I've no idea how accurate this information is, but in a short video on http://www.scottmcleod.org/didyouknow.wmv there are some wild predictions about the future... under the title of "Did you know?"

This echoes somewhat  "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by the eminent Ray Kurzweil (I saw him present once, and it was truly amazing - this guy has a brain the size of, I suppose, a planet ... e.g. he invented OCR when a blind friend complained that the supply of audio books was seriously limited), where the author theorises that technological evolution is almost exponential - ie. the pace of change is accelerating.

Kurzweil reckons the first 30 years of the 21st century will see the same degree of technology progression that the entire 20th century saw, and that the next 10 years will see the same again... to the point where, by the middle of the century, nano-bots will be injected into the bloodstream to repair damaged organs and defeat blood-borne diseases.

Of course, all of this could be a load of old tosh - after all, people thought in the 1950s that we'd all be piloting flying cars, wearing space suits, and eating food in pill-form by the end of the 20th century...

I've been in Seattle all week at a technical conference and have been largely living on Windows Mobile devices ... I have a QTek 8500 Smartphone (which is really nice and small Smartphone), a Palm Treo 750 (a Pocket PC with a smaller screen and built in thumboard) and an Orange SPV M3100 (larger PPC with slide out keyboard, Wifi etc). I've also been using Windows Mobile 6 (aka Crossbow) on a couple of other devices for ages... and have gotten really used to some of its new functionality regarding the way e-mail, calendar etc is handled when running against an Exchange 2007 server.

Jason (who was yesterday presenting to a room of 500 screaming and yelling people whilst - I kid you not - dressed as a pirate) has posted on his Mr Mobile! blog with a great summary of what's new in Windows Mobile 6...

... now I can't wait to see it hit the streets on some of the exciting devices that are out now or will be coming soon!

//Ewan

I think Apple scored a home run with their "I'm a Mac"/"I'm a PC" ads, and in the UK have done a great job (and no doubt spent a good chunk of cash) in getting Mitchell & Webb to feature in them. You can see the UK ads on Apple.com/uk if you have QuickTime installed, or if you haven't, see some of them here. Nay-saying their coolness, there was a hilarious (depending on your persuasion, I suppose) article in The Guardian (I'm always tempted to call it the Grauniad, can't think why*) which has the author admitting why he hates Macs, and rails against the latest ads as part of the argument.

Whatever you think of the merit of the ads and the messages they're putting across, they are very effective - but the opportunity to be spoofed is clearly too good, given the rash of comedy vids that have appeared on Soapbox and YouTube since.

My favourite bunch came from TrueNuff TV!, which does a great spoof of the whole GetaMac! website, and has some genuinely side-splitting ads...

Computers are Computers

Macs are great. So are PCs.
So are toasters - what's your point?
It's just a computer, get over it.

They even manage to poke some fun at a few other communities besides Macs and PCs... Be careful, though, some of the content is a little "mature"...

* Interestingly enough, searching on Live.com to just check I had the spelling of "Grauniad correct", guess what the top link is... www.guardian.co.uk :)

You might have seen demos of Exchange 2007 and the Unified Messaging capabilities (which are mondo-cool and so great to demonstrate to people that they're sometimes open-mouthed in awe): if so, and you want to play with it yourself, then check out this great new resource:

https://signmeup.exchange2007demo.com/

Put in your email address, and you'll be sent the details of your temporary (5-day) logon to the system, accessible from Outlook Web Access, Outlook (using "Outlook Anywhere" aka RPC/HTTP) or from a mobile device using ActiveSync.

Oh and you get a (US) phone number to call to test out the Outlook Voice Access function, which allows you to navigate your mailbox and interact with it either using a phone's keypad or (if you're an English speaker), with spoken commands.

If you're not US based, you could sign up for the Windows Live Messenger/Verizon Web Calling service, which would allow you to call a US number for a lower cost (in the UK, about 1.5p a minute).

It's been online for a little while - I only really noticed recently, but there is a matrix of telecom PBX systems and VoIP gateways which can sit in front of them, in order to enable Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging.

The Telephony Advisor for Exchange 2007 goes into some detail around what needs to be understood in order to get UM running. There's a link on there to the PBX Configuration Notes page, which not only details how the PBX/gateway needs to be configured, but shows a list (ordered by PBX) of what components and protocols are used, which versions of software are required etc.

It's not an exhaustive list but is a starter - if you want to know whether your current phone system could be integrated into Exchange 2007, hae a look...