Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Clearing the browser from all the links to cool tools and content for today.

Microsoft Stuff

• Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 BETA – Includes enhancements for Windows 7-based computers
• Seadragon.com – Convert Any Image On The Web Into A Deep Zoom Image
• Deep Zoom Composer Updated To Fix An Export Related Bug
• Streaming Media in Windows 7 – Streaming your collection over the Internet – unfortunately this doesn’t work if your Windows 7 machine is joined to a domain
• Sneak peek of what’s coming in Windows Live Movie Maker
• Live Video Streaming: Guide To The Best Broadcast Services To Stream Your Video In Real-Time
• What's new in Windows 7: Tour Windows 7
• Get a Live-Updating Bing Wallpaper Windows 7 Theme – i did this it worked really easily
• Megawoosh Slide for Microsoft Project – this is a funny little video that has gone viral in Europe. Heads up from Duncan’s blog.

Tune out if you don’t understand the title.

BTUB last night was lots of fun – catching up with many old friends and making new ones.

One of the special moments of the night was the latin dancing fever free lessons. @websinthe decided to dance his own special style – turned into a animated gif here at the request of many!

I took a bunch of photos – mostly of BTUB folk – but also a fair number of the latin dancing lessons. Some of the regular party goers got in front of the lens as well.

I have included a couple of the funniest / best/ weirdest photos below and the rest can be found on my flickr account.

BTUB photos

Latin Dancing Photos

SBS2008

We have our new server commissioned and running.

Hardware Specs

• ASUS TS700-E4/RX8 Intel Core Xeon Server
• 2 x Intel Quad Core Xeon 5405 1.6GHz CPU
• ASUS Server Mainboard
• 32GB of ECC Fully Buffered DDRII RAM (4 x 8GB)
• 12 DIMM slots support Quad channel DDR2 533/667 FBD up to 48GB
• ASUS Pedestal Server Chassis with 730W Power Supply
• 2 x 300GB Seagate SAS Hard Drives
• 2 x 1TB Seagate Drives 24/7
• up to 8 hot-swap SAS or SATAII HDDs
• Onboard RAID 0, 1, 1E
• Hardware RAID 5 via optional ZCR RAID card
• 2 PCI-X 133/100 MHz (one support ZCR RAID card)
• 2 PCI-E x 8 slots
• 1 PCI-E x 16 (x8 link)
• ASUS 16x DVD-RW Drive
• Dual Intel Gigabit LAN
• ASUS ASWM 2.0 & Server Anti-virus License
• 3 Years Hardware Warranty
• Powerware 5110/1500VA UPS

We are running SBS2008 which works very nicely. We found that there is a dearth of how to’s out there on the web in relation to a number of specific configuration issues we came across but we seem to have solved most of them now. We did use Philip’s excellent SBS 2008 setup list as a starting point. We also found lots of good helpful stuff on his website. we were both doing similar migrations from SBS 2003. In our case we didn't use any migration tools but manually moved data and mail. I actually copied every users mail out of exchange into a PST file, and then re-imported them into the new box from the PST file. The main reason for this was to avoid bringing over corrupted profiles and other bits and pieces from the old server. The value of this paying off already with quick profile load times and no errors.

Here are some useful SBS2008 articles from Philip:

There’s been a lot of things happening this week. Not the least being the possibility of a swine flu pandemic. Read on for a scientific explanation of swine flu.

General Microsoft News

• Amit has written article explaining How to Download Images from an Outlook Email.Tip – one of the options works for PowerPoint also.
• Sarah Perez lets us know that PhotoZoom Becomes DeepZoomPix. This is now using Silverlight. I believe this technology has also changed inside PhotoSynth in order to allow Mac users better access to the technology.
• She also lets us know how to Twitter in Excel – how to actually run twitter in side an Excel client.
• Windows 7 Beta keys are still available. The Release Candidate itself is due shortly. From the Windows Team Blog:

I’m pleased to share that the RC is on track for April 30th for  download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Broader, public availability will begin on May 5th. Link for rest of article.