This sounded too strange to be true. I really like Charlie's interviews and the fact that he went on-air without a healthy dose of makeup to cover the black eye makes the story all the better.  Would I do the same for my Dell m1330? Maybe...

Yesterday was my 34th birthday and I had a wonderful time with family at home while our roof was being replaced (cedar shingles) with a next-gen composite roof (another topic for another time).  Despite the hammering, we had a great dinner and this year, my mom gave me a Thermapen, connecting my love of grilling and BBQing and gadgetry.  This device was originally designed for laboratory use and now is used by culinary professionals around the world. It displays actual internal or liquid temperatures in 3-4 seconds vs. the 20 most take today.  I had the opportunity to try one out at least year's Eggfest and have been pining for it ever since.

The packaging is well done- each unit is individually calibrated and noted in pen by an inspector, it includes an NSF certification and certificate noting its rated to over 500 degrees.  Flip out the temperature probe and it automatically powers up.  If you have a chef or grillmaster in your family, this is a must-have gadget for saving them from singed knuckles.

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.

Angus Logan asks:

• Do you have media like *.mov files which Silverlight doesn't speak?
• Do you really really want that media in Silverlight?
• Do you have an abundance of bandwidth to push un-encoded files up to the cloud?
• Sick of melting your CPU to encode media? we can do it in the cloud.

On his site you'll find a video demonstration of the experience and details on the coming API's.  This isn't a replacement for Expression Encoder, rather I see a compelling service for everything from next-gen ad solutions for customers  looking to ingest a myriad of formats into standard video formats for broad distribution, to design/development houses looking to use Silverlight Streaming as a service for video delivery.  Congrats to the Silverlight Streaming team!

Learn more here.

http://tinyurl.com/33kl26  Ray Ozzie is speaking right now.

Thanks Jeff. 

The show officially starts in a few hours, but the events started last night. The night started off with a great dinner off the strip at a "foodie" approved Thai restaurant, "Lotus of Siam" with Dave Wolf of Cynergy Systems. Twitter was white hot with updates from different events and ad-hoc get togethers.  Later I stopped by the Blogger Party and met up with a number of familiar faces and met some new ones. I took some grief for not blogging enough so will try and do better.  Ryan Stewart stopped by and we played Rock Band, jamming to NIN's "The Hand that Feeds".  I'm sure there's some irony in there somewhere. My performance was marred by a semi-functioning yellow button on the axe but we had a good time.

Late last night, an update mail went out internally asking most MSFTies to watch the keynote from the overflow room. Apparently attendance is packed to the gills with very few no-shows or last minute cancellations.  So I'll be in the "other" room if you want to stop by and say hello. Lots of great sessions and meetups happening today and tomorrow.  Sure to be a topic on the floor today is Job's comments about Flash on the iPhone.  It's long been rumored that Apple has been working to create their own RIA platform with Safari at the center.  With Jobs making comments such as "There's this missing product in the middle", one has to wonder if there's a connection with Apple's March 6th event?

Remember how I said there would be some exciting announcements coming at MIX this year? ;)  Last night (Pacific time), Nokia officially announced that Silverlight is coming to their S60 and S40 mobile phones on the Symbian platform.  This has been in development for a long time now, and will dramatically increase the number of devices that support Silverlight- S60 alone ships on over 150 million devices worldwide - you can learn more about the phones here.  Congratulations to the team - more announcements coming shortly and for those of you on-location at MIX this week, you'll see this in person ;).  See you there.

Outstanding idea hiding a full-fledged home theater system in a stylish end table.  This piece would make all of our other furniture hide in the corner in shame.  Cable management has to be a bear though.

Sofaside PC Anyone? | eHomeUpgrade

The Expression Encoder team has just launched their blog here, with a video introduction hosted by Charles Finkelstein.  Charles is one of my favorite people at Microsoft - boundless energy, and a real passion for turning customer requests and insights into product and features.  This is just the beginning with I'm sure more to come next week.

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted.  A lot going on as of late so here's a quick rundown on activities and topics I'm going to write about during flights:

• Mix Update. The teams have been working incredibly heard in preparation for the MIX conference next week.  I've seen a sneak preview of some of the demos and think attendees won't be disappointed. 
• Silverlight 2 coming. ScottGu (now a newly minted VP!) provides a glimpse into Silverlight 2 on his blog.  If you can't be at MIX this year, don't fret- the videos will be posted on the Web shortly after the events thanks to Jeff Sandquist and team.
• HD-DVD is dead.  You can start buying Blu-Ray discs now or just go the digital route- my preferred method of delivery
• Apple TV Take 2.  Will I cancel my NetFlix and Comcast subscriptions?  Thoughts over the weekend and I'll explain how you can score one for $99.
• uStream as NannyCam.  Take an old IR-shot Sony DV camcorder, firewire and UStream my wife is addicted to her new Nannycam as a baby monitor.  I also hacked together a Vista Sidebar gadget for her which I may post. Now if only it was available in Silverlight...
• Dell XPS m1330. - my new and best laptop ever, despite the crapware
• New Silverlight site launches - Congrats to the team!
• MyNetflix Plugin for Media Center - Another reason why I need to put a full PC in the living room?
• Playing with CubeDesktop and loving it.  A must for any power user (thanks Chris)

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

If you have an XM Radio Subscription, the XM Radio Windows Vista Sidebar gadget is for you.  Recently updated to version 1.5, features include a polished and easy to navigate channel list, favorites support, and advanced Amazon search so you can purchase the CD or the MP3 of the song you're listening to as well as browse lyrics, Wikipedia and YouTube entries for the artist.  From the folks at BuildaGadget.com (a work-for-hire outfit), this is one I'm going to pin permanently to my Sidebar.

Download: XM Radio Vista Gadget

This is the funniest video I've seen in ages.  And for the record, yes that's actually the conference calling system we use.  And admittedly yes, I've done the same groove out. 

Probably more inside joke than anything but my 4 yo keeps asking "Play it again Dad, play it again!"

Kudos to the guys from Nashville.  Glad to see the fun is still alive.