Category: Microsoft

iPhone Watch

~ rbonini

Lets see what iPhone news I can find this morning.

Although Jobs announced that no SDK would be release for the iPhone, thee are a number of web applications that have been announced.

Don Farber points out that Etelos has made sure that its CRM App runs on the iPhone.

Don says:

the ideal use for the iPhone and Etelos is “listening to iTunes while sending out a group message to your prospects while riding a ferry across Puget Sound.”

Ajaxian points us to a list of iPhone Apps that is already exhaustive.

Mary  Jo Foley has the scoop that Exchange and the iPhone will play nicely. This is an obvious move for Microsoft as it wants to ensure the widest  possible distribution of Exchange ( Even if Mitch Kapor doesn’t like it and is building a replacement 🙂 , but I digress)

Continuing the speculation over iPhone licensing, Don MacAskill complains loudly that there are no corporate licensing terms for the iPhone.

He says:

I’m so bummed. We’ve got our sleeping bags ready to go so we can get iPhones for the SmugMuggers. We even have SmugMuggers who flew in from out of town so they could join the party on University Avenue (click that link, it’s worth it). Like most companies, we have a corporate plan with AT&T so we can share minutes, save money, etc etc.

They won’t sell us iPhones. Not one phone, not twenty phones. For any price. At all. Neither will Apple.

 

Which is really strange. Apple and AT&T should be trying to get as many people as possible to get an iPhone. On the other hand, as one of Don’s commenters points out,  AT&T could be waiting for the semi-religious demand to die down before coming out with a business offering. It make sense to get the phone out to the masses.

Talking of an iPhone SDK, Simon Brocklehurst says :

As I’ve said before,  iPhone will be an incredible device to develop applications for; and, Apple simply won’t be able to develop all the great new applications themsleves.  Neither will Apple have the bandwidth to build one-to-one relationships with many software development companies in ways that make the economics work.   So, Apple will need to come up with ways of helping any developer to build great native applications for iPhone.

Scoble comments in Don’s post and asks if anyone is brings a generator to charge everyone’s devices  while they wait in line 🙂

This is the smallest subset of iPhone news available. Just a few things I found interesting. More as the news comes in.

Trying Popfly

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

If the mashup embed works, it will show up below ( it shows up fine in Windows Live Writer Beta 2).

Well. I tried. Although the embed is in an IFrame ( i.e, no javascript), it does not show up in WordPress. Which is nonetheless disappointing, and one of the disadvantages of having this kind of setup.

In any case, Popfly works great. I created a photostack that grabbed random Blaugh comics in a couple of minutes. Worked great. So simple to use.

Back to creating mashups. More soon.

Windows Home Server RC1 Install, part 2

~ rbonini

Its nearly a week since I last wrote.

The first install went all the way to its completion, did the admin password thing and all. The only problem was that the Server logged in automatically on startup. I tried everything.  There might have been a few other things not working 100% but I can think of them right now.

So I  re-installed and this time it was perfect. Got everything working like a Swiss car. Copying my data back on to the server took a while, from a external USB drive. And then I backed up the PC’s which took even longer.

The Windows live domain wizard is very nice and sleek. I like the way it recognized me and presented me with the previous domain I’d used with the old install.

The router configuration wizard doesn’t work, again portfwd.exe hogged system resources, like 98% of the cpu and prevented anything from getting done. The solution to the resource hogging is to disable the service via the Administrative tools in the control panel.

I think it might be useful to get a list of compatible routers. It would be worth it to get a router that plays nice with WHS(otherwise there is no point to remote access).

The new install screens are very nice. You’re kept up to-date with the progress (I recall that a few people were unhappy with the Beta 2 install in this regard).

The thing is that with each new release, I find myself having to go less and less into the Console or even Remote Desktop. With each release, WHS is becoming more and more headless in the true sense of the word. 

All things considered, WHS might not be the all-in-one solution with WSUS, SQLServer ExchangeLite and so on, but it does exactly what it intends to – serve.

Windows Server Centro

~ rbonini

According to Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft’s mid-market server is approaching the CTP stage. 

Centro is bundle of

Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, System Center Essentials 2007, SQL Server 2005, ISA Server and other Forefront security technologies.

Sounds rather good.

Its a pity that I’m out of machines to beta ( err, CTP) test on.

The funny thing is that this is the first that I’ve heard of Centro.

The significant thing is that this is a 64-bit only product. Which is interesting when taken together with the rumor that Windows Home Server 2 is also to be a 64-bit only version.

Its a possibility that this [is part of] a push by Microsoft to get people to adopt the 64-bit architecture. A rather chicken-and-egg problem. Do you wait for a larger x64 install base? Or do you force people to move by releasing x64 only products? 

It depends largely on a) the current size of the x64 install base in terms of the x86 install base and b) the barrier-to-entry in terms of architecture transition costs. The you have to factor in multi-core machines into this. Question: Is it even possible to get a multi-core x64 machine?

It’ll be interesting to see where Microsoft goes with this

Scoble, Facebook and Zoho

~ rbonini

I’ve just been reading Scoble’s latest post. Its a long rant about Facebook (and maybe Social networking in general).

Now I don’t use any Social Network (Gasp!Say its not So! 🙂 )and its mainly because I prefer handling my friendships the old fashioned way – face to face. Any contacts go either on my phone, Outlook (Another gasp!! Outlook? OUTLOOK??? 🙂 )or Gmail.

But that’s not the point of the post.Its abut contacts in general. Outlook doesn’t do any sort of tagging. Gmail has tags. But not to the degree that Scoble suggests:

Let me define different behaviors for each tag. “LOVER” tag might go into one page with a password, for instance, that isn’t publicly available. That way Maryam and I could use a social network to send sweet nothings back and forth (I can’t use any of these networks for THAT kind of social networking). “BUSINESS ASSOCIATE” could have a form that includes why I care about that person, business wise. So I could put Fred Wilson there, add that he’s a VC, add his blog, add his Twitter account, etc.

Which is pretty clever.

They say genius is lightning across the brain. And as I read the above paragraph, a tool to do the job jumped instantly to mind –Zoho Creator.

Raffic Aslam, of Zoho, left this comment to my last Zoho post:

Dear User,

Thanks for your compliments )

I hope you would have checked out our scripting language – Deluge, which helps users to build powerful applications easily. I request you to try out Deluge Script and share your valuable thoughts.

Check out Deluge Scripting Video here –
http://static.zoho.com/creator/v2/collateral/delugescript/index.html

Thanks Again
~Raffic Aslam

 

The link is actually to a video of said scripting language in action, which you can view below (thanks to YouTube):

Its quite incredible. So this whole post is essentially a note to self reminding me to have a crack at this problem the next time I have a free afternoon. It’ll be more of a mashup than anything, but its a good idea to test Creator’s limits on.

Zoho Strikes Again

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

(via LifeHacker and Scoble’s link blog)

I’ve never seen something quite like this. I moonlight as an ASP.net Developer and this had me shaking my head in wonder:

Advice to Microsoft Corp. – buy Zoho before Google does (whatever the price, it’s worth it to beef up Microsoft’s web services). Imagine the power of Creator when merged with  SQL and Longhorn Server (err, Windows Server 2008), for example.

Life as a Beta

~ rbonini

Steve Rubel  is right on ( for the philosophically inclined):

From adolescence onwards, you’re in a perpetual beta mode. As an adult you’re constantly learning new skills and capabilities, even as you age. The best and brightest among us are constantly growing. As a human being, you really don’t “ship” (as the technology parlance goes) until you’re dead.

For the geeks among us :

This week Apple, a company that certainly strives for perfection, launched a new beta version of its Safari Web browser. It’s buggy on both the Mac and Windows and lots of people are grumpy. It even broke several of my Dashboard widgets.

Yet, Apple, as a technology company, seems to be allowed to make such mistakes. They are permitted to learn and grow out in the open by slapping the “beta” label on products and services. Everyone else, however, is expected to be perfect. That’s like asking Curt Schilling to pitch a perfect game every outing. It’s ludicrous.

 

And so, in a eureka moment, I figured out why  Google has  two thirds (maybe more) of its software with a Beta tag, even though the software works perfectly well.

Seriously, people ( or should we say beta testers??) are more forgiving with Beta software. I mean, that’s why we’re testing the software in the first place.

This’ll keep me warm  in the long hours ahead as I prepare my Windows Home Server for an upgrade to Release Candidate 1.

Safari for Windows Beta 3

~ rbonini

I must say I’m impressed with this addition to the browsers I have installed.  Along with Firefox and IE7, Safari rounds everything off in minimalist style. It invokes the Apple user in be to start clamoring for a Mac (or a Microsoft version of Boot Camp).

Its a Beta and an Apple App running on Windows, so crashes are de rigueur for this kind of thing ( forgive my french) .  And, yes, its crashed more than a few times since I switched to it full time last night (read: 24 hours ago).

As luck would have it, Safari crashed as I was reading this TUAW post. Specifically, it crashed as I read the line:

It has tons of new great features as well as the cursed instability issues…

The Unofficial Apple Weblog post has a nice rundown of the features, some of which I’ve never heard of.

In using any Apple app, you can expect the design ethic of His Steveness to permeate every aspect of the UI. Any Windows app feels like a chain saw in comparison ( that’s right, that goes for those toolbars).

I had one problem with regard to actually surfing. The booking process at easyjet.com broke down in Safari round about Step 4. The Safari team might want to look at their asp page support.

In the final analysis, Safari for Windows lives up to all the hype and is all that we’ve come to expect from Apple

Windows Home Server RC1 Install, part 1

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

Hmmm. What’s new in an install process that I can say?

 I’m still doing a little testing of beta 2 it seems, since this is the second time today I’m trying to remove one of my drives so that I can copy all my data off  to said drive to save said data being turned into random bytes by the uncontrollable, tyrannical Redmond installer. Ok, that was a bit theatrical, but you get my drift.

I downloaded said installer last night and set the server to remove the drive in question this morning. said drive still shows up as still being connected despite the wizard being left for “several hours” ( that’s the only time estimate given,which is useless).

I’ve now got to burn said installer to DVD while I wait. While I go and do that, you can look at the these installer screenshots, if you’re geeky enough.

Update: The Wizard has been running for 3 hours now, and the progress bar is less than a fifth of the the way across. I’m thinking of taking more radical action.

Update:Soon after posting the above update, I used remote desktop to bring up the Management Console, changed drive letters for my external hard drive so I could access it and started copying files over like mad. It took , oh, 6-7 hours to copy every thing across. I’ve actually got it installing now. Here’s to the install working first time.