For anyone who follows the "I always wait for the first service pack" method of deploying products, your excuse for waiting on SQL Server 2008 disappeared this past week, because SP1 for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is now available.

Among the features, I like the slipstream install capability (install SQL server and the service pack in the same installation process), and the ability to uninstall the service pack separately.

Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 is now available to customers. The Service pack is available via download at Download Center and is primarily a roll-up of Cumulative Updates 1 to 3 and minor fixes made in response to requests reported through the SQL Server community. While there are no new features in this service pack, customers running SQL Server 2008 should download and install SP1 to take advantage of the fixes which increase supportability and stability of SQL Server 2008.

The complete announcement is here.

UPDATE: We've had a great response and have assigned all of our beta invitations for the first round of testing, but please check the details below and let me know if you think you'd be able to help in a future phase!

I'm working with a software company to test some cool software that's currently in the early beta stage of development. The software is of a security nature and will be of interest to IT and security folks as well as individual computer users. We're looking for people with netbooks and notebook computers, especially ones with webcams built in, to test the software and provide feedback.

You'll be provided a test key and the beta software, and will need to honor the confidentiality provisions of the test program. It's nothing too complicated and the test risks are very small. You'll install the software, run through a few operational tests and let us know the results. We will ask first for technical results ("Did this work?") as well as your opinions and thoughts, should you wish to provide them.

What you'll need to provide and have available for the test:

• One or more notebook or netbook computers
• Computer(s) must be running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7
• If it has a webcam built in, all the better (but not required)
• A Flickr account (basic account is fine)
• An email account and server information (for application configuration to allow sending of email alerts)

What you'll get as a result of testing and providing feedback:

• A free copy of the release version of the software when it's released (and you'll be glad you have it installed if your computer is ever lost or stolen, hint hint)
• Satisfaction and a sincere thank-you from me and the developers of the software

This software is quite interesting and has a lot of promise to provide real security value when it hits the streets, so we want to find as many complete test cases as we can. If you're interested, please email me at greg@greghughes.net and provide the details about your system, OS, etc - or call me at 503-766-2258. We are testing now, so let me know!

And thanks!

Since my last post, in which I predicted the newly-minted Google Voice service would be a real positive impact in my world, my Grand Central account was enabled for the upgrade to the new application and I have migrated to the service.

Greg’s One-Line Review: It’s pretty darned awesome.

But you probably want a little more detail than that, so here we go…

First of all, I should explain that I’ve used Grand Central for the past couple years. Grand Central was the centralized phone service that Google acquired some time back, and it allowed one number to ring multiple phones, with centralized voice mail, call screening and recording, etc.

Google Voice builds upon Grand Central by adding a number of new features, including a couple killer apps in my book: Text/SMS messaging and conference calling. Other enhancements include automated transcription of voice messages and a unified inbox for all your text messages and voice mails.

I live in a very rural area, far from the nearest cell phone tower. Mobile service on my iPhone is – for all intents and purposes – nonexistent at my house. If I put the phone up on a certain window sill and avoid moving it or touching it, I can get marginal service and might be able to receive text messages. But sending messages and making/receiving phone calls is next to impossible.

By giving people my Google Voice number (which is 503-766-2258 by the way), my friends and colleagues can send me text message and call me at one number, regardless of where I am and what services are available at my location. When someone calls the number, Google Voice rings my cell and home phones at the same time. I can add other phone numbers to the ring list, as well – on the fly. So, if I’m working from an office number I can add it to the list, no problem. I can define time periods to each phone, so individual phones ring only when I want them to.

I rely on text messaging for a lot of things, and many of my friends, family members and colleagues also rely on it to reach me. Needless to say, with poor wireless phone service at home, there are times when I don’t receive and cannot send text messages. That pretty much defeats the purpose of using text messaging to reach people in real time. With Google Voice, text messages send to my number are delivered to my phone and to my Google Voice Inbox, meaning even if the phone service prevents delivery, I get the text messages in my web browser and can reply to them there. That’s huge for me – and I have already taken advantage of the ability to send and receive text messages from my computer.

There are a few things I hoped I’d find in Google Voice that aren’t there, at least not there yet. I’m hopeful they’ll be added in the future:

• No support for sending text messages to groups – While you can create groups of contacts in the unified Google Voice inbox, you can only send messages to individual contacts. Since I lead a youth group at church, and we rely on text messaging to send out regular communications, I’d especially like to be able to send a single message to a group. As it is today, I can send a message to multiple contacts at once from my iPhone and just save the thread and keep replying to it, but when the group membership changes I have to start from scratch. It would be much easier and more reasonable to send to a single group managed in Google Voice.
• I’m a Google Apps user and have an Apps email account under the same Google account as the one I am using for Google Voice. I’m not sure why, but behavior is not as expected when I click on the Mail link at the top of the page from Google Voice. Rather than taking me to my Google Apps email inbox, it takes me to a page where it asks me to sign up for a GMail account. All other Google applications seem to understand where to go when that link is clicked, but this one doesn’t yet. I’m sure this is just early/beta stuff that needs to be worked out, but it also means my contacts are not synchronized across my Mail and Voice inboxes, which is unfortunate (they’ve already enabled unified contacts sync with GMail account inboxes).
• Support for syncing external contacts on the server side – While I was able to export my Outlook contacts, which are maintained on an Exchange server, as a CSV file and then import them without any issues into Google Voice, even better would be the ability to keep them up to date and in sync via the Google Voice service on the back end, maybe using ActiveSync or something similar. I’ll have to look for contact syncing software instead, since managing the sync effort by hand won’t really work for me.

All in all, Google Voice is a great app that’s already changing my ability to communicate. People in rural areas with marginal mobile service could really benefit from Google’s new offering. I’m looking forward to seeing what they deliver next!

I live in a remote location where you can barely get wireless service. I have to place my mobile phone on a window sill in just the right spot, and if I do that I will often get marginal service – enough to receive text messages most of the time, at least. Depending on the weather and atmospheric conditions, I sometimes get no signal at all.

There are two pieces of forthcoming technology that I plan to use to improve my situation as soon as they are available: Google Voice and the at&t 3G Microcell.

Google Voice was just announced late last week, and is an upgraded version of the services I already use via Grand Central, which Google acquired about a year and a half ago. Grand Central gives you one number and voicemail box for calls, and Google Voice expands in that by enabling SMS messages to the common number, with web and email access to the txt messages. I should note the service is free. The new features will be huge for me, since my ability to send and receive txt messages from home is limited at best, and often unreliable. I already have Grand Central routing voice calls to my home-office and cell phones at the same time, so the SMS addition will be welcome. Google is also adding voice mail transcription (machine transcribed) and some other nice features like built-in conference calling. They started upgrading people who already have Grand Central accounts a couple days ago, but mine has yet to be enabled for an upgrade. So, I am impatiently waiting. they say new users will be able to sign up in the coming weeks. More information about features available on Google Voice can be found here.

On another front, month or so ago, the tech news/rumor world was all excited about the pending at&t wireless 3G Microcell, which is a device that a user can plug into their broadband connection at home or in an office to create what amounts to a short-range personal wireless tower. I am luck enough to have terrific fast broadband service via a rural wireless transport provider called Cascade Networks, so I’ll be able to take advantage of the new at&t hardware when it’s available. Unfortunately, there’s been no news recently about availability of the 3G Microcell, but I’m hopeful it will be available soon. Having that available would enable me to consider shutting off my home phone service and possibly saving that monthly cost. The 3G Microcell is rumored to support data and voice for a few devices at a time, and who-knows in the cost department. All I know is it would improve my ability to communicate, which would be a welcome change.

More than once someone has asked me if there is a way to get Google to change their search results to exclude mean, inaccurate, defamatory, rude, or otherwise hard-to-swallow web pages. Often the desire motivating the question is legitimate, as someone has been smeared unfairly or - even worse - in a completely fabricated and malicious fashion, sometimes by anonymous online personalities.

The short answer is, "Probably not."

Now, before you think the proper solution is to have Google block the pages from their search results, it's important to understand that Google is not the Internet, and that it's not really making recommendations to you when it lists web pages that match what you're looking for. Rather, it's showing you an extensive list of links to content out there on the Internet that seems to match what you're looking for.

And that's what Google's search engine is: A way to find information created by other people and displayed on the Internet. It's not a filter that's meant to decide good from bad, who's right and who's wrong, who's lying or telling the truth, etc.

That said, there are things that Google works hard to avoid showing you. Spammy pages (especially ones that try to game Google's own advertising systems) are filtered out, and there are a couple topics that won't return results in their adsense and adwords advertising systems (just try to set up adsense on a site that sells or promoted firearms, for example). So they're not completely hands off, but for the most part they don't discriminate.

When you want to have a web page removed from the search listings at Google, the most effective (and almost the only) way to do so is to convince the person controlling the web page to change the information or remove it. If you can't get them to do that, it might be time to go to a court - assuming you have convincing proof that the page is inaccurate and/or malicious, etc.

Granted, if a judge sends Google a legal notice requiring them to take action, they'll probably do so. But good luck getting a judge to agree to do that.

Always go after the source of the problem. It's not Google's fault that some mean person posted a page that says you're a jerk and thief (even though you're not). But you might be able to convince a judge that the person you claim is defaming you should change or remove the page. If that happens, Google's indexing bots will automatically update the search results the net time they crawl the offending pages and see the content has changed.

Matt Cutts has a good article (with a great graphic) discussing this. Here's a brief excerpt of what Matt tells people when they ask him the same question:

We really don’t want to be taking sides in a he-said/she-said dispute, so that’s why we typically say “Get the page fixed, changed, or removed on the web and then Google will update our index with those changes the next time that we crawl that page.”

His post prompted me to think about this again since I get this type of question several times a year. Just keep in mind that while it's an emotionally difficult thing to have someone write mean things and lies about you for all to see, it's a relatively clinical process to try to get that information changed or removed. Just make sure you stay calm and look to the right people to help with driving those changes.

Google's official page that addresses how to remove content from the company's search results is located at:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=136868

As of this evening, I am among the ranks of those who call themselves licensed pilots.

"Wow, what a day! I woke up this morning and started in on some non-flying related stuff that I had on my list, and at about 8:45 this morning my instructor, Kelly called me. Turns out one of the local FAA examiners that conducts check rides for private pilot candidates had today open and so he wanted to see if I could be at the airport for my FAA check ride at 1pm today. It wasn't quite where my mind was focused at the time the call came, but I quickly started shifting gears in my brain and agreed to be at Twin Oaks Airpark to meet Kelly at noon so we could make sure all the paperwork was in order."

Read the whole story about the exam and check ride on my flying blog.