For years, Mario Cardinal and I have been working on bringing To-Do.Studio to life. We have thought, experimented and pivoted many times, but are now certain that we are on the right track.
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I have a client for which I need to use some special vpn to get into their environment. Unfortunately, supposedly because of a bug in Windows 10, when i connect to the vpn i lose access to the internet, which means i can’t Bing or Google anymore… Not so good. (On a side note, the vpn software doesn’t work in Edge either, needed to install Chrome to get going).
My work around i figured was to connect to the vpn via a virtual machine, and the host would retain internet access, so i went on to install Hyper-V and then used the “Hyper-v Quick Create” tools to get a Ubuntu VM up and running :
I would have downloaded a Windows VM but other than a dev environment, i couldn’t find anything lightweight, and although I have the ISOs for Windows 10, i am really not sure how licensing works.. Linux is free, so let’s five it a try…
It took a few minutes to download the required 2 gigs, and then a few more seconds to get Ubuntu up and running. Since it was just a vm for me as work-around, i activated the AutoLogin feature (do not do that).
After that, Ubuntu restarted and the enhanced session stuff (high performance integration from VM to host) kicked in via XRDP. Unfortunately, here lies the problem, this enhanced session mode is not compatible with auto-login.
The way to fix it is to get into the tools “View” and unselect “Enhanced Session”, that will kick you into the normal un-accelerated graphics interface. Then you go into the settings app, then users and unselect the “Auto Login” feature.
Then logout from Ubuntu and reactivate “Enhanced Session” and voilà, your are good to go !
Now let’s install Chrome in there and see if the vpn works 🙂
Skype has been through a lot of changes lately. On the
Check it out at http://preview.web.skype.com.
I find this quite interesting because it almost seems like a single source code for all of the different platforms out there, I think this is the kind of architecture that we must
Skype team, if you are listening! drop me a line so I can invite you to our local user’s group !
Every now and then I examine the tools I work with, the brands I use and how I work…
To me, phones are… still phones. I love them dearly with all their apps and potential, but since I spend 8-10 hours a day with a computer, I don’t need another 5 inch screen on my desk…
Tablets… these are an interesting topic for me. I find them very cool (to the point that I can’t for the LTE Surface GO to come out so I can grab one). I need them to be a middle ground and act like a computer so I don’t always carry have to carry my laptop and act like a big phone
I don’t expect to work on a phone so them being driven by apps and stuff is fine. I do expect more from a tablet and cannot adhere to
Here are my wishes for the Windows ecosystem for Redstone 6, I guess available around spring 2019:
A long time ago, I was working with companies helping them create add-ons for Visual Studio. This was NOT an easy task. We had to write code, implement COM interfaces, figure out registration, packaging, development instances of VS… It was
Now a new beast is in town, Visual Studio Code. It is a code editor based on Electron, a Javascript system for packaging apps.
As it turns out, one of my clients needed to have an easy way to update data for his web site and so we created a JSON file that was in an accessible location. Next what we needed was an easy way to edit these files and so we thought, how about edit the file in Visual Studio Code with a custom addon.
The two commands required to start are (install yeoman, the generator and then create the base structure) :
npm install -g yo generator-code
yo codeThen you open Visual Studio Code in the directory and hit
Now go on and create something ! Here is a link to the docs !
At the first Microsoft Build event, they gave attendees a Samsung tablet, made for Windows 8. I loved that tablet (other than the fact that it was heavy) because it had a built-in cellular modem.
But sadly, last week, the thing crashed and was going into a boot loop. The only way to revive it was to reinstall everything…
This was going to be a challenge because this particular model required a 4gb Fat32 USB key. Unfortunatly it is 2018 and the smallest key i found was 16 gigabytes…
So search the internet and i didn’t find an exact recipe, but i did try something that could work – so i gave it a try. Open DiskPart and issue the commands:
list disk select disk 1 (in my case it was 1, it might be different for you !) clean create partition primary size=4160 active
That’s it, then i formatted it, copied the contents of this ISO of Windows 10 onto it and bingo, it booted and in thirty minutes everything was up and running.
To get back the key to 16gb, just run the same instructions without the size-4160 part.
And that’s how you shrink a usb key.
Well, as you all know, windows 10 Fall Creators Update is out (internally named Redstone3) and those of you who are Windows Insiders have started getting bits Redstone 4, which should go out in the spring and doesn’t have a public name yet…
In case you are reading Microsoft, this is what i would like to see…
One of the project i was working on involves taking Office 365 to the next level. Take the tools that Microsoft gives us and bring it to the next level.
Some of the things we do involves extending Sharepoint, Excel, Word, Office with addons. Works great. But where do we get all the nice information we show the user ?
This is where the Microsoft Graph comes in (http://graph.microsoft.com). It is basically an odata feed that gives you access to a variety of data that represents you. Naturally, you need to send a bearer token to get access so authenticate first !
You can find then entire “metadata” on the internet itself, all self-describing ! Also, there is some documentation.
You can even try the Graph Explorer, which is a web tool to explore the graph in an interactive way.
Here a are a few example of me for my own company :
Who am i ?
GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me
{
"@odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#users/$entity",
"id": "",
"businessPhones": [],
"displayName": "Erik Renaud",
"givenName": "Erik",
"jobTitle": "Principal Architect",
"mail": "erik.renaud@modelon.net",
"mobilePhone": "+1 514...",
"officeLocation": "+1.514...",
"preferredLanguage": "en-CA",
"surname": "Renaud",
"userPrincipalName": "erik.renaud@modelon.net"
}
What about my picture ?
GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/photo/$value
This is a goldmine of information and makes any business tool soo much more powerful.
Add an email, find recently used files, show how many unread things in teams… It’s all possible !
As a @Microsoft MVP, i got an award for helping people with technology. I can give a talk, i can coach a team, but how do help more. Here is my #HitRefresh moment:
Working collaboratively is hard, yet it is the basis ouf of how we live – we have families, we have collegues and we have friends. When we realised how hard this problem was to solve; we #HitRefresh and rethought how digital tools can help us work together and accomplish more : a studio for all of your things to do.
We are not ready yet, but we are working hard to bring it to you soon.
This post is part of the collection of #HitRefresh moments. Read more at www.hitrefreshbook.com
Microsoft Build 2017 is right around the corner, with keynotes streaming live in about 24 hours !
This is my reading of the Windows ecosystem, and what i would like to see announced… My new thinking is that an operating system is just a management thing, the APIs are all similar now… there is no reason i should be choosing my OS based on the apps available but rather how i want to manage it. Oh, and the web with PWA apps is going to kill it all…
The big messages are :
Here is the detailed list…
On the hardware side…
On the media side…