Tom on Tech

2011 Microsoft MVP for Windows Home Server

2011 sure has gotten off to a great start! I woke up yesterday to an e-mail in my inbox congratulating me on becoming an MVP for Windows Home Server.

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2011 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Windows Home Server technical communities during the past year.

It is an incredible honor to join the ranks alongside the other Windows Home Server MVPs, and I look forward to helping the community in the year ahead.

Hey students, want free Microsoft development tools?

If your answer to the question is yes, than have I got a deal for you!

Microsoft has a program called DreamSpark. The DreamSpark program is a way for you as a student to gain access to Microsoft technologies that you can then use to create amazing applications for the PC, the cloud, and the phone.

Dreamspark includes some really amazing things such as:

Visual Studio 2010 Professional
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
Expression Studio 4 Ultimate
SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition
Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3
Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools
Virtual Lab training for SQL Server, Visual Studio, and Visual Basic
IT Academy Student Pass
1 Year free membership to the App Hub and Windows Phone Marketplace (Yes, FREE! There is no $99 fee for students to build and sell Windows Phone 7 apps.)

All it takes to join DreamSpark is sign up, get verified as a student, and download the software.

I highly encourage any student that wants to get hands on experience with Microsoft technologies to sign up for Dreamspark and start playing and creating.

To find out more about DreamSpark, visit http://www.dreamspark.com

Microsoft software now available to ASU students for free

Hello my fellow Sun Devils! This post is specifically for you.

As an ASU student you can get access to over 300 different pieces of Microsoft software for free. Yes, FREE! You’ll have access to such pieces of Microsoft goodness like Windows 7, the entire Expression suite, and Visual Studio.

All you need to do is be an active ASU student enrolled in a science, technology, education, or math class. (STEM classes for short as they are commonly referred to within the education community.) For a complete list of qualifying courses, click here.

To access the Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance (MSDNAA, for short), you’ll need to follow these steps.

1. Go to the ASU MyApps portal (http://myapps.asu.edu) and login with your ASURITE

2. In the search box, type in “MSDNAA” (no quotes) and click Search.

3. Click the “Download from 3rd party” button to login to the MSDNAA portal

4. Once on the MSDNAA Portal, you can either use the drop-down menu to select the software you are looking for or use the search box to navigate the portal.

5. Once you have chosen a piece of software, you’ll need to add it to your cart. Click the “Add to Cart” button. If you have multiple pieces of software you want to download, add them to your cart first, and then download them all at the same time. You’ll be prompted with a usage guideline agreement. Read the agreement and click the “I accept” button if you agree to guidelines.

6. When you are ready to Checkout and download your software, click the “Check Out” button

7. Fill out your name and e-mail address on the next page, and then click “Next”

8. You’ll be shown an confirmation page. To download your software, click the “Download” button

9. You’ll be taken to a details page. Click the “Download” button. It will ask you to download a small file to your computer. Download this file to your computer. This is how the software will be downloaded. Open the file, and choose a location to download the software.

10. Click Continue. Your software will download, and you can monitor the progress at the bottom of the download window.

That’s all there is to it.

Attention Dell Venue Pro Owners

If you’re a Dell Venue Pro owner and you purchased your phone from a Microsoft retail store yesterday, then you’ll want to read this.

As you may or may not be aware, there is an issue affecting Dell Venue Pro phones where they are unable to connect to secured wireless networks. Also, if you look at the sticker on the battery it says “Engineering Sample.” (I’ve included a picture below.)

From information provided to me by the Microsoft Store, they are aware of both of these issues, and have been in contact with Dell. Apparently there was a mix-up and these phones labeled as engineering samples were shipped to the stores. Dell is sending new batches of phones to the Microsoft Store, and the stores will be contacting affected customers to arrange to swap out the defective phones for new ones.

I was told that the phones should be getting to the stores either by the end of the week or first thing next week and Microsoft will also be including a 1-year Zune Pass with the phone swap.

Please note, this is ONLY for those Dell Venue Pro users that purchased a phone at a physical Microsoft Store yesterday.

Windows Phone 7 Launches in the USA

Today Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7 in the United States. I went to my local Microsoft Store to check it out and purchase a Windows Phone 7 device for myself.

I arrived at the store shortly before 9am and it was fairly empty, although there were a couple small groups in the front and back of the store being shown demos of Windows Phone 7 and its features.

Towards the back of the store, there was a table set up with coffee, juices, water, and some breakfast items and store employees were eager to talk phones.

I was debating between the HTC HD7 and the Dell Venue Pro and after talking with one of the store employees I settled on the Dell Venue Pro. As I was checking out, it was explained to me that the Microsoft Store had only received six Venues and that the Microsoft Store and Dell.com would be the only places to purchase the Venue Pro. I’ll have more on the Venue Pro in another post.

Setup with Windows Phone 7 was very easy. Asked to double check date and time settings, and then asked if I wanted to setup with the recommended settings or customize settings. I chose to use the recommended settings and within less then three minutes I was ready to go with Windows Phone 7.

Over the next few days I’ll be posting my thoughts and experiences with Windows Phone 7. So far, however, I am absolutely pleased with the OS and am anxiously awaiting the first update.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about Windows Phone 7, you can visit the Windows Phone website, or if you are in the United States, you can also go to the T-Mobile and AT&T websites as well. I’ve included some photos below of the Microsoft Store and the Venue Pro.

Windows Phone 7 Launch

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Kinect: First Impressions

Allow me to start by saying wow. Kinect is awesome. I’ve played Kinect here and there over the last few months, but never really got to experience it as I have today.

I went to my local Microsoft Store and bought the Kinect Sensor and a second game, Dance Central. The Kinect comes with one game, Kinect Adventures.

Setup was a breeze. Because I have the older Xbox 360, Kinect requires the power adapter (included with the sensor). Plug the sensor into power and then into a USB port, turn the Console on and you’re ready to go. Note that Kinect does require the new Xbox Dashboard update that became available earlier this week. If you don’t have the update, sign into Xbox Live, and you’ll be prompted to update.

Once the Kinect Sensor is recognized, it walked me through a quick setup and calibration process, and once complete, I put in a game and was playing in no time.

There are common gestures such as waving to tell your console that you are there, holding your left hand out to pause a game and / or open the Kinect Guide, and each game has its own set of gestures for controlling the in-game menus and gameplay.

Other features like Kinect Hub and Video Kinect are very cool. With the Kinect Hub, I was able to control my Xbox 360 with my body and start a game, change settings, go to ESPN3, and with Video Kinect, I was able to use Windows Live Messenger to have a video chat.

Kinect gave me a good workout too. I didn’t measure my heart rate when I was resting, but in the middle of my game play I decided to throw on a heart rate monitor, and I definitely hit my target heart rate for exercise.

Kinect is without a doubt, the next big thing in gaming. In my opinion, buying the Kinect was the best purchase I’ve made in a long time. I’ve included some unboxing pictures below.

Kinect Unboxing

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What’s new with Windows Azure?

Last week at PDC 2010, Microsoft announced some new features in Windows Azure. Here’s a quick rundown of those new features along with my take.

New Management Portal: Azure’s management portal is getting a much needed facelift and better integration. If you’ve used Azure at all, you’ll know that there are three different management pieces and having to go back and forth can be a pain. Well, that’s all changing. Coming soon, the new portal will be Silverlight powered and the three sites will be integrated into one. I think this is great, and I wonder why this wasn’t done sooner. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

Admin Mode: I’m excited about this one. Currently, if you develop an application for the Azure cloud and deploy it and issues occur there currently are not many ways to diagnose the failure. Admin Mode, essentially Remote Desktop, changes things. With Admin Mode, you are able to RDP into your Web Roles and manage them just as if they were being run on a physical server in your own datacenter. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

Full IIS Support: Currently when an application is deployed into the Azure cloud, it is deployed into a highly customized version of IIS. With the new Admin Role, Microsoft is extending Full IIS support. Meaning that you’ll be able to deploy your application into the Azure cloud with the same flexibility as deploying an app in-house. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

Multiple Administrators: Right now, Azure is limited to two administrators per service account. Microsoft will now allow multiple administrators per service account. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

VM Role: Microsoft will now offer the ability to create a Virtual Machine and host it in the Azure cloud. Windows Server 2008 R2 VMs will be supported first with Server 2003 coming later. Key caution is that these are not stateful VMs, they revert to the uploaded image upon restart. Expect CTP availability sometime before the end of 2010 and a final release in 2011.

Extra Small Compute Instance: Microsoft is now offering an extra small instance that includes a 1GhZ processor, 768MB of RAM, and 20GB of disk space, all for $0.05/hr. I think this is a great starter option and can be used for smaller scale cloud applications. Available now.

These are in my opinion some of the top new features in Windows Azure. There are many more, such as SQL Reporting Services support in SQL Azure, finalization of the SQL Azure Database Manager, and some updates to the Azure AppFabric.

For more information, I highly suggest visiting the Microsoft PDC website and viewing sessions related to Azure. Click here to visit the Microsoft PDC website.

Building icons for Internet Explorer 9 Pinned Sites

If you are a web developer and are looking to take advantage of Internet Explorer 9’s unique feature set, you’ll want to check out this tool. It’s called X-Icon Editor and was shown off today at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Redmond, Washington.

With the X-Icon Editor you can make icons that will stand out, amaze, delight, and satisfy. (Ok, well, I took some creative license there, but your icons will stand out.)

The editor supports importing from .jpg, .ico, .bmp, .gif, and transparent .png, live drawing or editing, online preview on IE9, and support for high resolution icons.

You can check out the X-Icon editor at http://www.xiconeditor.com

Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 6 Announced Today

Today marked the launch of PDC 2010, a two-day Professional Developers Conference held at Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

At PDC 2010, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for the Internet Explorer team announced availability of the sixth platform preview for Internet Explorer 9.

In September, Microsoft released a beta version of Internet Explorer 9, and today’s platform preview builds on the underlying platform that powers Internet Explorer 9.

New in this release are CSS3 2D Transforms, HTML5 Semantic Elements, and improvements to the overall developer experience.

Today’s release is targeted at developers and is not an update of Internet Explorer 9 for end-users. Microsoft has said that the next public Internet Explorer 9 release will be the release candidate but have not given a release date.

To download the Platform Preview, visit http://www.ietestdrive.com.