Archive for the ‘Everything Else’ Category

I’m just passing along information contained in an email sent to me this morning. If you’re interested in obtaining Windows 7 certification, this may be an avenue for you to consider. ExamForce (click their name to head to their Twitter page) is offering a free Windows 7 practice test that is apparently comparable to the test that will land you a “MCTS: Windows 7, Configuration” certificate. If you’re interested, head on over to the following link and sign up:

ExamForce’s 70-680: TS: Windows 7, Configuring Exam Preparation

And, no, I am not affiliated with ExamForce at all — I just thought someone out there might be interested. If so, then best of luck!

-Stephen

Ahhh, it’s a Microsoft kind of morning! I woke up, checked my Hotmail account as I do every day, and was greeted with a rather odd (yet quite humorous) series of emails from Microsoft! See the screen shot below:

An email from Microsoft with the subject “tbd” sounded rather interesting, so I started with it first. All-in-all, it was nothing special; just an OEM Partner Center newsletter dated August 16th which contained a contest, various partner-related training opportunities, etc. Next, I read the email with the subject “Updated Subject.” As you might have guessed, it was a repeat of the “tbd” email — same date on the newsletter and everything, despite the fact that it was sent the next day. I suppose the importance of it is the contest offering a chance to win a 42″ plasma TV. If you’re interested in said contest, visit the following link to read the rules and details: http://oem.microsoft.com/script/contentpage.aspx?pageid=566235

So, the long and short of it is that I found it hilarious that Microsoft sent out an email with the subject “tbd,” then sent out the same email a day later with an updated subject. Personally, I don’t see why they couldn’t have just waited a day to send out the email… or why coming up with a subject other than “tbd” was such an arduous task in the first place.

I’m just poking fun, though. I love you, Microsoft. =)

-Stephen

Well, after quite an exciting day of Windows 8 information leaking its way out to the Internet, it appears Microsoft is officially on the war path to finding who leaked the information in the first place. As noted on Twitter by Tom Warren of Neowin, the blog of Francisco Martin — one of the first to bring some of this Windows 8 information to light — has apparently been nixed by Microsoft (his blog resided on spaces.live.com). The earliest that these slides can be traced back is to the Website win7vista.com (thanks to @tom_warren for the link).

The documents were originally XPS files converted to PDFs with the goal of removing any incriminating watermarks. Well, win7vista.com made a mistake. As “DanielRemains” — the individual who posted the leaked content — notes, “I spent many hours working on these on removing watermarks etc.” Unfortunately, he seemed to miss a slide and it has undoubtedly brought some unwanted attention to one Derek Goode from HP. Here’s the slide which shows his email address (Update: email address removed from slide by request):

Whether or not Derek Goode is the individual who leaked the slides directly, if it was a colleague who did it behind his back, or some other scenario, Microsoft is clearly on the prowl. win7vista.com wanted all the credit, so I hope they’re ready for what’s about to ensue. Don’t be surprised if many of these posts around the Internet involving this Windows 8 documentation suddenly disappear.

-Stephen Chapman
http://msftkitchen.com

Thanks to Android Central for the heads-up about this.

Yes, it’s true! Windows 3.1 on Android is the latest addition to the “let’s-see-what-all-we-can-get-Windows-3.1-running-on” benchmark. An Android enthusiast by the name of “drraccoon” thought it would be a fun idea to try to install Windows 3.1 on Android and the result is an ultimately useless but really cool (in a geeky sort of way) implementation of an ancient OS on a mobile device! Check out the screen shot below:

*Image courtesy of drraccoon

I don’t want to steal his glory by posting his method here (it’s really simple), but I *will* make a contribution by providing you a download link to the Windows 3.1 ISO which contains the installation files you will need should you choose to give this a shot yourself (they’re in a self-extracting .exe file I created with WinRAR, so I know this is virus-free).

Download: Windows 3.1 ISO

Now, go visit the source to obtain everything else you need to install Windows 3.1 on Android and feel free to post your results and/or ideas to try as I would certainly be interested to hear of everyone’s progress — especially if any of you give Windows 95 (something drraccoon also seems interested in attempting) a shot or some other legacy Microsoft program/game!

Source: drraccoon’s Android Blog

-Stephen Chapman

http://www.msftkitchen.com

This post is my gratuitous offer to Microsoft to help them track down websites of piracy advocates who store and/or share activation cracks and similar nuisances. This all started as an experiment to see how many ways I could find a particular file and I’ve come to the conclusion that Microsoft probably either isn’t implementing half the methods I’ve devised or they don’t have the time/interest or a person/team in-house or outsourced dedicated to formulating solutions like this. I’ve cherry-picked two methods to delve into, then listed some action items to follow through with in taking said methods into consideration.

I would use Bing for these examples, but I’m still waiting for an all-encompassing guide for using advanced syntax usage in Bing. Usually, when I try to replicate my Google methods in Bing (yes, I make sure I’m using Bing’s syntax where applicable), the results are dismal. Anyway, I’d like to think someone at Microsoft will see this for what it is and bring me in to really get creative with this stuff, because there’s a whooooooole lot more where this came from! But I won’t hold my breath, because in the words of one Tony Lucca, “if I held my breath, you’d be the death of me.” lol.

Method 1: Use the following query in Google (I’ve even hyper-linked it for your pleasure):

 

intitle:index.of removewat21 | removewat22 | removewat*

 

Results: A large number of personal websites where they have the RemoveWAT file stored and directly accessible for anyone to immediately download.

Method 2: Go to Google. Click “more” and then click “Blogs.” Now, perform a search using the following query and then, on the left-hand side, click, “Sorted by date” (yes, I’ve hyper-linked this one as well already using the aforementioned steps):

 

removewat21 | removewat22 | removewat*

 

Results: An ever-expanding list of blogs linking to the file(s) you’re interested in getting off the internet. Most of them link to file sharing services, but that’s a major score as well.

Action Items: Bearing in mind the methods above, the next thing is to gather a list of as many variables of the RemoveWAT file name as you can, such as scene release names, shortened versions, etc. and interchange them throughout the queries. Rinse and repeat the process with other activation crack technologies and voila. From there, of course, gather contact information from somewhere on the site, perform a whois search, etc. to contact the individual(s) to remove the file or simply send a DMCA take-down request to the host or whatever legal actions Microsoft has to adhere to.

Also, you can get more extensive with the research portion and use Yahoo Site Explorer or SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer to search for inbound links to the links harvested via method 1. The results are a mixed bag where that’s concerned, but I’ve found that Google typically yields those results after spidering the site from a completely separate entry point, so whether or not the person posted the file in a public forum or simply posted something completely irrelevant and Google happened to spider its way to the particular file is up in the air until additional research is performed.

Oh, and while you’re at it, you might as well try to make this process as automated, productive and facile as possible by setting up some Google Alerts (or something similar) for all the terms/queries you come up with and keep an eye on when new sites are indexed with those file names. What a great way of finding and getting rid of those files from (probably) a completely untapped avenue.

There! I’ve officially put my personal information-finding and off-page SEO research methods to good use for Microsoft’s anti-piracy endeavors. =) But bear in mind, the aforementioned methods and action items are just the tip of the iceberg. If I so chose, I could use just about any Microsoft product for free without ever touching a P2P application or utilizing a crack — all thanks to Google and absolutely careless individuals out there. There’s a lot out there; you just have to know how to find it.

Happy hunting, Microsoft.

-Stephen Chapman

http://www.msftkitchen.com

While having a conversation on Windows Live Messenger with MJ Foley today, the subject of project Natal came up. If you don’t know what it is, it’s basically a camera and microphone device for your Xbox 360 that will track your movements, gestures, and voice commands all in real-time. If you *do* happen to know what Natal is, then you just read that last sentence for nothing! *ahem*… Anyway, I had a funny thought that came to mind after reading MJ’s latest short about Natal: Basically, since Steve Ballmer has been the primary candidate speaking about Natal at select conferences, I thought of something I hope Microsoft (and Steve) seriously considers when launching Natal… and that is to have Steve give a repeat performance of the following:

… except, the difference for Natal’s launch would be to have a fighting game up on the big screen in the background and see if Ballmer can win simply by Natal “watching” him run around the stage in a frenzy like that. How great would THAT be!? Pretty darn great if I say so myself! And I do. From a marketing standpoint, it would be a great way to have Natal go viral instantly on YouTube, I think. Anyway, please consider doing this, Steve/Microsoft! I think it would pretty much be the most awesome thing ever. The end.

-Stephen Chapman

http://www.msftkitchen.com

If you’re like me, you’re as intrigued as the next person by the iPad. We’ve gone from desktops to laptops to small laptops to even smaller laptops (aka “netbooks”) and now, the iPad. The device looks great and if you love your iPod Touch as much as I do, it seems like playing your favorite games and using your favorite apps on a ginormous screen would be awesome. But is it $499 worth of awesome? Sadly, not for me. To determine if the iPad is for you, put the price aside for a second and ask yourself the following 3 questions:

1 – Do you read books/ebooks? One of the major selling points of the iPad is the convenience and beauty of reading books/comics/etc. but alas, I personally don’t read books. I like the idea of reading books! Unfortunately, I just don’t have the attention span to sit down and read a book. So, if you’re like me, this selling point is absolutely useless.

2 – Do you need a portable media player (movies, music, et al) the size of a magazine? Well, it would be cool to have a video player the size of the iPad screen, but apparently, they didn’t implement that capability. Also, my portable music bases are covered and the iPad just doesn’t quite fit the bill of portable even if my bases weren’t covered. I suppose there are some neighborhoods in this country where you could find people jogging down the street with their iPads, but not mine. Lastly, take into consideration the iPad’s form factor. If you’re going to watch a 2-hour-long movie, you won’t be doing it laying in bed. Not comfortably, at least. It would be like holding a magazine that whole time with nothing to prop it on except yourself or whatever you can creatively cook up.

3 – Going even broader here, where/how do you plan to utilize it if not the 2 ways above? See, I don’t even know for this one. I see myself starting off on my couch or maybe laying in bed, but even at that, I can’t see myself using $499-worth of this device. Browsing the internet? Okay, but my netbook does that perfectly and port-ably here at home. Games? Yes, definitely. Other apps? Nah.

I know people who say the iPad really is a game-changer. One of my friends is a former Microsoft-fan-gone-Apple-dev who said he has no idea how Windows users do it now that he’s got his iPad with him everywhere he goes. I guess if it’s *that* good, then the worst-case scenario for us burdened Windows users is having to wait for the HP Slate, huh?

In all honesty, though, I really would love to mess with an iPad, but even if I love the thing, I can’t justify the price tag based on my answers to the three questions above. Wanting one just to have one doesn’t quite compute here. If you want a really, really comprehensive review of the iPad noting both it’s shining qualities and biggest failures, check out Paul Thurrott’s iPad review here.

-Stephen Chapman

http://www.msftkitchen.com

Back in 2005, Microsoft mentioned in a Thinkweek article the idea of an ad-driven Windows. Ina Fried summarized quite well what was discussed in that article in a section titled “Plan Extends to Windows.” Seemingly only an idea back then, new evidence shows that Microsoft has done more than simply *think* about placing ads in Windows.

While recently doing a bit of research, I ran across a Microsoft employee’s mention (screen shot below) of an incubation project they were involved with sometime between 2005-2008. Code named “Madison” (not to be confused with the SQL 2010 code name), it appears an actual prototype has been created for advertising in Windows. Prior to writing this article, I mentioned my findings to Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet and she quickly made an observation I hadn’t thought of — the code name “Madison” obviously stemming from “Madison Ave.” in Manhattan. To quote Wikipedia, “[s]ince the 1920s, the street’s name has been synonymous with the American advertising industry.”

(Yes, that says “madision” but that’s almost certainly a grammatical error)

The implications of this prototype are staggering, but not necessarily all bad.

On one hand, this could be a way for Microsoft to offer Windows on-the-cheap for many individuals — namely, those who either can’t afford Windows or don’t want to pay for Windows in the first place (i.e. pirates, yarrr!). In theory, you could use a “Windows Ads Edition” or something where you’ve basically opted for ads to stream to you in exchange for your usage of Windows. Another possible scenario is for this prototype technology to perhaps replace (or maybe become a component of) Starter Edition. After all, with Microsoft’s recent job post looking to fill a position on the “Windows SKU team,” it’s pretty clear that Microsoft is planning Windows 8 SKUs — thus implying a SKU-secured future for Windows — so why not the possibility of a “Windows Ads Edition?” I don’t think too many people would use such a thing by choice, and for those who did choose to, Microsoft’s marketing would have to be crystal clear to spell out why you wouldn’t simply be using an ad-ridden version of Windows.

Also, when bringing ads into the equation, I can’t imagine they would riddle every SKU with ads, but how could Microsoft really expect to make a significant ROI based on a model where ads are being shown to people who are looking to circumvent – or simply cannot afford the cost of – Windows in the first place? With that in mind, perhaps it would have nothing to do with SKUs at all. Perhaps it would consist of a technology designed to run under certain variables in *any* SKU of Windows where the obvious candidates would lie amongst all unactivated, non-genuine, and pirated copies. The thought of that gets shaky when considering all the headaches Microsoft would face from those screaming “invasion of privacy” or “anti-trust measures!” They would have to be clever about monitoring ad traffic, of which there’s absolutely no way Microsoft could successfully convince businesses to fork over cash for ad views without being able to show some semblance of accurate numbers… unless it’s a PPC thing, and then Microsoft has to face dealing with potential click fraud amongst the other obvious deterrents, such as ad blocking software, host file modification to block ad servers, or even full-blow file modification/replacement to remove the ad-driven functionality in its totality.

Naturally, this all just boils down to Microsoft looking to cash in on a BIG money-making industry with the most visible product they have. The most popular application in the entire world. Potentially, every Windows user would be a lead just waiting to turn a profit for whoever pays to advertise in Windows. And if Microsoft went the route of making this a technology that wasn’t limited to any particular version of Windows, they could even scale it back to XP via a simple update (but I see XP being obsolete by the time ads ever make it into Windows).

Thinking even grander, imagine if Microsoft created an ad platform in Windows that was so successfully facile to the end user that the price of ALL versions of Windows was little to nothing at all. Now, that may sound ridiculous, but that’s the kind of forward-thinking that — if they could pull it off — would bring them many more users and drastically drop certain costs of developing Windows, such as the cost of anti-piracy measures. If they could figure out a way to make ads extremely relevant, non-evasive, yet have them yield high click-through rates — in a perfect world — that would be a version of Windows accessible to nearly everyone.

But I’m a realist. I don’t think such a scenario would ever come to fruition. Honestly, between unhappy users who want nothing to do with ads and potential legal woes that would inevitably face Microsoft, I see the headaches mounting for actually implementing ads in Windows. What do you think? Do you think Microsoft will ever bring such an effort to Windows? How would you feel about actually using an ad-implemented Windows? I don’t think I would mind too much, but the implementation of them would have to be nothing short of genius.

-Stephen Chapman

http://msftkitchen.com

In Microsoft’s never-ending battle to stop piracy, it appears Microsoft is considering upping the ante in Windows 8 and other products by searching for a new candidate to help “shake hackers and crackers off Microsoft products” by designing and building “new anti-hacking mechanisms” and “hack detection.” The job ad says the job is “not for the faint of heart,” so I imagine things get pretty intense and technical on this team.

To quote the job ad directly:

Our group is on a mission to build a rich, powerful platform to help protect Microsoft products against piracy. Here is your chance to join a team of exceptional developers as we build an extensible cross-company platform to support this vision. This is a fast-paced group that rewards smart and motivated individuals. We are looking for an experienced software developer to help us design and build new anti-hacking mechanisms, hack detection, and work on the security processor driver. The work touches many layers of the operating system and includes opportunities for partnership with MS Research and other security teams at Microsoft to productize exciting innovations and ideas that help shake hackers and crackers off Microsoft products. It’s not for the faint of heart, but the diversity of the problem space in this area is rich in growth opportunities just waiting for the right candidate. You will have ample opportunity to diversify your skill set and grow. In this position, you’ll get a chance to work on many aspects of the platform, starting with an assignment to drive the design of our application and Operating System (OS) virtualization support.

Regardless of how intense or involved, hackers and crackers always seem to be one step ahead of Microsoft where piracy is concerned. Naturally, they cannot account for every single scenario possible, but it’s a given that they must keep up and continue to innovate new security technologies. Some may consider anti-piracy measures a lost cause, but that’s certainly not the case. For every one product Microsoft sells purely based on theft prevention alone, it’s a win for them. What has me curious is the all-encompassing mention of “Microsoft products” in the job ad. Could Microsoft really be looking to put all of their eggs in one basket by employing a single anti-piracy platform across all applications? Probably not, but the thought of that doesn’t sit well with me insofar as if the platform were ever to be fully exploited.

-Stephen Chapman

http://msftkitchen.com

First and foremost, Bing just doesn’t quite cut the mustard with the results regarding everything I’m about to go into, so the opportunity to evangelize for Bing will have to wait until another day (but if a Bing expert would like to contact me and show me how to leverage Bing in the same manner to yield quality results, I would love to do this same article with Bing as the catalyst).

Something I have people inquire with me about frequently (friends and family and sometimes even random strangers via email) is if I can find a Windows 7 ISO that they can’t find themselves. There are some applicable scenarios for this outside of pirating, such as if you want to honestly give something a trial run or if you’ve purchased a licensed physical or digital copy but you’ve lost the media (either digital or physical). If you can’t find the product on Microsoft’s web site and you don’t want to go the torrent/P2P/newsgroup/rapidshare/etc. route, you’re in luck. I just so happen to be a Google aficionado (via my 8+ years experience with advanced search queries on-the-fly and because I’m an internet marketer full-time now, which means I am practically married to Google) and though what I’m about to show you is a very basic query, it’s the thought processes and the terminology you will learn to apply to them that you’ll benefit the most from. And, hey, if you aren’t even familiar with using Google in this capacity, then you’ll gain that component from this post as well!

Remember: intitle:index.of

Learn it, love it, eat, sleep and drink it. That little prefix to your Google queries can land you a treasure trove of results — and I don’t just mean for the specific scenario I’m going to delve into in this post. Now, with that said, let’s say I need to find an x64 Professional Edition Windows 7 ISO. I’ve got a key but I don’t have the media, right? There are a number of ways to approach this but I’m giving you the keys to the best method right up-front:

• 1 – intitle:index of

 

• 2 – The name of the Windows 7 ISO as you would get it from Microsoft (think via MSDN or some similar avenue where software is distributed digitally, thus resulting in a file name you can search for). So, for our scenario, we could search Google for something like Windows 7 ISO MSDN to find out what Microsoft’s Windows 7 ISO name scheme is. Using that method, I discovered that Windows 7 Professional x64′s ISO name as it exists on MSDN is en_windows_7_professional_x64_dvd_x15-65805.iso.

 

• 3 – With points 1 and 2 in mind, your search query will look like this (click it to see it in Google): intitle:index.of en_windows_7_professional_x64_dvd_x15-65805.iso

And for quick reference, here is a list of all the Windows 7 ISO names (excluding VLK and OEM versions, and I was going to hyperlink them, but the point of this post is to give you a new tool to leverage, so to make you copy/paste these into a new query is by design):

• Windows 7 ISO Enterprise x64 English: en_windows_7_enterprise_x64_dvd_x15-70749.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Enterprise x86 English: en_windows_7_enterprise_x86_dvd_x15-70745.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Ultimate x64 English: en_windows_7_ultimate_x64_dvd_x15-65922.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Ultimate x86 English: en_windows_7_ultimate_x86_dvd_x15-65921.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Professional x64 English: en_windows_7_professional_x64_dvd_x15-65805.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Professional x86 English: en_windows_7_professional_x86_dvd_x15-65804.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Home Premium x64 English: en_windows_7_home_premium_x64_dvd_x15-65733.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Home Premium x86 English: en_windows_7_home_premium_x86_dvd_x15-65732.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Home Basic x86 English: en_windows_7_home_basic_x86_dvd_x15-65654.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Starter x86 English: en_windows_7_starter_x86_dvd_x15-68956.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Language Pack x64 Multilingual: mu_windows_7_language_pack_x64_dvd_x15-73276.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Language Pack x86 Multilingual: mu_windows_7_language_pack_x86_dvd_x15-73272.iso

Remember: You can use this method for *anything*! Office, XP, Vista, Expression, SQL; you name it, you can apply this method to find it.

Now, while that particular approach works 8 times out of 10, for the 2 times it doesn’t work, you may need to get a bit more creative. Sometimes, all the links will be dead or maybe you won’t land a single result. Sometimes, you may find a link that’s live one day but then dead the next, or you might try a query one day only to find nothing, then try it again tomorrow and see that Google has indexed 3 new pages for your search term! Also some factors to take into consideration are thinking what someone else might name the file or you may need to find out the name of a scene release (if you don’t know what that means, basically, it’s when an internet group gets a hold of something and they release it to the general public — of which, they usually change the file name and release it in some kind of archived format like .zip, .rar, .7z, etc.) and search for the file name of the release to see if someone else downloaded it and stored it on their server.

Be creative and don’t get discouraged if you’re not successful! Have a formula and I guarantee you, you’ll never have to worry about how to get a hold of any Microsoft media ever again (unless you’re looking for the latest leaked build of Windows or if you’re searching for something that’s quite obscure or not truly utilized by the public, such as Microsoft MultiPoint Server or Windows 7 Enterprise, etc.).

I hope you found this post useful! Please feel free to comment and spread the word. =)

-Stephen Chapman

http://msftkitchen.com