We Got Served

The last week brought a couple of new people to this site – now it is time to remember another name…

Hey, I am Gregor Herdmann from Berlin, Germany, the newest addition to the international team at We Got Served. Some of you might have come across my name in the blogosphere before. I have been posting for LiveSide.net, a blog mainly focused on Windows Live and its competition, for some time (and I will continue to post there). I am a 22 year old law school student here in Berlin and while I know that this does not seem to have much to do with technology at first I am very interested in intellectual property law – brands, copyrights, patents – without them, no-one would spend money to create products…

I started using Windows Home Server during its early beta phase – after being truly amazed by the initial appearance at CES 2007. At home I am running a frankenmachine server with 2x 500GB storage. When I built my system, unfortunately the cool OEM hardware solutions were not yet on the market. As you may guess I am also running a test box with the public beta of Power Pack 1.

I was also an early adopter on the Windows Media Center front, as I was one of the lucky few to get invited to the first ever beta release that was intended for the German market – I have never stopped using it since. While WMC has made some significant improvements over the years I certainly share your pain about missing support for additional TV standards, features like Softsled or even basic 10 foot UI support for Recorded TV locations on the network (without using unsupported registry hacks) which would simplify the integration with Windows Home Server. The information on the Fiji release of Windows Media Center that leaked to the web indicates that the new product team in Europe is hard at work. And while not all feature requests will be served, some standards will be added by this release shortening the list of things desperately needed in the product.

Here at We Got Served,  I will try to combine all three aspects of my digital world – Windows Home Server, Windows Media Center and Windows Live. They all could play a big role in the true digital media experience across the home and the web with a unified user experience. Let’s hope that the latest HP slogan – “the computer is personal again” – becomes reality soon. I am looking forward to the improvements the future might (hopefully) bring in this area for software and hardware alike as we all know how painful the setup of a connected experience can be today.