Off to Microsoft MVP Summit 2012

on February 24, 2012

It is that time of year again, to fly off to Redmond/Bellevue for a week of deep technical learning and networking with folks I only see about once every year.  This year I am not sure what to expect, although the fact that the sessions I am attending were almost immediately filled up seems to be a good sign.  More File System Storage MVPs perhaps?  I am glad for the turn out and excited to hear about the latest and after latest things that might be discussed.  Even though the content is mostly NDA, I am sure there will be lots of notes taken and ideas spinning around about them.

I saw a post from fellow MVP Stephen Foskett that does a nice job summing up the experience, although I am just a bit excited about the MVP Party at Century Link Field.  The conversation and discussions are always good so I am looking forward to it.

What’s the most exciting thing about MVP Summit

I am still going to take the easy way out here… getting a chance to network with people from all technical disciplines and learn about where Microsoft is headed via the product teams.  I am fortunate to have landed in the Storage group as my fellow MVPs and those inside Microsoft who we get to interact with have certainly taught me a lot over the past few years.  Thanks all.

The other thing I like about summit is the amount of things that I get to see or learn about that might be waaaay outside of where my organization is now and sometimes where I feel comfortable as well.

No Ballmer or other execs this year

I am not sure if this is good or bad.  Usually the executive keynote is a state of the world according to Microsoft speech. Similar to other industry events, the sponsors get a chance to give the business chat, but at summit it is a bit different in that there are things that appeal more so to technical audiences than might a handful of slides to a sales group.

I guess we will see if there is real benefit to Microsoft if the keynote returns for the long haul in 2013.

Overall this trip is a week to interact with technologists and not worry about too much else, sure there are other events I have been to and will go to again that allow this, but it is still pretty cool when the event is at Microsoft.  Somehow I am still just as surprised and excited as the first time I went out to Redmond.  Here’s to another great MVP Summit, see you in Redmond.

Filed Under: MVP Summit, Storage, Technology, Windows Server Tagged With: ,

Running Ads, Links, and Other

on February 4, 2012

I have been at this blogging thing for quite some time and have not done too much in the way of running ads on my site.  Some of that has to do with ease of use and some with nothing more than I am not sure I really want to run ads.

If I could get my hands on a solid plugin to babysit Ad Sense on my site since the prior one I had been using went the way of the Dodo bird, I might be inclined to get that online again and swing a few ads into the site.  If I run them, it isn’t for tons of cash in pocket, but to cover hosting costs and things related to the operation of the website.

Sponsors

I am not averse to sponsored links or ads by a company whose products I have used or heard of.  If I have heard of a company that asks me to include ads or content, I am confident I can learn about the items and play with them.  This way I can speak to the usefulness of the product if asked. Or at least be ok with saying that I have looked at it.

Blogging has been under a good amount of scrutiny lately about full disclosure and making sure that any money coming in from ads or sponsors is disclosed as such.

I agree with full disclosure and have posted a page to cover my disclosures for this blog and other publications I write for.  If I find that there are other smaller disclosures needed for a post or a page, they appear there as well.

Unsure of some

Recently I was approached about a link ad for this website and asked to post the content at the top of the site, as a sticky post.  This doesnt work for me because my freshest content should be at the top, not an ad that was fresh two months ago.

When I didn’t like that idea, I thought maybe placing the ad either as a text link or banner ad in the sidebar, that seemed ok, but I am still not sure I am ok with that.  The income would help pay the costs of keeping the site online, but the fact that I was asked not to denote the link as an ad is a bit of a problem for me.  It is an ad for another service, not maintained by me and in some cases not used by me.  To endorse the service or company is one thing, but to do so almost blindly just seems wrong.

After a good amount of Googling it on Bing, and swapping email with some friends aboutit, the idea of sponsored links seems like a bad idea before you even get to the fact that Google can remove a site from its listing for doing it.

For now, the ads are on hold and I will continue looking for a decent plugin for getting that back online (or decide to leave them off).

Filed Under: Other Tagged With: , , ,

Looking at going Mobile with TheAppBuilder.com

on February 3, 2012

I met with someone this morning at breakfast who works for an Irish company aimed at helping non-developer types create applications for mobile devices.  Including the iPhone.

How does it work?

You can download the application from your devices app store and an Adobe Air based application for PC or Mac from TheAppBuilder.com.  Then you start pulling in content, perhaps your twitter stream (by selecting the twitter portion within the builder and entering your username) or a feed for your blog, by selecting Feed and entering the URL to the feed you wish to fetch.

After adding some content and clicking Done, your information is pulled into the emulator (or preview app on your device).  You can customize tile names and make changes to content to get it suited to your needs all within the preview/builder app. Getting this going doesn’t cost anything.  the preview features are free, its when you go all in and publish content for mobile that you will be billed.

What is the cost?

After playing with the preview and poking around the site for a bit I found that there are three plans:

Preview – free starter plan to allow you to preview your work

Standard – the basic content plan which costs 29$ per month and includes free setup

Premium – the whole enchilada which includes developer support and other things and costs $59/month with a $499 setup fee

With the Premium service you get to create your own app store accounts and charge for your app, standard accounts cannot charge for an app.

Are you serious?  My own App?

Being a blogger for both my own amusement (this blog) and other paid publications I can see where extending your brand to a mobile environment… wait, I meant all the popular mobile environments (iPhone/iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7) could be a hugely worthwhile move.  The applications can receive content updates as soon as they are made, for example, if I am out at the Microsoft MVP Summit Reception and take a photo of someone doing a headstand for a beer (stranger things have happened) and wanted to push that out within my app, I could select it from the camera roll and off it goes.

In addition to feeds and twitter streams, you can include the following:

News – which allows you to publish events and other stories right to the mobile app

Contact – your contact information

Web – a webpage right in the app

YouTube – a YouTube Channel

Gallery – a photo gallery

All of these parts can be used for multiple items within the app, for example a feed containing this blogs content and another feed containing content from other blogs or publications I work with.  It is all very simple to get moving with and really requires no developer chops at all.  I would suggest a mobile friendly theme for your blog if you are going to use a feed, but will caution you that the emulator does not render as a mobile browser when testing.  This was the only thing that I found frustrating, other than that the app is a breeze to use.

I am considering taking myself mobile but will likely spend some time talking further with my contact at JamPot before I do.

 

Filed Under: Events, Technology, Technology Uses Tagged With: , , , ,

ReFS – a new and improved approach

on February 1, 2012

I was looking through some email today and saw a newsletter from ZDNet at the top of my inbox.  Normally these don’t get my immediate attention, but for some reason, today… it did.  There was a post from Mary Jo Foley (linked below) looking at the upcoming file system in Windows Server 8, ReFS.

I am anxious to get my hands on this file system and play with the features that it will bring to the table.  I do have the Windows 8 preview and will get into it further soon, but from what I have read and previous discussions with Microsoft this seems very very interesting.

Things I like so far:

Live.  Microsoft is working to engineer ReFS to handle corruption and corrections live, without the need to offline the file system.  This will reduce the time needed to maintain the filesystem.

Better data integrity as a whole.  Because the file system can manage and mitigate corrupt files and handle much of the repair process online, there will be less need to reboot to take care of maintenance tasks, like following check disk runs.

Checksums on metadata.  Being able to ensure a file integrity has not been compromised at will without a process run by the user is great.

Shared Storage Pooling.  This will allow storage across servers to be pooled and shared amongst them creating a load balanced configuration to allow for better resource an file availability.

I cannot say that I am surprised these changes are coming and this makes up for the Metro UI a bit for me, but I do want to see more of that is planned for ReFS and get my hands on it a bit more.  One of these days I will get another Windows laptop and get Windows 8 running on it to get a closer look at the file system and its tools.

For more information on ReFS check out these links:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/microsofts-killer-windows-server-8-feature-refs/17757

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-goes-public-with-plans-for-its-new-windows-8-file-system/11666

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/16/building-the-next-generation-file-system-for-windows-refs.aspx

Filed Under: Gestalt IT, Technet, Windows Server Tagged With: , , ,