It's time again to share the content of CitrixBlogger.Org with the main Citrix blog space. Summarizing the content tends to reveal that the topics are very diverse. It is unclear whether this is good or bad. Most likely based on "Good to Great" standards it is not the best strategy. However, diversity often leads to interesting avenues of exploration. The marketing path with Jim Trout is perhaps the most different but also strangely very relevant. Walking down memory lane with Bill Gates was quite a treat. Learning what makes VHD tick was unexpectedly easy. Sharing tips is always fun since it is great to explore some new angle with the hopes of helping out other people as well.

Anyways, I hope you find something interesting in this list. Having a blog is a bit like trying to find customers. You try lots of topics in the hopes of generating interest. Typically the topics fall a bit flat but sometimes they do much better than expected. A post earlier this year spiked around 1000 people in the first day. The post was related to Microsoft's worst nightmare . The post was picked up by a Mac site that had a high readership. I tried one more time to address that market but did not catch the same interest the second time around.

Life is a long and winding road. Trying to capture audience seems a bit futile. It is far better for them to discover you, even if the posts are a bit quirky.

*REDFLY
New device which promises to make it much easier to use Smartphones with Citrix clients

*Virtual Hard Disk Specification
The original specification for virtual hard disks that is spreading quickly within Citrix

*Bill Gates - Looking Back, Moving Ahead
A misty colored look through the combined history of Bill Gates and Microsoft

*The Better Product Fallacy
Don't think that building a better product is going to make you more popular

*Sumit Dhawan Speaks About VDI
Honesty is always the best policy when it comes to VDI

*Vista Snipping Tool
Windows goes under the scissors through this excellent capture tool

*Citrix Video Tips
Put the words video and tips together and most likely it will be visually interesting

*Easy Sysinternals Tools
Run Sysinternals tools from anywhere without having to locate or install

It has now been two years since I started blogging. Most of the early posts were based on documenting Citrix history. More recent posts tend to wander many more recent Citrix related topics.

Here is the list since the last update:

• Single User ICA Server - Citrix Product Idea 431
  Idea submitted to Citrix Product Ideas Database to build single user version of ICA.

• ICA Stream - Citrix Product Idea 187
  Another idea related to treating ICA like a streaming protocol.

• Informal VDI Poll
  Simple poll about why customers would use VDI.

• Why not choose VDI?
  Another poll about why customers would not use VDI.

• The Next 5000 Days of the Web
  Insight into what might come to the web in the next 5000 days.

• Wandering Desktops
  Exploring the idea of desktops isolated from the underlying hardware.

• Citrix XenDesktop iPhone Demo
  Presenting the Citrix iPhone demo with a poll about whether we should do a client.

• Shawn Bass at Geek Speak Live 2008
  An investigation into what really happened at Geek Speak with Shawn Bass VDI presentation.

• Application Virtualization Roundup
  A decent summary of the players in the application virtualization space.

• Citrix Logos
  The Citrix logos over the years collected in one post! Very much in the history category.

• InfoWorld XenDesktop Review
  Outside opinion about XenDesktop from InfoWorld.

• DayJet Stops Flying
  It has happened. DayJet is finished.

• Trout on Strategy
  Jack Trout shares his marketing wisdom with the world.

I really enjoy using WordPress and that is one of the biggest reasons why I do not blog here. Another major reason is that I get full control of content.

Instead of pointing out what I think are the most relevant posts, I'm hoping that the brief summaries will be enough.

From time to time it seems necessary to link Citrixblogger.org to the activities going on the main Citrix blog.  Perhaps it would make more sense to deploy the posts to both sites.  At this point it seems more friendly to post once and then refer to the posts from here.

Here is a list of the 10 most recent posts:

Session Recovery Idea 422
Offline Access Idea 2003
Hype Cycle and Virtualization
Beyond Hardware Virtualization
Server Based Computing versus Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
BriForum 2008 Aftermath
Technology Faith
User Profiles and Folder Redirection
Clipboard Enhancements
Digital Independence

The most topical is "Server Based Computing versus Virtual Desktop Infrastructure".  The overall focus is shifting more to issues related to virtualization and potential trends and ideas.

The posts on this server related to me in the past (officially 150) are mostly small clips of the original.  The old blog site here would only copy the first few lines with a link to citrite.org.  Citrite.org is now gone.  This means the only way to get the full details is to manually match the post clips with posts on Citrixblogger.org.  It would make sense that most people would not bother. 

At Citrixblogger.org there are now more than 250 posts to scan through.  It is very difficult to summarize what people find the most interesting over there.  Typically people are searching for help with Citrix issues (like COM ports, and the clipboard) or they want more information about aspects of XenDesktop.

In September it will be two years since blogging began at Citrix.  As most people have noticed, I've really enjoyed it.  The running joke is that if I learn something new, I'm likely to blog about it.  Truthfully that was more true towards the beginning than now.

Blogging opened some new experiences including the invitation to BriForum 2008 in Chicago.  It was well worth it and proved that the extended Citrix community is really healthy with some incredibly bright advocates and presenters.

Thanks to Citrix for making this possible and also thanks for the words of encouragement over the last two years.

Here is a summary of posts from http://citrixblogger.org/

PNAgent and how it never goes away 

http://citrixblogger.org/2008/04/17/citrix-notification-area-abuse-pnagent/

Good to Great series 

http://citrixblogger.org/2008/04/21/good-to-great/ 

http://citrixblogger.org/2008/04/22/level-5-leadership/

http://citrixblogger.org/2008/04/24/first-who-then-what/ 

http://citrixblogger.org/2008/04/28/confront-the-brutal-facts/

I don't come over here very often but thought it would be worthwhile mentioning these posts. 

I've been wondering if I should mention here where I have gone.
Some people think that I have stopped blogging.  This is actually not true.  I've just moved.

My new address is http://citrixblogger.org based on WordPress.  The change happened about the time Citrite.org collapsed.  At that stage, this site was not fully set up yet.  I got used to my own space and now I would be reluctant to move back.  Citrixblogger.org is just about Citrix stuff that I write about.

As an example of a relevant post, please check out http://citrixblogger.org/2008/03/08/lessons-from-rick-mack/.
It's important to mention that I do blog once a day so there is usually something new.

Stop by if you get a chance.

There seems to be some confusion about XenDesktop relating to where it can run the workstations.  The name XenDesktop implies that it can only run with Xen but the truth is that it has been designed for running on other platforms as well.  Specifically, it can run on individual workstations (without virtualization), blade servers (also without virtualization), and virtualization servers.  The key message is that other VM providers can be supported as well.

XenDesktop really is not about locking you into a particular solution but rather to give you flexibility to create an environment that you want and can support.

The model is not radically new but it is new for Citrix to be embracing this model fully with an intent to have a full solution across the whole application delivery market (including desktop delivery).

The key technology for enabling the remoting of workstations is codenamed "PortICA" and has now been in development for more than two years.  PortICA allows Windows XP and Vista to be accessed remotely using standard ICA Clients and using standard Citrix infrastructure.  The goal of PortICA has been to port elements of Presentation Server to a workstation and that goal is almost complete.

PortICA is a project based out of Advanced Products in Sydney, Australia.  The team consists of six developers.  I'm only mentioning this to convey how big things can come from small teams.  The Advanced Products team in Sydney has produced a number of products and enhancements over the years including things like the Citrix Secure Gateway, Seamless support, SmartAuditor, AIE (App isolation), SpeedScreen (various flavours), ZL (Zero Latency), ICA Client Object, and Pictor.  It is a solid team with diverse experience.  The only limit the group has is based on not having enough people to tackle bigger or more projects.

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There is a topic I been meaning to cover for months now but just haven tackled it.  It is more research based and certainly isn Citrix related (yet) but it so interesting that I had to write about it. Earlier this year I found about Mirror Neurons and when I learned more about the topic, everything [...]

Years and years ago, I came to the conclusion that good software should only provide a few (3 - 5) choices of action at any given time. This was based on text menu systems before even the era of Windows or Mac. Personally, it just seemed too cluttered and too confusing to provide [...]

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David Robinson in Sydney recently alerted me to an interview with Ed Iacobucci about his company DayJet.  Within the last month, DayJet has launched service within Florida.  Ed is the founder of Citrix and left Citrix in 2000 to start what ultimately became DayJet. The premise of DayJet is to fly customers directly to their destinations [...]

This post is really about trying to catch up with what has been going on with PortICA Time Zone Support. For those of you that haven read about Citrix Time Zone Support, please look at my previous post. The idea is to preserve the user local time zone while working on a potentially [...]

About two months ago I received an email internally that announced a new Troubleshooting Guide . I didn pay much mind to this since I don actively support customer sites. Today I decided to look it over. It better than expected. I would recommend this guide to customers that are new to reporting issues [...]