Microsoft has a marketing site up called See Windows Vista, where Tom Skerrit invites you click on links to view videos describing the virtues of Vista. Although the site is very polished, and has a few nice touches (leave your browser sitting on the site for awhile and Tom will do a few cute things to try to draw you back in), I can't help but notice that while the site works under Firefox, it occasionally has some rendering problems. Regardless, if you're looking to be convinced why upgrading to Vista will be a good thing, this is perfect for you.

It's not all that common that we're able to link to our sister site, TUAW, in reference to Microsoft news. But today we can do just that. Microsoft has released a keyboard and mouse combination specifically for Macs, right down to the brushed silver / grey color, and lack of a Windows key. While I think most people can agree that Microsoft's current generation of PC hardware - specifically user input devices - is top-notch, it's still a little bit perplexing that Microsoft would go so far as to actually release Mac only hardware. Their keyboards and mice have long been compatible with Macs, and currently have markings for both Windows and OS X on new keyboards. To be clear, I'm not against the Mac-specific hardware, just a little confused as to the need for it. But, there you go.

The always entertaining Mike Elgan points to a Japanese site that purportedly has news of Sony launching a new 'PlayStation' brand of luxury goods, such as wine glasses, corkscrews, photo frames and even sweaters. While we haven't been able to confirm this, it's a rumor that's not all that difficult to believe given some of the crazy messages that have been coming out of Sony about the premium price point of the upcoming PlayStation 3 console. 

But PlayStation as a luxury brand? To be honest, even Xbox is a better brand name for that type of product line. Xbox implies something mysterious, something new. PlayStation implies a toy my one-year-old would play with. 

Engadget reported a few days ago on the fact that Google had outmanouvered Microsoft with respect to ensuring that their Google Desktop software comes preinstalled on Dell hardware instead of Microsoft's desktop search product, MSN Toolbar.  This deal also means that Google will be the default search engine on Dell machines, rather than defaulting to Microsoft's MSN Search page. The truth is that this is as it should be; Google really is the top of the heap in terms of online search engines, so it's good to see that Dell users will get that by default. It isn't clear to me, however, that Google Desktop or MSN Toolbar for that matter are particularly good choices to be installed for new users. Time will tell.

CodeProject.com has a great article on running ASP.NET 2.0 applications on a non-IIS operating system such as XP Home. The article also details how to install DotNetNuke on the Cassini Web Server. For all of the ASP programmers out there who have wanted a way to package ASP.NET apps and distribute them without the invasiveness of more traditional methods, Cassini web server does a great job. There are two versions, one for ASP.NET 1.1, and one for ASP.NET 2.0. Cassini runs as a Windows service, making it easier to implement and distribute with your apps, or to just use in a development environment. Check out the article from CodeProject, they even have links to the Cassini developer's guide on how to bundle your apps for Windows.

Microsoft has decided to differentiate between the version of Internet Explorer 7 that is available for Windows XP, and the version that will release with Windows Vista by calling the Vista version Internet Explorer 7+. The reason for the difference in designation stems from the fact that there are features that will be included in IE on Vista that apparently were not easy to create for XP - presumably they rely on technologies that are built in to Vista.

Of course I can't let this go by without mentioning that although this is a relatively minor example of it, this is yet another case of poor product naming. The 'plus' designation in software has had a long-standing perception of being a version of software that you pay extra for - and get extra features. In other words, a user that has IE 7 may well wonder what they can do to get IE 7+. When the answer turns out to be upgrade to Vista or buy a new PC, you can bet they won't be very impressed.

In fact, is it really necessary to differentiate the products by name? It's perfectly reasonable that in any given product, some features that might rely on the operating system might be available in the new OS but not the old one. Isn't it?

Last week Microsoft released Office 2007 Beta 2 to the world, and had somewhere over 500,000 downloads in the first two days. The primary reason for releasing this test version of the software so early is to get as much feedback from the Office using community as possible, soon enough that final product decisions can be made before it is released to manufacturing. 

To that end, the Office team has released a utility called Send a Smile. Once installed, it offers both a happy face and sad face icon in your system tray. The idea here is that when you find something in Office that you want to make a positive comment on, you click the smiley face, and if you find a problem you click on the sad face. Jensen Harris reports that in the past features that were thought to have been rarely used would be removed, only to find out that many people enjoyed the use of that feature. Sending a smile is offered as a way to effectively vote for your favorite features, to ensure they make the cut when Office 2007 is finally released.

For quite some time, Microsoft has had a relatively high-level manager blogging under the pseudonym "mini-microsoft". This blogger is widely considered to be the real deal, not some imposter posing as a Microsoft employee. One of Mini's theme's since the inception of the blog has been that Microsoft needs to downsize / rightsize - thus the nickname "mini-microsoft". The blog has also gone to great lengths to expose flaws in the way in which employees are reviewed and rated against one another.  

Recently, Microsoft announced plans to scrap the old method of rating its employees on a curve, which was one of mini's main complaints. There are also a number of other changes going on at Microsoft that mini finds encouraging, and thus has decided to take a break from the intense posts mini had become renowned for. 

Many have called for mini to reveal him or herself, but it is expected that due to the level of detail mini had exposed Microsoft's internal practices, it would be a career ending move. Mini reports no intention to reveal himself, but will be taking a reprieve from blogging for awhile to see how these new changes take shape.

Jordan over at DownloadSquad has a post about how to repair Windows XP with only eight commands. Thankfully it's been quite some time since I've been in a position of having to fire up the Windows Recovery Console, but unfortunately problems do hit from time to time and it's worthwhile to be prepared. As Jordan recommends, it's a good idea to read the entire article before attempting the procedure it describes, as there are a few instances where a wrong step could mean catastrophe. But since the process is intended to bring you back from the edge, it's a risk worth taking - and if you're careful about it, it's no risk at all.

James Kendrick over at jkontherun has posted his first impressions of working with OneNote Mobile, the much anticipated add-on for OneNote 2007. So far he's giving it a thumbs up, save for the fact that it appears not to be able to handle ink input, or the ability to sync ink back to the mobile unit. It seems OneNote Mobile was written initially for SmartPhones which lack a touchscreen for input, but I wonder if the decision not to support ink (at least initially) is out of concern for file size? That being said, Pocket PCs handle ink input just fine, thank you very much, so JK's probably on to something. Here's hoping they add ink before the final release. It would be nice to have a quick ink input method for those of us that are not lucky enough to have Tablet PCs!

Vista ReadyBoost will be a feature that will (most likely) be included in the final version of Vista on store shelves. ReadyBoost allows you to augment your current system memory with a USB key, or to "steal" unused memory from your network. So now, anyone with ReadyBoost enabled can be their own folding@home only with memory. Finally, any old PC I have lying around the house can be zombied by Vista if it has a network connection and idle memory. My wife will be thrilled. Finally a reason to keep the old PC's she's been trying to throw out for a while. Score one for the GEEK! Whoops. Did I just write that out loud? Anyway, ReadyBoost is a neat idea. This seems to be the culmination of the EMD or extended memory devices support we discussed in earlier posts. So, imagine what I could do at work with "extra" memory that I don't feel people are using. I might single-handedly solve the mystery of the human genome. Memory server farm, here I come. I just want Vista to come, someday!

Microsoft has finally woken up to the fact the Google's search offerings are kinda big business. Now, a new article details Microsoft's ideas on enterprise search, stating that, "...merely searching for and finding information isn't useful by itself. People must be able to create, find, use and share information." While I agree with this, and wonder how it took them so long to come to that conclusion, I wonder if Microsoft's strategy will work. In my opinion, much information is available for the average enterprise user, but not enough of it is well organized or accessible to the right people. Managers still have to call IT for everything, especially data-gathering and intelligence reporting, critical pieces of the business puzzle. Microsoft has some good thoughts in the article, but being the IT geek that I am still find the challenge of the myriad of services daunting to manage and deal with. If I want something found, do I use Vista's search, Windows Live search, Office search, or search in my Outlook/Exchange? I get the feeling that I will need to search for the best way to search, which from a strategic standpoint baffles me. Google's huge advantage is that their search is ALWAYS the same. On the web, in Desktop Search, in the Google search bar, In Gmail, in Calendar, in Notebook, etc. Google's search is truly unified everywhere. I doubt that Microsoft has this high level of search integration. From the things I'm seeing, it looks as if Microsoft is trying to figure it out, and has the structure in place, but is it truly all connected?

Chris Pratley is they guy that is in charge of OneNote at Microsoft, so when he talks about OneNote features, we listen. Today he's got a great post on his blog about the different ways in which OneNote 2007 and Outlook (both 2003 and 2007) are more tightly integrated than ever before. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure, OneNote is a dark corner of Microsoft Office that many people don't know about, but should. It's a note taking application, but to characterize it in that way is to do it a disservice; it's really an information collection and organization framework. Do yourself a favor and acquaint yourself with OneNote, and you'll soon find why it is very interesting to see why OneNote and Outlook have become "best buddies".

Microsoft has a great piece on using the Dot Net framework to program Lego Mindstorms. The website offers an introduction to programming Mindstorms, a Tips and Tricks section, and many patches for things such as machines that have hyper-threading technology. You can download the Lego SDK or the full source code in C++ if you so desire. Also available are the starter kits for Visual Basic, Visual J#, Visual C#, and the help files for the Mindstorms-Dot Net interface. The neat thing is you can get started with Lego Mindstorms programming with Visual Studio Express. That's right, free software that let's you tell your robots to do the people dance, and from Microsoft no less!