Shauntu شان: Microsoft

(TechEd) Quick Bits

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:23:58 GMT

I have reached the point of information overload, wherein I am now mostly taking it in with the idea of processing properly later -- this will happen after taking in information from basically 9am to 9pm (10pm on Tuesday!) 3 days running...

Still, there were some things that I thought I could briefly mention, as they perhaps might stick out... so, some quick bits:

SCCM OS Deployment: Really Cool Stuff -- basically, it makes use of WIM images and supports WinPE boot images as well as PXE boot, integrating with WDS (evolution of RIS). Nothing too cool yet. There is a Driver Catalog library support, so that your images don't need to include all the drivers possible. Not bad. There is the ability to capture the user's current state and settings so that you can keep them after the OS deployment, using the User State Migration Tool -- that's pretty normal... The really cool technology is the Task Sequencer.

With the Task Sequencer, you can control all the steps of OS deployment, including steps taken before the deployment, during the deployment, and after the deployment. So, for example, with Task Sequencer, you can ensure the user's machine will not have a problem, capture their settings, wipe out the hard drive, create custom partitions, load the OS image, configure networking and accounts, install the SMS client, install software updates, install applications, and report back at every step of the way. You can configure RAID controllers with it, you can enable BitLocker at the end, and a lot more.

You can even use Task Sequencer to capture the user's current image, and NOT do OS deployment! Finally, you can use Task Sequencer to install complicated software packages that need to install components in order, or to bring OEM supplied OS to your specs in settings, network configuration, etc... Very Cool Stuff...

SCCM Server OS Deployment: Task Sequencer is also useable for Server OS Deployment, and with the control that you get, it looks like it would actually be practical too... can also install stuff like Forecront Security clients, Dell Server Utilities and drivers, etc...

Upgrading Sharepoint 2003 to 2007: The Gradual Upgrade path is pretty intriguing -- you basically end up with both 2003 and 2007 installed, and can then, whenever convenient, easily upgrade individual sites to 2007, easily reverting to the 2003 version of any site if there are issues.

PowerShell: PowerShell is being pushed as the future of windows system administration, and one of the cool things they are doing is that all the new stuff, like SCCM and SCVMM etc, include places where you can have the UI show you the equivalent PowerShell script for something you have used a wizard to start.

SMS 2003 Asset Intelligence: With the existing SMS 2003 (and thus SCCM in the future), SP3 added Asset Intelligence, which is a knowledgebase of about 350,000 software titles, with a bunch of new reports that make use of it, allowing admins to track software in the client computers a lot more efficiently. Includes the ability to give you breakdowns on the source of software as well -- OEM, retail, volume licensing, etc...

Group Policy Management Pack: Part of the Desktop Optimization Pack, which also includes SoftGrid... allows you to easily delegate permissions on people, allowing them to make offline changes to GPOs (offline as in the changes don't reach anyone until approved), with the ability to show differences between GPOs (or between the changed GPO and the original live GPO), have check-in/out so that multiple people don't edit the same GPO at the same time, and have versioning control. Pretty cool.

'Policy Maker': Not yet officially named, PolicyMaker allows you to set about 3000 or new settings through Group Policy, including stuff like drive mappings and printer mappings that you would normally be using logon scripts for. The 'filtering' mechanism it has allows you to target people very nicely, based on not only security groups but also information from within the client computer...

Comedy Break at TechEd 2007

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:09:11 GMT

Time for a break on all the serious TechEd news... time for some trivial nonsense!

Before I even got to the TechEd conference center, I burned my self. Literally. Nobody is going to believe me on this. I burned my elbow while sleeping. Here is how it happened:

You know how you normally switch sides while sleeping, from the left to right (or vice versa)? You first get on your back and then to the other side (if you are normal). Well, not always being normal myself, I apparently switched sides by going face down and then to the other side -- and in dong so, brushed my elbow against the white hotel bed sheet really fast. I woke up immediately with the sharp pain from my newly burned elbow. I told you, you won't believe me. In the morning, looking at the elbow in the mirror, I could see a round patch, slightly bigger than a quarter, pinkish, with what looked like missing skin. After the full day, I could see the outline of a few cuts.

Bizarre.

A co-worker, Steve, is also at TechEd. We emailed each other many times Monday, trying to find each other, never succeeding. Finally, we planned to look for each other in the evening, on the computers in the main hall, and after some looking, found him, wearing a black TechEd shirt he got the previous day registering.

Weirdly, today (Tuesday), I have found him 3 times during the day, from long distances, even looking at him from a long distance from behind. The difference? He is wearing a green shirt and beige pants, and looks completely like he always does at work. Somehow, he stands out now. Being so tall probably helps.

Ok so there is nothing funny here...

IT people are not a funny bunch, sad to say. The PopFly demo in the Sharepoint session I attended wasn't working -- and no reaction. The person demonstrating error monitoring from SCOM showing iexplore crashes due to Google Toolbar and suggesting replacing it with Live Toolbar -- and gets away with it. Softgrid presenter and developer pointing out that you can't sequence IE due to it being 'almost' part of the OS and then backing out, cause he shouldn't really say that -- and the audience is accepting.

I suppose it makes sense then, that the concept of humor in the keynote was having 'Doc' from Back to the Future wanting to prevent the keynote speaker from talking about MS visions, while showing parodies of MS executive Biff knocking MS assistant McFly in the noggin about failed MS technologies like WinFS.

I will stop now. Sorry if you got your hopes up for something funny! If it helps, my elbow tingles at times -- might finally be valid to call it the funny bone...

(ok, that was really lame...)

(TechEd) Virtual Machine Manager

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:46:18 GMT

Until now, I have pretty much thought of EMC (VMWare) as the standard when it comes to virtualization technologies for desktops and servers. I have to give MS credit -- they are really doing some cool things here with virtualization, enough to no longer have me think of their products as also-rans.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager is their big solution to virtual machines -- kind of like their answer to VirtualCenter by EMC. Basically, you can have SCVMM manage your physical machines that act as vm hosts, keeping track of all the virtual machines on them, running operations on them (keeping track of all the jobs), etc. At any time, you can choose to move a vm from one physical machine to another, without the vm ever shutting off -- 0 downtime.

You can also configure your hosting machines with information on what cpu/memory/etc needs to be reserved for the host, and then choose one of your existing physical servers for conversion to a vm (or convert existing VMWare vms) -- and it will determine the requirements of the server, and show which of your hosts are good candidates. You can even run reports on Virtualizaton Candidates, and have it inspect all of your physical servers, and show which ones are good candidates for virtualization based both on device driver support etc as well as if your hosts can handle them. I can imagine converting most servers in a server farm to vm's here...

You can also provision VMM for creation of new VMs complete with what server image to use to start new servers -- allowing rapid deployment of new servers.

Another cool feature they went over is the Self Service Web Portal, where end-users can create their own VMs for use on your servers for their own use -- based around the permissions and restrictions given to them -- for e.g., you could say that user A is allowed to use 10% cpu time on your server (along with other limitations on memory, disk space, etc) and they will be able to create their own use VMs on your server as long as they don't go over the limits! (Myself, I can imagine the VMM Admin to use this feature to allow other Sys Admins in the same org to create VM Servers quickly and efficiently without hogging the system.)

They have a Server Virtualization Management Pack for SCOM 2007 btw, which allows the new MOM to be able to manage your virtual environment, create network diagrams of your virtual environment, etc. If you have that, you can then access all of that information within your SCVMM UI as well.

Finally, they mentioned they have plans of adding similar integration with SCCM 2007, so that the new SMS can be used to keep your VMs up to date on software updates, even for VMs that are off (they will be patched while staying off!). Useful for those VM Servers that you kept off for a while, to keep them up to date on security updates so that they are not immediately vulnerable when you turn them on months later...

Overall, pretty cool stuff...

(TechEd) SCCM + WSUS = Software Updates

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:07:16 GMT

With the new version of SMS integrating Software Updates, I wondered what would happen to WSUS. Turns out, SCCM 2007 does Software Updates by actually hosting WSUS 3.0 and integrating that within SCCM!

So what are the benefits of this? Well, much better reporting capability is obvious, making use of the inventory data SCCM can gather as well as it's nice reporting engine. Multiple distribution points is another advantage, without having to configure clients to point to different servers. You can also control updates doing to collections of machines better, including setting maintenance windows for specific collections. It also makes use of SCCM's new Search Folders feature, allowing you to get even better reports on patches for products you care about.

It also integrates with Network Access Protection, allowing you to quarantine machines that don't have specified updates, while allowing them to get the updates from SCCM to resolve the problem. On a related matter, you can also set compliance requirements involving updates.

Finally, SCCM (which is basically doing everything for WSUS, including downloading the updates from MS Update, scanning clients, and pushing the updates on them and gathering the reports) also supports 3rd Party Software Updates. The list of companies that currently have product catalogs wasn't too impressive (Adobe and HP are mainly the ones I recall), hopefully it will grow in the future. You can also create Custom Software Updates for your organization's own applications.

Basically, SCCM gets rid of the 'shoe-horned in' add-on for Software Updates in SMS 2003 (which really only did security updates, cumbersomely, and with minimal reporting) to integrating the WSUS 3.0 engine to make it a lot better, a lot more complete, and with much better reporting...

Overall, from what I can see, SCCM on it's own isn't a major upgrade to SMS 2003 -- except that it is integrating a lot of functionality that might have been separate before, like WSUS (and SoftGrid), and thus making it a key management and configuration utility for the client machines.

(TechEd) Office Communication Server 2007

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:59:04 GMT

Office Communication Server 2007 is a lot more complex (with a lot more potential) than I had initially imagined. I think I will separate it into 'Simple' and 'Complex'.

Simple:

You can setup a 'Home Server' in an AD, enable users for it, and you are done. You can support up to 5000 users, give them Presence, IM, Audio/Video Conferencing, Live Meetings (both ad-hoc and scheduled), multi-user authoring of documents, etc... Overall, pretty complete for most mid-level organizations. To set it up, all you really need is an AD, DNS, and a file share for downloadable/streaming meeting files and the Address Book Server. Clients can use Office Communicator 2007, Live Meeting 2007 client, or an add-in for Outlook... it will then integrate with all other MS stuff, like Sharepoint and Outlook, etc...

Getting Complicated:

You can start building on it depending on your needs, with Archiving Server or adding functionality for Web Based Communicator clients. If you get to having more than one actual server, you will need a Certificate Authority though. You can also use mobile clients and video-conferencing phones (an intriguing device is RoundTable, which is placed in the middle of the room and gives a panoramic view, while also being able to focus on specific speakers at the moment. You can setup Edge Servers to allow connectivity with off-site, allow communication with other IM services like MSN/Yahoo, etc.

Complex:

You can roll out VOIP, connecting with your organization's phone network (or replacing it!), allowing simultaneous rings to office phone and laptop/mobile device, or using Presence to ring in the appropriate place. This requires Mediation Server, as well as gateways to your phone network, SIP connectivity, etc, depending on what you are doing. You can also setup Enterprise Pools, with redundancy etc so that you have no downtime.

(TechEd) Orcas and LINQ

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:04:56 GMT

Orcas (code name for the next version of Visual Studio) includes a data querying ability in Visual Basic and C# called LINQ (Language Integrated Query language) -- and I have to say it's pretty sweet. Basically, with a visual interface rivaling Access, you can create database classes and fields (or link to existing databases classes and fields), and treat them as objects. You can then use LINQ to query them and manipulate them to use in your application (or display in reports), and it will take care of creating the optimal SQL for you. Thus, you can do complicated operations without even realizing they are complicated operations. You can also use the debugger to find out what the optimal SQL being used is -- which can teach you tricks you may not realize even if you are an expert with SQL...

(TechEd) Configuration Manager 2007

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 23:03:32 GMT

One of my major tasks at work currently has been building up SMS2003 and managing it -- System Center Configuration Manager 2007 is the next version of that. It's not quite as special an upgrade, so far, compared to some of the other stuff (like, say, SoftGrid), but I have more sessions to go to to see what else is up with it...

The big news is a lot of new roles -- integration with WSUS 3.0, WDS (bye bye RIS) w/ PXE boot, Network Access Protection (NAP), and so on... My laptop battery is out, so can't access my OneNote notes on the matter so going completely by memory here. Plus, OS Deployment is not a core function -- no more BDD. OS Deployment does look good, and overall an improvement over SMS 2003 (the integrated WDS and PXE boot support means it's a total solution too). Software Updates through WSUS 3.0 engine looks MUCH improved over SMS 2003 (where I had thought it cumbersome and unusable). NAP can allow compliance checks on machine's present software/update level and quarantine them (still allowing access enough to get the required updates -- no AntiVirus software? No network access, but allow getting software through SCCM itself, for e.g.).

The other big feature is Compliance reporting... basically you can set compliance rules for things like software, OS, updates, and settings, and then create Baselines that are a combination of those rules. You can then run reports on the Configuration Baselines, and see how far machines deviate from the baseline and how. However, there is no 'applying' of the baselines to machines -- that is promised for a 2009 or so version.

Other than that, the new UI is much improved with MMC 3.0; being able to create maintenance windows for specific collections is nice too. Still, with all I wrote above, it doesn't seem like a major revision -- specially since Feature Packs allowed some of the above functionality (with less control perhaps and worse UI) in SMS 2003 w/ SP3.

(TechEd) SoftGrid just blew my mind...

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 20:48:06 GMT

So two things I am heavily in favor of -- virtualization and software deployment -- joined together in a way that resolves just about all the problems I usually run into with both (I am thinking about virtualization from the perspective of something like VMWare Ace or Citrix/Terminal Services). I can easily see SoftGrid being a major change in how applications are handled for users...

Oh, this is with and without SMS 2003 -- though with SMS (SCCM2007 in the future) you get inventory (inventory what, virtual apps? heh) and metering...

Anyway, took lots of notes... some neat points:

Sandboxed apps -- run multiple versions of software together -- never conflict...
Apps are streamed as you run them -- thus, faster deployment (15 MB data transfer to run Word 2007 -- instead of normal 70+...). Only features you are using need to get streamed...
Can still stream 100% for full offline use
Checks licensing when run -- ensures enough licenses are available if desired
Can preserve settings for apps on server -- settings (and of course apps) move with user... without Roaming Profiles!
No installations ever take place on user computers -- host OS remains untouched (minus initial SoftGrid client). No registry changes, no dll files added/changed/removed...
No need to create installers! Sequence the software (install and let SoftGrid 'package' it) on a 'build' machine and you are good to go... no messing around with msi's / mst's etc...
Makes use of user's cpu/memory -- unless you want to use Terminal Services... in which case softgrid streams app to TS and uses TS cpu/memory -- again without installing app to TS!
Can even virtualize web apps (control what version of JVM to use, for e.g.)

If integrated with SMS 2003 -- the SMS Console has a SoftGrid connector so that administrators work with both together...

I think I could go on... SoftGrid is part of the MS Desktop Optimization Pack (for Software Assurance). The rest of the pack looks neat too: Advanced Group Policy Management, Asset Inventory, System Center for Desktop Error Monitoring, and Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit.

What can't it do? Device Drivers (and apps that rely on them)... e.g., stuff like VPN and AntiVirus software... IE (yet -- hinted might be able to in the future)...

Overall, I am very excited by the possibilities...

(TechEd) Operations Manager 2007 -- Not just for Servers

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:37:14 GMT

It appears that the big push with Operations Manager 2007 (new version for MOM) is Application monitoring -- specially custom line of business applications. You can set it to monitor websites (including Sharepoint sites), databases, services, gather error data (and control what gets sent to MS when crashes happen related to your apps), and even have custom 'Knowledge' stored about the apps so that if someone monitoring an application through Operation Manager notices an application having problems, they can see the custom solutions that exist (e.g., click a link to resolve problem, with the link restarting the service on a server that the application depends on).

What impressed me is that all the various things that you may monitor about an application (service, databases, websites, physical hardware, etc) can be connected together in a relationship, which helps really drill down and figure out what specifically is causing problems when user's call in, or when errors are brought to an admin's attention.

You can also get deeper information on application/service availability and performance metrics (e.g., how much processor time is an application taking).

I guess OM2007 connects with SMS since you can push the apps to downlevel clients through SMS.

As for simple server monitoring, the one cool thing I recall is they showed the ability to view reports on the recent accounts created on a server, as well as a log of 'Event Log Clearances' for those times when people clear event logs to cover their tracks...

SharePoint and PopFly

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:34:24 GMT

Caught the tail-end of the Sharepoint session, after some people left. Got to see RSS, Wiki, and Blogs in action on Sharepoint -- pretty neat overall, with Workflow integrated in them and Word useable as an Blogging Utility.

They also showed off (or tried to anyway) creating a mashup with the newly alpha PopFly, taking an RSS Feed from Sharepoint, joining it with Virtual Earth, thus giving an overlay of where stuff like upcoming events are being held and putting them on the maps.live.com maps -- and then you can add that Silverlight mashup app back to Sharepoint as a Web Part. Cool concept, even if the demo didn't work out...

One thing I thought might be cool -- they have a SharePoint User Training piece in development that is due in July or so, that organizations will be able to put up in their web / Sharepoints. Thus giving a flash based training for users within the organization to teach them how to get the best out of Sharepoint without IT having to manually train users...

At lunch now, the laptop I have claims to have connected, but I can't do anything online... so will post this later (using Windows Live Writer Beta to create these posts offline).

TechEd 2007 - Orlando Florida

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:15:54 GMT

I am at TechEd 2007 in Orlando, Florida, and plan to (at a friend's suggestion) blog about my experience and my thoughts. This is the first such entry. I will categorize them under 'Microsoft', so feel free to subscribe to the Microsoft Category if you would like to get RSS Feed updates.

My initial thoughts upon arriving in Orlando is that it is indeed rather humid. I took a shuttle to the hotel (Buena Vista Suites) and noticed pretty much nothing but trees and swamplike pools of water everywhere. The hotel seems nice enough, actually has a 2 room separation, one with sofa and TV and network connection, other with beds and TV. Ate steak at the hotel restaurant, it was ok. Had a great surprise when I unpacked, as my sweet wife had hidden a picture of her and Alisha with the clothes :).

This morning, took a shuttle to the conference center --wait for shuttle at the hotel took aboutg 15 minutes, shuttle ride 30, and line for registration about 20. Had a quickie breakfast and made it to the keynote before it started.

The keynote started with a neat video involving MS making fun of itself and it's previous promises of visions with stuff like WinFS, with an appearance by Christopher Lloyd and the Back to the Future car. A guest speaker from Gartner talked a fair amount about changing IT to concentrate on 'Agility', rather than just Quality of Support and Costs/Economics. The main keynote also concentrated on the idea of Agility, termed 'Dynamic IT' by the Microsoft speaker (Bob Mugley I think). The idea is to not just have IT work based on standards and processes, and not just on Business needs and requirements, but to have an agile and dynamic IT that can proactively work with Business to continuously change the services offered to match the quickly shifting technologies, to adapt to those changes efficiently, and to thus spend more time offering new services to the rest of the organization (going from a typical 70-30% model of maintenance/new to perhaps a 50-50% model in the best scenarios).

To move towards that ideal, the keynote focuses on Virtualization (of course!), both for Servers with stuff like Virtual Machine Manager in Service Center (Windows Server Core 2008 being a key component -- and they announced IIS7 as a newly added service for Core, along with capabilities like Quick Migration and converting VMWare machines) and for Applications through SoftGrid. They also spent time talking about modelling with SML, allowing applications (e.g., a Sharepoint application) to be manageable from Service Center Operations Manager (I guess the old MOM is going to be a lot more interesting).

They ended with showing some more flashy stuff -- Silverlight demoes. I have tried some before on my PC, but the Top Banana demo was new for me, and really very interesting -- basically, a video editor created using Silverlight (with thus the output being Silverlight as well) that allows you to edit, crop videos, and combine them, using an extremely simple and visual interface. Another demo (non-Silverlight) that I recall was using Visual Studio 2008 with Tools for Office 3.0 to create extensions for Outlook connecting user's contacts with information useful about those contact individuals stored on Sharepoint. Pretty neat stuff, rather minimal coding too.

Will add more posts through the week as I see interesting stuff, or have thoughts I'd like to share. Right now I am standing disappointed outside the Sharepoint 3.0 Breakout Session, for which the room is filled. This after a 40 minute walk from the Keynote (I will use the shuttles from now on for sure).

Search My Blog

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 15:40:02 GMT

Ever felt like searching through my blog? Try this out:

http://beta.search.live.com/macros/shauntu/blog/

Let me know how well it works for you... if you are using IE7, you can even add it to your Search Box for easy access! (just click the option for 'Add to browser search box')

Word 2007’s Blog Posting

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:17:41 GMT

Just trying out Word 2007 Beta 2’s blog posting capabilities. Seems pretty nice actually… though maybe I am easily impressed.

Office 2007 looses PDF as a default

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 22:41:50 GMT

Apparently, MS has to remove the ability to save as PDF files from Office 2007, as they were being threatened with a lawsuit by Adobe.

Exerpt from CNET:

"The 'save as PDF' feature is the second most popular request we get from customers," Heiner said, adding, "Adobe has told the world that PDF is an open format...and (rival) products OpenOffice, WordPerfect Office and Apple (Computer's applications) already support PDF and tout it as a selling feature. Microsoft should be able to support PDF as well."

Apparently, Adobe wanted MS to charge more for Office for including the ability to save as PDF. MS wanted to save as PDF as it allows them to say the Word etc supports an open standard, satisfying the US states that are starting to think of using standard file formats for official documents only.

This article points out more specifically that MS is also removing its own XPS file format as a default as well, to avoid legal trouble. XPS format could be seen as a bit of a competitor to PDF...

Fortunately, both options will be available as free downloads from MS site for customers that go through the effort of adding PDF and XPS support to Office 2007. Personally, that seems like trouble for the XPS format -- nobody knows about it, why would they go to the trouble of adding it in?

For a MS employee's point of view on the matter, check out this blog...

MSN Spaces Upgrades...

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:37:05 GMT

Well, MSN Spaces has seen some upgrades recently, adding new functionality / capabilities etc...

For anyone wondering what is new, this is an excellent summary...

Personally, I am hoping the Live Contacts stuff gets expanded to allow integration with Outlook/Exchange, Yahoo mail, Gmail, etc... that would be awesome...

Can't actually figure out how to setup Kanoodle advertising yet...

About unlimited Photo Storage -- hmm... I wonder if I should start having Photo Albums again or not... If anyone has any views on that matter, chime in...

Google Maps Flight Finder

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:34:49 GMT

For people looking for places to travel are the best airfare, here's an interesting usage of technology using Google Maps... Place your starting city, and then it will show you a listing of destinations with the best airfares it knows of from that city -- it will use data from destinations/airfares other users have searched to figure out what to show you, thus the word 'buzz' in the site name... Best part, is that the interface relies on Google Maps to show the flight paths, as well as to have you input flight schedules... Neat.

Quote

Kayak Buzz popular flight searches

Kahuna

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 02:08:00 GMT

Looks like MS have a new mail product, either to update or replace hotmail... their team blog is right here, if you are interested...

MSN Virtual Earth Beta

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 14:27:09 GMT

MSN released the Virtual Earth Beta mapping site/tool recently. Now, until recently for direction searches I have had the habit of using Expedia. I also have a script that works with MSN Desktop Search's toolbars to do quick searches from my home or work addresses to specific addresses that used to work pretty nicely when MSN Desktop Search was in beta (I just tried it and it doesn't work -- my guess I have to redefine the script since the full release of MSN Desktop Search).

(If you want to skip my rambling, go to the bottom paragraph for an example of its use.)

Having played around with Virtual Earth Beta for a while, I have to say that overall I like it. I like the scratch pad, and mostly I like the multiple category/business searches that can be active at a time, popping in locations as you move around the map or zoom out. For e.g., as linked here, I have my address and my brother's address on the scratch pad, and 3 business searches active, and when I click between my brother's address and mine, the businesses pop in and out appropriately. I love it.

While the road maps are nice certainly, and being able to move it makes it feel much better than say Expedia, the cool part is the Aerial maps. Done with a combination of satellite imagery and aerial shots from planes, they look amazing -- IF you are lucky enough to search in a place that have the color versions. For e.g., poor Tempe where I live seems to have only black and white satellite shots, and they are likely pretty old too. I have seen missing buildings in other searches as well. However, when I check out my brother's address, I get to see full color aerial maps that zoom in to amazing detail. It's awesome.

There are still things I would like to see however:

First, and most important for daily use, I would like color satellite/aerial maps for more places, and definitely for Tempe and Phoenix and surrounding area.
I would love to see more than geographical maps of foreign cities, like say Karachi, Pakistan. Google Maps is able to zoom in to quite a good amount of detail for Karachi. Virtual Earth could definitely improve here. Being able to search for addresses in Karachi would be amazing!
I would love to be able to have more than 3 business/category searches active at a time. To build upon that, it would be nice to be able to deactivate a category search without removing it. Also, I would like to be able to prune permanently individual category search results (for e.g., when I search for Best Buy, it does well, but also finds Best Buy Used Cars and Best Buy Insurance Agency).
I would like to be able to click on any spot on the map and create a scratch pad entry out of it, without needing to know before hand the exact address for that location.
I would like to be able to search for directions using locations on the scratch pad and category search results as both the From and To locations. Right now I get to choose one of them as either the From or To location, then it takes me to a separate page to supply the other side. Google Maps attempts to atleast fill in from the Where address if you selected one of your category search results as either the From or To to start with.
I would also like to see the resulting directions on the same map, like Google Map does, with the same easy to follow line directions overlayed on the map like Google Maps does so well.
A friend thinks being able to choose more than 10 as the upper limit of the number of results a category search can return at a time would be a good idea. I agree.
To go with the above suggestions, I would like to be able to save the state serverside, thus not having to have a huge permalink with all those category searches I will have, some active and some not, with false Best Buys etc pruned from the results, etc... The advantage, other than not having a huge permalink that would limit me, would be that I could access my custom map from any other computer as well.
Also to go with the above suggestion, I would still like to be able to create links to maps for others, where I get to select which of my scratch pad entries and which of my category searches will be on the linked map, so that I can send maps to others that only have what they need while still keeping my map as customized as I want.

With the above wishlist, I can see myself creating a highly customized and useful map for myself that contains all the businesses / business types around my house on it for easy reference, and whenever I search for an address the nearby locations of interest will always be available for reference, specially when I am travelling to another city. The 'Locate Me' for laptops with Wifi would work nicely with this as locations of interest will always be around my current location on the map.

What do others think of my wishlist? What would you like to see added?

Click here to see an example of a Virtual Map with category searches active. Move around the map to see how they change, and zoom in and out to see the difference as well. Click on the second address on the scratch pad to see how things change when you are in LA, and zoom in all the way to see the awesome aerial shots in action.

Firefox, IE, and MSN Spaces

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 18:19:24 GMT

For anyone visiting using Firefox, the Photo Album on the upper right looks nice. For anyone visiting using IE however, it looks much nicer, with a Slideshow. If an album is selected, the navigation options offered by IE are much sleeker as well. I wonder why? MS up to old tricks, or Firefox reluctance to include MS technologies?

PS: This entry brought to you from Firefox for once... hehehe...

PPS: I had to edit it with IE to have the PS actually show up on a separate line... WTH?

MSN Spaces launched!

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 22:19:15 GMT

Well, MSN Messenger 7 and MSN Spaces have survived the Beta phase, and reached launch. I figured it was best to celebrate the occasion with adding more personalization to my 'Space'. Overall, I like it.

Couple of people I know just started their own 'test' blogs, lets see if any of them keep it up, and if they do, how they look.

PS: With the recent activity by MSN (MSN Messenger 7, MSN Spaces, MSN Search, MSN Search Spoof, MSN's Start page tests (www.start.com/1 and www.start.com/2), MSN Remote Record, and MSN Desktop Search / Toolbar Suite), I have to say they have really climbed up my list of cool, inventive developers...

Windows Reduced Media Edition

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:33:13 GMT

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/209892_msftreduced29.html

Sometimes MS can be funny... too bad the Europe antitrust committee shot down this name for the Windows without Windows Media Player that MS is being force to sell in Europe...

Maybe someone can suggest alternate names?

Windows European Edition anyone?

Gates Foundation

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 17:17:49 GMT

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1455575,00.html

With all the people that hate MS, maybe some people should read this news and think about it... And if Bill Gates continues on this path, fulfilling his promise to give 90% away, using a well organized group as the Gates Foundation... Chances are, the relatively paltry sums people give to Microsoft compared to the income/property/sales taxes to the government, that my money given to Microsoft will end up being put to much better use than my money given to the government... At least at Microsoft, wars like the browser wars didn't end with thousands dead, but instead gives people with less opportunities education grants and vaccines...

MSN Toolbar Suite (w/ MSN Search)

Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:47:29 GMT

Well Microsoft just released MSN Toolbar Suite, actually a preview/beta version of it I guess... Its available from http://beta.toolbar.msn.com/, and I gotta say, its actually pretty nice.

Firstly, MS, far as I know, started work on this before the Apple and Google stuff was announced. Secondly, I have used the Google Desktop Search, and I didn't like the amount of taskbar space it would end up taking... I also didn't like how badly it worked when added as a taskbar to the left side of the screen... Finally, it has a screwed up installation/uninstallation routine, which has caused us problems at work while migrating from a NT4 domain to a 2k3 AD domain...

Based on the above alone, I recommend trying it out. It does seem really fast, works within Outlook, etc...

If you do, some tips:

1) Get the Adobe Acrobat filter from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2611 and it will support Acrobat files too.

2) If you want to use the Deskbar, wherever you like the taskbar, and want to minimize how much space they take even further... there is a registry tweak to remove the buttons... If comfortable with registry tweaking (it is simple to do):

Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSN Apps\DB, and add a new DWORD Value, called Buttons, and set the value to 1. Remove the MSN Deskbar from the taskbar, and readd it, and it is so much nicer...

What I like best, since I use MS OneNote 2003, is that it's indexing includes the content from OneNote...

Remains to be seen if I will tire of it like I did the Google Desktop search, or end up keeping it...