Interesting article that talks future plans for Azure and the concept of mini-Clouds.  Virtualized servers could one day become virtualized data centers.  Something that could become very interesting to enterprises as well as service providers.

Microsoft: Enterprises will be able to self-host Windows Azure, someday

iSynth Brings Microsoft’s Photosynth to the iPhone -- Seeking Alpha

Photosynth has added support for GeoTagged Synths.  This is a perfect “mashup” between Photosynth and Live Maps.

Map Explore

I was wondering when we would see this.  Imagine voting without even leaving home.  Of course there would be even more mistrust involved, however it would be very convenient. 

Computer scientists deploy first practical, Web-based, secure, verifiable voting system

In tough times many people have will need to relearn and retrain.  Microsoft in partnership with private, public, and community organizations has launched Elevate America.

Microsoft Elevate America

For those of you there were not able to attend PDC in Los Angeles.  Microsoft is conducting road show that brings the PDC to a city near you.  The MSDN Developer Conference better known as Re-PDC will be coming to 11 cities around the U.S. starting this month.  Click the logo below to register:

Microsoft recently launched Search Perks.  Seems like a pretty good proposition use Live Search earn points and get free stuff.  That’s enough to motivate me to do something I’d likely do anyway.  Check out.

http://www.getsearchperks.com/Landing.aspx?CampaignId=perks

So I typically don't pay a lot of attention to online ads.  Most of the time I am online for a specific reasons (e.g. reading mail, checking Facebook, or searching for something specific).  Because of that I typically typically ignore advertisements.  Today I was on ESPN.com checking some Beijing Olympics and noticed a game on the page.  ESPN calls it the Cameraman game.  Basically there two photos that at first glance appear to be identical, but upon further investigation you realize that there are slight differences in the photos.  Basically you have to find all 5 things that are different between the two photos.  The game is quite addictive, but I digress.  The game obviously is sponsored by the McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Sandwich is indicated buy the banner ads as well as a chicken sandwich background.  While playing the game I suddenly had a craving for one of those sandwiches.  Why?  Well I think it's because the advertisement was a part of the game itself and thus was noticeable.  In fact the ad briefly appear before the next stage of the game loads.  It appears just long enough to catch your attention and then the next pair photos show. It was apart of the overall experience.  The fact that I am hungry as I type this probably couldn't hurt either.  But that is no different from me seeing a McDonald's on commercial while watching my favorite program.  It is exactly the type of behavior that an online ad should invoke.  Anyway I'm off to McDonald's that sandwich is calling me name.

Live Mesh for Developers

When something like Photosynth is released you begin to wonder what are the practical use cases.  I found this "synth" on the site today that really shows the power of Photosynth.  It essentially is photo tour of the Art Gallery of South Wales.  Not only do you get a 360 view of the room, you also are able to zoom in closely and see the artwork on the walls.  There are several similar situations where this could be used.  Real Agents would love something like this.  I think the real power in something like Photosynth would be potential for social scenarios.  I know there has been talk before where individuals would be able to combine their pictures into a single "synth".  This means multiple patrons from the museum could combine their pictures and create the ultimate tour. 

Today Microsoft's Live Labs launched Photosynth the really cool online photo compilation service that allows you to string together a set of photos into a 3-D view.  They learned really quickly how cool the site really was because before noon eastern time the site was rendered inoperable.  One of the guys from the team was actually quoted as saying that they were "nervous" after completing testing of the site.  They made every attempt to plan for the amount of traffic they would see after launch.  The lesson here is that no matter how much testing you do you may never be able to plan for a huge spike in traffic, especially on day one.

I saw this really often when working in the hosting industry.  A customer when create a lot of buzz and the capacity didn't always handle demand.  I particularly remember a customer who built custom motorcycles and had a popular reality show based on their business realizing that the shared web server they were on was not enough to handle the load brought on by increased popularity. Then there was the company that wanted run ads during the Superbowl but was not sure if their server farm would be enough.

Bottom line, sometimes its hard to plan for a web site that becomes an overnight sensation.  But rest assure these guys have learned a valuable lesson.  I am sure that they would have planned for 10 times the capacity if they had it all to do over again.  Photosynth is still a really cool site and I can't wait to start creating my own "synths"

The Windows Live team announced expansion of the Live Mesh CTP to Canada, India and Ireland.

Live Mesh Blog

Microsoft has created the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool, which provides deployment and migration support for Internet Information Services versions 6.0 and 7.0. This tool incorporates many features that enable web server administrators to deploy, sync and migrate sites, including configuration, content, SSL certificates and other types of data associated with a Web server. For additional information, please see our documentation. This version of the tool, Beta 1, is a Go Live and can be used for production testing.

This tool can be used on Windows Server 2008 and Internet Information Services 7.0 as well as Windows Server 2003 and Internet Information Services 6.0. Please note that this is a Beta 1 release of the tool. As with any pre-release tools or software, you should always backup your system before using it.

Features

The tool supports a wide range of features, and the following list contains several of the features in this version:

Synchronization of IIS 6.0/IIS 7.0:
The sync operation provides administrators with a way to quickly synchronize a site or server and deploy changes to existing sites and servers. A synchronization allows you to synchronize one source with one destination. For example, you can synchronize two directory paths or two web servers. The sync can be performed with local or remote objects.

Snapshot of IIS 6.0/IIS 7.0:
The snapshot, or archive, functionality allows administrators or developers to quickly take an archive of their web site or server for rollback, restore or backup purposes.

Migration from IIS 6.0:
The migrate operation provides administrators with a way to migrate sites or entire servers from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0, including their settings and content. A migration is essentially a way of synchronizing, filtered by migration rules. For example, when migrating from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0, MS Deploy will check the value of some properties and see if it is the IIS 6.0 default. If it is the default, such as the log files directory, it will instead use the value set on the IIS 7.0 server. This enables a server admin to maintain new settings on IIS 7.0 while moving sites or applications from IIS 6.0.

Analysis of IIS 6.0 Installed Features:
The analyze operation allows administrators to check what components are installed on the source server. In this way, they can determine if features are present that they will need in IIS 7.0 or that require more advanced setup than simply copying files. For example, ASP.NET requires more than a file copy and will need to be installed on the destination server.

Troubleshooting and Validation Features:
For validating an operation, the -whatif flag allows administrators to see what actions would happen when they perform an operation. This is especially useful for performing sync or migration, when they want to validate what changes will be made before performing them. For troubleshooting, the -verboseLevel flag allows administrators to get rich detail about what operations are being performed, and upon failure, the ability to diagnose the problem.

NEW FEATURES in this version!

PowerShell Support:
PowerShell cmdlets are included, allowing you to use the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool conveniently with PowerShell. For more information about how the PowerShell cmdlets work, see the Help file as well as the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool walkthroughs.

Enhanced Dependency Checking:
The dependencies that are checked for a web site or server can now be viewed on IIS 7.0 as well as IIS 6.0. They can be turned off on a granular level, such as disabling the drive space dependency check while still running the other dependency checks, or disabling the check for a single ISAPI script map. Additionally, when you view dependencies, you will be able to see the “trigger” for the dependency (what location(s) in configuration caused the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool to say that the module/component is a potential dependency).

You can get support for The Microsoft Web Deployment Tool using this forum: http://forums.iis.net/1144.aspx.

Benefits

This tool is a substantial step forward for helping you to deploy, sync or migrate sites and servers in your Web environment.

Specifically, you can accomplish the following tasks:

• Simplify web farm deployments
• Migrate sites or entire servers
• Snapshot sites or entire servers for backups or versioning
• Determine the differences between two sites or servers
• Determine what components your site depends on

The tool can be found here: x86 or x64

I have been a huge fan of watching the Summer Olympics on nbcolympics.com.  Today, however, I found my first frustration with the site.  My friend and Georgia Tech classmate Angelo Taylor was running in the Final of the Men's 400 Meter Hurdle so last night I set up a phone alert to remind me of the event.  The alert was received on my mobile phone 30 minutes prior to the event as promised.  I also assumed that this meant that I would be able to watch the event live online.  Too my chagrin I found that I could only view the live results, which in itself is an oxymoron.  All is well though as Angelo brought home the gold medal once again (he was also the 2000 Olympic Champion)