Amit Mital kicked off TechEd Australia 2008 today with a keynote presentation on Microsoft’s view of how software and services will develop in the future, particularly in relation to their new Live Mesh offering. There is a good summary of his presentation on the TechEd New Zealand site, it seems they got an identical opening keynote. For someone who loves networks he sure doesn’t seem to like professional networks!

There was one flow of logic which struck me in his speech. Moore’s law is still holding true, and computer hardware is continuing to double in processing power every 18 months. This computer power is also appearing in more and more locations. But when was the last time your network doubled in speed? What about doubling in speed to each additional node? This rapid processing power increase has meant two things that are obvious even today:

1. Computers are islands of computing power - There is no seamless transfer of data between your devices. You work on a file at work, email it home, download it at home, work on it and send it back.
2. Deploying local machines is too hard - Each branch office needs a rack, servers, backup, redundency, configuration, support, licencing…

Microsoft’s solution at a high level is the Mesh stack, the structure of which can be seen in the slide shown here. The fundamentals are that local software is fast, hosted services are convenient, so lets tie them together with an API and we get the best of both worlds. The trick is getting the balance right, where does a local application end and the service begin? How do you split the business logic? How do you provide offline access and quick sign-on to new devices? Hmmm…

Microsoft’s current practical solution is to re-write most of its server packages to allow hosted delivery. Hosted Exchange is an obvious flagship for this. Google have taken a different approach. They believe that all you should need on your desktop is Chrome, essentially an all-purpose thin client rather than a thick client on a drip feed.

So who is right? Well I am betting things will converge on a middle of the road approach. Implmenting with current technology I would say that javascript, a web browser and some sort of XML interface would be the best way to go. A few things need to develop from here:

1. API’s need to be standardised and built into the browser (or OS as these merge). Something like Javascript libraries, but compiled, lightening fast and highly reusable. Chrome is getting there.
2. Data transfer needs to be better than XML. Think highly compressed, encrypted on the fly, but quickly decoded into a human readable format if necessary. Microsoft’s MeshFX is getting there because it has authentication and other services built in, but it needs to be open like SOAP.

So I guess the race is on! Google will take Javascript to it’s limits, Microsoft will try to blow us away with it’s feature set. When will they sit down and standardise on the next generation of javascript and data format?

I was recently invited (for the third year in a row) to be filmed in a promotional testimonial for Microsoft TechEd Australia 2008. It was recently put online on the TechEd testimonials page, but I have uploaded a YouTube version to save everyone downloading Silverlight. Let me know what you think!

The video interview that I did for Microsoft TechEd 2008 is now online:

http://www.microsoft.com.au/teched/default.aspx

I am the third person speaking, in front of the orange “Explore” banner.

Ok I don’t want to sound like an MS Fanboi, but there are actually a few cool things Microsoft related happening with me at the moment.

Skydrive

Skydrive is a very cool new file storage service from Microsoft. Really simple, you get 5GB of storage space and can upload any file smaller than 50MB. Sounds perfect for a “My Docs” backup system? The only catch is that there is no shell extension or decent folder upload tool yet. They do however have a nice drag+drop multi-file upload tool, which I guess will do for now. I would love to see a more integrated tool that actually backed your “My Docs” up for you, but my guess that is hidden somewhere in the greater Windows Live skunkworks for now.

Windows Server 2008 + Exchange 2007

Yes, I am migrating my servers at home to the latest and greatest MS enterprise offerings. This also means going to Windows 2008 x64, which is fine since I have been an AMD fanboi for some time, but it would have been nice of them to make the migration a little easier! I know hardware is cheaper than software these days, but it would be nice to be able to easily upgrade Exchange from 2003 to 2007 without having to have a spare x64 machine lying around. Anyway it is all underway, so keep an eye on my Netcraft page.

This white box behind the tabs of IE7 is the first sign that things are going wrong. Soon afterwards the toolbars start to disappear (also seen in the screenshot below). If you hover over where the minimise and close buttons would be these button appear, but the rest of the toolbar remains missing. It is instead replaced by whatever was underneath the toolbar at the time the window was moved! Very strange.

So what could the bug be? Display drivers are a good guess, but that is not the case. I tried different drivers with the same problem. Then the exact same problem occured on two other computers on the network! They had ATI graphics cards, as opposed to my Intel onboard card. Other strange problems manifest themselves:

Network objects like shared drives, printers etc. cannot be accessed, however the internet and Outlook work just fine. Applications start to fail with the above application errors, with the error being the same for any executable. It is also interesting to note that the style of dialog in the second example is different, reverting back to the Windows 2000 style interface. Very strange. Things recover a little if you close programs, however the problem always comes back once you start opening things back up again. The only ‘cure’ is a restart.

Having not installed any significant software in November (on any of the affected computers) I decided to check the Windows Updates for November 2007. The main one that I installed was 943460. The main files affected are shell32.dll and xpsp3res.dll, both pretty core files as far as I am aware. I have uninstalled the patch and it seems that the crash happens less often, but it is definitely still present.

If anyone has any advice I would love to hear it as this has me pretty much stumped. I am going to lodge a support case with Microsoft and see what they come up with.

�

The relentless pace of technology is exciting, but sometimes this fast paced environment
leaves its past behind a little prematurely. I was on the receiving end of one such
problem this week.

I purchased a new ATI graphics card, the x1950Pro AGP version to work with my existing
nforce3 motherboard. It is running an Athlon X2 processor and has 2GB of RAM, so it
isn’t an outdated machine by any stretch. I plugged in the new card expecting everything
to go smoothly, however it kept failing with a code 43 “Device
failed to start” error. Vista recognised the card correctly, however it just would
not leave the graphical ’safe mode’. I initially suspected the card was faulty, however
after a bit of googling I managed to find others with the exact same problem.

In fact not only did I find others, I found an acknowledgement
from Nvidia themselves of the problem. It was snuck in at the end of one of their
website FAQ’s and reads:

There is a known issue with ATI AGP cards with NVIDIA nForce3 and Vista. This
is currently being looked into and will likely be resolved with an MCP driver update.

In fact this problem has been known about and acknowledged since the start of this
year, and reported on the 7th of
February. Still nothing has been done, there is no MCP update and I am still left
sitting out in the cold. Nvidia has been infamously slack with their Vista drivers
in general, now they are blocking ATI cards too (Nvidia cards work fine)? I think
that is a little too convenient and completely unethical to be honest.

I will be attending the Microsoft Technet presentation that Jeff
Alexander announced on his blog recently. This should be a great session for those
(like myself) who may not want to upgrade yet, but are making decisions now that will
ease the upgrade path in the future. The agenda is as follows:

Sound good? You can register for the Sydney session here.
Hope to see you there!!!

Now that Office 2007 is upon us with a
new file format, how is everyone else going to cope? Well Microsoft has freely released
a file format converter which can be downloaded here.
Esteemed authorities such as Gartner have warned
companies to deploy Office 2007 file converters NOW, but how can you do that on
a corporate network? Microsoft only distribute the converters in an executable, how
can I deploy that using Group Policy?

Well Mr M Keadle provided the solution for
me. When you run the exe it extracts an MSI (as well as a bunch of other files) into
the C:\Program Files\MSECache\O2007Cnv\1033 directory.
If you copy these files to a network deployment location you can then use Group
Policy! What I don't understand is why Microsoft themselves wouldn't publish such
a solution (or even a single MSI)?

For some reason Outlook 2007, unlike Outlook 2003, requires that a network gateway
is set before it will connect to your Exchange server. I really wonder whether this
is a bug or not, it seems a bizarre requirement when most Exchange servers will be
on the local network. I would have thought that most companies would prefer to implement
a proxy server and not define a gateway. In fact, a workaround for this problem is
to set the http proxy settings within the Account Settings -> Change -> More
Settings -> Connection Tab:

If you enter your Outlook Web Access URL in this section then you can connect without
a gateway being set. This is obviously not a great solution, it would be nice if it
‘just worked’ like Outlook 2003 always did. This is especially true for corporate
network deployments. I am still left wondering whether this is a bug or not, I really
can’t understand how it would be a ’security feature’.

Microsoft is trying so hard to be cool. It really isn’t fair, why is Apple considered
cool just because they have pretty white cases? How has Apple managed to break the
nerd image that Microsoft is so desperately trying to shake with the mainstream audience?

The Xbox and now the Zune are Microsoft’s best attempts to break the spell so far.
They have recognised the importance of the community and are getting their people
out there spreading the message.
This personification of Microsoft through blogging breaks down the corporate monolith
image and helps evangelise technology. Blogging has been embraced by Microsoft more
than any other company. For example Microsoft flew
a group of influential music bloggers to Seattle for the launch of the Zune. This
is a clear recognition of the importance of community acceptance and support of their
products.

But it goes further than blogging. Just because your friends are talking about something does not necesarily mean you will find it cool, you need to get some kind of peer interaction and build a community around your products. Xbox gamer profiles, Windows Live Spaces and now sharing music wirelessly with your friends (see picture) are all ways of building communities. This push into people's personal lives is an interesting change for Microsoft, the Microsoft of the past focused on business efficiency and tools. In fact even their corporate marketing is changing with their massive push to promote People Ready. Personally I respect the fact that their executive summary of People Ready doesn’t even include the word technology. It is legitmately about people and how to put them first when developing a business.

Some people may regard this influencing of the blogosphere may
be regarded by some as a deceptive form of advertising. This disrespects the community
however, as it essentially says that people are not smart enough to differentiate
marketing from genuine company insights. If you read any kind of business
blogging case you will notice a number of things.

If you are just regurgitating the company line then you are not going to get read.
Blogging is about pushing the boundaries and attracting attention through strategic
risks. This means breaking the company mould and putting your passion out in the open
(then it is up to the community to make or break you). It takes guts to candidly criticise
yourself, link to your competitors and ask for public comment on your work. Taking
these risks will get you credit with the community. This two way conversation has
benefits for both the company and the blogger, feedback and information flow freely.

In the end blogging is Microsoft's way of building a corporate persona that is open
and people focused. Apple did it a completely different way with people focused products
and by trying to make people forget they are a tech company. In the end neither
Apple or Microsoft is the winner, the community is. Technology is created
to make our lives better (and not just for efficiency and technology's sake).

Note: This is cross-posted from my original post on TechTalkBlogs.