to deliver on that vision today with two new announcements. First, we’re proud to announce the public beta of LinkedIn for Outlook, which will enable our millions of Office 2010 Beta users to connect the OSC to a public network for the first time. Second, we’re excited to announce partnerships with Facebook — the most popular social Web site in the world, and MySpace — a leading social platform connecting people through expression, content, and culture.

Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2010/02/17/Outlook-Gets-Social-with-LinkedIn_2C00_-Facebook_2C00_-and-MySpace.aspx

Windows Phone 7 Revealed

Today’s announcement of Windows Phone 7 series is certainly greeted with a lot of positive sentiment.

You can go hear to watch the press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/windowsphone/

Also check out this site for demos, screenshots, etc…: http://www.windowsphone7series.com/

And this article on Gizmodo is one of the best I’ve read: http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series-everything-is-different-now

Windows Phone 7 Series Screenshots

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Data Protection Manager 2010 Release Candidate – now available

System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 delivers unified data protection for Windows servers and clients as a best-of-breed backup & recovery solution from Microsoft, for Windows environments.  DPM 2010 provides the best protection and most supportable restore scenarios from disk, tape and cloud — in a scalable, reliable, manageable and cost-effective way.

Link – http://connect.microsoft.com/site840/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=26452

Data Protection Manager 2010 Release Candidate – now available

System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 delivers unified data protection for Windows servers and clients as a best-of-breed backup & recovery solution from Microsoft, for Windows environments.  DPM 2010 provides the best protection and most supportable restore scenarios from disk, tape and cloud — in a scalable, reliable, manageable and cost-effective way.

Link – http://connect.microsoft.com/site840/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=26452

Restart issues after installing MS10-015

I am writing to let you know that we are aware that after installing the February security updates a limited number of users are experiencing issues restarting their computers. Our initial analysis suggests that the issue occurs after installing MS10-015 (KB977165). However, we have not confirmed that the issue is specific to MS10-015 or if it is an interoperability problem with another component or third-party software. Our teams are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. We also stopped offering this update through Windows Update as soon as we discovered the restart issues. However, those using enterprise deployment systems such as SMS or WSUS will still see and be able to deploy these packages.

Link – http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2010/02/11/restart-issues-after-installing-ms10-015.aspx

Windows Live Messenger – a short history

The instant messaging category got going in earnest around 1996 with the debut of ICQ, around the same time that Hotmail was founded. Over the next two years, each of what are now the leading IM services launched in rapid succession: AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, QQ, and our own MSN Messenger.

Link – http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowslive/archive/2010/02/09/windows-live-messenger-a-short-history.aspx

Windows Live Messenger – a short history

The instant messaging category got going in earnest around 1996 with the debut of ICQ, around the same time that Hotmail was founded. Over the next two years, each of what are now the leading IM services launched in rapid succession: AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, QQ, and our own MSN Messenger.

Link – http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowslive/archive/2010/02/09/windows-live-messenger-a-short-history.aspx

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate

The Release Candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2010 was made available for download for MSDN subscribers yesterday (Feb 8). It will be made available to the public from the VS 2010 site on Feb 10th.

Link – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx

Windows 7 Battery Notification Messages

Over the past week we have seen a little bit of blogosphere activity regarding Windows 7 and batteries, specifically the new Windows 7 message “Considering replacing your battery”. Since this is related to the engineering of Windows 7 we’re going to use this blog to provide an update to people. As we have talked about many times, we have a relentless focus on the quality of Windows 7 and we take seriously any reports we receive that indicate a potential problem that could result in a significant failure of the OS.

Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2010/02/08/windows-7-battery-notification-messages.aspx

Microsoft Small Basic

Microsoft Small Basic is a project that is aimed at making computer programming accessible to beginners. The project comprises a simple programming language that gathers inspiration from the original BASIC programming language; a modern and attractive programming environment; and rich, extensible libraries. Together they make programming fun for kids and adults alike.

Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b006d58d-c2c7-44ad-936b-e7e2d7de793e

Better IMAP in Outlook 2010

One of the things we have improved in Outlook 2010 is IMAP accounts. IMAP is a protocol that is used by many e-mail services, including Gmail and AOL. If your e-mail service supports IMAP, you can use Outlook to access your e-mail.

Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2010/02/06/better-imap-in-outlook-2010.aspx

A look at Windows Home Server “Vail” (Build 7360)

Windows Home Server "Vail", the next major version of this product, will be based on the current generation Windows Server platform (Windows Server 2008 R2) and will share a number of features and capabilities with Small Business Server and Essential Business Server. Unfortunately, Microsoft has been tight-lipped about Vail and the quality of information we have today is lacking, to say the least. Fortunately, a recently leaked build of Vail – tagged build 7360 – has shed some light on what the WHS team has been working on.

Link – http://www.withinwindows.com/2010/02/02/a-look-at-windows-home-server-vail-build-7360/

A look at Windows Home Server "Vail" (Build 7360)

Windows Home Server "Vail", the next major version of this product, will be based on the current generation Windows Server platform (Windows Server 2008 R2) and will share a number of features and capabilities with Small Business Server and Essential Business Server. Unfortunately, Microsoft has been tight-lipped about Vail and the quality of information we have today is lacking, to say the least. Fortunately, a recently leaked build of Vail – tagged build 7360 – has shed some light on what the WHS team has been working on.

Link – http://www.withinwindows.com/2010/02/02/a-look-at-windows-home-server-vail-build-7360/

Inside look at one of the domain controller promotion process using DCPromo

In order to add an additional domain controller to an existing domain, DCPromo must be used to complete the task.  The process will install the AD DS on the Windows Server, join the machine to the domain and replicate all partitions from the existing domain controller.  The steps for running DCPromo to promote a server to DC have been well documented.  They can be done either through the Windows Interface for user attended installation, or via an answer file for unattended installation. This blog will focus on what really happens after the user input is taken and the real installation starts.  Hopefully this can help readers have a better understanding of domain controller installation process, so that they can have effective debugging if any problem arises.

Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/openspecification/archive/2010/02/01/inside-look-at-one-of-the-domain-controller-promotion-process-using-dcpromo.aspx

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