Lots of interesting tid-bits I haven't had much time to write about:

The BBS Documentary is finally out.  Tons of chatter on aliases in MSFT among those of us who used to BBS.  I got my start in the industry as Operations Manager for Excalibur Communications Inc., creators of the first GUI-based BBS, Excal BBS for Windows (via Way Back Machine).

Speaking of way back and given the recent escalation in "we're better" mantra's in the console wars, check out the hype way back for a certain game console. I'm still looking for my real-time rendering of Toy Story. :)  Xbox 360 guru Major Nelson has his take here, while Sony has theirs here.

Through the din, dust, and ashes of the latest salvo in the console wars, you might have heard about Xbox 360 supporting display of photos, music, TV, and even high definition content and services from Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 PCs. Personally I was waiting to see who was going to be the first to announce RSS and Podcast support for their console ;). I've been tracking this since long before we launched MCE05 and I can say I was super-skeptical they could get the polish of the MCE experience on "Xenon" as Xbox360 was known.  I was dead wrong. Consumers will now have two premium choices if they're connecting to an HDTV: a full-fledged Media Center PC, or an Xbox 360 with Extender built-in (BTW: this functionality was codenamed "XeSled"- a play on Xenon and the codename for the first-generation extender, "Bobsled".  I'm looking forward to putting mine through it's paces but security keeps stopping me from liberating one of these bad-boys from Xbox offices over at Millennium campus- go figure.

Speaking of High Definition and Xbox, the team posted a whopping 17 WMV-HD gameplay trailers here. Download em all.

Lastly, I had a good chat with Ian Dixon over in the UK this AM via Skype.  My wife and I used Skype to make calls home from the UK and Greece just a few weeks ago and it worked great. I was surprised at how low the latency was.  It wasn't without issue (couldn't find peer nodes from time to time to help connect) but that was a small price to pay for free calls!

More tonight...

Matt Muller (AussieinSeattle) wrote a nifty plug-in for Seattlites looking to check up on current traffic conditions.  Features include:

1. SR-520 Cams (4 of them)
2. I-90 Cams (4 of them)
3. Bridge Traffic Flow
4. Carillon Point Cam 1 (good for checking wakeboarding conditions )
5. Carillon Point Cam 2
6. North Taffic Flow
7. South Taffic Flow

More details on this thread at The Green Button.  

BetaNews is reporting on Samsung's new development which enables them to store up to 16GB of data in and hard drive-only it's Flash memory.  They're reporting this could lead to extended battery life for notebooks and Tablet PCs.  During WinHEC a number of weeks ago, I was in a Sr. Exec meeting and had an opportunity to see this technology first-hand. It did in fact fit right into the HDD slot on an existing laptop. BetaNews reports access to data up to 2.5x that of regular HDD. Can you say fast? If the economics can be worked out, this could usher in a new generation of computing devices.

Competing with Google Earth, MSN's new Virtual Earth was demo'd earlier today by BillG according to reports.  Features include:

• Satellite images with 45-degree-angle views of buildings and neighborhoods 
• Satellite images with street map overlay.
• Ability to add local data layers, such as showing local businesses or restaurants

Screenshots and more here. theunofficialMicrosoftweblog has more here.

www.startsomethingpc.com is now open for online submission of competition entries to win up to $125,000. Downloads of the entry kit are 3x what we expected.  Apparently some folks have an idea about next-generation PC hardware design. What are your ideas?  What would you like to see?  Share you thoughts here.

Do you have Tiger "Widget" envy?  Konfabulator is available for both Mac and Windows PCs, delivering a solid level of polish and productivity (if you can call it that) to your desktop, even if you don't have Mac OS X "Tiger".

What's more, the new Konfabulator 2.0 is out with redesigned plug-ins and enhanced APIs.  While I cannot vouch for system resource usage or security- they may have have issues like Apple is having now with its own Dashboard Widgets.  At $19.95 to buy and free trial.  Be sure to check out the Widget Gallery. 

Unfortunately I am very tardy in writing up my thoughts on the Geek Dinner in the UK.  We had a great time and in typical fashion, not only was it Cinco de Mayo (which apparently is not celebrated in the UK- go figure <g>) and Election Day which may have helped to reduce the attendance. Either way, we had about 20 attendees and had a great time. More thoughts here and from Ian Forrester.  Next time I'm in the UK, we'll definitely do this again. 

I finally broke down and joined LinkedIn at the suggestion of some friends and co-workers.  You can find me there- just use my email address here.  Let's get the digiital media network growing- link in.

From Vincent Flanders' Web Pages that Suck:

I just got through reading that Bill Gates wants to start a blog. Why would anyone in their right mind want to read it? Do you think it will contain Heroin Content? As Seth Godin points out, blogs only work when they meet four of the following five conditions:

1. Candor
2. Urgency
3. Timeliness
4. Pithiness
5. Controversy

Check out Bill's speeches. Unless he's chatting with a comedian, there's no Heroin Content. If his blog were like this one from a Microsoft employee who worked with Bill at the CES trade show, it might be interesting.

Thanks Vincent.  I think... :) He may pull me for my page not being up (it's uploading now).

Gamespot says, "We're offering our HD-quality movies exclusively to our GameSpot Complete members, though we're offering several free samples to give the rest of you a taste of what you're missing." Excellent! or so I thought.  I don't have much time for playing games these days but I love to watch trailers and see what the current  state of quality is.

I took a look and it appears I'm still missing something.  I don't understand how they can call these "HD".  Sure, they're WMV files, but they sure aren't my understanding of HD quality. The first warning sign I saw was the video resolution - 640x360 for the Forza Motorsport sample and 640x480 for the Doom 3 sample.

When we talk about HD- as defined by the ATSC standard, the resolution has to meet a minimum bar of 720p - that's 720 progressive horizontal lines of video resolution. So why am I downloading a sample that purports to be HD as a part of a sales pitch, but delivers half the resolution of HDTV? Ok, it's 16:9 aspect content - on a 4:3 display it could be considered 640x480 resolution but that's still 480p- not HD. Am I missing something?

WMV-HD can handle this no problem and in J Allard's talk at the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, he made it clear that the next Xbox will "usher in the era of HD gaming and entertainment". He gave away 1000 Samsung HDTVs. If this was the definition of HD, he could have just given away standard TVs or perhaps EDTVs.

I hope others are calling this to the attention of Gamespot. The technology is there- WMV-HD can do what they're asking.  I hope others are calling their attention to this fact.

Check out this amazing Media Center case with a touchscreen LCD display.  The unit also has full MCE-compliant IR (Philips RC-6 spec) support and much more.  Personally I'd love to take one of these for a spin as Joshua Schipman at HTPCnews.com just did last week.  Be sure to check out the last page for a very interesting use of Konfabulator Widgets.

Update: Venue has been arranged, free WiFi: Nakhon Thai City 10 Copthall Avenue, London EC2R 7DE (link to map to the right). Kick-off @ 7pm. More details here. See you there :).

A few of you have inquired regarding more details on the London Geek Dinner. We've connected with Lee Wilkins who runs www.geekdinner.co.uk and he's posted a few details on the site. I'll be in the air tomorrow so if I don't get a chance to post an update here, please check Lee's site for latest details.

Final location is TBD, time is 19:00 until late. Hope to see you there- feel free to post a comment here so we get a general idea of the # of attendees.

From London, I'm off to Athens, Greece where I'm presenting at the Microsoft OEM Global Executive Summit and then a few days off in Mykonos and Santorini.  Any suggestions on what to do/where to eat are appreciated. Perhaps a Geek Dinner in Greece is in order ;). 

I've spent the better part of the weekend looking at competitive products and reviewing coverage on WinHEC.  While my team is focused on the consumer segment and we haven't started the roll-out there yet, there are a few things I would like to clarify:

• Slashdot coverage- there is no Beta of Longhorn. What was shown was not a Beta.  That's why Beta 1 hasn't shipped yet.
  
• Some, even folks I call friends were publicly harsh about the UI. I've been around for many OS launches, was a Beta tester for Win95 and by now, most people know that the UI is one of the final things to be disclosed. To use an example from the automotive industry, just look at Motor Trend or Autoblog- you'll find pictures of final production cars test driven all the time with "bras", weird paint jobs and more used to mask the actual look of the car.  This has been the case for quite a while for Windows.  You haven't seen anything yet.
  
• The objective of WinHEC's LH call to action was to build hardware - ensure video drivers, audio drivers, and much more all work great with 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.  Based on feedback- we've done that and delivered early code to help them in their endeavors.

Speaking on my own time.