I have avoided commenting on the Apple iPad thus far. There is enough commentary floating around already and the obvious jokes are being made. The only thing I have to add is this…If nothing else, the iPad will get people excited about touch interfaces. We have already seen that happen in the mobile phone/PDA space. Now it is time for it to happen in the portable/laptop/desktop computing space. Apple’s iPad may or may not succeed, but it will help usher in touch interface popularity for everyday computing.

On that note, Windows 7 is touch enabled out of the box. We just need computer manufacturers to seriously and I mean SERIOUSLY invest in touch enabled hardware for the masses. There are a few machines out there that take advantage of this Windows 7 feature, but not enough in my opinion. We need to get PC manufacturers AND display manufacturers together in the same room with a few of the touch enabled Windows machines that are out there now and tell them they can’t come out until they refine and foolproof some good hardware and then send them out to make it. We need some great PC designers to make machines that don’t look like “Dad’s PC”. We need some fun, exciting, elegant touch enable PC’s on the market (more than we have now!).

Case in point….

I am delivering a couple of presentations today at a technology conference. One of those presentations is on Windows 7. Late last night I received and email from one of the other presenters asking if we would be showing off a Windows 7 touch enable machine. I can’t help but think that the Apple announcement influenced that email.

OEM’s…..get busy!

Cheers!

I corrected all the hyperlinks!  Enjoy!

Cheer!

And we wonder why we should test stuff before public release?

Seems as if ALL of the links in my interesting downloads post are links within the larger document to their respective sections. Basically Table of Content Links. I am working right now to correct the links and will put up a new corrected post shortly.

Cheers…

***Updated 2:31pm on 1/27/2010*** (Fixed Hyperlinks in all lines below)

For quite a while now, you have seen my posts on “Interesting Downloads”. When I first started posting those, I thought, “Everyone will love this! a weekly list of cool stuff from Microsoft the covers everything for gaming, developers, IT Pros, consumers….everyone!”. In fact, I did receive several emails over time stating that people really like seeing all the information in one spot. But as I prepped to jump feet first back into the blogging pool, I went back and read through some of  my older posts. Every time I hit one of the “Interesting Downloads” posts, I ended up skipping over it. There was TOO much information in those posts and the formatting did not work well for a blog. Also, imagine trying to read through one of those posts on a mobile device. Ack!

So I have decided to trim that post down substantially and organize it just a little better. Let me know what you think!

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Link to extended summaries of all downloads

Infrastructure Development, Operations & Maintenance

· Deploying Windows 7 from A to Z

· Release Notes for System Center Essentials 2010 Release Candidate

· Operations Guide for System Center Essentials 2010 Release Candidate

· Deployment Guide for System Center Essentials 2010 Release Candidate

· MOF Technology Library

· Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010 RC

· Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 International Client Pack

· Office Communications Server 2007 R2, PreCallDiagnostic Resource Kit Tool (64 Bit)

· Office Communications Server 2007 R2, PreCallDiagnostic Resource Kit Tool (32 Bit)

· Unified Communications Phones and Peripherals Datasheet

· Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (KB972076)

· Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Workload Architecture Poster

Solutions & Solution Development

· Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 code name "R2" - January 2010 Community Technical Preview - DVD ISO Image File

· Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 Default SharePoint Site Performance Guide

· Software and Database Shapes for Microsoft Visio

· Microsoft FRx 6.7 Service Pack 11 (R11670) - Financial DataMart (FDM) 6.0

· Microsoft® Silverlight™ Release History

· Articles on Parallel Programming with the .NET Framework 4

· Microsoft HealthVault Connection Center for Windows

· Microsoft FRx 6.7 Service Pack 11 (R11670) - Financial DataMart (FDM) 7.0

· WHDC White Papers and Documentation

· MTP Responder for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3

· HealthVault SDK

· Business Productivity

· FastCGI Extension 1.5 for Internet Information Services 6.0 and 5.1 (x64)

· FastCGI Extension 1.5 for Internet Information Services 6.0 and 5.1 (x86)

· Hands on lab: Mobile Windows Forms Development

· How to Send and Receive Faults in Workflow Services

Security, Policy & Compliance

· Security and Authentication in Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Connectivity and Firewall Port Requirements in On-Premise Deployments

· SDL Quick Security References

· Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) 2010 Evaluation Version

· Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) 10.1 Product Documents

· Cloud Computing Security Considerations

· Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway Best Practices Analyzer Tool

Other

· Creating Connected Digital Experiences for Business Executives

· PrescriptiveArchitectureForElectronicCommerceAndDigitalMarketing

· AccentureAndAvanadeConnectedCommerceSolutions

· Streets and Trips Send to Mobile Carrier List

· ICONICSWindows7announcement

· Zune Client software, version 4.2

· Microsoft Product Use Rights Explained

· Microsoft Volume Licensing Brief: Application Server License Mobility

· Microsoft Volume Licensing Brief: Licensing Microsoft Server Products in Virtual Environments

· Microsoft Software License Dependency Reference Guide

· MicrosoftAccentureOGCollabSurvey2010

· Optimal Compensation Management Whitepaper

· Unstructured Collaboration is Key to Increased Innovation and Business Agility in 2010

· Mara View Microsoft Global Energy Forum

· Jim Burkhard Microsoft Jan 21 2010

· Microsoft Pre-Split and Post-Split Closing Stock Prices

· Digital Oilfield Online Launch Final

Cheers!

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We have run a number of specials on TechNet in the last few years, but I think this is one of the deepest discounts I have been able to offer through my blog.

Now through March 31, 2010, *NEW* TechNet Plus Direct subscribers can get 28% off the normal subscription cost.

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Cheers!

Wow!  It has been a long time since I posted anything to my blog. I made a conscious decision to back off from blogging late last year to figure out how to get re-energized around social media. That conscious break turned into an extended sun-conscious break from ALL social media. I was feeling tremendously overloaded with information and just shut it all down – no blogging, no Tweeting, no Facebook, no nothing.

It was actually quite refreshing to feel unshackled from the required maintenance of updating and monitoring all of the social outlets I was involved with. In fact, I would encourage ALL of you to evaluate how much time you dedicate to monitoring all of the different site and tools you think you have to be involved with and keep updated. You may be surprised to realize just how much time it really is.

On the other hand, the powers that be have pushed information to all of these portals with such frequency and effort that it really is almost required to be involved in a few just to stay apprised of goings on. So I do feel as if I have missed out on a lot.

But it comes down to striking a balance.

I have settled on using my blog, Twitter and Facebook as my primary outlets for collecting and disseminating information as well as for staying in touch with business and personal contacts. I am going to give Friendfeed a shot at aggregating all of this for a while to try to keep everything nice and condensed.

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Someone you have reported over the past couple of months that my blog formatting was botched, so I finally sat down today and cleaned things up. Here are my test results:

IE8 – Perfect

Opera 10.10 – Perfect

Firefox 3.6 – Formatting skewed

Chrome 4.0.249.78 (36714) – Formatting skewed

I don’t have any other versions of IE loaded on any machines currently to test with, but hey!…you should be on IE 8 ANYway!  :)

To be perfectly honest, getting the formatting fixed for Firefox and Chrome are pretty low on the priority list right now, BUT, I will start and email thread with some people I know to see if it is a quick fix that can be implemented with little effort.

Cheers….