James O'Neill's blog
Windows Platform, Virtualization and PowerShell with a little Photography for good measure.
So long, farewell Auf Wiedersehen, good bye
Today is my last day at Microsoft after 10 years, it’s sad to be going, but as someone said...
Date: 11/16/2010
Thinking about the cloud - part 2, Office 365
In my previous post I was talking in general terms about why BPOS was a sound idea. The recent...
Date: 11/01/2010
Thinking about the cloud (part 1).
I was telling someone recently that before I joined Microsoft I spent the late 1990s running a small...
Date: 10/19/2010
An unexpected call from a help desk? Hang up.
My phone rang: it was my dad. Father/son combinations don’t ring to chat like mother/daughter ones...
Date: 10/18/2010
Working with the image module for PowerShell; part 3, GPS and other data
In Part one I showed how my downloadable PowerShell module can tag photos using related data – like...
Date: 07/06/2010
Exploring the IMAGE PowerShell Module
In part one of this series I showed the finished version of photo-tagging script I’ve been using. I...
Date: 07/05/2010
GPS, and other kinds of Picture tagging with PowerShell
Well… I have been off for a bit and you can have a read of the previous post for some background on...
Date: 07/01/2010
How to make and share Panoramas more easily – Microsoft ICE + Photosynth
I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I was working on a post about scanned images – in fact it’s the...
Date: 03/22/2010
The 50th birthday that would have been
If you believe in the parallel universes then there are ones where Ayrton Senna is celebrating his...
Date: 03/21/2010
Virtualization announcements today.
In another window I am listening to the desktop Virtualization hour which I blogged about yesterday....
Date: 03/18/2010
Re-post : Desktop Virtualization Hour
About a month ago I mentioned that we have a “Desktop Virtualization Hour” planned for 4PM (GMT)...
Date: 03/17/2010
Book Review: Windows Powershell 2.0 Best Practices, Ed Wilson
Last week I watched a TV program called Michelin Stars, The Madness of Perfection it talked about...
Date: 03/16/2010
IE 8 is safest. Fact.
Every now and then a news story comes up which reminds us that if people with bad intentions, even...
Date: 03/15/2010
UK techdays Free events in London – including after hours.
You may have seen that registration for UK TechDays events from 12th to 16th April is already open -...
Date: 03/10/2010
Cars, social media, phones, windows media and there’s no hiding with co-pilot.
As titles go that’s an odd one, but stay with me. I’ve written before about my Citroen C6: Before...
Date: 03/09/2010
A FAT (32) lot of good that did me …
First rule of blogging. Don’t blog when angry. I’ve been through a time consuming process which...
Date: 03/09/2010
Photographic resolution and scans.
I’ve heard it said that every time you use an equation you lose half the audience. I’m going to take...
Date: 03/08/2010
How to use old drivers with a new OS – more on XP mode
In a post a while back about Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) I wrote “I’ve got a bad track record...
Date: 03/07/2010
Steve Ballmer talks about our cloud strategy
Yesterday Steve gave a talk at the University of Washington to discuss how cloud computing will...
Date: 03/05/2010
Retirement Planning (for service packs)
Yesterday I wrote about end-of-life planning for OSes and so it makes sense to talk about the end of...
Date: 02/25/2010
End of life planning.
No. I’m not talking about sorting out the music for one’s funeral* … I think every manager I have...
Date: 02/24/2010
Desktop virtualization update.
On the MDOP blog there is an announcement of new releases of both APP-V (which runs...
Date: 02/23/2010
What is Windows Azure ?
One of the things that seemed odd when I first came to Microsoft, was the way we put up...
Date: 02/23/2010
The Zombie cookie apocalypse (or how flash bypasses privacy)
Earlier this week I went to “Oxford Geek Night” and the title of one of title of one of the sessions...
Date: 02/19/2010
The Browser Choice Screen for Europe: What to Expect, When to Expect It
Dave Heiner, one of our Vice Presidents and our Deputy General Counsel has posted an explanation of...
Date: 02/19/2010
How to Kill IE 6
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be talking about IE8 (and depending on what gets...
Date: 02/18/2010
Free ebook: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization R2 Solutions
Over on the MSPress blog they have an announcement Mitch Tulloch has updated his free ebook of last...
Date: 02/17/2010
Desktop Virtualization Hour
I had a mail earlier telling me about desktop virtualization hour , planned for 4PM (GMT) on March...
Date: 02/16/2010
Windows Phone (again)
In theory I was supposed to be taking a day off on Monday to look after my children on half term....
Date: 02/16/2010
Giant Deepzoom mosaic, in a good cause.
I’ve been sorting out photos recently, and came across a ton of miniature Formula one images which I...
Date: 02/16/2010
Windows Phone announcement this afternoon.
Our press site says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will host a press conference at Mobile World...
Date: 02/15/2010
PowerShell and HyperV
An update of the PowerShell library for Hyper-V has been posted to Codeplex. This is the R2 version...
Date: 02/15/2010
How to deploy Windows 7 – 3 useful posts
I mentioned a few days back that I was going to write some posts about deploying Windows 7, but...
Date: 02/11/2010
Windows 7 activation update.
Over on the Windows blog there is a post talking about the update we are about to send out which is...
Date: 02/11/2010
Safer Internet day
I don’t often paste things from senior Microsoft folks into my blog, but I’d like to quote some...
Date: 02/09/2010
Installing Windows from a phone
Arthur : “You mean you can see into my mind ?” Marvin: “Yes.” Arthur: “And … ?” Marvin: “It amazes...
Date: 02/08/2010
More tricks with the Windows phone. Remote desktop.
I’m getting on reasonably well with my new HTC Touch Pro2, and Windows Mobile 6.5 (a.k.a Windows...
Date: 02/07/2010
Another trick of the Touch-Pro 2: Radio.
The more I explore the features of the Touch-Pro 2 (and Windows Mobile 6.5 – or “Windows Phone” as...
Date: 02/07/2010
Video, Windows 7 and Windows Phone
I keep thinking back to the theft of my laptop last year. I’ve had maybe a dozen laptops over the...
Date: 02/05/2010
But I don’t want the default browser
OK cards on the table. I’m prejudiced. I don’t pretend to be anything else, and I try to open about...
Date: 02/05/2010
The GPS / Sat-Nav experience with the Touch-Pro 2 and CoPilot
One of the things with the change of phone means sorting out sat nav software. I’ve been using ...
Date: 01/27/2010
Finding a Twitter client for Windows Mobile.
I’ve tried more several different twitter clients on my desktop but I always end up gravitating back...
Date: 01/26/2010
Early days with the HTC Touch Pro 2
Last week Orange delivered a consignment of HTC-Touch Pro 2 phones and one of them had my name on...
Date: 01/25/2010
I’m a photographer, not a terrorist (or any other kind of bogeyman)
Every now and then in photography forums someone will ask “Do I need a release to publish pictures...
Date: 01/25/2010
How to Pretty Print XML from PowerShell, and output UTF, ANSI and other non-unicode formats
PowerShell has been taking more than its fair share of my time of late and I need redress the...
Date: 01/19/2010
“Vague is good” revisited: How to make usable PowerShell Functions
Before Christmas I wrote about the conclusion I was forming on PowerShell parameters: Vague is good....
Date: 01/18/2010
The “Joy” of Reg-ex part 3: Select-String
One of the PowerShell tools I’ve been using a lot recently is Select-String : Going through lots of...
Date: 01/16/2010
The “Joy” of Reg-ex part 2 – ways I use it
In the previous post I gave some of the background to regular expression and how they might be used....
Date: 01/14/2010
The “joy” of Reg-ex part 1.
One of the good things in PowerShell is support for regular expressions – in fact I suspect some...
Date: 01/14/2010
New year, New user group … Newcastle.
Thankfully the snow is beginning to recede, and looking at the last blog post I made makes me...
Date: 01/14/2010