technical solutions and commentary

GeekNewsCentral.com is participating in the “31 Days of the Dragon” promotion. This is a group of 31 participating web sites which are giving away the HP HDX Dragon laptop with the sponsorship of HP. Geek News Central’s participation dates are May 28 – June 4, 2008.

You can get the laptop specs, a complete listing of the 31 web sites participating, and contest details at www.31daysofthedragon.com

About Geek News Central: Host Todd Cochrane (author of “Podcasting The Do It Yourself Guide”) hosts/produces a podcast twice a week on all things geek including tech and science. The podcast is primarily consumer focused and covers a wide range of topics. Along with the podcast, news items and other commentary is posted regularly on the blog.

This week Microsoft released some limited information around Windows 7, and even created a video demo of the multi-touch feature in the OS. Unlike previous versions of the OS, which Microsoft immediately began sharing information on when development started, with Windows 7 there has been little communication.

Check out the post on the Windows Vista Blog “Communicating Windows 7” to learn why there has been close to no communication around Windows 7.

To see the first video demo on Windows 7 which features the multi-touch technology see the Windows Vista Blog post “Microsoft demonstrates Multi-touch” which is based on the demo seen at the All Things D 6 Conference.

Apple released the 10.5.3 update this week an is recommending all users update Leopard to this latest version. You can get the details and the download from Apple Support here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1141

You can get a list of all the Apple security updates here - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

• Virtualization’s Dirty Little Secrets (3 main gotcha’s)
• Three Virtualization Lessons Learned

Microsoft will be releasing Internet Explorer 8 to render content in its most standards-compliant way by default. Giving top priority to Web standards interoperability helps web developers and designers drive toward the ideal of “write once, run anywhere”, freeing up more time to innovate rather than modify content for different browsers. This also addresses several development and design pain points from previous Internet Explorer releases.

However, browsing with this default setting may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended. This creates a call to action for site owners to ensure their content will continue to display seamlessly in Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft has provided a meta-tag usable on a per-page or per-site level to maintain backwards compatibility with Internet Explorer 7. Adding this tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to render content like it did in Internet Explorer 7, without requiring any additional changes.

Site administrators should begin to get their sites ready now for broad adoption of Internet Explorer 8, as there is a planed beta release in the third quarter of 2008 targeted for all consumers. To learn more and get started, please follow the step-by-step instructions located at the following link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=120024.

Additional Resources

The following links provide additional information you may find useful:

· Internet Explorer 8 main site: http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8

· Internet Explorer Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie

· Internet Explorer Developer Center: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/default.aspx

· Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit (for web designers and developers):
   http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/default.htm

· Microsoft Interoperability Principles: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx

You have likely heard about the “Core” installation role in Windows Server 2008 which does not have a GUI, but is all command line based. This is a great role to use for branch offices, for Hyper-V servers and some other roles that are typically managed remotely.

If you want to install the server core role, but would still like a GUI for the basic configuration your in luck. Guy Teverosky wrote a GUI utility called “CoreConfigurator” that does just that. It can be downloaded from http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/files/folders/guyt/entry68860.aspx. Be aware that this is not supported by Microsoft though.

On Mobile Phones with Internet Access:

1. Go to http://m.live.com to get Web-based Live Search for Mobile devices

2. http://wls.live.com to download and install Live Search for Windows Mobile directly on your Windows Mobile device. The updated Live Search for Windows Mobile now includes voice input (beta version), gas prices, and hours of operation for businesses.

From any phone – cell phone or land-line phone:

Live Search 411.  Live Search now has a new toll-free number, users can simply dial (800) CALL-411 (800-225-5411) and say the city and state, then ask for the business or business category to hear a list of options. Users say “Connect me,” to instantly connect to the business.

The State & Local Government Talk Tuesdays series is your opportunity to view free webcasts, demos and resources (both live and on demand) to learn how similar agencies are implementing and deploying solutions that are important to you.

Upcoming Webcasts:

• May 20, 2008 - Optimizing Desktop Infrastructure for State and Local Governments
• May 27, 2008 – Digital Archiving & Records Management Solutions for your Organization
• June 3, 2008 - Microsoft Citizen Service Platform
• June 10, 2008 - Connected Health and Human Services Framework
• June 10, 2008 - Reducing Local Government IT Costs through Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
• June 17, 2008 - Software + Services and Live@gov
• June 24, 2008 - Microsoft Online Services

All webcasts are 11:00 am–12:00PM Pacific Standard Time

The complete schedule of upcoming webcasts and past recordings can be found at  http://www.microsoft.com/governmentwebcasts

If you are looking at TFS for your development team, the question of how to size the server will come up quickly. For basic guidance around server sizing for TFS 2008, take a look at the post on MSDN Blogs: TFS 2008 System Recommendations.

I ran into a problem with Excel taking a long time to open a file from Windows Explorer. If Excel is started first and a file is opened from within Excel, the file opens immediately.  This problem is unusual, but does exist on some machines. Double-clicking an Excel file to open it from within Windows Explorer, or from Outlook (Excel attachment) can take 30 seconds or more, even if its a small file size.

The first place to begin when troubleshooting this issue is the Microsoft Support article at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/211494. If this doesn’t resolve the problem, then try the steps below.

To fix the issue in Windows XP try the following:

1. Open “Windows Explorer” (explorer.exe)
2. Select “Tools” | “Folder Options…”
3. Click on the “File Types” tab
4. Select the ”XLS” file extension (Excel 97-2003 Worksheet)
5. Click “Advanced”
6. Select “Open" from the ‘Actions’ list
7. Click “Edit…”
8. In the “Application used to perform action:” field*, change the text to:
   "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE" /e "%1"

To add the XLSX file type (Excel 2007 Worksheet), repeat steps 4-8.

*Note: The double quotes are required around the path and the %1.

I have not seen this as a problem with Windows Vista. However, it could possibly be affected.