Toby and I talking about our “Microsoft Office 365: From Simple Migration to a Hybrid Environment” session at At Tech-Ed Australia 2011.
If you missed it, the recorded session and slides are available for download here: http://cgoo.se/ndiUkE
This post is slightly off-topic compared to my regular posts, but its something I’ve been thinking about for some time now and has been one of those things sitting on my to do list that always gets trumped by something more important.
While my blog has never been inaccessible from mobile devices, I have never really put much thought or effort into improving the experience for mobile users. I was recently reading some interesting statistics on the explosive growth of mobile internet usage and that prompted me to do something about it. These statistics are probably best summarised by this:
You will now be able to access all the same content from your mobile device in a much more mobile friendly manner. And just because I am a geek I’ve even added a .mobil domain name so you’ll also be able to access it at http://cgoosen.mobi
I also wanted to share this great video that goes into some smartphone mobile marketing statistics. Don’t worry.. I don’t ever intend on introducing ads or marketing of any kind here, I just think the stats are interesting.
I recently saw this at Tech-Ed Australia and finally managed to track it down so I could share it. I think it’s such a great video and just excites me about the "future of productivity".
During the month of June I was fortunate enough to attend the Microsoft Certified Master rotation at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.
I am delighted to announce that after a very long month of waiting for the results of the final “qual lab”, I passed and have earned the Microsoft Certified Master | Exchange Server 2010 certification.
The MCM program differentiates itself through expert-led training. The curriculum is
developed in conjunction with Microsoft product engineering teams and delivered by industry-renowned instructors and practiced experts within their fields of discipline. Instructors use their numerous years of experience to ensure that students receive authoritative information on the successes and challenges of applying course concepts to real-world customer situations. I knew it would be challenging, but when day 1 ended up being 17 hours long we all knew we would be in for more than we could have ever imagined.
In order to successfully pass and be able to call yourself an MCM you need to get through 3 very difficult theory exams and then face the beast, otherwise known as the “qual lab”. Without going into it in too much detail, it is a very intense 3 weeks. How intense? read Bojan Nenadic’s Blog
I have to say thanks to all my rock star instructors and classmates.. I am humbled and truly grateful to have shared this experience with you all.
This one is slightly off topic, but I thought I would share it nonetheless. I recently came across a post about someone who upgraded through every version of Windows from 1.0 to 7.
What is truly impressive about this is that there is some 20 years of application compatibility to be witnessed. Here is the very impressive video:
The first thing I noticed when I watched this was that the author never installed Windows ME. I have since found his “FAQ”:
1) Why Didn’t you Install ME?
Since Windows ME cannot be upgraded to 2000, I chose to install 2000 straight from 98 as it was chronologically the next release. I might do an "alternate history" version to see what going from 98 to ME to XP looks like.
2) Did Doom 2 and Monkey Island work in Windows 7?
Yes. Sorry I didn’t point that out explicitly in the video.
3) Can you do the same thing with Mac OS?
I don’t know enough about Mac OS to be able to say, and I would not be the best person to do that experiment as I have never been a Mac user.
4) Where are you from?
Scotland.
I don’t often have much to say about mobile devices.. it is a frequently discussed topic amongst my friends and colleagues though and everyone generally has their own opinion.
I spent the last month testing a Windows Phone 7 device, The LG E900 to be exact. Before I share my thoughts with you, perhaps I’ll give you a little background. I use an iPhone, and I make no excuses for the fact that I love my iPhone. Before you start hurling abuse my way (this is a Microsoft centric blog after all, right?) I should mention that I have probably tried every Windows Mobile device out there, from the very first HP Ipaq’s, WM 2003 through to WM 6.5 but at the end of the day it was the iPhone that really changed the way I use a mobile device.
Windows Phone 7 – In short, I think its good.. certainly better than all previous Windows devices I have used. It’s responsive and quick and visually the interface is very slick. I like how it brings your contacts and Facebook together. What I did not like was how it requires a live ID to setup the phone and then automatically syncs those contacts to your phone as well.. no biggie, except you can’t disable this so if you are like me and don’t want your live ID contacts to sync to your phone, you need to ensure that your live ID is not your hotmail account. It does email and calendar well, but that is to be expected.
A few other things I don’t like.. no cut and paste (and yes, I know the early iPhones never had cut and paste either, but we are supposed to be progressing here..) There is no OCS/Lync client available for Windows Phone 7.. I honestly can’t believe that but I’ve been unable to find one.
Windows Phone 7 devices only support a subset of all Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policy settings so if you have Windows Phone 7 devices in your organization, they will experience synchronization problems if certain Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policy properties are configured. To allow Windows Phone 7 devices to synchronize with an Exchange mailbox, either set the AllowNonProvisionableDevices property to true or only configure the following Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policy properties:
Another thing I found is that Microsoft appear to have dropped support for SMS sync with Exchange Server 2010.
In summary, I think Windows Phone 7 is a great step up from previous versions of Windows devices.. but I don’t think its quite there yet.. the app community is nowhere near as large that for the iPhone or even Android. I don’t see this as a enterprise device, it seems to be more consumer centric and does not really compete that well against the likes of the iPhone which is after all a consumer device. If you are currently making use of the enterprise features in WM 6.5 you may be disappointed with Windows Phone 7. I look forward to seeing further development in this space.
I was looking around the attachments section of the MS Exchange Team blog earlier trying to find an older version of the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator when I came across “E2010+MBX+Role+Calc+Spoof.xlsx” I was curious to see what it was so I downloaded it.. lets just say it was not the version I was looking for, but it made me laugh..
“Gartner, Inc. has highlighted the key predictions that herald long-term changes in approach for IT organizations and the people they serve for 2010 and beyond. Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business today and beyond..”
Its a fascinating read, find the full article here
That’s right, you have not misread the heading.. not the kind of thing you would expect to see on here, right?.. Before you ask, I have not lost my mind, well.. not entirely.. today is Blog Action Day ’09 and this year’s topic is Climate Change so I thought I would try to talk about that a little. I’ll be the first to admit that I am no expert on the subject, I don’t drive a Prius and I don’t always remember to take my own shopping bags when I go shopping.
We’ve all seen the lists right? “25 Ways to Help Curb Climate Change”, etc.. etc and these usually contain things like “Recycle your newspaper” and “Take the bus as often as possible”. Firstly, who still reads the newspaper? we geeks are all about RSS feeds and Kindle’s anyway and if you live in a city, chances are you already take the bus daily.. don’t get me wrong, I think these little tips are important, but, I think its time some of these get revised.
I am a great believer that technological innovation will contribute significantly to reducing the effects of climate change. Other factors, like population growth on the other hand is often overlooked in this debate. Continuous population growth and an expected increase of 2.3 billion people on the planet by 2050 is multiplying the impacts of climate change. Perhaps greater access to family planning is the key? in fact, according to a London School Of Economics study, money spent on contraception is five times more efficient than money spent on clean energy technologies.
Lets look at little ways technology can help. LCD monitors.. not only do they look cooler and take up less room on your desk, they use less than half the power of a traditional CRT.
One of my personal favourites is Blackle. “Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search”. But why? here’s why.. An all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts. lets do a little math and see what could be saved by moving a high volume site to the black format.
Google gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode on a CRT monitor, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8 300 kilowatt-hours per day, or about 3 000 000 kilowatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that’s $75,000.
If you are reading this off my actual blog (not via RSS) you are probably looking around right about now and thinking something along the lines of “this site is not black!” well, yeah.. and I don’t get 200 million hits a day either, if i did, it would probably be black.. black is the new white after all.
Other links:
Having attended Tech-ed Australia last week, I cant help but echo my friend and colleague Craig’s thoughts. Infact, I thought I would repost something from his blog. The original post can be viewed here
Last week I attended TechEd Australia in the Gold Coast. I had a great time learning, connecting, talking, networking, teaching, socialising and presenting. Having said that I left the Gold Coast both drained and a bit frustrated.
While there was a lot of content there, there was an awful lot of content that was not there. I was lucky to be one of the speakers in the UC track. There were 12 sessions allocated for the UC track. Nine were focused on Exchange 2010 and three went to OCS 2007 R2. Now, granted, Exchange is a flagship product and 2010 is an exciting release. I would not take anything away from Exchange. But OCS 2007 R2 needed much more coverage. Rewind a year to TechEd 2007 and all the OCS 2007 R2 content was still under embargo so the result of the lack of sessions at TechEd 2009 is that R2 content has not really had a good airing at a large public conference in Australia.
This is not due to a lack of speakers – I submitted two other sessions that did not make the cut. I know other external speakers who put sessions forward that did not get a slot at all. I know the Microsoft UC guys could of done more sessions. Nor is it due to a lack of things to talk about. In pulling together content for our overview session Derrick Buckley and I drew content and inspiration from no fewer that 5 TechEd US sessions! Oh the detail we could of gone into if we had had the time. Edge Services, Conferencing Solutions, Group Chat Architecture and UC Applications could all easily be sessions in their own right.
So if we need more room in the UC track (among others) and we can’t trim back on the existing content because we need that too, what’s the solution. Simple really. TechEd Australia should be five days long, like the one in the US is.
Now, I know that events cost money and extending TechEd Australia to five days would not come cheap – but there must be a way. One suggestion I would put forward would be to combine TechEd Australia and TechEd New Zealand into one ANZ event. Surely it would be cheaper to run one event for 4000-5000 people than two for 2500 each. Also with fewer flights and nights of accommodation for the US speakers that hit Australia and New Zealand perhaps we could get more US speakers out here for the same money? More days, more colleagues, more experts and more content. It sounds like a winner to me.
Now – in reality this would probably mean canning TechEd NZ and just having one in Australia since there are no venues in NZ big enough to host an event that size. I use to live in NZ and I would of crossed the Tasman to attend TechEd in Australia if need be, but I’m sure there will be plenty of naysayers. Even now, if NZ builds a venue I would happily cross the ditch in the other direction to attend an ANZ TechEd in New Zealand.
I tweeted this thought the other day and got a few comments back from people who thought two more days would be great if their livers could hold out. What say you Microsoft?
