Wow, what a ride it's been so far. I've been really enjoying my new position on the Zune Services Team, and as many of you know by now we just launched Zune 4.0. :) Here's what you should do (you don't need a Zune device): Visit http://www.zune...

I've had a little project cooking on the side since I started with the Zune Services Team last month. One of the things that many of the Zune folks do is help customers out in the Zune Forums with issues they have, answering questions and the like. ...

For those of you who have or are going to be getting Windows 7, you have a great tool built into the OS. I was playing with it earlier, and I have a strong feeling this tool will play a very significant role in product support scenarios. It's going to...

Greetings! I know I've been somewhat quiet of late, but there's a good reason- I've been transitioning to a new position here at Microsoft! I've just joined the Zune team, working on catalog services. It's a very exciting change and a great position-...

Hi folks- we're currently experiencing some problems with the Microsoft Connect site ( http://connect.microsoft.com ). It is offline, and our support team is fully engaged in getting it restored ASAP. There is apparently a problem at a data center, but...

Hey folks- just a quick note on the Windows 7 Beta. Many people have been filing feedback or making comments, votes, etc to existing feedback on the Connect connection- at http://connect.microsoft.com/Connect . The Connect Connection is meant for filing...

Greetings, Programs! I've been extraordinarily busy both at work and away from it and we've all been working hard on the next major version of Connect- 4.0. Apologies for not having more content here lately, but as a New Year's resolution I'll update...

First, apologies for not keeping my blog up to date. It always seems like there's some fire to put out, and blogging keeps taking a back seat. Well, no more. So, on to current events. If you haven't yet seen the new Connect Site , you should check...

So I'm curious what people think of the new look and feel of the Connect 3.0 beta site . We've seen some activity and a few suggestions/bugs filed (thanks!), but I'm interested in general feedback on the site. What do you like, not like, etc?

The new Microsoft Connect site, which we've been working at for months, is now in public beta at http://connectbeta.microsoft.com . Head on over and check out some of the new features: A Dashboard showing all your activity (across all your connections...

Recently there have been a number of short, isolated outages with Connect. These have occured at generally random times of day and have usually been short, less than 10 minutes. We've been working hard to isolate the problem. I can't go into specific...

With the recent release of Connect 2.4, the Connect team is beginning a phase of more regular releases, in a hopefully dependable rhythm that we can continue to rely on. The Connect team has grown somewhat as Connect has grown. The Connect team is...

Sadly, it's true. At about 9:30 AM Pacific time, the Connect site and our internal management tools for it began having problems, and shortly after went down. We've added some new monitoring tools and process to the system recently, and they informed...

Hey there! Last night we deployed the first set of patches to Connect 2.3. Nearly all of these were what would be termed "backend" fixes for problems we encountered with the new user profile store. I did work out some changes for issues like this one...

After what I understand was a very uneventful upgrade procedure, the Connect site is back up at http://connect.microsoft.com . Please take a look. Also be sure to check out http://connectbeta.microsoft.com for a look at our upcoming 2.4 release!

Tomorrow morning (Saturday, June 2), assuming we run into no late-breaking issues, the Connect team will be deploying Microsoft Connect 2.3. This is a release we've been working on for quite some time now, and we're very excited to be releasing it. ...

Hi folks- we've just completed deployment of the latest Connect 2.3 bits to http://connectbeta.microsoft.com . Please take a look and see what you think. There are a few changes you may find nice, but keep in mind that this is VERY early in the process...

The Connect team is in the middle of development on Connect version 2.3, a minor functionality release of the site targeted for late spring or early summer. We're putting an emphasis on usability and user experience in this release. One thing I've...

Howdy folks- I hope your holiday season was a good one! On behalf on the Connect team, best wishes for 2007! The Connect team has been working hard on the next version of Connect- 2.3. I've been spending a lot of time writing specifications and there...

As many of you have probably noted, Betaplace ( http://beta.microsoft.com ) has been retired. The last program on Betaplace was closed yesterday. Betaplace, like JDPWeb, Ladybug, WindowsBeta and several other pre-release and beta programs at Microsoft...

It went up yesterday- thanks for your patience, especially you Vista testers, who bore the brunt of the display issues. We're already hard at work on Connect 2.3, and I'll provide more data on that as we move forward and solidify things.

Connect is back up and running. Thank you for your patience!

We had a severe and major hardware failure today, and the Microsoft Connect site is down as a result. We're working as rapidly as possible to resolve this issue and it's our current top priority. No data will be lost as a result. We currently have...

We had a pretty good Connect 2.2 deployment, although it took a little longer than we expected. We've identified what caused that and it shouldn't occur again. We've got our Release Manager working on a mechanism for zero-downtime deployments of Connect...

Connect 2.2 is being deployed as I write this, as you may have noticed from the "Site Maintenance" page. However, a snag was hit during the upgrade which forced us to restart a process, and we're going to be longer than the original timeframe. We're hoping...