Core OS

I can't say enough good things about this Outlook plugin. I even demoed it to the Windows Search v4 team at the Microsoft MVP Summit a few weeks ago and told them, "Make Windows Search do this!"

Originally introduced to me by my manager and another coworker, Xobni is finally available to everyone to download and install.

If you tried Xobni in the past and had performance problems in Outlook afterwards, that bug was fixed a few builds ago. If you don't know what Xobni is, read the press release here.

It is actually one of the only add-ins I use in Outlook. I normally avoid them. I love the analytics built into the interface and how it can pull phone numbers out of e-mail messages. I also like the fact that it keeps track of file attachments I have sent and received, per person.

Fun fact: Bill Gates uses it.

Note: This isn't a paid endorsement, but if they want to send me some coin, I'll gladly accept it.

Some potential gotchas with clustering with Windows 2008. Don't let this KB article scare you away from using the updated clustering features. They are actually really nice, but it is good to get this information out there.

In Windows Server 2008, a new set of platform APIs has been implemented to provide better functionality, better scalability, and easier manageability for clustering environments. The manageability aspect includes remote management. However, this new set of failover cluster APIs also poses interoperability issues with earlier versions of Windows.

The two items that I find the most interesting from the KB article are:

1. The backup APIs have been removed in Windows Server 2008. You must now use the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) writer to reach this backup functionality in a clustering environment. Additionally, several new APIs have been added, although the pre-Windows Server 2008 APIs should still function.

and

2. Because of a core protocol change in Windows Server 2008, you cannot call failover cluster APIs from earlier Windows clients to Windows Server 2008 clusters. Therefore, the new failover cluster APIs cannot be called from Windows XP or from Windows Server 2003. Currently, the cluster APIs can be called against a Windows Server 2008 cluster only from Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) or from Windows Server 2008.