Edit: OK.. We're having problems with the forum poll. Check details below on how to submit your vote for the winner! Please take a minute to comment on who should win! 

OK I'm proud to announce the 3 finalists of the Bink.nu contest. First of all I want to thank everyone that participated. It was a tough job selecting the best questions from all 258 participants. I also want to thank the Bink.nu team for helping out: Martijn, Raymond, Sumeeth and Blake.

I'm sorry if you didn't make it to the finals, but I hope you will vote for one of the finalists.

OK so here are the finalists:

#1 Sean Berens

I think Ben Armstrong the Program Manager for the Core Virtualization Team should be interviewed. Virtualization technologies are now becoming a hot topic of Enterprises and SMB's all over the world and I feel this gentleman can shed more light on the direction Microsoft is taking.

- Microsoft has a number of different virtualization technologies, VirtualPC, VirtualServer, Hyper-V, and Application Virtualization (SoftGrid). Is there anything in Microsoft's virtualization technologies that will get everyday users, Moms and Dads, using virtualization? Ie, Will we be seeing virtualization used as another security layer for users when running things like IE and Outlook to sandbox these applications so potentially unwanted applications from web pages and email cannot infect or alter the users OS experience?

- There a number of non-Microsoft virtualization technologies, some of these technologies allow users to boot a small kernel and launch a virtual image (VHD) in what appears to the user as a host OS. The benefit of this is the user is able to run this selected VHD without the loss of resources of the Host OS. Based on the MS Hypervisor, I understand that we could lose the functionality of the worker processes normally running on the Host OS (Primary Partition) for things like snapshots and saving state, but if the loss of this functionality is desirable to gain the ability to 'boot' this VHD. Do you envision Microsoft providing a solution for this type of scenario?
 

#2 Carlos Oliveira

I would like an interview with the product manager from the Research department. Of all the departments in Microsoft, in my opinion, this is the most interesting one and the one with the most potential to change the way we view our computers.

- To me it seems that the Research department does lots of cool concepts that in the end never materialize into real products or integrate nicely with the OS, for instance, something like the photosynth application would be a huge addition to the windows platform if it would allow consumers to use it with their own photos and thus allow it to grow. Why is it that although Microsoft has such a good research department, the end result, such as a new operative system doesn’t seem to build upon anything from it?

- The research department seems to me one of the most promising ones inside Microsoft, how do you guys keep up with all the innovation that shows up relating to technology, and how do you decide which course to take, or more specifically how do you choose which projects to invest on, and how can someone from outside Microsoft submit an idea for your evaluation?

#3 Luca Difino

Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management. He is responsible for incorporating Live services into the Microsoft Windows operating systems.

-Have you ever thought of incorporating a windows profile into Live services? I mean logging into a pc with a Windows Live ID and retrieve from the web all profile information’s (user preferences, documents, mail, IM, etc.) downloading needed data on demand, and purging all personal information’s on logout.

-When will we see an explorer interface to the Live SkyDrive service in order to use web space as a local drive?

Please comment on this newspost who's questions you like best.
Only reply the number and name of the person you want to win.
Only 1 post per Bink.nu ID, Will count on Wednesday at 21:00 GMT+1

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