Open Source Ahoy!

The first big Open Source sell off is finally going to happen, I'm sure a lot of VC's and business gurus are watching this development with mixed reactions. How can a company that has it's code out there in the open still make profits and be valued so high? The genius is in the details as always, this company specializes in high end consulting and solutions. http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/sun-to-acquire-mysql.html SUN is all set to take over MySQL for (hold your breath) $1 billion, the largest price till date in the open source industry. As one of the early bunch of guys who began to deploy MySQL to customers because they didn't have to pay for it, I can vouch for it's stability. MySQL has also evolved over the years starting from being a simple database solution to getting into the more intricate areas and in it's current form can directly take the fight to ORACLE and most importantly Microsoft's SQL Server.

Fernando Alonso and McLaren

Last week I stuck my neck out with the following comment in my personal blog.

McLaren needs Alonso as much as Alonso needs McLaren. There aren't too many options for the double world champion. The only place that would look like a promotion is Ferrari but Italians and Spainards are not good bedfellows. Alonso will not go from McLaren, I'm sticking my neck out on this one. Simply because the McLaren car this year is a rock solid package, it has completed every race it has started and except for just two failures during qualifying - Alonso's engine block and Hamilton's tyre, the car has performed incredibly well. I'm doubly sure that the research and development effort of McLaren is immensely being benefitted by Alonso's experience.

The press this weekend has been reporting the same news and looks like I guessed it pretty right, atleast for this season. Today's race in Istanbul should be an exciting one.

Identify this guy

Who is this guy and what is he doing at Nurburgring?

I love these videos

Bill Gates - Coke Commercial (Coca-Cola) - Soapbox on MSN Video

Bill Gates in Doom - Soapbox on MSN Video

(PS: Hez my Boss, be careful what you say about him in front of me)

Late Post - Bill Gates and Steve Jobs @ D5

A few weeks ago Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave an interview together on D5. While Mossberg is an ass I'm happy that he did bring together the two industry giants on the same stage. I watched it the moment D5 published it on the website and he is the highlights from Youtube. Just search for 'Bill Gates D5' on Youtube for the rest of it.

YouTube - Bill Gates and Steve Jobs highlights at D5

Windows Live Writer

I'm arguably one of the laziest bloggers (as you can gather from the number of my posts). In order to facilitate a recent decision to correct that habit, I decided to take a look at Windows Live Writer as I've heard rave reviews about it. The last two posts on this blog was made from WLW and its awesome. Here are some points I notice about it.

• Its simple and straight forward
• It expectedly has a very much Microsoft Word feel to it
• It can post to almost any blog / blogging service out there in the wide world. I personally tried my MSDN blog, Live Spaces and Blogspot and it came out of top every time.
• I has a very active as well as reactive team working on it, ably supported by a community that has developed very useful plugins for it.

In short I'm expecting to post every other post on any of my blogs from this tool going forward. You can find plugins for the same at the Windows Live Gallery for WLW.

If I have any feature request it is to somehow sync with accessible blogs and be able to edit previous logs. Now that certainly requires a partnership between the blog service and the WLW team, and I'm thinking MSN Spaces team might be a good place to start. Of course if I'm in the dark again and there is a way out, do point me toward it. Another feature might be to download all the previous blogs and then be able to post the same on a different blog. Would be great for Syncing blogs when one is moving over to a new provider. Again if there is any tool that can help someone move from  Blogspot to spaces throw the link my way please :)

Windows Vista - Upgrade pathways

I'd be participating in a support Webcast on Windows Vista Upgrade pathways sometime on July 25th at 10:00 AM PST. I will not presenting it, but might come on voice during the Q & A. I'm happy about doing this as this should be a good opportunity to help customers understand the various Vista upgrade options and especially the common mistakes made. If you need something specific added, feel free to ping me and I'll try and address the same on this Webcast.

EDIT: Almost forgot. You can find the Webcast at this link.

Windows Vista Support WebCasts: Supported upgrade pathways to install Windows Vista