This is about to be huge…!

Microsoft Launches New Product Category: Surface Computing Comes to Life in Restaurants, Hotels, Retail Locations and Casino Resorts
First commercially available surface computer from Microsoft breaks down barriers and provides effortless interaction with information using touch, natural gestures and physical objects.

Surface Computing Website: www.surface.com
First look at surface computing: http://on10.net/Blogs/larry/first-look-microsoft-surfacing-computing/

On the topic of books… The Windows Server Division Weblog has details on the newly released about to be released book called Introducing Windows Server 2008

Here’s the list of chapters:

1. Introduction
2. Usage Scenarios
3. Windows Server Virtualization
4. Managing Windows Server 2008
5. Managing Server Roles
6. Windows Server Core
7. Active Directory Enhancements
8. Terminal Services Enhancements
9. Clustering Enhancements
10. Implementing Network Access Protection
11. Internet Information Services 7.0
12. Other Features and Enhancements
13. Deploying Windows Server 2008
14. Additional Resources

The layout of this site goes against all of the basic principles of web design, but it’s just wonderful! I read through the whole site! (Seth Godin would love it!)

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

• Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate DHCP NAP Enforcement in a Test Lab
• Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate IPsec NAP Enforcement in a Test Lab

Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) announced today that the NZ music charts will include statistics from the various online music stores available in NZ. This includes iTunes Music Store, Digirama, Amplifier, and the Telecom and Vodafone mobile stores. I’d also like to see a separate chart for downloaded music as it would be interesting to compare how songs/albums sales differ.

Recording Industry Association of New Zealand President Adam Holt says with the early emergence of Amplifier and digiRAMA, the strong music presence on the Telecom and Vodafone mobile platforms and the recent launch of iTunes’ New Zealand store, legal digital downloading is now well established in New Zealand.
RIANZ says the market has established a strong digital sales base the changes are necessary to ensure the chart continues to reflect how New Zealanders are buying music.
Holt says he expects the addition of digital sales to have an impact on the chart, especially on the Top 40 singles.
“We believe the introduction of digital sales will make the chart more dynamic,” Holt says. “The singles chart will experience more change than the albums chart simply because of the sharp increase in the sales of digital tracks and singles over the past 12 months.”

I’ve just read through the validation tests that Pete McVicar put the NetGuide 2007 Web wards finalists through. Just one site passed both the valid HTML and CSS tests – Public Address. Pete criticises TradeMe for their use of tables for layout and Rowan responded with his own comments. I commented on Rowan’s site that there are a couple of tables that could be replaced with divs, but that tables should still be used for displaying the listings and search results.

This also prompted me to revalidate my own site and I discovered that my earlier post about the iTunes pricing was causing this site to fail validation. I had used Google Spreadsheets to analyse some data and produce a chart, and to embed the spreadsheet into your site, Google provides a snippet of HTML using the <iframe> tag. Turns out the <iframe> tag has been deprecated in XHTML 1.1 which is what the DOCTYPE of this site was using. After a bit of research, I found that the replacement for the <iframe> was to use the <object> tag instead.

So the original code is:
<iframe src="anotherpage.html"></iframe>
and with the <object> tag it becomes:
<object data="anotherpage.html" type="text/html"></object>

I feel good that this site conforms to the XHTML and CSS standards even though it is a bit more effort to do so – but I think it’s worth it.

Time to upgrade WordPress again as Matt tells us that 2.2 (Getz) has just been released. This seems to be more of just a bug fix release with a few minor features included. No built in tagging support yet as that has been moved to the next version, 2.3.

I had no idea that NZ had its own Digg-like social news website. It’s called Scoopit, and the blurb from their blog is:

Scoopit is a collection of links submitted and ranked by readers. Submit your own Scoop. View and vote for unpublished Scoops submitted by others.

There’s not much content on there yet as it’s only been launched within the last few months, but it’s good to see some good local content coming through. I’ll be adding a Scoopit button to my Wordpress template so if you read something interesting here you may want to “Scoop it” so others can read it too.

Hmmm – their service has been down twice since I started writing this post but they are aware of the problem and hopefully can get it sorted out.

Jeff Jones (Strategy Director in the Microsoft Security Technology Unit) has written a post about Server Core and how its reduced footprint increases security dramatically. The key here is “reduced attack surface area” as all of the most insecure areas of a server have been removed, such as IIS, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, etc…

However, pulling all these components out of a server have also reduced its functionality, which is why only the following roles are available: (taken from the excellent Server Core Step By Step Guide)

• Active Directory Domain Services
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Server
• DNS Server
• File Services
• Print Server
• Streaming Media Services

I’m a big fan of this approach and I can’t wait for Server Core to be improved so that the GUI is completely removed. I also hope that the modulisation of the components is improved so that the Web Server role becomes available as a Server Core option. It would seem to me that one of the best scenarios to implement a server with a “reduced attack surface area” would be on a public-facing web server.

I was reading Jon Udell’s latest post this morning who is was in NZ on a speaking engagement as keynote speaker at the Govis conference. He praises the beautiful scenery here, especially the drive down the West Coast from Picton to Greymouth, then crossing Arthurs Pass to Christchurch, which Deb and I did a few years back.

He doesn’t have such good praise for the internet access here though, mentioning his bad experience with wireless access in Christchurch:

This card has only one purpose in life — to reveal a string of hex digits — and it cannot even manage to do that.

Wellington actually has really good wireless access as we’ve got a choice between CityLink’s CafeNet, or Telecom’s wireless hotspots. It’s not cheap though and because of this I only ever use it for occasional access.

He also comments on the number of internet cafes prevalent here, which I find interesting too. I often see internet cafes full as I walk past them in town and there’s always an interesting mix of people in them, from students and backpackers to adults and senior citizens. Does this mean broadband pricing is still too steep in NZ that people still are required to pop down to their local internet cafe to check their email. I know several people who are still on dial-up plans because they can’t afford broadband, which is frustrating because just a few years ago NZ was among the world leaders in internet penetration in homes.