How did it feel to beat Google?

Every time I pass the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View, I'm amused and amazed that a Microsoft campus is in close proximity to Yahoo, Google, and other Silicon Valley bellwethers. The talent here is amazing!

If you haven't done so already, check out BingTweets, which fuses Bing's search results and real-time content from Twitter.

The San Jose Mercury News carried an interesting story over the weekend about how Bing's Silicon Valley-based team beat search engine giant Google to real-time search. Interestingly, Microsoft engineers Chad Carson and Eric Scheel, and their boss Sean Suchter— formerly VP of Search at Yahoo, planned it all aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 321 enroute to Seattle. The new search team at the Silicon Valley campus includes heavyweights like database expert and former IBMer Ashok K. Chandra— "a professorial presence who sounds like a poet when he compares creating computer algorithms to the view from the summit of Mount Whitney", and Shubha Nabar, a "newly-minted" Ph. D. from Stanford.

Excerpt:

By the time Flight 321 was over Oregon, the group in Row 6 had evolved from a technology klatch to a cabal of plotters who scrawled a schematic tangle of boxes on a sheet of paper to map out something no big Internet search engine had yet achieved. The three members of Microsoft's new Silicon Valley search team would try to make their company's Bing a window into America's stream of consciousness, serving up the chatter on Twitter and blog posts, with the latest updates on everything from celebrity gossip to breaking news.

Another interesting factoid many here in Silicon Valley may relate to— the plan didn't involve a PowerPoint.

The afternoon of the Seattle flight, Suchter stood before his boss in Redmond, Harry Shum, and pulled the dog-eared sheet of paper from his back pocket. This, Suchter told Shum, handing him the marked-up page, is what the team wants to do.

"I know I've got to get worried when you're giving me your plans drawn on a piece of paper and not in PowerPoint," Shum said. But he approved the effort.

When asked how it felt to beat Google, Suchter responds:

That was fun— retroactively. We didn't know we were going to catch them. We kind of though we would, but who knew?

More in Microsoft's Challenge: 90 days to beat Google on mercurynews.com.

Gmail discovers benefits of SSL, defaults to HTTPS

Google seems to have discovered the benefits of using SSL to encrypt HTTP traffic. In a blog post on the Gmail blog, Engineering Director Sam Schillace explains that Google has finally started valuing security over latency, and enabled HTTPS by default.

Gmail has always been using SSL to encrypt the authentication credentials sent from the login page. However, past the login page and accessing messages, all communication has been in the clear. Users have been accessing their messages over an unencrypted session. Users could choose to use SSL for the entire session, but since encryption would make Gmail slower, Gmail did not use it by default.

The latest change means the entire session will be encrypted by default.

If you haven't enabled SSL for the entire session before, you may see more latency when accessing Gmail. Encrypting data requires more resources. As Schillace comments in the post:

Over the last few months, we've been researching the security/latency tradeoff and decided that turning https on for everyone was the right thing to do.

To Gmail's credit, it's the only free web email provider that appears to be offering the use of SSL for the entire session. Microsoft's Live Mail and Yahoo Mail offer SSL-encrypted login pages, but there's no option to use SSL for the entire session. It's about time they follow suit.

Microsoft and Research in Motion announce full BES support for Exchange 2010

Microsoft and Research in Motion have just announced full BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) support for Exchange 2010 - the earliest customers have been able to deploy BlackBerry smartphones with a new Exchange release— ever.

You'll need the just-released Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2010, Exchange Server MAPI Client v6.5.8147, and BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.01 Maintenance Release 1 (MR1).

More from Paul Bowden in BlackBerry Enterprise Server fully supported on Exchange 2010 on the Exchange team blog.

Prevx Apologizes: So-Called Windows 'Black Screen' not caused by Windows Update

Interestingly, after reporting last Friday 'Black Screen woes could affect millions on Windows 7, Vista and XP', and causing a furor amongst IT pros, users and the media, Prevx apologized for claiming a patch applied by Windows Update was the cause of the so-called 'Black Screen of Death'.

In last week's post, Prevx stated:

If you Google Black Screen then you will find a whopping 80 Million plus results, mostly dominated by people searching for a fix to this problem. Thousands of users have resorted to reloading Windows as a last ditch effort to fix the problem, avoid that at all cost. We hope we can help a good many of you avoid the need to reload.

Clicking on the link provided in Prevx's blog post, and the search results are nowhere close to the "whopping 80 Million plus results" Prevx claimed in its blog post. In fact, the number is inflated by almost 100%, and there's a good chance it's not 40 million users facing the issue, or even 20, 10, or 1 million.



On Monday (11/30), Microsoft said it is investigating the issue. A Microsoft representative also said:

Based on our investigation so far we can say that we're not seeing this as an issue from our support organization. The issues as described also do not match any known issues that have been documented in the security bulletins or (knowledge base) articles."

On Tuesday (12/1), Microsoft's Security Response Communications lead Chris Budd said in a statement:

The company has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports.

Microsoft also said it had not been contacted by Prevx before going public with the issue. More in Microsoft: November security updates are fine on News.com.

Prevx backtracked in a follow-up post yesterday (12/1):

Having narrowed down a specific trigger for this condition we've done quite a bit of testing and re-testing on the recent Windows patches including KB976098 and KB915597 as referred to in our previous blog. Since more specifically narrowing down the cause we have been able to exonerate these patches from being a contributory factor.

Prevx apologized for the faux pax. However, its original post and the follow-up apology says nothing about informing Microsoft about a potential issue caused by a patch.

Tempting as it is to rush to blog and tweet about a critical bug or security issue one may have discovered, the responsible behavior is to contact the vendor, report the issue and request or even demand an investigation and a fix. As a customer you have every right to do so, and depending on the severity and impact of an issue, expect a fix within a reasonable time frame. If the vendor does not investigate or provide any explanation, go public.

This is not to say that the "black screen" issue many users may have been facing isn't real, but it's no excuse for insufficient testing, irresponsible reporting, and inflating the impact (quite dramatically in this case).

Office 2010 Beta: Outlook 2010 Shines

Now that Office 2010 Beta is officially available for download to TechNet and MSDN subscribers, here's a quick shout out to the Outlook team for what's shaping up to be an excellent, super-impressive, fabulous new release of Microsoft Outlook!

I've always preferred web-based apps, including Outlook Web Access (OWA) in the past, and Outlook Web App (still OWA!) in Exchange 2010. Like most IT pros, I use many different computers during the course of a day - laptops, desktops, servers, virtual machines, and RDP sessions. OWA is a natural fit for this type of usage.

But Outlook 2010 has won me over for its user experience, features, and user experience (in that order). Web-based e-mail apps/providers, with the exception of OWA 2010 of course, do not provide a comparable experience, and although a lot of emailing is now done on "Exchange ActiveSync-capable" mobile devices, if you have to use email on a real computer, there's no better way to email than Outlook 2010.

Want to check out how cool Outlook 2010 is? There's a video for that. Play it full screen to clearly see Outlook 2010 quick demos.

Exchange Server 2010 Released

Microsoft announced the release of Exchange Server 2010 today at Microsoft TechEd 2009 in Berlin. The release marks the first version of Exchange Server designed for the cloud, and provides customers the option of deploying it on-premises— the way Exchange Server has always been deployed, or use it as a service hosted by Microsoft, or a combination of the two.

Exchange Server CVP Rajesh Jha posts on the Exchange team blog:

This has been an incredible engineering endeavor that no one else in the industry comes close to delivering. Today, we've successfully scaled Exchange 2010 to more than 15 million Outlook Live accounts around the world and, moving forward, to millions more with Exchange Online. Our promise to deliver a seamless Exchange experience on premises with the server, in the cloud as a service or a combination of the two truly gives customers choice and peace of mind.

More in Exchange Server 2010 is now available worldwide! on the Exchange team blog.

Want to take Exchange 2010 for a test drive? Microsoft provides multiple ways for trying Exchange 2010. You can try Exchange 2010 by downloading the 120-day trial, or the pre-configured virtual machine for use with Windows 2008 Hyper-V. You can also experience Exchange 2010 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2 free for 60-days by signing up for the Unified Communications Virtual Experience.

Exchange Server 2010 120-day Trial: Build 14.00.0639.021
Exchange 2010 Release Candidate VHD: Exchange Server 2010 VHD image: This is a pre-configured VHD image which gets you started on your Exchange 2010 evaluation quickly without having to setup everything from scratch. Requires Windows 2008 Hyper-V.

Some links to get you started on the road to Exchange 2010:

• Overview | What's New | Documentation
  
• Licensing: On-Premise Licensing for Exchange Server 2010
  
• Pricing | Licensing & Pricing FAQ | Purchasing Options
  
• Exchange 2010 Forum
  

Windows 2008 R2 Support Coming for Exchange 2007

Exchange 2007 will be supported on Windows Server 2008 R2, Kevin Allison, GM Exchange Customer Experience, posted on the Exchange team blog today. With the general availability of Exchange 2010 just around the corner, Microsoft had earlier decided not to update Exchange 2007 to support its latest server operating system. Exchange 2007 is supported on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, and Windows Server 2008. This change in course is a result of customer feedback.

An update to Exchange 2007 will be released some time next year to enable full support for Windows Server 2008 R2. More in Supporting Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2 on the Exchange team blog.

Another Gmail Outage

After a widespread outage earlier this month, Google's Gmail web-based email service is reporting yet another outage today— this time affecting only "a small subset of users". More from Stephen Shankland in Gmail outage hits 'small subset of users'.

Gmail Outages And Cloud Availability

Google's Gmail service had yet another widespread outage on Tuesday at 12:30 PM which lasted more than 3 hours between 100 minutes (according to Google) to 2 ½ hours (according to PC World). News of the outage quickly spread like a wildfire on social media networks, where it quickly earned the epitaph of Gfail. A great day for Twitter and Facebook! Even by Google's own account, it was a "big deal".

Google's Ben Treynor, VP Engineering and Site Reliability Czar, apologized for the outage in a blog post on the Gmail blog, and explained the technical details of what caused it. I like his well-crafted response for most part, and although he calls it as it is ("Gmail's web interface had a widespread outage..."), when your web interface is the primary or only interface used by most customers to access your service, for customers the service is down.

With each outage, I've reminded myself that in spite of the best efforts of system and service architects to build as much high availability and quick recovery mechanisms in place, outages do occur— just as they do in your on-premise systems and services, and that there's nothing to be alarmed about unless it forms a pattern.

The latest outage, and the reported reason for it— a capacity miscalculation according to News.com's Tom Krazit, makes me a little uncomfortable. I use Gmail (there, I said it... just as I use Hotmail/Live, Yahoo!, several flavors of Exchange Server, and other POP/IMAP-based messaging systems), but using it as the primary email system for business, even for free, would be a difficult decision.

As organizations consider the move to the cloud, high availability is one of the many factors that must be carefully considered, and the potential of widespread loss of productivity must be factored in when calculating the cost savings. Additionally, if you rely on a cloud-based e-mail service, an outage like this also brings to a standstill the frantic e-mail and collaboration activity that goes on inside an organization that's dependent on e-mail. What adds to further loss of productivity is the fact that most users using a web-based e-mail service do not have a local copy of their data. Gmail, and other web-based e-mail providers do provide access to e-mail accounts using POP/IMAP e-mail clients, which allows you to download messages to your computer. But when was the last time you used a POP/IMAP client to access your web-based e-mail service?

To make the situation worse, if you depend on the same cloud-based service for your productivity apps such as word processing, spreadsheets, etc., you may as well have taken the day (or at least the few hours) off. Nik Curilovic reports in Gmail Now Really Down - Can I Get My Email Back Please (Update: Its Back) on TechCrunch.com:

I use Apps For Domain for everything - my contacts, my email, my todo list, my chat, my documents and more recently, my phone. As soon as it went down, I noticed in less than a second. I am now completely stuck, after a few months of being impressed by how I was able to run my entire life on Google.

Gmail is covered by the Google Apps SLA, which promises an uptime of 99.9%. Going by the proverbial "Nines of High Availability" calculation you've no doubt heard many times over in high availability presentations, three nines (or 99.9% up time) allows approximately 8.76 hours of unplanned down-time in a year. Yesterday's outage consumed more than one third of that.

Gmail's Site Reliability Manager, Acacio Cruz, says in a Current Gmail Outage post on the official Google blog:

Obviously we’re never happy when outages occur, but we would like to stress that this is an unusual occurrence.

PC World's JR Raphael notes:

While "frequent" would probably be an exaggeration when it comes to describing Gmail outages, "unusual" might be missing the mark by a hair, too.

Raphael chronicles Gmail outages in Gmail Outage Marks Sixth Downtime in Eight Months.

The total downtime, as stated by Raphael in the above article, is approximately 71 hours or more! The three longest outages lasted 30 hours, 24 hours, and 15 hours respectively. Yesterday's outage was world-wide.

To Gmail's defense, with the highly distributed nature of web-based services that have a global reach and are likely spread over many data centers in different parts of the world, a single user wouldn't have been affected by all outages. But it's an alarming number nevertheless. If you were affected by all the outages, it would translate to less than 99% availability (99.97% availability allows you little over one day of downtime), a figure most organizations wouldn't be comfortable with. On the flip side, Google would've rewarded you with 7 days of free service, "at no charge to customer" according to the Google Apps SLA— if you notify Google within 30 days from the time you become eligible for the credit.

If your organization require a higher SLA for its messaging system, and you've deployed high availability configurations to achieve higher uptime, this cloud clearly isn't for you.

How does Gmail's SLA and uptime stack up against your organization's internal SLA for e-mail? Will your users be satisfied with Gmail's report card?

Exchange 2007 SP2 Released, Adds PowerShell v2 and Exchange 2010 Support

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 is now available for download. SP2 adds support for Windows Powershell v2, and allows coexistence with Exchange Server 2010.

SP2 also adds support for VSS backups of Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008. More in Details of Exchange 2007 SP2 in-box backup when running on Windows Server 2008 on the Exchange team blog.

There's also support for monitoring named properties. For background, see Jason Nelson's post Named Properties, X-Headers, and You. As Jason notes in Named Properties, Round 2: What lies Ahead

(In SP2) ...No x-headers are ever promoted to individual properties if a client has not already requested (and mapped) them.

Finally, head over to Service Pack 2 Preview: Get-NamedProperty for more details on how to use Get-NamedProperty.

Exchange 2007 SP2 updates the Active Directory schema. Details of schema changes, including new attributes and classes, and modifications to existing ones can be found in Active Directory Schema Changes (SP2).

Note, once you install SP2, you cannot uninstall it without uninstalling Exchange 2007 from the server.

Microsoft recommends upgrading Exchange 2007 servers in the following order:

1. Client Access Servers (CAS)
   
2. Unified Message (UM) servers
   
3. Hub Transport servers
   
4. Edge Transport servers
   
5. Mailbox servers

More details and important deployment considerations in Exchange 2007 SP2 Release Notes.

Released: Exchange 2010 Release Candidate

Microsoft has released Exchange 2010 Release Candidate— a feature-complete version of the next release of Exchange Server. It is available for download here. You will be able to upgrade from the Release Candidate to the RTM version, due later this year.

Looking back, Exchange has come a long way in its 14-year history. Microsoft's Michael Atalla notes in a blog post on the Exchange team blog:

When we shipped the first version of Exchange about fourteen years ago, IBM/Lotus dominated the space. According to a 2008 Ferris research report, Notes/Domino share has dwindled to a mere 10% in enterprises, while Exchange has grown to 65% market share across all organizations and continues to grow with more than 4.7M starting the switch to Exchange last year. In fact, Exchange is now is approaching $2B in annual revenues. If Exchange were a standalone business, it would be the 9th largest software company in the world. We expect that momentum to accelerate with Exchange 2010, the most compelling version yet.

More in Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate Available Today!

Exchange 2010 is a 64-bit only release— Microsoft released a 32-bit version of Exchange 2007 for testing and training, during Exchange's transition to the 64-bit platform. Not surprisingly, in-place upgrades from previous Exchange Server versions are not supported. (In-place upgrades stopped being supported from Exchange 2007, and most Exchange folks do not prefer or use this method for upgrading Exchange servers.)

There is a lot to look forward to in Exchange 2010, and end-users will enjoy the many new features. I am particularly excited about the new Outlook Web App (yes, the new OWA. Note, the acronym remains the same), the productivity-boosting conversation view that'll help users better manage their email, MailTips, the new self-help features including users' ability to track messages from OWA and manage distribution groups. There's plenty to look forward to for IT pros and organizations as well, and we'll continue to look at these new features on Exchangepedia.

The 'Catastrophic' Windows 7 bug and security vulnerability that never was

Perhaps I should've used a different headline for this post. Something like "InfoWorld's conspiracy to derail the Windows 7 product launch". But that would be giving in to exactly the temptation I want to highlight— the one many bloggers, writers, and editors fall victim to, or otherwise find hard to resist in the quest for more pageviews.

Somewhere in the blogosphere, someone reports a "critical Windows 7 bug". One tech writer sees it as a "catastrophic bug" in Windows 7 which could "derail the Windows 7 launch".

Although the writer didn't discover the bug, and I'm not quite sure if the headlines are the writer's own or the handiwork of an over-zealous editor, but the outcome is an article with a sensational headline that screams for attention— Critical Windows 7 bug risks derailing product launch.

The sub-headline is equally interesting: An apparent fatal flaw in the NTFS driver stack may bring Microsoft's Windows 7 impending victory parade to a grinding halt.

What's wrong with Windows 7? In the writer's words:

The bug in question -- a massive memory leak involving the chkdsk.exe utility -- appears when you attempt to run the program against a secondary (that is, not the boot partition) hard disk using the "/r" (read and verify all file data) parameter. The problem affects both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and is classified as a "showstopper" in that it can cause the OS to crash (Blue Screen of Death) as it runs out of physical memory.

Sounds like a serious security vulnerability, and the writer suggests it is exactly that.

Also worth considering: This command can be executed in a nonelevated context under the looser Windows 7 UAC implementation (Vista requires elevation of this command via the normal user consent dialog before continuing). Not only is this a potentially catastrophic bug from a functional standpoint, it also opens up a new attack vector for malicious code. Hackers may be able to use this unprotected command to destabilize a system (by consuming almost all available RAM), and in extreme cases, cause it to fail altogether.

As reported, Microsoft has not been able to reproduce the bug.

I waited till I actually had the RTM code, and had the time to install and try this out on a couple of computers. Not only have I not been able to reproduce the blue screen, but as you can see in the following screenshot, UAC actually does prevent you from running chkdsk! And this is plain vanilla Windows 7 RTM with no updates, hotfixes, or changes to UAC settings.


Figure 1: UAC prevents running chkdsk /r on a computer with Windows 7 RTM.

The writer's implication of this being a catastrophic bug that opens up a new attack vector is not true. The command is not "unprotected"— Windows requires an elevated prompt to run chkdsk.

I also ran the command with an elevated prompt, and failed again! Chkdsk did consume a fair amount of available memory, but nowhere close to the "massive amounts of memory" reported by the writer. Needless to say, the much feared blue screen of death (BSOD) was never encountered. (As a sidenote, I've not seen a blue screen in a long time. The last time I saw it was when I knowingly installed an unsigned driver, bypassing Windows' warnings urging me not to do so! When was the last time you saw one?)


Figure 2: Chkdsk consumes a fair amount of memory, but nowhere close to 90%. It graciously releases memory when required for other tasks.

On further testing, I also noticed that chkdsk graciously released memory when the system required it for other tasks, such as running other programs [see screenshot]. This is not very different from how Exchange Server has historically behaved as far as memory consumption goes. Some tasks require more memory, and if more memory is available, perhaps it's intended to be used at some point?

As a more-than-reasonably-technically-savvy user, I do not recollect running chkdsk more than once or twice in almost a decade. Yet, a so-called bug that can't really be reproduced easily— or reproduced at all, somehow becomes a catastrophic bug that "risks derailing product launch". Noted author and ZDNet columnist Ed Bott responds with A killer Windows 7 bug? Sorry, no. Ed explains further why this is not at all what it's made out to be.

In an unusual response, Windows division president Steven Sinofsky left a comment on the blog that reported this issue. Says Sinofsky:

While we appreciate the drama of ‘critical bug' and then the pickup of ‘showstopper' that I've seen, we might take a step back and realize that this might not have that defcon level.

And as you may have guessed, that got faithfully reported by InfoWorld in Windows president tries to calm fears of critical Windows 7 bug. Yet another headline for InfoWorld, and no questions asked about who stoked the fear to begin with.

[Update: Steven Sinofsky explains how Microsoft deals with bug reports, partially in response to this issue. Read What we do with a bug report? on the Engineering Windows 7 blog.]

Having had my own brush with InfoWorld editors and writers in the past (Details in "Save XP" Campaign: InfoWorld responds, and the facts about downgrade rights), all I can say is— it saddens me to see what used to be a well-regarded technical journal for geeks (and still has some excellent experts and writers I admire) accelerate its pace towards becoming the MAD magazine of tech journalism.

Trust Thy Certificate? New SSL Vulnerabilities Revealed At BlackHat 2009

It's BlackHat time in Vegas, and I was expecting some interesting security revelations to make headlines, but not as serious as the SSL vulnerability revealed by independent security researcher Moxie Marlinspike. Moxie showed a way to intercept SSL traffic using what he calls a null-termination certificate. Reportedly, some programs terminate processing of a certificate's subject name when they come across a null character.

The implications? A certificate issued to www.paypal.com\0.thoughtcrime.org might be read as belonging to www.paypal.com. The risk isn't that users could be tricked into visiting a phishing web site— that seems pretty trivial these days. This vulnerability opens the door for more dangerous man-in-the-middle attacks that can go undetected and intercept data from supposedly secure sessions, such as those used for online banking or stock trading, amongst others.

Moxie demonstrated such a man-in-the-middle attack using code that allowed him to intercept SSL traffic undetected. What increases the risk— according to him it can be used to intercept FireFox update requests, which depend on SSL. It's not hard to guess the consequences of such a compromise. With a modified copy of FireFox and his tool, "...anytime you submit something to a site it sends me a copy", he revealed.

Are other browsers vulnerable? Yes, but not to a similar extent. It would be harder on Internet Explorer, since it uses code signing to ensure the authenticity and integrity of code.

Ready, Set, 7: Windows 7 Released To Manufacturing

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 were released to manufacturing (RTMed) today. These will become generally available on October 22nd.

IT Pros and developers with TechNet or MSDN subscriptions will be able to download the English version on August 6th, with other languages following on October 1st.

If you've been waiting to get a new computer with Windows 7 pre-installed, you may have to wait a little longer as most hardware manufacturers complete their shipping images.

UAE BlackBerry Update A Surveillance App

Unsuspecting BlackBerry customers in the UAE have been pushed out a surveillance app disguised as a BlackBerry update by telco Etisalat. Rather than improve BlackBerry handheld performance, the update emails received messages back to a central server! After downloading the app developed by Milpitas, CA-based SS8, a provider of communications intercept and surveillance solutions, users reported significantly reduced battery life, poor reception and in some cases, handsets stopped working altogether.

The telco in question calls it a "slight technical fault", saying that the "upgrades were required for service enhancements".

BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion said that it did not authorize the software installation and "was not involved in any way in the testing, promotion or distribution of this software application."

"Independent sources have concluded that it is possible that the installed software could ... enable unauthorized access to private or confidential information stored on the user's smart phone,' it said in a statement.

More in RIM Warns Update Has Spyware on WSJ.com.

Macs discover AutoDiscover: Exchange Server Support in Snow Leopard

Apple's iPhone and new Mac hardware announcements are certainly going to get a lot more airplay today, but there's something Exchange users (who use Macs) will welcome. Snow Leopard, Apple's forthcoming Mac OS upgrade adds Exchange Server support to the Mac.

From Phil Schiller's keynote at Apple's WWDC 2009, the following screenshot (courtesy Engadget) shows support for Exchange 2007's AutoDiscover web service, used to automatically configure Exchange clients such as Outlook 2007, and discover other Exchange services.



Recipients in the Global Address List (GAL) show up in the Address Book.



You can also drag a contact and drop in the Calendar to schedule a meeting. Of course, Windows/Outlook users have been used to this functionality for a while.



More details as they're made public, although if you don't want to wait for Snow Leopard to arrive, take a look at Exchange Server features supported by Entourage 2008, the equivalent of Microsoft Outlook for the Mac, and a part of Office 2008 for Mac.

Microsoft responds to VMWare's FUD

Much as I love blogging, I'm quite enjoying this unannounced break the past 3 weeks or so! A lot of interesting news, events (including TechEd 2009 in L.A.) and tidbits over the past weeks, and I'm sure you've kept up with it. (Incidentally, this also happened to be the first year in a long while when I actually took a break from TechEd!) What prompted me to end my unannounced break is the rather interesting turn the VMWare FUD has taken, with Microsoft's Jeff Woolsey, Principal Group Program Manager in the Windows Server Hyper-V team actually responding to VMWare on the Virtualization team blog.

Let's take a few steps back and look at the sequence of events.

Hyper-V Wows IT Pros and Critics Alike
It's no big secret that Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization platform has wowed users and critics alike in its very first release. ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley posted a review of the pre-release Hyper-V code (by Jason Perlow):

Even though Hyper-V is still pre-1.0 code, I think Microsoft has done a bang-up job with its hypervisor, and it may just turn this Linux freak a Windows 2008 junkie for running his own personal virtualization needs. While VMWare's ESX is still superior on a number of fronts, including its aforementioned VMotion technology and its more powerful cluster management tools, Microsoft has certainly sent a major warning shot across its bow and the bows of the respective Linux vendors, as well.

More in Review: Microsoft's Hyper-V puts VMWare and Linux on notice on ZDNet.com.

InfoWorld's Randall C. Kennedy, who can never be accused of writing a kind word for Microsoft by any stretch of the imagination, calls Hyper-V a "technically sound, well-performing hypervisor..." in Test Center reveiw: Microsoft's Hyper-V does the trick.

I've been using Hyper-V myself for a while now, and given how easy it is to deploy as a server role in Windows Server 2008, or as a standalone virtualization server using Hyper-V Server 2008, I'm admittedly a big fan and excited about where this train's headed.

Scott Drummonds' Video: VMWare FUD?
Back to the VMWare episode— On May 1, 2009, a video titled "Hyper-V Crashes in Consolidated Environments" is posted on YouTube by drummonds1974. The video, which seems to have been updated since then, leads with the following text :

On April 30, 2009, Microsoft TechNet and MSDN went down.
In 2008, Microsoft announced TechNet and MSDN migration to Hyper-V.
Are these two events related?

The video shows some VMs running on Hyper-V crashing, and the mystery voice-over informs you Hyper-V is running a workload "based on VMmark". VMmark, in case you aren't already familiar with it, is an "industry-standard" virtualization benchmark— developed by VMWare.

Of course, no technical details about the particular test or the scenario are provided in the video. Towards the end, drummonds1974 quips:

.. in one of our tests, we actually got the parent partition to crash, which brought down the entire server. Here's a bluescreen of that happening...

You can't be blamed for thinking "Perhaps a childish prank by a newbie sysadmin who just learnt a new trick or two?"

The final screen of the video boldly concludes: Consolidated workloads crash Hyper-V.

The video was posted by Scott Drummonds, Technical Marketing Manager at VMWare.

Microsoft responds
Jeff Woolsey responded to the video in Hyper-V Winning Daily/VMWare FUD Reaching New Heights. Excerpt:

The poster, who doesn't appear on the video, doesn't state what company he works for or provide any context. Gee, I wonder where he works.

and

On the Hyper-V team, we run thousands of stress tests per week and the stress tests we run are far more invasive than the test in this video. So, I consulted our Hyper-V Supportability Program Manager and dug deeper. I wanted to know if we've had any Hyper-V crashes reported. Here's what I found out.

Of the 750,000 downloads, we've had 3 reports of crashes under stress and with the same error code as seen in the video bugcheck (0x00020001). The solution in all three cases was to upgrade the server BIOS which solved the problem. This can happen as hypervisors interact very closely with hardware and BIOS updates generally inlcude updated microcode for processors ofteintimes to address errata.

In case you're wondering, VMWare has had similar crashes with older BIOSes as well. Here.

Round 2: Drummonds' non-response
May 15, 2009: (The timestamp can't be correct, because Woosley's response to this post is actually dated May 9th... !) Back at VMWare, Scott Drummonds responds with Video on Hyper-V Crashes. Scott states:

..The video and descriptive text have raised more questions than answers.

Now, like me, if you watched the entire video about 5 times in an attempt to get any answers, much as you would appreciate the conciseness of Drummond's video, it was devoid of any answers. Drummonds continues to bash Hyper-V in his response:

...the run rules were violated to make Hyper-V produce its best results...

Nice!

09 May 09 09:17: Over on the Virtualization team blog, Woolsey responds with Day Two of the Scott Drummonds VMWare FUD Fiasco. Rather than quote parts of it here, I'll let you read it and come to your own conclusion.

Of course, it doesn't end here!

Round 3: VMWare Responds, Again
May 14, 2009: VMWare's Bruce Herndon responds in Setting the Record Straight on the Hyper-V Video:

I am not exactly pleased to be writing on this particular subject in a public venue...

I can't help but comment here - Herndon is not exactly pleased about responding, but apparently, posting a public video on YouTube appears to be perfectly alright.

I had hoped that this whole kerfuffle would quickly die down, but it shows little sign of abating....

You hoped? Wihtout any details forthcoming for two weeks while a colleague from product marketing amateurishly bashes a competitor's product? As Woolsey points out,

In the meantime, VMware Sales Staff emails customers and would be customers to "check out this video" and VMware senior architects Twitter to "check out this video on You Tube"

Herndon ends his post with:

In the mean time, we intend to focus on helping to build amazing rock-solid products that our competitors can’t yet imagine.

Needless to say, I'm truly amazed by the attitude and tone of VMWare's posts!

Rather than reproducing Herndon's post and commenting on every bit, I'll let you head over to the Virtualization team's response from 17 May 09 10:01: VMware FUD Fiasco Part 3....

All I can say is— it's not the VMWare I know, and certainly not the many fine folks who work at its Palo Alto headquarters (I'm super-impressed with their new campus.. every bit as cool as Google's!). Perhaps the pressure of having real competition to deal with changes things? As Jason Perlow pointed out not too long ago:

Hyper-V represents the first stage of the mass-commodization of hypervisor technology, and if this beta release is any indication, it’s going to be a rough ride ahead for Microsoft’s competitors.

Windows 7's Windows XP Mode: Removing Application Compatiblity From The Equation

Earlier yesterday, Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera revealed a secret new feature in Windows 7— Windows XP Mode (XPM). XPM allows you to run Windows XP in a virtualized session, and includes a license for Windows XP SP3. As Thurrott & Rivera's blog post says:

Windows XP Mode dramatically changes the compatibility story for Windows 7 and, we believe, has serious implications for Windows development going forward.

Interestingly, XPM does not require you to run a separate desktop with Windows XP. Applications installed in the virtual environment are published to the Windows 7 host and shortcuts placed in the host's Start menu. Users can run Windows XP applications (installed in XPM) directly and transparently in Windows 7 desktop!

All I can say is— this is super cool! And although I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, it seems application compatibility is quickly headed to be a non-issue with Windows 7.

More details in Secret No More: Revealing Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 on Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows, and screenshots in Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 Screens.

Scott Woodgate confirmed it later in Coming Soon: Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC on the Windows Blog.

Released: Exchange 2010 Beta

The word is out— the product hitherto known as E14 has hit the streets as Exchange 2010 beta! Download it here (Note: 64-bit only).

As Exchange CVP Rajesh Jha points out on the Exchange team blog (read 'Presenting Exchange 2010'), the latest and greatest version of Exchange Server is built from the ground up with Software + Services in mind, and is already being used by 5 million Outlook Live users! In case you missed it, Outlook Live is the free email service available to universities, formerly known as Exchange Labs.

The reviews are already pouring in:

• InfoWorld: Exchange 2010 beta shines
  
• eWeek: Microsoft Exchange 2010 Beta Looks Solid from Core to Cloud
  
• Slideshow: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Includes Welcome Improvements, where you can see some screenshots.

Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer: Test Exchange from outside the firewall

Exchange 2007 brought with it a number of Exchange shell cmdlets that let you test Exchange functionality (scroll down to the end of this post for a list of the test cmdlets). But how do you test Exchange services are actually available and usable from the Internet?

Have you longed for an Exchange cmdlet like Test-ExchangeConnectivity which could test your Exchange services such as Outlook Anywhere, AutoDiscover, Exchange ActiveSync, and SMTP from outside your firewall?



Now there is! Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a web-based service that lets you test Exchange functionality and availability from the Internet. Best of all— it's free!

Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer answers your Exchange operations questions, such as:

1. Can my Exchange server receive inbound Internet/SMTP email?
   
2. Can my Outlook Anywhere (aka "RPC over HTTP" in Exchange 2003) clients connect from outside the firewall?
   
3. Can my mobile users connect using Exchange ActiveSync phones/devices?
   
4. Does AutoDiscover work for Outlook 2007 clients?
   
5. Does AutoDiscover work for Exchange ActiveSync clients?
   
6. Are the certificates used for these services valid?

Head over to Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer at testexchangeconnectivity.com. More details, and a great video, in Announcing the release of Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer on the Exchange team blog.

Exchange 2007's Built-In Test Cmdlets
Here's a list of Exchange 2007 Test Cmdlets. Although these test cmdlets aren't intended to replace full-fledged monitoring software or diagnostics systems, they do allow you to test a lot of Exchange functionality quickly and easily, without having to fire up a console or browser!

1. Test-ActiveSyncConnectivity: Lets you test ActiveSync synchronization
   
2. Test-EdgeSynchronization: Test EdgeSync status of subscribed Edge Transport servers, including whether a specified recipient is synchronized
   
3. Test-ExchangeSearch: Test Exchange Search status/health for a specified server or individual mailbox.
   
4. Test-ImapConnectivity: Test IMAP functionality on a Client Access Server
   
5. Test-IPAllowListProvider: Test if an IP address is listed in an IP Allow List Provider (a DNS-based list, think of it as the opposite of an IP Block List Provider or RBL)
   
6. Test-IPBlockListProvider: Test whether an IP address is listed in an IP Block List Provider (aka RBL)
   
7. Test-Mailflow: Test mailflow, including mail submission, transport, and delivery, from the System Mailbox on an Exchange Server to another Exchange Server or specified email address
   
8. Test-MAPIConnectivity: Test MAPI connectivity to an Exchange server or a specified mailbox. A MAPI logon is performed. This test will also create a mailbox in the MDB for those freshly created/enabled mailboxes that haven't been logged on to.
   
9. Test-OutlookWebServices: Test AutoDiscover configuration for Outlook 2007.
   
10. Test-OwaConnectivity: Test connectivity to Outlook Web Access, including certificate validation.
    
11. Test-PopConnectivity: Test POP3 connectivity for a specified Client Access Server
    
12. Test-ReplicationHealth: Test the health of Continuous Replication
    
13. Test-SenderId: Test SenderID status for a specified IP Address (the sending host) and domain.
    
14. Test-ServiceHealth: Test the status of services set to start automatically.
    
15. Test-SystemHealth:
    
16. Test-WebServicesConnectivity:

Google Docs' Privacy Blunder: Shares Your Docs Without Permission

Just as I was beginning to warm up to certain kinds of cloud computing comes news of Google Docs' "privacy blunder". Google has sent a notice to a number of users notifying them that it may have inadvertently shared some of their documents with contacts who were never granted access to them. Jason Kincaid writes in TechCrunch:

According to the notice, this sharing was limited to people “with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document” - a vague statement that sounds like it could add up to quite a few people. The notice states that only text documents and presentations are affected, not spreadsheets, and provides links to each of the user’s documents that may have been shared in error.

Needless to say, information security and privacy is probably one of the biggest concerns for most organizations when considering a move to cloud services. I point this out not only because it's Google's security lapse today, but as we continue to move to more cloud-based services with different vendors, the possibility of such security incidents occurring with other service providers cannot be ignored.

More in 'Google Privacy Blunder Shares Your Docs Without Permission' on TechCrunch.com.

Revealed: Windows Mobile 6.5, Marketplace, and MyPhone Service at MWC

The moment finally arrived. At a much anticipated press conference at MWC 2009 in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft revealed Windows Mobile 6.5, the next version of Windows Mobile software that will power smartphones from many mobile headset manufacturers such as LG and HTC.

Microsoft also announced Windows Marketplace for Mobile, an app store that will provide Windows Mobile apps, and MyPhone, a service to synchronize data on your Windows Mobile phone to the web.

Did pigs fly? Exchange embraces FireFox, Safari

It was a common belief Microsoft would never support the premium Outlook Web Access (OWA) experience on web browsers other than Internet Explorer (IE). OWA Premium, as you may already know, is the feature-rich OWA. Non-IE browsers such as FireFox and Safari have been relegated to the “reach” experience of OWA Light, with a reduced feature set. When asked if Microsoft would ever support the OWA Premium experience on other browsers, the common response from the skeptics has forever been: Sure, when pigs fly.

If Microsoft licensing ActiveSync to Google (earlier this week..!) was a precursor of things to come, this year may prove to be the Year-of-the-Flying-Pig!

In a video just posted on the Exchange team blog, KC Lemson announces full browser parity in Exchange14, the next version of Exchange Server, and ExchangeLabs— the services offering already running on Exchange14. The video includes a demo of Exchange 14’s support for FireFox, and Safari, in all its premium goodness. This puts all the three popular browsers on par for accessing Exchange14 using Outlook Web Access.

ExchangeLabs, the hosted Exchange service (aka "Exchange-in-the-cloud", or the "cloud offering") Microsoft provides for free to students and alumni is now called Outlook Live. It already hosts 3.5 million mailboxes, and is now available to faculty and staff as well.

Also demoed in the video is the new Conversation view of email threads, something that's been on many users' wishlists. The ability to view an entire conversation together, being able to delete it together, and Exchange14’s implementation should make our lives more productive dealing with the ever-increasing volume of email.

Wait, that’s not all – Outlook Web Access/Outlook Live also includes integrated instant messaging, bringing email, voicemail, and instant messaging (IM) into a single client. Now you can see presence information integrated within OWA, and start a conversation from within the browser window.

To find out more and watch the video (including what may be the first-ever demo of Exchange features on a MacBook Pro :-), head over to ‘Introducing Outlook Live for schools – and cool new features for everyone’ on the Exchange team blog. Make sure you post what you think of the dramatic intro music in the video! :)

Newsweek: Could Silicon Valley become the next Detroit?

Unless we spend more on technology and science, companies like Apple, HP and IBM could be eclipsed by foreign rivals, according to this article in Newsweek. It's not the first time we've heard that, and it won't be the last— but equating Silicon Valley with the U.S. auto industry and projecting it may land in a similar state in the future should send chills down your spine even if you are not vested in the technology industry.

Prith Banerjee, Senior VP at HP and Director of HP Labs, the company's central research organization, says:

The rest of the world has been rapidly boosting spending on science and technology, while the United States has been, in effect, scaling back. There is a perfect storm headed toward our tech industry.

More in Silicon Valley’s Fork in the Road on Newsweek.com.

Google joins the Exchange ActiveSync bandwagon

Google is the latest addition in a long list of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) licensees.

In what may be one of the briefest press releases ever, Microsoft announced Google's licensing Exchange ActiveSync as "a clear acknowledgement of the innovation taking place at Microsoft". Google will use ActiveSync for its Google Sync service announced today.

After Apple's embrace of ActiveSync for its iPhone, will Google add ActiveSync support to its Android mobile phone OS? The licensing agreement announced today does not cover Android, as CNET's Ina Fried reports in Microsoft, Google in rare technology pact.

CNET's Idea of Tech News

Although otherwise very readable publications/sites, some tech media outlets increasingly come up with news that really isn't news, and certainly not worthy of publication. For instance, this item in CNET's News.com: Georgetown University bans use of Windows 7 beta

Given such media coverage, you can't be blamed for wondering: "Wow, there must be something wrong with Windows 7 to prompt Georgetown to ban it!".

The fact that it's a beta, and the title of this apparently newsworthy (according to someone at CNET) item says so, doesn't quite register.

The writer quotes Paul McDougall's report from InformationWeek. It's a practice which, as you may have noticed over the past few years, absolves the quoting reporter of any responsibility to give it a serious thought or otherwise use common sense! Needless to say, "<Blah> bans the use of Windows 7 beta" is an excellent headline, bound to result in more than its fair share of page views. It sells.

Of course, there's no debate about the underlying facts - CNET's simply reporting what's been reported by another reporter in another publication! InformationWeek's original headline beats what CNET came up with: Windows 7 Beta Flunks Out Of Georgetown! It even comes with a juicier sub-title: University's IT department nixes downloads of Microsoft's new operating system.

A look at the source
To find out what Georgetown's University Information Services (UIS) really stated in its policy, let's head to the source doc on UIS' web site:

Microsoft Corporation recently released a "beta", or "pre-release", version of its new operating system, Windows 7. However, UIS strongly discourages using it.

The UIS doc goes on to explain what a beta is, and why you shouldn't install Windows 7 beta. The doc cites Microsoft's Windows 7 web site:

Microsoft's Windows 7 Web site states emphatically that there are risks associated with installing beta version of Windows 7 and that "it's not a finished product."

The doc goes on to state UIS' policy on software support.

Not trusting my own eyes, and my reading and comprehension skills, which told me the word "ban" did not show up in the UIS doc, I also used the search feature in both Internet Explorer and FireFox. As suspected, both browsers failed to find the word "ban" in the doc!

To ensure I was well into the "beyond reasonable doubt" territory, I reached out for the dictionary (the online one @ Dictionary.com), and looked up the words discourage and ban. I am now convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that "discourages", even when prefixed with "strongly", is not the same thing as "bans".

Unfortunately, CNET isn't the only media outlet that falls to the temptation of putting headlines and page views before fair reporting. Overall, CNET continues to do a great job of reporting tech news. (I miss Brian Cooley on CNET Radio— an important part of Silicon Valley culture for many, during the tail end of the dot com boom.)

Testing beta software
Windows 7 beta continues to receive some balanced (read "favorable") coverage, even from the naysayers.

Nevertheless, there's a reason beta software is called beta, and what's OK for an engineer at Intel may not be OK for the average non-technical user at large. Although the Windows 7 beta is remarkably stable, performs well, and is "production-ready" according to many testers and reviewers, it's not a great idea to run a beta on your "production" PCs unless you're prepared to support it yourself.

If you really want to test or play with beta software, get yourself a test box, or use virtualization software to run it in a virtual machine.

Extended Email Outage At The White House

One would have thought the email woes that plagued the previous administration would be a thing of the past. Apparently not.

Members of the still-transitioning Obama team have been without email for over eight hours, thanks to a "server outage". Ironically, even the tech-savvy Obama administration is not immune to the perpetual email woes at the White House. "Yes, Virginia, the Commander-In-Chief is without email!" Or, as CNN puts it, the "Outlook Server" went down.

Every time I come across another such incident, I can't help but wonder about the state of messaging systems, archiving, high availability, and disaster recovery at the White House. The former administration has had all sorts of trouble with all of these, and it seems to have extended to the new, tech-savvy Obama administration.

What do the White House IT operations folks go through when these events take place? It's hard enough to tell a Manager, CIO or CEO of a mid-size company that the email won't be up for 8 hours, but how do you tell the President of the United States? Particularly a President who refuses to be without a BlackBerry?

On the positive side, press secretary Robert Gibbs, who apologized on live television for the email outage, thinks working the old-fashioned way in a world without email is certainly a lot less stressful:

"I haven't had a less stressful day in five years," Gibbs joked, pointing at the BlackBerry on his desk and noting that it would make a good coaster. "The president can have my BlackBerry as far as I'm concerned."

More from Michael D. Shear in E-Mail Outage Forces White House to Operate the Oldfangled Way on WashingtonPost.com.

Gartner refutes IBM's Notes marketshare claim

In a recent press release ahead of its annual LotusSphere conference, IBM claimed that Notes is narrowing the lead Microsoft Exchange has. Garnter analyst Tom Austin says:

I don't believe that in either revenue or user seat share, that IBM is closing the gap [with Microsoft]. The gap is getting bigger and bigger.

and:

IBM may be adding Notes users, but its share of the installed base is getting smaller.

Interestingly, the Gartner statistic cited by IBM from "Gartner Dataquest's most recent report from 2008" indicating a 40% share worldwide for Lotus Notes, compared to Microsoft Exchange's 48%, was for 2007 shipments according to Austin.

The statistic is gone from an updated IBM press release.

More in 'Au contraire: Exchange's lead over Notes actually 'getting bigger and bigger,' says Gartner' on Computerworld.com.

Just posted: Exchange 14 video on Exchange team blog

The first public sighting of E14, aka Exchange 14, has been reported on the Exchange team blog! KC Lemson and Jim Lucey from the product team tell you more about the exciting developments around E14 in a video.

Head over to the team blog to see Exchange 14 in action!

Switcher's Lament: CNET Editor's Case Against The Mac

It's been a fun year watching those cute Apple commercials urging you to switch to a Mac. Yes, many of us love Apple's beautifully engineered hardware, and may have fallen for the charms of an iPhone (although strictly as a case study in usability... :), but switching to the Mac OS as your primary computing platform? I'm not so sure.

Having run Windows Server 2003, Active Directory, and Exchange 2003 on a Mac Mini in the past, I've come to love the form factor. They're virtually silent and virtually invisible— great for that lone server at home. However, if you need to run a few servers, Mac Minis can quickly get very expensive. Using Hyper-V on a loaded server is more effective.

Another great application for the Mac Mini form factor - Media Center PCs, aka HTPCs. Sony's great-looking HTPCs are available in a similar form factor. They are comparable, if not more attractive than the Mac Mini. But at $1350, the VGX-TP20E/W— the cheapest of Sony's HTPCs is priced more than what you may have paid for a decent high definition television this past holiday season!

Nothing against OS X per se - it has some nice usability touches, along with its own set of quirks. However, if you're used to using Windows, switching isn't exactly as easy as those Apple commercials make it seem.

CNET Editor Rafe Needleman laments:

But I moved us to Macs to avoid this kind of hackery....after two weeks of resisting, I am dropping back to Vista on my MacBook, at least during this critical week, when I will be covering both MacWorld and CES and will have no patience for a computer that gets in my way and apps that don't work the way they should.

Interestingly, Needleman arrives at the same conclusion as I did: Apple's hardware is great for running Windows Vista. It is also overpriced for running Windows Vista. More in Switcher's lament: The case against Mac on News.com.

Over the past year or two, we've come across quite a few switchers who continue to run Windows Vista or Windows XP using Bootcamp, Parallels, or something else. Very alluring, but thanks for now! I'd rather run Windows on a real PC.

McCain Campaign Sells Loaded BlackBerry Smartphones

As part of winding down operations, the McCain-Palin campaign ended up making yet another security foible - the campaign sold 10 BlackBerry smartphones without wiping them clean. According to Fox News, the devices with confidential campaign data on them were sold for $20 each. More in McCain Campaign Sells Info-Loaded Blackberry to FOX 5 Reporter.

SeaDragon Mobile: A Microsoft app for the iPhone?

A Microsoft App for the iPhone? Yes, that's right. LiveLabs became the first group within Microsoft to launch an application for the iPhone. It's called SeaDragon Mobile. It's available on Apple's AppStore. More on LiveLabs.com.

Released: Update Rollup 5 for Exchange 2007 SP1

Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 has been released. Download it here.

As noted in previous posts, Exchange 2007 updates are cumulative and release-specific.

Fixes for the following issues are included (details in KB 953467):

• 925371 Domino Server does not see attachments in meeting requests from Exchange Server 2007
  
• 939037 By default, managed content settings apply to the root folder and all subfolders in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
  
• 949722 An Event 800 event message does not log the username of users who ran the Get-MessageTrackingLog command in an Exchange 2007 environment
  
• 949893 You cannot create a new mailbox or enable a mailbox in an Exchange Server 2007 environment on February 29, 2008
  
• 949895 Exchange Management Shell crashes (stops responding), and Event ID 1000 is logged when you perform a cross-forest migration from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007 S949895
  
• 949901 Exchange 2007 users cannot send e-mail messages to a mail-enabled public folder in a mixed Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 environment
  
• 949968 Unified Messaging does not handle the diversion header correctly in Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
  
• 950272 The formatting of a plain text message is incorrect when you print the plain text message by using Outlook Web Access in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
  
• 951267 An exception occurs in Exchange Management Console when you preview AddressList in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
  
• 951273 The received date and the received time of IMAP messages are changed to the time of migration after you migrate mailboxes to an Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1-based server
  
• 951505 You may receive an error message when you run the Update-SafeList cmdlet in an Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 mixed environment
  
• 951564 Exchange 2007 S951564 Update Rollup 5 supports the addition of new items to context menus in Outlook Web Access 2007
  
• 951710 You receive error messages or warnings when you change an Active Directory schema so that the Company property supports more than 64 characters
  
• 952097 Update Rollup 5 for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 introduces events 12003 which can be used to clarify ambiguous Event messages
  
• 952583 Japanese DBCS characters are corrupt when you reply to a message or forward a message in an Exchange Server 2007 S952583 environment
  
• 953619 A public folder conflict message cannot be delivered, and event error 1016 is logged, when the public folder name contains DBCS characters in an Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 environment
  
• 953787 You receive an error message when you try to move Exchange 2000 mailboxes or Exchange 2003 mailboxes from one forest to an Exchange 2007 server that is located in another forest by using the Move-Mailbox command
  
• 953840 Event ID 5000 occurs, and the IMAP4 service may crash, on a server that is running Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 when you use a third-party application to migrate POP3 and IMAP4 users
  
• 954036 Hidden folders or files are listed when you view a UNC file server by using OWA in an Exchange 2007 environment
  
• 954195 The task originator is not notified of task changes and task progress in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
  
• 954197 Exchange 2007 CAS cannot copy the OAB from the OAB share on Windows Server 2008-based Exchange 2007 CCR clusters
  
• 954270 Message class changes during conversion when a digitally signed Message Disposition Notification is received by a server that is running Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
  
• 954451 An appointment item cannot be opened by a CDOEX-based application if the item is saved by Exchange Web Service together with the Culture property in Exchange Server 2007
  
• 954684 You cannot use an Outlook 2007 client to display or download an attachment when you access a message that includes an inline attachment from Exchange Server 2007
  
• 954810 An Exchange 2007 room mailbox stops processing requests after the resource booking assistant receives a delegated meeting request from an Exchange 2003 user
  
• 954887 You cannot add a Mail User or a Mail Contact to the Safe Senders list in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 by using OWA client
  
• 955001 Error message when you use the IMAP protocol to send a SEARCH command that has the CHARSET argument on an Exchange 2007 server: "BAD Command Argument Error"
  
• 955196 Log files are not copied to the target server in a standby continuous replication environment in Exchange Server 2007
  
• 955429 VSS backup application causes the Information Store service to crash repeatedly on an Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1-based server
  
• 955460 The start time and the end time of a meeting request are incorrect when a delegate uses Exchange Web Service to send the request in an Exchange 2007 environment
  
• 955480 Meeting requests from external senders are displayed as Busy instead of Tentative in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
  
• 955599 Event ID 10 messages fill up the Application log on an Exchange 2007 CAS server if an Exchange Server 2003 mailbox owner makes an Exchange Web Service call
  
• 955619 A user cannot access the mailbox by using a POP client or an IMAP client through Client Access Server in an Exchange Server 2007 environmen
  
• 955741 A message stays in the Outbox, and the message is resent until it is deleted manually on Windows Mobile 6.1-based devices in an Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 CAS proxying scenario
  
• 955946 If a private message is submitted by a SMTP sender, the sender receives an NDR message from the Exchange 2007 server
  
• 955989 The SPN registration of a cluster fails, and Error event IDs 1119 and 1034 are logged in an Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 environment
  
• 956199 The last character of a user’s Chinese display name is truncated in the Offline Address Book on an Exchange 2007 server
  
• 956319 The W3wp.exe process may crash on an Exchange 2007 CAS server after you use Entourage to send a message that is larger than 48 KB
  
• 956573 Event ID 1032 is not logged in the Application log when users send e-mail messages while they are logged in to Outlook Web Access as another user in Exchange Server 2007
  
• 956582 Exchange Server 2007 Update Rollup 3 does not update the Outlook Web Access Logon.aspx file after you modify the file
  
• 956613 The W3wp.exe process intermittently stops responding and Event ID 1000 is logged in Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
  
• 956709 Some recurring meetings may be missing when you view the meetings using Outlook Web Access in Exchange Server 2007
  
• 957002 The Edgetransport.exe process may crash intermittently on a server that is running Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
  
• 957137 The reseed process is unsuccessful on the CCR passive node after you restore one full backup and two or more differential backups to the CCR active node
  
• 957813 A Non-Delivery Report is generated when you try to send a high priority message that is larger than 250 KB in an Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 environment
  
• 957978 The OAB generation is unsuccessful and Event IDs 9328 and 9373 are logged in the Application log in a Windows Server 2008-based Exchange 2007 Single-Copy cluster environment
  
• 958855 The Edge Transport service crashes repeatedly, and an event error 1000 is logged repeatedly on a server that is running Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
  
• 958856 Event ID: 7012 occurs when you search message tracking logs on an Exchange Server 2007-based server
  

Congratulations America: Electing The Tech President

Earlier tonight, as the major networks called the election and Senator John McCain gave a graceful concession speech, history was made in more ways than one. Not only did the nation elect its first African American president, it also voted for what could potentially be one of the most tech-savvy administrations ever. It's great to see a candidate aspire to be the Tech President, as the Wall Street Journal notes.

The Obama campaign executed well on several fronts. BarackObama.com was voted as the best campaign website by the Web Marketing Association. Although his technology plan is not very different from Senator McCain's plan— Senator Obama unveiled his during a visit to the Google campus in Silicon Valley almost a year ago. The McCain plan was revealed in August 2008, a few weeks before the election.

The Obama campaign made impressive use of social media— blogs, abundant online videos, YouTube, Facebook, downloadable widgets, buttons, wallpapers, etc. have been communicating the vision of a more tech-savvy candidate for a long time. Gamers who fired up Electronic Arts' Burnout Paradise on their Xbox 360 consoles were greeted with a virtual billboard by the campaign. One can't help but wonder how the Obama campaign's iPhone app contributed to building an enviable online community, and the record online campaign contributions will make an interesting case study in innovative use of technology in a political campaign.

Undoubtedly, technology has played a crucial part in this campaign. The contrasts with Senator McCain's (with the deepest respect) "self-admitted computer ignorance" is striking. It's no surprise that the Facebook generation finds a candidate who has "never felt the particular need to e-mail" less appealing than the campaign they can connect with at the touch of a cell phone icon.

Congratulations, Mr. Tech President elect!

We can hope we won't be talking about missing email in the next four years.

Microsoft TechEd 2009: Move back to 1-week format

Microsoft's premiere technical education and networking event, Microsoft TechEd 2008 was held over a 2-week period— one week for the developer audience, and the second week for IT professionals. Based on attendee feedback, TechEd reverts to the familiar 1-week format in 2009.



TechEd 2009 will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA, from May 11-15. Yes, after a year in Boston, and 3 years in Orlando, it's back to the west coast.