Where what and why Zune

Engadget has published an article describing all we know about ZUNE, the Microsoft's IPOD killer.
Knowing Microsoft, it might be trying to cover the DRM market that Apple is gathering under IPOD and distribution of music. I think it is the music (songs) that made M$ to jump in to the market. As with all Microsoft's hardware ventures, (except XBOX) I hope this might not kill it self! Perhaps it a new way of delivering blue (red) crash screen in small format!
Anyway if you are interested, join the crowd at engadget to read, comment!!

Skype gadget

New skype gadget, a wi-fi phone
There is new wi-fi phone with built in skype software. Fire up your wireless gateway and grab this phone! To read more click on the header or here.

Winternals no more!

When I first saw the blog post by Dwight Silverman and Jim Thompson at techblog, I was surprised and let a long sigh! Just what we need in this buggy windows world. Hope there are more Marks in the crowd!
Remember the Sony root kit saga! That we posted while ago? Yes Mark Russinovich, who discovered that root kit is now a Microsoft technical fellow!Vi
Here is his own words;
" I'm very pleased to announce that Microsoft has acquired Winternals Software and Sysinternals. Bryce Cogswell and I founded both Winternals and Sysinternals (originally NTInternals) back in 1996 with the goal of developing advanced technologies for Windows. We've had an incredible amount of fun over the last ten years working on a wide range of diverse products such as Winternals Administrator's pack, Protection Manager, Defrag Manager, and Recovery Manager, and the dozens of Sysinternals tools, including Filemon, Regmon and Process Explorer, that millions of people use every day for systems troubleshooting and management. There's nothing more satisfying for me than to see our ideas and their implementation have a positive impact.

That's what makes being acquired by Microsoft especially exciting and rewarding. I'm joining Microsoft as a technical fellow in the Platform and Services Division, which is the division that includes the Core Operating Systems Division, Windows Client and Windows Live, and Windows Server and Tools. I'll therefore be working on challenging projects that span the entire Windows product line and directly influence subsequent generations of the most important operating system on the planet. From security to virtualization to performance to a more manageable application model, there's no end of interesting areas to explore and innovate."

Well Sony root kit is not the only thing that Mark discovered, he discovered many a windows problems and provided us with many a tools to fix them. From Administrator's Pak, which I used extensively to autoruns to find and manage the place where most malware and rootkits begin their process.

I was wondering why Mark was so quite after he revealed the Sony rootkit. May be he was busy talking to Microsoft. Anyway I hope that Microsoft bought him out, not to silence him but to improve windows with his abilities. Get all the tools while you can at Systernals, you are going to need them. But will they work with Vista?