One of the key pieces of functionality that I think is missing from Windows Vista is the ability to mount an ISO image.  Being able to write that image back to media would be useful too.

In the past, I have used VCD Control, a tool that is available to MSDN Subscribers as a mean to be able to mount an ISO image to a virtual drive without having to burn it to a CD.

Recently, especially after my upgrade to Windows Vista I discovered that VCD Control has become less than stable.  The virtual CD driver loads, but I can't always add a drive letter, let alone mount an image.

Given the situation I did a little search and came across a tool from SlySoft called "Virtual CloneDrive".  The best part is it is a free app.  That's the beauty of this; it's a functional application and the price is right.  I wished it worked out like that more.

Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files generated with CloneDVD or CloneCD can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive.

The virtual drive shows up as a drive letter represented with a sheep as it's icon.  You right click on the drive, and the context menu gives you the option to mount, unmount, or select a recently mounted ISO file.

Virtual CloneDrive supports up to 8 virtual drives at the same time.  In addition to ISO files, It also has support for BIN and CCD files.

You can download SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive here.

I saw Scoble mention this earlier on his blog today.

Don't get all worked up.  It's not as bad as it sounds.  It's not a medical condition, or something funny you do that keeps people staring directly at you.

A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!

It's a pretty simple concept.  You can check out Twitter.com to see what people all around the world are doing at this exact moment.  Things like "trying to look busy at the office" are commonplace.  You can submit your answer via phone, IM or their website.

So, join the network, add some friends and Twitter away.

How does that sound for a cool job title?  I was reading Jeff Sandquist's blog yesterday and found his entry about Michael Garternberg joining Microsoft and the Channel 10 team as a Enthusiast Evangelist.

I got to thinking ... When I was working for Microsoft, I remember all kinds of different titles like developer evangelist, technical evangelist, etc. I never once recall hearing anything about an enthusiast evangelist.  No offense to my old colleagues, but Technical Account Manager or TAM, doesn't have the same ring to it as Evangelist.

What does an Enthusiast Evangelist do? Michael explains in his blog entry:

"Our job is to find, engage and work with enthusiasts and other influencers and show them all the cool stuff that Microsoft is doing. In short, it’s our job to act as the bridge between Microsoft and end users."

Sounds pretty fun.  Sounds like a good opportunity to potentially make an impact with the user community.

The funny part of Michael's announcement is all of the comments to his post.  A few good, but a lot of "Boos" about him making the switch to Microsoft.  You can read the comments below his entry here.

About the time I was reading through the comments, my RSS feeds updated, and into my Outlook popped an entry from the blog of Michael Garternberg.  The title of his latest entry is "And Back To Analyst..."  Funny enough, Michael has decided to resign from Microsoft and return to Jupiter Research as an analyst.  Maybe the ribbing from colleagues and subscribers alike was too much?