It's here, it's official: the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 !
New Interface
Say goodbye to bulky toolbars. Internet Explorer 7 has a new interface that shows more of each webpage you visit. The streamlined toolbar makes it easier to add websites to your Favorites, search the web, clear your history, and access the other tasks and tools you use most.
Tabbed Browsing
Whether you're searching the web, comparing prices, or just staying on top of your favorite topic, Internet Explorer 7 lets you view many different websites at one time — all within one organized window.
Search
Internet Explorer 7 brings your favorite web search providers to you. With the built-in search box, you can search the web at any time without having to open a search provider page. You can display search results in a separate tab, and then open the results in other tabs to quickly compare sites and find the information you want. You can even customize your search by setting your favorite search provider as the default.
RSS Feeds
Don't waste time checking many different sites and blogs for updates. Just select the sites or topics you care about and Internet Explorer 7 delivers all the new headlines and updates to your Favorites Center.
Security
Internet Explorer 7 helps keep your information safe by alerting you to potential phishing sites — sites that look legitimate but actually are designed to capture your personal information. It's also easier to see which sites provide secure data exchange, so you can shop and bank online with confidence.
read the release notes
Take the tour
Have you ever sat and waited (and waited) while your Google Maps reloads the image as you scroll in? A new technology called Seadragon might change all that -- at least for Microsoft products.
Seadragon is a neat little technology where users run a streaming client that allows them to view images of much larger images, constantly scaling and scrolling on demand. Google Maps uses Javascript to load progressively larger resolution tiles of images. Seadragon, on the other hand, uses a client to constantly focus and defocus a JPG image on demand, without transmitting the whole image. As the Seadragon demo shows, the client software focuses the image for an effect similar to what you might experience while looking through an adjusting microscope.(
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Microsoft Exchange Server loyalists expect new releases to deliver performance and individual productivity improvements. Their expectations will be met in Exchange 12 – although architecture redesign may be required.This paper will help you understand the major items that will impact planning decisions. Time to Start Migration Plans. While the upgrade from Exchange Server 2000 to Exchange Server 2003 was considered a point release in complexity, the upgrade to Exchange 12 (the code name for next-generation Exchange) will be a major release.
We expect Exchange 12 to be generally available (i.e., “go live”) the first half of 2007. However, you need to start migration planning now – even if you just migrated off of Exchange 5.5. Very preliminary plans for major upgrades should start years in advance of actual deployments. Exchange 12 beta 1 was released 14 December 2005. Expect product development change as Exchange 12 moves through its beta cycles.
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Detailed discussion describing how Microsoft IT uses SQL Server 2005 to improve data security for its line of business applications. SQL Server 2005 enabled Microsoft IT to implement column-level encryption together with a robust, and yet easy-to-use encryption key management framework.
How Microsoft IT Implements Encryption Using SQL Server 2005
David Lowe writes: "One of the things we get asked a lot is when Longhorn Server will be released and when people will be able to get their hands on a new pre-release build. Well, you won't have to wait too much longer. We're planning to kick off a Customer Technology Preview (CTP) program to coincide with Beta 2, which will arrive in the second quarter of this year. That means all MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able to download it and start playing with fun new things like Network Access Protection, Server Core, IIS 7.0, Terminal Services Gateway and Remote Applications. You'll also get to pair it with Windows Vista to see the performance and reliability improvements we've made in our completely redesigned TCP/IP stack."
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See how easily you can work with people around the corner or around the globe. Live Meeting is an online, hosted service, so there is no software to install prior to use. Just complete the registration process and you're up and running.
Free 14-day trial of Live Meeting
Familiarize yourself with Live Meeting. Take a few minutes to experience the benefits of Live Meeting through this live-hosted walk-through of its features and easy-to-use interface. In a real hurry? Go to the Quick Demo for a hosted virtual tour.
Live Meeting Quick Demo
Russ Kaufman writes: "Rod Fournier and I had one of our geek talks recently, and it also came up in our clustering class in Denver. It also came up in a conference call last week. What does R2 offer when it comes to clustering?"
"The answer is, nothing. Let me expand on this because it really isn't true. While R2 offers absolutely nothing new for server clustering, it does offer many benefits that can improve the performance and reliability of clustering, and it also adds a new resource type. So, let's try this again. What does R2 offer when it comes to clustering? Improved DFS. DFS improvements allow for scheduling of traffic, throttling of traffic, and utilizes compression across WAN links. Also, DFS offers the ability to store and forward changes in response to WAN failures. Since it is possible to run DFS roots on a server cluster, this can impact your current environment."
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Russ Kuafman's weblog
Novell, through its CoolSolutions community-relations Web site, is conducting an online public survey to determine which Windows-only applications are most likely to keep Windows users from migrating to Linux. The company also wants to know which Windows-only apps would be most popular on Linux desktops if they were ported to Linux.
"The end result is that we will be contacting the vendors of these applications, asking them to partner with Novell to port their software to Linux," said CoolSolutions site editor Scott Morris. "As you know, numbers speak volumes." Morris said responses to the survey, which was launched earlier this month, thus far have been all over the board.
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This 100-level technical white paper provides information on the principle of least privilege and describes how to apply it to user accounts on Windows XP. The paper covers the following topics:
- Risks associated with administrative privileges
- Definition of the principle of least privilege
- Definition of the least-privileged user account (LUA) approach
- Benefits of the LUA approach
- Risk, security, usability, and cost tradeoffs
- Implementing the LUA approach
- Future developments
This paper also describes at a high-level the issues that affect implementation of the LUA approach and provides useful links to other online resources that explain these concepts in more detail.
Download the Applying the Principle of Least Privilege to User Accounts on Windows XP Whitepaper
In Exchange 2000 the password change feature was enabled by default, due to the Trustworthy Computing Initiative, Microsoft disabled this feature in Exchange 2003.
The Lazyadmin explains how on his website:
The change password feature can be enabled and you can allow your users to change their passwords via OWA again. Before you begin, you must have set up the IISADMPWD virtual directory already.
Once IISADMPWD is installed, it is a matter of a small registry change on order for this to take effect. Open up the registry on the Exchange 2003 server and drill down to:
HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/MSExchangeWeb/OWA
Locate the REG_DWORD called DisablePassword and change the value to "0". Close the registry editor and log into Outlook Web Access.(
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Windows Server 2003 R2 features the File Server Resource Manager which has the following functionalities: Quota Management, File Screening and Storage Reporting.
The File Screening technology enables administrators to restrict the use and propagation of non-business files throughout the organization. File screening rules defined by so called filters apply to all users in a folder tree or volume. Exceptions limiting inheritance of screening policies can be configured.
On the
blog of Matt Hester there is an interesting part which covers the limitations of this file screening technology. The limitation of the file screening technology is that it screens on file extensions.
Let's say that you configure a file screening template which doesn't allow Audio and Video files and apply this template to a folder. When you copy a file with a mp3 extension you get a access denied for this file. If you rename this file to a doc extension it's possible to copy the file to the folder.
It isn't possible though to rename the file with the doc extension back to it's original mp3 extension as long as it is in the folder with the template defined. What you can do though is take another (not known) extension and configure your mp3 player to play this extension as well.
Conclusion: The file screening technology can help you block unwanted files, in my opinion though it will be a matter of time before users find out it's weakness and make advantage of it. In that case it won't help you solve the real problem.
Ntdsutil.exe is a command-line tool that provides management facilities for Active Directory. The tool has a series of menus that allow you to move between different management tasks. Ntdsutil.exe is intended to be used by experienced administrators. In Windows Server 2003 it is installed by default in the %systemroot%\system32 folder. However, this version of Ntdsutil.exe does not contain the Group Membership Evaluation task.
The Group Membership Evaluation task is an update to Ntdsutil.exe. You can obtain the updated tool, along with instructions for how to run the tool at the download center on the Microsoft Web site.
Download the Ntdsutil update with the Group Membership Evaluation task update
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith announced Microsoft’s decision to license all the Windows Server source code for the technologies covered by the European Commission’s Decision of March 2004. The company is making this voluntary move in order to address categorically all of the issues raised by the Commission’s December 22, 2005 Statement of Objections. That document asserted that Microsoft’s prior technical documentation provided insufficient information to enable licensees to implement successfully certain Windows Server communications protocols.
“Today we are putting our most valuable intellectual property on the table so we can put technical compliance issues to rest and move forward with a serious discussion about the substance of this case,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “The Windows source code is the ultimate documentation of Windows Server technologies. With this step our goal is to resolve all questions about the sufficiency of our technical documentation.”(
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Microsoft Corp. announced the formation of Microsoft® Live Labs, a research partnership between MSN® and Microsoft Research. Under the leadership of Dr. Gary William Flake, noted industry technologist and Microsoft technical fellow, Live Labs will consist of a dedicated group of researchers from MSN and Microsoft Research that will work with researchers across Microsoft and the academic research community. Live Labs will provide consistency in vision, leadership and infrastructure as well as a nimble applied research environment that fosters rapid innovations.
“Live Labs is a fantastic alliance between some of the best engineering and scientific talent in the world. It will be the pre-eminent applied research laboratory for Internet technologies,” Flake said. “This is a very exciting opportunity for researchers and technologists to have an immediate impact on the next evolution of Microsoft’s Internet products and services and will help unify our customers’ digital world so they can easily find information, pursue their interests and enrich their lives.” (
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Microsoft Tuesday released new previews of its upcoming tools for designers. Microsoft Interactive Designer is a product for building Avalon ("Windows Presentation Foundation" or WPF) user interfaces. These tools have been dubbed a Flash killer by some industry watchers, as it is expected to compete head-to-head with the Macromedia Flash product that was acquired by Adobe Systems last year.
The software giant has released the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of its Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer tool, formerly known as Sparkle, and the company also released the fourth CTP of its Expression Graphic Designer, formerly known as Acrylic, said Forest Key, director of product management for Microsoft's design tools.
Download a trail at
Microsoft
Microsoft's Expression Suite consists of the Expression Graphic Designer, Expression Interactive Designer and the Expression Web Designer. Microsoft has yet to release a CTP for the Web Designer, also known by its codename Quartz. (Continue at source)
Steven Bink reports:
Next release of Microsoft Windows Vista CTP is set to Februari 21st. This won't be the Beta 2 yet, that is planned somewhere in April. The word is that the Februari CTP is feature complete!
It is not likely that in this CTP round a Longhorn Server build will be distributed.
With the threat from kernel-mode rootkits on the rise, Microsoft plans to make a significant policy change to block uncertified drivers from loading on x64 versions of Windows Vista.
Starting with Windows Vista and Windows Server (Longhorn), kernel-mode software must have a digital signature to load on x64-based computer systems.
The decision to block unsigned drivers from loading is a direct attempt to restrict the spread of powerful rootkits that intercept the native API in kernel-mode and directly manipulate Windows data structures.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the far-reaching policy change was part of the company's SDL (Security Development Lifecycle), the mandatory software creation process used by Redmond engineers to bake security into all Internet-facing products.(
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Mark Russinovich writes: "Steve Gibson (of SpinRite fame) proposed a theory in his weekly Thursday-night podcast last week that if true, would be the biggest scandal to ever hit Microsoft - that the Windows Metafile (WMF) vulnerability that drew so much media attention last month is actually a backdoor programmed intentionally by Microsoft for unknown reasons. Slashdot picked up the story the next day and I received a flood of emails asking me to look into it. I finished my analysis, which Steve aided by sending me the source code to his WMF-vulnerability tester program (KnockKnock), over the weekend."
"In my opinion the backdoor is one caused by a security flaw and not one made for subterfuge. I sent my findings to both Steve and to Microsoft Monday morning, but because the issue continues to draw media attention I’ve decided to publicly document my investigation. Understanding the WMF vulnerability requires a brief background in WMF files. A WMF file is a script for executing graphics commands, called graphics device interface (GDI) functions. Each command is stored as a record in the WMF file and examples of GDI functions include ones to draw lines, fill rectangles, and copy bitmaps."
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On November 1, 2005, Microsoft announced that it would release a set of services beginning in 2006 under the Windows Live brand. For the most part, the Windows Live services match up with previous projects from MSN, which had been pulled into the Windows division at Microsoft during a late 2005 reorganization. As a long-time fan of MSN--see my exhaustive showcase, MSN: The Inside Story, for details--this reorg gave me mixed feelings.
On the one hand, I felt that the somnolent Windows group could use the injection of energy, excitement, and innovation that MSN would no doubt provide. But on the other hand, I was fearful that the enormous Windows division would simply destroy MSN and the many benefits of MSN's rapid release mantra. Two months later, it's not clear how this combination of Windows and MSN will turn out. However, I am reasonably confident that the numerous Windows Live services that Microsoft plans to ship in the weeks and months ahead will be interesting and compelling for a wide range of consumers.
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Approximately a year ago Orange launched their best smartphone yet, the SPV C500. Neowin reviewed the device and it turned out to be the most popular smartphone that has ever hit the market. A year later and this time around it's a new operating system and a sleek refined model to wow new year shoppers and smartphone fans alike.
At first it's easy to say that the device is very similar to the C500 and that's a fair comparison. The outer shell of the C600 hasn't changed considerably from the C500 with only a few shifts and additions. From the C500 there haven't been many hardware changes. The screen is now QVGA and is slightly larger than that of the C500. The device measures a mere 10.5cm in height, 4.8cm in width and 2.0cm in depth. This is nearly identical to the C500.
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John Howard writes: "So hands up everyone who's built their own MCE machine - particularly those who have MSDN, for example, and like to "test" :) And... for those MCE machines, keep your hands up if you've bought one of those multi-function media devices which fits into a floppy-drive-sized bay (I can't think of the name) which allow you to plug in SD/CF cards etc. And... Still keep your hands up if the devices show up in explorer as boring drives rather than the image below. Obviously, this isn't specific to MCE machines, so I'm sure lots of you have those reader things in XP machines too."
"Well, if you're in that position, here's how many of the OEM builders change the icons - it's a simple tweak in the registry.
You basically need to change information under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\
, replacing with E, F, G, H etc.
The subkeys are DefaultIcon and DefaultLabel, both REG_SZ." (more)
The purpose of this blog post series is to serve as a guide to troubleshooting public folder replication problems. It will not tell you exactly how to fix every possible replication problem. However, it will show you how to isolate every possible replication problem so that you focus your troubleshooting on the point of failure. Put another way, this post is intended to take you from a problem description like “The content on my old server isn’t replicating to my new server” to a much narrower problem description like “My old server isn’t responding to the status requests from my new server, therefore the new server doesn’t know it’s missing data and isn’t trying to backfill. This means the problem is actually with the old server.” This post will also describe how to identify a few of the most common replication problems. Before I get into the details of troubleshooting, I want to give an overview of my general approach to these issues. (more)
We've just announced open federation for the Google Talk service. What does that mean, you might be wondering. No, it has nothing to do with Star Trek. "Open federation" is technical jargon for when people on different services can talk to each other. For example, email is a federated system. You might have a .edu address and I have a Gmail address, but you and I can still exchange email. The same for the phone: there's nothing that prevents Cingular users from talking to Sprint users.
Unfortunately, this is not the case with many IM and Internet voice calling services today. You can only talk to people on the particular service you have an account on (so you need an account on every service to talk to everybody, which is pretty cumbersome). With open federation, you get to choose your service provider and you can talk to people on any other federated service (and vice versa). (more)
Microsoft's forthcoming Internet Explorer (IE) 7 browser will have a thorough flush feature that clears its history and all associated files stored after a Web site is accessed. In IE 6, a user has to spend lots of time trying to expunge the information stored after a Web site has been visited, wrote Uche Enuha, a program manager on the IE user experience team, on the company's browser blog on Thursday.
The new "delete browsing history" feature under the "tools" menu will be able to wipe out five major data categories, including temporary Internet files, cookies, history, form data, and passwords, Enuha wrote. A user can delete all of those at once or can individually choose which ones to wipe through the "delete browsing history" panel, Enuha wrote.
Windows Vienna is the new codename for Windows Blackcomb the successor to Windows Vista.
Not much is known about Blackcomb officially and Microsoft is not ready to talk about it yet. However, Microsoft's blogging guru, Robert Scoble confirmed in a thread reply to a channel 9 video, "since this video was shot the codename for Blackcomb has indeed changed to Vienna. I haven't gotten the story on this yet, though."
While Windows Vista is intended to be a technologies-based release, with some UI changes (in the form of the Aero set of technologies and guidelines), Vienna is targeted directly at revolutionizing the way we interact with our home and office PCs.(continue at source)
A year after first disclosing its internal “Project Elixir,” Microsoft has begun releasing sample code and documentation so that developers can use it as a pattern to design their own integrated front-end and back-end systems around Outlook 2003.
“Project Elixir uses Microsoft Office 2003 as the development platform and Microsoft Outlook as the familiar user interface to make data in its back-end systems more accessible to the company’s sales force,” a company spokesperson said.(continue at source)
Steven Bink reports that Windows XP SP3 will not be available this year but in 2007.
Last year in April, Ballmer said windows XP sp3 would ship before "Longhorn" comes out. Now it will be a year later: 2nd half or 2007!!
Steven also reports that strangely SP2 for Windows Server 2003 is scheduled for 2nd half of 2006. (continue at source)
The Windows Server 2003 R2 Administration Tools Pack provides server management tools that allow administrators to remotely manage computers running the Windows Server 2003 R2 family of operating systems.
These packages contain management consoles for Print Management, File Server Resource Manager, Distributed File System, and Identity Management for Unix. Additionally, the Print Management tool enables remote administration of computers running the Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems. These management consoles are supplemental to the tools included in the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Administration Tools Pack.
One thing to note is that you must first install the MMC 3.0 Administration Tools Pack before installing the Windows Server 2003 R2 tools.
Download the Windows Server 2003 R2 Administration Tools Pack x86 | x64
Advertisers pay top dollar to place products in popular television shows and movies.
Now, Microsoft is hoping to expand on the concept with a new technology that allows viewers to click on cars, clothing or other products that appear in online movies or TV shows. For example, viewers of "Sex and the City" could click on Carrie Bradshaw's designer shoes or Kamali sweaters as she walks down a New York street and immediately be transported to advertisements for those products.
"Until now, there is no way for the user to actually interact with these ads in the video," said Microsoft data-mining analyst Li Li, who was showing off the technology as part of the company's annual adCenter Demo Fest Thursday.(continue at source)
Nice tip from Robert Scoble:
One thing that is a pain is on many phones looking at a full Web page is painful. MSN has a neat little search feature that lets you look at a Web site reformatted specifically for viewing on a phone. Just go to MSN Mobile Search, put in the site’s URL that you want to visit, and click “mobile” next to the result.
Go to the MSN Mobile Search Page
MSExchange.org writes: "In this article we’ll take an in-depth look at the new Public Folder improvements included in Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2). The biggest as well as most notable improvement in Exchange 2003 SP2 is without discussion the new Public Folder Settings Wizard, which was specifically made in order to make administration of Public Folders more efficient. The primary reason here was to eliminate the high number of support calls Microsoft Support Services received on Public Folder issues. The Public Folder Settings Wizard in Exchange 2003 SP2 replaces the old Propagate Settings with a new Manage Settings context menu command." (more)
How would you like it if the contacts you are talking to could hear the same music you are currently listening to? Well that’s what Leah from the Live Messenger development team wanted, so thanks to her idea, in an upcoming refresh build of Live Messenger we will have a new feature called “MUSIC MIX.”
It will allow both contacts who are messaging to listen to the same play list simultaneously. If you were to pause, skip, or change the track on the list the other contact will also receive the same change. Also for those of you using WLM, this feature will be available soon.
Anyone who's ever tried to browse the web on their cell phone knows that it isn't always the best user experience. That's why I'm excited to tell you about Google Mobile Personalized Home. We've designed a way for you to view the things that you really care about, from your Gmail inbox to news headlines, weather, stock quotes, and feeds (Atom or RSS). The interface is optimized for small screens, and we've arranged things so you don't have to click on a bunch of links to locate what you're after -– your personalized content appears on top, right where it should be.
Google Mobile Personalized Home
There are some shortcuts that you simply discover by accident! Like the dreaded CTRL+ENTER shortcut which many people unwittingly discover sends your email before you've finished typing it! I've blogged about a fix to that little problem here. But here's a shortcut that I only just discovered, completely by accident, while reading an email and fiddling with my mouse.
If you've got one of those mouses (I think that's the correct plural of computer mouse) with a roller wheel on it you can change the magnification factor while editing an email in its own pane. To do this, just hold down the CTRL key and roll your mouse wheel down (for zoom in) or up (for zoom out) while editing your email. I guess this only works if you use Word as your email editor and have the right mouse drivers installed. This little shortcut also works in lots of other applications. Try it here in your internet browser and see what happens!
By now many of you have heard that Symantec released a security advisory last Tuesday that reported its use of rootkit-like cloaking technology in its SystemWorks product. The Symantec use of rootkit-like cloaking raises the question of what exactly defines a “rootkit” and whether or not there is ever a justifiable reason to use cloaking. I’ll first describe Symantec’s cloaking and then I’ll move on to trying to answer these two questions.
SystemWorks includes a feature called Norton Protected Recycle Bin that serves as an extension of the standard Windows Recycle Bin, saving copies of deleted files that the standard Recycle Bin doesn’t capture such as those deleted by applications. The saved files store in a directory named NPROTECT that SystemWorks creates under the standard Windows Recycle Bin directory, RECYCLER, of each volume. Symantec was originally concerned that end-users might stumble across the directory, not realize its purpose, and inadvertently permanently delete the backups of their already deleted files. The cloaking therefore uses a file system filter driver to mask the presence the NPROTECT directories from Windows directory enumeration APIs. (more)
Performances are the greatest concerns CIO/CTO usually have approaching virtualization. You surely would compare a virtual machine performance against a physical server, but you could also be in need of exploring how different virtualization technologies perform.
The first aspect you should test is I/O performances: physical raw partitions, proprietary filesystems, remoted SANs systems, local virtual IDE or SCSI disk subsystem. All of these configurations should be tested and compared with each other and against physical machines I/O performances. Another second aspect you could test is network performances since virtual network adapters devices can handle traffic in different ways and be more or less efficient. (more)
A remote code execution security issue has been identified in the Graphics Rendering Engine that could allow an attacker to remotely compromise your Windows-based system and gain control over it.
Windows Vista Beta 1: x86 | x64
Windows Vista December CTP: x86 | x64
Microsoft launched this week the beta of its Chinese search engine, offering desktop and Web page searches. The move comes at a time when Microsoft Research Asia is in ongoing discussions with Yahoo Research about enhancing their respective search capabilities to better compete with Google. Baidu.com, in which Google owns a 2.6 percent stake, is currently the largest Chinese search engine. Microsoft launched MSN China in May of last year, a joint venture between MSN and Shanghai Alliance Investment Ltd. (more)
Late this year, Microsoft announced a name change for Windows Antispyware - now called Windows Defender. Windows Defender will become available to users of Windows XP SP2 and will be built into the next version of Windows - Windows Vista. Users got their first peak at Windows Defender with the December CTP of Windows Vista, Build 5270.
Screenshot: Introducing Windows Defender
As you can see in the above screenshot, Windows Defe 
