Microsoft Unified Communications & RTC User Group, United Kingdom

While I work for Microsoft, I am not blind to the fact that other software solutions exist and may be better or easier. There was a time when I did not use our sites for search. Live.com has improved greatly and today I experienced what I think a search engine should do - it gave me the actual answer I wanted. I received permission (we have 3 kids) to head out with a friend to see an afternoon movie. When he called I didn't know the times so I simply put <batman movie concord> into the sea... [read more]

One of my main responsibilities is managing Microsoft Consultants to work with our customers and partners in our beta/TAP programs. With both consulting and support involved each group gains product familiarity early and helps prepare their organization for when the product releases. One of the consultants was able to take his wealth of knowledge on our Edge Server roles and the challenges of configuring to be used for the purposes of creating this planning tool. One neat thing about this projec... [read more]

I love Live Mesh.  I use it to do really effective product support on both my mother and my mother in law’s PC.  I sync files into their own personal folder and use the “Connect” feature to troubleshoot issues that they have and it’s so much easier to manage their machines than just listening to them try to describe what they want to do over the phone.  So I was pleased to notice that we’ve extended the Mesh technical preview coverage to include Canada, India and Irelan... [read more]

I’ve just had a bit of fun with this quiz and thought I’d share it.  you click on photos that appeal to you according to the questions and it comes up with a fun personality quiz.  here’s mine… Wish I was a High Time Roller though – now where’s that champagne!…   Technorati Tags: Visual DNA,Personality quiz

Here’s another example of Deep Zoom and photo mosaic software that I found on Channel9.  a nice co-incidence as I found it the day that Photosynth has launched. Shame about the (rest of the)photo though as it doesn’t have universal appeal – well not to us women.  Apologies for that.  If you have an avatar on Channel 9 you might be able to find it.  And I’ve embedded the controls into the blog which is neat. Come on ladies – I’m sure we could put something interesting t... [read more]

There’s chance to get yourself a discount for Remix in the UK.  All you need to do is use this code whilst booking your place CC05Hw There’s quite a lot of topics covered at Remix if you’re a web designer or Developer.  Here are some of the session topics:  Silverlight 2 – What this rich interactive technology is and what it can deliver · Surface – Departing from Graphical User Interface to Natural User Interface and how this will effect creative UX and development · ADO.NET ... [read more]

…has been created here in the UK.  I wanted to call this blog post “The Very Useful User Group” as I think that this group will fundamentally help people with their AD challenges in their environments. So many people use AD, but use only about 10% of it’s functionality – which means products like Exchange 2007 can’t take full advantage of it.  Perhaps you aren’t aware of some of the features you can implement?  perhaps you’re not too comfortable with Group Policy, FSMO roles or... [read more]

I’m really looking forward to TechEd Australia – Jeff has really been building the momentum and has got everyone involved in the Ultimate Expert – speakers too.  You can be the Ultimate Expert too – try and beat all of the Microsoftees there – that would be fun… Have a look too at the map showing where everyone is travelling from to attend – I hope they do that at IT forum in November too.  And looking at this map makes me realise that the guys from Perth have a hell of a long jou... [read more]

Microsoft Office System Webcast: Tips and Tricks for Groove 2007, Provide Anywhere, Anytime Access to People and Information (Level 100) Tuesday, September 16, 2008 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time Paul Cannon, Workspaces Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383098&Culture=en-US Microsoft Office System Webcast: Understanding Six Key Scheduling Drivers in Project 2007 (Level 200) Tuesday, September 16, 2008 - 10:00 A... [read more]

We talk about great managers we’ve known, and great leaders too.  People that are amazing role models to us and people we aspire to emulate. I do a lot of work with the Management Excellence Community (MEC)) and the Management Excellence Leadership Team (MELT) – remember I did some video clips for the MELT last time I was in Seattle. We’ve been talking about some of the things that we think makes a good, and a great manager so I thought I’d share some tips about what I think makes a good... [read more]

Georgina has been busy working on our Calendar of events for the next few months and has published the list.  CLick on the links for more information and to register: Our Q1, early Q2 events are now all set up. Please promote where appropriate: 13 August 2008, London: Microsoft Virtualisation and Management Technologies 21 August 2008, Liverpool: Microsoft Virtualisation and Management Technologies 2 September 2008, Reading : TechNet: the Microsoft Vision for Unified Communications 9 S... [read more]

In my role I am on a distribution group with our Most Valuable Professional's (MVP), which allows us to gain valuable insight into trends with deployment problems, questions or documentation items as well they share input on future product plans to help us avoid problems based on their experience. I know a good many of these folks in person and others simply via email and blogs. Tonight I realized that I don't know enough people as Jeff Schertz shared a blog entry from one of our discussions on ... [read more]

This didn’t arrive through my Exchange account as it would have been trapped immediately as a phishing message.  This spam message (with a link to a virus) arrived on one of my old Web-based mail accounts.  Here’s a snip of the mail: 1: We don’t have an admin@Microsoft.com email address 2: lnes@hot2trot isn’t my web based email address 3: MSN Featured offers doesn’t try to get you to download IE 4: the Hyperlink points to an .exe file on a domain (Italian) where the home ... [read more]

What goes around, comes around doesn’t it?  and now I’ve been pointed to something that proves that old meets new in Technology too. Ian, my skiing buddy, who writes a blog about MOM, pointed me to Geeky girl, who now writes a blog called Electric bunnies, who blogged about Stripes (click the image for the link) which is an illusion (I love illusions) using modern technology which has exactly the same effect as really old technology in the film industry called the Zoetrope And with our l... [read more]

Just a quick post here.  I get asked quite a lot where people can download a copy of the 'Devil Does UC' videos can be downloaded from. Microsoft UC video for small screens Microsoft UC Video for big screens Microsoft Roundtable for Small Screens Microsoft Roundtable for big screens Enjoy

I never claim to know everything about certificates but I do feel I know a fair amount. In working with a customer issue we had some questions on whether the certificate would be trusted by the PIC partners given the intermediate authorities. When asking one of the partners to look I simply provided the cert we had, both in the P7b (entire certificate chain) and then an export of the specific cert as a cer file. The partner wanted an X509 text version which I didn't know how to generate so I pla... [read more]

You can keep your hard rock cafe memorabilia site and all of the other sites I’ve seen so far.  This site is an amazing use of Deep Zoom, Silverlight and mosaic generation software.  Zoom right in – right in…   All your kittehs in one place.  To make you smile on a Monday morning :) Thanks to Kevin for the find…   Technorati Tags: LOLCats,Deep Zoom,Photosynth

Deeps has published some interesting statistics about the social preferences of the TechEd Australia attendees.  They asked a few questions on the registration form and came up with some interesting statistics (the rest of the pie charts are over on Deeps’ blog) Not too many bloggers going then… Deeps, you should have asked another question – do you READ blogs? (Just to make sure we’re not talking to ourselves eh?)       Technorati Tags: TechEd Australia,TechEd

  I was nagging the team today to try and get them to complete their commitments the other day and they were querying one of the metrics I wanted them to achieve.  They thought that I’d pulled the number out of the air.  When I commented that I’d actually researched the figure, worked it out before giving it to them and jokingly remarked “Do you lot think I don’t do anything all day?” James responded that he had no idea how I managed to do everything in a day.  So here are... [read more]

This question came from our MVP's regarding the ability to prevent attendees from marking up the presentation. The presenter can do this in the following dialog. In the Attendees panel, select Permissions -

A team member shared this link (thanks Maureen) and she noted that while navigating the sight the links all referenced LCS until you go to the download section - <link> Edit August 5, 2008 - Matt McGillen has this post with what he learned about deploying the solution (overall a good blog to monitor) Edit August 8, 2008 - Giving visibility to Joachim's comment - We also describe what you need to configure on the BES server. Joachim http://unified-communications.blogspot.com

I’m a big fan of Surface and love the idea of being able to interact with a computer in this way – the idea that hotels and kiosks will have these in their public areas, so that you can browse and look around about what’s going on in the area.  2 handed click and resize is just amazing.  Have a look at the video… the idea of having the world in your hands (from 2:15 on the video) just blows me away, and the laying on of hands to bring the system back to the start reminds me of the ... [read more]

Now this is really interesting – especially if you like taking photos.  There has been an update to Deep Zoom composer which lets you upload your Deep Zoom collections to the web.  All you need is a live ID Brandon, from the Vista team (who told me about it on the Vista blog) uploaded one of his collections here (and see the space needle collection here too).  James has been going on about this for ages too. So the site I use the most when I demo, the Hardrock cafe memorabilia s... [read more]

I noticed over on the IE8 blog that they’re looking for beta testers: Wanted: IE8 Beta Testers As previously mentioned in the IE8 Beta Feedback post back in March, we have several ways to submit feedback on the IE8 Beta. Currently the only way to directly file a bug with the IE Team is to be a part of the IE8 Technical Beta program on Microsoft Connect. Beta 2 is right around the corner and we are expanding our reach!  If you wish to be a part of making IE better by contributing great b... [read more]

Chris Rothwell (Office Client PM) and I are forever arguing about which is better (in a joking way of course) ..... Outlook Web Access or Outlook client.  I of course preach the merits of OWA while he waxes lyrical' (is that right?) about the offline capable client that is Outlook. Well today I managed to use some UC technology to get one over him by IM'ing Jasmin from Inferno to 'take a pop' at him while he was on the phone to her.  Simply but affective use of multi model communicati... [read more]