Hi All,

For those of you who have installed Windows 7 RC on one these netbooks and couldn’t figure out what the two unknown devices are in device manager, then I have the solution for you.

Visit the HP website here and install the following downloads:

Nick.

Hi All,

Now that Windows 7 has hit release candidate, people are asking me how to create a bootable USB stick so they can quickly install Windows 7 RC1.

You will need the following to create the bootable USB flash drive:

• USB Flash Drive (>2GB+) - 4GB minimum recommended
• Microsoft Windows 7 Disk
• A computer running Windows 7 or Windows Vista

Step 1: Format the USB Drive

The steps below describe how to use the command line to format a USB disk correctly using the diskpart utility.

**** This will erase/delete/nuke/remove/junk everything on your drive. Be careful to select the right drive!  ****

Plug in your USB Flash Drive

Open a command prompt as administrator (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt (right click and select “Run as administrator”)

Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:

diskpart

list disk

The number of your USB drive will be listed, write it down - I’ll assume for this tutorial that the USB flash drive number is disk 2.

Format the drive by typing the following instructions into the same window. Replace the number “2” with the number of your disk below.

select disk 2

clean

create partition primary

select partition 1

active

format fs=NTFS

assign

exit

When that is done, you’ll have a formatted USB flash drive that is ready to be made bootable - don't close this Command Prompt, as you'll need it again soon.

Step 2: Make the USB Drive Bootable 

Now we’ll use the bootsect utility that comes on the Windows 7 or Window Vista to make the USB flash drive bootable.  

Insert your Windows 7 or Windows Vista DVD into your  drive - I’ll assume the drive letter is d:

Using the same Command Prompt window that you used in Step 1, change directory to the boot folder located on the root of the media.

d:

cd d:\boot

Use bootsect to set the USB Flash drive as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Windows 7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labelled as drive  f:\ by the Computer:

bootsect /nt60 f:

You can now close the command prompt window as this is no longer required.

Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive

Using Windows Explorer, copy all of the files from your DVD to the formatted flash drive, once completed, this USB flash drive is ready to boot. The final thing you need to do is to enable your computer to boot via USB in the BIOS and then you’re away.

To request a valid key for the beta and release candidate, please go here - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx.

Nick.

Hi All,

I’ve given myself a project of synth’ing Liam’s school (Halswell) for them – It’s a wicked technology from Microsoft Live Labs which has a whole heap of potential uses.. So if you’ve got some photos of Halswell School, ping me an email and i’ll happily add them in the collection as I progress...

NB: You can zoom in/out on the photos by using the + and – buttons as well as navigate around using the arrows.

Nick.

Hi All,

I've been working a bit with Nigel Parker in our developer evangelist team on some projects and he's always doing cool stuff with our new technologies, so I wanted to see how hard it was for mere mortals to synth photos - It's surprisingly very very easy - I took a few photos of my office at work.. and put this together (or you can view the embedded version below). For more info check out http://photosynth.net/. 

Nick.

Hi All,

We moved Microsoft offices last week here in Christchurch, and as such we needed some additional wiring and electrical work to be done as there wasn’t enough wiring to cater for our needs. One of the ports in my office wasn’t working (it didn’t pass the cabling test with my tester) so I asked the cablers to test all ports in the rooms to ensure they were working as expected. When we pulled the jack off the wall, this is what we found…..

So from the look of it (and from testing) the original cabler/sparky decided that the jackpoints on this wall maybe better suited on the other wall, so daisy chained it to the new jackpoint rather than running another cable from the patch panel… Both jackpoints are 26 and 28.. truely cowboy-ish for a new building install!

Nick.

Today Microsoft announced on the back of its 2^nd quarter earnings, that it plans to cut 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months - starting with 1400. I found myself today reflecting on the organisation I work for, the job I do, and what I/the company needs to focus on to weather the storm moving forward in the current economic climate. I’ve often joke with colleagues and friends that for me, working for Microsoft is an addiction. I’m never far away from email, a laptop or my cellphone, and I find myself fortunate to be paid to do my hobby. So my sincere thoughts are with those that were let go today and their families.

We had a company meeting in New Zealand today, and it’s clear to me that the company wants to look after it’s strongest assets (the people) while ensuring we meet our shareholders expectations by increasing market share and profitability. Our leadership team did an excellent job in relaying the facts as they currently stand, installing confidence in the job that we do, our contribution as a subsidiary to the corporation as well as New Zealand and how we can play a positive hand in our destiny by the way we engage with our customers and partners and focus on the job at hand.

We can’t be successful unless our customers and partners are, so now is the time more than ever, for us to help identify opportunities to drive costs out of organisations through automation, process improvement, and smart adoption and deployment of technology.

We aren’t a faceless US Corporation, we are Microsoft New Zealand. If you need to drive costs of your business, make sure you are realising the value of the software you currently own, talk to us about the challenges you face - you maybe surprised where we can help.

Nick.

Hi All, 

Fast food chain Burger King is putting online friendships to the test with their latest marketing campaign.

The burger empire has created a Facebook application, “Whopper Sacrifice”, which gives users a free hamburger coupon if they delete 10 people from their friends list.

“Now is the time to put your fair-weather web friendships to the test”, says the Whopper Sacrifice website.

“Install Whopper Sacrifice on your Facebook profile, and we’ll reward you with a free flame-broiled Whopper when you sacrifice ten of your friends."

Bizzar – go here for the full article.

So… 62 burgers for me, just what I need… :-)

Hi All,

So it’s 2009 already! We had a great party around here last night with some good friends; the kids had blast in the pool, playing swingball and staying up late.... So I’m sure they will be in _fine_ form today... no really! :-)

Last year had a lot of challenges for us as a family with various things going on, and this year no doubt will have its fair share, particularly with the impact of the struggling world economies, pending job losses and rising unemployment etc.

I was showing Brett a few snaps of our holiday last week from Purau and our retro camping experience with our Sprite Pop-top Caravan. If we reflect on life, the good memories that stick in our mind aren’t typically the things we purchase – it’s the time spent with friends and family. The kids had a blast at the beach, pool, playing in the creek trying to catch whitebait/eels, biking, staying up late etc and we found it very relaxing.

So for me, 2009 will be about focusing on the important things in life (family, friends, work – balance..) and enjoying the challenges that life offers to us all.

Have a great year, focus on what you can change/impact and enjoy your family moments! :-)

Nick.

Santa Call is back in action and ready to add magic to your kids' Christmas.

Just visit the Santa Call website [www.santacall.co.nz] to have Santa call your kids and record their Christmas wish-list. You will then receive an email with a voice recording of your child's wishes.

Nick.

Do you wish you could receive your Facebook messages along with your regular email on your Windows Mobile phone? Now you can with the new version of the emoze mobile push email service. With emoze’s free application, you can read, reply, and send messages directly from your phone’s interface without having to open up and browse to the Facebook web site itself. It’s completely integrated with your phone, all that’s required is a data connection. 

Once installed, the emoze Mobile Client application communicates with the Emoze Global Service Network (EGSN) to receive the incoming emails and direct them to the inbox on the mobile device.

Emoze can be downloaded from www.emoze.com or downloaded directly onto your Window’s Mobile device by navigating to http://emoze.com.

Nick.