120gb Zune on the way

Monday, August 18 2008 - , - 1 comments

Well look what Long found here .  Just this weekend I was complaining (quietly…to myself…) that I was running out of room on my 80gb Zune, so maybe this is a sign.  I tend to listen to live DJ sets which can be 2-6 hours long, which as you can imagine can take up a large amount of space on the Zune.   I wonder what the “Sweet” spot really is for my collection of music and podcasts, as every time I get a larger player, I always seem to get more music.  Do I really need to have it all with me at all times anyway? The Zune Marketplace makes it almost too easy to just keep...

Is Microsoft’s Exchange the new Kleenex?

Wednesday, July 09 2008 - , - 0 comments

I hope it’s not often that one can relate a messaging platform from Microsoft, with a disposable tissue from the Kimberly-Clark company.  It appears that “Exchange” maybe making in roads into our genericized vocabulary similar to how “Kleenex”, “Coke”, and “Tivo” are used when referring to Tissues, Cola based soft drinks, and Digital Video Recorders (DVR). After reading a post on Tim Heur’s Method ~of~ Failure blog, where he mentions that Apple is using the slogan of “Exchange for the rest of us”  when referring to their latest MobileMe service, you would believe that everyone knows what...

Logging the source IP of simple LDAP binds

Thursday, May 22 2008 - , , - 0 comments

Simple bind events don't record the calling Computer as the source, but record the ADDS-DC or the ADLDS instance name, so you cannot determine where the simple bind request came from.  So if you are trying to track down where the calling machine is that is locking out a user, you cannot determine this from the event log.  However, you can tell what instance the event is taking place on if you are trying to determine which AD server is being used.   Here are some ideas that might help you track down what machine the simple bind is coming from, even if you cannot log it normally.

Help Microsoft to improve DHCP server

Wednesday, May 21 2008 - , - 0 comments

It appears the Networking team is looking for feedback on how to improve future releases of the Microsoft DHCP server role in Windows Server. For me, the first thing that comes to mind is: Add WMI support This has always been one of the "Duh" points in the whole management of network services for me. You really can't get access to DHCP server information such as scope definitions, or lease information programmatically. Sure, netsh is a great tool for doing some management tasks, or dumping configuration data to text files , but that requires parsing out of data, in an attempt to make...

Share your Zune Pass, not your Social

Wednesday, May 21 2008 - , , - 2 comments

I love the Microsoft Zune Pass, since to me it's the most economical way to discover and enjoy music.  Currently with a single Zune pass for $15 a month, you can connect 3 computers, and 3 Zune devices, with unlimited downloads of music.  It allows you to have separate music libraries on multiple profiles on a single PC, or multiple PCs. 

This is a much improved model over the Apple iTunes "Buy" model which seems to lock you in to pay more, and get less ability to consume media how you may want too.  However, with the addition of the Zune Social community some issues are apparent with sharing a Zune Pass that I think MS should rectify to promote the Zune pass.

Directory Services Debugging

Sunday, May 18 2008 - , , , , - 1 comments

While trying to troubleshoot some application issues using SSL to connect to an ADLS/ADAM instance over LDAPS, I was curious if extended logging was available.  A quick post to the ActiveDir.org mailing list provided this nugget of Active Directory goodness for future reference.

XNA 3.0 CTP and Zune on x64

Saturday, May 10 2008 - , , , - 0 comments

This morning I was excited to see a tweet that the XNA games studio 3.0 CTP is out. With the tweet, came the reminder to make sure you read the accompanying README information. So after folloing the link to the download site, I find this in the readme: 1.1.1. Zune Development Is Not Supported on 64-Bit Operating Systems The XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Preview) does not support development of games for Zune if XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Preview) is installed on a 64-bit operating system such as Windows XP Pro x64 Edition or the x64 versions of Windows Vista®. Doh! All of my home machines are running on Windows...

Transcode media for Zune

Friday, May 09 2008 - , - 4 comments

One of the features that made the original Zune stand out from the iPod product line, was the ability to transcode your media in your collection to a lower bit rate when syncing to your portable Zune device. This made it simple to have Lossless copies in your media collection kept on your PC, which are often encoded at a higher bitrate yielding larger file sizes. With the Zune80, which supports Lossless, the large files would be copied to your Zune, with no options to control how the media was encoded. When you chose these files you wish to sync to your portable device, the software would transcode...

Zune Update 2.5 on the way...

Thursday, May 08 2008 - 2 comments

It looks like Zune will be getting some spring update love this Tuesday...

Using JAVA code with Active Directory

Sunday, May 04 2008 - , , - 0 comments

I tend to run into many JAVA coded applications which are coded simply for LDAP access, but do not utilize Active Directory as well as they could be.  Here are some resources JAVA developers can utilize to create more effective integrations.