Normally, this bundle costs $49.99. But to knock off a few extra dollars (5%), you can use 4527C939FC7C06 at check out. What? A coupon is a coupon. If you have any problems with the purchase, let me know and I’ll yell at the Appfather for you. I ain’t scared of him.

FCC disclosure: I get a kick back for all my hard work.

Do you have any other tips on quickly absorbing Windows Phone 7? Do share.

(This particular build of Office 14 (14.0.4302.1000) doesn’t uninstall properly, therefore I used an older Windows Vista virtual machine I had lying around for screenshot purposes.)

But why?

A cursory analysis came up empty, so I took a different approach; I placed my ATI Radeon HD 5900’s hardware ID pair (vendor 1002, device 689C) into the registry location and restarted Windows Live Messenger. After firing it back up, it was immediately obvious what the list’s purpose was. All the UI elements were purely static and made no effort to wow me; all whizz-bang animation effects were disabled.

But why?

Resolving all the IDs in the list paints a damning picture. Dominating the list are NVIDIA’s GeForce FX-based cards, known for their god-awful DirectX 9 performance. (Remember the whole Valve and NVIDIA fight?) Intel also made the list with its equally horrible and buggy GMA 500 chipset but ATI was strangely missing from the list, due to lack of data no doubt.

Conclusion: Windows Live Messenger uses a list of known under-performing (read: crap) DirectX 9 video cards, to ensure a consistent and stable user experience. Case closed. If you have one of these cards, it’s really time to upgrade.

The list, as of August 19, 2010 (WLM Wave 4 Beta Build 15.4.3002.810), follows.

Michael Pietroforte at 4sysops emailed me about a month ago, wanting to run a cross-technical-blog poll of sorts, garnering feedback to potentially help shape Windows 8. I agreed to participate, it sounded neat. I mean, it can’t hurt, right? Worst case, Microsoft simply ignores the whole thing.

Here’s how it works: Scroll down and follow the on-screen instructions. It’s pretty simple. At the conclusion of the poll, the results will be gathered from all the participating blogs – actually already done on the backend – and be published. If you have any questions regarding the definition of some poll items, don’t guess – simply refer to Michael’s post. (If Microsoft works on UAC, vice the bare-metal hypervisor, because of an errant vote… I will hurt you.)

Participating blogs: Demonic Talking Skull – markwilson.it – msigeek – Standalone Sysadmin – Teching It Easy: with Windows – The Experience Blog – The things that are better left unspoken – The Windows Club – WindowsPro – Within Windows (you are here) – 7tutorials – 4sysops

Back in May, I was invited out to the Microsoft campus to join Garrett Serack and a hand-selected crew of astronauts in the kick-start and development of CoApp. While we all have a fuzzy understanding of what CoApp is, it’s admittedly hard to explain to normal people. Thankfully, we don’t have to work at explaining anymore! We now we have an awesome video Garrett put together, using clean audio from his recent OSCON presentation. Warning: This isn’t your usual boring WinHEC video.

According to MSDN, DwmGetColorizationColor returns a color “used for Desktop Window Manager glass composition” and a boolean that simply indicates whether or not transparency is involved. The notable keyword here is composition. In the simplest scenario, a user uses a non-transparent color. This value simply gets passed to your application and everything Just Works™. In the real world, however (where transparency is turned on), things get a little trickier. The transparency toggle dutifully instructs the Desktop Window Manager to do all kinds of glass-like math-heavy nerd stuff to the base color. In this scenario, the returned color value is less useful.

Figure – Example function output, with and without transparency enabled

So, it boils down to – DwmGetColorizationColor is completely unusable for applications attempting to apply the current color onto an opaque surface. To workaround this, you have two options:

1. Retrieve the safe stored ColorizationColor value located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM
2. Use undocumented (but stable) dwmapi.dll function to retrieve these values for you

Both solutions suck, really. Microsoft could, at any time, rename these registry values, move the entire branch somewhere else, and/or change the ordinal numbers for their private API in dwmapi.dll. But, because I like to reverse engineer things, I elected to implement option 2. (I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this.)

Figure – Disassembled chunk DwmpGetColorizationParameters function

In opening up dwmapi.dll, IDA easily applied the private function names derived from the debugging symbols downloaded from Microsoft public debugging symbol server. One of the exported (by number, not name) undocumented functions was a _DwmpGetColorizationParameters (which I will call DwmGetColorizationParameters henceforth). The function was pretty small, it simply requested for and moved some information – seven values to be exact – into a structured block of memory you provide. I was able to quickly figure out what each value was by creating a dummy structure in .NET and looking at the values with my eyeballs; the values matched what was stored in the registry (see solution #1 above).

Translating that into C#, I came up with the following:

struct DWMCOLORIZATIONPARAMS
{
    public UInt32 ColorizationColor;
    public UInt32 ColorizationAfterglow;
    public UInt32 ColorizationColorBalance;
    public UInt32 ColorizationAfterglowBalance;
    public UInt32 ColorizationBlurBalance;
    public UInt32 ColorizationGlassReflectionIntensity;
    public UInt32 ColorizationOpaqueBlend;
}

[DllImport("dwmapi.dll", EntryPoint="#127")]
static extern void DwmGetColorizationParameters(ref DWMCOLORIZATIONPARAMS dp);

I wouldn’t (and didn’t) use the DllImport above in multi-platform production code. For applications that run on Windows XP, you’ll fail to bind to dwmapi.dll (because it doesn’t exist) and cause the Earth to tilt. Instead, you should import and make use of GetProcAddress, LoadLibrary, and Marshal.GetDelegateForFunctionPointer. Or just read the registry instead.

Look for Aero Glass colorization support in MetroTwit soon.

http://rdir.us/?l=http%3a%2f%2fyoutube.com&h=unknown_base64ed_value&p=number&u=sixteen_hex_digits

If it’s safe to proceed, this redirect shuffle takes only a second or two to complete. If things look a little bit fishy, Microsoft will throw up an interstitial page similar to Google and Facebook (below). I’m not sure what this page looks like when things are real bad, but I’m sure it involves varying shades of red and the acronym GTFO.

Figure: Windows Live making sure I don’t give my password to the Chinese.

While I can appreciate Windows Live’s efforts to reduce malware proliferation and increase overall safety of its users online, the following issues come to mind:

• My links are cataloged by some black box in the cloud, ready for hacker attack or spillage. (Think AT&T iPad fiasco.)
• Rather than use http://link.smartscreen.live.com as a basis for my link, http://rdir.us was used. Which looks safer to you?
• The warning page treats me like a dummy.
• The privacy policy didn’t appear until I landed on the interstitial page. What are the odds of people ever seeing this page? How about the odds of finding anything related to SmartScreen in that policy? (It was last updated May 2008.)
• I can’t turn the damn thing off.

What do you think? Would you leave this on or turn it off (if you had the chance)?

Digging around Windows Live Messenger “Wave 4” bits, looking for a way to turn off the permanently enabled SmartScreen-based link scanner, I stumbled on a flag that disables/enables the Aero window border.

If you’re interested in that sort of thing, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live\Messenger and create the DWORD value AeroWindowFrameEnabled with its data set to 0 or 1.

For those on 64-bit platforms, don’t forget you need to tack on Wow6432Node after the Software\ node, or you’ll be fishing around in 64-bit waters. (Windows Live Messenger is a 32-bit process.)

Given how poorly this works (e.g. can’t move the window, no title bar), I’m guessing it’s unfinished or on its way out.

Shortly after the release of the Windows Internet Explorer Testing Center – a site housing a comprehensive browser feature implementation test suite – there have been some grumblings regarding the accuracy of the data within. More specifically, Microsoft performed a comparison of its Internet Explorer 9 browser technology – currently in developmental stages – to stale builds of Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, and … that browser no one cares about (sadly) – Opera.

Sounds like a valid argument to me. I decided to re-test using builds of Mozilla Firefox “Namoroka” (1.9.2.5pre), Mozilla Firefox “Minefield” 3.7a5pre, Google Chromium (6.0.397.0/46552), and Apple Safari w/ a newer WebKit engine (r58804) that matched release dates with Internet Explorer 9 (May 5, 2010). After clicking around the site a hundred or so times in each browser, the results… changed. Each browser made noticeable improvements in areas like CSS3 and DOM; Apple barely beat out Chrome for the most improvement, while Firefox proved to be a bit slower (but error free). The numbers, Ed Bott’s favorite meal, are below. The takeaway here isn’t the numbers – forgive me if I made a slight error – but the fact that you can’t compare bleeding edge browser builds with stale release builds. That’s just not fair.

Days before our 1.0 release in March, we touched base with Google in hopes to stir up interest and to ensure the GLS API was there to stay (for a while), on the heels of Gears’ transitory news. After a few exchanges, with a middle man, we were passed a note, paraphrased as such: The Terms of Service for the Gears API doesn’t allow for this type of usage.

Confused? We were, because we’re not using nor touched Google Gears. Reading the Google Gears TOS, we discovered this nugget of evil:

5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google.

To conform to the TOS – despite its confusing scope of applicability – Google wanted us to funnel our access through their deprecated Gears product (or ask for special permission). More focused on pushing out Geosense 1.0, we ceased communication with Google and simply put our blinders on. “They wouldn’t know any better, with their hundred million queries per day, pffft.”

We pushed out Geosense 1.0. 1.1. And finally 1.2, fixing some major issues.

Interested in taking the sensor through Windows Logo certification – admittedly with Windows Update access in mind – I met with some Logo folks at the (Microsoft) mothership to soak up some knowledge. One of the huge benefits after Logo’ing an item is placement on The Gold List. (I made the name up.) The Gold List is simply a list of all Windows Logo certified vendors categorized down by product genre. For example, we’ll be the first (and only) entry under Windows 7 Sensors. With the pending Google legal nitnoid, however, I had to halt my Logo plans; there is no chance in hell an OEM would be interested in a sensor that has legal issues.

Coming full circle, we revisited our outstanding legal issue. We took our blinders off and contacted our Google representative, in hopes to obtain special permission for Geosense. Eleven days later we haven’t received anything back. No out of office, no “I’m looking into this, have a seat in the lobby”. Nada. Not being ones to wait patiently (or play lame corporate politics), we’ve decided to end our relationship with Google Location Services. I hope we can still be friends.

We are currently evaluating alternative services, such as those from Skyhook and Navizon. After we pick one and implement it, we’ll resume Windows Logo certification and testing.

I visited the kitchen for breakfast then returned shortly after. Thirty minutes later… nothing happened. Where the heck is everyone, I thought. Time was flying by and we haven’t even started; Garrett was pacing back and forth, foaming at the mouth when… a group of people walked in, relieved someone had found them. It turns out, they were locked away in some corner of the building (due to keycard restrictions throughout). Whoops.

Settled in, we started discussing the finer points of CoApp packaging, like the metadata to be made available on every single package. Attributes name, description and author were straight-forward but other attributes like version number and type drew immense fire (and blood).

After hours of discussion, we tabled the discussion and jumped into Connect shuttles to raid the Microsoft Store of its loot. Despite having gone earlier in the week, I picked up a few items I missed, such as Microsoft Streets and Trips – admittedly for the bundled GPS device only – and some Xbox 360 ‘ware. (Retail pricing for Xbox hardware is crazy.)

For lunch, we walked over to The Mixer again. In line at a Mexican eatery, participant Nasser Dassi called me over, excited – he had located the Mexican Jarritos soda, made with real cane sugar. I immediately grabbed one. I also grabbed a rare slice of Tres Leches (three milks) cake on display. The cake, traditionally made with condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream, was absolutely kick ass.

We returned to the Bravern II building, full from both eating and shopping. Leaving the metadata discussion alone, we moved onto task delegation – basically, who will own/work on what piece of CoApp. For example, I’m responsible for the Microsoft Detours-powered tracing tool that will monitor an existing build process and spit out metadata, ultimately to be used in Microsoft Visual Studio project file creation. Sweet! (A list of all delegated tasks can be found on the wiki.)

Wrapping up work, we returned to the hotel and walked over to The Parlour Billards and Spirits for fun, where we had an entire private room to ourselves housing three billiard tables, a television lounge area and food all around. Trent Nelson and I, having a bit of fun, decided to peek into a room through what looked like an EXIT door… We discovered there was a comedy club next door and Jackass’ “Wee-Man” Jason Acuña was on stage! Sadly, a bouncer quickly discovered us and shut the door. Ass.

Closing the billiard shop, a few of us took the escalator down to Lucky Strike and finished the night. We all did poorly, but somehow I managed to come in first with a sub-par 105. Yikes. Perl guru Adam Baxter, however, scored the #1 position in throwing speed, a game only geeks like us would invent to exploit the lane’s measurement sensors.

It was a fun night. No, scratch that. A fun week. But all the fun had to come to an end at some point. A very special thanks to Microsoft, Tanya Young and Garrett Serack specifically, for everything. (Garrett: “That’s what she said.")

Well, starting the series with a negative number didn’t work out as planned. I had to jump from Day –1 to Day 1 which doesn’t exactly make sense. Technically, this is Day 0. Let’s just pretend we have an off-by-one error and move on.

Dragging myself out of bed, I managed to make it to the lobby by the required 0730. I met a host of people alien to me, with an assorted range of accents ranging from Australian to Dutch. Everyone still a bit shy, we walked next door to Bravern II and met with Tanya, our event planner/logistical superstar. She handed us some stickers, one with our name to apply to our shirts, and another with our wireless access details. Ending our trek, we arrived at the meeting room; the room was standard issue, a large round table with convenient power and wiring access. At the middle of the table was a Microsoft Roundtable/Polycom CX5000 device neat USB doo-dad that provided a panoramic view of all meeting participants. In addition to providing a great view of the room, it had a secondary video stream that would always show the current speaker, using some sort of directional acoustics black magic. I want one.

To kick off the meeting, Garrett gave an awesome presentation that defined CoApp and stated its goals. The presentation, unlike all the diction circling around the wiki, was given in a plain manner that even I understood. So what is CoApp, you ask? Errrr, hold off for the presentation video. (I’ll keep poking Garrett to get me a copy for post.) Looking around the room, it was evident that everyone knew CoApp wasn’t going to be easy. We’re changing how applications are compiled, developed, and installed on Windows – something that hasn’t changed in decades. This is ground zero. This is big.

Afterwards, we started The Discussions. (This part of the summit was my favorite.) We would introduce a topic, talk about Garrett’s initial implementation of said topic, then go ape shit about its flaws, change some details, and repeat … until it became “good enough”.

We had people taking notes via Google Docs, of which would then be formatted and placed into the CoApp wiki. Things were a cluster… – and being geeks, we all loved it.

Rather than describe in great detail what we talked about, I suggest you visit the CoApp wiki. If you have any questions regarding why something was spec’ed the way it is, feel free to let us know via the mailing list, IRC, or hell tweet Garrett directly. Feedback is critical at this point in development.

After we hit 6pm, we called it quits and went back to the hotel. Freshened up, we all met in the lobby again and walked over to Canadian restaurant Earls. Inside was your typical restaurant configuration and dark decor but we were taken through a hallway into a private room with a sliding door and huge table in the center. The track lighting prevented us from bumping into each other. The food was geared towards steak house offerings, and having had dinner with Jared, I wasn’t in the mood for steak. I did, however, spot (and order) a rack of ribs that was smothered in a delicious sauce, with some Vodka/Redbull grog. Near the conclusion of our dinner, the restaurant lighting dimmed to the point where we all had a hard time seeing. For indoor hermits to complain about lighting… yikes. Worse, if you found the bathroom, inside you couldn’t even see the toilet. That’s just stupid, if you ask me.

Filled with food and drink, we returned to the hotel and parted ways. ‘twas a long day…

Back at the office, Wendy and I pushed Paul back into his cage and went to explore the infamous swag closet. Not an actual closet, but rather an empty full office, it contained a collection of marketing materials spanning from years ago – think Windows Millennium – to current day. I can’t go into detail as to what was in there, but lets say … cases of Corona? Loaded up with trinkets, I returned to the offices, said my goodbyes, tears streaming, and left Building 88. Paul and Wendy are good people.

Walking out the door, my phone buzzed. Cullen Dudas was on the other end, reminding me (thankfully) of our meet up at Commons. We met, shook hands, and I left. I kid. We walked over to Studio A, a predominately (if not completely) Xbox-owned building. Sadly, I didn’t get past the welcome area, but it was nice to sit down and talk nerd.

Unlike the previous two days, I didn’t spend a lot of time on campus. I returned to the hotel and briefly met up with the CoApp guys in the lobby. Ex-IT ‘softie Jared Shockley showed up and we departed to The Keg, your usual awesome steak house. (On the way, we hilariously passed a Google building.) Jared had a piece of meat with some of contraption involving twizzly frizzy onion straws (or whatever the hell) and other assorted funniness. I had a New York strip with a mushroom-based sauce cooked to medium with a baked potato side, smothered with a three-cheese butter with a glass of Guinness. We chatted about all his horror stories from working at Microsoft, which were more hilarious than scary, then fairly contrasted with some warm, fuzzy stories.

I’ve had this draft in my Windows Live Writer queue all day, adding bits at a time due to amount of work going on today… so I’m going to end this abruptly — I went to bed at the end. (Next update, covering Thursday, will be about our crazy meeting).

Past the doors, I entered what felt like a mall. The walls were lined with shops and eateries, selling items ranging from bikes and cell phones to burgers and Mongolian-style dishes, with every other corner housing some sort of live entertainment. After settling on a place to eat, Paul and I had some interesting discussions, mostly geeky but also down-to-earth. One notable topic was regarding Microsoft’s use of biodegradable materials in… well almost everything including the cutlery I was using. It was shocking to think my fork and knife was compostable! Like their software, they’re continuing to improve on their design; the current revision of the fork I used was “rev. 2”. I hear “rev. 3” is a huge leap forward in terms of reliability and usability.

After lunch, Paul and I made a quick visit to the Microsoft Store. The store front was your usual trinkety experience, a la PDC, WinHEC, etc. Tucked in a corner, however, was a security guard and glass doors. Behind these doors was a warehouse-like room, lined with rows and rows of discounted Microsoft software and hardware. Bins in the center of the room contained copies of software “for sale”, mostly Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade and other upgrade operating system SKUs. You know, the sucker stuff.

I parted ways with Paul and zoomed over (via a Connect shuttle) to Building 37 where Brandon LeBlanc – the Windows Team Blog dork – lived. Building 37’s interior, like all the Microsoft buildings apparently, has a different interior. It featured wood grain-trimmed staircases, lit up by natural skylight flowing through the glass ceiling. Bits of flora and seating peppered the area, adding a sense of home.

After signing in at the front desk, Brandon and I walked a short distance, on ground level, to his little boy cave.

Inside was various PCs – desktops and laptops alike – powered on and crunching some Windows 7. On his main machine, pending a quad display upgrade, Brandon was working on the next version of The Windows Blog as well as dog-fooding some Windows Live Wave 4 bits. I got to see first hand how large that new Messenger experience is; I’ll definitely be turning that off.

Having a seat in his somewhat uncomfortable chair (bastard), we lost track of time talking for a few hours about my current projects, his current projects, ideas, and life. He was excited to hear that after our meet, I’ll be heading to the Windows Logo guys to seek Logo accreditation – first ever – of Long Zheng and I’s Geosense for Windows gizmo. Chris Flores also popped in for a greet, was nice to see him again.

Loaded up with trinkets and goodies, I departed, already late, to Building 88 where Windows Logo/Ecosystem’s Kurt Hunter lived. We met in what appeared to be a smaller building, with its innards somewhat generic. It’s obvious this building was meant to be more of an office farm. You know, where the real work gets done.

Ducking into a conference room, we talked for an hour about the Windows Logo process, its (many) benefits, and how Geosense would probably be the first logical sensor to be certified! Woo! As I navigate through the Logo process, I’ll document my experience in a similar manner; I don’t foresee any major roadblocks… we’ll see. I walked out of that meeting, fully aware of what Windows Logo, stoked to get started, and with a box of Windows Logo marketing materials that are… in excess (long story).

Finished around 5pm, I jumped into a shuttle and went to the hotel room. Shamelessly, I again walked next door to rustic Italian Artisanal Table, trying some new meaty pizza and a freshly made Mozzarella dish. Again, absolutely delicious.

Tomorrow (Wednesday, Day -1) I’ll meet up with more friends – Wendy Stidmon, a Program Manager on the Windows Ecosystem Engagement team, and Jared Shockley, who used to run some innards of Microsoft in IT.

Well, if all goes well, we will be able to soon.

Garrett was kind enough to invite me out to Seattle for the first official CoApp Design and Development Summit, thanks partly to my familiarity with the Microsoft Detours API. Rather than fly out for two days and fly back home I decided to trek out early Monday morning, hence the negative day value in the post title, and stay the entire week. I’ll be documenting my experience the entire week…

My morning (EST) started at 4am. I flew via AirTran, through the Atlanta dumpster, landing in Seattle – a trip that took about 12 hours in total. Upon landing, I made my way to the Courtyard Marriott, cleaned up, and took a picture through my room’s window. Not a great view, but not a bad one either. (I’m not particularly sensitive to what’s outside my window as I usually seal it off to create the required hermit-like development environment.)

Garrett and I met up soon after – there’s no mistaking a large man with a cowboy hat – and walked next door to a towering Microsoft-owned building named Bravern II. Inside was a maze of not cubicles but glass enclosed offices, peppered with employees geeking out w/ Visual Studio and drawing smiley faces on their white-board walls. We found the conference room booked for the summit, bunkered down, and immediately started talking about some code I put together that, one day, shall cut down on the development of ‘detoured stubs’ and its usefulness in the CoApp vision, amongst other topics.

An interesting question came up in our talks — How would one inject a 64-bit library into a 64-bit process using a 32-bit injector (or the converse)? I’m not sure I can disclose why this topic came up, but the relevant tidbit is that some Microsoft software claimed to support this scenario. What?! How the… Scratching our heads and ruling out bizarreness such as writing to physical memory, kernel drivers, and undocumented API usage, we settled on the fact you just can’t do it without having a middle man (64-bit stub). Turns out we were right, sanity restored.

(Having the opportunity to talk with peers at similar levels of technical competency is a wonderful experience.)

“Work” finished up around 5 or 6 PM, my clock still a little awry. To finish off the evening, I walked next door to rustic Italian Artisanal Table, taking advantage of their daily 50%-off happy hour discount. I had a Bruschetta starter, pizza Bianca main, Tiramisu dessert, and a tall glass of Peroni to wash it all down all for the low price of $20. Shockingly inexpensive; absolutely delicious.

Tomorrow (Tuesday, Day -2) I’ll meet up with some friends – Brandon LeBlanc, Paul Donnelly, and Cullen Dudas – and go crazy at the Microsoft Store. I’ll also be speaking to some Windows Logo folks regarding Geosense for Windows, exciting stuff there.

In my experience, migrating from old to new usually involves the wiring together of pain-in-the-ass tools such as the Windows Automated Installation Kit, the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Windows Deployment Services (or whatever it’s called now), the User-state Migration Tool, and a bunch of custom scripts to fill in the gaps. Admittedly, some people have this down pat – I bow to thee.

Symantec took their exhaustive migration experience and bundled up a specific set of tools to make migration much easier – The Altiris™ Client Mangement Suite, Altiris Deployment Solution, and (the tool we’re all familiar with on the consumer side) Symantec Ghost Solution Suite™. I’m not acting solely as a mouth piece either, I shot a note to our IT guys upstairs who are actually in the middle of a Windows 7 migration – Little did I know (mainly due to my rebellious refusal to join the Active Directory domain), they’ve been using some of these tools with no major hitches. Neat.

If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. At least enjoy their cute video and watch my tweets (@WithinRafael) for a chance to nab a copy of Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery.

While I would personally dispense of the dangerous task, Scott was focused on upping the hard-coded limit – from 4 to something higher. This is pretty easy to do. Simply navigate to %windir%\Diagnostics\Scheduled\Maintenance and open the TS_BrokenShortcuts.ps1 file for editing. Search for the substring “-gt 4” and change the 4 to… something else as desired. Save, close all open windows, and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

Have a Windows 7 quirk that’s driving you nuts? Feel free to email me (bottom of aforelinked page).

So, Windows Phone 7 aside, what the heck is “Iris”?

Microsoft Iris appears to be an offshoot of Microsoft’s Media Center .NET-based UI framework, with changes in areas such as its markup language, providing sophisticated scripting opportunities; and in its structure, increasing its modularity allowing it to be ported to various (.NET enabled) platforms with minimal effort. Its only to-date retail manifestation is the Zune PC software, residing in assemblies UIX.dll, UIX.RenderAPI.dll, and UIXControls.dll specifically. As there’s no documentation whatsoever, writing a complete piece on Iris is impossible. Instead, I will provide notes regarding its capabilities, sectioned off for organizational purposes. None of the information below has been confirmed by Microsoft. Your mileage will vary.

NOTE: This information was put together based on information sucked out of the Zune PC software. I have yet to disassemble the Windows Phone 7 components released at MIX today. I will examine these components and create a new post as needed.

Input

• Remote control support (your usual button scan codes)

Imaging

• Anti-aliasing support, “method” used is unknown.
• Raw image formats (A8R8G8B8, X8R8G8B8, A8)
• Surface image formats (A8, ARGB16_1555, ARGB32, YUY2, etc.)
• External image formats (extensible)

Animation

• 3D space support (cameras, axis support)
• DirectX 9 w/ GDI (software) fallback (likely to be upgraded for DirectX 10+)
• Rendering quality profiles, adjustable on-the-fly depending on conditions
• Slew of built-in transitions (e.g. alpha blending, camera twirling, orientation shifts, scaling, etc.)
• External input support (extensible)

Data

• External input support (extensible)

Sound

• DirectSound, WaveAudio, and XAudio framework support
• Built-in PCM support, extensible of course

Markup

• XML-based w/ scripting support (UIX)
• Loaded and compiled into a platform-agnostic byte-code
• Platform-specific virtual machine to support byte-code input
• Supports various ‘types’ (e.g. UI, Class, Effect, DataType, DataQuery)
• Approximately 47 tuned virtual machine “opcodes” (e.g. MethodInvokePeek, PushNull), not including the 18 “operations” (e.g. MathModulus)

Video

• Television and monitor support (NTSC, PAL, PAL60 baked in)

Accessibility

• Right-to-left support
• High contrast modes available

Intellectual Property Protection

• Uses a method of signature comparison to ensure only Microsoft (at this time) can fully utilize the Iris rendering platform. Subverting the assembly check is possible but Microsoft offers a useful “tool mode” which disables rendering code (e.g. useful for scripting).

Geosense is a Windows Sensor that feeds the Windows Sensors and Location Platform relatively accurate positioning information, a lot like a GPS device. Instead of communicating with expensive satellites, we simply gather some metrics (i.e. your IP address, WiFi access points) to securely query huge databases with. In return, the databases provide location data for us to share.

Right now, Geosense plugs into Google Location Services for WiFi and IP triangulation. If the sensor becomes an overnight sensation, we’ll add support for others such as Skyhook Wireless and Navizon, to ensure you receive the most accurate data, regardless of where it came from. We’re also thinking about the implementation of mobile broadband (cell tower) detection – but that’s low on the list, due to lack of supportive hardware. (Anyone want to donate some hardware?)

So what can you do with Geosense? Sadly, the Windows Sensor ecosystem is thin, likely due to the learning curve associated with writing drivers. You’re limited to the Weather Gadget (in Windows) and… well that’s about it. As you read this, though, we’re cooking up new and innovative ways to use the sensor – stay tuned.

Call to action: Think of how location-awareness in Windows could help a friend or family member. Download Geosense and sling some code. If you’re not the coding type, share your idea – you never know, we (or others) may bring it to fruition.

This morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled new Windows Phone software sporting a brand new tile-based UI, not unlike Zune’s experience. Judging by the similarities between the two experiences and the fact the team responsible for Windows Phone and Zune are one and the same, I think it’s safe to conclude that Windows Phone (7 series) is also powered by Iris.

So what is Iris? Microsoft refuses to officially comment on Iris. Long Zheng documented his discoveries while poking about back in 2007, but little has bubbled up since. While I can’t authoritatively write about Microsoft Iris, I’ll share my notes taken during the disassembly of the Zune software over the next few upcoming posts.

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Product Description

Tips, tricks, treats, and secrets revealed on the latest operating system from Microsoft Windows 7

You already know the ups and downs of Windows Vista-now it’s time to learn the ins and outs of Windows 7! Internationally recognized Windows experts, Microsoft insiders, and authors Paul “Jerk” Thurrott and Rafael Rivera [that’s me, Mom!] cut through the hype to pull away the curtain and reveal useful information not found anywhere else. Regardless of your level of knowledge, you’ll discover little-known facts on how things work, what’s new and different, and how you can modify Windows 7 to meet your own specific needs.

A witty, conversational tone tells you what you need to know to go from Windows user to Windows expert and doesn’t waste time with basic computer topics while point-by-point comparisons demonstrate the difference between Windows 7 features and functionality to those in Windows XP and Vista.

• Windows 7 is the exciting update to Microsoft’s operating system
• Authors are internationally known Windows experts and Microsoft insiders [who dat!]
• Exposes tips, tricks, and secrets on the new features and functionality of Windows 7
• Reveals best practices for customizing the system to work for you
• Investigates the differences between Windows 7 and previous versions of Windows

No need to whisper! Windows 7 Secrets is the ultimate insider’s guide to Microsoft’s most exciting Windows version in years.

FCC mandated disclaimer: Obvious.

Windows Home Server "Vail", the next major version of this product, will be based on the current generation Windows Server platform (Windows Server 2008 R2) and will share a number of features and capabilities with Small Business Server and Essential Business Server. Unfortunately, Microsoft has been tight-lipped about Vail and the quality of information we have today is lacking, to say the least. Fortunately, a recently leaked build of Vail – tagged build 7360 – has shed some light on what the WHS team has been working on.

Others have written quick overviews of this leaked Vail build. But while anyone can find a torrent, download, install and then make a quick YouTube video, I think I can provide something quite a bit more detailed… and useful. Using some home-baked tools I used for gathering information for "Windows 7 Secrets," I was able to mine Vail for its actual capabilities. Here’s what I have thus far:

New codenames
Vail exposes some interesting codenames, including a few even Mary Jo Foley hadn’t heard of. Key among these is "Aurora," which appears to be a Small Business Server version that sits somewhere between WHS and the current SBS products (Paul’s SBS + cloud services dream solution?) and “Colorado,” which appears to be remote device related. (Windows Media Connect or DLNA-based devices, maybe?)

Update: Further evidence supporting the SBS = Aurora theory can be found on various sites, such as http://bjosbs.com/. (The site is registered to a SBS ‘softie apparently.) [thanks to Daniel K. for the tip]

New features
This version of WHS Vail provides two major functional updates, Homegroup creation/integration and media streaming. Both appear to be based on the same functionality that appears in Windows 7, and the media streaming feature utilizes a sweet Silverlight-based player, through its revamped remote console, that transcodes content of virtually any kind from what I can tell, on-the-fly. (I personally tested WMV, H.264, and XviD.)

New Dashboard
WHS Vail comes with a new dashboard, which replaces the awful admin console from the current version with a new normal window that appears to be the basis for similar dashboards in future versions of Windows Small Business Server and Windows Essential Business Server. This Dashboard is customizable, more so than previous versions, enabling server makers like HP to customize it with their own look and feel – color scheme, unique Home tab content, and more.

Add-in changes
Perhaps sensing that WHS add-ins can be the source for malicious and software, or otherwise just responding to complaints that some current add-ins seem to adversely impact the performance and stability of the server, Microsoft is making some big changes to how WHS interacts with these mini applications.

Some add-ins will be “Microsoft certified” and therefore known to be safe/good, while others will be digitally signed (or unsigned) and provided by third parties. Add-ins, of which will now also reside in an online catalog, will be version controlled, preventing the user from inadvertently writing over a newer version with an out of date version, and can support subscription-based services like anti-virus. Vail will also keep a watchful eye on add-ins, intervening when they crash, allowing a user to quickly locate the source of the problem. And, if I’m reading this right, WHS Vail will support the deployment of specialized add-ins to connected PCs as well, not just on the server.  (As in, install AV on the server and have it protect clients as well.)

Server health
In keeping with broader efforts across other Windows Server products, WHS Vail includes a number of server health technologies, many of which leverage the pre-installed PowerShell. It supports scheduled cleanups and backups of both clients and server and checks clients for both anti-spyware and anti-malware protection. While at work, Vail may find the need to generate an alerts or report, both of which can either be printed on-screen or emailed, much like the SBS product.

More to come?
With the TODO and DRAFT labeling littered throughout Vail’s interfaces and documentation, it’s impossible to know what Vail will really be. From what I’ve seen, however, it’s shaping up to be the easiest yet most powerful server solution in the home today. I’m particularly interested to hear more about changes in the way web site hosting worked, a feature supported very little in previous versions. (Perhaps that’s an area better left to a dedicated web server or newer cloud shared hosting solutions.)

Flickr Screenshot Gallery

Of course, I’m not here to write about the hardware.

After installing the card, I registered at Sapphire for their “gold club” membership; in other words, I registered my card for warranty services. One of the benefits to registration is access to an exclusive tool that allows users to tweak the card’s voltages for (enthusiast) overclocking purposes. After download I ran it a small issue. It doesn’t work at all.

The error baffled me a bit. It was specifically written for the 5970 yet doesn’t work on the 5970. What the hell? Poking around a bit, I discovered the executable was written in a .NET language making troubleshooting much easier.

After disassembling RedLine in Reflector, I noticed two things. First, the error popping up was due to an error being caught by a generic exception handler [1]  in the code. In other words, if anything happened during the initialization of the interface it would cower behind the “not supported” error and shut down. Hardly an accurate message, but at least it isn’t an error with hexadecimal digits.

Notice the program makes use of Windows Event logging? I did. Firing up Event Viewer, I caught a break and found the event generated by the disassembled code above [2].

VoltDisplayViewModel Failed Instantiation:System.BadImageFormatException: An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007000B)
   at HemlockOvervolt.ViewModel.VoltDisplayViewModel..ctor()
   at HemlockOvervolt.MainWindow..ctor()

Whoa whoa whoa. This looks familiar. Oh, that’s right… Yahoo made this same mistake a little over a year ago with their WPF-based Yahoo Messenger application. This “troubleshooting signature” is usually indicative of an application being compiled with “Any CPU” mistakenly selected as the target platform. (The target, “Any CPU”, was designed for applications that don’t have a reliance on platform-specific assemblies.) In this case, RedLine is attempting to load a 32-bit (GPU) hardware interoperability assembly into its 64-bit process, which is a big no-no.

Thankfully, the RedLine tool isn’t digitally signed making correction very simple:

• If you have Visual Studio installed, open an instance of the Visual Studio Command Prompt, execute corflags /32BIT+ SapphireRedLine.exe, and be on your way.
• If you’d rather use a hex editor – I recommend XVI32 – simply navigate to file offset 0×218 ($218), change the byte 01 to 03, and save.

Sapphire should feel ashamed for not releasing a quick fix for this by now. It’s been available (and buggy) since November 2009 plus they charge over $700 for the card. Tsk tsk tsk.