Windows

Just before the holiday, I asked the fine folks at Microsoft Press to send me some of their Windows 7 books for me to read and review. Several days later, a huge box arrived with a half dozen books. Over the holidays I had the chance to read through two of them. Windows 7 Inside Out by Ed Bott, Carl Siechert and Craig Stinson and Plain & Simple Windows 7 by Jerry Joyce and Marianne Moon.

The first of these, Windows 7 Inside Out is a solid reference guide for IT Pros and Tech Enthusiasts alike. This book assumes you are familiar with the Windows 7 basics and dives right into the meat.

Topics covered include:

• Configure and customize your system with advanced setup options.
• Manage files, folders, and media libraries.
• Administer accounts, passwords, and logons—and help control access to resources.
• Troubleshoot errors and fine-tune performance. Monitoring system health and troubleshooting errors
• Advance Search techniques
• Deep dive into the event viewer
• Registry Editing
• Automating routine maintenance with scripts and other tools.

Included is a fully searchable eBook, “Before You Call Tech Support” reference guide, links to download gadgets, tools, blogs (like this one) and more…

If you are looking to tweak your Windows 7 system or help to support others, this book will more than cover your needs.

The second one, Plain & Simple is a great book for those IT Pros who were directly or indirectly involved with the purchase of a Windows 7 PC for someone else who is not PC savvy. (ie: You are now or have been the tech support line for Mom, Dad, Grandma, etc…) With huge photos and solid walkthroughs, Plain and Simple is a must have addition to that new PC purchase. The book covers the key areas to get you set up and running.

• Running programs and sending e-mail
• Browsing the Web and sharing your files.
• Working with digital media, including photos, music, and videos.
• Burning CDs and DVDs; make your own movies.
• Setting up printers and home groups
• Managing security settings and performing backups

The book offers easy-to-follow steps and screenshots show you exactly what to do, lots of tips to teach you new techniques and shortcuts and their TRY THIS! exercises to help you apply what you’ve learned right away. One thing for sure, this book will reduce the number of “how do I” calls you will receive from friends and family.

Even I learned a few cool new tips and tricks reading through these books. :)

For even more tips and tricks, check out our recently updated IT Pro At Home Tips and Tricks area on Springboard and look for more book reviews over the next few weeks.

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I wanted to add my thoughts to the blog following Alex’s departure from Microsoft last week, and give our readers a little bit of insight into our focus for the new year.

Alex, you’ve been a key part of Microsoft’s anti-piracy efforts for many years and I think I speak for the company in saying a heartfelt thank you for your years of service.  I personally enjoyed having you on my staff – your depth of experience and strategic insights have been invaluable, and we all extend best wishes to you in your new venture.  I’m sure we’ll cross paths many times in the future - we’re certainly not slowing down in our efforts to combat piracy, and I’m sure that is the same with you.

Looking forward, Microsoft needs to continue its leadership in fighting piracy – for its own benefit and for the industry, but most importantly for customers.  After closing out 2009 in December with a global Consumer Action Day, we kick off 2010 with our commitment to continue our fight against piracy, especially with Microsoft’s investment in its Genuine Software Initiative, which focuses efforts on three strategic areas:

• Education. Microsoft is raising awareness of customers and resellers about the risks of counterfeit software so they can better protect themselves and ensure their software licensing is in order. Microsoft websites such as How to Tell provide detailed information and examples of counterfeit software.
• Engineering. Microsoft continues to invest in anti-counterfeiting technologies and product features that protect its intellectual property and alert consumers to the presence of counterfeit software. This includes improvements in our technologies and programs such as Windows Activation Technologies for Windows 7 and Windows Vista, and Windows Genuine Advantage for Windows XP.
• Enforcement. Microsoft actively supports government officials and law enforcement agencies in taking action against software piracy. Over the past two years alone, Microsoft has received over 150,000 customer reports of counterfeit software. These reports have contributed directly to numerous civil actions that have been filed against software pirates around the globe.

During 2010, you can expect to hear from me as well as the other genuine Windows team members that regularly contribute to the blog, including Jodi Kogan and Kim Griffiths.  We’ll have some information to share in the near future about topics relating to genuine Windows, including a post about volume licensing that Kim has planned for tomorrow.

Until then!

Joe Williams
General Manager, Genuine Windows

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With the close of 2009 I posted a listing of my personal Top 10 Windows Phone applications. To close out the apps mini series I thought I would set the context for what determined the choices (probably should have done this up front), respond to several observations of the exclusion of some applications, and talk about my hopes for the upcoming 2010 Windows Phone wise.

On My 2009 Top 10 List:

I love using my Windows Phone. In daily use I am pretty evenly balanced in my use of it as a work device as well as for a mobile social media device. On the work front I require a device that is managed by our central IT organization in order to protect the sensitive data that may reside on it from time to time. I also need the device to be backed up and have its Enterprise usage be reflective of the Enterprise needs and usage patterns of my clients. I would love to focus my use and attention on cool, cutting edge only features but my professional role necessitates a device and applications that meet my daily professional work needs. Application such as Communicator which ties in to my works Unified Communications platform, MyPhone which backs up my data to the cloud, Microsoft Tag which I use on my business cards as well as in conjunction with live events I present at are all examples of applications that fit nicely with my work requirements.

On the social media front I look for application that can help keep me connected to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and others, as well as capture rich mobile data. The applications have to work well for me on the device that I have which is an HTC Ozone running Windows Phone 6.1. With the device not running the newer 6.5 and not possessing touch screen capabilities the access to applications that may fit the bill for me from the Windows Marketplace is somewhat limited. However, even on Windows Phone 6.1 with no touch screen there are some incredible applications that assist me in my day to day mobile social media efforts. Applications like LiveMedia GPS for geocasting, Glympse for geolocation notification, MySpace that has helped me begin to utilize again what had been a dormant MySpace account, and more.

When I finished posting my final application, Bing, two articles were brought to my attention that raised some valid questions about my choices, the Windows Phone application ecosystem. There was also some question as to why I omitted applications like the Facebook one and why I chose applications like Twikini over other competitor products. The two articles were 1 - “What ecosystem? Microsoft apps dominate its guru's WinMo picks“ and 2 - “Microsoft shill - Michael Gannotti - names top ten 10 Windows Mobile apps - an exercise in insincerity.”

In the first article author Todd Bishop points out that fully half of the applications I chose are Microsoft created applications and justly asks whether my choices point to a lack of a 3rd party ecosystem. The second article goes even further suggesting that the large amount of Microsoft applications is an indication of shameless promotion of Microsoft applications. In response I think it is important to note that my application choices are reflective of the applications I actually use on a regular basis on my HTC Ozone running Windows Phone 6.1. The device itself, while a fine reliable one, itself limits the choices available to me. My son runs an older Samsung i760 but because it has a touch screen the number of application available from the Marketplace is much larger than what is available to me. As far as an indication of of an issue with the 3rd party ecosystem I leave that for others to decide. My choices are purely based on me finding applications that meet a need I have and perform reasonably well in addressing my needs. Once I have stumbled across an application and like it I will stick with it until it gives me a reason to look elsewhere. As a Microsoft employee I have had access to some of the early pre-release builds of some of our mobile applications. Those I found I liked, such as MyPhone, I have latched on to and continue to use, especially if the price is right…. free. As far as broad availability of 3rd party applications I do know one has only to look to Handango and other similar sites to find a plentiful assortment of 3rd party developed applications. In my caser though with me using my device as much for work as for pleasure I think it should come as no surprise that half of my picks were developed by my employer Microsoft. I never said I was publishing THE top 10 Apps for Windows Phone. I would require a better up to date, and more capable, device, in order for me to properly evaluate many of the applications out there. Even if I did have such a device I would not have the time for such an exhaustive investigation as my actual job at Microsoft does NOT include evangelism activities or reviews.

There were also a few questions around my omission of applications as well as choosing certain apps over other. In one instance a person was surprised that I did not include the Facebook application for Windows Phone in the list. Developed by Microsoft it has been perhaps the most celebrated of the Microsoft mobile social media applications. Unfortunately for me it does not appear to function well on my particular device and I find myself still relying primarily on the mobile browser view of Facebook. I hope this will change in the future but for now that is the case. I was also asked why I chose Glympse over another geolocation service and why I chose Twikini over a rival application. In the case of Glympse I saw it the first day I installed the Marketplace. I installed it, it has functioned as advertised and I have used it ever since. With Twikini the second article went so far as to insinuate that I somehow know the folks personally at Twikini. I first started using Twikini when it was in beta. I think I may have seen a post on Twitter by someone about it. It has worked well for me, I don't personally know the staff there, and it has been updated regularly. There may very well be better applications out there but I have had no cause to explore further. Again I don’t work for the Windows Phone team, i don't get paid to do reviews, write-ups, or evangelization (I wish I did and if anyone knows how I could get a gig doing that let me know ;-) so if I stumble on an application and it works I stick with it.

On 2010:

With the advent of a new year I am very excited about what is in store on the mobile front. With completion amongst device makers, platform provides, and mobile carriers heating up the consumers will ultimately be the real winners. As a Microsoft employee my professional needs remain the same but I am looking forward to trying new more productive applications. I also look forward to seeing the release of newer more capable Windows Phone devices that allow an Enterprise user such as myself to have the best of both worlds and have a managed device that truly facilitates mobile social media. I am already having visions of things like LiveMedia GPS incorporation of Photosynths in its video/Bing maps mashups. The mobile device marketplace is heating up and I can’t wait to see what my top 10 apps will look like for this next year.

Where do you see the hot spots being for applications or direction for mobile application development? Do you have any favorite applications as we move in to 2010 that you think I should be checking out? I would love to hear from you on it! :-)

Well time for me to wrap this up. Here again is a consolidated listing of my personal Top 10 Windows Phone Application for 2009 with links to the videos covering them. I hope you all had a great New Years and have a great 2010!!

1. Microsoft Bing
2. LiveMedia GPS by IncaX
3. Twikini
4. Microsoft Tag
5. Glympse
6. Microsoft Windows Live
7. MySpace
8. Microsoft MyPhone
9. AP Mobile
10. Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile

Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter

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Today is my last day at Microsoft and this will be my last post to this blog. I want to thank everyone who read, commented and supported the blog over the years. I believe in the mission of this group and in the overall goal of Microsoft’s Genuine Software Initiative to help customers, Microsoft partners and Microsoft shareholders and employees protect themselves from the consequences and risks of counterfeit software. It’s been truly great working here, the best part without a doubt is the people!

Thanks and Happy New Year!

Sincerely, Alex Kochis

P.S.: while I’m leaving Microsoft I don’t intend to leave the anti-piracy space. Those of you who follow the subject are likely to see me pop up in the future under my own shingle.

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In a follow up to last weeks blog on Understanding and set up of Remote Access to Windows Home Server, Sean Daniel, Program Manager for Windows Home Server, has provided further information on potential issues that you may experience when setting up your Remote Access, and how to solve the problem.

Once you finish setting up your remote access through Windows Home Server’s Wizard, a final screen will be shown.  In a perfect world, when you click on Details you’ll see all green checks once you have finished this wizard.  However, because there are three components (the home server, the ISP and the router), sometimes there is a snag in the setup. Here is an example of a working domain name with sample data:

The first check-box will actually check to make sure you have an outbound connection. This will ensure it can connect to the specific service at live.com. The second one ensures that Windows Live has your most recent IP address. The 3^rd item makes a call to the router via UPnP to ensure the ports are open, and finally, the 4^th item, was the specific check added in Power Pack 2. This sends your IP address to a Microsoft server in the cloud which attempts to load your public webpage on port 80 (it does not attempt to log in or anything). You will get an “X” here if the service on the internet cannot get to the website.

If all the pieces are working, you’re remote access website should be live on the Internet, if all the pieces aren’t working you’ll probably get a red “X” on this page, let’s talk about where to start looking.

Troubleshooting Remote Access

There are a number of things you can do to validate and pin-point why your remote access isn’t working. Let’s talk about a few of the more common ones:

(1) Your ISP does not give you a public IP address to your home

In order for Home Server to be on the Internet, it needs a publicly routable IP address from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). You can tell this by logging into your router and going to the STATUS page. The WAN (or Wide Area Network) IP address should not start with 192.x.x.x, or 10.x.x.x. If it does, then the home server will not be accessible from the Internet, and you should call your ISP to obtain a publicly routable IP address

(2) You have multiple routers in your home

Sometimes with the low cost of routers verses access points, it’s possible that you have two routers in your home. A router is designed to protect the external network from the internal network. If there are two of these in the home, the home network is broken into two different subnets, and if the home server is on the internal network, its calls to UPnP will only take effect on the router closest to it, while the change would need to be made on both routers, or optimally, there should only be one router on the network, and the additional pieces of hardware added to the network would be wireless access points, or network switches.

(3) UPnP is disabled, or does not conform to UPnP standards

UPnP behaves slightly differently between different router models, and in some cases, might be disabled all together. If this is the case, the Home Server will be unable to make the appropriate changes on the router and you will need to manually make these changes. To do this, you will need to give your server a DHCP reservation in the router (such that it always gets the same IP address), and then manually setting up the port mappings for 80, 443, and 4125. Do not put the home server in the DMZ, as only these 3 ports are needed. If the Home Server is in the DMZ for the router, it can cause connectivity issues inside the network. The Microsoft MVP community has put together a webpage on how to manually configure may of the most common routers.

(4) Your Domain Name is not setup

In rare cases, your domain name may fail to be set up, you can confirm this by going to a command prompt and typing in nslookup. Once inside nslookup, type in your domain name (e.g. hostname.homeserver.com), it should return with an IP address (e.g. 200.200.200.200). Compare this IP address to that of your router’s status page for WAN IP, they should be the same. If the nslookup doesn’t return an IP address and instead returns “non-existent domain”, then you should run the repair on the home server console and try again.

That’s the basics, there is definitely more to learn about networking in general and we can go deeper under the covers. You can always get help on the Windows Home Server Forums. Additionally, I run my own blog that touches on home and small business related technologies at http://whs.seandaniel.com.

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Smashing Magazine, an online (and independent) publication focused on web designers and developers, and the design community, has released 35 really neat desktop wallpapers for January 2010. A calendar is embedded into each of the wallpapers.

These wallpapers were created by designers all across the world. Smashing Magazine features a quote from designer on how they created their wallpaper in their post. They plan to post wallpapers by designers for each month.

Fellow Microsoftie (and fan of Smashing Magazine) Tim Heuer decided to take those 35 wallpapers and create a Windows 7 theme for everyone to download and install on their Windows 7 PCs!

Download: Smashing Magazine January 2010 Wallpaper Windows 7 Theme

Those who don’t know Tim - Tim is a Program Manager on the Silverlight Team.

Tim’s Windows 7 theme of these amazing wallpapers from Smashing Magazine is another great way to celebrate the arrival of 2010! For more Windows 7 personalization, click here.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year! Bring on 2010.

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Microsoft is providing the official Expedition Software with Windows 7, Bing, and Windows Live Messenger for Summit on the Summit: Kilimanjaro.

Summit on the Summit: Kilimanjaro, the brain child of musician and philanthropist Kenna, is an effort to drive global awareness around the clean water crisis facing the planet with celebrities  and educators such as Jessica Biel, Lupe Fiasco, Santigold and Elizabeth Gore climbing to the top Mt. Kilimanjaro. The climb starts January 7th, 2010. You can track the climb via the Summit on the Summit website.  1 billion people today don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water.

You don’t have to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro to be involved. You can sponsor a foot and donate to the cause. You can also download the Summit on the Summit theme for Windows 7 and the Summit on the Summit theme for Windows Live Messenger too! There are lots of tools you can take advantage of to show your support of this effort here.

HP is providing the official Expedition Technology for Summit on the Summit: Kilimanjaro. HP PCs will come with Windows 7 with Bing as the search engine and Windows Live Messenger installed.

UPDATE 12/31: Added a bit more information regarding the climbers and background on the effort.

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The 2 videos below were recently created to showcase all of the features found in Windows Home Server in 1 minute.

The first video gives an overview of how a family uses Windows Home Server in their everyday lives. It shows how Windows Home Server will keep all family memories safely backed up and stored in a vault-like box, and how it can also stream large collections of media throughout the house.

In this second video, you will see the benefits of using Windows Home Server in your Small Office/Home Office (SOHO). Windows Home Server provides an IT team for your office to help protect, organize, and connect to all of your data without the expensive price tag.

You can find more demos and videos about Windows Home Server on our demo page.

-Nicole

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Having saved my proverbial bacon more times than I can remember the Bing application for Windows Phone squeaks ahead in to my number one slot in my Top 10 Mobile Apps countdown. "The Bing app is your central stop for maps, directions, and local searches."

Well that wraps up my top 10 apps for this past year. My son is home from college for winter break and I have had a peak on his first generation HTC Touch and have seen that there are quite a few more applications available for touch screen Windows Phones than are available for my HTC Ozone running Windows 6.1. Do have a touch screen phone running Windows Mobile 6.5? If so what are your favorite applications?

Gotta run now. I am heading on a family vacation trip where I will be using my top 2 applications quite a bit. IncaX Live Media GPS will be used as part of capturing the whole event and we will be using Bing to navigate around the town. :-) Have a great New Years everyone and keep on living the Windows Phone mobile dream!

You can grab a copy of the Microsoft Bing for Windows Phone from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows,WindowsMobile,Mobility,Gannotti,Technology

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Timothy Daleo, author on the site http://usingwindowshomeserver.com, penned a very clever rendition of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” written by Clement Clarke Moore.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,

Not a creature was stirring, not even a Microsoft Wireless 6000 Mouse;

The computers were sleeping on the network with care,

In hopes that Windows Home Server Backup soon would be there…

Read the full version at http://usingwindowshomeserver.com/2009/12/24/twhsas-the-friday-night-before-christmas/.

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In the number 2 slot for Michael's Top 10 Mobile Apps countdown is LiveMedia GPS by IncaX. Okay folks, between this application and my number one it was soooooo close. For pure coolness and usefulness in a variety of corporate scenarios to include use in the travel industry, R&D, events, and more LiveMedia GPS is my hands down, number one application. With LiveMedia GPS you can capture all the rich data, video and geolocation information around virtually anything. I personally use it all the time to create geocasts while traveling. Leveraging a stack of Microsoft technologies including, Windows Server, Bing Maps, Silverlight, and more, LiveMedia GPS loads as an application your your Windows Phone to provide for compelling mobile geocast scenarios. As a great example check out the Microsoft case study "U.S. Navy Research Exercise Demonstrates Microsoft®-based Mobile GPS Solution’s Potential"

You can check out some of my own geocasts on my blog on my geocast page here.

• Check out the case study: "U.S. Navy Research Exercise Demonstrates Microsoft®-based Mobile GPS Solution’s Potential"
• Download LiveMedia GPS for you Windows Phone here.

Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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In the number 3 slot for Michael's Top 10 Mobile Apps countdown is Twikini. I am an avid user of the Twitter SocialMedia web service. Twitter provides great functionality for ad hoc linkage, messaging, and such. When I am on the go I want a rich application that helps me leverage to power of Twitter and that is exactly what Twikini on my Windows Phone does for me.
From the Twikini site: "Twikini offers a powerful and efficient way to use Twitter on your phone. It conveniently updates your favorite feeds in the background, and leverages the camera, GPS, media, touch screen, keyboard, graphics and storage capabilities of your device."

I use Twikini throughout the day, every day. It is absolutely a staple of my everyday must have Windows Phone experience and for that it comes in at number 3 in my Top 10 Mobile Apps countdown.

You can get Twikini for your Windows Mobile device here.

Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows,WindowsMobile,Mobility,Gannotti,Technology

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Hi, my name is Arthur de Haan and I am responsible for Test and System Engineering in Windows Live. To kick things off, I’d like to give you a look behind the scenes at Hotmail, and tell you more about what it takes to build, deploy and run the Windows Live Hotmail service on such a massive global scale.

Hosting your mail and data (and our own data!) on our servers is a big responsibility and we take quality, performance, and reliability very seriously. We make significant investments in engineering and infrastructure to help keep Hotmail up and running 24 hours a day, day in and day out, year after year. You will rarely hear about these efforts – you will only read about them on the rare occasion that something goes wrong and our service has run into an issue,.

Hotmail is a gigantic service in all dimensions. Here are some of the highlights:

• We are a worldwide service, delivering localized versions of Hotmail to 59 regional markets, in 36 languages.
• We host well over 1.3 billion inboxes (some users have multiple inboxes)
• Over 350 million people are actively using Hotmail on a monthly basis (source: comScore, August 2009).
• We handle over 3 billion messages a day and filter out over 1 billion spam messages - mail that you never see in your inbox.
• We are growing storage at over 2 petabytes a month (a petabyte is ~1 million gigabytes or ~1000 terabytes).
• We currently have over 155 petabytes of storage deployed (70% of storage is taken up with attachments, typically photos).
• We’re the largest SQL Server 2008 deployment in the world (we monitor and manage many thousands of SQL servers).

You can imagine that the Hotmail user interface you see in the browser is only the tip of the iceberg – a lot of innovations happen beneath the surface. In this post I will give a high level overview of how the system is architected. We will do deeper dives into some specific features in later posts.

Architecture

Hotmail and our other Windows Live services are hosted in multiple datacenters around the world. Our Hotmail service is organized in logical “scale units,” or clusters. Furthermore, Hotmail has infrastructure that is shared between the clusters in each datacenter:

• Servers to handle incoming and outgoing mail.
• Spam filters (we will talk more about spam in a future blog post).
• Data storage and aggregation from our service health monitoring systems.
• Monitoring and incident response infrastructure.
• Infrastructure to manage automated code deployment and configuration updates.

A cluster hosts millions of users (how many depends on the age of the hardware) and is a self-contained set of servers including:

• Frontend servers – Servers that that check for viruses and host the code that talks to your browser or mail client, using protocols such as POP3 and DeltaSync.
• Backend servers – SQL and file storage servers, spam filters, storage of monitoring- and spam data, directory agents and servers handling inbound and outbound mail.
• Load balancers – Hardware and software used to distribute the load more evenly for faster performance.

Preventing outages and data loss is our top priority and we take utmost care to keep them from happening. We’ve designed our service to handle failure –our assumption is that anything that can fail will do so eventually. We do have hardware failures—with hundreds of thousands of hard drives in use, some are bound to fail. Fortunately, because of the architecture and failure management processes we have in place, customers rarely experience any impact from these failures.

Here are a few of the ways we keep failures contained:

• Redundancy – We use a combination of SQL server storage arrays to host our data. We use active/passive failover technologies. This is a fancy way of saying that we have multiple servers and copies of your data that are constantly synchronized. If one server has a failure, another one is ready to take over in seconds. All in all we keep four copies of your data on multiple drives and servers to minimize the chance of data loss due to a hardware failure.
• Another benefit of this architecture is that we can perform planned maintenance (such as deploying code updates or security patches) without downtime for you. Key pieces of our network gear are also duplicated to minimize the chance of network-related outages.
• Monitoring – We have an elaborate system for monitoring hardware and software. Thousands of servers monitor service health, transactions (for example, sending an e-mail) and system performance for customers all over the world. Because we’re so large, we’re tracking performance and uptime metrics in aggregate as well as at the cluster level, and by geography. We do want to make sure that your individual experiences are reflected back to us, and not getting lost when we look at averages for the entire system. We care about every single user’s experience. We’ll talk more about performance and monitoring in a future post.
• Response center – We have a round-the-clock response center team that watches over our global monitoring systems and takes action immediately when there is problem. We have an escalation process that can engage our engineering staff within a few minutes when needed.

Engineering process

I’ve talked a little bit about our architecture and steps we are taking to ensure uninterrupted service. No service is static however; in addition to growth due to usage, we do push out updates on a regular basis. So our engineering processes are just as important as our architecture to provide you with a great service. From patches to minor updates to major releases, we take a lot of precautions during our development and rollout process.

Testing and deployment – For every developer on our staff we have a test engineer who works hand in hand with him or her to give input on the design and specs, set up a test infrastructure, write and automate test cases for new features, and measure quality. When we talk about quality, we mean it in the broadest definition of the word: not just stability and reliability, but also ease of use, performance, security, accessibility (for customers with disabilities), privacy, scalability, and functionality in all browsers and clients that we support, worldwide. Given our scale, this is not an easy feat.

And because we’re a free service funded largely by advertising, we need to be highly efficient on an operational basis. So deployment, configuration, and maintenance of our systems are highly automated. Automation also reduces the risk of human error.

Code deployment and change management – We have thousands of servers in our test lab where we deploy and test code well before it goes live to our customers. In the datacenter we have some clusters reserved for testing “dogfood” and beta versions in the final stages of a project. We test every change in our labs, be it a code update, hardware change or security patch, before deploying it to customers.

After all the engineering teams have signed off on a release (including Test and System Engineering) we start gradually upgrading the clusters in the datacenter to push the changes out to customers worldwide. Typically we do this over a period of a few months – not only because it takes time to perform the upgrades without affecting customers with downtime, but it also allows us to watch and make sure there is no loss of quality and performance.

We can also turn individual features on or off. Sometimes we deploy updates but postpone or delay turning them on. In rare cases we have temporarily turned features off, say for security or performance reasons.

Conclusion

This should begin to give you a sense of the size and scope of the engineering that goes into delivering and maintaining the Hotmail service. We are committed to engineering excellence and continuous improvements of our services for you. We continue to learn as the service grows, and we take all your feedback seriously, so do leave me a comment with your thoughts and questions. I am passionate about our services and so are all the members of the Windows Live team – we may be engineers but we use the services ourselves, along with hundreds of millions of our customers.

Arthur de Haan
Director, Windows Live Test and System Engineering

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In the number 4 slot for Michael's Top 10 Mobile Apps countdown is a very cool application that brings a wealth of possibilities to events, the travel industry, and more. Microsoft Tag is a slick application that “transforms everyday things in the real world into live links to online information and entertainment.

From your mobile phone, simply snap or scan a Tag image anywhere you see it – in editorials, advertisements, product packaging, signs and storefronts – and gain instant access to Websites, videos, reviews, schedules, contact information, social networks, discounts, promotions and more!

All you need to do is download the free Tag reader on your web enabled camera phone and when you see a Tag, snap or scan it to interact with the world around you in new ways.”

With Tag:

• Makes offline media (print ads, billboards, posters, television) and physical objects (product packages, storefronts, T-shirts, museum exhibits) interactive.
• Dream up your scenario; engage with your audience in real time, in the real world; and know how successful you were.
• Remember what you saw, and share it with friends.

You can grab a copy of the Microsoft Tag for Windows Phone from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Michael Gannotti is a Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and the author of the blog SocialMedia Talk. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows,WindowsMobile,Mobility,Gannotti,Technology

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Thinking about deploying Windows 7? Need to crunch the numbers to show your boss the  reduced TCO and quick ROI that Windows 7 will have for you’re company?

The Windows 7 Return on Investment (ROI) Tool, powered by Alinean, can help you evaluate your current PC total cost of ownership (TCO) and identify the potential benefits of deploying the Windows 7 operating system to help lower costs, improve service levels, and increase productivity.

This new tool can quantify the tangible value of Windows 7, estimate migration costs, and calculate the financial metrics necessary for your a project review and approval.

To check out the the Windows 7 ROI Calculator visit the Pilot and Deploy area of Springboard or just click here.

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MSWindows: @albertjo You can learn more about Win 7 and reasons you may want to consider upgrading here: http://bit.ly/49szVv. ^FM
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MSWindows: Video: Use Aero Peek in #Win7 to preview an open window - http://bit.ly/8ipw9c ^JS
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MSWindows: @elbertrosenbran let us know what you think of Win 7 once you get it up and running. ^FM
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MSWindows: @joshrosario Thanks for sharing! That's a good feature. ^FM
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MSWindows: Attending CES? @HP_PC & @Microsoft will host a Tweet ‘n Greet @ the MS booth (Central 7144) Fri, 2:30-3:30 #HPatCES #intlCES
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MSWindows: @stevec3412 That's great! Thanks for sharing and glad you're enjoying the upgrade. ^NS
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MSWindows: Students! Check out the Microsoft Student Rally at http://bit.ly/5bmyr7 You could win a new PC and monitor! ^JS
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MSWindows: @TrevAinsworth glad the install went smoothly. How are you liking Win 7 so far? ^FM
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MSWindows: Learn how you can watch TV in Windows Media Center on your PC - http://bit.ly/4sBZIX ^NS
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MSWindows: Trying to convince your friends to upgrade? Share the top 10 reasons to buy Windows 7 - http://bit.ly/49szVv ^NS
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