…and TypePad, and Blogger, too.

This new release from Microsoft sounds promising. Based on the description and feature list, it’s a direct competitor for WordPress:

Oxite is an open source, standards compliant, and highly extensible content management platform that can run anything from blogs to big web sites. We know this because it runs MIX Online.

[…]

Oxite provides you with a strong foundation you can build upon – pingbacks, trackbacks, anonymous or authenticated commenting (with optional moderation), gravatar support, RSS feeds at any page level, support for MetaWebLog API (think Windows Live Writer integration made easy), web admin panel, support for Open Search format allowing users to search your site using their browser’s search box, and more

You can get a pretty good idea of how it works from this video:

Of course, the biggest strength of WordPress is the developer/user community that has grown around it. Because Oxite is open source, Microsoft can tap the expertise of its own enthusiast developer community. That should allow the platform to grow much more quickly than it would if releases depended on the small team at Microsoft that produced Oxite.

This one is worth watching.

Well, you knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Despite the elaborate security precautions, a new build of Windows 7 has escaped into the wild.

According to AeroExperience, the new build originally appeared in the form of a virtual hard drive, but some other reports I’ve heard suggest that the VHD file has now been modified into a fully installable disk image.

Paul Thurrott has a screenshot gallery that doesn’t show much more than we already knew.

From the awesome Wondermark (click to see a larger human-readable copy):

Because I was an editor for many years, I have been on both sides of this exchange.

A pair of updates for Media Center just appeared on the Microsoft Download Center.

First up is the prosaic-sounding Update for Windows Vista (KB959485), which says it’s intended “to resolve issues with Media Center for Windows Vista.” (There’s also a 64-bit version of KB959485.)

If you installed TV Pack and have encountered problems (a pretty safe bet), you’ll want to check out the Update for Media Center TVPack for Windows Vista (KB957209), which promises to “resolve issues with Media Center TVPack for Windows Vista.” (Get the 64-bit version of KB957209 if you’re running Vista x64.)

None of the links to the associated KB articles work yet. If you’re an RTFM type, you might want to wait until those little extra bits of information are live.

Update: A Microsoft engineer confirms that the TV Pack fix resolves the “disappearing programs” issue discussed in this Green Button thread.

Update: The KB957209 article is now live:

Issues that this update resolves

The update for Media Center TV Pack for Windows Vista resolves the following issues:

• Media Center crashes after you replace a TV tuner.
• The guide data in Media Center stops downloading.
• Recordings on systems that have in-band schedule data are split into multiple recordings.
• Scheduled recordings disappear from Media Center.

And the KB959485 link is now live as well:

SYMPTOMS

You install the October 2008 Cumulative Update for Windows Media Center for Windows Vista (955519) on a Media Center system that has digital cable card tuners installed. When you perform back-to-back recordings, the first recorded TV show plays back correctly. However, the second recorded TV show plays back only audio.

This one bit me pretty hard, and plenty of other people as well, judging by this Green Button thread. I was able to resolve by hiding that cumulative update, which I will now gladly reinstall.

And one more update: Gack! I just read the entire KB959485 article and then promptly uninstalled this update and the 955519 cumulative update? The reason is buried at the bottom of the article, which says the problems (shows recorded with audio but no video) may continue in a configuration that includes both digital cable (CableCARD) tuners and extenders.

Oh well…

Guess who uses a Zune? (Hint: He’s moving to a new house on January 20…)

Paul Young has an interesting description of his experiment running Windows Home Server in a virtual machine on a system that’s also serving as a full-time Media Center. It’s an experiment I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and seems like a logical idea to combine two functions onto one physical machine.

Paul’s biggest mistake, in my opinion, was starting with weak physical hardware. This is a three-year-old PC that wasn’t exactly a top gun when it was new, and it is clearly straining a bit to handle Media Center duties. Asking it to take over Home Server chores is a little much. It also sounds like he had some flaky hardware, which affected performance and reliability.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been running Windows Home Server in a Hyper-V virtual machine under Windows Server 2008 for the last six months or so. The hardware is a $500 Dell Inspiron 530 with a Q6600 quad-core CPU with hardware virtualization enabled, and WHS barely breaks a sweat running in the Hyper-V environment. Performance is very good, and I’ve configured the system to use a virtual disk that occupies 100% of the space on a physical disk. Works great. Here’s the CPU load on this physical machine as the virtual Home Server performs a backup of one of its client PCs:

Hardware virtualization and the quad-core CPU really make the virtual task easy, don’t they?

A few tips for anyone thinking of doing this:

• If you’re using x86, be conscious of memory limitations. I would install a full 4GB on that system, even though you only get to use 3.3GB of it. For this task, the extra 300MB is meaningful.
• Set aside 768MB of RAM on the virtual machine. That should be sufficient for all native Home Server tasks plus a couple of add-ins.
• There’s no need to configure separate virtual disks as Paul has done (and as I did originally); I recommend putting the OS and data on a single virtual hard disk (VHD) with no duplication. Just back up the VHD file along with the rest of the server and you’ll be protected from any damage to the VM and its data.
• If you do have multiple virtual disks, install Home Server on the largest one. That sounds counterintuitive, but it is in fact the way to get best performance. (The same advice is valid if you’re using physical disks, by the way.)
• You don’t need USB support on the virtualized Home Server. If you want to add a USB hard disk, add it to the physical machine, create a VHD on it, and add that virtual disk to your Home Server installation.

Unfortunately, Hyper-V doesn’t run on Windows Vista, so I can’t replicate this setup on a system that’s also handling Media Center duties. I suspect that on a similar system running Vista Ultimate, VMWare Workstation would run just as well. It’s on my “Science projects I’ll tackle someday” list, but isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. Not with Windows 7 Inside Out at the top of the stack.

Is anyone else out there thinking of doing this? The Media Center/WHS combox is certainly an unconventional configuration and fits the very definition of “edge case,” but I think in 3-5 years it could be a mainstream product.

(via Philip Churchill)

Mary Jo Foley still thinks Windows 7 Beta 1 is going to be available in mid-December, specifically, December 17.

My money is on January 13.

So who’s right? Probably both of us. Mary Jo is probably right that the Beta 1 build will be locked down and signed off in mid-December, But I’m probably right about when everyone outside the hallowed halls of One Microsoft Way gets their hands on it.

The process of locking down a major release of Windows (which this will most certainly be) is a complex one. Right now, as I write this, Microsoft has already created “escrow builds” of Windows 7 that are feature complete. You could also call these release candidates, and although purists within the Microsoft dev teams might grimace, you would have the right idea. (Raymond Chen has an excellent explanation of how and why the terms have evolved. Money quote: “The term escrow does a good job of conveying the true state of the build: ‘It’s over, and we’re not going to touch it unless there is a real emergency.’”)

Those escrow builds are solid and stable enough to use every day and to test extensively, which is no doubt what is happening right now inside the Microsoft corporate network. The goal of the testing is to uncover regressions and showstopper bugs. At some point, after the list of potential showstoppers is cleared and no new bugs are found, an escrow build is declared ready to release.

December 17 is an ideal date to target for that to happen. If the Windows dev team hits its dates, everyone gets to enjoy the holidays and the code is ready to show off at CES. (And if any last-minute glitches appear, there’s still time to iron them out, even if it means a miserable Christmas and New Year’s for the engineers assigned to do the ironing.) Meanwhile, manufacturing can get busy cranking out DVDs and accompanying documentation for distribution to press, analysts, partners, and customers (like attendees of the MSDN Developers Conference).

In the old days (mid-2006 and earlier), invited beta testers (aka “technical” beta testers) had a special place in this hierarchy. They typically got builds that the general public never saw, and they got a head start on downloading and testing milestone releases. Today, under the current Windows management, that group officially doesn’t exist. If you’re not a Microsoft employee or part of a very small group of privileged corporate partners and OEMs, you’ll get the release at the same time as everyone else.

As a principal author of a book on Windows 7 under the Microsoft Press imprint, it’s frustrating as hell to work under the new system. Knowing that beta code will be ready some four weeks before I actually receive it and can begin dissecting and documenting it is maddening. But that’s the way things work at Microsoft, circa 2008.

Update: Be sure to read Rick’s lengthy comment below, which asks some really good questions about why Microsoft has chosen to freeze out “technical” beta testers. And then add your own comments, especially if you’re either a former technical beta tester or have an inside-Microsoft perspective.

If you’re running the pre-beta PDC release of Windows 7 (build 6801), I’m interested in your experience with third-party programs. Have you encountered any compatibility issues when installing or running programs under Windows 7?

Leave details in the comments. If you don’t want to share details publicly, leave a brief comment and fill in your real e-mail address (I’m the only one who’ll see it) and I’ll get back to you.

That’s the word from a Microsoft insider.

Over at ZDNet I’ve just posted a lengthy analysis of how Microsoft releases service packs and other major Windows updates. I decided to perform this analysis after reading several reports suggesting that Microsoft was “rushing” Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista. Here’s my response:

They all need to dust off their Windows history books to see that the reality is exactly the opposite. If Vista SP2 does make its official appearance in April, it will mark a return to normal development and release cycles for Microsoft, which lost its way badly with Windows XP.

I’ve got the proof, in easy-to-read chart format. Here’s a timeline of every Windows service pack Microsoft has delivered since the release of Windows NT 4.0 in July 1996. Each color-coded bar represents the number of days between each service pack and its predecessor (RTM, in the case of SP1 releases). See any patterns?

A big hat tip to Ask Mr. Excel for his excellent step-by-step instructions on how to create the timeline charts I used for this story.

Go read the whole thing:

With Vista SP2, Microsoft is back on track