While installing a driver from HP I saw the picture below. I was surprised to see a KBps rating for the software installation.

I normally associate KBps with modems and networks and not hard drives. I didn't know what to make of the number since it could mean the disk transfer rate, how much of the installation program had been written as a function of file size/time, or some other calculation. It was slightly interesting to watch but a totally useless number without some sort of context to put it into.

Microsoft is looking for people who have used the BRE in a project to fill out a survey so they can get feedback and plan for the next version. I haven't ever used BRE so I didn't answer the survey but if you have used BRE please fill out the survey at https://live.datstat.com/MSCSD-Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=BRE_Usage_Survey_Blog.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that Silverlight 2 was released. The amazing thing is that it is already installed on one in four of the computers in the world. Also the integration with Eclipse is exciting as it will allow Silverlight to be used in organizations where they don't normally have Microsoft development tools.

Today you can download it from http://silverlight.net/GetStarted. There is also a lot of guidance to help you get started with Silverlight development.

I got sent an e-mail with the subject "did you see this?" and a link to an article with the title "IBM May Quit Technology Standards Bodies". I did some more research and found the following articles about the story

http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39293016,00.htm?r=1

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/IBM-standards-business-practice,6403.html

http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C400693880002574CD0027DDFF.html?ref=technology

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10048497-92.html

The articles seem to speak around the same general points which I summarize as follows:
1. IBM is concerned about the perceived value of standards that are not widely agreed upon.
2. IBM wants to make sure that they are using their influence to ensure that the standards that are created are ones that a majority of the industry can agree upon and that will get wide adoption.
3. There is a concern that if the standards bodies are not respected there will be a proliferation of standards or an abandonment of standards which would be bad for the entire industry.

I agree that if people loose faith in the standardization process we will soon cease to have standards. I agree with the stance that each standards body (to be respected) needs to have a well documented process for reviewing proposals and resolving differing opinions. Those processes need to have checks and balances that will make sure that minority opinions are not ignored while at the same time not allowing a minority to completely stop progress on a specification. Those rules should be different for each standards body as they are dealing with different topics with differing levels of impact on the industry and differing levels of contention between the participants.

As the cnet article points out IBM has also been accused of manipulating standards bodies for their gain so I don't see this so much as IBM threatening the standards bodies or reacting to the OOXML specification so much as IBM saying that we need to make sure that there is not another instance where a standard is approved without having been properly vetted in the community to the point that different national standards bodies are complaining about the results.

When I fired up the Zune client this morning to listen to my podcasts I was told that there is a newer version. I updated the client software first on my machine and then upgraded my Zune. There were several things that I liked:

1. I think the new interface is cleaner and easier to navigate.
2. New podcasts in the marketplace. They may have been there before but I found it easier to navigate around and find what I want.
3. Mixview in the Zune Social. Here is the view for my Zune. I did notice that it only shows the recent items played on the Zune and not from the desktop client.
   
4. Games added to my Zune. I haven't had time to play them but I figure over the next couple of weeks there will be some down time to check them out.
5. Easier setup than iTunes. This issue should probably be a different post but I really don't want to blog vile when I only have 1 try behind me as I might have been the problem. The short version is that I set up iTunes for my son and was very disappointed by the lack of keyboard support in the setup program.
6. Audiobooks - I know this has been a very requested feature as I have talked to other users. Now you can download and transfer books from audible.com and overdrive.com.
   

There are some things I didn't like:

1. I had to remove the "friends" that were added for me in the Zune social. I don't know how they were chosen since I didn't recognize one song or artist from my "friends" and removed them.
2. I was told in the upgrade that WiFi would be turned on. When I checked it wasn't so I don't know if it was turned on as part of the upgrade and then set back to it's previous setting (that would be a good thing) or something didn't work like planned (a bad thing).

I am looking forward to many more hours of music from my Zune.

Sometime over the weekend the home page for Live Search at http://www.live.com has been updated. It is a lot cleaner and loads a lot faster. I have only done a few searches with the new page and don't have any feel for changes to the search results. I like the new clean interface but to be honest what I really want are good search results. If I just wanted a pretty interface on the search page I could go to http://www.msdewey.com or http://www.tafiti.com to get a pretty interface on the search engine.

I just saw that Microsoft is not going to sweeten the deal for Yahoo! any more than it has and has decided against a hostile takeover. I am not sure what Microsoft would have expected to gain but with all the moves that Yahoo! has made lateley to make sure that it is an unattractive takeover target I guess it is the best for Microsoft. When they start talking companies of that size and the different cultures there are a lot of factors to take into consideration. I am sure I am not aware of even a small part of them so my opinion probably doesn't count for anything. I guess that is why Steve Balmer and Jerry Yang get the compensation packages that they do and why I am nowhere close to getting paid as much.

The article did say that if Yahoo! didn't show stronger performance they might be a target for a takeover bid. I am sure at that point Microsoft will take another look at whatever they thought was attractive about Yahoo! and decide whether to make another bid.

I saw a piece in the RISKS digest at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.13.html#subj4 that says spam (unsolicited e-mail) has hit its 30 year anniversary. I also saw an article this morning off the MSN home page http://tech.msn.com/security/article.aspx?cp-documentid=6679669 talking about spam. With all the doom and gloom messages that spam is a major problem I have to admit that I am happily living in my protected world not having to deal with the problem for the most part. I used to get tons of spam at my Keane account until they installed a filter. I then went down from 300 or so spam messages a day to around 20. That number was much more manageable. I don't know what Advaiya, Microsoft, hotmail, gmail, or the other places where I have e-mail accounts does to stop spam but I see very few messages. Perhaps I have just gotten lucky with not having my new e-mail in an article or other place where it can be picked up on-line and added to the spammers lists?

In any case I think we can all agree that getting any kind of message whether it be for a product we don't want, a job offer from the company we swore we would never work for, or the nagging hints from our boss that we have a project due it isn't the kind of thing that we want a lot of and especially first thing in the morning when I typically find the most spam in my inbox.

Just as an aside, since I mentioned my experience with my Keane e-mail account. I have recently been told and have tested that it does not send back a message that the account has been closed so people sending to it are probably thinking that I am ignoring them. The truth is that I haven't been able to access the account since August when I left Keane. If you are trying to contact me on some matter you can contact me through my blog here and I will give you a better e-mail address to reach me at.

Yesterday Microsoft released version 2 of Expression Studio. You can find a lot more information at http://www.microsoft.com/expression but some of the key new features include

• Silverlight support
• Importing Adobe Photoshop files
• Support for ASP.NET AJAX
• Convert XAML into WPF user controls
• New codecs
• Image slicing

I think there is probably something for everyone in the package.

Last night Microsoft announced that the technology preview of Live Mesh is available to a limited number of beta testers. Live Mesh is a way for me to sign up all of my devices (mobile and Mac coming soon) and designate libraries (files) on each one to be synchronized to the others. I also get a secure remote desktop into the machine. This all runs in the cloud and uses your Live ID and SSL to secure the data. I can see this enhancing/replacing the array of tools I use now for synchronizing and remote access to my machines and data. I am excited to start working with the technology preview and see how this will work when I am on the road next for remote access to my home PC. Right now if I need to get to it I can have someone log into it and I use the remote help option as an easy way to do remote access without having to configure firewalls and worry about having a connection from the Internet to that system. The downside of that is that someone has to request the help and then allow me to have control so it takes someone being available. From what little I have seen about Live Mesh I don't have to have someone at the device to connect to it securely so it will make it more convenient.

Of course at the top of my wish list is to have Live Mesh work with CardSpace but since I can set up my Live ID to use CardSpace I don't know that it is that big of an issue.

When the SDK comes out later it will be interesting to see how Microsoft delivers on their promise of having the same API on the client and in the cloud. If the API looks just like the current .NET Framework that would go a long way to making this the "killer application" of clould computing even though it is really a platform to create killer apps. If all of the .NET programmers can just write their applications and then at some time decide to move them from an on premise app to a being hosted in the cloud that would make this platform extremely useful and really enable it to take off. If I have to write my applications in a new way with different constructs and they only run in the "mesh" then I don't know if I would start targeting this platform for general user applications. There are a class of applications that use collaboration heavily and could use the mesh immediately but I don't know that writing your typical data entry and reporting line of business application would gain enough benefit from the mesh to justify a new programming model and the drop in productivity that it would entail.

For now I will just try to explore what I can do with the technology preview and post my experiences.

You can find more information about Live Mesh at the web site http://www.mesh.com. There are also the following resources available:

- Watch the interview with Ray Ozzie introducing Live Mesh on Channel 9 (link: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=399578) 

- Watch an interview with Abolade Gbadegesin on Live Mesh Architecture (link: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=399577) on Channel 9
- Watch the demo of the Live Mesh application on Channel 10 

Some good background on Mesh can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/livemesh/

I got back from vacation and got a few prompts this morning to update software installed on my machine. This one for Flash player caught my eye since the biggest sale point of Microsoft's Silverlight over Adobe's Flash has been that Silverlight can play HD videos. Now it looks like Adobe has closed that gap so it may make it harder to sell companies on Silverlight.

I saw an article on the BBC News technology web site that said PayPal would start warning users who have older, less secure browsers and eventually would block them from accessing their site. My first reaction when I read that there are users using IE 3 and 4 to access PayPal was "you gotta be kidding me". I knew that there are people using older browsers out there but I always assumed that they were like my parents who are on dial-up, visit the 2 or 3 web sites they know, and don't do anything else. They don't feel the need to upgrade their computer because it is faster than they can type and I also figured they weren't using the latest browser because downloading IE 7 would take too long. I was surprised that these people would be using PayPal. The more I thought about it I decided I know people like that. One of their favorite web sites is EBay and they love to buy and sell items, always looking for a good bargain. I can then see how PayPal would be getting involved with people using older browsers. I applaud them in their role to help protect the Internet because it will help all of us to be safer.

I am looking forward to the time when the use of Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates becomes widespread and we will see users looking for the green address bar just like they look for the lock icon for SSL now. I am also holding out hope that at some point in the future we will see Microsoft putting out patches on a DVD and making them available at Wal-Mart or other large retailers where people like my parents can get them and update their computers. As time goes by I see fewer and fewer reasons for Microsoft to go through the cost but it would definitely make it so I wouldn't have to spend most of a night updating computers when I go to visit family. Until Microsoft starts dropping DVDs with the latest patches I (and a lot of other people in IT) will just plan on giving up some sleep each year to update older computers.

I heard the other day that the difference between ranting and constructive criticsm is the offering of a solution so let me rant first and then I will offer a possible solution. So first the problem. I sent out an e-mail with a Microsoft Project 2007 .mpp file attached. I heard back from one of the people that I sent it to that they could not open the file. I wasn't sure if it they had an older copy of Project or didn't have Project installed on their computer. I decided to go into Project and do a "save as" on the file to an older version and print a XPS file that I could also e-mail. While saving to the older version I saw that I could save to Excel and decided that might be a better option. I ran through the wizard asking me what columns I wanted saved to the Excel workbook. I foolishly clicked on the button to add all and then had to go through and delete most of them since they were not populated in the Project file. After cleaning up my mess I finally got through the whole wizard and clicked on finish only to get a message that the Excel workbook couldn't be created because of security settings with a somewhat terse message on how to fix the problem. I was able to do the 2 steps to get to the dialog box where the instructions started and reset the security settings. The second time through the wizard I was much faster and I was eventually able to save the file. My complaint was with the error. I shouldn't have ever had to see it. I can see 3 possible solutions to this problem.

1. The option to save to an Excel file could have been disabled. I would have seen that there is a possibility and could have looked in the help file to figure out what I needed to do. I am not sure how effective this would be because I would have likely determined I didn't have the correct driver or something and instead printed to the XPS but at least I would have known that when the sun, moon, and stars all align just right I might be able to save as Excel.

2. I could have been told that my security settings wouldn't let the wizard finish and asking me if I wanted the security settings to change. I don't really like the idea of a "black box" security change and would be tempted to say no most of the time but given the amount of time that I had invested in this (100% my fault) I might have been tempted to accept the option and try to undo it later.

3. The second screen of the wizard (you know the one after the splash screen that nobody bothers to read) could have checked the security settings and told me that I couldn't finish without making some changes. It could link to a help file with accurate instructions and a full discussion of the tradeoffs I was making by changing the security setting.

Option 3 seems so simple and certainly like it should be the logical choice so why wasn't it taken? I have no idea. I *suspect* that the reason might be that this particular feature wasn't tested or that it was automatically tested. I can see automatic testing being the most likely culprit. If I were given a specification for a feature that says if a certain security feature is set a message should appear and the file shouldn't be created I am pretty sure I could write an automated test to determine that is what is happening. Since I might only have to watch it run once if even that many times to make sure the test ran correctly and then I wouldn't have to think about it any more. I could also see reusing another test to fill out the dialog box so it wouldn't be like you were taking a lot of time to set up everything.

My solution to the problem would be to have the automated tests run at least once manually during each product development cycle to make sure that they still make sense and that they test the correct functionality. I am not sure what the cost of all this manual testing would be verses the amount of complaints Microsoft gets from customers but there should be some way for Microsoft to check the number of calls coming into PSS and just check the tests that are designed around those features.

This is a followup to my post last week. I just checked and I moved up in the NCAA rankings. I guessed half of the teams in the final 4 correctly. Next week I guess I will finally find out if I was lucky or one of the teams I didn't pick wins.

On the OOXML front things are looking up as well. According to the article at http://www.itnews.com.au/News/72970,the-votes-are-in-on-ooxml.aspx the results of the vote are not yet public but an informal poling shows that OOXML will pass. I have been really busy and haven't had time to digest all the feedback but there are numerous articles and e-mails floating around about how Microsoft or someone opposed to OOXML strong armed someone into voting one way or another. I wasn't there and with a few exceptions don't know the people personally so I don't know how reliable the accounts are and how much of what they are reporting comes from their own personal bias. I have to say that is disappointing but not that unexpected. All anyone has to do is look at the political process here to see examples of name calling, mud slinging, and down right lies used to make one person look better than another. I suppose that each side in this discussion/debate is passionate enough to resort to those same means to get what they want.

In the end the idealist in me would like to see everyone be able to decide on a single specification but the pragmatist says "if you ask 10 people their opinion on a topic you will get 12 different opinions" so we will not be likely to see any single specification satisfy everyone. For now it looks like we will have an official specification to work from and to make changes to as they are discovered and voted on through the change procedure.

While you are watching the NCAA basketball tournament and wondering if Davidson is going to win again or end their Cinderella story there is another "contest" going on. Actually it is a vote and not maybe not as dramatic as the NCAA tournament but possibly more important. I can tell you that I didn't fare to well in my predictions on basketball (sinking to the bottom of the brakets on ESPN) but if Open Office XML (OOXML) fails to be ratified we might see Microsoft having to change the file formats for the next version of Office. If, on the other hand, it is accepted as a standard that will mean that anyone ca write file viewers and other tools that interoperate with Office. I know that I love using Foxit for reading PDF files. It seems to load faster and it doesn't prompt me to download updates all of the time. I could see others taking the specification and writing viewers for PowerPoint that don't take up as much memory on my machine but that would be 100% compatible so I don't have to worry about fonts or animations not looking correct.

Even more important would be the possiblity of getting a competitor to Word and Excel that includes the "basic" functionality that we all use without some of the fancier or more esoteric features that you don't even know how to use.

Come on and admit it, you really want to know what it would be like to write the next software that will be the "killer app" for the desktop and this gives you a chance to try :)

After the considerable amount of press over Microsofts bid to buy Yahoo, the rejection by Yahoo, and then the announcement that Microsoft was going to continue to try to take over Yahoo it seems that Yahoo has been doing everything in its power to be unattractive to Microsoft. First there was the changes in the benefits package that would mean Microsoft would be paying out for a long time for former Yahoo employees. Today I read that Yahoo has joined the OpenSocial group. When the initiative was formed Microsoft didn't seem impressed since they have a programming model for Live already and OpenSocial was more of an idea for bringing the different ways of writing gadgets, portlets, blocks, or whatever they are called for social networking sites under a common API. If Yahoo is successful in implementing some of OpenSocial before the takeover it would require more work on Microsoft's part to change the technology and bring them under the Live programming model. Of course Microsoft could also just decide to support OpenSocial and leverage that technology but I haven't seen and couldn't find anything official in Live Search saying Microsoft will support OpenSocial. One thing is for sure, this is an interesting time for all of us as companies struggle with the tension between protecting their income streams and making sure their products interoperate with other products.

So last week Microsoft announced that they were going to publish APIs for their major products along with expanding the interoperability lab and not suing open source developers for using their technology as long as it isn't commercial use. I thought it was a good move and will help the ecosystem around Microsofts platform. Today the EU fined Microsoft $1.3 Billion for charging competitors too much. Microsoft has said the fine is for past offences since they were told in October that they are in compliance. I can understand that Microsoft needs to pay for past sins. My big question is who gets the money? I wonder how much of it is going to the companies hurt by the over charging and how much is going to the lawyers and government coffers.

I got this message as part of my subscription to Microsoft Executive newsletters

The potential for information technology to drive business success has never been greater. Advances in software, devices, and networks are transforming the way companies streamline communications, automate processes, and enable employees to access the information and capabilities they need to respond to new opportunities.

At the same time, the complexity of IT has never been higher. Business success increasingly depends on providing mobile employees with easy access to corporate computing resources. People who use instant messaging, social networking sites, and other relatively new communications technologies at home expect to use similar tools at work.

The result is a growing number of contradictory requirements: ease of access vs. security and compliance; performance vs. cost; innovation and agility vs. reliability and continuity. For IT professionals, the real challenge is resolving the tension inherent in trying to create an infrastructure that provides both the flexibility to enable employees to drive business success and the control to protect corporate resources, maintain compliance, and provide continuity.

Helping companies find the right balance is one of Microsoft's most important priorities. To do that, we are focused on technology innovation that will enable companies to build systems that have the flexibility and intelligence to automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with strategic objectives. This is a vision we call Dynamic IT. Virtualization technologies that provide powerful new tools for creating more efficient, flexible, and cost effective IT systems will provide a critical foundation for bringing this new vision to life.

In previous executive emails, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer discussed advances that are revolutionizing communications, improving productivity, and transforming the way companies use information. Because you are a subscriber to executive emails from Microsoft, I want to share my thoughts about virtualization with you. As senior vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, I know that virtualization is helping IT departments reduce costs and improve business continuity and compliance, and I believe that over the long term, it will have a significant impact on the way businesses run IT. It is still early for this important technology--ultimately, virtualization will play an important role in improving business agility by making IT systems more flexible and more responsive to changing business needs.

Understanding Virtualization

Virtualization is an approach to deploying computing resources that isolates different layers--hardware, software, data, networks, storage--from each other. Typically today, an operating system is installed directly onto a computer's hardware. Applications are installed directly onto the operating system. The interface is presented through a display connected directly to the local machine. Altering one layer often affects the others, making changes difficult to implement.

By using software to isolate these layers from each other, virtualization makes it easier to implement changes. The result is simplified management, more efficient use of IT resources, and the flexibility to provide the right computing resources, when and where they are needed.

There are different types of virtualization. Machine virtualization uses software to create a virtual machine that emulates the services and capabilities of the underlying hardware. This makes it possible to run more than one operating system on a single machine. On servers, this approach is called server virtualization; on end-user PCs, it is called desktop virtualization.

Application virtualization separates the application from the operating system, reducing conflicts between applications, which can simplify deployments and upgrades. Presentation virtualization enables an application on a computer in one location to be controlled by a computer in another.

There is also storage virtualization, which lets users access applications and data without having to worry about where they are stored. And network virtualization allows remote users to tap into a company network as if they were physically connected.

Virtualization is not new. IBM first introduced virtual machine technology for mainframe computers in the early 1960s. Microsoft Windows NT included a virtual DOS machine. Virtual PC was introduced by Connectix in 1997 (Microsoft acquired Connectix in 2003). EMC's VMware introduced its first product, VMware Workstation, in 1999. Softricity introduced SoftGrid, the first application virtualization product, in 2001 (Microsoft acquired Softricity in 2006).

Currently, industry analysts estimate that fewer than 10 percent of servers are virtualized, despite the fact that virtualization has been around for many years. But its significance is growing as companies have introduced products that target today's high-volume, low-cost hardware. Now, more and more companies are using server virtualization to save money by consolidating the workload of several servers onto a single machine.

Virtualization: A Foundation for Dynamic IT

As important as server virtualization can be in reducing costs, saving money is just the beginning of the value that virtualization offers. At Microsoft, we believe that virtualization will play a significant role in enabling companies to create IT systems that are not only highly efficient, but that have the self-awareness to adapt automatically as business conditions change.

By separating the layers of the computing stack, a virtualized IT environment makes it possible to quickly deploy new capabilities without having to configure components. In a virtualized environment, testing requirements and application compatibility issues are reduced, processes are easier to automate, and disaster recovery is easier to implement.

In the data center, virtualization not only supports server consolidation, but it enables workloads to be added and moved automatically to precisely match real-time computing needs as demand changes. This provides greater agility, better business continuity, and more efficient use of resources.

On the desktop, application virtualization reduces management costs. And when the operating system, applications, data, and user preferences are all virtualized, it makes it possible for users to access the computing resources they need anywhere, from any machine. The result is tremendous flexibility for employees and greater efficiency and agility for IT departments.

Microsoft Virtualization Products and Solutions for Dynamic IT

While each layer of virtualization delivers an important set of benefits, the real power of virtualization comes when companies implement an integrated virtualization strategy that extends across their IT infrastructure. Today, Microsoft provides a comprehensive set of virtualization products, tools, and services that span from the datacenter to the desktop:

Server Virtualization: With Microsoft Windows Server 2008, server virtualization will be available as part of the operating system with the new "Hyper-V" feature. Microsoft's design approach improves virtualization efficiency and delivers better performance. (This technology is also available separately through Microsoft Hyper-V Server.) Hyper-V technology--as well as the currently available Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2--supports server consolidation, re-hosting of legacy operating systems and applications on new hardware, and disaster recovery based on application portability across hardware platforms.

Application Virtualization: Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization transforms applications into centrally-managed virtual services that are streamed to desktops, servers, and laptops when and where they are needed. SoftGrid dramatically accelerates application deployment, upgrades, and patching by simplifying the application management lifecycle.

Presentation Virtualization: With Microsoft Windows Server Terminal Services, a Windows desktop application can run on a shared server machine and present its user interface on a remote system, such as a desktop computer or thin client.

Desktop Virtualization: Microsoft Virtual PC runs applications that are not compatible with the operating system on a desktop PC by supporting multiple operating systems on a single machine. It also accelerates testing and development of new software and systems. In addition, with the Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop license for hosted desktop architectures (also known "virtualized desktop infrastructures"), an entire desktop can be hosted on a server and remotely delivered to another desktop computer.

Our goal is to provide companies with the underlying technology they need to implement a flexible infrastructure that delivers the capabilities that employees and customers need, when and where they need them.

The Importance of Integrated Management

In a virtualized environment, a comprehensive management approach that provides the ability to monitor and track physical and virtual resources becomes critical. To achieve Dynamic IT, management solutions must also provide the foundation for automating the allocation of resources as business conditions change. It is the combination of virtualization technologies running across computing layers and orchestrated by a single set of management tools that provides the foundation for Dynamic IT.

Microsoft System Center delivers management software that enables IT professionals to manage all of their computing resources--both virtual and physical. System Center provides provisioning, monitoring, and back-up tools for virtual and physical environments across desktops and servers, and operating systems and applications. System Center enables companies to capture information about their infrastructure, policies, processes, and best practices so they can automate operations, reduce costs, and improve application availability.

Dynamic IT from the Server to the Desktop

Although virtualization has been around for more than four decades, the software industry is just beginning to understand the full implications of this important technology. Server virtualization to consolidate multiple machines into a single server is the most common form of virtualization in use today but it is still very early in the adoption cycle. At Microsoft, we believe that in the coming years, sever virtualization will become ubiquitous. Adoption of other forms of virtualization is just beginning, too, and their potential value remains largely untapped.

To help make this valuable technology more accessible, Microsoft is delivering innovations that make virtualization more affordable and less complex. We also are actively working with industry partners to develop new products and services that will unlock the power of virtualization for companies of all sizes.

Already, virtualization products from Microsoft and our partners are helping companies match computing capabilities to business needs. Imagine, for example, if your employees could access their personalized desktop, with all of their settings and preferences intact, on any machine, from any location. Or if workloads running on the servers in your data center automatically redeployed to respond to a sudden surge in demand for a specific capability. Or if your entire infrastructure could restore itself instantly following a catastrophic power outage.

Today, using existing Microsoft technologies, these Dynamic IT scenarios are already possible. Tomorrow, they will be the norm as we continue to bring new innovations in virtualization and systems management to market that help companies build truly dynamic infrastructures, from the server to the desktop.

Bob Muglia

I am in Iceland now and tried to go to Google to search for something. I was surprised to see this page appear.

Fortunately the interface is very simple and I could also read the link at the bottom for Google.com in English but I would have been lost of a more text based interface had appeared in Icelandic. I tried out some other major sites to see if they also redirected to a page for Iceland. I thought Google or the local ISP (whoever that is) might have been redirecting google.com to save on bandwidth. In my informal survey only Google returned a "localized" page so I am guessing now that this is something that Google is doing. Pretty cool if you speak Icelandic.

Earlier this week I upgraded my AT&T 8525 phone from Windows Mobile 5 to Windows Mobile 6. It was a fairly painless process to do the upgrade. I was looking forward to it since I had heard lots of good things about the latest version of Windows Mobile but hadn't really had a chance to play with it.

My first impressions were good. Setting up my e-mail and the partnership with the computer was easy to do. My only complaint in this area is that the new Pocket Outlook (or something on the phone) is smart enough to realize that my HotMail account is not normally accessible through Pocket Outlook and it redirects me to Pocket IE to go to the HotMail site. This is a minor inconvenience since I was able to read HotMail in the old version of Pocket Outlook.
One thing I really like is the ability to look up e-mail addresses in the "company directory" a.k.a. Global Address List from Exchange. This is great because I don't have to add everyone I might want to send an e-mail to into my contacts list. I can just add the ones I am going to send e-mail to a lot and the others I can look up as I need to.

I really like the larger screen for typing in my PIN to unlock the device. Before I had to use the keyboard which meant either sliding out the device to get to the built in keyboard or using the stylus. The new buttons are big enough that I can use my finger. This is useful when all I want to do is make a call.

The alarms started working again. I don't know what I did before but the alarm sound only chimed when I was turning the phone on. That meant I got a lot of alarms every time I landed at a new destination and turned the phone on. It was kind of embarrassing to have the phone beeping at me in the plane. It also meant that the phone couldn't work as a backup alarm clock when I was traveling.

I haven't had a lot of time to add new applications to the phone but the ones that I have added seem to work just fine.

First of all let me say Happy 2008 to everyone out there. It seems hard to believe that another year has come and gone.

I have sworn off swearing off making predictions and will attempt to come up with a list of things that I think will be important to all of us working in technology.

1. The Economy - In the past few years it seemed to me that IT budgets were increasing and companies were willing to take a chance on newer technologies or new ways of thinking. With the mixed signals on the economy and nobody really knowing if the US is headed for inflation or a recession but it seems from my informal polling that IT budgets are staying flat or increasing at a smaller rate. That could be a local phenomenon but if it is true it means that we will all be back to justifying costs and showing a shorter ROI for our projects.
2. Green - No, not the lime green color that my daughter is crazy about but the environmentally conscience type of green. Before "green" has been seen as something you do because you are an activist. After all, three years ago when I looked at purchasing a car I just couldn't justify the increased cost of a hybrid vehicle. I would have loved to own one but I just couldn't ever see saving enough in fuel costs to justify the larger up front cost let alone the expected higher maintenance costs. Most companies have looked at their "green" initiatives in the same manner. If they could save money by consolidating servers (and save the environment as a side effect) they were willing to do it but nobody in their right mind would spend extra money just to be green. I now see more companies seeing green as an investment that might cost them money in the short term but that will pay off large dividends in the long term. Besides that being green can be used as a competitive advantage if you can show how your competitors are polluting worse than you are.
   I think technology can help out a lot here. Not only are newer computers getting better about saving energy, the newer operating systems like Windows Vista are pre-configured with energy saving settings that will shut down monitors, spin down hard drives, and will eventually put the computer to sleep. There are other technologies that allow me to shut down my machine but have it wake up when it needs to be patched by the IT group so I don't have to leave my machine on all night long one or more nights in the month. There is also tremendous potential for IT applications to be used for tracking energy usage and providing plans for cutting down on the impact of our technology on the environment.
3. Open Source - I think that open source software has become such a large portion of our industry that to think that it will ever go away is just a fantasy. I also don't see it taking over the world and all "closed source" software going away. I think there is room for both models. I still don't see how you can build a long term business on creating and giving away software but if someone can figure a way to do it I am more than willing to use their software. I see a longer term where Linux and a few successful large projects will be supported and a lot of small utilities but the majority of the software industry will still be run on closed source software. I am not sure what the final percentages will be but I will expect that for the next few years at least we will see open source gaining in prominence. I also expect to continue to hear open source touted as the fix to all the software ills just like structured programming and object oriented programming and a lot of other "silver bullet" ideas before it. One thing is for sure and that is the whole collaborative model of most open source projects has proved that quality software that addresses a business need can be developed by large, geographically distributed teams.
4. Communications - A lot of major players in the industry have "unified communications" offerings. If you take a larger look at software a lot of it is about communicating ideas. I am putting software like Microsoft Office, blogging, pod casting, and web conferencing software into this larger bucket of communications software. There are countless articles and studies talking about how we are overwhelmed with data but starving for information. I think a lot of this problem lies in the way that we try to communicate facts to each other. I think that whoever is able to come up with software that will help us weed out irrelevant facts and drill down on the data that will ultimately become information that we can use will have done us all a service.
   I see a bunch of different technologies that can help with this communication issue. Some of the most obvious are the web conferencing and telecommunications type software like skype but there is a large range from the spam filters that we use to the business intellingence and data mining that drives the dashboards, KPIs, and reports that we rely on to software for creating presentations (just an aside, anyone who could figure out a way to stop boring PowerPoint presentations from being delivered would be a real hero). As we are innundated with information and expected to be constantly available this software will become more and more part of our lives. I think it might be too soon for it to appear this year but within a few years I would expect to see the resurgence of "agent" software that will go out and find information that is of interest to us and put it into neat little packages of information that we can get whenever it is convenient for us.
5. Security - I just read a report on the rise in data breaches last year. It is staggering how much data is lost because someone left a laptop in a cab or because somone sent unencrypted data through the mail and the package was lost. I see many more companies implementing a Chief Security Officer or similar position that will be responsible for making sure that data is secured. I also hear more about encrypting data whenever it is at rest so it will not be compromised. We also have to be aware of phishing attacks and other on-line scams. All of these threats will need to be addressed if we are to continue growing our digital economy.

These are a few (fairly obvious) trends that I think will be important in 2008. Who knows, if I am right I may do something crazy in 2009 like predict when the next version of Visual Studio will be released.

Today I tried to download a training kit for Visual Studio 2008 as it promised all sorts of things like labs, demos, and PowerPoint presentations that might come in handy for user group meetings later on. I was prompted to view the beta page for the new download center that uses Microsoft Silverlight.

I clicked around a little bit and I do have to say that I like the new interface. The download center provided a good search mechanism to find the download I wanted. I was thinking to myself that the least Microsoft could have done would have been to take me to the download I requested instead of the home page when I realized that my download had opened in the original page and that the beta was in a pop-up window. That resolved the one concern that I had while trying to find the training kit. I am sure if I spent more time on the site I could come up with a list of things I like and those that I don't like but for now I am pleased.

My favorite feature was the alphabetical list of downloads. One of my biggest complaints about the MSDN Subscriber download page is that you have to find products by their product family in the tree view. Some products (like SharePoint) have Office in the name but are in the servers branch of the tree. It isn't a big deal to look in a couple of places and I can search by name on that site as well but I really like being able to hover over a letter and see all the downloads that are available.

I hope you all enjoyed Christmas and at least got to spend the day away from work. I came back in and was catching up on my e-mail this morning when I found 2 different messages with much the same theme. It is an important topic so I thought I would share with the rest of the world (or at least that small part of the world that reads my blog).

The first e-mail was on Pex. Pex stands for Program EXploration and is a research project at Microsoft. According to the web page explaining the project it is designed to look at code, automatically generate unit tests, and in some cases it will even suggest bug fixes. Now I know that a lot of the research projects never make it out of the lab and into our hands but if this were to become available in the next version of Visual Studio it would really raise the bar for productivity. It would also mean that a lot of menial tasks (writing simple unit test cases) could be automated and would free up the humans to do what they do best, figuring out new ways to solve business problems.

The second e-mail was from a web site. Burried in the details was an offer for a free paperback book on peer code reviews. I had to read that twice, it seems there are lots of free e-books to be had but a real live dead trees book shipped to me, well I had to click on the link. I got taken to this page where there are lots of nice things written about the book. It looks like you can trade some of your personal information for a copy of the book. I have to admit that the nice statements about the book make me think that it is a very long list of reasons why I should buy some software so I decided not to order the book. It isn't that I don't think peer reviews are a good idea but that I really don't want to buy software. When we were doing peer reviews I don't know that we found a lot of bugs but just knowing that you were going to have to give the code to someone else and then defend why you did things a certain way made you think a lot harder about commenting your code, making sure it was designed well, and that you weren't doing any "hacks" just because you could.

I have been doing some looking at Microsoft's BizTalk Services hosted at http://biztalk.net. I was working on some of the sample applications and trying to write my own application last Saturday. I thought I had something working and was going to come back to it later to make sure it worked the way I think. I got the flu and didn't get back to it until tonight. I found that my code was failing with the error "ID3037: The specified request failed.". I tried some of the sample applications and one worked and one got the same error. I logged into the site and was told that the services had been updated. I needed to provide a secret question and answer as well as updating my password. I did that and while I was there I took advantage of the new feature to associate my Windows LiveID with the account. I thought that would have fixed the problem but it did not.

I tried a Live search and then a Google search for the error. I found some interesting entries like for obesity in Canada and women's scarves from Japan but nothing that even remotely looked relevant.

When all else fails I tend to RTFM so I looked at the What's New? page and saw that along with some updated services the SDK was updated on December 17. I guess that explains why some things worked and others didn't. Now I just have to go back through the new samples in the SDK and figure out what I need to change in my code to get it to work.

Oh the joys of working with CTP software :)

For those of you at the Utah .NET User Group last night I want to thank you for letting me come and speak to you. I am always amazed at the good questions I get and the way that people are thinking about using CardSpace. I have sent off the PowerPoint slides and the code to be uploaded on the web site.

I had mentioned that I was doing a series of video presentations on CardSpace. The first one has been posted on the MSDN Security Developer Center. The direct URL to the page hosting the downloads is http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bb968865.aspx. I would love to hear any feedback you might have.

After a couple of trips to Europe to teach Application Platform Optimization classes I think I might have a few readers in Europe who might be directly interested in this contest. Even if you aren't elegible to participate in the contest you might want to check out the results because I am sure they will be spectacular.

1^st European Silverlight Challenge

This competition is taking place in different European countries (e.g. Italy, United Kingdom , Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, France, Spain , Belgium, Croatia, Ukraine, Bulgaria) at the same time starting right now. As an example - the German and Spanish version can be found here:

http://silverlightchallenge.ineta-germany.org/
http://desafiosilverlight.bcndev.net/

The winners of all national competitions (there are great local prizes as well) will get the chance to compete against each other on a European level and win one of our 3 master prizes – paid trip to MIX 08 in Las Vegas including conference passes and some more goodies!

http://www.silverlightchallenge.eu/Premios.aspx

http://www.silverlightchallenge.eu/

PDC08 is scheduled for October 27-30, 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. There will be a pre-conference day on the 26th. From the announcement I got...

PDC is the definitive Microsoft event for software developers and architects focused on the future of the Microsoft platform. Mark your calendars and save the date. More information coming soon.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/pdc2008

No, this post is not about the 10 types of people who either understand binary or do not. This is in reference to a comment made in one of the early shows of .Net Rocks! where either one of the hosts or a guest said something like "Soon there will be 2 types of people in the world. Those who understand batteries and those who use them." I don't remember the context of the quote. I don't even remember the exact wording of the quote but I do remember hearing that and laughing. Since that time I have decided that I am definitely one of those people who uses batteries but doesn't understand them. I do know that I want batteries that last a long time, don't over heat and cause a fire, and are environmentally friendly. Not being one who understands battery technology I am not sure if all 3 if those goals are achievable. Today I saw an article on nextenergynews.com about a battery that claims to hit all 3 of my points.

The article claims that the battery will run for 30 years, power a laptop without getting hot, and when it runs out of electricity it will be inert and will therefore not harm the environment.

The first thing I did was to look for the date that the article was published. I was sure it was an April Fools joke that someone had finally gotten around to sending to me. The date looks legitimate. I also saw a lot of comments about the article that make it sound like the site is a legitimate site and not some subtle form of satire that I just didn't get. If all of that is true then my only regret will to have not put a 4th condition on my batteries which would be that they be affordable to just about everyone in the world. I have a feeling that any company selling something designed to last 30 years will put a large price tag on it since they won't be selling a lot of them. I really don't want to pay as much as I did for my house for a battery to run a laptop that will be obsolete 28 years before the battery is.

On Scott Guthrie's Blog there is a post about source code for parts of the .NET Framework being made available at the same time that Visual Studio 2008 is released. You will be able to set up your debugging to allow you to download the latest version of the source code and symbols so you can debug into the framework code. This will be much more useful than running relfector to see what is going on as the locals window and breakpoints will work so you will be able to see exactly what your code is doing in relation to the base class libraries.

The source code is released as part of the Microsoft Reference License so you will be able to look at, but don't touch, the source code to make modifications or try to build your own framework with the code. I really love that Microsoft is trying to be more open about their code and what is happening while at the same time providing a framework that protects the IP (Intellectual Property) and trademarks in their code. I see that as being a somewhat (note I don't say ideal) happy medium between the completely closed source model and the completely open source model.

I can't wait to be able to debug down into the BCL and see what I am doing that doesn't work with what Microsoft is doing. I can't help but think that will give us better, more stable code on the .NET Framework.

Sorry for the short notice but we had to cancel the Utah County .NET User Group meeting this month. We will meet again next month on the 19th. Please see our web site at http://www.ucnug.org for more information.