Ozzie.eu

Graph Databases, published by O’Reilly Media, discusses the problems that are well aligned with graph databases, with examples drawn from practical, real-world use cases. This book also looks at the ecosystem of complementary technologies, highlighting what differentiates graph databases from other database technologies, both relational and NOSQL.
Fill in a short form to get your download link by e-mail.

Site: http://www.graphdatabases.com/

While searching for documentation about how to install, configure and administer the latest Microsoft Sharepoint released, I found two very relevant documents that combined give a really good work basis for deploying a fresh install of a server farm or maybe just a standalone development server.
First came the Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 Preview. It’s the preview version but it has useful information on, for example, how to use a network share to install the software prerequisites. It looks a bit like a work in progress documentation, but it has some bits and pieces that are gone from the definitive guide.
Second, came the definitive Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013. It’s an official free eBook to learn how to install and configure SharePoint Server and SharePoint Foundation. It comes in several formats and it’s a downloadable source of the content available at the TechNet Sharepoint Library.
The first guide is really nice if you’re an experienced administrator that comes from the 2010 version, but lacks some specific guidance. The second one is a complete guide and covers the operation and maintenance aspects very well.
Download the Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 Preview here.
Download the Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 here.

Advanced Persistent threats are a hot security topic lately. According to Wikipedia, APT usually refers to a group, with both the capability and the intent to persistently and effectively target a specific entity. The term is commonly used to refer to cyber threats, in particular that of Internet-enabled espionage using a variety of intelligence gathering techniques to access sensitive information.
A modern attack performed by APT is the “Pass the Hash”. According to a whitepaper from Microsoft, while performing a PtH attack, an attacker obtains elevated read/write permission to privileged areas of volatile memory and file systems, which are normally only accessible by system-level processes on at least one computer. Second, the attacker attempts to increase access to other computers on the network by:

1. Stealing one or more authentication credentials (user name and password or password hash belonging to other accounts) from the compromised computer.
2. Reusing the stolen credentials to access other computer systems and services.
   This sequence is often repeated multiple times during an actual attack to progressively increase the level of access that an attacker has to an environment.

Returning to the subject of this post, while going through Microsoft’s community information, I gathered quite interesting resources regarding security tools and guidance.
Regarding free assessment tools from Microsoft, as well as protection software, there’s a really nice compilation on the “Irish IT Professional” technet blog. You get to know tools like Microsoft Security Compliance Manager, Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and Microsoft Security Assessment Tool.
Regarding security tools for footprinting, internal auditing anf guidance, you should check out the Security Tools Community Edition page, on Microsoft’s Technet Wiki.
Finally, you might want to follow the Microsoft Security Blog.
Photo Credit: JustEvents via Compfight cc

While installing a third party software on my laptop running Microsoft Windows 8, the operating system informed me that it required to download and install the .NET Framework 3.5. After my consent, it failed to download the package to install. I thought nothing of it and left the task for later.

However, this began to be a recurring episode. Even the very .NET Framework setup program would fail. While installing Windows Live Essentials (I really love Live Writer), the error happened again:

The error code 0x800F0906 wasn’t something I knew about and the support link is an awful article which suggest an over the top work around.

So I tried some common sense and analogy. If you’re used to administering Windows 2008 Servers you should know that the Microsoft .NET 3.5 Framework is installed from the feature selection on the add/remove role operation for the Application Server. Windows 7 itself has features that are essential for system administration like Telnet, and yet you have to add them manually.

With these aspects in mind I went to the Windows 8 Start screen and typed “Features”. Afterwards I selected “Settings” in the search bar and the desired option appeared, called “Programs and Features”:

From the list, you just choose the .NET Framework 3.5 and choose to download from Windows Update:

Now just wait for the installation to complete:

I was all set to go. You should be too .

Today Microsoft announced a new set of tools to help you support modern and older versions of Internet Explorer.

The site makes available a scanning tool that, provided a URL, detects common coding practices that may cause compatibility problems or prevent your users from getting the best possible experience on a webpage rendered on IE. For instance, I ran the scanner on this blog and the report was as follows:

A common problem from supporting old versions of IE was detected. The scanner found that the blog webpage was currently rendering in a Compatibility Mode on Internet Explorer 9 and 10, due to the following tag:

<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible"
      content="ie=emulateie7">

Other “nice to have” issues were detected like a lack of responsive design and no Windows 8 features like a touch browsing interface or a live tile for the start screen.

After removing the compatibility tag, the common problems were all fixed.

Another interesting part of this site is that virtual machines are made available for both Mac and Linux developers to download and be able to test their Web applications on Internet Explorer, using various versions of the windows operating system and the browser:

Finally I leave you with the insights from two IT professionals about how challenging it is to develop web application given the number of browser and client devices that exist:

Modern IE Homepage: http://www.modern.ie/

For all the Microsoft Office enthusiasts, here are the top 10 compilations regarding last year:

• Your top 10 favorite Excel posts of 2012
• Your top 10 favorite Word posts of 2012
• Your top 10 favorite Outlook posts of 2012
• Your top 10 favorite PowerPoint posts of 2012

Enjoy!

A free guide is available on MSDN patterns & practices section, demonstrating how you can create from scratch a multi-tenant, software as a service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud.
This guide is the third release of the second volume in a series about Windows Azure. It demonstrates how you can create from scratch a multitenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud by using the latest versions of the Windows Azure tools and the increasing range of capabilities of Windows Azure.

The guide is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that are appropriate for the cloud. It is primarily written for people who work with Windows-based systems. You should be familiar with the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio, ASP.NET, SQL Server and Microsoft Visual C#.
You can check ou the guide at this MSDN page.