Tuesday 27 October 2009

Microsoft opens up PST file format

Microsoft opens up PST file format: "

Data portability has become an increasing need for our customers and partners as more information is stored and shared in digital formats. One scenario that has come up recently is how to further improve platform-independent access to email, calendar, contacts, and other data generated by Microsoft Outlook.

On desktops, this data is stored in Outlook Personal Folders, in a format called a .pst file. Developers can already access the data stored in the .pst file, using Messaging API (MAPI) and the Outlook Object Model—a rich set of connections to all of the data stored by Outlook and Exchange Server—but only if Outlook is installed on the desktop.

In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties.

This documentation is still in its early stages and work is ongoing. We are engaging directly with industry experts and interested customers to gather feedback on the quality of the technical documentation to ensure that it is clear and useful. When it is complete, it will be released under our Open Specification Promise, which will allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.

More at: http://blogs.msdn.com/interoperability/archive/2009/10/26/roadmap-for-outlook-personal-folders-pst-documentation.aspx

Via: Microsoft Opens Up the PST Format - SuperSite Blog


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Monday 26 October 2009

Adobe Launches Lightroom 3 Public Beta

Adobe Launches Lightroom 3 Public Beta: "Adobe just announced the first public beta of the upcoming Lightroom 3, the next version of its professional photo-management and post-processing application. As...



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Apple preparing Aperture X upgrade to 3.0 [u]

Apple preparing Aperture X upgrade to 3.0 [u]: "A new book available for preorder on Amazon.com implies that a new 3.0 version of Aperture, called Apple Aperture X, could be coming by May 2010.
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Apple shuts down ZFS open source project

Apple shuts down ZFS open source project: "Apple's efforts to support the development of ZFS, an advanced file system originally created by Sun, were officially terminated today in a notice posted by MacOS Forge.
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Microsoft Offers Netbook Upgrade Tool for Windows 7

Microsoft Offers Netbook Upgrade Tool for Windows 7: "Microsoft offers a simpler Windows 7 upgrade option for netbook owners



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Facebook’s New Front Page Looks DOA

Facebook’s New Front Page Looks DOA: "Facebook gave its homepage a makeover ...again. This Facebook user is not impressed.



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Windows 7 Reflections of a Microsoft Developer

Windows 7 Reflections of a Microsoft Developer: "

Microsoft formally launched Windows 7. I can’t say how proud I am of the work we did in Windows 7 – it’s been an amazing journey. This is the 4th version of Windows I’ve worked on and I have never felt this way about a release of Windows. I have to admit that I get a bit weepy with pride whenever I see a Win7 commercial (Kylie is simply too cute :)).

I thought I’d write a bit about the WIn7 experience from my point of view. I’ve written a bit of this stuff in my post on the Engineering 7 blog but that was more about the changes in engineering processes as opposed to my personal experiences in the process.

For me, the Windows 7 work basically started just after we shipped Vista. While the PMs and leads on the sound team were busy working on planning for Win7, I spent most of the time between Vista RTM and the start of the Win7 feature design cleaning up some of the Vista code I was responsible for. During the final Vista testing, I realized that there were some architectural deficiencies in some of the sound code that caused some really subtle bugs (that I don’t believe anyone outside of the sound team has ever found) so I took the opportunity to clean up those deficiencies.

I also fixed an issue that occurred when someone called the wave APIs from their DLL entry point. Yes I know that apps aren’t supposed to call any APIs from DllMain but anyone who’s read either my blog or Raymond Chen’s blog will realize that a lot of apps do stuff like that and get away with it. This fix was actually first deployed in Vista SP1 – we had identified the DllMain problem before we shipped Vista and included a workaround for the problem but we also added some telemetry so we could determine the number of customers that were affected by the bug. Based on that telemetry we decided that we had to include the fix in Vista SP1 of the number of users affected by the issue. This is a perfect example of some of the ways that the customer experience improvement program directly leads to product improvements. Before we had the CEIP, we would have had no way of knowing how much impact the bug had on customers, the CEIP gave us visibility into the severity of the problem that we wouldn’t have had before.

Continue Larry Osterman's WebLog Windows 7 Reflections…


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Sunday 25 October 2009

Easily install Windows 7 from USB: Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Easily install Windows 7 from USB: Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool: "

The Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool allows you to create a copy of your Windows 7 ISO file on a USB flash drive or a DVD. To create a bootable DVD or USB flash drive, download the ISO file and then run the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool. Once this is done, you can install Windows 7 directly from the USB flash drive or DVD.


Click here to download the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool installation file.


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Windows 7 Launch Pictures

Windows 7 Launch Pictures: "

IMG_0045

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DSC00005 Paul Thurrott, Rafael Rivera and Bryant

DSC00006 Windows 7 paper cups, later used to serve food

DSC00008 DSC00009

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Ballmer energetic

DSC00013 DSC00014

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Streaming media from 1 Dell laptop to 13 devices

DSC00018Suddenly curtains open to a room full of Windows 7 loaded hardware, pretty cool!

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Ballmer happy seeing all the new cool Windows 7 hardware


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Nasser Hajloo
a Persian Graphic Designer , Web Designer and Web Developer
n.hajloo@gmail.com

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