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The You Had Me at EHLO Exchange blog has a great article on how with Exchange 2007 you no longer do recipient-based tasks from within ADUC (Active Directory Users and Computers) but from within the Exchange 2007 Management Console (or PowerShell). This is great news for a large enterprise where the AD and Exchange engineers may be on separate teams and not so great for smaller shops where one or more engineers do both roles.
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I'm listening to Somewhere Out There by Our Lady Peace from the album Gravity
I have really started to take advantage of the unread mail view\filter available in Outlook 2007 (and Outlook 2003) to get a better handle on mail coming in. This view will show all of my mail and RSS items that have the unread flag turned on. At first it took some getting used to as some of the RSS feeds that come with Outlook 2007 by default have a lot of postings (MSNBC News for example) as well as all of the MOM alert emails I get and traffic from various mailing lists. The first thing I do is go to view -> Expand\Collapse Groups -> Collapse All Groups. This collapses all of the emails under their group headings and provides a count for how many unread emails each contains. I then expand Inbox so I can easily notice when new items drop in. Using the arrow keys on my keyboard I can easily navigate up and down the tree expanding and collapsing groups (left or right arrow) as I move along. I also collapse the Navigation Pane to give myself some extra screen real estate while reading. In the Beta 2 TR I have found some bugginess with regards to when read items "drop off" the view (sometimes not at all) but overall I find this a very useful and effective way to focus on what needs to get done. I would like to say I shoot for a clean inbox, but so far I am about 30 emails short.
tags: Outlook2007, Outlook, UnreadMail, OutlookViews
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If you download the latest Windows Live Writer update (build 141) be aware that it will replace your defaultstyle.css with a new one. If any customizations have been made, back this file up and replace it after the upgrade.
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The new Microsoft Antigen Management Pack for MOM supports the 9.0 versions of Microsoft Antigen for Exchange, Microsoft Antigen for SMTP Gateways, and Microsoft Antigen Spam Manager. The MOM pack supplies critical events and alerts on virus, worm, and spam activity to MOM 2005, and also monitors the health and availability of these products.
Download here.
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The Windows Vista Team Blog has a post up detailing an email sent to testers by Paul Donnelly wherein he mapped beta tester locations in MapPoint. There are some really great views that show the concentrations of testers in typical places like North America and Europe. However, in drilling down you see some funny things:
- In the US, North and South Dakota are woefully under represented. Why is that always the case? Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan is not all that much better off.
- There are more testers in Hawaii than in Alaska.
- I was surprised at the small number of testers in Australia.
- There are no testers in Cuba, Iraq, Iran or Syria.
- There are a few testers afloat in the middle of the Pacific ocean!
tags: Vista, Windows+Vista, Windows, Beta, Beta+Testing
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I have had trouble in the past when installing the Exchange System Manager (ESM) on my laptop so I can modify email information about a user in Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC). I get conflicts with Outlook (some shared or overwritten DLLs I imagine) or in the case of Outlook 2007 Beta 2, outright consistent crashes. I found this article by Jim McBee on how to copy just the needed DLLs from an Exchange server to the workstation in question. The page isn't available on his site for some reason so access the cached version from Google here. I am also including below. Enjoy. This worked very well for me.
From an Exchange 2003 server, copy the following DLLs from the \program files\exchsrvr\bin folder in to a common folder (preferably in the path) such as \windows\system32 on the machine on which you want to manage Exchange attributes:
address.dll
escprint.dll
exchmem.dll
glblname.dll
maildsmx.dll
pttrace.dll
Once these are copied on to that machine, run REGSVR32.EXE c:\windows\system32\maildsmx.dll to register that DLL. When you re-open Active Directory Users and Computers, the Exchange extensions will show up!
tags: Exchange, ADUC, ESM, JimMcBee, ExchangeSystemManager
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Get information on Microsoft's new anti-virus and anti-malware client for the enterprise. You can watch an informative demo and sign up for the public beta. This is, IMO, one area where a Microsoft produced product offering seems like a natural due to the tight operating system integration needed for optimal performance and effectiveness.
Link to Microsoft Forefront Client Security: Home
tags: antivirus, antimalware, forefront, forefrontclientsecurity
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Since the technical refresh to Beta 2 was released thousands have downloaded the new bits. I was a bit disappointed that the link the beta team posted brought me to the public site where Microsoft tried to charge me $4.50 to download the updates. I am also disappointed that the people who have been beta testing this for over a year and a half don't get some advanced lead on downloading the updates, but rather have to wait in quite the crowded queue with the general public. Thanks for the appreciation Microsoft. Luckily some smart people found the links on Microsoft Download and I was at least able to avoid the $4.50 in download recovery fees.
One thing that is misleading is that these downloads are not the full product, but rather a series of large patches to Office 2007 Beta 2. And as such you must already have Beta 2 installed. I have also heard that you should save any Word docs in Office 2003 compatibility mode as B2TR Word cannot open native .docx files from B2. Weird. The interface is a lot smoother and I love the new splash screens. Being an artist and graphic designer at heart, the UI always gets me first. Of course, there is the new icon set as well, although the XP start menu still uses the old icon for email.
You are also prompted to install (or re-install if you installed it for beta 2) the beta 3 version of Windows Desktop Search so you can instant search in Outlook and OneNote.
tags: Office2007, B2TR, Outlook, OneNote
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Office 2007 B2TR is now available for download from Microsoft downloads. Get it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b07a3387-01cf-4bc3-821a-0bb10e7a59fa&DisplayLang=en
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Like a lot of people I eagerly awaited to hear the new announcements from Apple Showtime yesterday. I was busy preparing for a user group meeting so I couldn't catch it live. I have to tell you that no matter how much I love Microsoft software, I lust for Apple hardware. iTunes is okay. I haven't had a chance to test drive the new version 7 yet which is getting some good reviews. And I like that they are leading the charge to add the ability to download movies; even if it does lock you in to their crappy licensing model. $12.99 is a little too steep for me and takes it out of the realm of the "impulse" purchase that has led to many a 99 cent mp3 download. I can justify to myself or my spouse a few (or 10) songs a month at 99 cents each. I cannot justify a few $12.99 movies however. And that is if they are purchased in the first week. After that the price goes up. The new Nanos look neat as well, but that is just cosmetics. The new Shuffle however, is plain amazing looking! I absolutely love it. I have an old shuffle though. But I want a new one. This is literally close to consumer wearable electronics. The headphones are larger than the player. I didn't feel one way or the other about the iTV announcement. 
For me, it isn't in my lifestyle "sweet spot." I don't spend a lot of time in front of my TV in my living room where the big screen is. I have an XBox 360 that also gets neglected in that same room. And believe me I hear about it. The damn thing wont shut up. So adding another device that will only collect dust, no matter how cool, isn't something that interests me. I would have rather seen what Mike Torres envisioned. Then I could view the digital goods on any of my TiVO equipped TV's. tags: Apple, Nano, Shuffle, iPod, iTunes, Showtime, TiVO, MikeTorres
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Show your love of football and OneNote this season with the new football stationary\template for OneNote from Microsoft. Works with OneNote 2003 and OneNote 2007 B2. Download it here and enjoy. Now if only I could get them to do an Ohio State Buckeyes template!
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Although my prediction last year could be seen as a jinx, I am going to go out and predict, again, that the Buckeyes will tear Texas a new two-step. The team looks impressive and the offense is absolutely loaded with stallions. Of course, one game isn't a tell-all, but things looked good. I was a bit disappointed that as many mentioned, after scoring 28 points in the 1st quarter, the Bucks seems to go on cruise control. I have been longing to see the bucks throw up a 65-12 score on someone like all the other top teams do. Especially in a Heisman year like this one for both Smith and Ginn Jr.
And I don't feel guilty at all for smiling with glee when I read that the starting Texas cornerback, and a senior no less will be suspended from the game for being arrested on a weapons and drug charge (let the excuses begin come a Buckeyes win). I know they are innocent until proven guilty, but really, why would you even put yourself with ten miles of the situation on the eve of the most important game of the season? What were you thinking? Go back to last year's game with Texas and we can relate all too well as Troy came in rusty from his own suspension.
Texas also moved up the polls to the number two slot adding another dynamic to the confrontation that has not been seen in quite some time. Hopefully whoever wins will go on to run the table and appear in the national championship game in January. Go Bucks!
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I have been using Windows Live Writer more and more for my blog postings. I have been impressed by the community that has instantly sprung up around it to provide tools, support and plug-ins. One plug in that is a favorite of mine is the Live Writer OnScreen plug-in. There is also a repository of plug-ins here. Mike Torres also has an excellent blog post on his favorite plug-ins that is a good read. I only wish I had the programming chops and skillz to add to the plug-in community!!
tags: WindowsLiveWriter, OnScreen, MikeTorres
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Windows Vista RC1 (RC1 v5600-16384) was released to technical beta testers yesterday. It will also be in wide public release soon through the Microsoft website and in the mail from various other testing programs.
tags: WindowsVista, Vista, RC1
Update: More information here.