Alain's Globosphere

Hi all, I just wanted to share my joy with you all. On Saturday, I'll get married! :-D I have spent almost 10 years of my life with my soon-to-be wife so I figured out that she deserved it. You know what it is, right? Living with an IT specialist is...

A couple of years ago, I was mentioning in one post how pleasant it was to work in a plane while wirelessly connected to the Internet. This service was delivered by "Connexion by Boeing" . Boeing's CEO, Jim McNerney, has decided to stop delivering...

My readers know my interest to the "Software as a Service" concept. Microsoft has just released a complete subsite on MSDN Architecture led by our friends Gianpaolo and Fred . Here's where you can find it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/saas...

With the latest news about terrorism and the extra-security in the airports, you know that laptops no longer are allowed in planes. Neither are PDAs and Mobile phone. Can you imagine how much sentive data is stored in your machines? What if they "disappear...

Tim O'Reilley comes back to some interesting facts about Open Source software, software distribution and Web 2.0 considerations. He's saying: " one of the motivations to share -- the necessity of giving a copy of the source in order to let someone...

Did I tell you that Microsoft Research really is essential to the future of the company. Go read this document that has been created ( among many others ) for this year's SIGIR conference. There's been a press pass about that as well.

I'm seeking for information on the number of IT Staff per employee in a typical corporation . Corporations can be divided in categories and yes, I know there's no definite answer ... but here, rule of thumbs can help. IMHO, I have perceived this to be...

Some time ago, Dell did launch their blog site called "One2One". Of course, very naturally, everyone of us did try the web site with the corresponding URL and ended up on an adult site... Not too good for Dell of course. After many complaints, they...

As most of you know already, Windows Vista is knocking at the door and should normally be on the market early next year. There are many things you can do to get ready to this upgrade. If you're part of the Customer Preview Program then you do have...

It's this time in the year where plenty of things have to be talked about with the managers. It's my responsability to inform, train, help and lead Architects and Architect thoughts in Belgium. So, while organizing next year, my manager came to me...

Windows Live has now one new companion: the Windows Live Toolbar . This toolbar adds significant integration to your browser with the Windows Live platform offering. It integrates very rich funcationality such as: - Desktop Search - Local Live location...

You know that Microsoft's stock has been quite flat those last five years. Consequently, people start asking questions about some of the biggest expense bucket of Microsoft that is: Microsoft Research . Yes, Microsoft spends billions of Dollars in...

Atlas has been extremely popular since the first public CTP release in October 2005 and the momentum has continued to build. In fact, the March CTP, the first release with a Go-Live license , generated over a million visits on the site in just 3 days...

I've just heard that there's a new microsoft.com home page being prepared. Go see for yourself over here . Enjoy.

Earlier today, we had the privilege to have both Steve and Kevin in Seattle to meet their technical people. They were, as usual, great speakers. What I'll remember from what I heard is the following: From Kevin We've done an amazing year and we...

Today has be the 3rd and last day of Architect meetings in Seattle. Tomorrow will start the global sessions in the Seattle Convention Center that is packed with more than 8000 Microsoft employees. This morning has been organized into breakaouts around...

There we are, after a second packed day in Seattle. Whilst yesterday was with the EMEA Architects, today we had the pleasure to meet with the World Wide Architect community at Microsoft. We had very famous names such as: Michael Platt who came an...

We've done a serious working day today in Seattle with some of the EMEA Architects. We met 3 new colleagues from Greece, Romania and Gulf region. We were quite happy to welcome them. Oh yes, did you guys know that July 21st is the National Day in Belgium...

As I was telling in a post a couple of days ago, I needed to go to Seattle (where I am now as I write those lines). My travel agency chose for KLM to go from Brussels to Seattle with a stop in Amsterdam. KLM uses a flight operated by North West Airways...

Windows Live Mail Center beta, previously called Windows Live Mail Desktop is the tool that is meant to allow you to read your Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/Custom Domains mails from a rich desktop application via POP3. It also is applicable to any POP3 server...

Lately, I've seen my live.com homepage updated very nicely with colour, more configuration settings, etc. All in all, this was just a great move . Now, let's focus on this feature/setting called " search only ". I'm quite puzzled with that and I really...

Dear Mr Architect, Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be...

Earlier, in my blogs I was referring to the name .NET 3.0 . This name change has brought serious confusion amongst our customers. Microsoft has put together a very clear and concise set of resources to address this concern: A FAQ is available...

Hi guys, Our colleague Andreas Erlacher just joined Corp to take over the role of AE Role Owner. Useless to say that I'm pretty happy with that decision. Of course, Nina might not be as happy as I am but I'm sure she'll join him sooner or later. ...

Remember my last post about ODF? Things go quite fast in our industry. Indeed, Microsoft has decided to enable the support for ODF format both for reading and writing documents. Microsoft is funding and providing architectural guidance to three...