The newest version of Windows Intune is now available. Sign up here for a FREE 30-day trial and test it out on up to 25 PCs! What are the some of the key new features we have added? Software Distribution: Deploy most Microsoft and third-party updates or applications to PCs nearly anywhere over the Internet to Windows Intune managed PCs. Remote Tasks: You can now easily and remotely perform the following tasks on Windows Intune managed PCs from the administration console: Full scan, Quick scan, Update Malware Definition, and Restart. Read-Only Access: You can now can give select administrators read-only access to the administration console so they can view PC information as needed, but not perform any configuration tasks if you choose to. Enhanced Reporting: You can easily create hardware reports based on new hardware filters for common hardware characteristics. Additionally, you can now create and save report parameters to make it easy and efficient to run a report again in the future. Alerts & Monitoring: You can now configure alert types to be reported according to a specified threshold, frequency, or percent of computers affected. Want to learn more about these new features and all the other updates to Windows Intune? Check out the following content: ...

TechDays Singapore2011 is getting closer - to be exact its just one week away! The team is working very hard on getting the latest and greatest bits together and install them on our demo machines but most of all looking forward to meet everyone on 13 October! Take this opportunity to explore new ideas from 18 breakout sessions, 22 hands-on-Lab topics and Ask-the-expert sessions we have put together for you. Discover new possibilities, strengthen your knowledge, learn what’s new in System Center 2012, Windows Azure platform and Windows Phone 7.5 and much more. See full schedule here. get your geek on and register HERE if you have not! remember to follow @GoSpiffy on twitter and use #SGTechDays to tweet! [caption id=“attachment_5749” align=“aligncenter” width=“587” caption=“TechDays Singapore 2011”][/caption]

Recently I presented Kinect programming in Geekcamp Singapore 2011. Here is some of the resources related to my Kinect talk. Firstly, I talked about Augmented Reality. It is about putting a virtual layer on top of physical world. Therefore, after computer gets to know about our physical world through all types of sensors, such as camera, GPS, compass, audio, it will be able to provide a virtual information layer on top of the real world. One example could be BMW Z4 campaign. By using a paper logo, you could see 3D Z4 car appear on screen and you can drive around the car using keyboard control. You can check out video below and download this cool toy here. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTUJKvXIkSU[/youtube] And here is another interesting campaign down by Lego that you could view 3D toy model by using a paper logo as well. Download demo: http://atlantis.lego.com/en-us/augmented/default.aspx Here is how Kinect works as a much more complicated sensor to help computers understand the real world. Kinect captures image stream, depth stream, audio stream to NUI library, which application could interact with. Here is a simple application I did by using Kinect SDK which you could download here. I used one of the samples presented in Kinect SDK quick starts here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/KinectSDKQuickstarts. I think this series of videos really cover all the fundamentals you should know for starting Kinect development. Lastly, I presented two Kinect hacks: - Transform into Ultraman yourself: http://code.google.com/p/kinect-ultra/ [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUG-Uvq-J-w[/youtube] - Kinect with Dragon Ball: http://code.google.com/p/kinect-kamehameha/ [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lajP7HO7ZyE[/youtube] I spent quite long time to configure this. Kinect hack is using open source driver so it will have conflicts with offical Kinect driver. And these comments are very useful for setting up: http://code.google.com/p/kinect-kamehameha/wiki/Comments. Enjoy your Kinect!

Recently I was asked few times what is the difference between virtualization and private cloud. There are distinct differences between virtualization and private cloud. They are not the same thing. Virtualization is just the first step towards private cloud. According to NIST defination, a private or public cloud should have following characteristics. These are the fundamental differences between private cloud and virtualization. On-demand self-service: the ability for a user to obtain computing resources (compute, network, storage) as needed and automatically, without interaction with other people Broad network access: the computing resources are accessible over the network and using tools widely used as thin clients and thick clients (phones, laptops, desktops, slate) Resource pooling: the computing resources are pooled together to serve different customers using a multi-tenant model. The different physical and virtual resources are assigned dynamically, based on the needs of users. This allows you to get a sense of independence from the location of resources as the end user does not have an exact idea of ??where you actually reside the resources it uses, but may indicate a high level of preferential locations Rapid elasticity: the resources can be quickly modified, often automatically, so you can quickly adapt to the waxing and waning of necessity. From an end user’s point of view, this can lead to the feeling of having unlimited resources to buy the necessary amount for the time. Measured Service: The cloud systems automatically monitor and optimize resources by exploiting the capabilities measure implemented at different levels of abstraction depending on the type of service provided. The use of resources can be controlled, measured and reported enabling the end user and service provider access to information transparently use Virtualization alone does not achieve these characteristics and does not enable efficiency. Let’s look how these cloud functionalities can be through Microsoft technologies. Base Virtualization Infrastructure The base infrastructure for private cloud is virtualization. One important thing everyone tends to take for granted is Active Directory. Active Directory provides the base for identify and security management. In the base infrastructure, there are ...

Sept 28th 2011, Windows Phone 7.5 officially launch in Singapore, with more than 500 new features and enhancements. And I just received update notification on my HTC windows Phone and finished codename MANGO update. The upgraded features are list below: - Social Network Integration - Facebook, Windows Live, Twitter, LinkedIn - Groups: you could group your closest friends, family, teammates, ping at start screen and starting to received live updates - Chatting: integrated Facebook Chat, MSN Chat. Connecting with your online friends. - IE9!!! - You could scan barcode(only US user), QR code, MS Tags in search to get information. - Amazing windows Live skydrive! Auto-sync for all my documents and back up into the cloud! - Whats my favourite feature? Maybe a girly answer for you: There is a white Windows Phone 7! Lastly for Singapore, HTC Radar and Samsung OMNIA W will be availble soon in store. Samsung OMNIA W will be priced below $498. It has been a year since the first time I got my Windows phone. And great progress!

September User Group Meeting Speaker profile: Prakash S Sawant, Microsoft Technology Solution Specialist with ten years of experience in providing database solutions; Prakash is a subject matter expert in SQL Server Migration/ Upgrade and Performance Tuning. Prakash is also an active member for the development of content and methodology for the SQL Server 2008 R2 Upgrade and Application Compatibility Testing program. He has worked with more then 100+ Lab participants across India, USA, APAC and Middle East to assess Upgrade readiness and provide guidance on Upgrades from SQL Server 2000/2005 to SQL Server 2008. He has also created and delivered trainings for Microsoft’s SQL Server support engineers from various verticals. ...

Last July 19th I had the awesome opportunity to judge for the iCreate Mobility Challenge run by NUS Computer Centre. They will be showcasing their apps this July 27th (Wed) at the NUS University Hall, Atrium, Level 1, Lee Kong Chian Wing from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM. You are all invited! Below are recorded videos of their presentations during judging (I got the links from https://ivle.nus.edu.sg/). It was hard judging these 3 teams simply because all of them are excellent! See for yourself.. ...

Date: July 28th, 2011 Time: 7:00PM – 9:00 PM Registration starts at 6:30 PM Venue: NTUC Building 22CF-12 Microsoft Office One Marina Boulevard Speaker profile: Renaud HARDUIN is ESSILOR European IT Singapore Developement Service Manager, in Singapore (ESSILOR ITSS / 38 people / 6 teams). He is in charge of Europe IT Development Team and provides support for various Business Support. Renaud is MVP on SQL/BI since 2005. Michael LABASTIDA is ESSILOR BI Technical Leader & BI Expert In charge of one of the major BI ESSILOR Project in ESSILOR ITSS. ...

I heard about Umbraco during MIX11 and was recently reminded of it when I was doing my research on CMS for Azure. What I really like was the availability of an Azure accelerator that allows you to setup Umbraco on Azure easily. Well, I’m not too sure if its just me, but the setup process wasn’t really smooth sailing, so I thought it will be helpful to share my experiences and hopefully it will help you guys who encounter similar road blocks. I highly recommend you watch this video from MIX11 to preview the entire setup process. Go on, I’ll be waiting right here when you are done ;) Welcome back, time to start cracking, download the following: ...

Apart from real time monitoring, AVICode also provides intelligent information on each of those alerts. These detailed information can be access by click on each alert and select “Click here for additional Event details” In the detailed event view, Distributed Chains shows the average total time for each page. This information helps developers to understand which page takes most of the time. Performance Counters has a timeline view for different metrics which provides more insights to the developer team. Intelligent report in AVIcode provides Summary Failure Analysis, Summary Performance Analysis, Summary user Analysis. These reports helps to identify quick wins and address application issues that can make big impact. Summary Failure Analysis – It shows the top failures of a particular application. Like below example the top 1 failure is counted for 50% of the failure of the applications. Developer team and infrastructure team may want to address that failure issue immediately and application availability can be improved. Summary Performance Analysis - Similiarly Summary Performance Analysis shows the top performance issue. As below example address the top 1 issue can address 44% of the application performance issue. Summary User Analysis – It has details on Security, Connectivity, Performance, and Failure that related to each individual user. It perticularly useful for development team to resolve issues for VIP end users.