techSOAP has MOVED!!!

You can now find all the same content at www.techsoap.net

It was great getting into the blogosphere with Blogger but in an effort to grow I have moved to my own domain name and to Typepad for the back end.

Please update your aggregators and links.

Thanks.

Brendan

Windows Celebrates 20 Years

"Bill Gates wanted to call Windows 1.0 'Interface Manager"

And 19 other interesting facts about Windows 1.0

Thanks Scobleizer for the reference to creole.spavia.com

It's a Tankless Job

Another tangent, but a good one. Here is a perfect example of NASA's work spilling into our everyday lives.

NASA - It's a Tankless Job: "It's a Tankless Job"

new XBox 360 commercials...

Time for a commercial break

this and this.

from scobleizer.

Next Version of Exchange Server to be 64-bit ONLY

From E2KSecurity

Exchange 12 to be 64-bit only
Breaking news: Exchange 12 will be 64-bit only. I have a lot more detail to post on this, but they're about to close the forward boarding door-- more when I land in Cincinnati in an hour or so. Here's a link to the umbrella press release from IT Forum.

Why the change? x64 technology is already widely deployed, and using it with Exchange reduces the I/O count dramatically-- by up to a factor of 4. This is huge, since IOPS are much more expensive than RAM or CPU. (If you don't believe me, try pricing 16GB of DRAM and a dual Opteron server compared to an EMC SAN and get back to me).

One objection I anticipate hearing is that this will strand customers who aren't on x64 hardware. I'm resistant to this argument, though, because even low-end servers now often include x64-capable CPUs, and this trend is only going to accelerate between now and the time Exchange 12 ships next year. Organizations that are planning to move to Exchange 12 after it ships can easily buy x64 hardware any time between now and the time they upgrade, usually without any increase in cost. Of course, I expect to hear criticism of this move because some customers won't be prepared to move to x64, but the fact is that there will always be customers-- for any product-- who don't want to, or cannot, upgrade when the manufacturer wants them to. Sure, there will be Exchange customers who will cling to their existing versions, but that has always been (and will always be) true for Exchange, Notes, Workplace, OCS, SAP, and any other software in this class.

The big news here, to me, is that Exchange is once again breaking ground in delivering a new technology-- and in this case, it's one that has the potential to radically alter the scalability and cost factors we're used to working with. I can't wait to get my hands on some E12 bits and start testing!

Microsoft Memos about the Services switch being thrown...

Here is a link to articles from one of Dave Winer’s blog with links to the actual internal Microsoft memos.

Bill Gates’ email

Ray Ozzie’s memo html

More on Office live...

I continue to hear more about office live and I get goose bumps.  Check out the section about the free domain name, website, and email for 50 users up to 2 GB for each mailbox…

 

Office Live Will Be A Huge Productivity Tool

The other product announced yesterday at the Microsoft Preview event in San Francisco was Office Live. Office Live will launch in Q1 2006.

My raw notes from the event are on CrunchNotes, and my profile on Windows Live went up last night. Rajesh Jha presented the product.

Office Live is not an online version of Office.

Office Live is a set of free, ad-supported productivity tools for businesses that will really help the small guys. The service will also have a premium subscription product that will have “less” ads, according to Bill Gates yesterday.

The core tools are a free non-microsoft domain name, website and up to 50 email accounts with 2 GB of storage each. Rajesh created a new website in the demo, adding content and images, in a minute or so. For a small company needing a informational website, it will be great. Given that the domain name, website building, hosting and email will all be free, this will be very attractive to a small business.

For customers needing more, Microsoft will offer a suite of additional productivity applications - 22 in all were announced yesterday. They will also support third party applications - ADP’s payroll software was shown integrated into Office Live. A set of APIs will be available for third parties to add their application functionality into Office Live.

Among the additional applications was an office document collaboration tool. You can share an office document real time with others, allowing them to view and edit it. Impressive.

Office Live should become a starting point for small businesses wanting a web presence and a general platform to run their business operations.

If Microsoft can hold on to them as they grow by offering additional services, it will become a lucrative product for them. And the ad inventory they will generate from page views will also be highly valuable to advertisers selling into the small business space.

There is a real chance Office Live will be one of the big revenue generators for Microsoft, both from advertising and subscription fees.

Tags: microsoft, officelive, techcrunch, web2.0, web+2.0

Microsoft is no longer an applicaitons company....

they are now a services company…… see below from Tech Crunch

Also, here is a link for a some real-time notes from the announcement yesterday

Windows Live - More than an AJAX Desktop

I blogged my raw, unedited notes from the Microsoft press meeting today real time on CrunchNotes. One of the two major announcements was Windows Live (best viewed on IE of course). Office Live was also announced, which I will be writing about later tonight.

Windows Live is a free, ad-supported AJAX virtual desktop. Most of the functionality could be seen in the Microsoft sandbox project called Start, which we profiled a couple of months ago.

However, Microsoft has added plenty of new features that add a lot of value to the product. Among them are email integration, a new instant messaging client, plaxo-like contact management and skype-like features that allow outgoing calls to normal POTS phones. Windows Live is also extensible via “gadgets”. After what I saw today, I despair for many a silicon valley startup.

The Desktop

The core features include a (now) standard AJAX desktop, wich a drag and drop interface, options to change the number of columns, ability to save searches, etc. There is a pre-populated feed reader on the left column, and adding new feeds is a one-click affair.

The really special stuff, though, are the Gadgets. These are third party applications that can be added to Windows Live via the Add Content feature on the top left. For current gadgets, check out MicrosoftGadgets.com.

One Gadget I added was the Flickr viewer. Adding it takes a couple of steps, and you are able to view Flickr photo’s via tags. Since anyone can create a gadget, I’d expect to see thousand so options in the near future.

Email

You can add a mail account directly to the Windows Live page and get Outlook Express-like functionality directly on the browser. This technology looks to come directly from the Kahuna project, which we have written about several times.

Instant Messaging & VOIP

This was the coolest thing I saw demo’d today. Windows Live will soon have a new instant messenger client embedded on the site. The IM feature will include the ability to make outbound POTS calls, like Skype. They’ve leapfrogged Google’s Gtalk in this regard.

There is also an advanced contact management feature that bakes in plaxo-like features (you control your own contact info and people pull it to keep updated).

Blake Irving walked us through a demo that included a search for restaurants near the TransAmerica Building in San Francisco. As he zoomed in and narrowed his choices, he chose a restaurant, and via a click called the resaurants’s normal phone line to make a reservation. I took a picture, which is up on flickr. The VOIP caller is pictured to the left.

The IM functionality will be released in December.

That’s all I’m going to profile for now. Additional features are discussed at ideas.live.com. I want to repeat, what really got me today was the Gadget extensibility and the full VOIP IM integration.

Tags: ajax, windowslive, microsoft, voip, techcrunch, web2.0, web+2.0, instantmessaging, email

How IT is taking on organized crime...

Does IT matter? It does against crime

I just had an interesting breakfast with Mark Eppley. You might know him as the founder of LapLink. But this morning he was telling a different story. Business really is about stories, you know. Do you have a compelling one? He does.

100 semi-truck-loads of goods disappear every day in the United States.

That’s his story. I had no idea. Billions of dollars in supply-chain losses every year. Turns out organized crime steals trucks. They usually find the trucks later on. But the load is gone. Some of this is in collusion with truck drivers. Some of this is just opportunity (a truck is left running at a truck stop, a thief breaks in and steals the truck, takes it to a drop-off-point where the load disappears into an underground marketplace).

In some overseas markets, he tells me, they are even more brazen. They’ll just kill the driver and take the truck.

Does this crime pay off? Well, consider a truck load of Viagra. One pallet of that stuff is worth millions. One truck can hold $30 million worth or even more.

Now you know how the spammers are being funded.

So, how is Mark Eppley’s new company,� SC-Integrity� (for supply chain integrity),� gonna stop them?

Well, with the Amazon model. Huh?

He’s sticking all sorts of data from the supply chain industry into a database and looking for commonalities.

You know, the same kind of system that Amazon uses to figure out that if you buy a Harry Potter book you’re probably going to be interested in other things based on the past behavior of other people who’ve bought Harry Potter books.

He also uses a variety of devices that are placed inside the cargo. They use a variety of information gathering and sharing techniques and techniques to avoid detection. He didn’t want me to share much about how the devices work but let’s just say they report back home where they are and other data. They also aren’t detectable and if jammed, that can be figured out too.

Does his anti-crime system matter? Well, he says they’ve already returned millions of dollars of goods back to their owners.

Can this system be foiled? Yes. But he says that’s not the point right now. The point right now is to raise the bar on the criminals and make them react to the system. Most crime, he says, goes to where the easiest fruit lies. His customers, he says, will be very happy if they reduce their losses by a few percent.

Oh, and do trucking companies prosecute drivers? Usually no. They usually just fire the drivers who then go across the street and do it again at another company. The trucking industry has a shortage of drivers, he says, so they’ll usually hire anyone without a criminal record.

So, what he’s doing is looking not at the driver, but at the route, or at the truck stop, or at other common patterns. What’s the probability of a trucker carrying a load of diamonds getting hit at a certain truck stop? His system will know over time. Just the same way that Amazon knows the probability that you’ll buy a Tom Peters book after you buy a Harry Potter book.

Does IT matter? Ask the criminals who are behind bars.