From ZD Net Australia:

in brief Citrix used its thin client technology to demonstrate an Apple iPhone running Windows XP, at the recent Citrix Application Delivery Conference in Melbourne.

Windows XP, seen below running on the iPhone, was loaded using Citrix's thin client desktop software XenDesktop. Using the Citrix ICA client — a UNIX application that allows devices to access Windows sessions on a Citrix server — the presenter was able to run Windows on the iPhone via Wi-Fi.

Hit the link above to see screen shots of the client running. The iPhone’s native touch screen pinches and other controls work as well allowing you to zoom in on the thin client while running. Tres cool.

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Okay, I didnt know what to expect this being my first Apple WWDC. I am a vetran of ten Microsoft TechEd’s and a couple MECs. For the most part, Microsoft has cold the logistics of feeding, moving and running over ten thousand people around in an orderly fashion. People would joke about the strictness of the lunch ushers or the “soda and cookie ***” that guarded the coolers and treats until just the right moment. We laughed at the guards that made us go a certain way and managed the ebb and flow of the geeky crowds. Having been at the Apple WWDC for one day, I laugh no more.

To say that there is no control over anything here would be generous. To wait through the ritualistic Jobsian hazing for this morning’s keynote was a case in painful point. My flight was late last night and I couldnt register on Sunday. Registration opens at 7am, three hours before the keynote. Even though I know the Apple fanboys are famous for lining up hours ahead of time, surely I say, registration would be a simple affair. Ha! How wrong I was. People waiting for the keynote seating and those waiting for registration are put together in one line. This I had to finally just accept as none of the guards or ushers at the front door could confirm this for me. I was told to just get in the big line. Later, some of my line mates confirmed this is indeed where I should be. Then the condensation of the line starts. As you move up you are instructed to make a line four across and the mass starts to condense. Then you are allowed in to the building in groups. At this point, you can continue on to wait in line or register. If you register you lose your place in line and have to then re-join the line wherever it happens to be when you are done registering. You are reminded not to lose your badge – you will not get another.

The way food is distributed is a nightmare. It is just wheeled out to the masses and you would think they just threw one hundred pounds of red meat to five thousand starving tigers. At 3pm, after a morning of nothing but coffee and little dixie cups of water, they put out Odwalla juices, cookies, fruit and chocolate. Chaos insued as people fought and shoved to get to the juices and snacks. People were literally shoving and pushing to grab a juice or a bag of chips. It was a repeat when they rolled out drinks and hot hors d'oeuvres at the reception later that evening. I didnt even stay. I couldnt find anything redeeming about the  mess.

Lining up to get in to sessions isnt any better. Most of them fill up and you have to get in queue as soon as the previous session ends if you want to get in. There are plenty of Apple “staff” around, but not many get involved to make things a good experience.

Apple, send some people up to visit Brian’s team at Microsoft that runs TechEd. Take notes.

And lastly, why the top-secret, CIA type security at all the sessions with regards to giving out information and guarding what is presented? Again, Microsoft beats you hands-down with their transparency, open blogging by staff and information sharing. There arent many (if any) things they wont share and discuss with you, especially at their top technical conference. Community, learning and sharing are key examples they set.

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Mental note: Never fly United ever, ever again. Please cancel my United frequent flyer membership and flush all my miles down the proverbial toilet on one of your crappy planes.

We all know how bad off the airline industry is. They are limping along, or at best, trying to ‘reinvent’ themselves in to some kind of relevancy while slowly stripping us of benefits and things that were once standard wherever you flew. Now you pay for your luggage, you only get a granola bar for your $1200 first class seat and even going to the bathroom can be met with hostility. Now Delta in-flight engineers claim it is a security risk for coach passengers to use the first class bathroom. When called on their completely false logic, they then went on to say that all first class passengers have been pre-screened and we know more about them given their proximity to the cabin. Wow, even that guy you just upgraded? Touché. Do you think I am stupid?

The worst though was my wife’s recent trip to London. She flew United for the domestic leg to Dulles where she then took Virgin Atlantic across the pond. Her flight from DAY to IDA was delayed due to bad weather for over an hour. However, she was able to make her connection at Dulles in time. When she got to London, was her luggage there? Nope. With no helpful information coming from either carrier, she turned to me back in the States to try to help. I drove out to DAY and lo and behold what did I find at the United baggage office? Her luggage. Still_in_Dayton. Two days in London with no clothes or toiletries. Nice.

I went to the airport to pick her up a week later and guess what? You guessed it! They left her luggage behind at IAD *again.* She took it off of the Virgin Atlantic flight, brought it through customs and then re-checked it. On top of all of that , her flight to DAY was again, to no one’s surprise, delayed by two hours. So how does the baggage get left behind again?

My wife was understandably nuts at this point. Greeted by the United baggage rep with the same “we know nothing we will call you at some point when we find it” non-answer she was even more upset. At this point, the United rep responds “Ma’am, if you don’t calm down I am going to re-route your baggage to Beijing.” Nice. I finally resorted to working through the United 1-800 number for lost baggage and implored them to get it on the 10pm flight to DAY from IAD. That flight, was of course, delayed as well. To me, this means even more opportunity to get the baggage on there. Through the whole thing United wouldn't confirm anything. We can call in the morning and ask them to get it on the first flight. Why cant you call them *now* and ask them to get it on the 10pm flight? Our computers only send messages to each other every four hours. Wow. They certainly aren't spending money on computer upgrades.

I called back every hour through the night and was finally told the baggage ‘most likely’ was on the 10pm flight which was delayed to almost midnight. I picked up the baggage at the DAY airport at 1:50am.

“I hope your wife has calmed down by now” the agent from earlier told me. I am sure she has now that you didn’t route her baggage to Beijing.

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Announced today were the new features for the next OS version release for the Mac OS X – 10.6 – code named Snow Leopard. Each of the previous seven released over the last eight years since OS X was introduced ushered in over 1000 new features.

Number of new features being slated for introduction with Snow Leopard? Zero. None. Nada.

Okay, wait, there is one. Native OS integration with Microsoft’s Exchange server. Apple publicly acknowledged the market share Exchange server holds and has built native integration in to Apple Mail, iCal and the address book.

Snow Leopard (10.6) is slated to be released some time next year. Pre-release developer builds were handed out to attendees today. Exchange support requires Microsoft Exchange 2007. The presenter quipped that Microsoft should be happy with Apple for driving Exchange 2007 sales and adoption.

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Everyone is streaming in trying to find the optimal seat. After four hours of waiting in line, I don’t care where I sit just as long as I am sitting. There are large plasmas all over the place which is good – from my vantage point, Jobs is going to be a dot. Huge applause – Al Gore is here in the audience. From my seat:

More cheesy pre-show music …

10:01 AM PST

Still waiting, people still streaming in. Whomever was in charge of the herd\logistics should be shot. Microsoft owns them in this regard – the all important conference logistics and organization!

10:05 AM PST

Still waiting – oh no, here we go – lights are down!! Applause. NDA on screen, all rights reserved, etc. Showtime!

Steve comes on stage to rabid and thunderous applause.

Record 5200 attendees. Sold out. Biggest venue we can find.

We have planned a lot of stuff to show you today.

Three parts to Apple: Mac, Music + iTunes, iPhone

Bringing up head of iPhone departments and product marketing

After lunch we get a peak at Snow Leopard!

iPhone

25K applied to paid developer program
iPhone 2.0

Enterprise Support

SDK

New User Features

Enterprise Support

Push email

OTA config

Certs

Remote wipe

Cisco VPN

Beta program – 35% of Fortune 500 participated

Showing video of customers like Disney that were in the beta

Customer testimonials from the beta program. Disney, The Army, Security companies, etc.

  Now the SDK

Opening uo the same API and tools they use internally to developers

Coca Touch – Media – Core Services – Core OS

Line for line same source code as Mac OS X

New feature called core location allows for location based services

Core Audio – open GL es and surround sound

Coca touch – OOF and UI optimized for full screen touch interface, makes building it a breeze

X Code will be used to write edit and debug

Interface builder lets you construct the user interface and then insert in code

iPhone emulator to debug and test

Instruments allows you to test, benchmark and appropriately size your apps.

SDK Demo with Interface builder

Interface builder interacts with X Code and knows about each other. Then compile in X Code and complete. Test in the simulator. Plug an iPhone in to the computer and you can then test on that iPhone. Signs it automatically, loads it on the iPhone and you can test. Debugger loads automatically. Looks at the location with location based services and can sort data based on that.

More developer demos.

Sega gets big round of applause for having Super Monkey Ball for the iPhone. In three months all development was complete. Game will launch with app store for $10

eBay – auctions on iPhone – watch lists and custom searches give updates in real time. Find out when you get out bid and when things you are tracking go on sale. Filmstrip allows you view all photos associated with sale. Will go live with the app store.

Loopt – location with a social network. Using location based services, you can see your friends on the map and see where they are. You can also share photos, comments and emails about\with where you are. Communicate with friends and get directions to where they are. Never eat lunch alone again. :) Free when the app store launches.

TypePad – post to their blogging platform natively from the iPhone. Blog the moment. Send photos straight to blog. Select photos from the photo album, scale and add. Add blog comments, choose blog, keywords, tags, etc. Then publish straight to blog. You can also view via Safari to check final product. Free at launch of app store.

Associated Press – mobile news network, read news streams, watch video, email stories to friends, you can also report the news you see from the iPhone (hmmmm – wonder how that will work out). Completed entire app in 5 weeks. Free from app store at launch.

More demos, more demos, I will be back after all the demos . . . .

MLB.com has media minutes on the iPhone after it happens. Near realtime streaming video.

And, a developer from an insurance agency developed an awesome band\musical application that allows you to make music on your iPhone.

Modality made an iPhone based app for medical students to learn all the parts of the body on in stunning detail with annotations and definitions. Quiz mode, etc. Brilliant.

MIMvista medical imaging software – medical imaging is a lot of data and a lot of action. They are showing slices of a fusion study from a CAT scan and metabolism from a PET scan at the same time in composite mode like a weather map. You can even self-mix it and they had a prototype in 3 weeks and a working model soon there after. It looks amazing and the detail is phenomenal. You can mark up all the images and make measurements, etc on screen. When you want to erase them you just shake the phone like an Etch-a-Sketch!!

Digital Legends has only been working on this for two weeks with the SDK. Demo of a game called Krull which looked absolutely amazing with full OpenGL 3D graphics. Available in Sept.

Demos over. Phew. Lets here the news!!!

Developers want notifications on actions even when the user is not running the app. IM and eBay alerts even when not running the app. They dont want to do this using background running apps. Drains battery and hinders performance. Just slammed WM6 using its task manager to kill background processes, like a “game or challenge” to keep your phone running well. Push notifications service will be used instead.

You can push badges to show how many unread emails you have, you can push sounds and you can push text alerts with actionable buttons. It scales. Works OTA on both WiFi and cellular networks.

Thats it for SDK updates.

Few more features:

contact search

Full iWork document support

Full Office document support

Bulk delete and move for email

Save images from email right to photo library

Scientific calculator

Parental controls

Languages – Asian, 2 Japanese, 2 Chinese, they can draw the symbols with their fingers if they want. Switch on the fly.

Comes out in Early July – free for all iPhone owners. $10 for iPod touch owners.

App store – opens in July when iPhone 2.0 comes out. Developers set price of app. Keep 70% of revenue. Can also give them away for free. No credit card or hosting fees.

Now going to be in 62 countries. If 10MB or less they can download over any network. If larger than WiFi or iTunes.

Enterprise app store, their apps only on their phones only. Distribute them on their own intranet. Users download them and sync to their phone via iTunes.

Ad Hoc is a third way to distribute apps. Ad Hoc distribution for up to 100 iPhones. User download and sync them on to their phones via iTunes.

MobileMe (the new .Mac)

Called “Exchange for the rest of us.” Better than activeStink. (sic). Now you can push email, contacts and calendars right to your mobile device. You can use Mac, PC or iPhone. Everything is stored in the cloud. When you get a message it is immediately pushed to all of your devices. Change a contact, make an appt. Get an email. OTA it is all kept up to date.

Can also be accessed via a web browser. Very nice interface. http://me.com

Sync photos as well. Documents and content too with iDisk. Cost? Log out when done with that computer if a public computer. Live demo took 4 seconds to sync changes across Mac, PC and iPhone.

$99 a year with 20GB storage for all contact. 60 day free trial. Comes out with iPhone 2.0 in July. Mobile.me replaces .mac – will get automatically upgraded.

Battery running low – will go on as long as I can.

iPhone first birthday on 6/29.

“The phone that has changed phones forever” & “Users love their iPhones.” 97% customer satisfaction. 98% mobile browsing. 94% email 80% are using 10 or more features.

6M iPhones and then ran out about 4 weeks ago.

Next challenges: 3G, Enterprise support, 3rd party app support, sell in more countries, more affordable!!!!

iPhone 3G!!!

• 3G
• Thinner
• Full plastic back
• Metal buttons
• 3.5 inch display
• Camera
• Flush headphone jack
• improved audio
• Feels better in your hand

3G for faster data downloads. Need for browser and email.

Test website 21 secs for 3G and 59 secs on edge

Great Battey life – 300 hours standby time – 3G talk time – 5 hours – industry leading – browsing 5-6 hours, video 7 hours, audio – 24 hours

GPS included in the new phone!!

Location-based services will rule. Location data from cell towers, wifi and GPS.

Full Exchange and Cisco support.

To the tune of “Its a Small World” the map gets populated to show it will be selling in 70 countries.

Moving on to “more affordable” - $599 for a 8GB, now $399 – will now go for $199 for an 8GB phone!!!

Goes on sale 7/11

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Waiting in line for the keynote. Kind of a “cattle call” experience. At least we get moved around every hour or so. People started lining up last night. I woke at 5am and headed over and ended up being about 1000 back, wrapped three thirds of the way around the block.

It isn't easy standing amongst the faithful either. I heard about 100 Windows jokes in the span of an hour. Every story I heard told was always punctuated with ‘well you should see when I ran it on windows’ or ‘that would bring NT to its knees, ran on the Mac just fine’ and so on. Being in the very distinct minority I kept my mouth shut. :)

Around 6:45am PST they started to move us inside. If you have ever been to Disney World, you are familiar with this process. We proceeded to weave and wind around escalators, partitions and roping  around the convention center until we finally stopped. There we sat for another hour. Then we were moved upstairs to wait again. At least there are restrooms, water, coffee and bagels up here.

The other thing that is interesting compared to a Microsoft conference is that everyone is carrying the same thing. Everyone has an iPhone. Everyone has some size of a MacBook Pro or MacAir. The homogenous feel is overwhelming. I feel the urge to moo again.

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test of uploading photos

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Skyfire is a mobile browser that delivers rich web media "real fast." You can:

• Watch streaming video like YouTube
• Listen to streaming music like last.fm and Rhapsody
• Access social networks like Facebook and MySpace

Skyfire promises "blazing fast" page loads, as fast as your real PC. Skyfire also supports QuickTime, Java and Flash.

Sign up for the beta here.

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The public TechNet SCMDM (System Center Mobile Device Manager) is now open.

Here are some links to some good SCMDM blogs I have come across as well (link love):

• Marco Neilsen: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/mnielsen/
• Patrick Salmon: http://patricksalmon.blogspot.com
• Enterprise Mobile (MS Partner): http://blog.enterprisemobile.com

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Note: for some reason the embeded video didnt work ... The link is above.

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At the end of the iPhone commercials there is a pleasant ring tone demonstrated that somehow never made it to the shipping iPhone. It is in fact, a sound from the iLife application that ships with new Macs. You can download it from this web site that solved the mystery!

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Here are some helpful documents, guides and planning tools for those looking to evaluate or deploy System Center Mobile Device Manager.

System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 Resource Kit Tools

System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 Product Documentation

Microsoft TechNet Center: System Center Mobile Device Manager

Download the Windows Mobile 6.1 Device Emulator Kit (allows you to test SCMDM as phones pre-loaded with WM6.1 are not yet available, nor are upgrades.)

TechNet Edge: Intro to System Center Mobile Device Manager (scmdm) 2008

How Microsoft IT Secures Mobile Devices - wma file

Windows Mobile Parts 1-3 wma files - Part One - Part Two - Part Three

TechNet Forums - System Center Mobile Device Manager

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In a move sure to make many an ITPro squeal with delight, Apple announced today that the iPhone will soon be enterprise-ready by licensing ActiveSync from Microsoft and adding remote lock, remote wipe and other requested features. Sign up for the Enterprise Beta program here.

The iPhone will offer full Exchange support, thanks to licenses from Microsoft. The iPhone will also get enterprise-friendly security features, including remote wipe, support for Cisco IPsec VPN, certificates, identities, and WPA2/802.11x support. "Enterprise customers will be pretty excited," says Schiller.

Scha-wing! Now, let's slice another $100 off of the price and we will be in business!

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Released shortly after today's MIX '08 Keynote, a more standards-friendly IE8 beta 1 is now available for download.

Features include:

• Activities - contextual services that provide quick access to external services from any web page.
• Webslices - take "slices" of a web site offline or bookmark.
• Choice of layout engine
• CSS 2.1 compliance
• HTML improvements
• Improved namespace support
• Platform performance improvements
• Developer tools
• Improved Phishing filters
• Domain highlighting

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So with the release of Windows Server 2008 I was really looking forward to some post or announcement from Microsoft with regards to the availability of native Active Directory management tools that can be installed on Windows Vista SP1 without any mods, kludges or scripts. You know, they just work out of the box. Like the good ‘ol days when you copied adminpak.msi from Windows Server 2003 over to Windows XP.

Now that I am running Windows Server 2008 as a workstation I don't necessarily have to worry about this. As soon as I installed the server features for Active Directory Domain Controller Tools I had all my faithful friends like ADUC back at my disposal. So of course, I thought I would just grab adminpak.msi from c:\windows and be on my way. And yet, in the back of my brain,I knew there would be no such thing. I hate it when I am right.

So while it doesn't effect me in the near term it is effecting lots of others I am sure. People who would like the real tools to bring over to Windows Vista SP1. Perhaps there is a way to copy over all the bits and bobs and do some voodoo DLL registration to wrap it up and get it going. If someone finds out, please let me know!

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Mary Jo Foley has an article on bringing back creating Windows Workstation 2008 (Part I) and proposing the idea that in the past there was a “server” version of NT4 and Windows 2000 and a “workstation” version that was the same product with limits on concurrent usage when running IIS, etc. She says that since Windows Server 2008 is the best version of Windows Server ever by a wide margin, why not capitalize on that an offer a “workstation” version.

Some people, especially in the consulting field or who are consulting ITPros, have long run a Server OS as their “workstation” often on laptops as well. I decided to give Windows Server 2008 a shot myself, especially after getting some guidance from the blog of Vijayshinva Karnure, (Part II) a Microsoft employee who wrote a great blog post on how he adapted Windows Server 2008 for his use as a workstation (on a laptop to boot).

I followed Vijay’s instructions for the most part. I started by enabling only the things I needed step-by-step in order to keep as much of the speed savings as possible. It only stands to reason that if you turn on every bell and whistle you find in Vista, you haven't gained very much. There is a debate in the comments of Vijay’s post about how the kernel is identical between Vista SP1 and W2K8. I believe this is true. However, W2K8 flies, were Vista SP1 merely jogged along.  Don't get me wrong, Vista SP1 is a big improvement over Vista RTM, but W2K8 is even better.

Of course, there are a couple of things you have to give up. I didn't get the Hyper-V version as my Dell Latitude D620 doesn't have hardware virtualization. I am just running 32–bit Standard without Hyper-V. I turned on Themes and the Themes service so I can use Aero. That hasn't slowed it down yet. I also turned on the WLAN Auto Config service as I need wireless on the laptop. That one took me a second to figure out. Networking showed the adapter as lit up and seeing a signal, but disabled. Easy enough I thought: Just right-click and enable. I did this several times to no avail.

Another PITA is the IE ESC (Enhanced Security Configuration). In W2K3 you went in to Add\Remove Programs and Add\Remove System Components to remove it for administrators. In W2K8 you need to go to Server Manager (which is nice enough to present itself to you every time you log in) and then down to Security and click on IE ESC Configuration.

For some reason I also cannot burn DVD’s with my DVDRW drive. I can read them but it will not burn files from the shell. I haven't had time to try a third party tool yet.

And the final bummer is that no Windows Live components (like Live Writer) will install. I had to go back to BlogJet for this post.

However, I am still quite happy with the speed that this installation is performing at. My boot time, logon time and overall responsiveness is much improved. Let’s see how it looks two weeks from now!

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One of the missing things from Windows Vista that most perplexed me (or frustrated the monkey cr*p out of me) was the lack of the RunAs shell extension. Following proper administrative best practices, I don't log in to my laptop with domain administrative privileges, I have a separate account for that. Running something like ADUC was never easy, and UAC in Vista often got in the way. If you turned it off, you could not get prompted to run an application under a different set of credentials. You could set it under the local security policy to always prompt for credentials, and then enter your other set of credentials. of course, then you get prompted to enter your credentials for everything under the sun. Its a good security practice, but boy does it get old quick. Very quick. This utility returns the traditional right-click RunAs functionality to the explorer shell. Enjoy. Rejoice.

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Some Microsofties are starting to offer TechNet Briefings in Second Life at the Microsoft Ampitheatre. Michael Murphy has the straight scoop at his blog. Personally, I would like to see more of this type of thing. It add an interesting twist to keep the community engaged over the typical mass-Live Meeting webinar. Those are only a step-up from reading a book. Now and again, you will get an exceptional presenter that engages you or a fantastic demo. I tried Second Life once and found it hard to pick up but I am sure with more practice I would get better. Companies like IBM have been using SL for fostering community for its virtual workforce and consultants for quite some time now.

Here is the brief on the Microsoft briefing:

Group Notice From: RobinG2 Proto

Saturday Feb 23 Noon - 1pm SLT (PST) at the Microsoft Island Amphitheater for Part 1 of a 3 Part Active Directory Primer Series with Michael Murphy of Microsoft TechNet.

Part 1:

AD Logical Components

We’ll take a look at the basic AD components; Domains, Forests, Tress and Organizational Units.

We’ll examine the function of each component, how they can be organized to create a comprehensive directory services structure forming the basis of your network Authentication and Authorization Chain.

 

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Windows Live SkyDrive today made two announcements:

You've made two things clear since our first release: You want more space; and you want SkyDrive where you are. Today we're giving you both. You now have five times the space you had before — that’s 5GB of free online storage for your favorite documents, pictures, and other files.

and

SkyDrive is also available now in 38 countries/regions. In addition to Great Britain, India, and the U.S., we’re live in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

They also threw in some bug fixes and improved the speed and reliability. They are so sure of what they have accomplished that they removed the beta tag. So I guess they are not going the route of GMail, which is still in beta.

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After checking out Xobni for a couple of days I have been extended five beta invites. Leave an email addy in the comments and I will send them out to the first five. If I receive more I will post an additional request. Also, sign up to be on the beta wait list by clicking on the badge in the left-hand column and it will go to get me more beta invites to hand out. I will post a further review soon, but so far it has lived up to its billing and is pretty sweet. I just don't know how to tell my wife she is only ranked #10 by the software of the people I email. I wont tell her today! It might spoil our ten year anniversary. Thanks for ten awesome years honey!

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Having trouble making that connection to the console session via RDP? If you have applied SP1 to your Windows Vista installation the switch has changed! Instead of "mstsc /console" it is now "mstsc /admin." Go figure. Personally, I would just add a "console" checkbox as one of the options in the expanded connect configuration on the client. Why do you have to go and be all mysterious Microsoft?

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Phishing attacks are nothing new and you can usually spot them in your email with half of your brain tied behind your back. You've seen them - bad grammar, syntax and spelling. The obvious links to knock-off URLs. The pleas from Nigerian-Kings-in-hiding. Today in my GMail I received a note from Hallmark that I was the recipient of a e-card. Now, Valentines Day was a week ago so this seemed suspicious, but my mother is not above sending these cute little e-cards every once in a while so I took a look. "Click here" it tells you, but prior to clicking, I always hover on the link to see the source URL. Where do you think it went? Not to Hallmark I can tell you!

This is a simple, but effective step in determining if the email or link you receive in an email is legitimate. While not foolproof, it goes a long-way to determining what might happen when you click on a link. Running Windows Vista with User Account Control turned on to prompt for a user name and password with administrative privileges is also huge in controlling the effect something like this would have on your system should you decide to click on the link and accept the download of "love.zip." Its no news that people across the intertubes have endlessly complained about UAC (even the Mac commercials pan it) but it is a small price to pay to what happens when on your computer. Like it or not, the Windows platform is the most highly targeted OS for attacks. Practice the digital equivalent of "safe sex" when you are online.

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LOL. Cute image from Palm highlighting RIMs service outage last week.

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I have been looking at a new software add-on package for Microsoft Outlook called Xobni (Inbox spelled backwards). I was directed to it by Viral's blog and it is quite interesting. It is in by-invitation beta right now, click on the badge in my sidebar to get more information and sign up (disclosure: clicks get you quicker beta product access).

Some of the features the product provides are :

"Lightning" fast email search (I put lightning fast in quotes as I have not had a chance to try the product. Once I get a beta invite I will provide a more in-depth preview.) Emails and contacts appear as you type.

Email analytics - graphic rich stats on the people you email include message counts, frequency, dates of conversations, contact information and quick links. Telephone numbers are extracted from emails and associated with senders "contacts."

Navigate your Inbox by people - leverage the "social" aspects of email and associate conversations and people rather than looking at individual messages and entries. Also chart's the relationships between people and their emails.

Intelligent assistant automatically finds open slots in your schedule when arranging meetings.

Historical attachments are made available on a per-contact basis in the sidebar without searching for the specific email they are attached to. Hover over the attachment to see the associated email.

Overall Xobni shows a lot of promise as an extension to Outlook. I can see myself leveraging a lot of these new features, especially the enhanced threaded conversations. This is something that is lacking in the current version of Outlook.

Some of the more intelligent association of data concepts are missing from Outlook too and I don’t understand why they were never included. The simplistic phone number harvesting and association is big winner that can be implemented with little effort. Other companies have added things like calendar previews when hovering over a date in an email so you can reconcile your availability on the fly.

I wont get too optimistic however, until the can actually get some hands-on experience with the beta. Stay tuned.

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There has been a lot of talk around the technical Microsoft blogs about the RTM of Windows Vista SP1. There has been even more chatter around the fact that even though the final, gold bits have been released, Microsoft wasn't going to give any public access to them until some time in March. I understand the reasons, but like many, railed at the logic. However much I disagree with a Microsoft decision, I like that they listen. So beginning immediately they are making it available to the technical community in a variety of ways over the next couple of weeks. First to the beta testers, then volume license customers and finally MSDN\TechNet subscribers. Kevin has the straight poop on his blog.

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