What a clever piece of marketing - so cool I had to post it here, with the appropriate link love of course.

Today I found this plastic bag in my letterbox:



These are the instructions:

i. Do not open
ii. Place in warm loctions for 2-3 days
iii.visit www.____viruses.org.nz to find the cure (fill the blank with the letters that appear in the petri dish).

So, yes you have to visit http://www.zeroviruses.org.nz/ to find out what this all about.

No, ths is not a bacterial culture. It's just cheese mould according to the instructions in the back. But very clever.

Many of you might know Internet Explorer 8 is being released in full standards mode.

I have an opportunity to provide your feedback to the Microsoft team - but only a couple of days so this need to be quick.

I am looking for your feedback in those topics:

- what do you think of this decision?
- what is the impact you think this will have on your customer or developer experience?
- any recommendations on how to make developers aware of this?

I understand Microsoft is planning to contact some tech websites around the world, to distribute information about these changes, FAQs and other material. This is related to the third question above. Do you see this as an effective way of doing it?

Anything else I forgot? Post in the comments here or contact me.

I spent Thursday last week at the Microsoft offices in Auckland, judging the Imagine Cup 2008. This year's topic is "environment" and we had very good entries in the contest.

The judges were instructed to select three teams to go to the New Zealand finals, but we couldn't select only three - so at the end we agreed to select four teams to go through. You can get more updated information on the competition on the Microsoft NZ Student blog.

The teams are pictured below, in no particular order:

I have the chance to post some questions ot the Microsoft Office team in Redmond about the OOXML standard, its approval and more.

If you have a question for the team please contact me and I will relay it. I post the answers here in my blog.

Asus has just announced the Eee PC with pre-installed Windows XP and th big question came up: what's going to happen to these little machines, since Windows XP is supposedly being retired from this year?

Microsoft has just announced something that will help this new class of small computer keep running for a few more years - Microsoft has announced that it will extend the availability of Windows XP Home edition for this emerging type of computer referred to as an ultra-low-cost PCs (ULCPC).

The extension will run until either 30 June 2010 or one year after general availability of the next version of Windows – whichever is later.

Of course people will ask "what about Windows Vista?". It all come down to requirements it appears. According to David Rayner, Microsoft NZ Windows Platform Marketing Manager:

While Windows Vista provides many benefits, including an easier and more secure user experience, Windows XP Home edition provides an effective solution on these emerging devices from a performance and cost perspective.

ULCPCs are a new and growing class of mobile computers designed for customers interested in complementing their primary Windows-based PCs with additional, lower spec’d computers. These machines vary, but typically have smaller screen sizes and lower-powered processors than more expensive mobile PCs.

The Windows Home Server team has posted an update to their Home Server World Cup - and New Zealand is still #2 in terms of relative uptake for this smart server for domestic use.

Also interesting to note is Windows Home Server was first released in New Zealand - I actually bought a license as soon as it was released here and have been using it since.

But despite the fact kiwis love technology and are in general very early adopters, the big players are not coming to this market. I contacted HP asking if their MediaSmart Home Server would be coming down here and I was told that no plans existed for the moment.



A few local companies will put a very good machine together to host your home server if you need. But we don't see here the number of brands and options the European market is seeing. I'd like to see at least the HP option around!

By the way, this is an old screenshot, our Windows Home Server is now up to 2 TB and 80% full - and the crappy 1 TB Maxtor drive was replaced with two 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent, which are much more reliable.

This is me with one of the banners showing my quote during the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 launch in Wellington:



Microsoft is using those banners around the country. I think I am in good company.

Today I am attending the Microsoft Launch Wave 2008 (Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008) at Te Papa Museum of New Zealand. Really cool to see one of my quotes about running Geekzone on Windows Server 2008 in one of the banners around here.

Also cool was to be invited to judge the entries in the Imagine Cup New Zealand. I also found out you can vote for your favourite team and be in to win an Xbox 360, Windows Vista or Microsoft Office. Keep the votes coming!

Continuation from my previous post on annoying Microsoft Outlook errors:



Isn't this enough reason to be annoyed? Why offer add-in capabilities if any add-in installed turns a dual core 64 bit machine into a slow box?

Removed Xobni, disabled Avast Excchange add-in, disabled the search indexed - hey Windows Vista Search is a great feature, but the whole PC crawls to a halt if Microsoft Outlook 2007 is running and indexing is enabled.

Let's see how it behaves this week.

If there's a single thing that annoys me a lot on Microsoft Outlook is this "A data file did not close properly the last time it was used and is being checked for problems. Performance might be affected while the check is in progress" message.

Yes, it sure slows down everything, no kidding. It's worst when it happens on a Saturday evening.

I found this before and fixed it by disabling the Avast Exchange server add-in. Now I am using Xobni and it's happening again.

Is it possible to have any Microsoft Outlook add-in installed that do not crash Microsoft Outlook?