Where is Wednesday’s IT Blogwatch? In Denver, where Microsoft launches a Salesforce.com-killer. Not to mention building Scott Hanselman’s ridiculously fast PC…

Marc L. Songini reports:

Years after nimble upstarts like Salesforce.com Inc. broke ground in the on-demand CRM business, Microsoft Corp. is finally set to launch its own, much anticipated hosted offering today at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver. The offering from Microsoft’s Business Solutions unit is based on the next version of its packaged CRM application, code-named Titan, which is due to ship in the fourth quarter.
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The hosted service will come in two versions — Professional and Enterprise Editions. The Professional Edition will include all the customization, sales, service and workflow capabilities of the Titan software. The service will be offered without charge through the end of 2007, and then will be priced at $39 per user per month during 2008 and $44 thereafter … The Enterprise Edition includes the same capabilities and allows users to continue working in an application independently of the service. Once the user logs back on to CRM Live, the data on the laptop is automatically synchronized with the online database … available in April 2008 … at $59.

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After my software installation fiasco with Kodak’s EasyShare 5300 multifunction ink jet printer last week, the last thing I expected was a repeat performance with HP’s Photosmart C5180. But that’s exactly what happened.

The C5180 is the other ink jet printer I’m testing to see if Kodak’s claims of cheaper printing pan out. The issue I have is with all of the nonessential, "value added" software - to me it’s crapware - that the Kodak and HP installation routines pump onto your computer as part of the default installation.

Beautiful plumage on Monday’s IT Blogwatch: in which we ask, "Is Microsoft dead?". Not to mention how to make your own Kentucky-style fried chicken…

Paul "Plan for Spam" Graham opined:

A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they’d positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn’t understand. It was as if I’d told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?
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No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But they’re not dangerous … What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring simultaneously in the mid 2000s … Google … Ajax … broadband Internet … [and] Apple.

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Oh good, it’s Good Friday’s IT Blogwatch: in which the Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie speaks volumes to the online magazine for the Wharton School. Not to mention a great use for an empty 25 disc cake spindle…

The Knowledge@Wharton gnomes interview Ray Ozzie:

Ray Ozzie has a long and storied history of technological innovation, with accomplishments that include creating Lotus Notes and founding Groove Networks. But Ozzie may now be facing the most daunting challenge of his career: coordinating the work of Microsoft’s various product groups to keep the world’s largest software company agile enough to address the challenge of the next generation of Internet-enabled software.
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Ozzie: What is breathtaking to me, once inside, is the scope and the number of initiatives that are being undertaken in parallel by all of [Microsoft’s product] groups. It’s a much more nuanced business than I had appreciated …

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In a past life I was the CTO of Samsung Contact — a startup that sold a Linux-based email-and-collaboration-cum-unified-communications server; an alternative to Microsoft Exchange. It was based on technology licensed from HP OpenMail (on which I worked in several capacities from 1987 to 2001).

One of the interesting things about OpenMail/Contact was the way it supported Microsoft Outlook, using its native "MAPI" mechanism. This allowed a much richer set of functionality than would, say, a standards-based IMAP4 connection.

Earlier this year, Microsoft started  licensing something called the Outlook-Exchange Transport Protocol. I’m seeing a few people out there confuse this with MAPI. It’s not, it’s actually something related but different.