News.com: "Microsoft plans to overlay its current sales structure, which divides the continent into regions, with a second group that is focused on five specific industries--financial services, health care and life sciences, manufacturing, professional services and retail."

In light of Jim's announcement, I've posted some suggestions that might help to improve the next generation of tools for GotDotNet.

Just how many people are catching on to this podcasting phenomenon?

Now that we've updated the MSDN blogs platform, I wanted to have a handy link for Community Server questions/issues. Here's the Community Server FAQ for those that are interested. Thanks to Rob and Scott.

I picked up a Channel 9 guy while in Redmond last week. Here's some more evidence that geeks of all ages love Channel 9.

Since joining Microsoft, I frequently find myself in conversations where customers are focused on their architecture and want to understand how our server products fit into their environment from an architectural perspective. For example if a customer has standardized on an integration platform, and then they look at BizTalk and see its...

I'm looking for a headset for my phone- something that is relatively small, has decent talk time, and is fairly inexpensive. Please leave a comment with any recommendations/suggestions/advice. Thanks. [Cross-posted to clrsql.com and blogs.msdn.com]

Check out the comments from Dare on Google's and OSS- good read.

This event isn't exactly my neck of the woods, but it is the same state. And it gives me an excuse to point out the MSDN Events site, which has a very useful RSS feed. Register to attend this FREE session and walk away with the MSDN Event Resource DVD, as well as... Real-world, down-to-earth techniques you can immediately apply to new or...

The Virtual PC Guy is posting a "how to" for migrating a physical computer to a VPC image. I'm hooked on VPC, and I'm currently doing all of my SQL Server 2005 development in a VPC image. I'm interested in doing this with my old computer soon I'm not forced to immediately reinstall all of the old software and restore all of the old...

John Evdemon posts a link to a very interesting looking webcast, "Governance and Compliance in Service-Oriented Solutions". Here's an excerpt from the abstract: Because of the complexity of modifying existing business solutions, compliance can be costly to implement and execute. This webcast will examine the Compliance Architectural Theme...

Before I turn in tonight, I wanted to keep up with my resolutions (item #2). John posted an account of him trying to help his father-in-law fix an issue with his PC. I've definitely been there, and find that when I try to help family I generally always end up looking much less knowledgeable than I actually (think I) am. Anyway, John is a super...

So tonight, without even realizing it, I made my 300th post. In looking back over the past 18 months, 300 posts isn't that many, but it is a start. And when I look at my archives, I'm proud of some of what I blogged about (I think I'm still the only person to have blogged from one of Microsoft's CIO Summits). I also want to thank people...

I'm a pretty organized person by nature, but over the past few months the number of things on my plate (work at MS, charity work, writing a book, new baby coming in early January) has really forced me to rethink my approach to organizing my information. I'm getting about 400 e-mails a day, I have about 10 tasks on any given day and about...

Scoble talks about Channel 9, and describes it as disintermediated marketing. Interesting. I'll go one step further though. Not only is Channel 9 a marketing site, but so is http://blogs.msdn.com (in a way). The PDC is also a huge marketing event. Just because something has technical content, that doesn't mean it isn't marketing. Outside...