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Don't delay, get Exchange Server 2010 SP2

Publié: décembre 5, 2011, 10:35pm CET par Joe Wilcox
If you've got Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft has Service Pack 2 fresh up on the download servers. The update is more than just bug fixes. Microsoft reaches into its goody bag and pulls out some new features.

For employees on the go, there is "mini version of Outlook Web App". Say, Microsoft, what happened to your usual acronyms -- in this case MVOOWA, which reads very Native American to me (my great-great grandma was MicMac indian). I'd prefer Outlook Mini-App or Mobile-App nomenclature, but that's just me. The browser-based service offers much of the same functionality -- calendar, contacts, email, etc. -- users expect from sibling Outlook Web Access (or is it called App now?) but tidied up for mobile devices.

Enterprises that use more than one global address list can use the new address book policies for easier setup and management. Caveat, according to Microsoft: "ABPs aren't available in Office 365. As a result, if you’re in a hybrid deployment, the entire address book will be visible to your users with cloud-based mailboxes".

For mail administrators, Microsoft "What's New?" doc reports: With Exchange 2010 SP2, you can enable a silent redirection when a Client Access server receives a client request that is better serviced by a Client Access server located in another Active Directory site. This silent redirection can also provide a single sign-on experience when forms-based authentication is enabled on each Client Access server. For more information, see Understanding Proxying and Redirection".

Before installing SP2, make sure your Exchange Server 2010 meets these prerequisites:
- Make sure that the functional level of your forest is at least Windows Server 2003, and that the schema master is running Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later. For more information about the Windows functional level, see Managing Domains and Forests.
- The full installation option of Windows Server 2008 with SP2 or later or Windows Server 2008 R2 must be used for all servers running Exchange 2010 server roles or management tools.
- For all server roles other than the Edge Transport server role, you must first join the computer to the appropriate internal Active Directory forest and domain.
Additionally, Microsoft provides system requirements.

Exchange Server 2010 SP2 is available from Microsoft's Download Center.

Photo Credit: gualtiero boffi/Shutterstock
Cure rogue touchpad contact

Publié: décembre 5, 2011, 9:25pm CET par Mark Wilson

There has been a general theme of downsizing when it comes to laptops. While this has helped to make computers more easily portable than ever before, it has also exacerbated a problem long plaguing laptop users: Rogue touchpad contact. Not everyone is an adept touch typist and for many people this means looking at the keyboard whilst typing. Should the palm of your hand stray on the touchpad, you may not notice until a large portion of text has been overwritten or typed in the wrong place. This is something that Touchpad Blocker can help you with.

A laptop should is supposed to mean freedom -- to work wherever you choose. You could pop a mouse into your laptop bag so avoid the problem of working with a touchpad, but this is just something else to remember, something else to carry around, and something else to lose. Touchpad Blocker is a free app that enables you to intercept and block accidental touchpad touches to prevent them from interfering with your typing.

This makes Touchpad Blocker different to other applications that have been designed to help with the same problem. Other programs have a tendency to allow the touchpad to be completely disabled but Touchpad Blocker does a good job of only blocking it when needed. This works by disabling the touchpad whenever the keyboard is being used and for a short period of time afterwards.

You also have the option of configuring keyboard shortcuts that can be used to disable the accidental tap detection, but a shortcut can also be used to enable or disable the touchpad altogether for times when this is more appropriate. The features of the program may sound simple, but if you have ever been frustrated by the positioning of your touchpad, this is a seriously useful tool.

You can find out more and download a free copy of the tool by paying a visit to the Touchpad Blocker review page.

Photo Credit: nito/Shutterstock
Gowalla shuts down as staff goes to Facebook

Publié: décembre 5, 2011, 8:27pm CET par Tim Conneally

Location-based social network Gowalla announced on Monday that its service is shutting down at the end of January as its team "goes to California" to join the Facebook team.

Gowalla became known as something of an also-ran against location-based social networking leader Foursquare. For a brief period of time in 2010, the two services were in close rivalry and so-called "geosocial networks" were hot topics in the startup scene.

Though the interest was high among tech early adopters, the Pew Research Center revealed that "checking in" was actually only used by 4% of the population.

Though these services have gained a little bit of traction, the Center found it was still the least popular activity among smartphone-using adults earlier this year. Because of this, many of FourSquare's competitors began to shift their focus onto different competitive areas.

Andy Miller, CEO and Co-Founder of mobile rewards card app CardStar pointed this trend out to us last February.

Miller said: "Foursquare's competitors, Brightkite, Gowalla, and so on...all those guys are pivoting, but Foursquare is staying the path, they have a long uphill battle. I mean, Facebook Places is just crushing everybody. But Foursquare, I don't think they're toast. I think they're in a pretty great niche market."

So rather than try to keep Gowalla afloat, it is shutting down entirely.

"We plan to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well. Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data," said Gowalla co-founder and CEO Josh Williams.
Microsoft's 'future of TV' isn't in my house

Publié: décembre 5, 2011, 7:33pm CET par Joe Wilcox

I need your help. For weeks, I've asked Microsoft and its PR agency for Xbox 360 and Kinect loaner for review. BetaNews never reviewed Kinect, and I surely wanted to report on the big, splashy Xbox updates coming this week. Xbox 360 and Live are getting major entertainment makeovers, and I wanted to give BetaNews readers all the juicy details. New game console isn't in my budget, and I certainly wouldn't buy one just to review an update, no matter how big.

I ask the BetaNews community to chip in and offer reaction -- even to review -- the new Xbox 360 dashboard and exciting Xbox Live services -- and companion app for Windows Phone. Even if Microsoft suddenly shipped Xbox 360 and Kinect, I would still start from behind in the review process. The dashboard update comes tomorrow. Your participation is vital to getting out information to other readers, who might be debating whether to buy Xbox 360 or another console during the holidays. Please share your experiences in comments, or email joe at betanews dot com. If you'd like to write a review, email only, please.

There are several important nuances to the December 6 updates, with voice control -- even more than what Microsoft offers now -- being top of the list from a platform perspective. Microsoft is making a big push into natural user interfaces, with Kinect being front and center. But voice control also is important and comes not long after Apple captivated some iPhone 4S owners with Siri. If you've got iPhone and Xbox 360, your reaction to both would be invaluable.

I held off reviewing Google TV 2, thinking a comparison with new Xbox television features would be better. Bonus: I'm a subscriber to AT&T U-verse, which uses Microsoft's Media Room software. Google and Microsoft are both vying for the living room, as is Apple, and then there's incumbent Sony, which distributes GTV. If you've got Apple TV or Google TV and Xbox 360/Live, please offer comparative impressions -- ideally as full review rather than something in comments.

Microsoft has amassed many TV and other entertainment partners for updates rolling out this week and beyond. The United States isn't the center of the planet, which might surprise many Americans. If you live internationally, please offer review/reaction, too. Australian Broadcasting Corp., GolTV, Mediathek/ZDF and Rogers on Demand are among the content partners coming later this month to Xbox 360 and Live.

Best recap of what's coming is the letter Marc Whitten, Xbox Live corporate veep, sent to the console community and infographic prepared by Microsoft. Whitten writes:

Dear Xbox Live Members,

Today, we’re launching a new Xbox 360 experience that connects you with your favorite entertainment and games like never before and makes finding and enjoying entertainment as simple as it should be.

It’s a vision we shared at E3 and I’d like to thank you for all of your valuable feedback along this incredible ride and share a little more about what we have in store this holiday – from Beacons, cloud storage and Facebook sharing, to our latest entertainment offerings.

Building upon our great lineup of partners, we’ve teamed up with nearly 40 of the world’s leading TV & entertainment providers to bring you an array of live and on-demand TV, movies, games, sports and music experiences. The first wave of new partners rolls out today with experiences like EPIX and TODAY (MSNBC) in the US, LOVEFiLM in the UK, Sky Go in Germany, Premium Play by (MediaSet) in Italy and Telefonica España – Movistar Imagenio in Spain. And we’ll continue to roll out more entertainment content to Xbox Live in the coming months.

Beyond entertainment, you’ll find a number of features designed to make your Xbox experience more personal, social and effortless. The dashboard has an entirely new look and feel and a completely reimagined interface that makes your entertainment accessible through simple voice commands. Now, using voice search with Bing on Xbox, you can find and play the programming you want across multiple entertainment providers without having to search for a remote control. In the mood for ‘The Office?’ Just say “Xbox, Bing, ‘The Office’”, and Xbox will display all episodes available from various entertainment apps across the console.

We’re also bringing you Beacons and Facebook sharing, further integrating social into your Xbox experience. Before jumping into an episode of ‘The Office,’ you can activate a Beacon to let your friends know that you want to play, say, “Gears of War 3”. Then, sit back and relax with the Dunder Mifflin crew. The Beacon will let you know when a Live friend is available for a round of Horde in Gears. After the game, use Facebook Sharing to tout your achievements and showcase your in-game accomplishments through direct posts.

While we’re proud of our capability to connect you remotely to the global community of more than 35 million Xbox Live members, sometimes there’s nothing like being with your friends and family. And so we’ve added cloud storage so you can access game saves and your Live profile, including achievements, from your friends’ consoles as well.

Lastly, with the ever-expanding library of content available, we realize Xbox is enjoyed by all members of the family. Rest assured that our parental controls have improved in parallel with this new content. Parents can manage their child’s console activity, sharing on social networking sites as well as regulate access to games, movies, television, and music. Additionally, the update brings enhanced navigation to Xbox 360 Family Settings to better integrate with Kinect.

We strive to continually innovate and bring meaningful experiences to each and every member of the Xbox Livecommunity. Currently, our community is already enjoying 2.1 billion hours of entertainment each month. We imagine this number will only continue to grow as you discover enhanced entertainment on Xbox this holiday that is instantly searchable, easily discoverable and enjoyable in extraordinary new ways. We hope you enjoy this new chapter in the evolution of Xbox and continue to push us to write the next.

If you're an Xbox fan and would like to let everyone know what you like (or even not) about the big dashboard and services updates, once again, please comment below or email joe at betanews dot com.
Kaspersky Lab is against SOPA: quits Business Software Alliance for supporting it

Publié: décembre 5, 2011, 6:23pm CET par Tim Conneally

Security research company and prominent antivirus software vendor Kaspersky Lab has announced its intent to withdraw from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) because of the Alliance's support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, also known as H.R. 3261).

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) are the software industry's two biggest trade groups. Since both groups have strong anti-piracy stances, neither directly opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act. Both expressed interest in working with Congress to design the law.

After the bill was introduced last October, BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman said, "As Congress continues its work on this legislation, it will be important to strike the right balance between two sets of considerations — enabling effective action against online pirates, while also ensuring the law does not impede technology innovation or the evolution of software and the Internet, which are critical engines for future economic growth. We look forward to working with Chairman Smith and his colleagues as they push this important legislation forward.”

Holleyman remained positive about the bill in a BSA blog post in late November, "The idea behind SOPA, as Chairman Smith explained at last week’s hearing, is to remove pirates’ ability to profit from their theft. We think that is the right approach as long as it is done with a fine touch."

Kaspersky Lab is a member of the BSA along with such luminaries as Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Dell, Intel, McAfee, Symantec, Sybase and more, but it is firmly against SOPA.

"Kaspersky Lab is aware of the public controversy and debates sparked by the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Kaspersky Lab is occasionally mentioned in the discussion as a member of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which supports the SOPA initiative," a statement from the security company said on Monday. "Kaspersky Lab would like to clarify that the company did not participate in the elaboration or discussion of the SOPA initiative and does not support it. Moreover, the company believes that the SOPA initiative might actually be counter-productive for the public interest, and decided to discontinue its membership in the BSA as of January 1, 2012."

Kaspersky Lab will be coming forward later today with more detailed statements about its stance on SOPA and its decision to withdraw from the BSA.

Image: Iofoto/Shutterstock
BlackBerry, Windows Phone can't catch a break

Publié: décembre 5, 2011, 5:29pm CET par Joe Wilcox

Another three-month handset report is available from comScore, and BlackBerry and Windows Phone continue their relentless declines. However, new Windows Phone 7.5 handsets shipped after the analyst firm's reporting period. True test will be the next round of data.

BlackBerry is literally in free fall, with it's share of US smartphone subscribers falling 4.5 points to 17.2 percent from the three months ending in June to the same period closing in October. That's right. Three months! A year earlier, BlackBerry share was 35.8 percent. So since October 2010, the smartphone OS cut its subscriber share in half. Quick, grab some O-negative blood, BlackBerry opened an artery!

Windows Phone's share decline is more ebb than raging rapids, losing just 0.3 points during the same three-month period, ending with 5.4 percent share. However, predecessor Windows Mobile had 9.7 percent share a year earlier and 11.8 percent in July 2010. Microsoft plugged the artery but blood loss continues.

Meanwhile, Android gains are still torrential. During the three months, share rose 4.4 points to 46.3 percent. At this pace, one half of American's smartphones will run Android by end of January. A year ago, Android share was 23.5 percent and 17 percent in July 2010.

For all the buzz about iPhone 4S, Apple smartphone share continues its slow share gains. From July to October, iPhone rose 1 point to 28.1 percent share. Still that's a healthy gain -- 3.5 points -- from a year earlier. Apple released 4S during the recording period and dropped iPhone 4 to $99 and 3GS to free (a penny some places).

Still, iPhone's modest gains don't necessarily mean equally modest sales. The number of US cellular subscribers with smartphones rose by 10 percent to 90 million during the three months. The base expands rapidly. A year earlier the number was 60.7 million.

More broadly, looking at the entire US cellular handset market, Samsung maintained its leadership position, with 25.5 percent subscriber share, but flat growth. A year earlier: 24.2 percent. So despite the popular Galaxy S II product line, Samsung's growth appears to have topped out. By comparison, fourth-ranked Apple gained 1.3 points from July to October, with 10.8 percent share. Second- and third-place LG and Motorola lost share -- 0.3 and 0.5 points, respectively, to 20.6 percent and 13.6 percent.

At the end of October 234 million Americans age 13 or older owned cell phones -- unchanged from October 2010. That's a hugely important data point. The US cellular market is saturated. Rather than adding new subscribers the base converts feature phones to smartphones.

Apple and Android fanboys can debate all they want about which is superior -- iPhone being No. 1 smartphone and generating more revenue per handset, for example. But by the subscriber numbers, there will come a point where smartphone sales dramatically slow. The platform with larger install base wins the platform wars. Unless iPhone makes hugely dramatic share gains during the holidays and over the next 6 to 8 months, Android will eclipse iOS as smartphone development platform of choice, confirming my October 2009 analysis: "iPhone can't win the smartphone wars".

Photo Credit: olly/Shutterstock
Siri humbled my Android

Publié: décembre 5, 2011, 2:04am CET par Joe Wilcox

I chuckle whenever someone in comments calls me anti-Apple. Much of what I write here derives from experience. Sometimes that works for Apple, or whatever other vendor, sometimes against it. Today, I've got a wet, smoochy kiss for iOS 5 and iPhone 4S and kick aside the head for Android and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket.

Yesterday, my daughter met up with a friend for the Toyland Parade in the North Park community of San Diego. She's a live-in-the-moment, never-think-ahead teen. (Who isn't?) So, of course, when we got in the car and I expected my girl knew the way to the meetup, she didn't. After I chided her, out came the white iPhone 4S, and she spoke: "Direction to Claire de Lune". I knew where this was going, thinking: "There's no way Siri is going to get this right".

Wrong. Within seconds, Siri's weird female robotic voice repeated the search query and Google Maps app launched showing where we were and how to get where we needed to be. I gulped, sheepishly, wondering if my Android, the aforementioned Skyrocket, could do at least as well. So, later, after dropping off my daughter and returning home, I experimented. It's really sad commentary on just how little my phone's voice-control features get used. Asking for directions brought up a Google search page with strange variations of Claire de Lune and one linking to Google Maps and another to the coffee shop website.

I repeated the experiment three times with worsening search results. Apple's Siri didn't just humble my Android's voice search capability. The natural UI technology humiliated Android. "Humiliated" is too many syllables for a headline, unfortunately. Hence, "humbled".

But the the strangest thing happened today. I repeated the exercise so I could capture a screenshot to illustrate this post. I got out the phone, tapped the microphone icon and spoke "directions to Claire de Lune". The text flashed back at me green on black (or dark grey). I tapped and got a Google Map with directions. It worked! Android got off the mat before the count reached 10 and delivered a sudden blow to Siri. Maybe, just maybe, Android voice capabilities could take on Siri.

So I asked: "What time is it in Moscow?" Google search page opened and across the top: "3:57 am Monday (MSK) - Time in Moscow, Russia". I next asked: "Where is the best price for Xbox 360?" That brought up another map and a banner ad. Map: Best Buy in Mission Valley community of San Diego. Ad: Microsoft Store, which is perhaps a kilometer farther, if that. If you count refurbished items, Best Buy has better prices than Microsoft Store. But could Android have simply picked up on "best" in the name -- and that's why I got Best Buy? So I tried: "Best price on macaroni and cheese?" That brought up a search page, where the first entry led to a mac & cheese "compare prices" page from Nextag. Cough, cough -- $70 from Neiman Marcus. Wow, everything really does cost more there.

Okay, how about: "How old is William Shatner". That popped up web page with text across top: "William Shatner age - 80 years (March 22, 1931). "What was Mark Twain's IQ?" brought up another search page with wiki.answers giving 135-140. "What was Charles Dickens' IQ?" brought up a strange selection of search results but answer nevertheless: 180. Damn, I knew he was smart. Whoa, Copernicus was only 160.

The story would be incomplete without Siri's answers. They surprised me. Firstly, I give kudos to Apple for offering the better user interface response, the robotic voice and text on screen. My daughter asked the questions. Siri spoke the correct time in Moscow but totally blew "Where is the best price for Xbox 360?" Answer: "I found 13 toy stores, 7 of them are fairly close to you. I've sorted them by rating". I skipped mac & cheese. William Shatner's age? Better than Android: "80 years 8 months 12 days".

Uh-oh. For "What was Mark Twain's IQ?" Siri brought up a comparison of movies "Mark Twain" and "IQ". Get the frak. The information filled several screens, too."IQ" released in 1994 and generated box office receipts of $26.3 million -- not exactly a blockbuster. "Mark Twain" is a 2002 film and was much longer -- 212 minutes to the other's 100 minutes.

So in the end, Android wasn't so humiliated after all. Android did at least as well, so I have to withdraw the offer for a wet, smoochy Siri kiss. But, hey, I already had written the first four graphs of the story before doing additional testing, and the headline reads so well.