Just thought I’d do a little promotion for one of our old friends, Steven Sinofsky, who is now blogging with John DeVaan over at Engineering Windows 7 (or e7 for short). There’s a welcome post up already, which leaves you in no doubt as to their intentions for the blog.

“We strongly believe that success for Windows 7 includes an open and honest, and two-way, discussion about how we balance all of these interests and deliver software on the scale of Windows. We promise and will deliver such a dialog with this blog.”

Steven you already started off by setting expectations too high, and inevitably you will now disappoint. Maybe someone could be open, honest and two-way about Ultimate Extras though while you’re at it – you know, that small little thing we all paid $100 for.

“In leading up to this blog we have seen a lot of discussion in blogs about what Microsoft might be trying to accomplish by maintaining a little bit more control over the communication around Windows 7 (some might say that this is a significant understatement).”

…and Windows Live too. See Long Zheng. I’d go out on a limb here and say this was approved disclosure.

“Our intent is to post “regularly”. We’ll watch the comments and we will definitely participate both in comments and potentially in follow-up posts as required.”

Why the quotemarks? Ohh, that’s right, its going to be a press-release style, information posted when approved by PR type of blog. Maybe just move the blog to MS Presspass to make it easier for those mainstream journalists to find and quote?

“We will make sure that members of the Windows 7 development team represent themselves as such as well.”

So the Disclosure Director is now tasked with beating employees into commenting on the blog. Oh fun times in Redmond for the next 2 years!

Community vehicle, no. PR vehicle, most likely. PR is good, just don’t pretend this blog is something it is not going to be. Full credit goes to the real community efforts.

PS: Steven, if you want some more stickers just let us know. Maybe throw us a link in your sidebar?