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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Microsoft accepting nominations for Access 2010 Technical Beta program

The Access team is taking nominations to participate in the Office 2010 Technical Beta program. We expect availability of our first beta release, known as Technical Preview, in the month of July. The team is excited to get feedback from our community that will help us make this a great release. Here is your opportunity to nominate yourself to participate in the program (space is limited). If you are interested in beta testing Access 14 please complete the following nomination form (you will need to log into Microsoft Connect with a Live ID)

Source: Microsoft Access Team Blog

Office 2010 Beta: apply now!

Microsoft has just started receiving applications for the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Program, through Microsoft Connect.

The Microsoft Office Technical Beta program is an invitation only program intended for committed beta testers. The purpose of the program is to gain product feedback and technical validation across the family of Office client and server products. Selected participants will receive pre-release software, early product documentation and guidance, and beta technical support through our sponsored Technical Beta Program newsgroups. Selected testers will be expected to participate in monthly program surveys and other requests for feedback.

Space is very limited, and all nominations will be evaluated on a first come, first served basis.

Note: The Microsoft Office Technical Preview build will only be available via download. No CD/DVD format will be available.

Click here to apply for Office 2010 Click-to-Run Technical Beta for Home and Small Business Consumers.

Source: In-house

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No 3-app limit for Windows 7 Starter

Windows 7 StarterMicrosoft will be making Windows 7 Starter available worldwide on small notebook PCs and will enable Windows 7 Starter customers to run as many applications simultaneously as the customers would like, instead of being constricted to the 3 application limit that the previous Starter editions included.

Windows 7 Starter still includes only a subset of the features offered in the higher editions of Windows 7 such as Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and above. Windows 7 Starter does not include:

  • Aero Glass, meaning you can only use the “Windows Basic” or other opaque themes. It also means you do not get Taskbar Previews or Aero Peek.
  • Personalization features for changing desktop backgrounds, window colors, or sound schemes.
  • The ability to switch between users without having to log off.
  • Multi-monitor support.
  • DVD playback.
  • Windows Media Center for watching recorded TV or other media.
  • Remote Media Streaming for streaming your music, videos, and recorded TV from your home computer.
  • Domain support for business customers.
  • XP Mode for those that want the ability to run older Windows XP programs on Windows 7.

Source: Windows 7 Team Blog

DirectX vulnerability discovered for XP

Microsoft warned yesterday that hackers are using QuickTime media files to exploit an unpatched 0-day vulnerability in DirectShow.

In a posting on Microsoft's security response center blog company officials confirmed the new vulnerability affects Microsoft DirectShow in Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, under limited attack.

After initial investigation Microsoft have confirmed that the vulnerable code was removed as part of their work building Windows Vista. This means that Windows Vista and versions of Windows since Windows Vista (Windows Server 2008, Windows 7) are not vulnerable.

Microsoft have provided workarounds for the exploit available under the 971778 security advisory.

Source: Neowin

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Friday, May 29, 2009

Bing.com top features

  • Auto-Suggest. Offers intelligent alternatives for search queries
  • Instant Answers. Serves up information within search results, eliminating the need to click on anything
  • Best Match. Provides useful links and information for definitive sites
  • Related Searches. Points to deeper information available with one click
  • Deep Links. Enables easy, direct access to relevant content within a site
  • Quick View. Summarizes a Web site at a glance, before clicking through to the site
  • Smart Video Preview. Previews a 30-second clip of videos simply by scrolling onto them
  • Infinite Scroll. Provides easily browsed image results without clicking to a new page
  • Quick Tabs. Tailors search results with one click

Source: Bing Product Guide (.xps)

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Bing.com available worldwide by June 3rd, 2009

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Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Bing, a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today’s search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

The new service, located at http://www.Bing.com, will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on Wednesday, June 3.

The new brand portfolio will include the following changes to existing Microsoft programs:

Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise. More information can be found here.

Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel.

• Microsoft’s popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.

Sources: Microsoft PressPass, Live Search blog

New WSUS Product Categories for Office Communicator R2 releases

There are 2 new product categories being added to the WSUS Products and Classifications dialog, both under the product family “Office Communicator Server and Office Communicator”.

The two new categories are:

Office Communications Server 2007 R2:

The Office Communications Server 2007 R2 product category will include updates for the Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2, including service packs, critical and security updates.

Office Communicator 2007 R2:

The Office Communicator 2007 R2 product category will include updates for the Microsoft® Office Communicator 2007 R2 , including service packs, critical and security updates.

Source: WSUS Product Team Blog

Introducing the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7

The Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 is a set of six multi-touch optimized applications and games that are designed to truly showcase the capabilities of Windows Touch in Windows 7. It consists of 3 casual games, and 3 Microsoft Surface applications that have been created for Windows 7.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s in the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7…

Microsoft Surface Globe

Microsoft Surface Globe pretty much puts the whole world in your hands (well, kind of!). It uses the Virtual Earth 3D engine to display a 3D version of the world. Using multi-touch, you can navigate to different regions, get local information, and “pin” your favorite locations. You can even “fly” around 3D models of buildings in some cities. The Microsoft Surface Globe was one of the apps Julie Larson-Green demoed at last year’s D: All Things Digital conference. To see the Microsoft Surface Globe app in action – take a look at this video.

Microsoft Surface Collage

Take your favorite digital photos and arrange and resize them using only your fingertips with Microsoft Surface Collage! Once you have your photos in an arrangement you like, it’s simple to save your collage and make it your desktop background. I’ve made a whole series of backgrounds and cycle through them with the desktop slideshow.

Microsoft Surface Lagoon

Microsoft Surface Lagoon is a screensaver that you can interact with using multi-touch. It recreates the natural environment of water and schooling fish. It is really relaxing to run your fingers through the “water” and hold your finger down and watch the fish gather around.

Microsoft Blackboard

Solve a puzzle game of physics, called Microsoft Blackboard, by creating a nifty machine on a virtual blackboard. Use gestures to rotate and resize gears, fans, seesaws and more to move balloons and balls toward the light bulbs - and victory.

Microsoft Rebound

Use your fingers to propel a ball and annihilate your opponent in Microsoft Rebound. Play against the computer or challenge a friend and battle it out in the electrified court to see who the champion is.

Microsoft Garden Pond

Finally, with Microsoft Garden Pond, you can guide your origami creations to peaceful areas on the pond or direct them with gestures to complete goals that have been set for you. Gently move the origami by making ripples in the water.

In order to use the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 – you’ll need a Windows 7 PC that supports multi-touch. The Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 will be available to PC makers (OEMs) who will have the option to pre-install some, none, or all of the applications available in the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 on PCs designed for Windows Touch (PCs that meet the logo requirements for Windows Touch) – so you should start to see these applications showing up on some touch PCs around the time Windows 7 is made broadly available. After general availability of Windows 7, we will look at making the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 even more broadly available based on feedback from customers and partners

Source: Windows 7 Team Blog - The Windows Blog

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

WSUS 3.0 SP2 RC Program now available

Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 Release Candidate is available today at the Connect Site (available to all registered and authenticated users of Connect.)

WSUS 3.0 SP2 RC Overview

New Windows Server and Client Version Support

·       Integration with Windows Server® 2008 R2

·       Support for the BranchCache feature on Windows Server 2008 R2

·       Support for Windows 7 client

WSUS Feature Improvements

Auto-Approval Rules

·       Auto-approval rules now include the ability to specify the approval deadline date and time for all computers or specific computer groups.

Update Files and Languages

·       Improved handling of language selection for downstream servers includes a new warning dialog that appears when you decide to download updates only for specified languages.

Easy Upgrade

·       WSUS 3.0 SP2 can be installed as an in-place upgrade from earlier versions of WSUS and will preserve all of your settings and approvals. The user interface is compatible between WSUS 3.0 SP1 and SP2 on the client and the server.

Reports

·       New Update and Computer Status reports provide the ability to filter on updates approved for installation. You can run these reports from the WSUS console or use the API to incorporate this functionality into your own reports.

Software Updates

·       Stability and reliability fixes for the WSUS server, such as support for IPV6 addresses greater than 40 characters.

·       The approval dialog now sorts computer groups alphabetically by group name.

·       Computer status report sorting icons are now functional in x64 environments.

·       Fixed setup issues with database servers running Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008.

·       A new release of Windows Update Agent is included with WSUS 3.0 SP2 that provides improvements and fixes, such as support for APIs called by non-local system callers in a non-interactive session.

Source: Technet Blogs

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Windows 7 language packs are available for computers that are running Windows 7 Ultimate

Microsoft has just released all 32 Windows 7 Language Packs for Windows 7 Ultimate RC1.

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Windows 7 language packs are available for computers that are running Windows 7 Ultimate. The Windows 7 language packs can be installed only from the Optional Updates section on the Windows Update site. These language packs are not available on the Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) Web site or through the Microsoft Download Center.

To download Windows 7 Ultimate language packs, visit the following Microsoft Web site:  http://update.microsoft.com

When you install a language pack, you can change the interface language of Windows 7 Ultimate to the language that you select.
Language packs also let multiple users who share a computer select distinct display languages. For example, one user can choose to see the dialog boxes, menus and other text in Japanese while another user can choose to see the same content in French.
To change the display language, follow these steps:

  1. Click Start, and then type Change display language in the Start Search box.
  2. Click Change display language.
  3. In the drop-down list that appears, select the language that you want, and then click OK.
To uninstall a language pack, follow these steps:
  1. Click Start, and then type Uninstall display language in the Start Search box.
  2. Click Install or uninstall display languages.
  3. Click Uninstall display languages.
  4. Select the language or languages that you want to uninstall, and then click Next.
  5. Follow the rest of the steps to uninstall this language or languages.

Source: Microsoft Support

Download Windows Vista SP2 x86/x64

Microsoft has just released Windows Vista Service Pack 2. The downloads are available from the following locations:

[32 bit] Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 - Five Language Standalone (KB948465)

Service Pack 2, the latest service pack for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, supports new types of hardware and emerging hardware standards, includes all of the updates that have been delivered since SP1, and simplifies deployment, for consumers, developers, and IT professionals.

[64 bit] Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 - Five Language Standalone for x64-based systems (KB948465)

Service Pack 2, the latest service pack for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, supports new types of hardware and emerging hardware standards, includes all of the updates that have been delivered since SP1, and simplifies deployment, for consumers, developers, and IT professionals.

In case vLite software was used to customize the Windows Vista installation and some required system components were removed you might face the following error message: “One or more system components that the service pack requires are missing”, which can be resolved by following the instructions of the following Knowledge Base article:

Error message when you try to install Windows Vista Service Pack 2: "One or more system components that the service pack requires are missing"

Massive Ad Campaign for Live Search rebranding to ‘Bing’

The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. That's a big campaign -- big compared with consumer-product launches ($50 million is considered a sizable budget for a national rollout) and very big when you consider that Google spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, with about $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting. Microsoft, by comparison, spent $361 million. Certainly Google has never faced an ad assault of anything like this magnitude.

People who've seen the Microsoft product suggest it's useful and has some nifty filtering tools, even though it's not a markedly different-looking interface, at least for text search (some of the multimedia search results, however, do look quite different from how Google currently displays them).

Source: adage.com

Windows 7 Build 7140 Alleged Changelog Leaked

A user of SevenForums posted the following changelog for Windows 7 build 7140:

1. You can now add anything to the Taskbar.
2. Icons slightly expand when you hover over them on the taskbar.
3. The “System” menu is more simplistic, and easier to navigate.
4. You can change the login screen picture through the “Personalization” menu.
5. The menu/lists that pop up when you right click on things now have the Aero Glass effect.
6. The default icons for Folders have changed to be the transparent blue ones featured a long time ago.
8. The Minimize/Maximize/Exit buttons on the top-right of a window have changed icons, and are a bit smaller than the Vista/7 counterparts.
9. [BIG ONE]: There’s an “Upload” feature for Pictures, files, and videos. If you right-click a file, and click “Upload”, you can make it automatically upload to a website of your choice. After uploading, a pop-up will appear saying it’s done, and clicking “OK” will cause the link/download link to the file to appear in the popup box. I tried ImageShack and Facebook, and they work.
10. Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese unicode(s) and settings are integrated, so one can run foreign apps or use foreign keyboards without changing languages & restarting.

Source: ihackintosh.com

Monday, May 25, 2009

Feature-Complete Expression Blend 3 Going for Beta

Microsoft has completed the set of features that will be included into Expression Blend 3. With this “detail” out of the way, the Redmond company is now focusing on the introduction of the next development milestone for its design solution tailored to the Windows Presentation Foundation and to Silverlight. Essentially, Expression Blend 3 will move from Preview, the stage where it is now, to the Beta phase. Microsoft has so far failed to indicate a specific delivery deadline for the availability of Expression 3 Beta, but just the fact that the solution is now feature complete means the software giant is on the right track.

(…) some of the new features that Blend 3 Beta will bring to the table: “a completely re-designed Asset Library: This is by far the biggest addition to Blend. The sample data system now allows you to specify custom objects. Project pane search - you can easily find the files in your project, similar to what you would do for properties. Find in Files - this allows you to search for information across files.”

At the same time, developers using Blend 3 Beta will be able to paste images into their projects directly from the clipboard. The Beta bits introduce marquee selection of keyframes, streamlining the selection of multiple keyframes. Blend 3 Behaviors have been expanded with additional functionality. Transitions will be available for preview right on the design surface with state switching actions.

Read more at source: Softpedia

Controller-free Xbox coming?

According to sources, Microsoft will unveil a new technology at the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles (June 2-4 2009) that will allow players to control a game’s action by using only their gestures.

The new technology system uses 3D camera / Infrared light technology to monitor the players’ movements in all three directions without using motion-sensitive controls – such as those used by Nintendo Wii. This technology is more advanced than Sony’s EyeToy which detects players’ movements in two dimensions.

A source close to the Microsoft project said: “By taking away the controls altogether the game becomes so easy to operate that even your grandmother can master it.”

Sources: 1. The Daily Telegraph, 2. The Times

Windows 7 Beta 1 (7100) will start shutting down on JULY 1st

For Windows 7 Beta 1 (build 7100), bi-hourly shutdowns will begin July 1st, 2009. You will be alerted to install a released version of Windows and your PC will shut down automatically every 2 hours. On August 1st, 2009 if you are still on the Windows 7 Beta your license for the Windows 7 Beta will expire and the non-genuine experience is triggered where your wallpaper is removed and “This copy of Windows is not genuine” will be displayed in the lower right corner above the taskbar.

Source: Windows Team Blog

Friday, May 22, 2009

(Updated) SharePoint SP2 converts license to Trial!!!

During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes. Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users.

We are working to release a hotfix to automatically fix this issue. A manual work-around is currently available and involves customers re-entering their Product ID number (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration.  For more information and detailed steps please read this KB article. (The KB link is not currently active, it will be available within the next 48hrs)

Update: Microsoft has released a hotfix that resolves this issue. More information and download links can be found here.

Source: MSDN Blogs

New WSUS Product Family - Live Search

Hello WSUS Admins,

Shortly we will be publishing a new top level category (product family) for WSUS – Live Search. The Live Search product family will include updates for all Live Search products. Under this product family we will be creating a category for:

  • Search Enhancement Pack – For all updates relating to the Search Enhancement Pack

Source: Technet

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Microsoft has shut off the Windows Live Messenger IM for users in the countries embargoed by the US

When you try to sign in to Windows Live Messenger, you receive the following error message:

810003c1: We were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger Service.

Microsoft has shut off the Windows Live Messenger IM for users in the countries embargoed by the US hence Microsoft no longer offers Windows Live Service in your country.

  • Cuba
  • Syria
  • Iran
  • Sudan
  • North Korea

Source: Messenger Support Blog

Get ready for Vista and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2

Hello WSUS Admins,

The MU team has published information about the upcoming release of Vista and Win2k8 SP2 through WU and WSUS. You can find more information on their blog post here.

Just a heads up to prepare for Windows Vista  and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2. It will be available in the coming weeks on the Download Center (DLC) and also through Windows Update and WSUS. On April 28th, we announced the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. SP2 includes all updates that were released since SP1. It also includes support for new types of hardware and other technology improvements. For more information on the changes with SP2, see the notable changes document on TechNet.

Here’s a short list of the tools and guidance that’s available for SP2:

· If you’re managing systems that connect directly to WU, you can use the updated Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit to prevent WU from offering SP2 to your client computers.

· For more information about SP2, refer to the SP2 Frequently Asked Questions on TechNet.

· For help with deployment related questions, you should read this blog post on the Windows team blog.

Source: Technet Blogs

New Microsoft SharePoint site at microsoft.com, based on MOSS 2007

Lights… Camera… Action!

Today, we launched the SharePoint marketing website on SharePoint Server 2007.  First the home page, it is brand new and we’re using Silverlight enabled web parts to keep the interface simple, elegant and dynamic thus enhancing the overall usability of it.  You can watch customer videos, learn about events, download trial versions of the software and a lot more on the home page now.  Since the site is powered by MOSS, we are taking advantage of the publishing feature and list driven content.

Visit the new site at http://sharepoint.microsoft.com

Source: SharePoint on SharePoint: Launch of new website