Have you ever watched the Red vs. Blue video series? It's a funny series based on the XBox game Halo. Anyway, the first episode of season two is online now.

Joe Hewitt: Why Longhorn Will Suck

Heh, did Joe attend my "how-to-write-a-headline-that-will-get-linked-to" class? :-)

Seriously, Joe, you need to meet with the Aero team (Aero is the UI experience in Longhorn). I used to believe what Joe did until I saw their plans.

Update: Joe says he's seen Aero and will have some examples of things he'd like to see us do even better. I can't wait.

By the way, I see that Hillel Cooperman (he's the guy who heads the Aero team) has joined the Eric Rudder club of webloggers. You know, they post twice and then they never post again.

Just kidding guys. I know you have more important things to do than blog. But, just leaves an opportunity for me to poke some fun at ya!

SeattleTimes: "IBM spokeswoman Trink Guarino confirmed yesterday that the memo was legitimate but said it had been taken out of context. She said IBM has "no such plans" to shift to Linux-based PCs."

Microsoft Monitor Weblog: Microsoft has extended support for Windows 98, 98 SE, and ME, which is a smart customer-service decision.

CNET News.com: Yahoo tests syndication technology for MyYahoo

But I still hear that RSS is a fad and isn't important. Hmmm.

WinFX 247 advertises itself as "essential developer info for Whidbey, Longhorn, and Yukon." Hmmm, looks cool!

TechWeb: RadioShack picks Windows XP Embedded.

RadioShack engineers spent a great deal of time deciding between XP Embedded and Linux, said Ron Cook, vice president of strategy and technical operations for the Fort Worth, Texas, electronics retailer. "It came down to an issue of management software," he said, namely "the ability to deploy patches and upgrades."

Jeff Sandquist turned me onto this one: dreamdinners.com. I'm gonna try it next week, cause my wife is back in Silicon Valley to take care of her mom (who is doing much better now).

This is great for those Microsoft geeks who don't wanna learn to cook. You just order a meal. They prepare it. You cook it at home.

ComputerWorld: Microsoft bloggers come to MSDN.

Yeah, this is old news (happened last Friday) but that's what happens when I go on a road trip while having blog troubles.

On associated news, I participated in a presentation and discussion with a group of Microsoft bloggers. Chris Sells reported on one part of the meeting.

Good discussion of what's good about blogs and my approach to publishing here. I echo Chris Sells' report. I am very happy with how management here has approached blogs.

It'll be interesting to watch how blogs (and other community mechanisms) are used in the future.

Still having trouble with my blog. We're working on it.

InfoWorld: the year's best products.

Interesting, the winner of the best analytics/reporting solution is Iteration Software's Real-Time Reporting Suite. This was done in completely in .NET. It's an n-tier high-end server application (think cluster of Datacenter Server machines with many CPUs and LOTS of RAM each). Congrats!

An Iranian journalist is crediting blogs for getting him released from prison.

Still working bugs out on my blog. Thanks Lawrence at UserLand for the help! The weekend was nice. Drove from Silicon Valley up to Seattle. Driving is cool cause it's a forced "no computer" vacation.

I see Sam Gentile was interviewed on the .NET Rocks audio program. Sam used to be a consultant with Groove and he's very opinionated and smart.

Update: I fixed an error in the above post. Sorry about that Sam.