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From the Director of Microsoft's Azure Services Platform Ecosystem

Brandon Watson

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Top Stories by Brandon Watson

About two weeks ago I had the good fortune to spend some time at an offsite where I met Gary Flake.  I remember reading the Wired Magazine cover piece on Gary a few years back, but didn’t have any idea who he was when I was introduced to him at the offsite.  As one of Microsoft’s Technical Fellows, he’s basically one of the 20 or so smartest engineers in the company.  Spending time with a guy like that is a treat, and this guy thinks about stuff that gets me excited.  Data and systems. It’s a good thing Gary is so good at his job, because when he gave me the initial pitch for Pivot I thought it sounded about as interesting as a new sorting algorithm [NOTE: the downloads are restricted to token holders, so if you are interested in getting Pivot, hit me up on Twitter and I... (more)

Microsoft Turning Corners

Mini-MSFT is back, with a post about Microsoft turning The Corner.  It’s interesting to contrast his point of view with that of MG Siegler over at ParisLemon.  Given my own perception of  Valley bias on the part of Siegler (he is one of the new voices of TechCrunch after all), it’s great to see that we’re making progress which is being met with receptivity and not suspicion.  Further, ev... (more)

Introducing Windows Server AppFabric

Azure Cloud on Ulitzer About one year ago I was fortunate to be working on the launch of Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.  With the start of our new fiscal year, I was asked to take over a team which was responsible for the technical marketing for our developer platform product management team.  It’s been quite a journey, and I have been able to expand the scope of the... (more)

Blog Post + Network Effects = NY Times Article

About 3 weeks ago, I wrote this article about the Kindle, and mentioned how I thought that for various reasons attached to the Kindle, I was actually going to be reading more. Shortly thereafter, I got a ping on Facebook from someone I didn’t know.  His name is Brad Stone, and he identified himself as a journalist and he had some questions about my blog post.  I rang him up, and we spoke ... (more)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Install Fails In Boot Camp

I ran into an interesting bug this past wee when trying to install the beta 2 build of Visual Studio 2010.  I tried both the web bootstrap install and the full ISO download.  I also tried the Ultimate version as well as Professional.  Nothing seemed to be working. It turns out that my machine configuration was the problem.  I am running a MacBook Pro for my personal dev machine, mostly so... (more)