Technology

It’s the morning before I leave for 18.5hrs of travel. Stating the obvious, Australia is a long way from America (and I’m only going to the West Coast). But I’m beyond thrilled to have been given this opportunity.

To my non IT friends and family, I’m going to Silicon Valley for a conference.

That conference is Tech Field Day’s Virtualization Field Day 6 http://techfieldday.com/event/vfd6/ If you’re awake during San Jose’s day, you can even see live video streaming of the day on that page. If you have twitter, play along with the hashtag #VFD6

As a ‘partner’ in the ‘channel’ (just imagine the air quotes), I’m going to stand on my soapbox and have a little chat about the role that we play in making software & hardware companies successful. Yeah, that totally sounded conceited, but follow along with me here.

There are so many facets to this chat that this post won’t be published in its original form. It’s going to take time to organise these thoughts into a logical sequence that flows, because the partner relationship is not a simple conversation.

This landed in my Inbox last week.

It?s a phishing scam, designed to capture your real login details and is definitely not from Microsoft.

It?s good practice to log straight into?the website or Cloud service?in your web?browser to check the validity of any warnings like these. Don?t click on links in your emails!

From: Microsoft Management Team <update.m01205@outlook.com>

Subject: Your Microsoft account requires update

Hi Microsoft User,

Your mailbox Size is almost full. Incoming mails might soon be rejected and Your mailbox might be closed.

The ATO Business Portal is vital to Australian businesses. This secure gateway allows us to provide reporting information to the tax office, to meet our compliance regulations.

It?s understandable that if you do any of those kind of tasks (either for your own business or someone elses), you need to know that the website and it?s AUSKey authentication is going to work before you upgrade to Windows 10.

The goods news is ? it does work.

People have started asking me how I have made so many connections with other people in IT, especially overseas. When I examined it, it turns out it�s just a by-product of how I engage with other people and get connected into groups of peers and �hero� speakers/writers. It�s nothing I specifically set out to achieve.

I�ve published my thoughts on LinkedIn�s Pulse blog site:

http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-become-known-within-your-industry-show-up-contribute-sonia-cuff?trk=prof-post

-SCuffy

Microsoft has announced that a free upgrade to Windows 10 will be available on the 29th of July for�eligible systems. This can be applied anytime over the next 12 months and your computer will be presented with a system tray icon and popup showing you how. Note: Eligible computers are�those already running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. If your computer is joined to a business �domain� network, you may still be eligible but won�t see the popup, so your IT department can control the upgrade process.

Nothing taunts a systems administrator like a yellow exclamation triangle in device manager.

After�an HP all in one computer had been worked on to remedy another issue, the only problem that remained was no sound & no webcam. And that stupid little yellow symbol. This appeared after Windows Updates had automatically updated the operating system from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1.

I tried all the usual suspects � disable the driver, uninstall the driver, try to update the driver (already the latest version), install the Realtek High Definition Audio driver directly from the Realtek website, disable the anti virus software etc etc. Every time, after each reboot, device manager taunted me with that little yellow symbol.

Ah the joys of a proof of concept. We’re playing with a vendor’s application that has some tricky networking requirements (multi-site VPN support through a third party aggregator) to see if the architecture would work with a server in Azure.

The great part is we have a trial version of the software, so we can replicate things from the comfort of our own office without disturbing the customer. Which is just as well, really.

The Click to Run software manages the streaming of the installation of some Office products and a virtualised environment to enable different versions to run side by side on a Windows computer. If this software gets its ‘knickers in a knot’ (technical term), you might come across some issues with your next Office software installation. Don’t remove this component if you think you’ll only ever use msi based retail CD installations.