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Hello folks,
Today my daughters helped me realize something. they convinced me to stop watching videos and reading “howto” articles and actually strap on the snow board and go to the hills with them. You see… I’ve been contemplating learning to Snowboard. I went out I bought a board, boots, a helmet, the whole kit and kaboodle. (I don’t know where this expression comes from but this is something my dad used to say all the time…) Then to prepare, I read articles, I watched videos. I thought I was learning. WRONG!!!! I was definitely fooling myself.
I thought I would look like this picture after my research.
I was so far from learning to snowboard. in fact it looked like I was learning to snowplow down the hill, with my face. I looked a lot more like this…
I then realized that this translate very well to my professional life. I’ve never been a book learner. I need to do it. As my wife the grade 6 teacher tells me I’m a tactile learner. I need to put my hands on the stuff I’m trying to learn to get it. That’s why when trying to rap my head around new products like the new System Center 2012 Suite that just got it’s RC release I need to download it put it up in my lab and start playing with it. As I run in to situations, I then go to blogs and TechNet to figure out the details. there is nothing like getting your hands on the goods.
that why I always go to the Microsoft Evaluation Center and download the evaluation copies that I need.
Evaluation Steps
.jpg "Select a product.") Select a product from the list below
Review system requirements
Register for evaluation
Download and install software
Receive emails to access expert resources
Use blogs & forums to share tips
I’m telling you I spent more time reading and watching about Snowboarding then I did actually going down the mountain. but I can tell you that the last run of the day was the best. I stayed mostly upright, did not break anything and learned a little. but a lot more than just reading about it. I love the last run of the day, because it leads to the chalet. but whether its learning to snowboard or learning to take advantage of the System Center 2012 suite somehow I always end up here!
Now, get going! go the the evaluation center, and download something. Never stop learning. Whether it learning new IT skills, or learning not to break your neck. They both can bring you satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment that only that kind of personal growth can bring you.
Pierre Roman, MCITP, ITIL | Senior Technical Account Manager | Directeur de Compte Technique Senior
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 My team is in the midst of our planning cycle right now and a question came up that has me scratching my head. “What conferences or face to face activities do technical professionals in Canada attend in order to get training and keep up to date on what’s out there?” Times have changed – there used to be a lot of conferences and activities years ago – but what about now? Oh – I am also talking about ones NOT PUT ON BY MICROSOFT. I’m trying to think outside of the box here. Drop me an email (rick.claus@microsoft.com), tweet me a reply (@ricksterCDN) or comment below if you please!
I’ve been hypothesizing over the last couple of weeks as I’ve been heading out to the community activities on the Virtualization Reality tour and talking with the folks afterwards over pints. Developers / entrepreneurs / start-ups have the {fill-in-your-name}camp activities (DemoCamp, CloudCamp, CodeCamp etc). When I used to work for various consulting companies – we had internal lunch and learn and team knowledge building activities on a regular basis. But what do “The Infrastructure Types” attend?
There has to be more out there.
This is part of a larger conversation that I’ve been having with myself (ok – and others too, I don’t just talk to myself). You’ve heard me talk about investing in yourself and your skills – external training / info sessions / partner events are one avenue to stretch that training budget. It still takes a withdrawal on your personal time budget. Going out and participating in community driven technology meetups / user groups / professional associations also take a tax on your personal time, but it’s a necessary evil.
Do you take the time to make this type of investment? If so – where do you go? I ask once again: “What conferences or face to face activities do technical professionals in Canada attend in order to get training and keep up to date on what’s out there?” Drop me an email (rick.claus@microsoft.com), tweet me a reply (@RicksterCDN) or comment below if you please!
I’ll write up a summary of all the responses from across Canada for all to see.
Note: I didn’t call out TechDays on purpose. We will be sharing our plans for TechDays this year in the coming weeks. 
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 I’ve opened a can of worms with a post a couple of months back (ok – a LOT of months back – was it REALLY February?) about should IT Professionals care about Cloud Services yet and what type of cloud service would have a direct impact on IT Pros daily lives. That post had over 22 comments (albeit a big number from “mike”) prodding for more information about Privacy and Security (two very different things when it comes to cloud) and impact on things like Patriot act and other legislation here in Canada and around the world.
This is not “the special post on security and privacy and all that S#&t” .
That one comes later THIS WEEK.
Yes “mike”, it’s finally almost here - months after you brought it up. The team has been busy, we’ve been planning and I’ve been talking with people inside and outside Microsoft about privacy, legislation, regulation, patriot act, security, ISO standards and the like. I’ve even been polling people on Twitter, facebook and Linked’in asking if they could give me their thoughts on their concerns on Cloud Services.
Take a moment and fill out your response to this simple question: What concerns you about using “The Cloud” and hosted services?
 As for services that will impact IT Pros daily lives – have you checked out Windows InTune beta? It’s targeted at small and medium sized businesses for giving them a cloud based solution for anti-malware and antivirus, centralized reporting and control, software and hardware inventory and it’s independent of domain membership / workgroup membership / physical location. It’s in Beta now and was open (now closed) to the first 10,000 signups. As of Yesterday (July 12th) it opened again (still open) for another 10,000 participants – I signed up and am using it on a dozen different PC’s and laptops I look after as the “friends and family” IT Consultant we all are. I’ll have a more detailed post on the overall experience and my thoughts on it – but I wanted to let you know it’s open once again for signups – go try it out!
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Part of our visit to Quebec City, Shawinigan and Trois-Rivières included driving and walking around the city to get to events and places in between.
 
As you might have noticed – the traditional construction of most houses include outside stairs access to the upper floors and balconies. Christian was telling me stories of him growing up and going outside most nights to socialize with all the neighbours. Everyone in the neighbourhood did it and it strengthened ties in the community and kept everyone informed, connected and entertained. It was the norm and there were tangible benefits for participating and nurturing these encounters.
Makes me think about social networking in the online world – both socially and professionally. It’s something that you need to do in order to keep abreast of what’s up in the industry, keep friendly connections alive and well for future opportunities as well providing a form of entertainment. You have to mix it up and touch on a number of services and methods as everyone has their preference for where they invest their time.
For me? For the most part – I use the following engines. Are we connected on them yet? Click on the icons for connection details.
 Facebook: more for social connections and friends
![LinkedIn2[3]](http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/canitpro/WindowsLiveWriter/8004ce5bd723_9616/LinkedIn2%5B3%5D_1.jpg "LinkedIn2[3]") LinkedIn: Professional connections and references
 Twitter: online “public chat” and conversation
 Email: primary communication tool and life organization tool
 Phone: still works – but now unified with email and computer
 edge.technet.com: work podcast and video interviews
 MicrosoftSocial: online profile and forums
Then add in professional associations, users groups as well as multiple informal meetups and coffee chats for face to face time – it goes on and on. Staying connected and nurturing those connections can really take up a lot of time. Mine might be a bit much – but it is my job to stay connected. What about you? How often do you connect and use these and other tools to keep your network alive and healthy?
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(Thought that title might get your attention)
Over the last month or so – I’ve had my head in the clouds working away on creating a scenario based demo for EnergizeIT that leverages the scalability of the cloud and “transportability” of existing .net code and “n” tier architecture. I’ve been living the life of an IT Pro influenced in a “Dev” world for the most part. I don’t know how many of you IT Pros deal with in house developed apps and are considering Azure – but it got me thinking of a more general question I thought I’d ask you.
As IT Pros who save the world every day at work – what do you think about all this “cloud” stuff?
Like – seriously. Do you think it is going to impact you in the short term? Is it something that you can “ignore” because it’s a DEVELOPER thing? Are you worried about how it will affect your day to day work? How much change will it introduce when it does “hit” your environment – if it hasn’t already. I have my on theories on it and it’s affect on “life as an IT Pro” based on research I’ve been doing over the last while – but until now – I haven’t asked YOU.
What are “cloud services” and how will it impact you?
This shouldn’t be anything new to you for the most part – you can look at it in one way as a marketing term to spin a simple concept that has been around for ages - Hosted Services. Hosting has been around for a while. Initially as something that made sense was to host your public presence of website / eCommerce (remember that term?) at a hosting provider/partner and you maintained it as a separate entity – instead of having it hosted within your own premise and exposing parts of it to the public. Cloud Services like Azure introduce scalability and performance “elasticity” for applications hosted in the cloud. But the term “cloud services” really is more then just Dev and application stuff.
Now that we’ve talked about apps - what do you think is The Next generalised workload that is a good fit for hosting? Think for a moment about your environment – regardless of size – and what takes a good chunk of your time and would MAKE SENSE to have hosted by someone else but managed and controlled by YOU. What workload would that be? What workload would you consider to offload to the cloud if you have the power to make the decision right now. Am I blowing smoke? Would you / could you do it?
OK – now tell me with a comment posted below.
EnergizeIT will be talking about “the cloud” from one perspective (with a really COOL multi-faceted scenario based demo in the morning) and it will even show you some real world examples of how it might impact your “IT Pro world”. That being said - I thought I would start a thread of conversation specifically targeting NON application hosted / developer perspectives on “cloud services” for IT Professionals here on the blog and explore the “non-developer” (for lack of a better term) focused scenarios and what it could actually mean to you in your day to day activities / tools and even roles at work as an IT Pro.
I’m anxious to read your comments.
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
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 Can I work a room or can I work a room?
Why Work the Room? If you’re attending TechDays (or any other tech conference this year), you should keep in mind that while we spend a lot of energy on the presentations and sessions, the opportunity to meet and talk to the other people there is just as important. I’ve observed that some of the most important things I’ve learned at conferences didn’t happen at the presentation, but in the hallways, conversing with the other attendees. This observation is so common that it’s given rise to “unconferences” like BarCamp, whose purpose is to invert the order of things so that the conference is more “hallway” than “lecture theatre”. It’s especially important to talk to people you don’t know or who are outside your usual circle. Books like The Tipping Point classify acquaintances with such people as “weak ties”, but don’t let the word “weak” make you think they’re unimportant. As people outside your usual circle, they have access to a lot of information that you don’t. That’s why most people get jobs through someone they know, and of those cases, most of the references came from a weak tie. The sorts of opportunities that come about because of this sort of relationship led sociologist Mark Granovetter to coin the phrase “the strength of weak ties”. The best way to make weak ties at a conference is to work the room. If the phrase sounds like sleazy marketing-speak and fills your head with images of popped collars and wearing too much body spray, relax. Working the room means being an active participant in a social event and contributing to it so that it’s better for both you and everyone else. Think of it as good party citizenship. 9 Ways to Work the Room  Here are some bits of advice for working the room at TechDays, culled from a mix of Susan RoAne’s advice in her books How to Work a Room and Face to Face: How to Reclaim the Personal Touch in a Digital World, Larry Chiang’s article in GigaOm on the topic and my own experiences working the room (which in turn led me to this job and is why you’re reading this blog entry).
- Be more of a host and less of a guest. No, you don’t have to worry about scheduling and who’s running the AV rig. By “being a host”, I mean doing some of things that hosts do, such as introducing people, saying “hello” to wallflowers and generally making people feel more comfortable. Being graceful to everyone is not only good karma, but it’s a good way to promote yourself. It worked out really well for me; for example, I came to the first DemoCamp as a guest, but by the third one, I was one of the people officially hosting the event.
- Beware of “rock piles”. Rock piles are groups of people huddled together in a closed formation. It sends the signal “go away”.
- Beware of “hotboxing”. I’ve heard this term used in counter-culture settings, but in this case “hotboxing” means to square your shoulders front-and-center to the person you’re talking to. It’s a one-on-one version of the rock pile, and it excludes others from joining in.
- Put your coat and bag down. Carrying them is a non-verbal cue that you’re about to leave. If you’re going to stay and chat, put them down.
- Show and tell. We’re geeks, and nothing attracts our eyes like shiny, interesting pieces of tech and machinery. It’s why I carry my accordion around; I think of it as a device that converts curiosity into opportunity (and music as well). Got a particularly funky laptop, netbook, smartphone or new device you just got from ThinkGeek? Got a neat project that you’ve been working on? Whatever it is, park yourself someplace comfortable in the hallway, show it off and start a conversation!
- Save the email, tweets and texts for later, unless they’re important. They’ll draw your attention away from the room and also send the message “go away”.
- Mentor. If you’ve got skills in a specific area, share your knowledge. Larry Chiang from GigaOm says that “It transitions nicely from the what-do-you-do-for-work question. It also adds some substance to party conversations and clearly brands you as a person.”
- Be mentored. You came to TechDays to learn, and as I said earlier, learning goes beyond the sessions. One bit of advice is to try and learn three new things at every event.
- Play “conversation bingo”. If there are certain topics that you’d like to learn about at TechDays, say Silverlight, test-driven development, REST, and so on, put them in a list (mental, electronic or paper) of “bingo” words. As you converse at the conference, cross off any of those topics that you cover off the list. This trick forces you to become a more active listener and will help you towards your learning goals. Yelling “BINGO!” when you’ve crossed the last item on the list can be done at your discretion.
We’ll see you at TechDays, where we’ll be doing all of the above! 
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www.toothpastefordinner.com
“Let’s try rebooting your computer” If you have ever provided or asked for technical support these words are familiar. I recently had an issue that required some technical support and as I went through the process it reminded me of things I used to say and highlighted how frustrating those things are to the end user who just wants their problem fixed. There is a process to troubleshooting an issue that all technical people are aware of; ask for symptoms, try to reproduce, identify issue and attempt to resolve. It is a pretty standard thought process, so much so that many large organizations have scripted it. While this might be efficient I believe this is also the cause of frustration in the end user. Having recently gone through a technical issue as an end user with no system or admin access I was constantly asking why, what for, what’s going on. I had no idea because the technicians weren’t telling me, I was in the dark, doing what they asked me to do without question. Now I will take for granted that I am more technical than the average person and have a better chance of understanding what they might tell me but I question if you really need to tell people the technical details while still including them in the troubleshooting process. As I went through this process I tried to understand why it might be frustrating for an end user. I believe that not including the end user in the process is what causes the frustration. And by including them in the process I don’t mean asking them what they think is wrong but keep them informed. Not including them in the process leads to the feeling of them being the problem. My issue was one of remote connectivity, I would connect via a VPN and be quarantined even though my system was up to date. As I proceeded to check for updates, run tool XYZ, replace files, etc… I was never included in the loop as to what they believe the issue is and why I am doing what I they are asking me to do. A simple “You system is not reporting it’s health properly so we need to identify why this is happening” would have been enough for me to understand what was going on while not being overly technical. While I was performing different tests and tasks a simple explanation of why I was doing it and what the outcome should be would have been enough to make me feel like I was part of the process and not part of the problem. Perhaps we need to be more inclusive and work with end users to solve their problems? How often have you been on a support call and found out a crucial piece of information afterwards when the user says something? Or had the user “just try something” that lead to more information or even a resolution. While most end users are not usually as technically gifted as you or I they are the ones sitting in front of the screen with full access to the system. Try including them in the troubleshooting process, inform them of what you think is the issue and what you are going to do to try and resolve it but remember to speak their language. Just think how you would feel if your doctor was poking, prodding, drawing blood and the like but not telling you why :) 
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 I recently had the privilege of holding a piece of Canadian history (photo credit, Mark Blevis from Podcasters Across Boarders). Well, actually 64 pieces of history – in the shape of the SixStringNation guitar. I was at a conference this past weekend and the keynote was from Jowi Taylor – the mastermind behind the ambitious project of assembling a guitar made up of historical wood and miscellaneous objects from every corner of Canada. It’s a really fascinating piece of living history that any Canadian is capable of holding / playing whenever the exhibit is at a local community event. Just to give you an idea of it’s diversity – here’s a sampling of some of the items:
Seat #69 from Massey Hall
A piece of the school Louis Riel attended as a child
a chunk of rock from the oldest rock in the world (great bear lake)
Piece of Copper from the Canadian Parliament Buildings
A Patuanak Moose shin
Maurice Richard’s 1956 Stanley Cup Ring
Piece of the Bluenose racing schooner
Paul Henderson’s Hockey Stick
Wayne Gretzkys Hockey Stick
Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s canoe paddle When I listened to Jowi’s keynote, about the challenges raising support for such a project, the process he went through collecting all the pieces and capturing the stories behind them all – it brought to light what kind of magic you can have when you bring such diversity together to create something new representative of something larger then the assembly of pieces that make it up. ok – so why is Rick telling me about this guitar? am I supposed to take up guitar lessons and join a band? not exactly… while the SixStringNation project is an ambitious project that is still ongoing, it can be a metaphor for your own work environment and the possibilities of working with all the pieces of your IT department in harmony for the benefit of your end users.I have been a consultant working with clients of all shapes and sizes. I can probably count on one – maybe two hands if I stretch it - the number of IT departments that actually worked well together across the whole breadth of the company without friction, politics and tension. Why is this? How is it that the server guys groan whenever they get told of a project only when it’s at the end of it’s development cycle and it now needs to be deployed into production on an infrastructure that has just now been revealed? What about the developer who is not given the tools and resources to properly develop in a realistic and representative environment to which his/her application will run? How about the end user who is forced into using technology that does not meet their needs – but it’s what IT told him/her is right for their job and anything else is not authorized? Maybe it’s the manager who has to make decisions gathering data from 5 different tools, most of which he/she is unable to tweak or update easily due to security concerns? Maybe it’s the executives that are still waiting for the ROI to come in that the slick sales person convinced them would be in within 2 years of migration. When can we all just call a truce, admit to the issues and start working together to get them resolved? It takes a big person to admit to what is going wrong in a project and an even bigger one to address the problems head on in a department and get them sorted out. Are you up for the task? If not – that’s ok, so long as you are willing to support someone else who has decided to get things resolved for the better? There is no silver bullet. it’s a long process to get things running like a well oiled machine in a department – sometimes overcoming years of neglect or mistrust. All I am asking is that you take a step in the right direction and start to identify things that are not working and prioritize which ones you can start to chip away at. Combine that with a broader discovery initiative of like minded individuals from other sections in your department and you will be surprised to see how many people actually want to fix things together. Rally around each other – create a virtual team for change within the org with some clear goals of improving process or technology that needs updating / fixing. Pitch your efforts to a supportive manager / executive with the goal being a better / meaner / more efficient group and tie your success to the success of the company. You’d be pleasantly surprised at the support you’ll get if you spend a little time thinking things through with a diverse team looking at all the angles. If you are looking for a structure on which to start your research on areas to improve – you could always start with a little review using our Infrastructure Optimization framework. I dug up some nice resources from the partner site (http://www.microsoftio.com/) or you can dive right in with the Tech Center on TechNet. Both have plenty to read – stick to the overviews for now, just to get the hang of it. oh – and I seriously suggest you check out the SixStringNation site and get out to see this collage of Canadian History. Here’s a link to a video that explains the concept.
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 Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading a few stories on vulnerabilities found in various operating systems. You might have seen the headlines like Attack Sneaks Rootkits Into Linux Kernel or Security Team Shows Unfixable Windows 7 Hack or First Mac OS X Botnet Activated and while all are valid (both as exploits and as ultra scary headlines) they are so easily mitigated that I have to call them out.
Lets look at the first one on the Linux rootkit. There is a feature in the Linux kernel 2.4 and up that is used by developers to perform kernel debugging. This feature allows someone to mount memory as /dev/mem and read and write directly to the memory. Great feature for kernel debugging but someone could exploit this and mount memory, write to memory and insert malicious code. So what is the catch, you need to have root access. Mitigation? Let’s look a the first two rules of computer security…
Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore
Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it's not your computer anymore
I especially like the “new” and “unfixable” flaw in Windows 7. This is the same exploit, by the same researchers, demoed on Windows Vista two years ago, updated to work on Windows 7 so not really new and the unfixable part? VBootkit is a piece of code that is loaded into memory on boot and allows an attacker to take control of the machine, log keystrokes, change passwords and more. The catch? The attacker needs to have PHYSICAL access to the machine when it boots to inject the code into memory. In fact they need to have physical access each and every time the machine boots as the code is memory resident and does not survive a reboot and it cannot be done remotely. It can be mitigated with BitLocker configured in TPM mode (does that count as a fix?). Simple physical security practices also mitigate this risk reminding me of computer security rule #3…
Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore
The last one makes me laugh and actually reminds me of a few sayings; “buyer beware” and “you get what you pay for”. The OSX botnet has been made possible by injecting malicious code into downloadable copies of pirated versions of iWork ‘09 and Photoshop CS4 for OSX. A user simply has to download and install this software from a P2P site for the machine to join the botnet. While pirated software is tempting to a lot of people it reminds me of the 6th rule of computer security…
Law #6: A computer is only as secure as the administrator is trustworthy
If you are installing software from untrustworthy sources there is no way you can be sure your PC is secure anymore. I met a few people on the Energize IT tour with newer builds of the Windows 7 beta that they downloaded from P2P networks and it is shocking to see. Not only are they admitting to a Microsoft employee that they downloaded and installed pirated Microsoft software (can you say DUH!), they are also oblivious to the fact that a WIM image can be mounted, edited (to lets say run a custom key logger) and then repacked into an installable format. I know someone who had their identity stolen using a pirated version of Windows Vista in which the attacker placed a small custom application that recorded all saved passwords and login information and uploaded it to an FTP site.
Security is something that will always be a concern and will always make headlines. Just remember headlines are meant to generate traffic and think about the 10 Immutable Laws of Security while reading.
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So as you’ve seen with Rick’s posts we are in Vancouver for TechDays Vancouver. We all got out West a little early and Rick and I decided to spend a day skiing. We headed up to Cypress Mountain based on the advice of the bartender at the VanTUG pub night we attended. Considering it is the location for a few skiing events at the 2010 Winter Olympics, it must be good.
We had a great time, it was a beautiful day and we both walked away sore, but without injury! The lack of injury was most likely due to the fact that we stayed off the expert runs and obeyed the warning signs like this one.
_thumb.jpg "Cypress Mountain (8)")
That said we were curious if a Windows Mobile device with GPS and a fully charged battery qualifies as “proper” equipment for self rescue.
So how did we do this without taking a day off? Well if you’ve tried Windows 7 already you have have noticed a new feature that allow you to simply create your own theme with rotating background photos. You can find out more about these themes as well as download additional themes here. Well in order to do this we needed to take photos and because it was foggy in Vancouver we had to head up above the fog and if we are the mountain already you might as well ski right?
I created a widescreen theme with the following photos and you can even download it below and test it out on your Windows 7 PC.
BTW that is a new feature of Windows Live Writer that automatically creates photo albums when you insert multiple pictures at the same time :) So with the theme created and ready for you to download our job was done, we headed into the lodge to have a drink before heading back into the fog and setting up for TechDays Vancouver. You can see the rest of the photos here.
We just wonder if John (our manager) is going to buy this excuse for work :)
Download our Windows 7 Ski Theme here!
P.S. In case you are curious Cypress Mountain is running Windows Vista on their desktops and we even got a peek at the server room :) 
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So I spent $5 on what is one of the most secure ways to do any online logins, in this case my PayPal account. PayPal now offers a one time password token (OTP) to give its users a more secure login methodology. Now instead of a username and password you must also provide the current passcode displayed on the token they provide. 
The passcode is valid for 30 seconds upon which time a new passcode is provided and that passcode can only be used once. I am sure you are all familiar with RSA SecureID or one of Canada’s own AuthAnvil (run by Canadian MVP Dana Epp) and this is really not very different. The device has a serial number and once it is synchronized with the authentication server you are ready to go. Now you have something you know (your username/password) and something you have (the passcode on the token) for a nice secure two factor authentication scheme. This got me thinking, why isn’t this standard from all financial institutions? I asked around with some people I know and there is no reason why it isn’t feasible. The banks could do, like they do for credit/debit cards, centralize the authentication/token sync so that you could use one token for your different banks and accounts. When compared to the smartcard technology they are just starting to implement on credit cards in Canada, which is pretty lame since they all still have magnetic stripes on the back with the data and they use the same PIN as your debit card, isn’t this a better route? I was more than willing to pay the $5 to cover the costs which included shipping for the added protection and I’d even go as far as paying an additional fee every month with my bank to provide me a real level of security. The token is small enough to stick on your keychain and as a backup you can authorize a mobile phone and get a OTP sent to your phone via SMS for emergencies. Doesn’t this make more sense than adding a smart chip but leaving the “dumb” mag stripe on the back? 
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I got back into the office yesterday and in the course of a number of "Happy New Years" and other conversations, I was also asked what I did over the Holidays. Besides spending some well-deserved time with the family (I probably travel more than my kids would like), the most exciting thing we did was purchase a new vehicle.
Truth be told, I was not specifically looking to get a new vehicle but my own car (1995 BMW M540) is in need of some work and I wanted to get something more winter-friendly. Looking at the news reports of the auto sector bailouts, and having leased a Chrysler Town and Country for my wife to use earlier this year, I was curious at what was out there from Ford, GM or Chrysler that I would find attractive while at the same time be able to make a small contribution to the North American economy. To make a long story short, we (because a new vehicle is always a family purchase) settled on a 2009 Ford Escape with Ford Sync (powered by Microsoft).
While I was pleasantly surprised by the Ford Escape in terms of overall handling, finish, performance and the like, what really blew me away was the Sync system. After only using it for a little over a week, I don't think I will ever get a car without it, and here's why.
When I get into my Ford Escape and turn on the key the Sync system automatically connects to my Windows Mobile device, a Samsung Jack, via Bluetooth and now my phone calls play over the internal speakers. The microphones in the car work so well that my wife tells me it's clearer than using the phone directly. Furthermore, when I paired my phone initially with the Sync system, it downloaded my entire address book, and through what I would consider quite amazing voice recognition, allows me to issue such commands as "Call John Oxley at work". The response is a very efficient "Calling John Oxley at work" and I am connected. Incoming calls also display the name of the person calling on the dashboard (if in my address book) or the phone number for easy reference. I suspect that I am probably only scratching the surface on the phone features, and need to look at the manual to find out how to do more wonderful stuff with it - like have Sync read out my text messages to me!!
Another cool thing about the Ford Sync system is the ability to take the music content of my Zune (or iPod, if you choose) and index it within the system. This allows me to issue such voice commands as "Play Artist Guns and Roses" and Sync connects to the Zune, gets the appropriate tracks and starts playing. Oh so cool!! I can even have it play similar songs to the one I'm listening to, shuffle all songs or a subset of them, play my playlists, and so on. Great for those long trips after the free 6-month Sirius subscription has run out!!
The one thing I have yet to try is the Vehicle Health Report which provides you with an email on how your vehicle is doing and if there is anything you need to worry about or recalls to deal with. Quite handy and I'll give it a try in a month or so, whether it needs it or not.
The one Sync service I don't want to try is the 911 Assist, but is is great to know that it is there in case I ever need it.
All in all, I can say that the Ford Sync (powered by Microsoft) really made the decision to buy my new 2009 Ford Escape an easy one. I've only had my Escape and Sync for a short time and am loving it. I would love to hear from others who have also bough the Sync system or are considering it so send me an email (damirb@microsoft.com) and tell me your Sync story or post a comment on the blog.
Cheers.....Damir 
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I was walking my 3 kids to school this morning - it was blowing snow and cold. Somehow the conversation turned to my work and I was explaining to them (6.75 son and twin 4.5 year olds) what it is that I do (connect with ICT Professionals, share stories of their success, help them develop skills etc). I mentioned that one way that I share stories or retell stories is not through sitting down and reading to each and every one in the ICT Community, but through things called Blogs, Podcasts, VideoCasts and MicroBlogging (Twitter). It was rather amusing to "translate" this into terms they understand - I should share that sometime, but I'll save that for another post. When we were in the schoolyard, their bags in the various lines that represent their classes, they went off to play. I huddled in the corner, out of the wind and since they were off for 10 minutes of freedom before the bell rang, I took a sip of coffee from the travel mug and pulled out my SmartPhone to check out my mail and see what was going on in the twitterverse. It's amazing to see what people can say when they only have 140 characters to say it in. This one "tweet" from my boss got me thinking... 
Not bad for 140 characters, eh? it caught my attention. As ICT Professionals - what are you / can you do to have a positive impact on your company or customers? This is a good starting point for a conversation... What do you think? Are you worried about projects that have to be cancelled / delayed because of economic concerns or improper/unclear alignment to cost savings or business drivers? Do you have to do more work, because contractors / PS consultants are not being brought in to help bolster the ranks or share their expertise? what's your strategy to make yourself or your IT department stand out positively with all that is going on?
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
My Shared Bookmarks 
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As you may have read I recently jumped on the netbook bandwagon and have been playing about with the Asus Eee PC 901 for a while now. For the past few weeks I’ve been using it as I travel for TechDays as an email and web surfing machine but decided I should put some music and videos on there to watch on the road. That was were the fun began. I had installed Ubuntu Eee as I like to have one Linux based machine accessible in case I want to try something out or I am bored. It is a nice little OS for the little notebook netbook and for email and web surfing it did a suitable job. The fun began when I tried to do more. I had already given up on a good Twitter client or blog editor and have gotten used to the lack of features in Pidgen IM and was pretty happy with how things were working. Then came that multimedia idea. The Eee PC 901 has two storage devices, a 4GB flash drive and a 16GB flash drive. The OS is installed on the 4GB drive leaving 16GB for music and movies (or other data), more than enough for a few days on the road, so I connected to a network share and attempted to download a few gigs of data. Where is the 16GB secondary drive? It shows up in GPart, the partition manager, so physically the drive is working and recognized so thinking something else was wrong I deleted the partition, recreated it and formatted it. Still not available. Hmmmm… After about 20 minutes of searching online I had the answer, I needed to mount the drive, and as simple as that sounds it really couldn’t be more convoluted. Open Terminal and… sudo mkdir /media/HDD2 chmod 777 /media/HDD2 (I am sure I gave too many permissions) Logout and then log back in and then sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/HDD2 With the drive mounted I was able to copy data over to it and I was ready to go on my way. So a few days later after a successful TechDays Montreal I am in the hotel unwinding before an early flight the next day and decide to watch a TV show I had recorded on my Media Center and re-encoded to AVI format using the DivX codec. The same problem shows up again with the 16GB drive missing. Hmmm so I run the last command from the set posted above and the drive mounts but I am thinking shouldn’t it auto mount? Well it can you just have to edit the /etc/fstab file, of course, silly me for having to look that up online as well. Another 20 minutes of searching and I am back in Terminal and… sudo nano /etc/fstab Then add the following line, save, ext and reboot! /dev/sdb1 /media/HDD2 auto user,auto,exec,rw 0 Now when I reboot the drive is automatically mounted! Great now I can watch my TV show! While enjoying some time with my feet up, watching Crusoe I got to thinking. Yeah the fit and finish has come along way, but it still has a long way to go before it hits mainstream. You should not have to jump into a command prompt, elevate privileges, create mount points and edit obscure files just to access a drive and have it auto mount. If the drive is there during install, shouldn’t the install take care of that? Am I missing something? Just for fun I threw a typo into the fstab file and well that is a story for another day… As I thought about it more I wondered if your everyday PC user like your mom, dad, brother, sister, etc… could figure this out and why this isn’t just automatic? Maybe we have become lazy, there was a time when you had to start your car with a crank and now some cars you just get in and press a button and go :) 
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I'm sure many of you have seen the I'm a PC ad campaign that we have ben running over the last little while. The most recent ad starts out with a what looks like the PC guy from the Apple Mac/PC ads saying "Hello, I'm a PC and I've been made into a stereotype". Those words are not uttered by an actor, as is the case with the Apple ads, but by an actual Microsoft employee named Sean Siler.
Sean is actually the Program Manager responsible for IPv6. He is also the person responsible for the IPv6 blog, a great place to find out about this version of the Internet Protocol that will become more and more important over the next few years as networks worldwide start to take advantage of it. Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes of RunAsRadio interviewed Sean just before TechEd 2008. In the interview, which is Show # 53 on RunAsRadio Sean shares his thoughts on the importance of IPv6 and clarifies some of the misconceptions about the latest version of the IP protocol. Check out the show.
Going back to the I'm a PC campaign, it is nice to know that like all of the other folks declaring "I'm a PC" in the most recent commercial, Sean is one of us.
I'm a PC and I'm bald....
Cheers....Damir 
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