The Pirates of Silicon Valley Pt. II- Electric Boogaloo

What the heck does this title mean? Well, it means that they’re dancing a jig down in Sunnyvale because Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, has joined the board of Apple.

Welcome to the software business Eric, and best of luck to you in your future work with Steve Jobs.

UPDATE- An excellent analysis by Don Dodge. His comment on the speculation about a Google/Apple alliance: “Could Google and Sun cooperate on a StarOffice product to compete with Microsoft Office? Could Google and Apple cooperate on an iTunes product to compete with Zune? Could Google and Mozilla cooperate on a product to compete with Internet Explorer? Sure, there are lots of synergies smart people could imagine. But unless there is pent up customer demand…it isn’t going to matter.”

32-bit Vista and Protected HD Content

Windows Vista Team Blog: Clarifying Windows Vista Support of Protected HD Content in 32-bit Systems

I’m glad to see a quick response to this story spreading on the meme trackers earlier today. The only question I would pose is has Microsoft provided any guidance to ISVs related to this issue or do we know what any of them are planning to do? I think that a little more detail would be useful here.

Arch 2.0

Just Shelley: “I’m trying a little behind the scenes recruiting to get O’Reilly to put on a scripting, Ajax, and web development conference here in St. Louis.”

Microsoft reaching out to Firefox developers

Not exactly a brand new story, but definitely worth sharing. Via arstechnica: “Microsoft wants to help aid in the development of Firefox. It sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it? If you’re still here, let me tell you that it’s not as bad as it seems. Sam Ramjii, Director of Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab, has extended an invitation to the Firefox and Thunderbird developers asking them if they’d like to visit the company’s open source research center. Microsoft’s hopes are that, in a four-day span, the company can provide the open source developers with enough information to get the popular web browser running smoothly on Windows Vista.”

Windows Live Contacts now in beta

People Ready in St. Louis: “Windows Live Contacts is a new service that enables you to integrate your customer’s Windows Live Contacts information (Hotmail and Messenger contacts) into your web site. There is some good feedback coming in from the online community following this announcement. If you want to make it simple to let your customers leverage their contacts data while on your site or reach their contacts to help promote your content or services, you should definitely check it out.”

I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of the current Windows Live properties and other sites integrate this new functionality.