I'm updating my list of blogs to watch for IIS 7 content.

Kanwaljeet’s blog has a couple of posts with details you won’t find anywhere else.

http://blogs.iis.net/ksingla/

.

Of course, David Wang’s blog is indispensable.

http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/

Thomas Deml often has useful bits.

http://iisgeek.no-ip.org/

If you have any others that are must have's, let me know.

-brett

I don't know if you've seen this, but there's a new, free service from the Windows Live division of Microsoft called FolderShare. Evidently, Microsoft bought this stuff a couple of months ago. It let's you synchronize folders between computers across the net.

You can get this guy at http://www.foldershare.com/. It's free and lets you synch about 2GB of data with multiple systems.

Finally, this information has been posted:

http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=2&subtabid=25&i=1100

For some reason marketing has gone wild creating a bazillion version of Vista. I'm telling you right now, I am not going to answer questions like "why doesn't X work on Home" when it's not part of the feature set. Not cause I don't care that it's confusing and unncessarily complicated, just that the avalanche of questions would mean I would get nothing else done. Perhaps I should setup a 1 800number like 1800IISWhatup to answer this. Press 1 if you have Vista home, 2 for ...., Press 123 if you have Vista for Donut Manufacturing Professionas... 

-brett

In case you missed the hoopla, Virtual PC is now a free product. You can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx It's not a trial, it's fully functional. As far as running Vista / IIS  7 in it, there are some new beta2 additions you can and should install. It appears they are on http://connect.microsoft.com so you'd have to be in a beta program to get to them. Seems odd since Beta2 can be downloaded publicly. Sign up for the Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta if you’re not already in it.

At any rate, I am delighted that Microsoft is making this stuff avail for free. This follows the dramatic success of the Express editions for Visual Studio.

Of course, the entire virtualization thing is huge now and internally, there is a lot of activity around that. Be aware that in order to get the latest virtualization technology in Longhorn Server, you will have to have the 64 bit version. That's something I don't think is widely known, but is not a secret. Of course, we got ways to go on LH Server, but in Microsoft time, a year is almost tommorrow.

I should right about working at Microsoft as a time compression experience - it's weird.

-brett

Very interesting news today. It appears that Microsoft has purchased the famous Sysinternals company - makers for Filemon, regmeon and the amazing process explorer tool as well as other indispensible utilities. From a technical point of view, these tools are the most commonly referenced non-Microsoft software at Microsoft. When I was teaching IIS classes, I used to say "put filemon on a USB stick and carry it around with you everywhere you go". I also used to joke that I had keyboard macro to reply to emails "use filemon".

And process explorer - I mean - wow. Have you ever tried that thing? It's beyond belief amazing. No one understand the insides of a Microsoft OS like Mark Russonvich and he will be a great asset for Microsoft. In truth, I wonder how this has come about as the last time I talked to Mark (I know him from our frequent intersections at variours speaking events), his working for Microsoft did not seem like a remote possiblity. He's irritiated more than one person by publishing "secrets" about how things work. He's a great guy and I hope made a bazillion doallars on the buyout.

-brett

Eweek reviews IIS 7 saying it should be getting more attention. I agree of course.  http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1988880,00.asp

-brett

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=215282

A new video was just posted to Channel 9. This is me and Thomas Deml, IIS uber PM, being "interviewed" by my boss, James Conard about IIS 7 extensibility. IIS 7 really does open a lot of new doors for web developers so check it out. If you want details on the developer side of isle, check out the examples and sample code iis.net. Go to the TechCenter and filter on IIS7.

-brett

eWEEK posted a pefomance article testing open source applications on Windows Server 2003 R2. The premise was to test peformance of open source technologies running on Windows vs Linux.

The Windows based stacks did very well in the tests overall leading to the conclusion that "Enterprise IT managers shouldn't hesitate to look into the option of deploying open-source stacks on a Windows Server platform."

It's mind boggling, however, that the only test off IIS 6 here is with Sharepoint. I would love to have seen Windows+IIS+PHP+MySQL vs LAMP in this test.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1983364,00.asp

-brett

At Microsoft, most people have their own office. Even a lowbie like me has a private space with a door that closes and I appreciate that. However, it is pretty common for people to be relocated fairly often as new hires come in, people leave for new jobs in and out of Microsoft and team priorities change requiring reduced or increased staffing.

So, as you may have heard Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft, and this happens just as we are shuffling offices. I got shuffled into Robert's office. Now, don't go thinking it's anything special ... Not.

He did leave a gigantic box of video tapes and some other stuff, and we had a few chats in the hall about his move. Robert was always very approachable and kind to me, something I appreciate from anyone, and even moreso from somone who has his name recognition. Some people are pretty stuffy when they think they are "someone" instead of  themselves.

At any rate. I thought it was at least intresting that I'm landing in his office. Maybe it will result in more blogging!

-brett