Bugs and Microsoft

This is really interesting. Microsoft is exposing all of the bugs and feature requests they get from customers in the new Visual Studio and .NET realtime on this site. I have worked with Microsoft support in the past and they are mostly very thorough in their findings. I wonder if the same will happen with this site.

All of a sudden the customer has instant access to the company and in full public view can publish their problems and suggestions, and trail through how Microsoft responds to these problems or suggestions.

I sent a suggestion off to Heinz so that their customers will stop bending forks when opening the new ketchup squeeze bottles. I did ask for a few things in return for implementing my million-dollar idea (a tour of the plant, some ketchup, etc.) but was interested to get the following response:

Our Company does not solicit ideas, product or packaging concepts, recipes, or other submissions from outside sources. Rather, we rely on the creativity and analysis of our employees, including internal research and development, marketing, and advertising groups, combined with contracted external agencies.


Well, I could be an external agency. Contract me! :)

Seriously though, a business should listen to its customers, as they will probably end up having the potential of being a far more valuable resource than the employees of a company or a contracted company that is boxed in by the requirements of the contract rather than free-thinking.

Then again, listening to your customers may get you this.

Read this before Fox cracks down on it.

Thinking of Firefox again

Mark from the SQL Team @ MS blogs about Firefox (well, indirectly anyway).

Do you remember the movie Firefox? (Okay, that came out in 1982, before some of you were even born, but at the time I was a Clint Eastwood fan and into military aircraft, so back off!) The key to the movie is that the jet (codenamed Firefox) has a neural connection and the pilot controls things like firing armament by thinking the command. Of course, it being the 1980s, the bad guys we were stealing the plane from were the Russians (or probably more accurately Soviet Union) so Clint had to THINK in Russian.

What if you could just think at the computer and it would do what you said to, just like an arm or a leg?

Anyway, the purpose of his blurb is recapped:
So, what language do you think in? Is it the same one that you're currently being paid to use? If not, you are not as efficient as you could be. And your code may be horribly inefficient, too.

I asked my friend this one time, since he is Brazillian and speaks Portugese, what language he thinks in. I think he said English, but since he speaks at least 5 languages now, including German and SQL, I am not too sure.

read more here

wiki wiki whack!

Something just whacked me upside the head. I have been using OneNote off and on for awhile now (mostly off until it becomes a little less rigid and a little more drag-n-drop).

One of the good things about OneNote is its ability to search notes, and to be the central repository for all those little .txt notepad files that end up everywhere.

One of the bad things is there was no import or export tools.

There is an import tool now. Haven't seen any XML export tools yet but it can't be that hard. If you can get it in, you should be able to spit it out.

What about an RSS feed directly from your OneNote software, to Sharepoint? Does anyone know if this exists?

Another good thing about OneNote is that it is a great tool for gathering requirements from meetings. This lends it to the Wiki model of hyperlinking the entire document with helpful information, and group collaboration, maybe with Sharepoint Portal Services.

Hmm... Sort of like team blogging to create an encyclopedia of the project and it's requirements...
http://journals.tuxreports.com/lch/archives/000203.html

xTreme Programming

A great place to track down every possible resource and piece of software related to fast, effective programming.

Includes acceptance testing software, unit testing software, and the methodologies and practices around xtreme programming.

Hit with new worm?

The Korgo L and P variants are highlighted today for unpatched MS04-011 workstations or servers. The author continues to improve the worm capabilities with each release.

Files in your Mozilla profile directory

A great description of the personally-identifiable information stored in your web browser, relating to Firefox and Mozilla. That's a lot of stuff to sync up. Also good for backup, another good application for my previous sync-yourself idea. How about you have backup/restore information stored remotely with your most critical files? Another good application with FTP Sync. Now how about versioning too....

I just thought of another idea here, how about using your internet habits as a reflection of your personality? Based on what you look at on the internet, this is the personality profile that you fit into. Sort of like SQL Profiler & Query Optimizer for real life. Geeky but probably useful.

I wonder why they have Portugese as a second option there? Any ideas? Is Mozilla the browser of Brazil?

Firefox extensions warning

Just a warning to do not go crazy with the Firefox extensions & themes available out there.

Here is how to uninstall extensions when the software won't load.

(Hey it's still version 0.9. It's still better than Netscape 6 or IE 6.2)

Share files between friends and family

clevercactus share is a private and secure environment to share files with people you know. It is simple and easy to use, it is free for individual users, educational institutions, and non-profit corporations, and it runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Groove is the business alternative to this.

You can also try this DIY method with your ISP's FTP account, or a 3rd-party account using FTPSync.

Here is an awesome idea for an all-encompassing file synchronization tool. All applications should share your preferences on the internet, so that when you login to your PC, your mobile, or your laptop, or a friend's PC, it instantly recognizes who you are and sets up your desktop the way you like.

The tool should synchronize your mail, bookmarks, contacts, links, music playlists, start menu, buddy lists, ftp, saved games, etc. etc.

It should allow you to right-click on an application in the start menu and select Synch Preferences, or right click on the start menu and select Synchronize All Applications.

You should have a management tool to synchronize all preferences and setup locations for files and preferences to be synchronized.

There should be an autodiscovery of common preference locations and updates via a web service, to make it easier for the non-tech person to figure out how to do this.

Maybe I should start this project up on sourceforge.net

I still want to get my Sync Up Your Car idea going. Having my stereo stolen every few months is a bit frustrating, and it would help if the only thing in there was a removable face with a USB connector. You can't steal something that's not there.

A good idea would be to embed the technology into the dashboard. I would buy something with Digital Rights Management just so I could find out when it was plugged into somebody else's car. Then I would sic my dog on them.

What could you do if you had a USB connector in your car? How about dial-up or wireless internet? Maybe Bluetooth-enabled cars?

7 Habits for Business Success

7 Habits for the Business Success of an Entrepreneur:

Plan Thoroughly
Get Organized Before You Get Started
Find the Right People
Delegate Wisely
Inspect What You Expect
Measure What Gets Done
Keep People Informed

Microsoft Skills and Drills

By completing a Microsoft Skills Assessment, you will receive a Personalized Learning Plan to help you understand if you are ready to implement specific business solutions. Your Personalized Learning Plan will include the Microsoft Official Curriculum courses, Microsoft Press books, and Microsoft TechNet resources that will help you with your preparation.

Great site for MS Certification practice.

Firefox Review - setting the world on fire

Popup Blocking
Tabbed Browsing
Smarter Search
Privacy and Security
Hassle-Free Downloading
Fits Like a Glove
S M L XL XXL XXXL
Setup's a Snap
A Developer's Best Friend

Firefox has got to be one of the most exciting pieces of software I have used in a long time. An open-source, embeddable web browser from Mozilla, Firefox is the latest release from a company which touts its product as "The Future of the Browser". And it's free.

Currently a 4.7MB download available here, Firefox is a very streamlined piece of software. It is refreshing to see the bloatware of Netscape disappear with the release of this product.

First install took less than a minute, and after a couple of uses I decided to switch browsers. (of course I am still typing this in IE - more about that later) Choose the custom config and get the Web Developer Toolbar, a revolutionary add-on that every person who has to deal with web pages will want.

The Web Developer Toolbar allows you to change the way pages are viewed on-the-fly. Some of the more interesting features:

• Display image dimensions


• Find broken images


• Zoom in/out


• Hide images or make them invisible


• View Speed Report


• Show Comments


• Custom-sized browsers


• CSS/HTML/Standards Validator


• Link Checker


• View Response Headers


• View Cookies

....Catching breath....

• Display Form Details


• Show Passwords


• View Form Information


• Outline Table Cells

There's really no point in listing them all, just download it.

Be wary of plugins. The main reason I am using Internet Explorer right now is the fact that I tried every plugin out there and one of them pooched the installation really nicely. If this happens to you, there is some documentation about running the tool with the firefox.exe -p switch, and creating a new profile.

That got me back up and running nicely. Speaking of extensions, there are quite a few and sure to be hundreds of these additional plugins for Firefox in the next few days. There is a tool to synchronize your bookmarks via FTP. An RSS Reader. A notepad. An ad-blocker. A DOM inspector. A Google Bar. (There's actually a few Google bars). A utility to search University web sites from A-Z. A tool to .... you get the idea.

Skins have become a big thing since WinAmp and this is no different. There are a few Themes available out there and more to come, which make the tool look uber-cool.

There is a Download Manager, with a cleanup option, and an extension for moving different downloads to alternate paths.

The tabbed-browsing piece has been available for awhile. It is still great. Forget scrolling through the taskbar to find the IE window with the 3 letters that may contain the window you are looking for.

Auto-open a folder of your favourites. How about opening up all your favourites at the same time, in the same window.

The GUI still has some bugs to iron out (click customize on the toolbar and see), and the install bailed when importing my IE History, but it doesn't matter. This is 0.9, and still much better than alot of 2.0-shipped software out there.

This will be the next killer-app if things go right for Mozilla. Once they get a few more blogging extensions in there, a media-player, integration with E-bay, Paypal, Amazon, and GMail, and some weather & traffic applets, streaming audio, and .... wait.

Nevermind. A 4MB download is enough for now.

Introducing the Visual Basic .NET Power Pack Get the Visual Basic Power Pack, a collection of custom controls that provides enhanced user interface elements to client based applications.

[via MSDN Just Published]

DIY Action Figures

This is really cool. Do it yourself Action Figures.

Sure, they're like $500 bucks but what an awesome gift. Voice recordings too?!?

I think I'm like the 11'th person to sign up as an affiliate so maybe this is a ground-floor opportunity.

Check these out:
Pink Dress for Action Figure
Embarass your villain action figure by dressing it with this lovely pink dress. This dress fits all of the Herobuilders.com action figures.

Hip-Hop Outfit
Get this cool outfit for your action figure. Includes white sleeveless t-shirt & cargo shorts (available in black, beige, or blue).

check it out here

Scoble is using Firefox.  The browser wars are back again.

Mozilla leader says Microsoft doesn't care

Ars Technica interviews Mozilla.com's Scott Collins.

"Microsoft is a juggernaut, a terrible enemy to have. Terrible because they just don't care, they don't have to care — it's like the mosquito on the elephant. So, no, I don't think having Microsoft as an enemy or having them come out ahead of us made us hungrier. For some people, that's probably true, but I think people are driven by their own individual motivations."

Well, you can say a lot of things about us, but saying we don't care? Not in my experience. Every Microsoft employee I meet cares deeply about what they are doing. I wish I could give Scott a tour of campus. Heck, Scott, just watch the videos I've been putting up on Channel9. Are those the voices of people who don't care about what they do?

And, I know quite a few of the people on the IE team. They are not happy at all that I'm using Firefox. Whenever I have lunch or a meeting with someone on the IE team they ask me "how can we get you back?"

Is that the sentiment of people who don't care about what they are doing?

[via Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Mozilla Project Officially Releases Firefox 0.9 _xeno_ writes "The last release candidate was apparently good enough, because Mozilla Firefox 0.9 has now been officially released. New features since 0.8 are, ...

Lots of good stuff out there today.  Tuesday is supposed to be the most productive day of the week.  Too bad it's Wednesday.

I installed Firefox 0.9 and it bailed on importing my Internet History.  It sort of reminds me of Opera without the bloat (if you can believe that).  Netscape went from being the piggiest browser on the planet to starting over from scratch.   There's a good one in the comments on this site about Netscape suing MS a couple of years ago: dude anything that microsoft does is legal. they're the o.j. of software companies.  I wonder what they will do to compete with Netscape reborn.

Here's a good one about How to Become as Rich as Bill Gates. I don't want to get to that level, but if someone can shoot me $800K I'll have my 5 year plan complete.  The first $1M is the hardest, so I figure I should leave a bit left to work for if my Paypal account fills up before then.

Toronto's Daily Dose of Imagery has some wild photo shots of the Big Smoke (or smokeless now, there's a lot more people standing outside bars in T.O.) and I guess they've branched out to the suburbs now.

the chair

25 second exposure of a very dark room in whitby's abandoned psychiatric hospital.

http://infiltration.org/usufruct/index.rdf - A cool site on the hobby of Infiltration - scoping out places you really shouldn't go and do anyway.

Index Creation Guidelines Index Creation Guidelines for SQL Server can be pretty sparse. Usually there are a couple, clustered index for ranges, nonclustered, etc. Leo Peysakhovich has taken some time to write down his guidelines based on his experience for creating indexes and the rational for doing so. He's also taken a few minutes to look at which indexes NOT to create, something that might be worth knowing..

 

How about same-day delivery?

This will help my Ebay Auction shipping costs.

Teleportation breakthrough made

By Paul Rincon
BBC News Online science staff


In the past, teleportation has only been possible with particles of light Image: Rainer Blatt Scientists have performed successful teleportation on atoms for the first time, the journal Nature reports.

Crazy. We are at the beginning of a new era here. I read about some flying car last week (not sure if that was real or not) and now this.

Web vs. Windows

Joel on Software has a gynormous amount to say about software.

My feelings about Web apps pretty much match his, though I disagree with some of the things he says can't be done well with them. (Look at Flash, sort of a desktop plugin I guess but blurring the line).

I have been working with web sites pretty much since the early '90's, and building web apps for Business Intelligence (great oxymoron) for at least 8 years. It is very tiresome to implement 'workarounds' to fix code that doesn't work in a customer's version 3 IE browser, but at least we aren't dealing with DLL hell here.

Quoting Joel:
Web Applications are easier to deploy because there's no installation involved. Installing a web application means typing a URL in the address bar. Today I installed Google's new email application by typing Alt+D, gmail, Ctrl+Enter. There are far fewer compatibility problems and problems coexisting with other software. Every user of your product is using the same version so you never have to support a mix of old versions. You can use any programming environment you want because you only have to get it up and running on your own server. Your application is automatically available at virtually every reasonable computer on the planet. Your customers' data, too, is automatically available at virtually every reasonable computer on the planet.

But there's a price to pay in the smoothness of the user interface. Here are a few examples of things you can't really do well in a web application:

1. Create a fast drawing program
2. Build a real-time spell checker with wavy red underlines
3. Warn users that they are going to lose their work if they hit the close box of the browser
4. Update a small part of the display based on a change that the user makes without a full roundtrip to the server
5. Create a fast keyboard-driven interface that doesn't require the mouse
6. Let people continue working when they are not connected to the Internet

These are not all big issues. Some of them will be solved very soon by witty Javascript developers. Two new web applications, Gmail and Oddpost, both email apps, do a really decent job of working around or completely solving some of these issues. And users don't seem to care about the little UI glitches and slowness of web interfaces. Almost all the normal people I know are perfectly happy with web-based email, for some reason, no matter how much I try to convince them that the rich client is, uh, richer.

So the Web user interface is about 80% there, and even without new web browsers we can probably get 95% there. This is Good Enough for most people and it's certainly good enough for developers, who have voted to develop almost every significant new application as a web application.

Which means, suddenly, Microsoft's API doesn't matter so much. Web applications don't require Windows.

Well, they will in the next version, from what I'm reading online. Watch out Google.

Speaking of web apps that DO require windows, checkout Dave's Toolbar It actually uses javascript to display an all-powerful search box in your taskbar. I haven't even tapped into the usefulness of that one yet.

And for something totally off topic, the Top 11 80's Cartoon Villains.

$375 and all the software in the fridge

Microsoft has an ISV package for MS Partners - $375USD for an MSDN subscription.

Microsoft Empower for ISVs offers the following benefits:

Up to five (5) software licenses (for internal use):
Microsoft Windows® XP or Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Office XP (Premium or Developer Edition) or Microsoft Office 2003 Editions
One (1) software license and up to five (5) Client Access Licenses (CALs) for:
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server (Standard or Advanced Edition) or Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 (Standard or Enterprise Edition)
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server (Standard or Enterprise Edition) or Microsoft Exchange 2003 Server (Standard or Enterprise Edition)
Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 (Standard or Enterprise Edition)
Microsoft SharePoint™ Portal Server
Development and Testing License: One (1) MSDN Universal Subscription media kit and five (5) user licenses*
One (1) MSDN Universal Media kit (DVD)
Each MSDN Universal subscription is a single user license for development and testing purposes and includes Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET Enterprise Architect Edition, the full range of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software, all Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft productivity applications (Office Developer Edition, Microsoft Project, FrontPage®, Visio®, and MapPoint®), as well as access to SDKs, DDKs, and the MSDN Library. Each subscription also gives you priority access to new product releases, updates, and betas through the MSDN Downloads site.
Note: Microsoft Empower for ISVs is a one-year initiative with an opportunity to renew for the second year. All initiative benefits lapse once membership expires.

* MSDN Universal Subscriptions for ISV Empower members do not include any phone-based incident support.

MSDN Online Managed Support Newsgroups (English Only)
Ask software, hardware, and related technology questions in the newsgroups supported by Microsoft Support Professionals.
MSDN Online Concierge Trial (English Only)
This service helps users find articles and resources within MSDN. It is available worldwide and provides real-time responses.

Get it here if you have a small business and don't already have this.

Another cool toy - 3D GPS

ala Grand Theft Auto Vice City, the best game ever.

Testing .NET apps

Peter Provost has started a petition to include unit testing in VS 2005. Just download Nunit.

Unit Testing support should be included with all versions of Visual Studio 2005 and not just with Team System.

Wesley's blog

Wil Wheaton has a blog. After I saw him last week on the Xbox G4TV Halo Championship show I wondered whatever happened to that guy. Guess I know, and will never ask again.

Just wish he wore a red shirt on the last episode of STTNG. :)

William Shatner: Now men, we are about to go on a very dangerous mission. It is highly likely that one of you will die.
The crew that will go with me are Spock, McCoy and Ensign Ricky.
Ensign Ricky: Aw crap

And IBM's bigger brother - that monitor doesn't look too portable

Downsizing Never Looked So Good
By Lauren Simonds
June 11, 2004

OqO - A Windows XP 1 GHZ Transmeta 20GB the size of an Altoids can

OqO

This mini-computer is pretty cool, runs xp! Designed to replace pda's, laptops and smartphones...

Their email is so swamped right now and they are not returning requests for quotations. Their support site is 'Under Construction'

Last count in the free Hub magazine article I saw says they had over 10,000 orders @ $2.5k USD and it doesn't even come out until Aug/Sept.

MSNBC Article

This will definately replace my tape walkman.

Stack Full Error Part 1

I didn't realize people could talk so much. There are over 1+ million blogs out there and at last count I must have subscribed to most of them, or at least within 2 degrees of separation. This has caused some serious lagtime in my RSS Reader, RSS Bandit, otherwise a great tool that I'll keep for day-to-day reads since it can easily synch with my laptop. My problem is when I added all the MSDN feeds for pretty much everyone in the company that has a feed. I think MS employees are mandated to post at least once a day, and if that's in relation to their bonuses, they are going to be big this year. My other problem is when I added all the Blogrolls. A Blog Roll is a list of all the subscriptions a person has. If Robert Scoble had all his subscribed feeds printed out for a day, I am sure we could climb our way to Mars. The Scobleizer's bonus should be at the top of the pool, since he also works for MS. After 1 week I'm kind of happy with the fact that this has happened, since now I know the limitations of a couple of the readers out there, and I can stop reading this stuff for a bit. If anyone knows of a self-help group for this stuff please let me know. There's a couple guys in a similar predicament who seem to have solved this issue. Let's give it a try.

Microsoft TechEd 2004 Powerpoints

If you are a SQL DBA like me, this stuff is gold. Not sure when I'm going to get the time to scour all of this.

You can also find some MIT Courseware if you search Google or Teoma. MIT for free - I'm in.

Also, Microsoft has a site called MSDNAA that gives you all the free training you need for .NET and other MS tools.

There is way too much going on in the blogging world right now. Scobleizer's blog has given me enough to read for the rest of my life, and there doesn't seem to be any way of catching up.

Speaking of geeks, check out Napolean Dynamite. Saw a free preview last night, friggin' hilarious. Also, after a popcorn box leaked Becel all over my new Dockers I got some more free movie passes, and my dry cleaning done for the week. I dragged the popcorn box over the Customer Service desk to illustrate how disgustingly greasy it was. Worked well!

Challenge?!? Double-deuce?!? Strong Bad has been the highlight of Monday's for awhile. One of the most-viewed sites on the 'net, Homestar needs to get his own movie soon.

Good blogging

The Marquee de Sells blog has some interesting stuff. Chris is the Content Strategist for MS Longhorn dev web site.

How about tracking your web site using Simcity instead of just charts and graphs. Here's what Chris has to say about this one.

VisitorVille maps your real-time web site data to a SimCity-like environment that you can use to see where folks are going on your site and how they're navigating from one place to another. It does the other web traffic kinds of analysis, too, but the ability to watch your visitors in real-time looks pretty darn cool. This is the kind of thing that Longhorn should be good at enabling.

Like the self-promotion thing but he's right - I have been working with various tools from vendors such as MS, Kana/Broadbase, Marketwave/Accrue, NetIQ, etc. and this one takes the cake for cool-factor. Hope it will support X-box in the next version.

Sort of reminds me of the feeling I got when I first saw that Analyzer tool that came with Site Server. Kinda makes your stomach drop when you're zooming around all the links.

Great Quotes that may come true

"The world will only need five computers"
attributed to Thomas J. Watson, IBM

"640 kilobytes is all the memory you will ever need"
attributed to Bill Gates, Microsoft

"There is absolutely no need for a computer in the home"
attributed to Ken Olsen, DEC (once a leading minicomputer manufacturer)

1. What if all the computers in the world become connected. Are they now one?
2. What if each computer in the world only had 640k and they were all connected. Isn't that all you need?
3. What if you had an appliance in your home that talked to this computer. No more need for a computer in your home.

The grid is an interesting concept. (What is the Matrix??)

Software Development

This man seems to be on top of things here, when it comes to the software development process.