If you take a look back to the Top 10 Reasons to use Windows Home Server, you can see that I have gone over the majority of these points.  In this post, I am going to share a little more about items 4 and 6: libraries and user accounts.

Windows Home Server’s integration with Windows 7 libraries is one of my personal favorite features. I have 4 computers at home that hold hundreds of pictures. I love being able to share my photos with friends and family, but unfortunately before Windows Home Server, I could never find what I was looking for! It would take me up to an hour to look through all 4 computers and all of the picture folders on each PC to find a specific set of photos.

With Windows Home Server as your media server, your digital memories will be kept in a central location so that you can access what you want from any computer on the network. Integration with Windows 7 libraries means that your Windows Home Server will automatically add and store your digital memories in the libraries. This enables you to quickly access what you want from any computer on the network and save time by having all your things in one place.

*Screen shot of Pictures Library. Notice pictures in this location are from “My pictures”, “Public Pictures”, and all pictures on the home server.

Windows Home Server users, Grant and David, saw the benefits to having all of his content located in Shared Folders and stated:

• · “I am now backing up six computers in my home and moved all my music and video data to the home server where it can be shared with the Xbox 360 and other computers in the house. Before, we had this content everywhere.” –Grant
• · “After installing Windows Home Server and moving all existing data to the Windows Home Server, management of the data is simplified and i no longer has to worry about moving data to new hard disk nor backing up of data” -David

Although libraries store and centralize all of your digital content, you may still want to keep particular items private, or not edited and changed by other users on your network. To increase protection on all of your important content, Windows Home Server allows you to create up to 10 user accounts. Windows Home Server gives you the ability to change which Shared Folders users have access to by either allowing “read/write” access, “read only” or “no access”.

As you can see from the image above, prominent blogger, Terry Walsh and his wife, have easily set up their user accounts. For a step by step in how to set up user accounts, you can visit Terry's blog.

To learn more about Windows Home Server along with libraries and user accounts, please visit the Windows Home Server Web site.

After seeing all the great new technology at the PDC in LA last week, I’m very excited to get started on my holiday shopping! Earlier this year, I bought my wife a new Windows 7 PC, which has now inspired me to think about what other electronics and software we may need this holiday.

The challenge with shopping this year is there are simply so many fantastic products to choose from.  So here is my advice - looking for products that have earned the “Compatible with Windows 7 logo” is the best way to know the product will work as expected and give you a great experience. These products have passed Microsoft designed tests for compatibility and reliability with Windows 7 including testing for common issues to minimize the number of crashes, hangs and reboots. With the growing number of Windows 7 PCs running 64 bit, you can also be confident that any product displaying the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo also works on all versions of Windows 7, including 64 bit. Over 9,000 products have earned the logo so there is a logo’d product in every applicable category:  anti-virus, printers, games, networking gear, cameras, digital picture frames, graphics cards, portable media players, productivity suites, monitors and displays, system utilities, and webcams.

How to find logo’d products -

#1 Check the status on the Windows 7 Compatibility Center

You can browse or search the compatibility center easily check which products have earned the logo. There are Windows 7 Compatibility Centers around the world to support you.

• Germany: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/de-de/default.aspx
• Spain: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/es-es/default.aspx
• Italy: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/it-it/default.aspx
• China: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/zh-cn/default.aspx
• Russia: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/ru-ru/default.aspx
• US: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/en-US/default.aspx
• France: http://www.microsoft.com/france/windows/windows7/compatibilite/
• Japan: http://www.microsoft.com/japan/windows/windows-7/compatibility/default.aspx

#2 Check the box on the shelf

Many manufacturers display the logo on their box- so you can simply check the box at retail. Here is a great example:

#3 Ask the retailer

You can simply ask any associate to direct you to products that display the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo.

#4 Look on retail sites

The logo is now displayed on 20 retailer websites. Here is just a sample of some popular sites displaying the logo:

1. Shopper.com

2. Buy.com

3. Staples.com

4. Zones.com

5. with many more coming soon…

Ok!  I’m off to start my own holiday shopping!

Feeling literary? Creative? Or maybe just passionate for the latest generation of Windows Home Server devices hitting the market? Either way, here’s your chance to win a Home Server and host of other great prizes including Zune HD players and 1 TB hard drives to help expand your storage.

Through December 11^th, Intel and Microsoft are co-sponsoring A Home Server Haiku contest. To enter, simply write a haiku about how a home server would help bring peace of mind to your life—or simply why you really want one. Your name will be entered in a contest to win one of three new home servers, one of ten Zune digital audio players, or one of ten 1TB hard drives.

If you’re like me, a handy English class refresher on Haikus can be found here, courtesy of Wikipedia (simply put, it’s a poem made up of three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, with thankfully no rhyming needed).  :-)

More details – and the entry form - are up on the website www.winahomeserver.com.

So here’s my attempt:

Each day it helps me

From its perch in my basement

My little server

I’m sure you can do better…Give it a try, and spread the word!

- Mark

During Wednesday’s keynote, Brian Goldfarb demoed an amazing Silverlight 4 client for Facebook. Beyond its amazing looks, this Silverlight 4 demo provides a full and complete desktop client application for Windows (and Mac). SilverFace is built on top of Silverlight 4 – also announced during the keynote. If you want a cool Facebook client application to work on from your Windows desktop, you should take a look at the Fishbowl for Facebook Preview. Fishbowl is a great WPF application that you can install and enjoy as a user, and at the same time it is a great code sample for developers whom are looking to write WPF applications that use Windows 7 features.  If you are interested, you can download the source code for Fishbowl.

In today's world, the client’s experience is more important than ever before. Your application doesn’t just have to be fun and interesting; it has to be good looking, polished, and functional, providing a “natural” user experience that just works. As a developer, you need to push the envelope and use any available technical tool that the OS provides or any other available means (if installed on mobile devices) to provide a superior user experience, or users will switch to the next guy. In such a competitive scenario, using the Windows 7 Taskbar to shave a few seconds from day-to-day tasks looks like a very obvious choice.

Both Silverlight 4 demo and Fishbowl applications each provide a great UX and enhance user productivity. Scott Guthrie also announced the Facebook SDK for managed code applications that combines the latest in Web and Client platform innovations with leading Social technologies (services) to help developers plug into Facebook. But, beside the new Facebook SDK and beside the great looks, the Fishbowl application is a great WPF (3.5) example that demonstrates how to write applications that produce amazing experiences on Windows 7.

As a WPF application, Fishbowl runs on multiple Windows versions, including Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, and it integrates with the Windows 7 Taskbar and Multitouch. One of the main ideas behind the Taskbar is to provide users with quick and easy access to their content and help them accomplish tasks and navigate between windows easier and with more confidence. For example, JumpList provides a great tool for surfacing common work items and tasks. If you have a task that you perform once or twice a day, taking two or three clicks to perform the task is not that bad. However, if you have a task that you perform 10, 20, or even 30 more times, using JumpList tasks or items in the recent category list goes a long way. Facebook users often check their wall, write notifications and messages, view friends' pictures, and so on. Therefore, in some scenarios, the Taskbar JumpList tasks, icon notification, thumbnail buttons, and other functionality become major tools in the application.

Fishbowl uses the taskbar to provide a quick, easy, and seamless integration with Facebook functionality directly from your Taskbar. Let’s review some of the user functionality before jumping into code behind.

The Fishbowl taskbar offers a few tasks even before you start your application. You can go to Facebook.com, or you can actually “jump” directly and see your wall, friend's picture, and more, as the following image shows. One of the amazing things in Fishbowl for Facebook is that it changes it functionality between the different modes of the application. Being able to use the taskbar differently for

different scenarios provides an amazing user experience in heavily used application like Fishbowl.

When Fishbowl runs in normal mode, the Taskbar JumpList reflects items and tasks that you can actually perform in the context of a running application, like viewing the last few notifications and messages that you received without opening the application, as shown by the following image.

If you hover with the mouse above the Fishbowl control, you see the thumbnail preview provided by Windows 7 taskbar. However, Fishbowl uses the thumbnail button again allowing you to both view a preview of the application and act immediately upon the thumbnail preview as shown in the following image.

If you hover with the mouse above the Fishbowl control, you see the thumbnail preview provided by Windows 7 taskbar. However, Fishbowl uses the thumbnail button again allowing you to both view a preview of the application and act immediately upon the thumbnail preview as shown in the following image.

(And thank you Raman for writing so many PDC tweets J)

Fishbowl also has a mini-mode operation mode. This mode shows just one message in a small window. As you can see in the following image, a small arrow allows you to switch between messages. When you hover over Fishbowl taskbar icon, you can see the preview but you can also control the message, again using the taskbar thumbnail preview.

Besides great Taskbar integration, Fishbowl offers a great Multitouch experience, allowing you to scroll between messages using your finger to touch the touch screen. It is a little hard to illustrate Multitouch with screen capture so you will have to trust me on this one.

We've covered most of the Fishbowl features unique to Windows 7, and in the next post I will dive into the API that enabled these Taskbar and Multitouch features. If you are interested, you can download the source code for Fishbowl.

Last week, we announced the availability of the Facebook SDK for .NET developers. The SDK supports coding for both Silverlight and the Windows Platform (WPF, etc.). Yesterday, Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform, took the stage for his part of the Day 2 Keynote at PDC09 where he announced Silverlight 4.

During the keynote, an out-of-browser Silverlight 4 application called SilverFace was demonstrated. SilverFace was developed using the Facebook SDK we announced last week.

SilverFace lets you do all kinds of things on Facebook directly from your Windows desktop such as update your status, upload photos, view friend’s photos and videos, and much more. This application is meant to serve as a proof point for the capabilities of Silverlight 4 in combination with the Facebook SDK and is not an actual product. You can think of this as more of a “technology showcase” and a demo of what the technology can do.

For those of you wanting to try out physical code (and is pretty cool), I’ve got something just for you.

Today, we’re making available an application for Windows 7 called Fishbowl for Facebook. This application is a sample application created by UXLabs@Microsoft that showcases the Windows Platform (when I say Windows Platform = .NET Platform) and takes advantage of key Windows 7 features.

Download: Fishbowl for Facebook Preview

Fishbowl for Facebook lets you quickly post a Status Update to Facebook, watch your Facebook News Feed, post comments, browse your friends and their photos and upload photos directly from their Windows 7 desktop. Let me take you through a few key areas of the app. I’ll start with the Windows 7 integration.

When running, Fishbowl for Facebook takes advantage of new Windows 7 features such Taskbar Previews and Jump Lists.

For example, when moving your mouse over the Fishbowl for Facebook icon on your Windows Taskbar, you get a Taskbar Preview. This allows you to quickly navigate quickly between Home (you’re News Feed), your friends list, your profile, and photos. You can also quickly go to Facebook’s homepage too.

If you right-click on the Fishbowl for Facebook, you get a Jump List that lets you see your most recent notifications. It also lets you switch to “mini-mode”.

You can upload photos to Facebook using Fishbowl for Facebook – simply by drag-and-drop!

Just put a title in, choose the album you want to add the photo to (or create a new album), and hit upload! Here I am dragging a panoramic photo I created in Windows Live Photo Gallery from my visit in September to the U.S.S. Hornet in Oakland, CA.

See the red lines under the “U.S.S.” and “SFO” text? Yeah, that’s spell check. Fishbowl for Facebook comes with spell check to help ensure you don’t accidently spell important words wrong that your friends can make fun of you for the rest of your life with. Trust me, it happens ;-)

While browsing a photo album, you can view the album in a slideshow, save photos, print photos, and zoom in and out.

And Fishbowl for Facebook supports Windows Touch too.

Ok, one last thing – when browsing your friends in Fishbowl for Facebook, you are given several ways of sorting through your friends. You can sort by name (display name or family), last Status Update, Upcoming Birthdays, or Interest Level. And you can also adjust Interest Level of individual friends by simply clicking on a friend and viewing their profile. Interest Levels let you control how much of that friend’s stuff hits your News Feed. If you have an annoying friend, just turn the Interest Level way down.

There are a lot of neat experiences you can have with Fishbowl for Facebook so give the app a spin yourself! Remember, you can download it here.

Fishbowl for Facebook will run on Windows XP and Windows Vista but requires .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to be installed (this is not needed if you’re on Windows 7 as it’s built in). For the best experience with Fishbowl for Facebook, it is recommended you use Windows 7 to take advantage of all its features. Fishbowl for Facebook with automatically update when updates are available as well so when we make updated available, you’ll get them! But please note that Fishbowl for Facebook is meant as a sample application showing what developers can do with the Windows Platform and the Facebook SDK. This is NOT an officially supported product.

Stay tuned, Yochay from the Windows 7 for Developers Blog will be posting some behind-the-scenes geeky developer stuff shortly. For you developers out there, this will be a must-read. I can’t wait to see more applications like this for the Windows Platform.

The Windows Home Server Team is pleased to announce that Power Pack 3 will be available in all shipping languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish) on November 24^th, 2009. Power Pack 3 will be made available to existing users via Windows Update. Users need to have Windows Home Server with Power Pack 2 already installed on their home server. Power Pack 3 will automatically install as part of Windows Update if Automatic Updates is enabled on the home server.

As we’ve communicated in a past post, Power Pack 3 improves the Windows Home Server experience with Windows 7 and Windows Media Center by providing new features like: backup and restore of computers running Windows 7, Windows 7 Libraries integration, enhancements for Windows Media Center, and better support for netbook computers. Power Pack 3 will enable the most optimal experience for Windows 7 users on a Windows Home Server network.

“If you've recently upgraded to Windows 7, Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 is an essential download providing enhanced integration between the two platforms and a number of cool new features. Combine library support with enhanced features for Windows Media Center, and we're really starting to see Microsoft bring together the Windows Home Server and Windows 7 client experience so that your media can be stored on your home server and enjoyed seamlessly on TV, PC and Mobile devices with little effort from the user. The bad old days of copy, paste, convert and transcode may well be behind us,” says Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) Terry Walsh of We Got Served.

Microsoft MVP Alex Kuretz of MediaSmartServer.net says “Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 makes storing and accessing your media easier by bringing all the content contained on your Home Server smoothly into your Windows 7 libraries. TV Archive is also a very nice feature that has allowed me to record TV shows and move them to my Home Server to be watched at a later time.”

Here are some details on what’s new:

Windows 7 Libraries integration

When you install the Windows Home Server Connector and log on a computer running Windows 7, you can access the Windows Home Server shared folders from the Windows 7 libraries.

Windows 7 Action Center backup warning suppression

After you install the Windows Home Server Connector to enable the home server backup for your computer running Windows 7, you can suppress the Action Center warning reminding you that Windows Backup has not been set up.

Windows 7 power settings

You can configure your computer running Windows 7 to wake up at a scheduled backup time and then go back to sleep after the backup finishes.

 Console support for Windows 7

Windows 7 is properly displayed as the operating system shown in the Computers & Backup tab.

Windows Search

Windows Search 4 is included to improve query search times, indexing times, and reliability. Extended Remote Discovery increases the efficiency of searching across all your libraries running Windows Search 4. Files encrypted with EFS are now supported.

TV archive

Windows Home Server can automatically archive recorded TV by moving your recordings from a Windows Media Center computer to your home server in the format of your choice. This enables playback in the correct format for your home computers and/or portable devices.

Console view

You can view information about your home server’s storage space, hard drives, backup status, and more from Windows Media Center.

Complete details are available in the Power Pack 3 Release Documentation.

We want to thank our community for all of their testing and feedback over these past months with the Power Pack 3 Beta. You validated that Power Pack 3 was ready for release. We like to think that we are building this product together – as a passionate community.

- The Windows Home Server Team

I am glad to announce that today we shipped a new version of the Windows API Code Pack – version 1.0.1. This is not a major version with a lot of new features, but rather a minor version focused on fixing bugs, improving performance, adding demos and few features updates (new wrappers…)

But before we dive into this new version of the Windows Code Pack let’s better understand what this Windows API Code Pack is all about.

Windows 7 offers new features like the taskbar, libraries, and the Sensor and Location platform, to name a few. These features enable new scenarios and create new opportunities for developers to make their applications shine on Windows 7. All these great features are exposed via the Win32 native API. Currently there is no “Windows 7” namespace in the .NET Framework, and no easy way to use these features from managed code applications. To help managed code developers access them, we released version 1.0 of the Windows API Code Pack for the .NET Framework in August (just after Windows 7 RTM).

The Windows API Code Pack is a free, managed Source Code Library provided by Microsoft as is. You should consider this library as if you wrote it yourself, as if it is your own code. It is a great starting point and provides a really good and solid solution for managed code developers. It covers a lot of the new Windows 7 features as well as some more fundamental core features from the Windows Vista timeframe. You may think of the Windows API Code Pack as the closest thing to an “official” managed API for Windows. But you need to remember that it’s not a product with 24x7 technical support available from Microsoft Customer Service and Support. We believe it is a great solution, and that the codebase is very solid and high quality.

Our goal with the code pack is to enable managed code developers to take advantage of Windows APIs that are not part of the .NET Framework. We feel that as a shared source that is separate from the .NET runtime libraries, the Windows API Code Pack provides an optimal compromise between the Microsoft Win32 managed wrapper, short time-to-market -we released the Windows API Code Pack just a month after the Win7 RTM, and we ship full source code of the library.

The Windows API Code Pack includes a great deal of managed API for Windows (7). For example:

• Extensive integration with the Windows Shell namespace, with support for the Windows Shell property system, providing control like explorer browser and access to Windows Libraries
• A completely 100% feature parity with the native Taskbar API including (but not limited to) JumpLists, Icon Overlay, Progress bar, Thumbnail, custom switcher, Thumbnail Button, etc…
• Windows Task Dialogs , other controls
• Support for Direct3D 11.0 and DXGI 1.0/1.1 APIs
• Support for the Sensor Platform APIs
• Extended Linguistic Services APIs
• Windows Restart Manager
• Power APIs
• And many other features

Each technology represented in the Windows API Code Pack has multiple demos and examples (including source) in C# and VB. We are planning on releasing updates to the Windows API Code Pack roughly every three months. We will be investing mainly in stability (meaning fixing bugs), fundamentals, testing and documentation, as well as new feature support (based on customer feedback).

You may ask yourself, “Why isn't the Windows API Code Pack part of the .NET Framework?”

We ship open source code that we might bring into the runtime sometime in the future, if we feel it's sufficiently core to the entire framework to be worth the size increase. Remember the .NET Framework runs on both Windows Vista and Windows XP. However, Windows 7 is here now, and we want to enable you to access this set of free, open source library sooner rather than later. We’re shipping this library in a community-supported form and, as you can see, we intend to keep updating it. While this version (1.0.1) is a minor release, we are planning on another release in the next few months. In the meantime, you get the best of both worlds in a package that you can use as a whole or in parts without restriction.

Another question you may ask is, “Will .NET 4 replace the need to use the Windows API Code pack?”

When .NET 4 ships, you will be able to use its Windows 7 features such as Taskbar and multitouch integration with WPF, DirectWrite support, and the location API via the Devices namespace. Continue to access other features such as libraries, Restart Manager, and Sensors via the Windows API Code Pack.

Last but not least, we are looking for feedback from the community – that is you the .NET developer using this library to write managed code applications for Windows 7. On the Windows API Code Pack site, you can ask questions, provide feedback, report bugs, and follow open bugs. Your input is critical for the continuation of this library, so please send us your feedback and questions.

To learn more about how to use the Windows API Code Pack check the Windows 7 Training on Channel 9

Hot off the presses, we’re extremely pleased to report that our newest OEM, ASUS, has just announced that they’ll soon be introducing a new Home Server to the market here in the US – and in other markets across the globe. Their TS Mini Home Server, powered by a 1.66 GhZ Intel Atom chipset and running Windows Home Server, will come in two configurations:

• 500GB Hard Drive (with 1 empty HDD bay) @ $349 MSRP
• 1 TB Hard Drive (with 1 empty HDD bay) @ $529 MSRP

The form factor is pretty sleek and comes packed with 6 USB ports and an eSata port for additional external storage options. In addition to all the great features of the underlying Windows Home Server operating system, the TS Mini will also come bundled with a free year long subscription to a 500 GB online storage service, a feature that automatically synchronizes files stored on the TS Mini with external drives, and a real time system monitoring tool.

Not to be outdone, ASUS also points to the device’s ‘green’ credentials: it’s certified ‘Energy 5.0’ compliant and consumes on average only 24.5W.

The TS Mini is now available for pre-order at online retailers Amazon.com and NewEgg.

A hearty welcome to ASUS in joining the Home Server family!

- Mark

Today is Day 2 of PDC09, and attendees were given a nice “treat.” During this morning’s keynote, Windows and Windows Live Division President Steven Sinofsky took the stage and announced that all attendees* of this year’s PDC will be given an Acer Aspire 1420P Convertible Tablet PC. This is being done to show our gratitude for the support we received by PDC attendees in the development process of Windows 7. This PC enables developers to leverage many of the unique Windows 7 capabilities including multitouch – which I will talk about further down in this post.

This laptop promotion is the result of a collaborative effort with Acer, whom we worked closely with to have these laptops ready for PDC. This PC is not yet available in the US (Acer has not yet announced pricing and availability for this PC) so that makes this “PDC Edition” of the laptop exclusive to PDC attendees.

The Aspire 1420P PDC Edition comes with the following specs:

• Windows 7 Ultimate x64
• Processor: Intel Celeron CPU SU2300 @ 1.2GHz
• Memory: 2GB (Supports up to 8GB)
• Display: 11.6” Widescreen |1366x768 Resolution
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
• Network: 10/100/1000 Ethernet | Intel Wi-Fi Link 1000 802.11b/g/Draft-N
• Mobile Broadband: 3G
• Storage: 250GB

For a more complete and detailed list of specs, click here.

The Aspire 1420P comes with 3 USB ports, 1 HDMI port for connecting to HDTVs and monitors, a VGA port, Ethernet port, and a headphone and microphone jack. The laptop features a unique design with a metallic textured design just above the keyboard and a metal hinge for converting the laptop into Tablet mode. Its design is essentially a small laptop with Tablet PC features. It’s slim, light, and has a small footprint – making it easy to carry around. This laptop features a CTRL+ALT+DEL button and a Flip 3D button. Also, the Aspire 1420P uses the Windows 7 Sensor and Location Platform to adjust the screen depending on which way you hold the PC (in Tablet mode). For example: if you’re holding it a landscape position, the screen will display in landscape for you. Vice versa if you hold it in a portrait position.

We worked with Acer to image the laptops with some great software – including the beta release of Office 2010.

• Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta
• Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7
• Windows Live Essentials
• Windows Virtual PC with Windows XP Mode
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Corel Paint it! touch

Because the Aspire 1420P supports Windows Touch, we’ve included the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 as well as Corel Paint it! touch.

Corel Paint it! touch allows you to use your fingers to draw and paint. You can also turn your photos into paintings too.

One application I’ve written about recently is Amazon’s Kindle for PC. Amazon has released Kindle for PC and it works great on this laptop. You can download the beta of Kindle for PC today here. You can use multitouch gestures to move from page to page on the Kindle book you are reading. You can also zoom in and out with ease. For more on the Kindle for PC app, check out my demo video here on this post. In Tablet mode, reading books with Kindle for PC is very nice.

The Aspire 1420P also sports Mobile Broadband. With Windows 7, using Mobile Broadband is easier than ever before. Windows 7 will automatically detect if a Mobile Broadband connection is available (after inserting your SIM card).

You can choose to connect to the Mobile Broadband connection where you will be required enter subscription details from your mobile carrier. No need to mess with 3^rd party Mobile Broadband connection utilities.

Not only can you use multitouch with the Aspire 1420P, you can also use it as a Tablet. The Aspire 1420P is perfect for writing down notes using Microsoft OneNote 2010 (my favorite Office app).

Overall, this PC will be great for all the developers attending PDC to experience many of Windows 7’s new features and to be able to develop with those features in mind.

* This promotion is for full-conference attendees who are onsite at PDC. It is not available to Microsoft attendees, members of the media, government employees, staff, speakers, crew, volunteers, day pass attendees, guests, or Workshop-only attendees.

Developers! Developers! Developers! Greetings from the Microsoft PDC in LA – it’s Mark Relph from the Windows Ecosystem Team. I hope everyone is enjoying PDC this year either here in person or watching the stream at microsoftpdc.com. I wanted to give you a sense of what the Windows Ecosystem team is doing at PDC and the conversations we are having with our amazing developer community at the show. I just walked out of the Day 2 keynote that featured Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows & Windows Live Division and it was fantastic! (for a couple of big reasons)

A Hallway Discussion about Building Windows 7

Steven’s keynote began as a “hallway discussion” about how we developed Windows 7. We learned a lot from the Windows 7 development process. Steven described the engagement we had with beta testers, partners and the developer community across various channels including the “Engineering 7” blog and the Windows Ecosystem Readiness Program. These programs helped us to make sure developers had the resources they needed to be ready for Windows 7. We also found that a disciplined release and disclosure cycle was invaluable. Everyone wants to get code sooner, but having API complete and feature complete code that is actionable is far more valuable. This extended to our disclosure by ensuring all information was accurate and actionable to ensure we provided the ecosystem with correct information.

One of the key highlights from Sinofsky’s keynote was the role of telemetry and research in developing Windows 7. Telemetry is the broad set of tools we use to assess the engineering “integrity” of the Windows platform and how Windows is performing in the real world. This real world data has been incredibly valuable for us in enhancing the product. Without customers opting in to participate and send us real time data- we would not be able to make some of the improvements we made. Beyond the telemetry is the qualitative view—the type of research we do to gain an in depth understanding of how people use their PCs and what problems people would like to be solved. As developers we often feel “we know” what customers want. These are some of the tools that help us to remove our observer biases and to walk in the shoes of real customers.

The Windows 7 Ecosystem - Great Hardware Powered By Great Software

Steven then shifted to a focus on Developing for Windows 7. Steven’s keynote highlighted how vibrant the ecosystem around Windows 7 is. Along with Mike Angiulo, they demonstrated the opportunity developers have to take advantage of the range of hardware devices that run Windows. The ecosystem around Windows is really amazing. Think about the install base - there are more than one billion users who use Windows.  Those users want great applications and there are 3 million programmers building applications around the world and 90 percent of those developers target Windows.   You could also look at our telemetry from the beta cycle which shows more than 800,000 unique applications (which includes multiple versions, 32/64 bit & languages) running on Windows 7 during the beta timeframe.  From packaged ISV software, shareware and custom applications the number of applications available for Windows 7 is measured in the hundreds of thousands. Only 3 weeks after the launch of Windows 7 we know that over 25,000 applications from our partners in the Microsoft Partner Program have a public statement of support for Windows. Even more partners are striving for a higher quality bar by earning the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo. Today, 1700 hardware and software companies have delivered over 9,000 logo’d products.  Many partners are also coming out with public statements of support. One way to measure that is the Windows 7 Compatibility Center which provides compatibility information and upgrade path for some of the most commonly used products on the market. We have had 2 million visitors to the site since its launch on October 20^th. Today, there are over 25,000 products listed on the site with both 32-bit and 64-bit compatibility status and our database that is constantly growing. Finally if you take into account market impact, over the last several years, NPD data tells us that the top 4000 applications generated $4 billion in sales. This speaks volumes to the strength of the software ecosystem.   As I post this blog, it is clear that the Windows ecosystem is growing and thriving.

Speaking Of Hardware….

Steven spent a few minutes talking about what it takes to build a laptop. The decisions about processors, memory, inputs, video and the drivers the make the experience great. He talked about working with our friends at Acer to really experience what it takes to build a great PC. Speaking of hardware, there was one really big surprise…….

For all the full conference attendees of PDC09 we giving away a “PDC Special Edition” laptop!! It’s a cool machine and Brandon will be posting a full review on the machine to this blog very soon.

Finally, Steven talked about the future of IE. I won’t cover the details here, but my colleague Dean Hachamovitch will speak to the news over on the IE Blog.

Announcing the Winners of The Code7 Contest

Another way to look at the health of the ecosystem is individual innovation. Over the last few months we gave developers around the globe the opportunity to show the world their talents in the Code7 Developer Contest. Developers across multiple countries answered the call and we had finalists from around the world join us at PDC to show off their work for the final judging. I had the pleasure of hosting the final event during the pre-PDC Windows Developer Bootcamp. I’m pleased to announce the grand prize winner is Benjamin Bondi from the Middle East & Africa for his application called “Notes Everywhere” a WPF client that enables you to manage desktop notes everywhere by leveraging Windows 7 and Windows Azure. Benjamin will receive $17,777 and the accolades of his peers in the developer community!

The momentum of the ecosystem and excitement of developers has made PDC an amazing event to be a part of. Sinofsky’s movie theater analogy from the keynote is the best way to describe it. We’ve built a great theatre with awesome sound, a great projector, good snacks, and comfortable seats - but the theatre is only as good as the movie that brings it to life. The same can be said about Windows 7 – it is a great OS supported by amazing hardware & software. If you are a developers and want to bring your application to life on the big screen then think about building the modern Windows application by building on – the Ribbon User Interface, Jump Lists & Progress Bars, Libraries, Multi-touch, Ink, Speech, DirectX®, High Definition Audio/Video, sensors and a connection to the cloud. Check out a few of the resources available to you at the Windows Developer Center and watch for the Windows specific sessions from the PDC as they become available online at microsoftpdc.com