Ryan Stewart and Long Zheng summed it up nicely.  This kind of banter and candor is why I work at Microsoft.  A CEO who will go, "Monkey Boy" just to please his customers.  Guy had some really nice things to say about the new Microsoft culture which was great to hear.  I'll post the keynote here when available.

I don't often blog here about the enterprise side of Microsoft though for digital media delivery it's hard to beat Windows Server in terms of cost or scalability. Then comes news that Windows Server 2008 just got a Five-Star Rating from eWeek Labs, noting even "Faster" and "Slimmer":

The new Windows Server boasts a set of networking enhancements that dramatically boost file serving performance, and the product can be deployed in a new, stripped-down Server Core configuration, which significantly reduces the attack surface of systems hosting certain Windows Server roles.

Toss in a more modular and securable Web server in IIS (Internet Information Services) 7.0, Microsoft's new hypervisor-based virtualization functionality and a host of management enhancements, and Windows Server 2008 merits eWEEK Labs' Analyst's Choice designation.

Congratulations to the Windows Server team- this is a huge feat.  And for those in the digital media biz, be sure to check out Windows Media Services 2008 and the IIS7 Media Pack, both blogged about and available from Chris Knowlton's blog here. 

Why does this all matter?  Fact is most video-serving sites are pigs when it comes to responsible use of Internet bandwidth.  The average clip is about 5 mins in length, and only 20 seconds are watched, though most users receive the entire file.  With the IIS7 Media Pack, all forms of digital audio and video - even QT, MOV, and FLV/SWF can benefit from the Intelligent Bit Rate Throttling built in.  You'll be hearing more about these features at MIX in a few short weeks.

eWeek: Windows Server 2008 Is Microsoft`s Leanest, Meanest Yet

By popular demand, Bill Gates' last day at the office video, courtesy of Channel 10.

Bonus points if you can name all the cameos and the song he's playing on Guitar Hero. ;)

Bill's Last Day: The CES Keynote video
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I'm watching the CES 2008 keynote right now, streaming live on the web with Microsoft Silverlight at www.microsoft.com/ces.  I'm so happy they allowed the funny video with a long cast of celebs in the simulcast.  I have four streams going right now for test purposes. Kudos to the istreamplanet team for keeping up with the crushing stream load, I understand it kept rising and rising during the keynote.

Speaking of which, I'm happy that Bill just unveiled that NBC Universal has selected Silverlight exclusively for online delivery of the 29th Olympics in Beijing, PRC in partnership with MSN.  Lots of exciting stuff to come there.   I'll write more on that later.

More pictures below:

Update: If you're unfamiliar with this whole Silverlight thing, check out Andy Plessner's Beet.TV interview where we discussed Silverlight last year. For some reason that day, I opted for the Quicksilver T-shirt instead of my "Evil Monkey" shirt.  Perhaps it was partner love.

The new Microsoft at CES site is up, and it's powered by Silverlight. There are so many projects underway now it's hard to keep track of them all and this was a great one to see.   
What's more, you'll be able to watch the keynote live in-page with Silverlight or via WMP/default browser.  Take a look, spin the wheel in LV fashion and check out the latest news from Microsoft at CES.

Hope y'all enjoy the show - Sunday night @ 6:30pm

Every year, I pore over my Christmas music looking to create the ultimate mix for that cocktail get-together with the neighborhood friends, the perfect in-car mix for shopping, the Christmas Eve Classical mellow-out of young children, and the anthem to which tiny feet run down the stairs Christmas morning.  Yes, I'm a sucker for the holidays.

I also use my free time over the holidays to try and put digital media to some unnatural uses around the home.  This year, sharing photos of holidays past with family and friends takes center stage.

Step 1: Assemble your "Best of the Holidays" Picture Collection into a Single Folder
To simplify transfer to my phone/PDA/Xbox/Media Center and call-up, I use the recently released Windows Live Photo Gallery to organize all of my holiday best pictures into a folder at the top. These are pictures I want to share during the party.

This is easy to do and can be done with any one of your favorite photo apps, though I strongly recommend WL Photo Gallery - not because I work at MSFT but because it has some really great features like ability to upload directly to Flickr.

Step 2: Sprinkle in some Holiday Trivia

I've created a set of 15 questions in the below pack and included the master images from the- all you have to do is unzip it, put the pictures in the same folder as your "Best of" collection.  You'll probably want to rename the files so as to mix them in sets with your own photos.  The pictures are from the old Winter Fun Pack I did as a side project so many years ago for XP.

Step 3: Assemble the Ultimate Christmas Mix

This year we went a little upscale with a swank set of songs for the adults and a few favorites.  Pretty much anyone can build a playlist these days.

Here are some of my favorites:

Cocktail Party Swanky Christmas (Most off "Christmas Classics" on Zune)

• Christmas Time is Here - Vince Guaraldi Trio
• White Christmas - Bing Crosby
• Baby, It's Cold Outside - Dean Martin
• Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Lou Rawls
• Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let it Snow! - Lena Horne
• (Everybody's Waiting' For) The Man with the Bag - Kay Starr
• Happy Holiday - Peggy Lee
• Sleigh Ride - Ferrane & Teicher
• I'd Like You for Christmas - Julie London
• It Came Upon a Midnight Clear - Ella Fitzgerald
• Grown-Up Christmas List - Michael Buble
  

Step 4: Share it on the Big Screen with Xbox 360, PC, Media Center, Digital Picture Frame etc.
There are a number of ways to get your photo playlist onto your PC or picture frame.  I use my Xbox 360 as an extender, and a CompactFlash card inserted into a digital picture frame to share them in two rooms.  Here are a few examples (click images for larger sizes):

Play it on Xbox 360 from your Zune - from the Zune device or home network

Play it from Windows Vista Media Center

Play it on a digital picture frame

Hope you enjoy- Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our family to yours.

I've received so many inquiries and kudos about the Silverlight name, logo, and brand video internally and externally that I thought I'd post the real story of how it came together.

• Naming research was completed in Q3 2006.  We decided to hold it for a special event at a later date.  "WPF/E"- the codename of Silverlight was intentionally unappealing to keep mainstream consumers from installing it until we had good feedback from the developers/designers during the alpha (CTP) preview.
• Brand work was done by my team working with an outstanding design firm I'll mention here once I have clearance to do so (by them).  We kicked this off in October, and went through many iterations before landing on the animated logo and final frame lockup.  If you don't like the frame, you can blame me Long :)  The orb is a plasmic energy being held into shape by an unseen force, where it spins and flows, almost organically.
• The brand video was done by Phoenix Edit, a group of ex-Industrial Light & Magic wonks out of San Francisco.    The goal was to show many different Silverlight-enabled scenarios woven together – designer/developer collaboration, personalized e-commerce, devices, user-generated video, viral sharing, and the network effect on sales. We intentionally avoided excessive use of text or voiceover so the video will translate globally as we kick off events around the world. For the line, "Light up the Web" - you have me to blame.  It's more about illumination and blazing a trail vs. blazing anything else ;)
• The music in the brand video is by my friend and prominent UK DJ Andy Hunter. The song is “Go” off his album, “Exodus”.  Andy consulted on the project and the remix, and has considerable street cred touring with DJ Tiesto. His songs have been used in The Matrix games, and multiple movie/television show. Andy is now on Nettwerk records working on his next release.
• Customer and partner engagement was tightly synchronized.  During initial briefs, partners were shown a slide announcing the final name as "X-Plat Player Plug-in for Browsers" in Microsoft logotype, a self-deprecating way of noting that we knew the name had to be cool and were on the ball (ironically or sadly some thought that was the actual name!).  We'd show the logo without the name, and always used the name "WPF/E" in our discussions and external communications.
• For the press announce, named companies didn't even know the final name until a matter of hours before the release hit. We intentionally didn't publish any brand elements internally and had about a dozen people total that had access.  The product management team got really tired of hearing me talk about secrecy and except for a few small nits that went unnoticed, they really did us proud.

Some day I'll post the evolution timeline of the logo if others are interested.

Michael Gartenberg has an interesting recount of the negotiations between  Microsoft and The Rolling Stones by Brad Silverberg and  Brad Chase for the  commercial rights to "Start Me Up".  Part 1 of 2 details the negotiations, and the new version of the song that almost was.

This got me thinking about what should be the launch theme of Windows Vista?  (Disclaimer - I have no knowledge of any plans).  Windows XP's commercial anthem was Madonna's "Ray of Light".  Everyone thought it would be Jimmi  Hendrix' "Are you eXPerienced?".  No doubt any music selected will be contemporary, but I think the anthem should be Van Halen's, "Right Now".  Considering  the following:

• The original album hit #1 and was on the charts for 74 weeks, this is no small feat. 
• The median age of a target Windows PC user is in the same demographic that  will remember the song fondly
• The experience of Longhorn/Vista, the song's lyrics speak  to me  about both the challenges and incredible effort of the engineering team to deliver what's shaping up to be a great release
• The song is forward-looking, capturing the essence of opportunity
• Rock music is making a comeback  ;)

Another nice choice would be U2's "Original of the Species", but given U2's relationship with Apple, I doubt that would happen.

What song would you pick? Feel free to comment here.

Back when the Xbox 360 was announced, J. Allard and Robbie Bach also talked about a new development platform called "XNA", designed to make it easier to build games Xbox and Windows PCs, sharing much of the same high performance code.  A series of tools announcements were made and then frankly, we didn't hear much more in the general tech 'sphere.  Until now.

XNA Game Studio Express will be unveiled today at Gamefest, an annual event Microsoft holds.  Until we have a public demonstration, here's a little snippet about XNA Game Studio:

XNA Game Studio Express will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry.

Stripping away the PR-speak, these tools are being developed specifically with Game developers in mind.  The Express moniker is also used in Microsoft developer tools such as Visual Studio Express and SQL Express to denote fully functional but slightly less industrial-grade versions focused on students, hobbyists, and the like. 

Some call it "democratization of the game platform". Ick. What's cool about this announce is that the same way YouTube and GarageBand.com are opening up the doors to indie video, film, and music creators, this will do the same for gaming for the first time.  Up until now, you had to be a game publisher paying thousands of dollars just to get your foot in the door to do serious development for game consoles.  It will be a trickle at first, but this is a disruptive technology that has the potential to revolutionize game development similar to when a few hard-core enthusiasts built a little game called, "Doom".  Think about all the games that could be developed that never would have seen the light of day because, "some suit" said it didn't test well in a focus group. I think the flood gates have just opened. 

Update0: The XNA team has posted their blog here.  More details to come soon ;)

Long Zheng from Australia was excited to win my little giveaway a few weeks back and finally recieved one of the first iRiver Clix players in his country.  His thoughts are posted here as well as pictures of the swank jacket we created for the launch team which I included as a bonus.

Now comes more good news for our friends down under. The Clix is now available officially at Dick Smith Electronics.

Sorry, I don't have any additional details on Clix availability in other markets- please contact iRiver and/or your favorite retailer directly for your region.

Last week, at Microsoft's Financial Analysts Meeting, reporters poked fun at a demo bug with speech recognition, some going so far as to call it "Speech Wreckognition". Slashdot had it, Neowin had it,  Digg had it, Reuters had it.  

Clearly this was a bug in a test build of Vista and it made for a good chuckle (you don't hear about all the other demos that ran flawlessly of course).  There must be someone responsible, to hold accountable right?  That was probably a faceless, nameless developer somewhere in the "Echo Chamber" who would never admit it publicly right?  When these things happen, engineers tear the demo system apart to learn from it but then keep that to themselves and quietly fix the bug, right?

Wrong.  The owner of the issue, Larry Osterman is one of those developers I just admire the heck out of.  He fessed up.  "It was all my fault" he writes on his blog about the bug, noting what caused it, creating a shared learning with others. He could have said, "I spoke to the guy who owns the bug" but that would have been disingenuous.  He held himself accountable.  Kudos Larry.  Subscribed.

Nick White from the Vista team posts on their official blog more details on Vista changes coming in the Release Candidate or already seen in interim builds here on their official Vista Blog.  It's a good start but pretty wordy.  Thanks Nick - how about some shiny happy screenshots with John Madden-like chalk talk to detail the changes before/after?    :)

Todd Bishop of the Seattle P-I has updates on Zune and Vista from the Microsoft Financial Analysts Meeting (FAM).

Correction: Todd Bishop of the Seattle P-I. ;)

Xbox Live's Major Nelson interviewed my VP, Amir Majidimehr for his podcast while I was out on vacation.  This is a frank and highly informative look at HD-DVD, Blu-Ray and DVD.  Even if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I still recommend you listen to this interview to learn more about why Microsoft got behind HD-DVD, and continues to supply technology that will ship in both formats.

Back in the saddle at work today after an extended vacation :). 

Billboard has a good write up about a new Microsoft project under the brand name, "Zune". I've received a few phone calls and emails asking for comment, but prefer to make my thoughts known here.  Let me first say I’m not a member of the Zune team and in no way speak for them or Microsoft in an official capacity on this topic.  With that out of the way, here’s my take.

From what I've learned, Zune is a new brand for Microsoft - Zune is about community, music and entertainment discovery.  You'll experience Zune with a family of devices and software that bring it all together. Yes, we all want more details, but we’ll have to be a little patient for more details. Check out www.comingzune.com and sign up if you want more details.

One question that gets asked here is the relationship to our existing PlaysforSure program. The Windows digital media team (of which I've been a member) has been focused on raising the tide for all boats, raising the experience for many partners through programs like PlaysforSure, giving sessions on 360 degree product design at partner events, offering frank feedback on product designs when requested and more.  We want Windows to be the best place to experience digital music and entertainment.  The Windows team will continues to work closely with service and device partners to make Windows a great platform for any digital media.

And one need only look as far as the MP3 player/portable media player market to find other examples of taking multiple approaches.  At least two of the largest consumer electronics manufacturers compete on not one, not two, but three levels:

• They supply memory for their own, and competitive MP3 players
• They design and sell MP3 "engines" (systems on a chip) for their own, and competitive MP3 device manufacturers
• They design, build and compete for retail space for their own, branded MP3 players

There are many other examples that can be drawn within Microsoft as well – for example, Microsoft Game Studios competes with independent game publishers for consumer dollars on the same platform (Xbox) also built by Microsoft. In all these cases, relationships of trust must be established independently between product groups or divisions.  The same holds true here as well.   It’s hard to understand unless you’re inside Microsoft but these groups have separate P&Ls (Profit/Loss metrics) and that sometimes means trying different strategies.  To quote Jonathan Sasse, President of iRiver America in a recent CNet News.com article:

“Microsoft is a great partner and we expect continued success moving forward. The potential launch of a device by Microsoft does not appear to threaten our relationship in any way.”

I personally hope, like Jonathan, that this new effort will help to raise the tide once again for all players as the so-called digital lifestyle continues to evolve.  PlaysforSure continues to be a Windows effort with some 140+ products in the market today and with the recently updated PlaysforSure 2.01 specification, the experience bar will be raised even higher.  Zune is a part of a different group and P&L,  but an integral part of Microsoft’s vision for “connected entertainment” that spans across offerings including as games, music and devices. So that’s my take on it. 

(To learn more about the Zune community, check out Cesar’s new site at www.Zuneinsider.com or the official teaser site at www.comingzune.com, which will offer more information when available. For more on PlaysforSure devices available today, see http://www.playsforsure.com)

Update0: Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times weighs in on my post here.
Update1: Richard Winn, a member of the Zune team and new to Microsoft is blogging at www.madisonandpine.com
Update2: Chris Pirillo says the post is a link worth loading and notes I'm one of the Microsoft employees he trusts - thanks Chris :)

In my totally unsanctioned but nice to poke have a little fun style, you might recall a month ago I announced a contest to win an iRiver Clix.  The winner is in: Long Zheng's "Feel the Beat" was selected based on its simplicity and spirit in line wiht the player+device+service combo.  Long's second design, "Press the Magic Number" was another top contender.

And for the heck of it, Austin wins the runner up "Nice try and yes, there's some truth there too Award" for his entry I call, "Usable".  Austin gets a cool WMP11|iRiver Clix launch team jacket (with tiny logos) for his entry because it made me laugh.

Congrats to both our winners!

Wonder how active Microsoft is going to be in giving people new features as well as comprehensive driver coverage via Windows Update and the Ultimate add-ons?  Try this on: a major update for Vista Beta 2 users went out for the Mobile Device Center.  Thanks to Sidebar Geek for the scoop- this is great to see.

Today the announcement was made that Bill Gates will be stepping down as Chief Software Architect and in two years will retire to his part-time position as Chairman of Microsoft. Instead he's going to focus on efforts such as battling tuberculosis, a topic near to our family. 

My "little" sister is a microbiologist for the CDC, running Tuberculosis projects around the world.  Yesterday she IM'ed me from Botswana-a surreal moment.  She was in Kazakhstan just a few months ago, it's amazing.  Regularly she talks about Bill Gates a reverence not seen (in my parts) in a while now.  Despite all the flak he received in years past, Bill is doing something incredibly worthy with his immense wealth.

I've had the opportunity to work with and talk with Bill on four separate occasions.  In each of these, he had the air of an elder statesman, on one occasion even sticking around for an extra hour to brainstorm a few ideas with a group of us.  It was energizing to have this kind of engagement with him, outside of a review, just like a group of friends and co-workers out of the office shooting bull about the industry.  He's human, we didn't necessarily share all the same ideals but could discuss and debate.  I enjoyed our time in this capacity.

Bill is part of the reason I joined Microsoft- the mystique inspired me like many; the desire to meet him "one day" was strong (checkbox filled plus pictures).  But in actuality his is just one person.  Microsoft is filled with bright and passionate people I learn from every day. He's not the only one.  The transition is bittersweet, but now it is perhaps my sister's turn.  I know she (like many other scientists) would like to one day work at the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation.  Perhaps she'll get her opportunity one day to meet Bill and the two of us can compare.

For now, we can all joke about how Bill is following Robert Scoble's lead :).

The WSJ has an interesting article on a small outfit called MusicGremlin whose portable music player goes on the market today.  What makes MG unique?  Wireless.  You can wirelessly download music from the service or even share tracks (legally) between friends and other subscribers.  It's a really interesting idea and Uncle Walt and Kathy seem to agree.

The device is a bit chunky (or is that clunky?), the service lacks the desirability of others (i.e. letting people browse before creating a registration) but it's an interesting concept to what I'd call, "Super-enthused music lovers who have a wireless connection and want to share with friends and can't wait until they get home to download music oh but they still need a wire to charge their device" kind of people.  Wireless should support the core experience, not BE the core experience IMO. Laboriously typing in characters to search? No thanks.  Back in the day it was a pain typing in three letters for my high score in Pac Man using a joystick, I'm sure not going to make this my primary way of searching for music. 

But... it supports PlaysforSure so Urge should work with this, so thats a plus... when connected to a PC.

Update: Michael Gartenberg weighs in on the concept himself here. David Card seems to agree with him that Uncle Walt has been seduced.

Here's the link. They started shipping to stores over a week ago as well- call your local store or pop your zipcode in online but chances are if you're looking for a last minute father's day present, this could be it.

Speaking of which, today my VP stopped by my office to note all the VPs that have Clix devices now.  The funny thing is, they're getting one passed around by another VP at a meeting.  Then they're buying them for themselves.  They're showing them to family and then have to buy them for their family.  I know of at least 50 units that have been sold.

Why?  Because it just works. Just like the iPod, it works as advertised. But this one works with services where you can download all you can eat for a flat rate per month.