This Week, July 16th, 2007 - Home Server RTM, Malware Encyclopedia

This week the Microsoft Global Exchange is taking place in Orlando.  I chose not to attend this year since I'm leaving Friday to spend 7 days in Seattle and attend TechReady 5, our bi-annual technical briefing for the Microsoft field.  I couldn't be more excited, seriously.  I love Seattle, it's among my favorite places to visit, and I love any opportunity to interact with product teams at Microsoft.

This Week!  The biggest announcement to come out today (Monday, although it's just past midnight as I'm writing this) from Microsoft is the RTM of Windows Home Server.  I've been testing Home Server for many months now and only recently rebuilt my test server so I could start playing with multicast in WDS.  If the HP MediaSmart server is affordable, I will be getting one for our Home.  WHS is a really interesting solution as an appliance to ensure data fault tolerance and secure remote access in the home.  As my family grows I think more about how to preserve my digital assets, they are becoming my most valuable possessions.  I currently use a replication scheme with a PC at the Grandparents, WHS would be a better long term plan for local redundancy.  I will probably still do some form of replication to prevent loss in case of fire.  The one factor that will drive my purchase is digital video.  I am would really like to do a HDD based HD video camera in October but I worry that unlike miniDV, a HDD camera does not have tapes to fall back on if files are ever lost.  Home Server is also a great recovery solution for rebuilding our laptops should the need ever arise.  If a sub-500$ version of WHS becomes available, I could see staging one with each Grandparent to lower support costs, speaking as the family IT guy...

Some interesting recent posts from fellow Microsoft bloggers.  It seams Microsoft has published a Malware Protection Center which provides an online encyclopedia of information on viruses/adware/spyware.  From here you can research existing threats or submit information if you believe you have found a new threat, including sample files.

The 2007 Faculty Summit is going on this week.  This is an opportunity for Microsoft Research to share their upcoming plans with Universities, and also have discussions around what the research agenda should be in the future.

Larry posted information about the Higher Education Consortium which provides an opportunity for Microsoft customers in EDU to provide feedback to Microsoft on various concepts including subjects like student collaboration tools.  They specifically are looking for feedback at this point on future projects.

The beta program for Mac Office 2008 is taking nominations for beta testers now.  Good opportunity to nominate yourself and not only get to test the product but also help report any issues you encounter prior to the final code.

Finally, I've been reading about VMRCPlus for a few weeks now and a friend (Troy) mentioned I should give it a try.  It's great!  I will never use the web console again unless I am doing remote administration, and even then the cases are limited.

Hoping to get lots more posts out this week so hopefully you'll hear more from me.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Home Server, Malware Protection, Faculty Summit, Higher Education, Mac Office, VMRCPlus