Microsoft has ideas for your home [2007 archive]

[As part of a series rediscovering some geeky tech posts, this one I wrote in April 2007]

Hey it's interesting to note that beyond the Windows and Office offerings to the consumer market, Microsoft are soon to be offering "Windows Home Server". This is designed to tie all your data - be it home video, recorded TV or any other files - to one place, where it can be managed and backed up onto another disk without you needing to worry about backing up.

If Windows Home Server sounds an exciting idea to tryout before it ships and you have a spare 1 GHz machine, you can apply now to join the beta team.

See what a number of us have to say about Windows Home Server, following Bill Gates' announcement at the US Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The other exciting thing for me this week is that Google have released "My Maps" - an easy way to build a Google maps mashup, but without needing to know how to code against their API. Create your own layers of features and then publish your map, included embedded video from YouTube and all!