12Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

The Surface Meta-App

Surface
Just a quick little blog post about one more app you're going to want to track down for your Surface. Great Windows Apps. Why do you need this? Well, how to put this, the Store, looks nice. But it doesn't work terribly well. Trying to see the top rated apps, or looking for new apps, you can get different results at different times and I find it quite frustrating. But, Great Windows Apps is running some sort of queries or something against the Store and displaying the information in a much more meaningful, and quite accurate, representation of the apps. It's just good.
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06Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

Microsoft Surface: Top Apps… So Far

Surface
After living with the Surface for a month and trying hard to make it work as a tool for production, not just consumption, I feel like I've got a handle on this thing. There are several that are built in that I'm using all the time like Word, Mail, Internet Explorer, OneNote, Music and Video. But there are a few others that you need to know about if you're looking to get more functionality out of your Surface. One note, I tried to find links to the Windows Store for all the apps, but I can't seem to do that, or at least I couldn't find how to do it. Here's the list: Tweetro: This is the single best Twitter app that I've tried so far. It functions as I…
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19Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Living with the Surface, Maybe

Surface
No major updates at the moment. I still haven't played with remoting through PowerShell. I'm just living with it. Had an interesting problem start today. You can swipe from the sides to get different behaviors. Swipe in from the top or bottom and you get menu choices in the app you're in. Swipe in from the right and you get the Charms. Swipe in from the left... well, you're supposed to get the list of recent apps or the ability to set an app in another window or even switch to the previous application, all depending on how you swipe. Except, mine stopped. Hurrah. I did a bunch of poking around to figure out why this happened, hoping I'm not looking at a hardware issue (oh please, not that). When…
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14Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Remote Desktop and Surface

Surface
The Windows RT operating system is not the same as Windows. After all the talk about the upcoming OS and hardware, this should not be a shock to anyone. This means that there are going to be some apps that just won't run on your RT device. OK, not a problem. Because you can always attack to a remote desktop session, right? Maybe. The principal app for doing remote desktop from the RT has a funky name. It's called Remote Desktop. It was not installed on my machine by default. I had to go and get it from the Store. No big deal. The UI is incredibly simple. Enter the name of  the PC you want to connect to. I have not made my Surface a part of my domain…
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12Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Surface Problems With Azure

Surface
I've been posting about the Surface over the last couple of weeks and I've tried really hard to be positive about it. But there are some serious problems with the device. I've already made a stink about the apps, but this time, I want to talk about the Microsoft ecosystem. I'm working more and more with online services. These vary from storage, such as SkyDrive to Amazon Servers to Azure. And Azure is my problem. I sit here, typing into a device that is really, really close to being fully productive despite being extremely small and light. Really close. And, it's supposed to be a major player within the Microsoft world. It's what the new OS was designed for, or so I thought. But, I might have just found my…
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11Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Purpose of the Surface RT

Surface
I'm a little over two weeks with the Surface at this point. I've been travelling all of that time, so I have been using the Surface quite a lot, as I used to my (beloved) Android tablet. It took a little while to get functional enough, upgrading the dysfunctional Office that came installed, figuring out how to get various email set up, learning how to use the touch type, and figuring out the operating system. But, at this time, the Surface is close to functional. Close. But what's it for? First, it's a consumption device. I've got a web browser in my hands, wherever I go, as long as I can get WIFI. That gives me a hefty chunk of the world to work with. I can rent movies. I've…
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09Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Using the Surface

Surface
I'm attempting to push this thing. I want it to be a production device, not just a consumption device. Frankly, until there are a lot more apps (which don't crash & burn), this isn't all that attractive a consumption device. Typing with the touch keyboard has gotten radically better as I've worked with it. So much so, it's starting to mess with the way I type on a real keyboard, jut a little. I find a little pause, every so often, after typing quite a few words, resting my fingers, just for a moment, on the home keys (bless my typing class in high school), getting my index fingers reoriented to the little indents that mark F and J. I actually just used that last sentence as an example. Each…
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09Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit Day 3: Dr. David Dewitt

PASS
Two quick points, I'm putting this blog together using the Surface.. ooh... and this isn't a keynote, but a spotlight session at the Summit. Still, I thought I would live blog my thoughts because I've done it for every time Dr. Dewitt has spoken at the Summit. Right off, he has a slide with a little brain character representing himself. But, we're talking PolyBase, and futures. This is basically a way to combine hadoop unstructured nosql data with structured storage within SQL Server. Mostly this is within the new Parallel Datawarehouse. But it's coming to all of SQL Server, so we need to learn this. The information ties directly back to what was presented at yesterday's keynote. HDFS is the file system. On top of that a framework for executing…
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02Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 7 Comments

More Surface

Surface
I’m continuing to work with the Surface. BOOM I just had my first crash. I was in IE when I tried to switch tabs and the pull down window would not stay open. So I tried closing IE. That didn’t work at all. I tried switching to the Start window or switching apps. No joy. I then did a hard restart, holding down the power button for about 10 seconds. On restarting, the system started updating itself, which was weird since I had made sure to do all the updates when I started. The update finished, I logged in, and noticed that the wifi symbol looked funny (wish I had a screen capture, ooh, is there a utility for that?). No big deal until I tried connecting to the wifi…
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01Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Surface, Surface, Prepare to Surface

Surface
More stuff about the Surface. Web browsing works extremely well so far. I enjoy how you can swipe to move back a page. I like how the tabs work too. I'm not crazy about how long it takes to get the link option window open. You hold on a link and then eventually a little box appears. Then you remove your finger and you get option such as "Open link in new tab". Since I do this a lot while browsing, I need it to be faster, something like a right click. Which, you can do from the pointer on the keyboard, there are two little spaces right below the pointer area that act as left & right click. Cool stuff. But using the touch screen to do it, not…
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