More photos from Africa

March 17, 2007
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Air Originally uploaded by ckindel. I’m now about 1/3 of the way through organizing and filtering the over 4000 photos we took in Africa. I still haven’t geo tagged any, but I appreicate the pointers I have gotten from people on good tools to use. Click here to see my Flickr set containing a sampling of the best shots we took.I’m off to Europe tomorrow to visit with Windows Home Server partners and to see …Continue reading →

Using WHS Computer Backup to upgrade a PC

March 17, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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This morning I used Windows Home Server’s Compter Backup capability to “upgrade” my main workstation’s HDD. Here’s how I did it… My main PC at home has a 60GB WD Raptor 10k RPM drive in it. For some reason that escapes me, long ago I had configured it such that I was only using one of these drives and I had it partitioned into two partitions (C: 40GB and D: the rest). Why I did …Continue reading →

ComputerWorld Review of Windows Home Server

March 2, 2007
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ComputerWorld has a comprehesive review of Windows Home Server. “I found Home Server to be intuitive to use and very effective at backing up data as well as monitoring my home network’s health. Its simplicity and automation will make it a winner with many home users. More technically savvy users, however, may find its limitations frustrating. Microsoft has done a great job of hiding the complexities of server management in Home Server. … For my part, …Continue reading →

Fake product screenshots

March 1, 2007
Smart Home
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Fake Windows Home Server screen.  This is weird. I can understand people who have too much time on their hands creating fake product images of products that are not available yet. For example all of the mocked up images of Apple’s products that show up on Engadget regularly.I get that.I also sorta get the fact that when the Wikipedia article for Windows Home Server appeared (the day we announced in January) it had a fake/mocked up …Continue reading →

Back from Africa

February 25, 2007
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Day 1 – Arusha to Serena 162 Originally uploaded by ckindel. We’re finally back from our amazing trip to East Africa. I thought I’d be able to jack in during our lay over at the Amsterdam airport and start to catch up on mail and start organizing photos. Almost 4000 of them.  But it didn’t happen.I took my GPS with me and created track logs of everywhere we went. I’m really excited about geotagging all …Continue reading →

Hello from the Serengeti

February 18, 2007
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Day 1 – Arusha to Serena 162 Originally uploaded by ckindel. The “tent camp” we are staying at here in the Sergengeti has a PC with satellite “broadband” access. I was able to sequester it long enough to upload this image and type this post. So far, the sights have been pretty unbelievable. Lions, giraffes, hyeaneas, birds, cape buffalo, elephants, gizelles, … Over 1600 photos between the four of us so far and we’ve only …Continue reading →

A great runthrough of Windows Home Server setup

February 15, 2007
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Terry over at We Got Served posted a nice run through of what the setup for Windows Home Server beta 2 is like. He took pictures along the way and if you are curious to see what it looks like before you get your beta kit take a gander. We Got Served Note this is probably the last post I’ll make for a while; I’m off to Africa for vacation. We are going to the Serengeti!

Jetman: A human jet airplane

February 14, 2007
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There are few things cooler than this. Ever. I want one of these. Wow. http://jet-man.com/playervideo.swf?video=jetman2007.flv  

Where I answer "why not"…

February 13, 2007
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FYI: I just posted a lengthy post titled “Why Doesn’t Windows Home Server do Foo?” over on the Windows Home Server Team Blog.

Building your Windows Home Server box

February 11, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Until OEMs ship Windows Home Server hardware the only way to run Windows Home Server is on a machine you provide. The hardware requirements are pretty meager: An x86 CPU with roughly the same horsepower as a 1GHz Pentium III. It will actually run on less (I had it running on an old 550MHz Pentium III for a while), but for a reasonable experience you want something in this range. My current box at home …Continue reading →

RSS Aggravation

February 11, 2007
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So far I think they all suck. What am I talking about? RSS Aggrigators. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between RSS Bandit, Google Reader, Outlook 2007, and several others for the last few months and none of them make me happy. A critical requirement for me is to be able to access my feedlist, with updated read counts, from any of 3 or 4 computers. RSS Bandit allows uploading and downloading the feedlist to …Continue reading →

One Man (keeps) Shouting

February 8, 2007
Smart Home
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Rick has posted several more parts of his ongoing series on Windows Home Server based on his discussions with me. He’s up to “Part 4“ as of today: Part 1 – Security of Data, User Privacy  Part 2 – User Management Part 3 – Business/Marketing Part 4 – Technology Enjoy…

Scoble says the buzz has died?

February 5, 2007
Smart Home
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First, I think the idea of having a conversation via blogs is funny. In his post today Robert says “I hope to interview Charlie Kindel (he runs the Home Server group) when I visit Seattle later this month…“ Since he didn’t send me email with a request to meet, I guess I’m suppposed to reply via my blog as well. So here goes: Hi, Robert. I’d love to chat with you when you are up …Continue reading →

Book Review: River of Gods

February 5, 2007
Books, Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Whew! I finally finished River of Gods by Ian McDonald this weekend. I categorize River of Gods as a “Great story but a PITA to read book”. Here’s the deal: I shouldn’t have to work to read a science fiction novel. To me “a great read” just flows…I start reading the first chapter and 17 hours later I close the book and say “wow”. The books I love to read don’t make me tired. I …Continue reading →

Windows Home Server team blog

February 1, 2007
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My team (the Windows Home Server team) now has a blog. Here’s the abstract for this new blog. This blog is managed by the Windows Home Server team at Microsoft.  Our goal with the blog is to educate and inform families with multiple PCs about how Windows Home Server will help them easily store, protect and share their treasured photos, music, videos and documents.  We hope you enjoy the blog and find it a good source of …Continue reading →

Visual Studio Express and Windows Home Server

January 26, 2007
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Dan Fernandez is the lead product manager for Visual Studio Express. He just blogged about developing tools and applications for Windows Home Server using Visual Studio. + As I mentioned in my Channel9 video I’m super excited that WHS is going to enable geeks, makers, hobbyists, or whatever you want to call them to build fun and exciting things for their homes. Of course, WHS will also allow “professionals” to build products that extend the …Continue reading →

Matt Pietrek & Windows Home Server

January 26, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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I just noticed that Matt Pietrek has been blogging about his experience playing with Windows Home Server. Matt is one of the many MS employees who have been Dogfooding the product for a while.

Change the world or go home

January 25, 2007
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I’ve been working at Microsoft a long time. Almost 17 years. My family and I have made huge sacrifices in our personal lives for Microsoft.  For the most part, I’ve been financially rewarded for those sacrifices. Financially, it’s been a good deal. However, when people ask me “Why? Why do you still work at Microsoft?” the answer is out of my mouth before they can even finish asking the question: “I can’t imagine anywhere else where I …Continue reading →

Home Server Flickr Group

January 20, 2007
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Windows Home Server prototype Originally uploaded by ckindel. I’ve created a Flickr group for collecting pictures of people’s home servers and other related imageshttp://www.flickr.com/groups/homeservers Inspired by the Media Center group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/mediacenter  

Cheesburger Brown…rediscovered

January 18, 2007
Books
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Those of you paying attention will remember Cheesburger Brown. He’s an insanely talented sci-fi author and artist who, two years ago, penned Simon of Space as well as Darth Vader’s blog. Simon of Space was originaly written in the form of a daily serial where each chapter was posted as blog entry every day. When he was posting it, checking for new chapters was a seriously important part of my daily routine. It has since been …Continue reading →