From the floor of the PHP Tek Conference in Chicago, with my colleague Peter Laudati , we’re excited to announce the availability of the Windows Azure SDK for PHP version 3.0 . This Open Source SDK gives PHP developers a “speed dial” library to take full advantage of Windows Azure’s coolest features...

Since the launch of Windows Azure a couple years ago, we’ve been working on driving Interoperability scenarios that enable various developers to harness the power of the Windows Azure cloud platform. In parallel, we’ve supported interoperability projects, in particular on PHP and Drupal, in which the...

There are many common scenarios in web development that require processing of information, gathering data, or handling message traffic that can be accomplished asynchronously – meaning in the background while the user is doing other things with the application. A common example of this is sending email...

It has been a long while since I have posted, as I have been busy working with the global Microsoft community, helping re-scope/expand our efforts around delivering relevant interoperability solutions between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies worldwide. We recognize that effective interoperability...

I just walked out of the finals ceremony at Imagine Cup 2008; what an amazing experience. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate each of the three finalist teams in the 2008 Interoperability Award including Team Together (Poland), Team Ecologix (Brazil) and the Grand Prize winner: Team...

Day 2 was all about Partners – those who we are working with through the Interop Vendor Alliance as well as a host of companies building solutions that interoperate with Microsoft NAP technology. Video: Interop Las Vegas 2008 - Day 2 -C

I am not Ryan Seacrest. With that in mind, here is a quick recap of Tuesday's activities at Interop Las Vegas. Video: Interop Las Vegas 2008 - Day 1 Thanks to Grant Williams and Jessica Evans for putting the video together! UPDATE: You can now watch Bob Muglia's Interop Las Vegas keynote online...

Again this year we will be talking interoperability at the Interop Las Vegas conference. The event is next week (Apr-27 to May-2) at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Microsoft will have a large booth presence where we will be showcasing a the work of many product groups as well as that of Interop...

The official ISO press release can be found here: http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1123 Martin LaMonica's (CNET) take: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9908939-7.html?tag=nefd.top

Open XML vote results are in – Ecma appears to have secured ISO/IEC ratification of the standard – now known as IS 29500. It is a great victory for supporters of document choice and flexibility and for those who prefer to use ISO standard formats. It validates the need for additional document standards...

Check out the HP Position Statement on Standardization of Office Document Formats . It is a refreshing and pragmatic view - that choice is important and ODF and Open XML will co-exist and interoperate. On the ISO standardization process: "HP believes that the international standardization process is...

Developers can now integrate InfoCards into their PHP-based web projects using the recently released Zend Framework v1.5 with the Zend_InfoCard 1.5 library component. Documentation on Information Card integration can be found here . For more information about Information Cards and the identity metasystem...

Here is a quick clip of Bill being asked about Open XML and digital archival by Washington State Congressman Brian Baird during a U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science and Technology meeting last week.

The discussion continued Wednesday the 12th in Seoul, when we sat down with representatives from KANOi, Wooam, ECO and Tomotec. Through these discussions we learned that there are a number of very interesting products in the Korean market that are currently taking advantage of open standards-based document...

In this letter , Chris outlines the importance of Office Open XML as a document format choice for customers, the benefits of global stewardship of the format through international standards bodies, and Microsoft's pledge for future support of the open standard.

As announced yesterday , this week represents the kick-off in a series of technical labs and roundtable discussions that we will be driving focused solely on interoperability between open standards based document formats, including ODF, UOF, Open XML and others. The location selected for round 1 was...

How do you ensure that somebody, someplace in the world is actually a student (so you can give 'em free software)? This is the challenge that these gentlemen sat down to solve. Through the combined use of Open Source and Microsoft technologies, they have figured out an elegant way to get enrollment verification...

This afternoon we published the specs for the office binary document formats and placed them under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise . This means that anyone can now freely use these formats for any reason without any concerns over intellectual property rights. Enjoy!

With the latest version (4.0) of Quickoffice Premier from Quickoffice® one can open, edit and save as the Open XML file formats on Symbian OS based mobile devices! This is yet another great example momentum of Open XML across a broad array of platforms and devices. See the You Tube video here!

My colleague Jean-Christophe Cimetiere has been working on a lot of demos and these were just posted to You Tube . It is really cool to see very wide spread adoption of Open XML in consumer products like iPhone, as well as in other products on Apple OS X. It is remarkable not only how many products are...

In the latest Channel8 video , my colleague Vijay Rajagopalan has some good info here about how the entries will be judged, and how he thinks about technical interoperability in the context of identity and the Imagine Cup theme of the environment. If you don't know him, Vijay is an interesting and very...

The Interoperability Award Contest that I told you about on the Channel 8 interview back in December is now (finally) accepting entries on the Imagine Cup Website . Because it took longer than we anticipated to get the submission rules approved and posted to the site, submissions for the Interoperability...

I have read a number of blogs posts and articles recently that demonstrate the groundswell of support for the Office Open XML formats. Most impressive in this list of course is support by both Google and IBM (that's right – I said IBM). Gray Knowlton has a post that demonstrates some of the places...

I just ran across something from December that is of major significance to web developers WW. The Internet Explorer team has announced that the current build of IE8 running in Standards Mode will correctly pass the ACID2 rendering test. You will be able to try it out for yourself in the sometime in...

After taking a month off for parental leave over the holidays I am back at work. A lot has been happening over this period with the Open XML ISO standardization effort as the process moves closer to the final Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM). All exciting stuff (to geeks like me anyway). This morning...