Blog:: Craig Pringle

Nick Randolph has posted that the Australians have won the Imagine Cup for 2008.

Australia took out the2008 Imagine Cup Software Design competition.  Team SOAK took on a fierce competition and came out successful - well done guys!

Well done team SOAK. A huge effort.

Check out Nick's post for a raft of phone from the final day.

I've just had a reminder of the next meeting of SWIG from my friend Derrick, who runs it.

See you all at SWIG on Tuesday for great talks, prizes and free food and drink.....

We have a great talk on preparing for your Windows 2008 MCITP exam with Ken Schaefer

Ken’s Bio - Ken Schaefer is a systems engineer consultant for global systems integrator Avanade. Avanade is a joint partnership between Microsoft and Accenture and focuses on enterprise projects across the Microsoft product stack.

Ken has worked with IIS for around 10 years, and been a Microsoft MVP for IIS since 2003. He has presented at numerous Microsoft Tech.Ed events across the US, Australia and Asia, written articles for Microsoft TechNet and spent countless hours talking about IIS at other events, user group meetings and roadshows. He was lead author for Professional IIS 7 (Wrox/Wiley) and co-author of Securing IIS 6.0 (Syngress Press)

He is currently an MCITP (Win2k8 EA), MCSE+Security, MCDBA, MCTS and holds a Masters in Business and Technology from UNSW. Ken blogs about IIS at http://adopenstatic.com/blog

I have yet to finalise the second talk but am hoping for a confirmation on a Hyper V talk!

We also have a Demo from Chris Mohan on File Server Resource Manager for Windows 2008. Have a look at Chris’s blog - http://www.chris-mohan.com/

I will send an update soon

See you on Tuesday
Derrick Buckley

Should be good. Details are:

When: Tue 15/07/2008

Where: Healey Room, AMP, 50 Bridge Street, Sydney

See you there!

As I previously mentioned I am putting together a Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) environment to enable me to rebuild my Vista machines at will. 

I now have  a Windows 2008 Server machine running inside of Virtual PC that is a self contained MDT environment.

To do this I had to configure the Server with the following services.

• Active Directory - I promoted it to a domain controller in its own domain.
• DNS - required by AD
• DHCP - to give out addresses, required by WDS.
• Windows Deployment Services (WDS) - this is an optional Windows Component you can add on Windows Server.  WDS responds to network boot PXE requests from clients and sends them a Windows Pre-installation Environment (PE) boot image.
• MDT.

There are a number of other components that MDT needs to be able to deploy anything, but it is ridiculously easy to add these in.  The main management console of MDT is the Deployment Workbench, which contains a node in the navigation pane called components.  Clicking on that shows the current install status of the various things you need and you can download and install them inside the Deployment Workbench.  Click the image below to see what this looks like.

Once all the required software is in place it is a matter of creating a distribution share, adding the OS images (which you can do by right clicking Operating Systems and selecting New..  You then just pop in the CD and follow the prompts in the wizard.) and creating a build.

Another cool thing with MDT is you can import drivers in much the same way as operating systems.  These can be added to the build so that they are inject into the image before the hardware detection takes place, so if you have more recent drivers than those included with Vista you can insert them and it will never load the older driver.  Much cleaner.

To do this you right click on the Out-of-Box drivers node in the Deployment Workbench and select New...  This will launch a driver import wizard.

You fill in a path and optionally assign one or more groups that the drivers will belong to and then click Finish.  MDT will search the directory and any sub directories and import any drivers it finds.  Also by default, when you build your boot image it will include all Network and Storage drivers so that you should have the bare requirements to perform a network install once the Windows PE image boots.

I've got my build going on the Acer laptop I've been testing against to the base OS level with no input required from me beyond pressing F12 to initiate the network boot.  Now it is time to start working on the applications.

The MDT Team has a blog - so if you want to find out more that might be a good place to start.

It is time for another round of MVP awards and some great people have been recognised by Microsoft for their tireless contributions to the technical communities. 

Sierra Modro and Matt Faulkner- both from GottaBeMobile.com have both been awarded a Tablet PC MVPs.  Welcome to the team guys - it is well deserved for both of you!

Also awarded was my good friend and colleague here in Sydney - Derrick Buckley.  Derrick runs the Sydney Windows Infrastructure User Group and was awarded as a Communications Server MVP. If you are in Sydney, head along to SWIUG some time as there is always great content there.

Great stuff from all of you - keep up the good work!

For my money UAC is a good thing Or rather it is a painful and annoying intrusion, but there is a good reason it is there. It helps to address a very real threat. But, I've often thought that it should have a way to mark an app as trusted, so it always runs as admin without prompting. Thankfully the how-to geek has a way.

Create Administrator Mode Shortcuts Without UAC Prompts in Windows Vista
One of the most talked about annoyances in Windows Vista are the UAC prompts that constantly pop up when you are trying to make system changes. It's especially irritating when you often need to run a particular tool that requires administrator mode in order to run. Thankfully there's a simple hack that you can do to create an administrator mode shortcut that doesn't prompt for UAC.

Read More...

Great tip!

One of the things that has annoyed me about the podcast functionality on the Zune is that I could not find an easy way to unsubscribe from a podcast from the device.

The post from Kevin @ jkOnTheRun about sharing and subscribing to podcasts (which I just posted about) from the device gave me an idea.

Sure enough if you press and hold the centre button on the Zune while listening to a podcast one of the options presented is unsubscribe.  Excellent.  The Gong Show for podcasts.  That is exactly what I needed.

As I just posted Motion have reached out through me to one of their customers who posted a comment here about a poor experience he had with their support.

I think it is great that Motion are paying attention.  And not just to the bloggers, but to the comments as well.  This is a very good thing. 

Often we as customers feel like we are nothing more than nameless, faceless numbers to the companies we buy products from.  When they show that they are listening and want to help it is truly gratifying.  I don't know why more companies don't keep their finger on the pulse.  Good work guys.

When I posted the other day that I was meeting with Motion's CEO, Scott Eckert, I called for questions.  One comment came from another Scott who has been less than satisfied, shall we say, with the battery life of his LE1700.  Worse, when he tried to raise the issue with Motion support he found them "terse--and unhelpful".

Good news Scott - I've been contacted by someone at Motion that wants to help you get a resolution to your issue.  They asked me to forward their details on to you so that you can contact a person who will own the issue and get it resolved.  Here's the rub - I don't have your email address as your real address was not provided with the comment.

I don't mind that at all.  I respect people's privacy.  But it does mean I can't reply to you directly.  If you email me using the link at the bottom of the left hand column of my blog pages, or leave a comment and specify your email address in the appropriate field I'll forward you the details of someone who wants to help.

Just to clarify for everyone out there - anyone who comments on my blog is asked to provide an email address.  There is no checking that it is a real address and if you choose not to provide your actual address that is fine.  However, just so you all know, if you do provide an address it will never be used by me for any purpose other than replying directly to you comment if I think that is appropriate.  I will never provide your address to any third party without your express consent.  I will never sell any email addresses (I hate spam).

The last couple of weeks have been pretty full on.  I never made it bat to CeBit after my previous post as a project I am working on ran into some issues and that demanded my full attention.

However, while I was there I talked with the guys from Motion Computing (who had a great stand at CeBit, BTW) and on Friday I got a call from the country manager here in Australia.  He tells me that Scott Eckert, the CEO of Motion Computing, is going to be in Sydney next week and asked if I would be keen to meet and talk to him.  Heck yeah!

Now it is no secret that I have long been a slate fan and that I've had a couple of Motion slates in my time.  My Motion LS800 is still one of my favourite devices and I've always wondered why there was never another in the LS line...  I've got plenty to things to talk to Scott about.  But then I'm sure some of you do as well.  So if you do have any questions, leave a comment here and I'll see what I can do.  I'm meeting Scott on Wednesday - Sydney time.

At CeBit I'll be experimenting with Windows Mobile blogging using Kevin Daly's new version of his Windows Mobile blogging app Dairist 2.

The application supports inserting images, which are uploaded to your blog on the fly straight from the device.  to make the process a little more seamless I have configured the camera on my HTC Tytn II to capture at 240x320.  I then just need to rotate the image and insert it into a post and click publish.  Very cool.  Thanks to Kevin for this great app.

I dropped into CeBit in Sydney yesterday. Here I am in front of one freakin big plasma screen from Panasonic. I will be heading back again today and tomorrow... Stay tuned.

SPAM is a pet peeve of mine.  If you manage a mail server or can influence someone who does - make sure they have configured SenderID.  For more information I refer you to a lengthy post I just put on my other blog.

To put it simply an email server that supports the SenderID framework queries a special DNS record to validate that the computer submitting an email is allowed to send for that domain.

Spread the word.

While I was at the MVP Summit in Seattle Rob Bushway invited me to do some posts on GBM. What tablet blogger could say no?

I'll be contributing over at GBM semi-regularly now, though. I'll still be maintaining this blog as well.

Rob announced this on GBM and my first post is now live. Check it out.

I just spotted this in the sidebar area on my blog:

Somehow I don't think my readers are the audience this company is aiming for!

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to see a Motion Computing F5 on stage at the keynote for Interact 2008.  It was used as part of a great demo.

There followed a great demo of the real value of UC. what was great about it was that it was not run from Office Communicator or from Outlook. It was a demo of a Point of Sale application that had been "Communications enabled" and it was run from a Tablet PC.

The demo scenario was a customer asking a staff member if they had a particular product. From their tablet pc the employee can check stock in other nearby stores.  He could then see who in the other store was online and available to take a call.

The call was then initiated from within the PoS app using the tablet's speakers & microphone. On the receiving end the incoming call had a subject indicated that the call was a stock enquiry for a particular product and the app automatically displayed info that was contextually relevant - their stock level for that product. This means that at the time the call is answered the person already knows what it is about and has the information required to help at hand. A very compelling demo.

This sort of scenario is perfect for a slate style device - which is more usable when you are standing or moving than convertible style devices. My full post on the keynote is here.

I'm sitting in a departure gate in Sydney International Airport.  I'm on my way to the US for two weeks.  First up I'll be going to San Diego (where it is warm) to attend Interact 2008. 

Then I'll be heading to Seattle (where it is not so warm) to catch up with a couple of thousand more geeks at the MVP Summit. 

Should be a great time, but as with all trips from this part of the world to - well pretty much anywhere - it starts with a long flight...  In about 24 hours I should be touching down in San Diego - albeit a bit jaded.

 Kevin Tofel points to TabletPCReview, who have the low down on a great travel accessory from Belkin.

On the run in your car with mobile devices all the live-long day? Belkin's Travel Power Adapter might be the best friend your glovebox every had based on this overview at TabletPCReview. For around $100, you get the adapter that fits in your vehicle's cigarette lighter and 11 interchangeable tips. Simply plug in your notebook or other device while you're driving and you'll be charging up your laptop on the go.

What a great accessory for the mobile geek.  I could of used this for a few long road trips in the past!