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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill Date: 03/21/2010

Virtualization announcements today.

In another window I am listening to the desktop Virtualization hour which I blogged about yesterday....

Author: James ONeill 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)...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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 -...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill Date: 02/24/2010

Desktop virtualization update.

On the MDOP blog there is an announcement  of new releases of both APP-V (which runs...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill Date: 02/23/2010

Earlier this week I went to “Oxford Geek Night” and the title of one of title of one of the sessions...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill Date: 02/17/2010

Desktop Virtualization Hour

I had a mail earlier telling me about desktop virtualization hour , planned for 4PM (GMT) on March...

Author: James ONeill 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....

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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 ...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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....

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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....

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill 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...

Author: James ONeill Date: 01/14/2010

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