I changed gigs at Microsoft last June by joining the Windows Phone team. We've been pretty quiet up until Monday, when we unveiled the Windows Phone 7 Series. My new role is on the developer documentation team, and I'll be able to talk more about how...

Starting July 1, the beta will start to reboot every 2 hours and then expire on August 1st. If you want the RC, you'll only be able to download it until August 15th. Download the Windows 7 RC today! Chris FIN

The sun is shining here in the Seattle area today, and for some reason, it got me thinking about disaster recovery. I guess I'm weird that way, but then I have dreams about command lines from time to time. Anyway, thinking about how to recover from...

In honor of Earth Day, TechNet magazine has released an online-only edition, with articles around reducing energy consumption in the data center and other ways you can do more with less. Check it out at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/default...

Good coverage at the Data Platform Insider and PSS SQL Server Engineers blogs, and as always, product documentation is in the TechNet Library . Chris FIN

With the geometric explosion of ever briefer (hello, Twitter !) electronic resource materials the past few years, you might think the need for long-form books is declining. Think again. From ancient history's clay tablets to today's print on demand...

Reading white papers, product documentation, blogs, forums or any other textual information can only go so far when you're trying to learn how to do something or get up to speed on a new technology. That's why we've been adding more and more video...

Spring cleaning continues on TechNet with a refreshed Windows Server TechCenter ! Our big changes here include: A vertical left navigation strip that appears on every page of the site, exposing the most requested downloads and tasks We changed...

It's Spring, (well, here in the Seattle area, it was snowing this morning, so Winter isn't quite ready to release it's icy grip...) so it's time for Spring cleaning on TechNet! We've started with the Windows Client TechCenter . Notable changes:...

Regular visitors to the TechNet home page might have noticed that we've been making more changes around the content we feature. Previously, we were featuring a variety of blogs at the top of the page, but we realized that the chance of a blog post...

ars technica has a short article about installing the Windows 7 beta on a Mac . It's worth a look if you support multiple platforms. Chris FIN

Bits. You want 'em, we got 'em. And we serve 'em up from the Microsoft Download Center , which has just been refreshed with a great, new Silverlight home page. Take a peek. Chris FIN

In a few months, it will have been fifteen years since I set up my first web server on a spare Mac II at www.hsas.washington.edu using Mac httpd . (You can check Netcraft to see what it's running today.) The genesis of that box was frustration. Frustration...

The Sysinternals TechCenter is one of the most popular TechCenters we have on TechNet, so I'm sure that many of you have seen this already, but this week we refreshed its look and feel. If you've never visited, take a look. There are some great, free...

The Seattle area is notorious for its darkness during the winter due to the combination of latitude and weather. (A little-known fact is that Seattle is farther north than the majority of the Canadian population - check the map !) Contrary to popular...

Just in case you had not heard, Microsoft is offering a $250,000 USD reward for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet. We have a resource-packed...

Microsoft is moving its Developer & IT Professional primary support content (also known as Knowledge Base – or KB - articles) from http://support.microsoft.com Web site to MSDN and TechNet, respectively. This move is to ensure that Developers and...

Microsoft takes security seriously. So seriously in fact, that we provide a broad range of security resources , including the Security TechCenter , which is focused on supporting IT Pros and their unique security needs. Things like: What vulnerabilities...

This week Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 RC1 and Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8 RC1 , and to celebrate, we've significantly revamped the Internet Explorer TechCenter . As part of our ongoing work to reduce the number of pages all across...

One of the things I love about the web is the fact that it is in constant motion and that we're all still making it up as we go along. Here at Microsoft, change is constant, and my team has been doing some great work recently around slimming down our...

Just my luck - I take a week of vacation last week and a major beta comes out! In case you missed it, the Windows 7 beta is now available, so download it and take it for a spin. We've also added a Windows 7 section to the Windows Client TechCenter...

System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 SP1, the latest release of the MDM system, includes a number of new features and changes, such as multiple-instance deployment and changes to MDM Self Service Portal. More information: System Center Mobile Device...

SQL Server Service Pack 3 (SP3) addresses issues reported through the SQL Server community, and includes a roll-up of fixes since SP2. SP3 does not introduce major new features. Also, the Feature Pack for SP3 has been updated with this release. ...

I was remiss in covering the fact that the Windows Server 2008 SP2 Beta and Windows Vsita SP2 Beta were made available earlier this month. More information: Windows Server 2008 SP2 Beta and Windows Vista SP2 Beta Chris

Intelligent Application Gateway 2007 SP2 is now available. Intelligent Application Gateway 2007 is a comprehensive, secure, remote access gateway that provides secure socket layer (SSL)-based application access and protection with endpoint security...