Monday, July 31, 2006

VoiceCon coming soon

VoiceCon will be at Moscone Center August 21-24th. The exhibits are the 21-23rd and you can sign up for a free pass. Should be a good show to check up on the state of VoIP.
- Ed

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

IT buying spree

I was talking with Doug Spindler yesterday and he and I both felt like there seems to be an increase in the amount of acquisitions going on. With HP buying Mercury, AMD buying ATI, Microsoft buying Winternals, and a whole slew of other purchases going on it feels like there is some opportunity buying going on. I guess a lot of companies have more cash laying around then I thought.
- Ed

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

VMware Server License

I was getting the free license for VMware Server (you know it is free, right?) on the website and thought it was pretty wild when I was filling out the form that I could get 100 licenses at a shot. Yeah - 100!! So I did it, just because I could! hahahaha So cool.
- Ed

HP buys Mercury

It was just announced that HP is buying Mercury for their application development management platforms. I wonder what is going to happen to SiteScope now with HPOV being the big boy on the block.
- Ed

TechSmith's SnagIt 8.1

SnagIt Screen Capture from TechSmith is a very cool product. If you are doing any presentation work and need to do screen captures their product is one of the BEST ways to do it. The product just works as you would expect. To top it all off, TechSmith gets the user group side of the fence completely. They even have a way to request materials like eval cds, door prizes, and literature for your user group meetings to give out. You have to give them credit, TechSmith even has a Chief Evangelist (Betsy Weber - hi Betsy!) which I find remarkably refreshing. Hats off to Guy Kawasaki for really building the evangelist style and kudos to TechSmith for using it!
- Ed

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Winternals Software is acquired by Microsoft

Winternals Software announced this - big news for them. Guess this means that Mark Russinovich won't be a Microsoft MVP anymore since he will be a MS employee. Congrats to Winternals.

- Ed

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Windows Vista Build 5456

I downloaded build 5456 yesterday and I have been having issues getting this build to install correctly. What is odd is that I am using a system that has been running previous Vista build without much problem. I don't remember the last build outside of 5270 that installed smoothly, which has me a bit concerned.
It seems that the install process gives you very little information about where potential conflicts exist in either your hardware or even the lack of drivers within the native OS. There appears to be a LOT of room for improvement to getting Vista to install on hardware. The most frustrating part for me is that I need this stuff to run to work on my lab configurations for testing the network performance. Go figure eh?
- Ed

Sunday, July 02, 2006

I've been awarded as a Microsoft MVP again

Well, third time is a charm? I am very thankful to all the folks up at Microsoft and their MVP program for feeling that the work I am doing in my user group involvement is worthy of the MVP title. It is a great honor. I think there are only about 3,200 or so Microsoft MVP's in the world so it is a rare honor to be part of such a small but elite group.
I guess I will be seeing Scot Mehl, Doug Spindler, Mike Pennacchi, Laura Hunter and a bunch of other fellow MVP's up at the Microsoft Summit in March of next year. Very excited about the work I am doing on some practical labs for Vista. I hope to have some more posted on those here shortly.
- Ed