Yes I am alive. I must apologise (or apologize as the Americans say) for my lack of recent blog posts. Things have been rather hectic at work with a new (short term) assignment I've been handed. Our team's 'complete mission' is still officially a secret - but not for much longer.

I am planning on spending some more time with Silverlight Beta 2 in the next few weeks. I tried some stuff out last week and I didn't like what I saw (missing methods on System.Collections.ObjectModel.ObservableCollection being one example). Silverlight seems great for rich media websites - but I'm still doubting it's ability to build line of business applications (at least for version 2.0).

Turning to the front lines of the re-ignited browser wars: I'm running IE Beta 2 and I like it. It may actually convert me from Safari (my personal browser of choice). Great work by the IE team and I applaud their courage in including 'InPrivate' (it will cause a serious disruption in the on-line advertising industry).

If you haven't tried Mesh yet then you are missing out. Awesome. Trust me: it is only going get even better.

I have recently acquired a taste for a few guilty pleasures. In the interests of honesty:

• Safari on Windows: What can I say... I like the way it draws the text. It's sexy. Extremely insecure (perhaps that danger is also attractive). Let's just say I don't do internet banking with it.
• Gruner Veltliner: I know I should just settle for Sauv Blanc or Chard. But imported wine from Austria is just soooo tasty.
• The iCup: Every Microsoft kitchen has one. As non-espresso coffee goes it isn't too bad.
• Reddit: Sure it's all rubbish but I can't turn away. It's like watching the aftermath of a digital car accident (and driving around and around the block to see it over and over again).
• Mexican Coke: What can I say? The Mexicans know how to brew Coca-Cola. It has two primary differentiating factors from US coke: Glass Bottles (ie. no plastic/aluminum taste) and Sugar (instead of the reviled high fructose corn syrup).

How the hell is it legal to name your child 'Number 16 Bus Shelter' while 'Yeah Detroit' was deemed illegal?!? It is New Zealand afterall - only Middle Earth names are legal now :).

BTW: Really classy to try and name your twins Benson and Hedges. Real classy.

I really hope this isn't photoshopped.

http://eatliver.com/i.php?n=3323

It turns out that the gratis vs libre croud are still obsessed with the desktop - while the industry turns toward the cloud.

CNET asks the Free Software Foundation (FSF):

Instead of soiling your feet in Apple's shrines to proprietary software and hardware (aka "Apple Store"), why don't you instead demand that the web services we use remain open? Why not fight for open data guarantees? Why not, in other words, do something that affects more than my ability to listen to Radiohead on the Zune, and instead affects my ability to take years of email stored in Gmail and move it elsewhere, offline or online?

Service portability will be a big challenge for Cloud Providers. Interoperable APIs are a good start - but open data will be the key to customer satisfaction. Dynamics CRM Online vs Salesforce.com is a great example of this. With SFDC is hard to get your data back (not impossible - but not easy). MSCRM Online gives you your complete database - all your data - not just a collection of CSVs. Then you can take that DB and migrate it to the system of your choosing.

PaaS providers will need to ensure that they can offer platform portability (where feasible) to the partners which build SaaS offerings on top of them. In theory everything could be portable but at some point it will begin to negatively impact COGS.

SaaS providers will need to consider how they want to attract and retain business. The ability to import data from your competitors is a strong selling point (eg. the Salesforce.com migration template isn't in MSCRM just for fun). SaaS providers should take the leap of faith and encourage their customers to take their data whenever they want. Smart SaaS players will make 'ease of leaving' as much as a selling point as 'ease of arriving'. As the old adage says: "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was."

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/chi/748263604.html

Identity is becoming more and more of a challenge nowadays. The requirements for SSO, Federation and complex authentication mechanisms are beginning to significantly tax developers. Not to mention the fact that soon regular username/password schemes won't be able to outrun Moore's Law (ie. desktops will be able to crack most passwords).

A lot of people haven't spent much professional development time examining newer Authentication and Authorization mechanisms. Perhaps the Zermatt Beta (from Microsoft's Federated Identity team) is a good opportunity to dive in. BTW: Their samples and documentation is really impressive for a beta.

TechReady (internal Microsoft field technical training conference) is rapidly approaching. For those Microsoft field friends who would like to drop by and say hi... I'm now in Building 42. Please feel free to drop by and say Hi if you are on main campus.

I'm not sure I agree with Brent: @learyb Social CRM: Twitter IS, Email Marketing ISN'T...But That's OK!.

I agree with Brent about the transition from Traditional CRM to Social CRM. Brent posits that the traditional Campaign to Lead process is replaced by the Content to Conversation process. The idea that you can attract a customer through interesting content and then pull that potential customer into your sales cycle with an authentic conversation (eg. Email/IM/Phone) is very compelling to me. Naturally MSCRM is well positioned to take advantage of this with it's Outlook Integration (that's why that integration was built - not to shore up a franchise).

I'm confused as to where Twitter sits in the Social CRM spectrum..... will people 'discover' your Twitter feed (ie. Content) and begin a Conversation? Is it for existing customers - to entice them to give you repeat business? Is Twitter 'opening the kimono' just a little too much (the Scoble's of the world would say that you can't be 'naked' enough).

Y Combinator puts CRM at #6 of it's list of 30 ideas it would like to fund. It's also good to see 'Outsourced IT' at #4. I think the industry is about to experience to major paradigm shifts:

The Cloud is one of these shifts. Over the next ten years companies of all sizes will seriously question the need to have servers and infrastructure in house. Do people want their own generators or do they want to buy off the grid?

The IT Rebellion will be another. The fact that most CIOs can never become the CEO is telling. I believe that many companies will begin to radically restructure their IT arrangements. These restructures will go beyond simple outsourcing arrangements and will be synergistically tied to cloud migrations. Today these IT Rebellions are limited to regional and departmental skirmishes. Expect these to become enterprise wide.

Microsoft is well positioned as neutral party in both these paradigm shifts. We are well positioned with respect to the cloud (I wouldn't have moved from my beloved CRM team to Cloud Services if I didn't believe that). On the IT Rebellion front we are always faithfully served both business user and IT department and I believe we will continue to do so.

Apparently my new work computer with it's NVIDIA 8800 GTS GPU is 'ready to die'. Great.

My new team just released R12 of BizTalk Services (the umbrella codename for Identity, Messaging and Workflow services in the Cloud).

Clemens has a detailed blog post which covers the new features.

More information about services and the SDK can be found at http://labs.biztalk.net. Anyone can sign up for an account and start using the service right away (however don't forget we are still in beta).

P.S. I know it confuses a lot of people - but the service is not actually BizTalk Server. Zero knowledge of BizTalk Server is required to us the service. The BizTalk brand was used to denote 'systems integration' functionality. I'm guessing that in the medium/long term you'll see us adopt another brand for this service.

With all this talk about 'Conversations' with customers and Social CRM (to build loyalty or achieve a sale). I thought some of you might find this article on the Consumerist interesting: http://consumerist.com/tag/murky-coffee/?i=5025306&t=coffee+shop-threatens-to-punch-customer-in-his-dick.

The old adage of the 'Customer is always right' is more true today than ever (even if the guy was a philistine for wanting an iced triple espresso).

A New Zealander sent me this: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/gruentransfer/thepitch.htm. They are two advertisement which are selling the idea of invading New Zealand.

I should note that the ABC is the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (the Government funded media organization).

It's cheeky - but it makes you think. Should all wars be 'sold'? Oh that's right: wars have always been sold since the dawn of time.

I got my new workstation today. Dell T3400 (which appears to be the standard workhorse in our team) and a Samsung 245BW display (24" Widescreen at 1920x1200 native). I tried running the display in portrait mode (good for reading code) but it was so long my neck had to move to scan the entire screen. In it's landscape configuration the monitor is almost as wide as my desk (thanks to a rather 'snuggly' office sharing arrangement).

When installing all the drivers I discovered an interesting fact about the Dell: it has an NVIDIA 8800 GTS graphics card which "feature a powerful unified architecture that delivers an incredibly true-to-life gaming experience. Power through games at record speeds". I'm not exactly sure what kind of gaming I'm supposed to be doing at work - but hey - it runs Windows Classic Mode on Windows Server 2008 like a dream!

As a side note I switched my Lenovo T60p over to Windows Server 2008 64-bit and it's running like a dream (much better drivers are out now since I tried 64-bit last). One piece of advice: if you install Hyper-V the 'Sleep' function of your machine won't work (thanks to Michael Lu who passed on that very useful info).