It looks like the Longhorn information floodgates are officially open — again.

Microsoft employee, Longhorn evangelist Robert Scoble, announced on his blog this weekend that he has been authorized to restart the "Team 99" Longhorn evangelism effort. On Microsoft's Channel 9 Web site, Scoble is soliciting member nominations for the third-party evangelism team, which initially is expected to include about 20 individuals.

"All (Team 99 members) will need to sign NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) cause there are things in Longhorn that we don't want to leak out, but they'll be your proxies," Scoble blogged. "They'll tell us where we're screwing up, what we're doing well, and will be world's top authorities on Longhorn."

Scoble's announcement follows by a few days Microsoft's first public preview of its latest Longhorn build, No. 5048. Build 5048, which Microsoft distributed to attendees of its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) last week in Seattle, is an alpha release. Microsoft is characterizing Build 5048 as one aimed primarily at PC makers and software developers, whom the company is hoping to entice to write third-party drivers and applications for the next-generation version of the Windows desktop.

The first true beta of Longhorn is due "early this summer," according to company officials. Beta 1 will be only about one-third feature-complete, officials confirmed last week. Beta 2, which Microsoft is expecting to be feature-complete, is expected some time after the September Professional Developers Conference. Microsoft officials said to expect the company to release Longhorn to manufacturing in the summer of 2006, so that it will be available in volume by "holiday 2006."

Microsoft is planning to release non-beta-quality interim builds, known internally as "community technology previews" (CTPs) of Longhorn between its beta milestones, officials said.

Scoble explained the "Team 99" name this way:

"Longhorn got its name from the bar that's between Whistler and Blackcomb up in British Columbia. 99 is the road you drive from my house to get up to the Longhorn bar. So, Team 99 is the team that'll take us to Longhorn's launch."

("Whistler" was the code name for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. "Blackcomb" is the code name for the major client and server Windows releases set to follow Longhorn client and server.)

This isn't the first time that Scoble and other Microsoft employees have endeavored to establish a third-party Longhorn evangelism corps. In the fall of 2004, Microsoft was soliciting members for a similar "Team 99" effort, according to sources close to the company.

Microsoft put an almost complete stop on all official outgoing information following the company's decision to trim a number of features — most noticeably its WinFS Windows File System — from Longhorn in August 2004 in order to be able to ship the product in 2006.

Two weeks before this year's WinHEC, Microsoft officials began priming the Longhorn pump. Jim Allchin, head of Microsoft's platforms group, began talking up Longhorn during a cross-country press tour the week before WinHEC.

Allchin also taped a video interview recently with Scoble. Allchin said that WinHEC was "not a coming-out party for Longhorn." Instead, he characterized the recent conference and Build 5048 as Microsoft's attempts to try "to set the record straight about the end-user capabilities of the system."

During his video interview Allchin didn't sway from Microsoft's claim that Longhorn will be a major Windows release, and not just a service-pack-style update.

"In the past, each (Windows) release was targeted at one audience," Allchin explained. But with Longhorn, Microsoft "is trying to hit all the bases now," he said, ranging from OEMs, to partners, to consumers, to knowledge workers, to IT professionals, to developers.