As per the Vista team blog, Microsoft announced that attendees to the Microsoft PDC conference in October will recieve an advance preview copy of Windows 7 on a USB drive. This is a great opportunity for developers to get a jumpstart on Windows 7.

Some of us more infrastructure-oriented types might want to check out PDC for this opportunity as well. Microsoft has been very tight-lipped on Windows 7 and any rumor blog or screenshots I've heard about have been taken down almost immediately. I know I may be in the minority, but I think it's the right thing to so. If it were ready for public consumption then it would be out there. Especially with the anti-vista sentiment, despite the Windows mojave project, and the general enterprise sentiment of "We'll wait for Windows 7" keeping it under wraps until it's "ready" benefits everyone. I believe Microsoft will release a solid, "ready for market" product with Windows 7.

Check out the PDC site to sign up - http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

PCWorld has been pretty good at collating rumors lately and has the definitive Windows 7 post here. Be sure to check out the latest NetworkWorld article on Windows 7 from John Fontana as well

Before anyone asks, I know nothing of Windows 7 except what's been explicitly posted on an official Microsoft site. I have thoughts and conjectures just like everyone else. Feel free to post yours below. :)

According to Greg Keizer's article at ComputerWorld not only is Google Chrome usage not growing but it's now shrinking. "At the end of its third week of availability, Google Inc.'s Chrome accounted for 0.77% of the browsers that visited the 40,000 sites tracked by Net Applications, down from a 0.85% share the week before."

Chrome had a high just above 1% but appears to be disappearing just and quickly as it first appeared. The various theories on Chrome's ultimate goal are really interesting and people seem to have put a lot of thought into them, but none of them work if no one uses Chrome. It was an interesting idea and I think the concept was strong but it might just be too early for the cloud-only model Chrome was trying to push.

Steven J. Vaughn-Nicols wrote a great article on why he thinks Chrome just isn't ready... yet. And Royal Pingdom asked why does it seem like all Google products are always in beta? Support costs are a huge impact. Google escapes the support costs, and the PR nightmare of releasing an otherwise buggy product by calling it "beta". Google, we're calling you out. You're one of the big boys now. Stop pushing beta software and push product! Real, RTM-worthy product.

There's a lot of buzz about Cisco's acquisition of Jabber and before that, PostPath. John Furrier says it's "getting interesting" but most of the discussion I've heard is how Cisco will remain a non-starter in rich UC. Bar none, Cisco makes a great VoIP platform with their CallManager platform. However VoIP does not a UC platform make. They now have all the pieces, email (PostPath), IM (Jabber), VoIP/UM (CallManager) but they lack the glue.

It's impossible to overstress the importance of "unified" in unified communications. Microsoft's Gurdeep Singh Pall adds

Cisco’s offering is the definition of “un-unified” communications. With more than 40 products, their solution is a patchwork of technologies and networking. The risk for customers is that a patchwork system is slower to roll out, harder to train users, and more expensive to manage and maintain over the long term.

He has an obvious vested interest but you can't ignore that he makes a good point. No one wants to roll out 40 different independent platforms, or even 3-4. The whole point of UC is a single console and a single user experience across multiple modes of communication all tied together with a presence engine.

Cisco has proven they don't have the software expertise to bring it all together as Brian Riggs notes in his evaluation of their current IM solution,

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VMWare demo'd a new version of their VI Toolkit for managing VMs at VMWorld. VI Toolkit 1.0 has been out for awhile, but the new 1.5 version has a few more tricks up its sleeve. According to Carter Shanklin (through CNet) administrators can adjust the configuration of some applications through the toolkit API. For example, "[it] could be used to adjust the configuration of a virtual machine running Microsoft Exchange. In the demonstration, the Exchange server virtual machine was upgraded from 1GB to 4GB of RAM without a reboot." Note that hot-adding memory is a function of Windows Server 2008.

This opens up a world of possibilities for the virtualized datacenter. One of the headaches in a virtualized environment is that in a lot of ways you still have to manage servers independently. The new version of the VI toolkit has the possibility to adjust many things in an environment from a single console. With the ability to build PowerShell cmdlets administrators could automate many tasks to a single button click.

It's not hard to see where this is going. I'm excited! I think the next 3-5 years will be very interesting in the virtualization world.

One commenter on the official Microsoft Vista blog noted "I found myself waiting to get the message". And that, my friends, is exactly the point! The blogosphere and even mainstream media is abuzz about the new Microsoft ads. Where are they going? What's the point? Why? Why ask why? I don't remember the last time people were buzzing this much about Microsoft!

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There's been much hullabaloo (I always wanted to use that in a sentence) about Chrome being "the next OS" and a challenge to Windows on the desktop. One idea is that it could be the "boot to browser" launching pad into the Google ecosystem of cloud-based applications however, as I noted before I see this being a bit of a niche market and nowhere in the Enterprise. Microsoft needed to respond if for no other reason than to quell the buzz. Matt Asay notes they preempted Chrome with the latest release of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).

From Matt's "The Open Road":

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Just a short note on Google Chrome. I downloaded it today to try it out. I had not idea how hard that would be. The download was easy but it doesn't seem to work with a lot of webpages. Most importantly for me if you try to visit Outlook Web Access the Exchange 2007 CAS server will force you into downlevel "OWA Light". Any browser I use absolutely must support the full functionality of OWA. Maybe I shouldn't have had such high expectations from a beta product but I expected more from Google given all the hype.

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John Furrier was way out in front of the Google Chrome story. What's Chrome you ask? Google will announce tomorrow they are coming out with a new browser called "Chrome". The feature list looks a lot like IE7 and IE8 with a sprinkling of Firefox. And the kicker, supposedly it will be 100% open source.

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I know this is a Cisco focused story, however this is at least peripherally Microsoft related. I follow the unified communications market closely and am a big fan of Microsoft's Office Communications Server product. However, Cisco is one of few companies with the R&D capital and chutzpah to challenge Microsofts place atop the throne.

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Rui Silva posted an article, part 1 of 2, on "12 Tips to Optimize an Exchange 2007 Infrastructure". Reading through them they may seem like common sense but they're a good reminder of best practices. There are also some performance tweaks I'll bet are new to all but the most hardcore geeks. In a busy IT world filled with firefighting sometimes a little proactive work can go a long way. You'll have to check out Rui's post for the details but here's a list of the first 6 tips:

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Hey everyone! I apologize for the "break". I had no idea it had been so long. Between mixing 80 and 100 hour weeks for my other job I haven't had much time to jump over here and write. Hopefully that's behind me, and you're all still here waiting with baited breath. ;)

Microsoft made a rather important announcement last week about running Exchange 2007 in a virtualized environment. Well, sort of. They've announced they've certified Exchange 2007 under the SVVP program, the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program. It's interesting to note the partners they list as part of the SVVP program:

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According to CNet News Microsoft has launched a new version of Windows, Windows Mojave. The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Users are amazed at the easy to use features and new interface. Before you ask, no this isn't Windows 7, it's Windows Mojave.

Here's the catch, Windows Mojave is really Vista. What? Exactly. Mojave is a marketing codename for a study on Vista perception, reaction and education.

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A lot has been made about baseline benefits and ROI, however it can be difficult for the average information worker to see how it will improve their job performance and satisfaction. No one really likes cubicles and hard offices are hard to come by or reserved for upper management. How does an enterprise of any size meet the desires of its employees to work in comfort and privacy? Unified Communications is key to that strategy.

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According to various sources, including the San Francisco Chronicle, a soon-to-be former network admin has locked everyon out of the San Francisco "FiberWAN" network. From the article, "records such as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail inmates' bookings" are stored on this network. Terry Childs is currently in jail on $5 million bail.

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Like most in the technology industry I work well over 40 hours per week. Also like most, rarely am I compensated for all the ad hoc work done off hours. We just accept it as a matter of course based on the industry we're in. However, some legal eagles are saying employees may be entitled to overtime pay for using their iPhone, BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device for business use after hours.

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