Lukas Svoboda: Strategy, Architecture, Governance & Technology

A glimpse on Chris Lainer's blog on the future of remote control based vista media center extenders. I love the whole idea of making the concept in-wall. i.e. a wall panel to control vista media center. I think a hardware snappable version would be perfect. I.e. it's a remote and it could snap into a wall panel to become a fixed item. You could have several around your house and mount it where ever you thought it was best or needed at the time... IP royalty payments to me :)

Maybe I keep my head in enterprise tech too much, but did you know that Microsoft has free accounting software available? You can view details and download from the IdeaWins website. I don't know a lot about it, but I sure will be reading up on it now!

Update: it's focused on home and small business, however the features are quite intensive. Worth a look if you are a small business and need something quick!!!

Microsoft have released Virtual PC 2007 for free. You can get more info and download it from here. Some commentary on it's release from Microsoft-Watch.com, news.com, lifehacker.

Microsoft are also releasing quite a few Virtual Hard Disks for testing and evaluation purposes. Go here to get Virtual Hard Disks of Exchange 2007, SQL Server 2005 and Windows Server 2003 R2.

Hit Tip to Engadget for most of these leads, but some great stuff happaning with Home Threatre PC's these days:

Ablatron releases the most powerful Mini-ITX mainboard called the Nano Abox and supports a niffty 155 x 87 mm screen.

The FLeX 4.2 home theater PC from Italy's P.Guerra is a beautiful looking box which folds out and has Bose speakers built in!

An MCE based jukebox from CEPro with all the wonderful jukebox stylings is also equied with a beer cooler.

Origin AE Release a LCD equipped HTPC enclosure.

My new pet project has gone live tonight: ARCast NZ. Check it out at the following address:  http://www.arcast.co.nz/

ARCast NZ is an official offshoot of Ron Jacobs' International ARCast. Since 2005, Ron Jacobs has been interviewing architects all around the globe and giving insight into the world of architecture. ARCast NZ is hosted by yours truly and is focused on the software and infrastructure architecture community in New Zealand. I intend to do at least one cast a month looking at relevant issues in the local NZ architecture community.

I found this free for personal use RSA encryption utility for Live/MSN Messenger called SimpLite. I'm just testing it out now and it seems to work really well. And it supports the latests version of Live Messenger even though it doesn't say "Live Messenger". It will automatically make conversations red that are unencrtyped and make conversations that are encrypted green. Both ends need to install the utility but its a very quick download and a simple install if you follow and read the wizard. It uses 2048 Bit RSA keys so I figure it's pretty secure.

It's good to see another asian manufacturer developing Windows Mobile phones, especially Windows Mobile 6 ones. Asus are traditional mobo manufactor but are now branching into phones with Windows Mobile 6. Definitely one to watch in this area!

Blink.nu has some screenshots and info on Windows Mobile 6. I've been reading about this for a bit on leaked sites and my MVP information. Looks very interesting indeed. Good to see CF and SQL Mobile will now be bundled.