Charles Torre and I paid a visit to the Windows Home Server team to get the latest on what’s up with the SDK they released, what it means to consumers, what Add-In’s they’re playing with now, and what we can expect from the team down the road. (Check out Charles’ video on Channel 9 here)

While I was there, they pulled out some new hardware for Home Server. The first (at 11:00 in) is the Epson Endeavor, based on an Atom CPU (low power, very quiet) using 2.5″ laptop hard drives. Next is reference hardware from VIA (at 14:30 in the video) called the Antigo, based on a Pico-ITX motherboard. This one is extremely small sizing up smaller than a Western Digital My Book external hard drive. This one is without a doubt going to be my replacement Home Server.

Article – http://on10.net/blogs/larry/Windows-Home-Server-First-Look-at-New-Reference-Hardware/

The .NET 3.5 Framework (RTM and SP1) are not supported for use on WSS 2.0 and SPS2003 platforms. (This includes installing Visual Studio 2008, as it installs .NET 3.5) It is going to cause webparts to error.
Symptoms

If .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1 is installed on WSS v2 the symptoms are:

Each web part will display the following error:

Web Part Error: A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Web Part Page cannot be displayed or imported because it is not registered on this site as safe.

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/ronalg/archive/2008/08/26/net-3-5-and-sql-2008-not-supported-for-wss-2-0-and-sps2003.aspx

Silverlight Tip of the Day #32

Title: How to Declare a Custom User Control from a XAML Page.
Demo:http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Custom%20UserControl/iframe.html

Silverlight Terrain Tutorial Part 3

Title: Creating Smooth Tile Transitions using Opacity Masks.
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Terrain%20Transititions/iframe.html

Silverlight Tip of the Day #31

Title: How to Detect Alt, Shift, Control, Windows and Apple keys with Left Mouse Down in Silverlight
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Left%20Mouse%20Down/iframe.html

Silverlight Tip of the Day #30:

Title: Fast Sprite Animation in Silverlight
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Fast%20Sprites/iframe.html

Silverlight Tip of the Day #29:

Title: Creating a Transparent, Draggable Dialog with Rounded Corners.
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Border%20Demo/iframe.html

Silverlight Tip of the Day #28:

Title: How to Implement a Custom Mouse Cursor
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Custom%20Cursor%20Demo/iframe.html

Silverlight Tip of the Day #32

Title: How to Declare a Custom User Control from a XAML Page.
Demo:http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Custom%20UserControl/iframe.html

Silverlight Terrain Tutorial Part 3

Title: Creating Smooth Tile Transitions using Opacity Masks.
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Terrain%20Transititions/iframe.html

Silverlight Tip of the Day #31

Title: How to Detect Alt, Shift, Control, Windows and Apple keys with Left Mouse Down in Silverlight
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Left%20Mouse%20Down/iframe.html

Silverlight Tip of the Day #30:

Title: Fast Sprite Animation in Silverlight
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Fast%20Sprites/iframe.html

Silverlight Tip of the Day #29:

Title: Creating a Transparent, Draggable Dialog with Rounded Corners.
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Border%20Demo/iframe.html

Silverlight Tip of the Day #28:

Title: How to Implement a Custom Mouse Cursor
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Custom%20Cursor%20Demo/iframe.html

On behalf of the SBS team, I am extremely pleased to announce that Windows Small Business Server 2008 software has been finalized! Today both SBS Standard and Premium are being released to manufacturing, which means we begin the process of finalizing international versions, creating media, building packaging, delivering the product to distribution channels and handing it off to our OEM partners, so it will be widely available by our November 12 launch. (More information about launch will come in the future.)

Full article – http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/08/21/sbs-2008-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

When I set out to write my review of the original iPhone last year, I found myself in the uncomfortable role of spoiler. The unjustifiedly positive early reviews from Apple fanatics at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today were so out of touch with reality that I was determined to set things right: The iPhone was not the perfect device trumpeted by these guys, who appeared more interested in protecting their close relationships with Apple than with providing readers with accurate reviews they could trust. The iPhone experience on Windows, circa mid-2007, was a disaster, and no amount of whitewash could cover it up. My review reflected that, and provided Windows users–i.e. the majority of iPhone customers–with what I feel is still the most thorough and accurate coverage of the device available anywhere. I’m not blinded by the reality distortion field, and you shouldn’t be either.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/iphone3g.asp

A day after someone noticed a “Windows 7 Client” category popping up on Windows Server Update Services, another curious enthusiast on the Neowin forums has also noticed a sudden prevalence of “Windows 7 Client” drivers on Microsoft’s Update Catalog – the online library of drivers which Windows uses to automatically install.

A simple search for “Windows 7 Client” reveals more than 1000 drivers already available. These drivers range from the big brands from Nvidia, ATI, Intel and Broadcom to even miscellaneous display drivers. Whilst it is true all drivers approved after June 1 should have been tested on Windows 7, most of these drivers date back to early 2007 suggesting most drivers have just been carried over from the latest WHQL release.

With updates in one hand and drivers in the other, can you say beta test?

Article – istartedsomething.com

A day after someone noticed a “Windows 7 Client” category popping up on Windows Server Update Services, another curious enthusiast on the Neowin forums has also noticed a sudden prevalence of “Windows 7 Client” drivers on Microsoft’s Update Catalog – the online library of drivers which Windows uses to automatically install.

A simple search for “Windows 7 Client” reveals more than 1000 drivers already available. These drivers range from the big brands from Nvidia, ATI, Intel and Broadcom to even miscellaneous display drivers. Whilst it is true all drivers approved after June 1 should have been tested on Windows 7, most of these drivers date back to early 2007 suggesting most drivers have just been carried over from the latest WHQL release.

With updates in one hand and drivers in the other, can you say beta test?

Article – istartedsomething.com

The Visual Studio 2008 Software Development Kit (SDK) 1.1 includes tools, documentation, and samples for developers to design, build, test and deploy extensions for Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. You can also use the Visual Studio 2008 SDK 1.1 to create custom tools environments based on the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Shell.

Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=59ec6ec3-4273-48a3-ba25-dc925a45584d&DisplayLang=en

Microsoft has released Photosynth!!!. This is an extremely cool image tool that builds a 3D virtual space from collections of 2D images and then allows the viewer to navigate around this 3D space to view the images.

Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience. You can browse others collections or upload your own and let Photosynth do its magic to create a virtual world from your pictures.

Getting Started

Visit the Photosynth site and install the browser plug-in. Once that completes you can browse the collections that are online such as the Taj Mahal or a Red Sox/Yankees game from 2004.

If you want to create your own ‘synths’, you can visit the learning page to get started. You will need to setup an account (of course!). For tips on how to get the best results when making your own synth, check out the guide or just watch the How to Synth video.

It’s been a while since part two of this series appeared, but for once, I can’t blame myself: Microsoft has been curiously quiet about Windows 7 in the interim, so there hasn’t been much to say. But in recent weeks, things have finally heated up: The Microsoft executives most directly responsible for Windows 7–Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan–have started the Engineering Windows 7 blog, which they pledge to update regularly. And I’ve gotten my hands on a second interim build of Windows 7, which should lead to some interesting discussion.

Transparency vs. translucency

But that’s for the future. For now, let’s examine Microsoft’s communications about Windows 7 thus far this year. The roots of this discussion date back to a mid-2007 decision by Sinofsky, who penned a memo to co-workers that was first revealed by Mary Jo Foley in her Microsoft 2.0 blog. Here is part of it, with a few comments thrown in for perspective. I have bolded certain passages for emphasis.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/win7_shipping_03.asp

This is the first blog post in a series I’ll write over the coming months called Pushing the Limits of Windows that describes how Windows and applications use a particular resource, the licensing and implementation-derived limits of the resource, how to measure the resource’s usage, and how to diagnose leaks. To be able to manage your Windows systems effectively you need to understand how Windows manages physical resources, such as CPUs and memory, as well as logical resources, such as virtual memory, handles, and window manager objects. Knowing the limits of those resources and how to track their usage enables you to attribute resource usage to the applications that consume them, effectively size a system for a particular workload, and identify applications that leak resources.

Full Article – http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspx

Looks like its open-season on Wave 3 now, with Inky over at Mess.be getting his hands on the Wave 3 Milestone 1 installer for Windows Live Messenger. While Inky may be obsessed with version numbers and about screens, we’re more interested in what’s going on in terms of new integration across services. Its now been 9 months since the launch of Messenger 8.5, Mail and Photo Gallery as part of Wave 2, but as this is only a first milestone, there’ll be other internal updates before a version gets released to the public. That said, there’s still some positive signs that the eventual Messenger v9 release is going to be good.

Full Article – http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/08/11/windows-live-wave-3-messenger-v9-m1-dogfood-build-review-and-screenshots.aspx

Looks like its open-season on Wave 3 now, with Inky over at Mess.be getting his hands on the Wave 3 Milestone 1 installer for Windows Live Messenger. While Inky may be obsessed with version numbers and about screens, we’re more interested in what’s going on in terms of new integration across services. Its now been 9 months since the launch of Messenger 8.5, Mail and Photo Gallery as part of Wave 2, but as this is only a first milestone, there’ll be other internal updates before a version gets released to the public. That said, there’s still some positive signs that the eventual Messenger v9 release is going to be good.

Full Article – http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/08/11/windows-live-wave-3-messenger-v9-m1-dogfood-build-review-and-screenshots.aspx

REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 6, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the new version of the company’s acclaimed data management and business intelligence platform. This version of SQL Server provides powerful new capabilities such as support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data, and advanced reporting and analysis services. SQL Server 2008 provides the trusted, productive and intelligent platform necessary for business-critical applications.

“Microsoft developed this release of SQL Server with the customer in mind,” said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft. “SQL Server 2008 is the only major database that includes comprehensive, tightly integrated functionality for data management as well as advanced business intelligence out of the box. By offering a complete solution, we save customers time and money and allow them to focus on deriving the most value from their data assets.”

With more than 450,000 customer and partner downloads of SQL Server 2008’s community technology previews (CTPs), more than 75 large-scale applications already in production and more than 1,350 applications being developed by nearly 1,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) on SQL Server 2008, it’s clear that customers and partners are excited about the capabilities now available in SQL Server 2008. Tim Whitehorn, founder and chief executive officer of event management software provider ServiceU Corp., said, “We selected SQL Server 2008 because we can entrust it with our critical business applications. SQL Server 2008 is highly secure and reliable, and offers the best value on the market today. In addition, it accelerates the time frame for deploying new features and enhancements, and that to us makes SQL Server a winner.”

A number of enterprise customers from various industries are testing SQL Server 2008 including Clear Channel Communications Inc., Fidelity Investments, Hilton Hotels Corp., Simon & Schuster Inc., Siemens AG and Xerox Corp., among many others.

SQL Server has been well-received in the analyst community. Noted Forrester Research Inc. analyst Noel Yuhanna wrote in a January 2008 report, “The Forrester Wave: Information-As-A-Service, Q1 2008,” “Microsoft is (one of) the only vendor(s) with top enterprise search and business intelligence reporting capabilities. It offers strong support for aggregation, summarization, search engine and dashboards. Transactions across distributed data sources and long-running transactions are also strengths for Microsoft.”

SQL Server is an industry leader in both scalability and performance. It is the first and only database management system to be proven capable of delivering scalable results on TPC-E, the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s (TPC) newest and most challenging online transaction processing (OLTP) benchmark, with 13 published benchmarks to date.¹ Seven benchmarks are published on Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 by multiple hardware vendors, demonstrating strong price-performance and performance results, including IBM Corp.’s new No. 1 performance result using SQL Server 2008 on a 64-core System x3950 M2 server.² Also demonstrating the performance of SQL Server 2008, Unisys Corp. and Microsoft set a new extract, transform and load (ETL) performance record by loading 1 terabyte of data in less than 30 minutes using SQL Server 2008 Integration Services. In addition, SQL Server 2008 has proven its scalability in large-scale data warehousing, as demonstrated by its recent 10-terabyte TPC-H benchmark.³

“We saw a 35 percent improvement in throughput on the system that we upgraded to SQL Server 2008, with no code changes on our end,” said Gary Oberg, vice president of IT and development at Applied Discovery (a member of the LexisNexis group). “This translates straight to the bottom line for us, as the more documents we can upload, the more we can process.”

Microsoft is setting additional benchmark records with ISV solutions, including a world record on four-socket industry-standard blade servers in a three-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark, and demonstrated the largest benchmark ever on the Siemens Teamcenter digital product life-cycle management solution, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics AX and the Camstar Manufacturing Execution System solution.

SQL Server is a key component of the Microsoft Application Platform, a suite of products and technologies designed to help customers build, run and manage dynamic business applications. SQL Server 2008 is available in the following editions:

SQL Server 2008 Enterprise. SQL Server 2008 Enterprise is a comprehensive data management and business intelligence platform that provides enterprise-class scalability, data warehousing, security, advanced analytics and reporting support for running business-critical applications. With this edition, it is possible to consolidate servers and perform large-scale online transactional processing.

SQL Server 2008 Standard. SQL Server 2008 Standard is a complete data management and business intelligence platform that provides best-in-class ease of use and manageability for running departmental applications.

SQL Server 2008 Workgroup. SQL Server 2008 Workgroup is a reliable data management and reporting platform that delivers secure, remote synchronization and management capabilities for running branch applications. This edition includes core database features and is easy to upgrade to the Standard or Enterprise edition.

SQL Server 2008 Web. SQL Server 2008 Web is designed for highly available, Internet-facing Web-serving environments running on Windows Server. SQL Server 2008 Web provides the tools necessary to support low-cost, large-scale, highly available Web applications or hosting solutions for customers.

SQL Server 2008 Developer. SQL Server 2008 Developer allows developers to build and test any type of application with SQL Server. This edition features all of the functionality of SQL Server Enterprise but is licensed only for development, test and demo use. Applications and databases developed on this edition can easily be upgraded to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise.

SQL Server 2008 Express. SQL Server 2008 Express is a free edition of SQL Server that features core database functionality including all of the new SQL Server 2008 data types, in a small footprint. This edition is ideal for learning and building desktop and small server applications, and for redistribution by ISVs.

SQL Server Compact 3.5. SQL Server Compact is a free embedded database designed for developers and is ideal for building stand-alone and occasionally connected applications for mobile devices, desktops and Web clients. SQL Server Compact runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, including the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems, and on Pocket PC and smartphone devices.

Pricing and Availability

SQL Server 2008 is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be available for evaluation download on Aug. 7, 2008. SQL Server 2008 Express and SQL Server Compact editions are available for free download today at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver. As previously announced, pricing for SQL Server will not increase with SQL Server 2008. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/sqlserver.