John Gossman, one of the original members of the Expression Studio "Sparkle" team, gives us some insight into the first year of the product's life. It's interesting to think that the app has been around in some shape or form for 4 years now. That's quite a while to keep a secret. He also revealed that Lutz Roeder, of .NET Reflector fame, has been working on the project. Awesome. I'm personally looking forward to a similar background on the other three years as well. Keep it up, John!

Microsoft's Chris Capossela took the stage during Bill Gates' Tuesday morning keynote to demo a new interim build of Windows Vista, which revives the Windows Sidebar. The Sidebar will be populated with gadgets and will feature an open platform for developers to create their own mini-applications. (BetaNews) Read more......

Graphics drivers developed for Vista, Microsoft's next generation OS, will be far more stable than their Windows XP-based counterparts, and not crash the operating system anymore, an executive of graphics chip developer ATI told Tom's Hardware Guide. Ben Bar-Haim, vice president of ATI's software division, told us consumers will be able to identify graphics cards supporting Vista by way of a Vista ready logo... (Tom's Hardware Guide) Read more......

One of the questions we’re often asked here at PDC is, “What is the history of Windows Sidebar?” The concept behind Microsoft's interpretation of Gadgets for the Windows Desktop has a long history, dating back to Microsoft research projects and prior... (Microsoft) Read more......

Tom's Hardware Guide talks with ATI's vice president of their software divsision Ben Bar-Haim about "Vista-Ready" Drivers and discusses their stability.

Vista graphics drivers are programmed for a new driver model currently named LDDM (Longhorn Display Driver Model), although the "Longhorn" part is subject to change. According to Bar-Haim, the "user mode-based" drivers depart from Windows XP's "kernel mode-based" model, and are thus unable to crash the operating system: "Microsoft had concerns about the stability of drivers in XP when they noticed an unreasonable high amount of XP crashes due to device drivers. With LDDM, we can run the driver engine for months without crashing," he said.

This is definately another plus on Microsoft's part for Windows Vista. I'd like to install drivers without crashes. I want to be able to install an incorrect driver and have it just tell me that the device driver won't work with the specified device instead of possibly crashing the entire operating system. The drivers ATI has released for Windows Vista Beta 1 have proven strong and reliable as I tested Beta 1. I have yet to load the ATI drivers in Build 5219 as of yet.

Today at the Professional Developers Conference 2005 (PDC05), Microsoft Corp. announced that more than 30 independent software vendors (ISVs) have already confirmed plans to deliver new applications optimized for the upcoming Microsoft® Windows Vista™ operating system. The announcement signaled strong industry response to Microsoft’s next-generation operating system and the opportunity for ISVs to ride the accompanying upgrade wave. (Microsoft) Read more......

Describes the functionality and benefits of Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation, soon to be a standard part of the Microsoft Windows platform. Windows Workflow Foundation provides a general framework for defining workflow, one that can be used in many different kinds of applications. (MSDN) Read more......

The real power in this platform has always been tied to the support of the developer community. When they get excited about changes the platform's potential is better realized. When they don't the market simply doesn't move. The developers at this year's PDC seemed more excited than I have seen in years. (TechNews World) Read more......

Microsoft Windows Vista September Community Technology Preview ReleaseFact SheetSeptember 2005 View document...

I apologize to those of you visiting our site and trying to make comments which at this time do not work. The issue is being looked at and worked on currently. Thanks for your patience in this matter. I still want to hear you're comments so feel free to email me!

Check out the screenshot of Microsoft's Media Center Edition of Windows Vista. It looks interesting with all the transparency and detail, but will the release of this OS force users all around the world to upgrade their PCs to match... (Chris Lanier's Blog) Read more......

By way of Robert Scoble comes a Channel 9 video interview of three of Microsoft's networking rocket scientists whose job it is to build better networking technologies into Windows Vista as well as Longhorn server. Both client and server will use the exact same stack. In the interview, Scoble asks what his mother will get out of the work they're doing (and later makes some inquiries on behalf of developers too). Here's some of what I gleaned from the interview... (Vistulations Blog) Read more......

ATI today announced its Mobility Radeon X600 graphics and Radeon Xpress 200M chipset are available in two new ThinkPad models from Lenovo-the Z60m widescreen Leadership Model and the R51E mainstream performance notebook. ATI's current top-to-bottom line of graphics processors support Microsoft's next generation Windows Vista operating system... (GameFaction) Read more......

Like all power users, I’ve been “hunting” every Windows Vista announcement and I have installed all the available beta versions. And I can’t say that I’m overwhelmed by Windows Vista, but most certainly it will be the best Windows Microsoft has ever made. (Softpedia) Read more......

If you thought there was going to be some resistance with software developers because Microsoft will soon release another new operating system and yet another new version of Microsoft Office, you thought wrong. (Canoe Network) Read more......

Looks like Mary Jo was right on the money. Today, Microsoft announced a major reorganization of the entire company. Addressing criticism that the company had become too bureaucratic, Microsoft made the divisions bigger to make them more agile. Interesting concept.

Todd Bishop breaks it down:

Here's how the new structure works out:

• Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division: Windows, Server and Tools, and MSN. Headed by Kevin Johnson and Allchin, as divisional co-presidents, until Allchin's retirement.

• Microsoft Business Division: Information Worker (Office) and Microsoft Business Solutions. Headed by Jeff Raikes as president.

• Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division: Home & Entertainment Division and Mobile & Embedded Devices Division. Headed by Robbie Bach as divisional president.

That's right. Jim Allchin is retiring after Windows Vista launches in 2006. In addition, Eric Rudder, with the most recognizable eyebrows at Microsoft, is moving on to work directly with Bill Gates. Newly minted Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie will now also be responsible for services strategy across all three divisions.

My Take
This reorg can be summarized very simply: Windows, Office, Everything Else. This strategy makes sense, and sounds a lot like strategy from back in the 90s. By uniting Windows Client, Windows Server, Development Tools, and MSN, Microsoft may once again be attempting to tightly integrate services into Windows. By bringing together Office and MBS, it would be theoretically easier to build applications that span all levels of business. By bringing entertainment and devices together, it is readily apparent that Microsoft intends to take the interaction between the Xbox 360 and devices one step further in the next release.

This ought to make things interesting...

Today I attended my very first live webcast at Microsoft. Let me tell you, this was a wonderful experience. The LiveMeeting Software rocks!

The live webcast today was about Introducing Blogging to IT Professionals. Robert Scoble with Jeff Julian and John Alexander from Alexander and Julian Inc talked about all the things the IT Pro would need to know about blogging to do it successfully.

I cannot even begin to explain how awesome this webcast was. The three guys totally opened up so much more for me as a blogger especially here at LonghornBlogs.com. I have so much stuff flowing through my head its not even funny. Robert, Jeff, and John all did a absolutely great job talking about what Blogging is and how to do it and get noticed.

I took notes today during the webcast using Microsoft OneNote 2003. Click here to view my notes in web form. I encourage those of you visiting and want to start blogging to check my notes out.

A special thanks goes out to Robert, Jeff and John for the awesome webcast today!

No Vista news today as our site admin wiz kids make new improvements to the site. Regular news broadcasts to resume tomorrow. Please visit us again!...

At the PDC this morning Microsoft demonstrated the latest version of Windows Vista. Here you get to meet the Shell team. Now, what does the Shell team do? They make the Explorer and do a variety of other things. You will not want to miss this video because you'll get a good look at Windows Vista from both an end-user perspective as well as a developer perspective. You'll get to see just how powerful the desktop search feature is that's built into Windows Vista. (Channel 9) Read more......

This is Larry Osterman's long-kept secret. The audio stack in Windows Vista has been completely rewritten so we can have cool things like per-app audio control. Anyway, Steve Ball talks to us about what the team has been working on and gives us some demos and introduces us to the team, including Larry. (Channel 9) Read more......