Last night Nicholas Carr the author of "The Big Switch" - Powering the World, From Edison to Google was on Stephen Colbert. Mr. Carr was the keynote speaker this past year at Citrix Synergy and his message was that the internet (cloud) is becoming one big Utility driven by google. The book is a fascinating and great read and I would highly reccomend it for anyone in the computer industry.
I picked this gem up from Tony Sonyo of Microsoft blog. Tony picked it up from the Microsoft Word Team blog who gives a good bit of information about just exactly what redaction can do for you here.
Law offices and personnel departments finding their offices plagued with requests for documents will find this tool indispensable. It basically lets you black out sensitive text in a word document.
The officially supported previous Word 2003 version of the redaction tool can be found here.
While Microsoft has not officially released a 2007 version of the Microsoft Word Redaction tool and are not supporting this you can now download the one the developers are working on Codeplex here:
http://www.codeplex.com/redaction/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=17177
Have at it!
While I have been a huge skeptic for the previous two Microsoft ads this one I like. It goes right after Apple. I'm a PC.
Video: Pride
While clicking around today on the Citrix news site I found this video about how the rural city of Agogo in Africa is connected using Citrix technology. The video talks about ways that the Africans will use the Internet to tell the world about their plight and the message of the dwindling forest. It is quite interesting and worth the look. For more info click here.
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Mail generated by Woodstone Servers Alive at Monday, September 15, 2008 4:06:46 AM
OMG! Are they serious? Really? Really? This is not going to sell
anything. Not even remotely funny. The Microsoft
downward spiral continues.
Video: New Family
Look,
I am no MS Hater. I've been one of their biggest cheerleaderd since Dos 2.1, over 30 some years ago. It just REALLY irks me that they are spending this type of money to try to "improve" their image when really all they need to do is just engage the vendors and help show them how to write their programs and drivers work on Vista. Thats all. Seriously. Thats it. That is ALL they need to do.
I'm not finding any humor in the fact that I have 750 Vista PC's sitting here for over a year now that I can't deploy because every time I think I have a "golden image" another gotcha comes along with Vista that prevents me from implementation. ONE YEAR!!!
I thought woohoo, SP1 will come along and fix my problems. Boy was I wrong. The bottom line is Vista works great IF
A:) You are not on a domain using roaming or mandatory profiles.
B:) You are an administrator of your machine.
Otherwise the list of incompatabilites in programs and drivers is sickening. Blame it all you want on 3rd party vendors, but it is Microsoft's problem. And Bill Gates adjusting his shorts or doing the robot no matter how funny you find it, is not going to change peoples opinion of Microsoft when they have a computer in front of them causing maddening issues.
If this continues, no matter how bad they may be, I will be considering Macs or Linux for our next purchase, at least I know the programs I need to put on the local desktop on them will run. I can run the rest from Citrix
With the release of Xenapp 5 to the web,(get it in your MyCitrix) Citrix also has released several new client versions and yes once again has renamed them as promised at Citrix Synergy earlier this year.
First there is the Xenapp Plugin which is the new name for the Xenapp 11 client that was the new name for Citrix Presentation Server client that was the new name for the Citrix ICA Client.
That is split out into the Xenapp Web Plugin version 11(the ica web client) and the Xenapp Plugin for Streaming Apps version 11.
Find them all at http://www.citrix.com/clients
There were also two Access Management Console extensions posted earlier.
See
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX118347
And
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX118352
Here are some key talking points on XenApp 5.0 from Citrix:
XenApp 5 Highlights
Delivery of ALL Windows Applications
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New inter-isolation communication capabilities simplify how virtual applications are packaged, maintained and updated, and ensure that the applications can interoperate as if they were installed locally.
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Support for application streaming via HTTP and HTTPS provides more flexibility for application delivery.
User Experience 2.0
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XenApp 5 includes a redesigned, intuitive and consistent user experience on the desktop and over the Web.
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The ability to prioritize users and applications ensures the best experience for critical use cases.
Application Performance Monitoring and Support
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Significantly expanded monitoring provides rich data into the user experience to enable faster and better assessments of performance issues.
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New end user simulation tools allow administrators to proactively identify performance issues before they are experienced by end users. This capability allows IT organizations to track the performance of real-world end user tasks and measure their performance against service level commitments.
Support for Windows Server 2003 and 2008
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XenApp 5 leverages the architectural enhancements in Windows Server® 2008 to improve security and manageability. For example, administrators will now be able to apply patches to Terminal Services without needing to reboot.
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XenApp farms can now contain both Windows Server 2003 and 2008, allowing customers to begin migrating to Windows Server 2008 right away.
If you are looking for a comparison of Xenapp 5.0 features compared to previous releases look here;
http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/salesdocs/Citrix-XenApp-Comparative-Matrix%28Aug08%29.pdf
