First of all,  the important pieces are all in place ….. that is to say they know where to pay my wages into and I have a mobile phone and broadband ;-).  Seriously though,  I have started to get my head round all of the different parts of Vodafone that enable communications to happen and I am surprised (and pleased) to see that almost everything is catered for,  we really do have a wide range of products that would come under the Unified or Total Communications banner … more on that to come later.

I have a few things I am working on at the minute that I will share later but for now you might want to take a look at https://ubiquitousconnections.blogspot.com/2009/11/cloud-based-communication-part-2.html which gives you an idea of at least one of the things that is going on here at the place where everything is red :-)

Mark

Technical Partner Manager @ Vodafone

My friends have raised over £1650 and I wanted to use some technology in order to involve them in the race as much as possible so I am planning on doing a few things.  I just love technology !

- I am planning to tweet while running the marathon.  Follow @markdeakin if you want to see how I am getting along

- I am planning on posting to facebook also

- I will be texting my girlfriend along the way also so she knows when I am coming to the finish line and perhaps more importantly for her she knows that I am still ok :-)

- I am thinking about taking a Flip Video camera with me to record some of the run also

Now had I not been technically minded,  my friends would have donated and all they would have seen is a few photos of me and hope I actually ran it.  At least this way the can follow along :-).

Oh,  and I will be wearing a pink tutu (my commitment to them if they raised all the money in time) so look out for me on Freeview Channel 301 from 1400 onwards ... I will try to get myself on TV !

Thanks to all those that sponsored me - www.justgiving.com/deaksdoesamarathon

With all of the free texts you get these days from mobile operators,  this might be one way to make sure you get the most out of them :-).

Finally if you look further down the page you will see a converted phone booth .... nice :-)

At the beginning of September,  after working at Microsoft for 8 years and 1 day,  I had my last lunch at TVP and left the office to go work for Vodafone UK.  I have been there now for two and a bit weeks and I am almost settled in.  I am doing a role based around Vodafones partnership with Microsoft,  in UC in particular so the 'apple never falls far from the tree'.  If anything I might have more to talk about as my knowledge of UC expands.

Anyway,  for now I just wanted to make a quick post to explain whats happened and RSS me so you can get updates once they start flowing again.

BPOS is the best and easiest way of getting access to the cost saving MS productivity suite that I use myself every day and finally its available for people in the UK to purchase and start using.

BPOS includes (£10.04 per user per month):

· Exchange Online (£6.69 per user per month)

· SharePoint Online (£4.85 per user per month)

· Office Communications Online (£1.67 per user per month)

· Office Live Meeting  (£3.01 per user per month)

· Deskless worker (£1.34 per user per month)

If you are interested (and you should be – its very cheap),  I recommend you contact one of the UK BPOS partners or sign up on https://www.microsoft.com/online/en-gb/default.mspx.  If you are planning on doing 25 users or more (perhaps a 25 user pilot) then I certainly recommend you make contact as their might be something else we can do :-)

Two important points for any small business reading this

1. By the end of the week you could be using the same technology as your ‘bigger cousins’ in Enterprise.  Making your act and respond like a big organisation (in a good way).
2. People need to save money and they need to save money now.  Using BPOS gives you access to the cost saving technology (Livemeeting is an excellent example of this) without any deployment delays. 

Credit cards at the ready then !

This tool has been available internally at Microsoft for as long as I can remember and over the years I have used it to copy virtual PCs and installations files over from Redmond or from a local server to my PC.  The problem is that I have never been able to share this little gem as its only been available for internal use.

I am glad to say its now available for download from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx get clicking,  get downloading and get copying.

My three top tips for using RichCopy

1. If you are copying one or a few big files,  set ‘File Copy’ attribute to more than '1’.   It uses up resources but copies big files down quicker

2. If you are copying lots of files then set the ‘Thread number’ attributes to 10-10-1.  This will copy multiple files quicker

3. If you are copying over a dodgy connection.  You can re run the download and it will go and find the files it didn't manage to get the first time.

This is a seriously cool application and the fact it has blue progress bars that fly across the screen when you are copying just makes it better than sliced bread itself !

Brett Johnson has put together some brilliant ‘tips’ on OCS R2.  Something there for everyone me thinks :-)

‘Share the love’ with Communicator Desktop Sharing

Communicator Voice Settings 

Audio conference calls – Part 1

Audio conference calls – Part 2 – Joining as a leader on a normal phone

Audio conference calls – Part 3 – Joining using the browser

I will keep this post updated as Brett puts together more pearls of wisdom

Enough of that for now though,  when you have 10 mins free,  pop along to https://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/nethistory/#fbid:cdOi6BnV9bB and watch the hilarious video on the brief history of the internet including the classic ‘Hamster Dance’

It’s been about a month since my blog post on ‘To Tweet or Not to Tweet’. I have done over 100+ ’tweets’ and have a modest following (as well as following approx 50 people) and the question I asked myself this weekend was “Has it been worth it and is it working?”

To answer that question I should really look at my main reasons for wanting to try it out.

1. Being two faced – Provide relevant status updates on my ‘work persona’
2. Faster than a speeding blog post – A way to share information I think wouldn’t constitute a blog post
3. Keeping your ears to the ground – Using twitter to keep in touch with the community

To a greater or lesser extent,  it has indeed delivered on these three ‘requirements’ list above.  Let me give you some examples taken from the last 30 days or so

• Shared my twitter URL at the beginning of a presentation.  By the time I was back in the office I had already had a few people contact me to,  either to compliment me on my presentation (which was nice of them) or to know more about UC. 
• Making contact with those ‘on the ground’ that are using and abusing OCS R2.  I have been talking to a few people that are either installing OCS,  using OCS as an employee,  writing about OCS as a journalist or analyst or going on OCS training organised by Microsoft.   The instant feedback and intel’ you get from Twitter just isn't possible with traditional forums.
• I have also been tracking the infrastructure deployment of camatmckesson who appears to be installing and using everything we produce at Microsoft.  Its great to see someone using the ‘stack’ to its full potential

Put simply,  Twitter is indeed a great corporate tool if you make the time to dedicate to it.  In fact I am putting together an internal virtual team to think about how we can get more people within Microsoft twittering.

What’s your experience of Twitter as a professional messaging tool?  Good? Bad? Any tips?

I remember seeing a video similar to this when I started Microsoft in 2001 and reflecting upon it a few years later when some of the ‘future’ technologies had become reality,  Microsoft Smartphone (as it was known then) being the one I remember the most.

Take a look at the video below of our vision for 2019,  then carry on reading the rest of this post…. no peeking !

Ok … so hopefully you didn’t peek and have a good idea of what we see the future looking like.  Now to share my thoughts on how it will happen

Remote classrooms – Already possible using LiveMeeting and similar video technology,  all we need now is the broadband speeds to increase and mass market cheap video displays/walls.  Both are dropping in cost and increasing in size so certainly possible within the next 10 years.  What was you internet speed at home and how big was your TV in 1999?

Touch screen surfaces – This is already available through Microsoft Surface.  I played with one of these a while back and it truly is an amazing piece of technology,  only a matter of time before it too becomes ‘mass market’ and more accessible to schools etc.

Integration into your child's school schedule – I have seen schools using SharePoint in order to provide access to calendaring etc so this is entirely possible now.

Projection – The guy at the airport uses location based technology to find the location of a colleague,  he then projects ‘directions’ onto the floor.  The IT world has already invented small projectors … examples here https://www.personalprojector.co.uk/ and RFID/GPS will make location based applications possible.

Room141 (4m3s) – Looking through the photos for Room 141.  This is Photosynth and is available now.

So what’s stopping all this happen you might ask yourself?  It’s a very good question and comes down to three areas in my opinion.

1. Availability of technology – Some technologies are still to be invented but that doesn't make them impossible.  If someone had told me about Microsoft Surface or Photosynth two years ago I would not have believed it was possible,  24 months later look where we are now.

2. Cost of technology – Video conferencing is an example of a technology that is available but yet to take off ‘mainstream’ i.e. on every desk.  This is partially down to the fact that its expensive.  In a similar way to how we are applying a software approach to a hardware world with UC,  bringing down the cost of communications software,  I think we can do the same with some of the technologies shown in this video.  As I mentioned earlier,  Flatscreen TVs are another example of technology that was expensive but is now becoming mainstream (although obviously Microsoft did not have anything to do with that)

3. User/Organisation acceptance – The other key areas is user/organisation acceptance.  A lot of people fear change and its those that are willing to accept change and ‘live on the bleeding edge’ that make technologies like this possible.  I run my laptop on Windows 7 and have been using OCS 2007 R2 for months now.  Yes it sometimes ‘stumbles’ but  that's the fine with me because I get to make the most of the technology before other people,  living the life in these vision videos as much as I can.

I look forward to reviewing this post 12 months from now and seeing how much of this has become reality,  getting us closer to 2019.

****** UPDATES *****

Augmented reality - During the video you see some examples of augmented reality.  In the video this is usually shown by holding one of the ‘tablets’ in mid air,  the best example of which is when they hold one up to the plant.  Looks like we are working on that already.  Take a look at https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/msrtechfest/videoGallery.aspx?initialVideo=techfest_channel10_AugmentedReality