Is it too much to ask? Win one freaking game. Best record in the NL, second best record in all of baseball, and what do they do in the NLDS? Lose three straight. The one good thing, maybe, is they successfully completed 100 years without a title. I was...

Like a lot of people, I have been watching a lot of Olympics recently, and have really enjoyed it. I cannot quite put my finger on why, but I have been excited by the Olympics. This has also led me to augment my TV viewing with other sources of information...

This is cool - Microsoft has 300,000 servers in a container farm in the Chicago Data Center . It has got to be hot in there. This kind of gives an idea to the pace of growth at Microsoft. Exciting times. Venkat

I am a huge fan of Formula 1 racing, and don't follow races in the U.S. that much. However, I just found out that Live Search is sponsoring a car at the Daytona Motor Speedway for the 24 Hours of Daytona Endurance race. Turns out this is for a good cause...

I have been looking at getting the HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server. Right now, all my data is stored on one external hard disk. I would really like to not have to worry about backing up all of the photos and videos I have. That should all just happen...

Brandon LeBlanc has gone to some trouble to get a list of all Microsoft Team Blogs in one location. This is a very useful list for any Microsoft watcher. - Venkat

My experience with web 2.0 applications is limited to Live.com homepage ( www.live.com ) and Start.com. In my experience, start.com was generally faster than live.com. There are various reasons for this, but one of the main ones is the amount of JavaScript...

Microsoft has released a new experimental Search Engine at www.tafiti.com . This looks like it is more to show the power of Silverlight than to show off a new Search interface. And it really does that. It is very easy on the eyes and completely smooth...

This is exciting. Windows Live, for a long time has been confusing for a lot of people. Sites did not look the same and they did not work well with one another. That seems to be changing now. More and more services seem like they were built together....

Yahoo Developer Network has a good post that details a number of things you can and should do to improve performance of your websites. Most of the recommendations are common sense, but together they pack a powerful punch. I have personally seen the bumps...

People that know me, know i am a huge Blues fan. I am particularly fond of the guitar. My favorite artist is Eric Clapton. So when I see a concert that features Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Robert Randolph and Jimmie Vaughan, I usually want to...

It seems like Microsoft is putting the Medstory acquisition to good use. MSN Health and Fitness now uses Medstory technology for Search results. When you search, you get results with a cool dashboard on top. This dashboard has categories and related terms...

Looks like the Microsoft Ad Lab research center folks have been busy. They released a new Keyword Suggestion Platform that seems to be off to a good start. It seems to be getting some good reviews - here is one by Jorie Waterman of iCrossing . It is definitely...

Halo 3 marketing starts - http://www.halo3.com . This should be fun to follow. - Venkat

PopFly now has blocks for Live Search. These are what are available now: Block Description Live Search Retrieve web results from Live Search Live Image Search Retrieve images from Live Image Search Live News Retrieve...

Akamai has released their web performance visualization tools to the public. This is a very interesting way of looking at the traffic patterns on the web. Remember, this is only 20% of all traffic on the web, but the numbers are still gaudy. Visualizing...

I started using Popfly this morning. I have one word to say - Wow!. Actually, i have multiple words to say - "Are you freaking kidding me, wow!." I dont know what else to say. This is just amazing. Someone with sharp design skillz obviously worked...

I first started working on start.com two years ago, when we started with a small agile team and did some pretty good things. I got to work closely with Sanaz and Steve. We had lots of fun. We took what we learnt from Start.com and applied to www.live...

This is interesting. We (Microsoft) seem to have released a new site where you can play games and win prizes - http://club.live.com/home.aspx . The prizes seem impressive enough - you can win an xbox 360, Zune, Vista Ultimate, or a LifeCam, among other...

SuperBowl! (in a sing-song voice) :) Have you ever had a feeling where you cannot wait for something to happen, and yet you dread it? That is exactly how i feel now. This is tough. I really hope we get a good game on Sunday (my definition of a good...

We have recently released some templates (basically a ready made page) and celebrity homepages that you can add. Frankly, i have not heard of these "celebrities", but i am told these people are very popular among younger people. :) If teens suddenly start...

Live Search has a couple of programs going on to enable you to contribute to charity. All you have to do is search. For more information check out the following places: Live Search Blog teamseattle.live.com click4thecause.live.com - Venkat

This is big news for a lot of people in the Ajax community. This is a free download . You can find more information at http://ajax.asp.net . We do not use ASP.Net Ajax on www.live.com (long story), but i do use it in my personal site. I have tried prototype...

We have had a fun couple of weeks here in Seattle. We first had snow (heavy for Seattle) a couple of weeks ago. On Thursday, we had a huge wind storm. Winds about 50 mph with gusts up to 80 - 90 mph. That was fun. Unfortunately, we lost power on Thursday...

The product i work on, Live.com , is growing up. We now have a product tour . The product tour has some pretty, um, interesting videos. Here's one . I am not sure what to make of the marketing videos though. I do like the product tour. It makes is easy...