This is just precious. A new Samsung advertisement goes after the trendy hipster types that stand in line for hours to buy new Apple products, even though in this case--with the iPhone 4S--there are superior devices out there already. The ad nicely parodies the whole Apple Store line experience--you know, because they may not make enough of them, so you better get in line.

My favorite sequence is the hipster who dismissively says, "I could never get a Samsung. I'm creative." To which the guy next to him responds, even more dismissively, "Dude, you're a barista." LOL.

Classic because it's true.

Source : Paul Thurrott

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I've often imagined a computing environment in which you could run mobile apps on a full desktop OS. For example, I figured it made sense for Apple to replace the widgets capabilities in Mac OS X with the ability to run iOS apps. Or, Microsoft could provide a way to run Windows Phone apps on Windows instead of gadgets. Well, someone has brought this dream to life: Via a utility, you can now run Android apps on Windows.
The utility, called BlueStacks, is available in an early, pre-beta release right now. And while I've only just started testing it on the Windows 8 Developer Preview slate PC, I was so surprised by how well it's working already that I wanted to get the word out. This thing appears to be the real deal. For example, I was able to easily and seamlessly use the Pulse mobile app, full-screen, on the PC with full touch support.

You gotta check this out. It looks very interesting.

Thanks to Sheldon D. for the tip.

Source : Paul Thurrott

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A good 10 parts series of articles about MDT 2012 by Manoj Nair :

blogs.technet.com

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Here’s the situation: You are called into consult for a client, and in examining their IT infrastructure you observe no organization as to how service accounts are deployed. For instance, some line-of-business (LOB) applications are using the domain Administrator as their service account identity, while others use the Local Service or Network Service identity.

Recently, the client began associating application services with dedicated domain user service accounts. However, because domain password policy forces password changes every 60 days, the manual reassignment of service account passwords created organizational headaches for the IT support staff.

How can you resolve this mess of a real-world situation?

Source : 4sysops.com

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Released earlier this week, a new survey pegs the eminently mobile iPad as much more of a homebody than previously thought. After gathering usage data from 15,000 iPad owners across more than a dozen countries, research firm McKinsey & Company were surprised to find that 62 percent of those polled never take their iPads out of the house.

Source : appadvice.com

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I’ve always been a little bit reluctant to use Microsoft Log Parser. I know it’s really powerfull, but it’s command line interface is not really fun to use.

Last week I decided to give it another try and I discovered Log Parser Lizard (better late than never). It’s a FREE GUI Tool to use the Log Parser API. It’s a must have !

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In Microsoft Windows, we have Safe Mode. In SQL Server 2008, we have the Dedicated Administrator Connection, or DAC. We can use DAC to obtain emergency access to a SQL Server 2008 database instance in cases where the instance is blocked up, locked up, or just plain hosed.

Full article : 4sysops.com

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Google+ launched its business pages a week ago. One of the highest profile sites is from Bank of America. Or is it? Judging by the biting satirical content, Google has been thoroughly punked.

Complete article : www.zdnet.com/blog/bott

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Faster iPhones and Android devices have been taking market share from Research in Motion's once-addictive BlackBerry, but analysts and its executives are not ready to count the smartphone out yet.

Interesting article from the LA Times.

Source : www.latimes.com

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Here’s my favorites shortcuts in Internet Explorer (IE) 9 :

Ctrl + W	Close the current window (tab)
Ctrl + F	Find on this page
Ctrl + I	Open Favorites
Ctrl + E	Open a search query in the address bar (with last query string)
Ctrl + click	Open links in a new tab in the background
Ctrl + Shift + click	Open links in a new tab in the foreground
Ctrl + P	Print

Complete IE 9 keyboard shortcut list :
windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Internet-Explorer-9-keyboard-shortcuts

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If you’re like most people, the terms “roomy and practical” don’t exactly call to mind performance-driven fun. The 2012 Volkswagen Jetta GLI might just change your mind.

Source : blogs.vw.com/jetta

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there are serious integration problems between Apple Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). Specifically, we are seeing (a) sluggish binding between the Macs and AD; (b) super-slow domain logons; and (c) completely blocked domain logons.

Source : 4sysops.com

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The original MDTDebugger that I wrote is a great help for debugging tasks running in a litetouch (LTI) deployment task sequence, but it doesn't work for zerotouch (ZTI) deployments. The reason for this is that it needs to be able to display a window on the desktop of the computer that is running the task sequence; something that Systems Center Configuration Manager actively prevents. Well, this is no longer a problem because now there is a version of the MDTDebugger for ZTI deployments! This tool works in the same way as the LTI version but with a key difference: you open the debugging window on a different computer. In order to achieve this, I split the tool into two parts, the first part is the launcher that runs from the task sequence, and the second is the GUI that you use to help with the debugging.

Source : blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys

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Steve Jobs was a great CEO, but Bill Gates has moved beyond technology and is trying to save the world. Why isn't he getting more recognition?

Also forgotten has been a simple yet critical bit of history: Jobs, in his second and more successful period as Apple's CEO, stood on the shoulders of Bill Gates. Had Microsoft not made computing ubiquitous, there wouldn't be any reason to have an iPod, or an iPhone, or an iPod. In fact, they simply wouldn't exist.

Source : www.infoworld.com

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