Looking through the Windows

Introduction to XNA on Windows Phone 7

2010-07-12T04:51:18Z

One of the priorities I have for FY11, is to launch Windows Phone 7 in to the market in Singapore. I can tell you I am really excited about this release of our phone software and the work that is going on with the partners and ecosystem to make it a success.

Applications always play a big part of phone adoption, and in Windows Phone 7, we support two development models…

Silverlight (For all applications)
XNA (specifically for games)

While I used to be a developer, a long time ago, I havent had a chance to polish up my phone development skills, or where to start. This article looks like a great place to begin and I wanted to share it with you. If I have time tonight, I might give it a spin…

Introduction to XNA on Windows Phone 7

Nearly 50% of Windows 7 PCs run 64-bit versions

2010-07-12T04:01:28Z

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/07/08/64-bit-momentum-surges-with-windows-7.aspx

I have been using 64-bit on all the machines I own that can run it. While the features are the same as the 32-bit versions, it’s the ability to fully utilize all the capabilities of your machine is what I love.

Now many people ask me should I run 64-bit Windows on my computer? There is really at this stage (who knows for the future?) only two things to consider when making this decision.

How much RAM do you have? (This is the most important)
Do you have a multi-core or 64-bit processor?

If you have 4GB of RAM in your machine, and lets face it many of the newer machines quite often do, apart from a lot of the lower end smaller machines, then you definitely want to go 64-bit as the architecture of that OS will fully utilize the memory you have.

On all my machines, where I can, I run 64-bit, and have had no problems from applications for business to games… love it.

Installing Windows 7 on a MacBook via a USB

2010-05-03T15:52:15Z

Ok, so I am no MacBook specialist, but someone I was talking to was complaining about the amount of time it took to install Windows 7 via Bootcamp on a MacBook via a DVD.

So I got a hold of a MacBook, my wife got one for a broadband promo, and embarked on the challenge.

1. Partition the drive using BootCamp Assistant: This step is simply to help to partition the drive so you can choose to run either OS at startup. The *ISSUE* is that bootcamp does not recognize a USB key as a viable installation path, so that shot that down. I hope that this gets fixed at some point, as I love installing my PCs via USB, its very fast.

2. Download a free tool called rEFIt: This tool essentially lets you to have better control of where the Macbook will boot from when you restart. Once you have this installed, you can then restart the machine, then as it starts back up, you can hold down the “Command” button to choose the “Install Windows from” option. This will then detect the USB as an installation media.

3. Follow the prompts of the normal Windows 7 install: That's the simple part. The installation to a usable OS took just over 15 mins.

So there you have it, installation of Windows 7 from a USB drive on to a Macbook, simple and hassle free… now!

Windows Phone 7 Application Design Excitement

2010-04-29T14:52:22Z

Ever since the launch of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP, there has started to be a real flurry of excitement in developer space on the applications that can be created.

I came across this blog by a company called Clarity Consulting on design and development for Windows Phone 7, and they have some really interesting perspectives on how the new technologies have really changed the game as it relates to application development on Smart Phones.

This is an example of some of their work;

Looks great right?

Check out more of what they are doing here at their blog

http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/windows_phone_7/default.aspx

Windows Phone 7 – Calling all Phone Developers

2010-04-08T02:31:51Z

Pretty excited to see Windows Phone 7 coming to market. It looks great, and even better the support for developers coming fast. In addition to the tools recently releases at MIX2010, the team have just released the icons for people to develop their applications. You can check them out at the blog post from the Windows Phone Developer Blog.

Speed up the Windows Task Bar

2010-03-23T04:42:26Z

Saw this great tip from the guys at Lifehacker.com on how to speed up your Windows 7 Taskbar. When you have lots of applications running, its a great way to speed the process up to look through all the active applications.

Check it out at

http://lifehacker.com/5497021/speed-up-windows-7-taskbar-navigation-with-a-registry-hack

Speeding up Internet Explorer 8

2010-01-26T02:11:05Z

Is Internet Explorer 8 not performing for you? Just read this great post from Ed Bott, on ZD Net on how you can speed up your Internet Explorer experience.

Apparently it stems from corrupted add-ons, and Adobe Flash Player being the most common :-(.

Anyway check out the great step by step instructions at http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1694&tag=wrapper;col1.

Internet Explorer Security Update Released

2010-01-22T03:33:17Z

As a follow up to the recent IE security vulnerability. Microsoft has released an out-of-band security update to protect the recently reported remote code execution hack.

You can see more details here

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-002.mspx

If you have Automatic check for updates enabled, you should get this update automatically.

The Internet Explorer threat

2010-01-20T09:55:03Z

There has been a huge amount of media regarding the current security concerns of using Internet Explorer as a browser on your machine. Reports are indicating that the French and German governments are instructing people to change to another browser to fix the problem.

Our advice for users of Internet Explorer today is to ensure they upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 8.

Now the questions that everyone will ask is, will that actually make a difference? Aren’t all Internet Explorer versions at risk?

Lets start with the vulnerability itself. Essentially it involves what is called an invalid pointer reference within Internet Explorer, which a specifically crafted attack could reference to enable remote code execution.

To do this, a user would have to navigate to a website that was specifically created to take advantage of this exploit, not your average everyday site, in fact you would have to be tricked to go the site via something like though an email message or an instant message, so in most cases Junk email filters should help to block these emails and you should never click on links from anyone you don’t trust or seem suspicious.

Now lets say for instance that you managed to get tricked to going to a site that had the attack created. The code would enable the attacker to get the same level of access as the current user. It is for this reason, we encourage average users not to operate under administrative privileges. As a standard user the attacker would have less permissions to try and do things on your PC.

Now finally, if you went to the site with attack code as an administrator user, Internet Explorer 8 has another benefit that protects users called Data Execution Protection (also known as DEP). DEP essentially blocks any code that is trying to be executed in a memory space that has resulted when an error occurs. Which is essentially what this attack is trying to do. So people using IE8 are protected because of the DEP turned on by default.

Now where is DEP enabled and in what configurations. There is a good table created on the Security Research & Defense Blog, which really simplifies the evaluation of the threat.

	Windows 2000	Windows XP	Windows Vista	Windows 7
Internet Explorer 6	Exploitable	Exploitable (current exploit effective for code execution)	N/A (Vista ships with IE7)	N/A (Windows 7 ships with IE 8)
Internet Explorer 7	N/A (IE 7 will not install on Windows 2000)	Potentially exploitable (current exploit does not currently work due to memory layout differences in IE 7)	IE Protected Mode prevents current exploit from working.	N/A (Windows 7 ships with IE 8)
Internet Explorer 8	N/A (IE 8 will not install on Windows 2000)	DEP enabled by default on XP SP3 prevents exploit from working.	IE Protected Mode + DEP enabled by default prevent exploit from working.	IE Protected Mode + DEP enabled by default prevent exploit from working.

If you really want to check if you have DEP turned on for your machine, you can download a program called Process Explorer from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx, this is a small app we have via our acquisition of a company called Sysinternals, its completely free. When you run this you will be able to see all the processes running, and to check if DEP is enabled do the following;

1. Click View

2. Select Columns

3. Ensure that “DEP Status” is enabled

Then you should be able to see as in the picture below, that DEP is enabled.

As you can see there are many technologies in place that actually protect users from the vulnerability that many people are talking about in the news and blogs etc.

So in summary, the ways users can protect themselves

1. Install IE8, it has the best technologies to protect users from the threat.

2. Unless absolutely necessary try and run as a standard user on your PC and not as an administrator

3. Be extra vigilant on clicking links in emails or instant messages, and ensure your email filters are up to date. You can do this by ensuring that you turn automatic updates on in Windows.

For all the latest updates check out http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/.

2010 The beginning of a new year and new challenges.

2010-01-18T06:34:55Z

Wow, for just a moment you stop take stock and look back and say to yourself…

“Where did that time go?”

For me this is my ninth year at Microsoft and I feel I am at a point where life is truly exciting. Windows 7 is out, people are enjoying… I am loving it in my home. There is so much to be happy about.

So with the launch out of the way, I am going to try and spend more time with the blog and showing people what can be done with Windows.

To that end I am working on a couple of home-grown projects with Windows and see if its things we can share. Those projects are;

1. HTPC: Building the ultimate Home Theatre PC

2. CarPC: Integrating a computer platform in to your car, and what it lets you do.

3. Gaming PC: Building the key gaming PC yourself.

Most of these projects will be running at the same time, but I will try and tag them appropriately so as to not make it such a chore to sort though the information, which I hope people find valuable.

Anyway, time to get started, please ping me if there is anything you want to discuss.