Wait, what? I’m not even sure what that means?!   Are you seriously telling me that Veeam will send me to VMWorld 2009 in San Franciso? Where do I sign up?!

Veeam Video Contest. Win a FREE trip to VMworld 2009 !

In this economy, who wouldn’t like to win a free trip to VMworld 2009 in San Francisco?

Tell us why you love Veeam and get a chance to win a free full pass to VMworld 2009 or Flip video camera!

How to participate

Between now and June 15,

• Create a video about any Veeam product you love. See Contest Rules for details
• Send us a link to your video at video@veeam.com
• Deadline to submit videos is June 15, 2009

And make sure to post your Video to the Veeam Forum!

And… Then you’re done!  If I don’t see any traction from you folks out there, I’ll have to post a video myself (oh my! will @CXI win a trip to San Francisco!?) Don’t challenge me, I might!  So, post post post! Check it out and get yourself a free trip in this economy, oh and VMWorld2009 should be cool too! ;)   If you need some ideas of what/how to post, hit me up on Twitter and I can help you out also… My idea of a video (for me) likely will be drastically different than you can imagine anyway.. :)

What? Seriously? Are you seriously trying to tell me that Calculator is cooler than just ‘watch me add, watch me divide! ooh, scientific view? whatevah!”

Seriously though, it is!  I didn’t even give it a second glance until someone I’m working with here launched it and the world started to shift before my eyes! (Our unspoken voices have been heard?!?)

While on the surface it looks like it always did “oh blah, calc”

When you start to look under the covers, things start to shift and change!@

Sure, Programmer Mode is kind of cool, and even Statistics

But once you turn on Unit Conversion or Date Calculation, we enter near zOMFG territory!

What is the killer? the true Zed in zOMFG?!?! It’s the Worksheets! THIS IS CALC DAMNIT!

So, whoa, wow and check it out! I wonder if they’ve drastically changed any other ‘core’ functionality that we all take for granted!

If you like me simply did the install without any care for the Product Key and you’re getting closer to that ‘doh! I’m going to deactivate soon!’ well, look no further, because it took me a few searches on Microsoft to find this Key Generator of sorts!

Simply visit this site: Windows 7 Release Candidate

Then simply select your Processor type and Language, and you’ll be prompted for your LiveID.

In my case, that meant copying/pasting the URL into IE, and logging in equaled my Product Key

So, get out there, generate your keys and get your Win7 set and running… until 2010 ;)

For those of you in the ESX space who are religious about your installation and deployment of Host Utility Kits (I hope you are!) 5.1 has just been announced! Hooray!

ESX Host Utilities 5.1 contain the following new features:

• Support for ESX 4.0 hosts.
• Support for role-based access control (RBAC) user names so that root access to storage controllers is not required.
• The mbralign program that fixes misaligned VMDK partitions.
• New timeout values added to config_hba to support software iSCSI initiators on 10 Gb Ethernet. Check the Interoperability Matrix for supported 10 Gb configurations.
• Updated SNIA API libraries for Emulex and QLogic adapters.
• An -expert option for the Host Utilities install command that installs the Host Utilities components but does not set timeouts or paths

And lots of other cool stuff, but these are the major high-lights, so get out there and download today! Hooray!

That’s right! If I ran into you (Hey Developers!) at TechEd I likely harassed you about this contest running from new CloudApp() !

While I am in no way affiliated with newCloudApp() I for one like to see people use their talents to win cold hard cash! Oh, and have some fun in the process!    So what is the plan?

What Is It?

new CloudApp() is a US-based developer challenge for .NET & PHP developers creating cloud applications or services (hereafter “application”) on the Azure™ Services Platform. Have your application judged by industry leadersOm Malik and Michael Cote and share your cloud coding skills with other developers. Grand Prize Winners will be announced at Structure 09 and featured on azure.com.

Register and submit your application now!

When?

• April 30:  Contest Open
• June 18:Submission deadline
• June 19:Community voting starts
• June 25:.NET & PHP category winners announced @ Structure 09
• June 29:Community voting ends
• June 30:Community winner announced

What Could I Win?*

Winning submissions will:

• Be featured on www.azure.com as well as at major Microsoft events
• Be featured in a video interview on Channel 9
• Be announced at Structure 09
• Receive cash ($):
  • NET App Category winner: $5,000 VISA gift card
  • PHP App Category winner: $5,000 VISA gift card
  • Community winner: $2,500 VISA gift card

So, seriously, step up! If you’ve never written an app for the Cloud before, now is the time when there is money on the table! MONEY ON THE TABLE? WHERE, SIGNZ ME UPS! err… Damn lolcatz!    But seriously.. if this is your bag, as it were, no better time than the present for peer acceptance and pocketbook love!   Check it out, and doooo it! :)