Earlier this week I served as a judge in Microsoft’s Code2Fame contest, which gave me the rare pleasure of voting to give away someone else’s money.
I was looking forward to this event because I wanted to see what third-party developers are doing with the Windows Home Server platform, and I wasn’t disappointed. The winner, Andrew Grant, has come up with a free add-in called Whiist, which makes it easy to create custom websites and make them accessible via the web server built into Windows Home Server. The winning feature, for me, was the ability to create a photo album by simply dragging and dropping a folder full of digital pictures.
I’ll be writing more about Windows Home Server when I get back from vacation. Meanwhile, go and read about the winners.
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
Ed,
Do you have a feel for whether or not the home user is going to be able to buy a shrink wrap (or downloaded) version of WHS to install on a home built machine?
My wife works for Microsoft (enterprise sales) and has been hunting around to get me into the beta, but I think I missed that boat a while ago.
Aaron
Aaron, you will indeed be able to buy a shrink-wrapped version of the WHS software through the System Builder program, just as you could with XP Media Center Edition. It’s actually being sold at the Company Store right now. (I have a copy with the Company Store sticker on it!)
And yeah, the beta is long closed.
I’m looking at retiring an older system and putting WHS on it, so this is great news. (I have an MSDN subscription, so I assume the final version will be there along with all the other server products.)
Ed,
It would have been too easy for me to just send her to the company store. It was more fun to send her on the goose chase trying to find me a copy through a back door.
Thanks.
Aaron
Ed, I see you and Paul kept your distance. HA!