Tag: Microsoft

Awesome Contest Announcment–Kinect for Schools

Teachers, this one is for you.

Microsoft has announced the Kinect for Schools contest. They are giving away four (4) Xbox 360 + Kinect packages between now and May 14th, 2012.

What’s included:

  • One (1) Xbox 360 Kinect 250GB Bundle. Approximate Retail Value (ARV) $399.00.
  • Two (2) Kinect Video Games. Approximate Retail Value (ARV) $99.98.
    • Games will be selected from the following titles: Dance Central, Body & Brain, or Sesame Street.

Drawing schedule:

January 23 to February 14
Winner selected on February 15th, noon Pacific Time 
February 15 to March 14
Winner selected on March 15th, noon Pacific Time 
March 15 to April 14
Winner selected on April 15th, noon Pacific Time
April 15 to May 14
Winner selected on May 15th, noon Pacific Time

If you’re a teacher and you want an Xbox 360 for your classroom this a great opportunity to enter and win.

To enter go to http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/kinectsweepstakes/Pages/default.aspx

For official contest rules – http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/4/5/C45EB9D7-7685-4AFD-85B3-DC66F79277AB/Kinect_School_Sweepstakes_Official_Rules.pdf

Most Valuable Professional for 2012

This morning I woke up to some New Year’s cheer. Microsoft has named me a Most Valuable Professional in the Windows Home Server category for 2012.

Dear Tom Ziegmann,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2012 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.

I’d like to say thank you to the Home and Small Business Server team for this award, as well as the MVP team for everything they do, as well as congratulate my fellow returning MVPs and welcome any newbies.

Updates for SharePoint Foundation 2010

If you are running SharePoint Foundation 2010 on Windows Home Server, this post is for you.

Microsoft has released some updates for SharePoint that you may or may not have seen through Windows Update. If you have not updated, then I would advise that you do, as the base version of SharePoint Foundation can be woefully out of date.

The updates that you will want to install (as of October 26, 2011):

– SharePoint Foundation Service Pack 1 – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0F56EBFB-183F-4F4D-9D41-DF1E5ACEB893

– June 2011 Cumulative Update (must be installed after Service Pack 1 and after installation reboot before installing next update) – Click here

– August 2011 Cumulative Update – Click here

NOTE: After each update, you must re-run the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard to apply the update to your installation. This means you must run wizard three times before your installation is fully patched.

Update to Installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 on Windows Home Server

Tonight, I have released an update to the how-to guide, Installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 on Windows Home Server.

The guide can be found here. Please note even though the post says first draft, the PDF link and the Scribd document have been updated.

The following updates have been included:

– Grammatical errors have been addressed

– Corrected directions to prevent users from seeing an error message similar to the one below. When asked for credentials during the SharePoint database creation process, they must be entered in the form of servernameusername.

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Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows,Office,Windows Home Server,Windows Home Server 2011,SharePoint

Here’s an APPortunity to Go Mango!

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Microsoft has a really cool new promotion running that I thought I’d let everyone know about.

It’s called GO Mango!, and it’s designed for you phone developers out there to design and develop apps for Windows Phone 7.

For every app you submit, you’ll receive an entry to win a Samsung Series 7 Slate, and for every five apps you submit, you can win free advertising for one app of your choice.

If you have not developed for Windows Phone before, here’s a link to the Windows Phone SDK, http://bit.ly/GoMango.

To participate in this promotion, you need two things. The first, an app that you’ve developed, and the second is the ever important promo code. For this promotion, the code is 8UCVN.

Fill out the form located at http://bit.ly/MangoOffer, include the promo code, and submit your app today!

Fix for servers with Exchange 2007 / 2010 and Internet Explorer 9 installed

If you are a Small Business Server 2008 or 2011 user, you have Internet Explorer 9 installed on your server, and you try to close the Exchange Management Console, you may encounter an error similar to the one listed below.

You must close all dialog boxes before you can close Exchange Management Console

Microsoft has released a fix for this issue and I’ve included the download links below. In order to install this fix, you must have the latest updates installed from Microsoft Update as of October 11th, 2011. If you have not updated your server(s), do so before installing this patch.

If you are not experiencing this issue, it is advised that you don’t install this patch, as it has not been as thoroughly tested, and is planned to be rolled up into a future Internet Explorer update.

For Windows Server 2008 / Small Business Server 2008 systems – click here

For Windows Server 2008 R2 / Small Business Server 2011 systems – click here

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article #: 2624899

A server for the home or small business

After having used such servers as the HP MediaSmart Server, the HP Proliant MicroServer, and various Dell servers, I decided to set out to see if I could build my own server for a reasonable cost with features I desired.

The intent of this build is to showcase a server that can be used in the home with Windows Home Server 2011 (yes, this build is somewhat overkill), and in home based / small businesses, with Small Business Server 2011 Essentials or Small Business Server 2011 Standard.

My requirements were as follows:

· Total cost could not exceed $1500. (Ideally, I wanted to stay at or below $1000.)

· All parts used must be server grade. By that I mean, must have 3-5 year warranty depending on part, and similar to parts used by the major server manufacturers.

· Must support future expandability. Must support large amounts of memory and case used must support addition of multiple hard drives.

· With Windows 8 and Windows 8 Server on the horizon, processor support for Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) and hardware virtualization were key to this build.

So what parts did I use?

· Antec VSK-2450 Mid Tower Case

· Intel Server Board S1200BTS

· Intel Xeon Processor E3-1230 (3.2GHz, 8MB Cache)

· Kingston 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 ECC RAM

· Western Digital RE4 Enterprise 1.0TB Hard Drive

Specs as configured:

· Intel Server Board S1200BTS

· 16GB ECC DDR3 RAM

· (1) 1.0TB Western Digital RE4 Enterprise Hard Drive

· Intel Xeon E3-1230 Processor

How does this build stack up to my requirements?

· Total cost: $1050+tax. I bought all the parts I needed from a local vendor instead of online and was willing to pay a bit more because of it. It is entirely possible to find these parts for cheaper online, but if you can, support your local businesses.

· Warranties on all parts are at least three years. Western Digital’s warranty is five years on enterprise hard drives, and on memory Kingston has a lifetime warranty.

· From an expandability standpoint, the case allows for up to 6 hard drives, the motherboard allows for 6 SATA connections, and the motherboard supports a maximum of 32GB of RAM.

· The processor used in this build supports hardware virtualization and SLAT, or as Intel calls it, Extended Page Tables. When looking for an Intel-based processor to be used for virtualization I suggest ensuring that it supports Intel-VT and Extended Page Tables. The Intel ARK tool, http://ark.intel.com, is a great resource for that type of information.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be showcasing more about what this server can do.

Imagine Cup 2011 Featured on CNN America Morning

The Imagine Cup was featured Friday morning on CNN’s America Morning. Steve Ballmer along with several Imagine Cup participants went to CNN’s New York studios. Interview posted below,

Team Note-Taker featured in BBC interview

Team Note-Taker from Arizona State University was featured in an interview with the BBC and were introduced by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.

Team Note-Taker from Arizona State University interviewed by BBC

Team Note-Taker presents at Imagine Cup 2011

IMG_0334Today, Team Note-Taker from Arizona State University, presented to the judges in the first round of the 2011 Imagine Cup.

David Hayden, Michael Astrauskas, Shashank Srinivas, and Qian Yan, spoke to a four person panel about the Note-Taker project.

The Note-Taker was conceived in 2007 as a way for David Hayden to solve a challenge he was having. He had added a Mathematics major to an existing Computer Science major and was struggling to keep up with the pace of note taking (12 whiteboards in 45 minutes sometimes!) due to having low-vision. He wasn’t going to let this get in the way of pursuing his passion so he developed the Note-Taker.

The Note-Taker is a hardware / software combination that allows its users to easily take notes IMG_0284without needing outside assistance. Note-Taker combines a USB connected camera with pan / tilt / zoom functionality, a Microsoft Office OneNote 2010 add-in, and a tablet PC into an all in one solution.

One might wonder why not use an existing assistive technology. The problem with existing technologies are that they have what the team calls “board-note-board” delay. This is the delay that occurs when one looks at the board, down to write notes, and then back up to the board again. Note-Taker eliminates this delay because the user stayed focused on their tablet PC and a split screen view shows their notes and the video that the camera is seeing.

The team sees their project as a way to improve access to education for low-vision individuals. According to statistics presented by the team fewer than 40% of the 20 million low-vision individuals in the United States participate in the workforce. Team Note-Taker believes that this is due to the lack of access to education. Through Note-Taker, low-vision individuals now have a way to access education and improve their quality of life.

Note-Taker successfully made it through the first round of competition, and we will find out this evening at 8PM EST if they move on to the finals.