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MS MyPhone open to all


That’s right folks, the beta of Microsoft’s MyPhone is open to everyone-go and sign up here.

I’ve been using it for a couple of months and it’s pretty much excellent It’s a great way to keep a backup of Office files and photo’s- as well as text messages. I also find it useful for getting items from my phone to my pc when I can’t find my USB cable, which seems to be most of the time 🙂 It will really come in to it’s own when you get  a new phone and you have a nice easy way to quickly import your texts etc.

It’s biggest drawback in my eyes is it’s 200MB storage limit, that makes it no real use for music and transferring MP3’s and WMA’s is where I’d love to use it most. This could easily be overcome by using the Hotmail SkyDrive as a storage pool-giving us all 25GB 🙂 As it was originally called “SkyBox”-that link could still be a possibility…

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Star Trek Movie Quick Recognition Chart


I just saw this on Digg and it is awesome-a handy flow chart style guide to the Star Trek films.

startrekmovierecognitionguide

*Click image to make it bigger.

Having re-watched Insurrection at the weekend, I definitely agree that this chart works!

Props to www.lukemckinney.org for this 🙂

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New Apple Ad targets Laptop Hunters


Apple have finally got aruond to attacking Microsoft’s very successful “Laptop Hunters” campaign, in the new Mac vs PC advert.

As usual, it’s based on half truth’s and hyperbole (at best) but we all know what to expect from these ads by now 🙂 My questions is-do these ads really work…in the true sense that they convert people from buying PC’s to Macs, as I don’t think they do!

I can’t find a version I can embed so here’s the link to Engadget’s site:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/13/video-apple-responds-to-microsofts-laptop-hunters/

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A few Sharepoint 2010 tidbits


A few more bits of info about Sharpeoint 2010 have come out of TechEd through blogs and tweets.

The 2 big ones are:

Groove is to be renamed “Sharepoint Workspace Manager”. I think this will help drive an increase in people using this technology as currently, most people don’t know that Groove & Sharepoint can be used together.

Sharepoint 2010 is going to be 64bit only-and will require a wholly 64bit environment I.e. “64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 to run. It also will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005”.

Another point is that it won’t support Internet Explorer 6 but will be “targeting standards based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) including Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.x. running on Windows Operating Systems. In addition we’re planning on an increased level of compatibility with Firefox 3.x and Safari 3.x on non-Windows Operating Systems”.

All info via Mary Jo Foley

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Office 2010 Movie on Twitter


This morning man people, Engadget & Gizmodo included, saw tweets from @officethemovie claiming that:

First of today's Zune tweets
First of today's Zune tweets
Second of the Zune tweets
Second of the Zune tweets

and this got people all across the internet excited, but not everyone was convinced. Gizmodo expressed their distrust here and it turns out they were right-the account is actually run by a Mac fanboy who is, in some bizarre way, trying to highlight iphone piracy…ah well…I think we all knew those tweets weren’t real…deep down!

One thing that does confuse me a little is that Gizmodo say that the offical http://www.office2010themovie.com/ page was linking to the afore mentioned twitter account, but I don’t see how that could be the case. MS do link to the official @office2010movie account…is it just people confusing the 2 similar account names…or were MS somehow fooled too?!

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Windows 7 in 2009


At today’s TechEd, Microsoft revealed that Windows 7 will be available “by the holiday period” (so by Xmas); this was their first public announcement that Windows 7 will be with us in 2009, rather than early 2010.

screenshot_jump

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Microsoft BPOS to support Office 2003


Yesterday I was part of a technical roundtable regarding MS Online Services/BPOS and there was a lot of great information revealed, unfortunately I can’t say much as it’s all under NDA…suffice to say it’s a great product that is going to keep on getting better.

There is however, one piece of info I CAN share and that is that BPOS will-from June (next month)-start to fully support Office 2003.

This is brilliant news as the Office 2007 only requirement was preventing a lot of people from being able to seriously consider MS Online Services which was a shame! BPOS is positioned as a great way to reduce the impact on budgets and to help keep costs down but then having to upgrade to the latest version of Office didn’t tend to go down too well…I think a lot of people saw it as “giveth with one hand, taketh with the other”. It is often the smaller companies, who would most benefit from MS Online, that are still on Office 2003 so now a whole new arena is opened up…good skills Microsoft 🙂

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Microsoft Cloud Database Testing


Project Huron, one of Microsoft’s group of cloud-based teams, are asking customers to get involved with testing a first release of their online database synchronization effort; which will be done via the Azure platform & SQL Data Services.

The Huron team said “We are looking for are any customers that are looking to share SQL Server or SQL Compact databases via the cloud and have an existing project that would warrant this functionality…”

The team’s blog says “The goal is to remove the typical complexities (configuration, scalability, security, etc) involved with sharing database information between local databases such as SQL Server and SQL Compact and provide simple UI tools for configuration and sync components developers can embed in existing applications.”

Screen mockups:

huron1huron2

For those of you that are interested in being an early adopter for this-fill in this short email form here:

Project Huron Early Adopter Contact Form

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Windows 7 XP Mode Pre-requisite


The inclusion of “XP Mode” in Windows 7 is great news, the ability to run legacy apps inside the Windows 7 desktop is going to allow so many more people to upgrade to Microsoft’s awesome new Desktop OS. There is however, one pre-requisite that might mean that not everyone can use this new feature-and that is the need for Hardware Assisted Virtualization (HAV) which is a property of the physical processor.

Intel call this Intel-VT(x) and AMD call it AMD-V and it is tricky because not all processors include this feature. Certainly most (if not all) processors older than 3-4 years won’t be HAV capable and it seems there are still some CPU’s available now that don’t have it. I have seen on blogs (Gizmodo/Engadget etc) and heard from co-workers and the like that finding which processors are compatible can be quite difficult so below is my attempt to clarify the situation. I would like to point out that I’m purely software so CPU’s aren’t my forte-thus if you see any errors/omissions in the below, please let me know 🙂

Intel Processors that support HAV:

Intel’s site is really rather good with great feature comparison charts for all their processors. I’ve made an Excel sheet (which I then had to convert in to a .ppt for WordPress) showing which do/don’t support Intel-VT which is here. Intel’s page is here.

AMD Processors that support HAV:

AMD’s site isn’t anywhere near as good and I had a tough time finding much useful info. The AMD-V page contained this:

amd

and Wikipedia says:

“AMD-V operates on AMD Athlon 64and Athlon 64 X2 with family “F” or “G” on socket AM2 (not 939), Turion 64 X2, Opteron 2nd generation[1] and 3rd-generation,[2] Phenom, and all newer processors. Sempron processorsdo not include support for AMD-V.

On May 23, 2006, AMD released the Athlon 64 (“Orleans”), the Athlon 64 X2 (“Windsor”)and the Athlon 64 FX (“Windsor”)as the first AMD processors to support AMD-V. Prior processors do not have AMD-V.”

If anyone can shed any more definitive light on the AMD chips, please let me know.

**Update** I’ve got some more info and resources to help see if you can benefit from XP Mode.

I don’t know which Processor I have:

Not to worry, the document I put together above tells you which processors support Intel-VT and this link tells you if the CPU in your machine is one of those 🙂

http://www.intel.com/support/processors/tools/piu

Just download the small app and run it to find out if your Intel chip supports VT.

XP Mode still isn’t working:

Hardware Assisted Virtualization isn’t as straightforward as it perhaps could be, so there’s quite possibly one more step you need to take even if your CPU supports it. Often, HAV is turned off in the BIOS by default and so needs to be activated before you can start. This isn’t the same for every PC so Microsoft have put together some general instructions for Dell, HP & Lenovo here. (The AMD CPU Checker should also be available via that link but it’s not currently working for me).

As you can see, the vast majority of Intel chips that will be in use do support hardware assisted virtualization, and thus Windows 7 XP Mode, but it’s best to check to make sure.

If you find your processor doesn’t support HAV, I’d strongly recommend getting a new CPU/machine that does so you can fully take advantage of the new features of Windows 7.

I hope that helps 🙂

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