I've been told that this is related to the leaked SP1 beta of Vista floating over the internet, but you can now manually download and install two Vista patches that improve performance and compatibility. I'm sure these will filter through to Windows update eventually but what I heard was that they were specifically supposed to be part of SP1 instead. Interesting! Download the Performance Path here, and the Compatibility Patch here. I haven't installed them yet, but plan to today.

Almost forgot to blog it J. This morning at TechEd NZ, I'll be talking on best practices for team based software development. I'll be looking at principles and recipes for success, how Microsoft Visual Studio Team System can help the process and giving the benefit of my experience of using team system with a specific customer case study. If you are at TechEd NZ today come and listen to my talk @ 10:45, I think its NZRoom1 or NZRoom3 from memory.

I'm using Vista as my primary OS on my laptop, but tonight I decided to install Windows XP. Mainly because I have a few multimedia things that don't work under Vista but I still need to use them every now and then (For those curious, the main one is the BlueMic Snowball – A high quality USB mic I use for Podcasting). XP and Vista ship with too different bootloaders and only the Vista bootloader will pick up an existing XP installation. For design and forward compatibility issues, the XP bootloader will not recognize any existing Vista partitions. Once I had XP installed, I then had to do a few things to make both dual boot happily. I searched quite a bit on the net before I got all the answers, I had to review a few of commands as they were pre-RTM vista. I certainly didn't find anything that documented the process fully. So here it is – hopefully someone else will find this useful:

Part 1: Installing XP

• Before you install XP, be sure to use the Vista Disk Manager (Right click on Computer and select manage) to resize down the vista existing partition and create a new partition. You don't need anything like partition magic if you have Vista
• Install XP into a new partition directly after the vista partition you created
• Restart – you should boot back into XP and have no ability to boot into Vista

Part 2: Vista Bootloader re-setup (From Windows XP)

• Once into XP, make sure you have your Vista DVD in the DVD player and your user has admin rights
• Open a command prompt window (start, run, "cmd")
• Change to your CD Rom drive by typing the drive letter and colon, e.g. E:
• Change directory to \boot, e.g. "cd boot"
• Run the following command: Bootsect.exe –NT60 All
• Restart the machine – the machine should now boot into Vista and have no ability to select Windows XP from any bootloader

Part 3: Using BCDEdit to get XP booting again (From Windows Vista)

• Once into Vista, make sure your user has admin rights
• Open a command prompt window (start, run, "cmd")
• Change directory to \Windows\system32, e.g. "cd Windows\System32"
• Run the following commands to create an XP boot option:
  • Bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Windows XP"
  • Bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=x:
  • Bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr
  • Bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast
• Reboot
• You should now have a boot option menu for Windows XP, select it to make sure it works

Part 4: Copying over ntldr files to ensure a successful XP boot

• If you get a "status: 0xc000000f" error with "Windows failed to Load" when you try and load windows XP, do the following steps:
  • Place the follow files from your Windows XP setup CD: NtDetect.com and Ntldr into the root of your XP partition
  • These files are in the i386 directory on your Windows XP directory
• Reboot and you should now be able to select and boot into Windows XP okay

Regarding Part 4, I'm not sure whether everyone needs to do this – but I did notice that Windows XP did not place these folders into root directory of the XP probably because the XP setup wizard thought it was a single boot environment.

Disclaimer: Use at your own peril, this worked for me but I can't guarantee this works for you!

I posted on the weekend a new ARCast NZ podcast on Interaction Design which I recorded with Phil Cockfield. This is my favourite to date and looks at how the concept of interaction design works with the concepts of IT architecture. The overview of the session:

Join Lukas Svoboda and Phil Cockfield as they discuss the concept of Interaction Design (ID) and how it fits with the discipline of Software Architecture. The relationship between ID and Agile Software Development is also discussed as well as the notion that Interaction Design is the missing link in Architecture. Lastly Phil discusses how an Architect can get into using Interactive Design approaches to help develop architectures for software today.

Well Microsoft TechEd New Zealand is finally upon us again and it's kicked off well. This year the company my company Fronde is a major sponsor and I've had the pleasure of putting our stand together. I was at TechEd this morning but I've gone and found some peace and quiet to prepare for my session which is on Wednesday around team system best practices (I'll blog more later today…). If you are at TechEd, go checkout the stand, we have a professional masseuse to ease your conference tensions, prize giveaway of 1 Gig USB hard drives and iRiver music players. The stand also features video testimonials of our employees and customers.

Apparently the private beta of Vista SP1 was leaked recently. There is an interesting view of this Service Pack here at APCMAG.com. The article is particularly interesting around the issues of speed of Vista and the fact that the service pack drastically increases the performance of vista.

Right now, people who work with me can MSN me, Skype Me, Yahoo me, Email me, call me on my Cell, call me on my desk phone, text me, track me down on my blog or on LinkedIn, walk over and see me and god forbid send me snail me. Is it just me or are we too connected in this day and age? The thing I find hardest is to concentrate on one task for more than a few hours without being disturbed. These days if I need to concentrate I usually end up turning everything off - not ideal but necessary. Anyone else got any thoughts with managing being in contact versus distraction and focus? (It's Friday arvo, and it's noisy in the office and all my contact channels are going mad – and I'm trying to write two documents – I might as well give up! J)

A good article on Stuff showing the NZ government is largely ignoring SME businesses in general. I think this shows a very sad story for NZ and tends to be typical around the current mentality shared by many government departments – that the big NZ companies or the fastest growing ones are the only ones to invest time and effort in. I'd certainly like to see this change into the future.

Kirk Jackson, the chap responsible for running the excellent .NET User group in Wellington for many years has done some analysis on the NZ.NET user group and the mailing list we use. It's really interesting to read as it concludes that mailing list concept has really served our .NET community well in New Zealand.

The mailing list is something I've maintained and managed since 2001 for the community and certainly reflects many thousands of hours of my passion for the .NET community. I would also like to thank Kirk for his acknowledgement of my efforts J

The only way to know, is to watch this crazy video J

Very interesting article in Computerworld regarding some of the frustrations that IT managers will face with allowing access to corporate resources from the iPhone. Just listening to the Apple strategy of the device shows it is very consumer orientated and certainly not a player in the enterprise. It's interesting to see how this strategy will work for Apple in its quest for mobile dominance. This strategy is distinctly different from the likes of RIM and Microsoft, who have been solving the corporate problem before attacking the mass consumer market. My prediction is that the iPhone will get a lot of attention for its looks and cool factor (typical response to anything Apple by the majority of consumers and Apple knows it) but will get a massive thumbs down when it comes to corporate integration. By the time Apple works this out, RIM and Microsoft will have copied all the cool features and be out with devices that are as cool but have much better corporate integration feastures. All-in-all, an interesting IT space to watching.

Okay, this one's partly a concession to Miramar Mike – I have to hand it Google, I'm totally in love with Google Mail. And I'm not just talking about the "Yay I get an email address @ gmail.com" service, I'm talking about the hosting all your personal domain email with Gmail i.e user_mailbox_x100@svoboda.co.nz. This is some I just discovered recently. I also had a good look to see if Microsoft was doing this as well. However their service with POP3 support is not free and a lot more expensive than even the Google premium service. One thing I didn't like was the Google Mail interface. I found it a bit outdated. It's grown on me but I would like to still see it lean, but a bit slicker and more professional looking. The other thing that worried me was the conversation threads and no folder support. I've grown to like conversation threads as now I don't lose any emails in a particular conversation and I have fallen in love with archiving and labeling instead of using folders. All in all a nice offering and providing some major challenge to Microsoft in terms of hosted email offerings.

I've finally spent some time on setting up my network and career profile on LinkedIn. This seems to be one of the free best online services for managing this type of personal information. I particularly like the network contact features which help me keep my network up to date. To see my linked in profile with my career history, go to http://www.linkedin.com/in/lukassvoboda

Interesting commentary from John Lilly, Mozilla's chief operating officer on the release of Apple's Safari browser for Windows. It's basically a "Apple needs to learn" article and certainly reflects a lot of my thinking that despite trying to maintain a "cool" image, Apple's corporate thinking is still very backward.

Proving that everyone loves a great conspiracy theory (and the IT industry is no exception) - this Computerworld article details the mystery of tiny faces on Vista DVDs. It details some of the great conspiracy theories put forward and then tells of the rather simple and pragmatic explanation from Microsoft.

Just a quick note, I haven't been posting much the last two weeks due to a rather nasty headcold turning into an even nastier ear infection. I'm back on board today and slowly getting back into things. Many things to blog on!!!

Okay this is a pretty technical post, but it does have an important enterprise implications. The proxy file (convention is to use proxy.pac) is a javascript file that defines how web browsers can automatically choose the appropriate proxy server for fetching a given URL. This is very useful to use in a company where you might have different proxy servers in different geographies and you want the person's web browser to automatically use the right proxy server. The file can also do things like turn off the use of a proxy server if it isn't in the currently used network. This is very useful for laptop users who might use their laptops on a home network at the end of the day. So in summary a proxy.pac file stops you from having to reconfigure proxy settings for your browser every time you change networks.

http://nscsysop.hypermart.net/proxypac.html - good examples on how to write complex proxies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_auto-config - Wikipedia Resource

http://wiki.garylaw.net/doku.php?id=technical:automatic_proxy_configuration – Lots of details and resources here

Some resources regarding the feature list of Visual Studio Orcas:

Microsoft Marketing Material: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700830.aspx

InfoQ round-up, technical focused: http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/03/Orcas-Roundup

Scott Guthries' first look at Orcas Presentation, technical focused:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/02/08/my-first-look-at-orcas-presentation.aspx

Orcas Announcement from Microsoft Blogger Somaseger

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/04/19/visual-studio-orcas-and-net-fx-3-5-beta1-shipped.aspx

BetaNew Arcticle on Orcas Features, some good semi-technical explanations

http://www.betanews.com/article/Visual_Studio_Orcas_Enters_Beta_1_NET_Framework_35_Released/1177012085

Download the Orcas Betas from Microsoft

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx

Thanks to Ric Anderson @ MS for these resources:

Windows Mobile Reference Index

Microsoft Enterprise Platform Group and Partner Support Line

Australia: 02 4221 9780 OR freecall 1800 027 128; New Zealand: Freecall 0800 450888

• For certified partners and Enterprise IT
• SBS set up issues
• End User help
• Connectivity issues
• Not linked into PSS support calls
• Wireless Data Services answering the calls
• Reporting and issue consolidation back to MS

Windows Mobile Homepage

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/windowsmobile
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/default.mspx

• Local device availability (Australian site)
• White Papers
• Case Studies
• Developer Links

Case Studies

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/business/success/default.mspx

Partner Resources

Windows Mobile Competency Partner certification
https://partner.microsoft.com/msppmobility
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/partners/logon/login.mspx

Partner collateral, logo's and reference information
http://www.windowsmobilepartnershop.com

Application certification (Mobile2Market)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/partners/mobile2market/smartphoneapps/default.aspx

Developer sites

Local Microsoft Developer resource page
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/msdn/tools/msdnflash.aspx

Windows Mobile elearning Training Application Development
https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=112167

Windows Mobile elearning Training IT Pro
https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=112394

Deploying and maintaining mobile applications
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8a5a43ea-dd75-425b-b05c-1aa3a0e55420&DisplayLang=en

.NET Compact Framework and the Mobile Client Software Factory

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=27fc4663-8661-4760-9993-cde5d27d5fc9&DisplayLang=en

MS Developers Conference 2006 DVD
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=27fc4663-8661-4760-9993-cde5d27d5fc9&DisplayLang=en

BLOGS

• Technology information and tips
• jkruse, dglover and jeffa36 includes local MS information
• Local UMPC info on UberTablet

http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonlan/
http://blogs.technet.com/vik/
http://littlesandpit.blogspot.com/2006/10/direct-push-guide.html
http://jankity.spaces.live.com/
http://blogs.technet.com/jeffa36/
http://blogs.msdn.com/dglover
http://blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/
http://blogs.technet.com/jkruse/default.aspx
http://UberTablet.blogspot.com
http://msgoodies.blogspot.com/2006/12/tip-installing-communicator-mobile.html
http://www.mogadget.com/

VISTA with Windows Mobile Device Centre

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devicecenter.mspx

• Think ActiveSync for Vista
• NOTE if folks are having trouble syncing after upgrading to Vista check that the Proxy settings are disable on the device in
  start/settings/connections(tab)/connections/proxy

3rd party retail applications

Handango UK – Voice Command 1.6
http://tinyurl.com/3ye4dv

iMate supported software and services
http://www.clubimate.com/

Trend Micro trial software (mobile virus protection)
http://www.trendmicro.com/en/products/mobile/tmms/evaluate/overview.htm

As posted on Eric Newcomer's Weblog, WS-TX 1.1, the group of standards consisting of WS-Coordination, WS-AtomicTransaction and WS-BusinessActivity has now become an OASIS standard.

Looks like Johno and I are probing the same iGoogle/Apple conspiracy theory! My original post is here.

Thanks to Nikolai for this link. On sharetrader.co.nz there is a very interesting debate on the Xero IPO. Find it at this link. Many people taking a wait and see attitude, but also others suggesting the punt is not a bad idea.  I do think however the comments give a clear view of the risk profile of Xero and it's definitely very high. Also very interesting to note is the link to 1stplace, another NZ company offering a web based/SaaS accounting package for the SME area. So there is definitely competition to Xero aside from the traditional accounting software vendors. Also another think to note is that Microsoft currently gives away a free accounting package at www.ideawins.com – okay so it's not focused on NZ, but it appears to do a lot of the basics for free and for a small amount you can upgrade to a pro version.

Very interesting webcast on how SalesForce.com does integration. It's a good example how a SaaS offering like SalesForce.com can provide an effective platform for integration. This is perfect for the majority of business who are contemplating a SaaS offerings but have existing applications to integrate. I found the Google demonstration particularly fascinating - Certainly add more fire to rumours of SalesForce.com and Google moving ahead together. SalesForce.com market cap is 5.6 billion which Google could quite happily buy given the amount of cash they have. However people I've talked to in the know speculate that acquisition is unlikely but partnership is more realistic. Watch that space I say. One last random thought, imagine putting Apple into this mix. The combination of Apple/SalesForce/Google would be a very serious challenge to Microsoft both in the consumer and business spaces. A combination like this would be an end-to-end turnkey platform for both consumers and businesses and in the process a very massive threat to Microsoft...

Good article on Computerworld regarding the architecture aspect of SOA and how it is the most important part. Very interesting article by Galen Gruman.

In this Computerworld article, Provenco moves to SalesForce.com CRM with Fronde as the implementer. Talk about a small world, I've worked for Provenco before when it was called Advantage Group and I've just recently joined Fronde….