General
I’m a consultant which means my entire (work) life has to fit into a bag (the smaller the better) and be ready to move in an instant. Currently I’m toting around a slimline Victronix similar to but older than this Louvre 17. I received this bag from the Microsoft MVP program a few years ago and it’s easily the best (physical) gift they gave me. This thing easily holds my laptop, power cord, and the rest of the stuff in my consultant ready kit. It’s the “rest of the stuff” I’m thinking of now. What do you carry with you at all times?
That and a few business cards are pretty much all I carry. Anything I’m missing which would make my mobile life complete?
Microsoft has made the news lately with some incredible anti-spam efforts, bringing down the botnet Rustock which is responsible for 80% of global spam and able to send more than a billion spam messages a day.
What is a botnet and how does a computer become part of a botnet? A botnet is basically a bunch of computer programs working together automatically to accomplish a single task. While originally not a problem, recently we’ve seen a lot of organized crime types put botnets to use for the delivery of spam messages, theft of financial data, and attacks against companies’ websites. A computer usually joins a botnet as a result of a virus infection.
Your computer could be infected and be part of a botnet right now!
Antivirus programs are a great first line of defense against botnets. Pick a good one like F-Secure or a free one like Microsoft’s Security Essentials but pick one, keep it updated, and run it. You can even use the free online OneCare scanner from Microsoft if you don’t have one installed yet.
Occasionally (monthly) it is important to go that extra step, download and run Microsoft’s malicious software removal tool (full scan). This single purpose tool runs once and clears a host of bad stuff off your computer.
Malicious Software Removal Tool | Protect Your Computer
Kill botnets. End spam. Run the removal tools to clean up your system.
[This post was inspired by PC World republish of a Mac World article, “How to Switch to Google Calendar”]
Hotmail is the largest email service in the world (unless you count Facebook), but you never hear people talking about it or it’s calendar the way you hear about Gmail and Google Calendar. A brief list of great features:
- it has always been free (since it was founded in 1996)
- unlimited storage space
- seamless and effortless integrations to Outlook and Windows Phone 7
- Integrations to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites
- Integrations to Office Web Apps which enables in-browser viewing and editing of Office documents a snap
There are a ton of other reasons why I like the Windows Live Hotmail service offering, but this post concentrates on the calendar…
Create a calendar
Creating a Hotmail calendar is as simple as signing into your existing Windows Live account or creating a new account.
Once you’ve signed into your Hotmail account, use either the left pane navigation or the dropdown menu at the top of the screen to change views to your calendar. From here you can either interact with the default calendar or create a new calendar
Dropdown navigation:
New calendar:
Access your calendar how you want
Web
If you’re at a computer, you can obviously visit your Windows Live site and interact with the calendar via your browser. The Windows Live Hotmail calendar site works well with every browser – check out these comparative views of the same calendar page in Chrome and IE9.
I am a big fan of the Chrome browser, but IE9 is winning me back with a few of the great new features. My favorite new usability feature is that you can pin a website to your Windows 7 taskbar and use the custom Windows 7 jump lists to interact with the website before you even open the site by right-clicking on the taskbar icon. Check out how pinning LinkedIn, Facebook, and HotMail to the Windows 7 taskbar behaves:
When you click one of these icons you get a customized version of the browser, themed for that specific site. Notice how the back and forward buttons are colored differently and the addition of the site icon in the top left. This site icon acts like a home button, bringing you back to the home page of that custom pinned site (Hotmail in this case). Contrast this screenshot of the subtly customized IE9 browser to the default IE9 experience of the same page above.
Outlook
If you’re anything like me, Outlook has become the hub around which your life revolves. I’ve got three accounts in Outlook today – my corporate account, my client-provided account, and my Hotmail account. Installing the Outlook Connector, part of the Windows Live Essentials pack is an effortless way of pulling your email, calendar, and contacts into Outlook. Outlook 2010 offers a seamless way of interacting of multiple calendars, including side by side and my favorite, the overlaid view as seen in the screenshot below:
Mobile
Hotmail supports the same ActiveSync protocol that corporate Exchange servers and GMail use. This means that you can get your calendar on your favorite mobile device. Here are a couple of links which might interest you.
Of course, I’m a Windows Phone 7 enthusiast and I’m happy to say that the integration experience on any Windows Phone 7 device is entirely effortless. Among the very first questions asked by a Windows Phone 7 device after being started for the first time (including after a reset) is whether or not you’d like to connect your device to your Windows Live ID. Once you do that, you’re done! Hotmail shows up, as do your contacts and your calendar. The following image was borrowed from MSCerts.net.
Read more about the pros and cons of the Windows Phone 7 calendar on Paul Thurrott’s WindowsPhoneSecrets.com calendar blog post.
Share your calendar
Sharing a Windows Live Hotmail calendar is almost entirely effortless. First you simply enable the sharing of the calendar according to your desired level of public interactivity.
Step 1 – select the calendar to share:
Step 2 – set up the sharing rules:
You can share a calendar with specific named individuals (I’m sharing my calendar with my lovely wife Kim) and you can grant each of those named individuals distinct view and edit permissions according to this list (view details, view only times and titles, view only busy/free status, edit, and co-owner):
Beyond sharing with named users, it is possible to create calendars which are entirely public (view only) and even calendars which are exposed to search engines.
Here is what Kim sees on her calendar. Notice first that she’s using Firefox (browser test #3). On the left side of the screen you can see the calendars she’s viewing, including mine. You can see my shared event at the bottom of the screen, complete with the ability for Kim to edit my event details.
Summary
This was my attempt to help you use freely available digital tools to simplify your life. I live and die by my calendar and I tell everyone I work with that if it isn’t on my calendar, it doesn’t exist. The ability to pull all of my calendars together in Outlook and on my mobile devices is crucial to my professional survival.
This doesn’t stop my wife from keeping a paper calendar on her desk. Despite my protestations, we frequently spend time in the kitchen comparing calendars. Whenever I mention that sending me calendar invitations would greatly simplify things, she gently reminds me that she isn’t my secretary. Oh well! One day I’ll convince her that a jointly digital life is a simpler life!
In the meantime, I hope this has been helpful to those of you reading this!
Here is the press release we just got from them being awarded the Hosting Solutions Go To Partner.
June 24, 2009 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
MaximumASP Honored as 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards Winner in Hosting Solutions
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, MaximumASP, www.maximumasp.com, proudly announced it has been selected as a 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards winner in Hosting Solutions. The company was chosen out of an international field of top Microsoft partners as delivering market-leading customer solutions built on Microsoft technology.
“We are thrilled to be recognized from among thousands of Microsoft partners to receive the 2009 Microsoft Partner of the Year award in the Hosting Solutions category,” said Wade Lewis, co-founder and Managing Partner of MaximumASP.
Co-founder and Managing Partner Silas Boyle added, “This award is a great testament to partnership and cooperation that we have worked to develop with Microsoft over the past nine years. We appreciate the recognition and view this as a great symbol of the benefits of a long-term, strategic relationship with Microsoft.”
Awards will be presented in a number of categories, with winners chosen from a pool of nearly 2,000 entrants worldwide. The Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year award recognizes partners who have demonstrated solution innovation and a commitment to engaging with Microsoft. As you complete your entry, document how your company and hosted solution focused on an end-customer business challenge either by identifying a new market opportunity or by using technology innovation to address the need. Along with demonstrating innovation, your submission should show how customers have seen you working closely with Microsoft. Showcase this commitment by providing examples, such as which version of Microsoft product your solution is built on or how you have actively promoted your solution through marketing campaigns. Also, if your solution allows for extensive customization or if you are selling through a channel of resellers, be sure to describe those differentiators in as much detail as possible.
To be eligible for this award, you must:
- Be active in the Hosting Solutions competency.
- First profile your nominated solutions in Partner Solution Profiler.
“Microsoft is pleased to recognize MaximumASP as the Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year for its MaxV platform, and for demonstrating an in-depth knowledge of Microsoft technologies,” said Ross Brown, Vice President, Solution Partners and ISVs, Microsoft Corp. “By working closely with Microsoft, MaximumASP contributed to the development of the Microsoft Dynamics Datacenter Toolkit, which enables hosting providers to deploy on-demand managed services and virtualized servers powered by Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center. By utilizing the toolkit, MaximumASP has proven its ability to offer instant scalability, increased support through advanced monitoring, disaster recovery, and ultimately higher customer satisfaction.”
The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions over the last year.
About MaximumASP
MaximumASP, based in Louisville, Kentucky, was founded in 2000 as an outsourcing firm for Microsoft Windows based hosting and IT services. The company currently hosts more than 50,000 domains for customers in over 60 countries. With a strong focus on hosting solutions that combine advanced monitoring and management tools, MaximumASP has become a top choice for Microsoft developers seeking a robust hosting platform for mission-critical web applications. For more information, visit www.maximumasp.com.
The Next Generation of Windows® is almost here!
Microsoft has released a video blog called Talking About Windows.
This video blog provides insight on Windows 7 from the Microsoft engineers who helped build the product.
www.talkingaboutwindows.com
Check out what those who have used the product have to say.
It seems like a mandatory thing – own an iPhone, download a ton of apps (mostly free) and write about them on your blog. My turn.
My Top Ten (this one goes to Eleven!)
Evernote (free) – truly one of the best apps, Evernote is an extremely usable note-taking tool which combines text, photos, and voice notes with a synchonized iPhone client, web client, and desktop client. I’ve personally used this in place of OneNote to effectively take notes at a three day conference where I simply didn’t want to drag my laptop around. Worked beautifully. I’m not as familiar with Evernote as I am with Microsoft’s OneNote (my favorite Office application) but it is a strong contender due to the super-useful iPhone client. I’m sure this will eventually warrant it’s own blog post. I use it and love it.
mBoxMail ($9.99) – thanks to my complete reliance on e-mail and my possibly insane desire to keep my work and personal mail accounts as separate as possible, I was forced to turn to a distinct mobile app for my personal e-mail. I use HotMail as the mail server for DevCow. Until recently, HotMail didn’t offer Pop3 access in the US and the mobile web UI is less than appealing. Along comes mBoxMail (specifically version 2.0 which I am testing in beta) which offers a slew of features I love, including features which are missing from the current default iPhone mail client. I’ve actually written about mBoxMail already. I use it and love it.
CameraBag ($2.99) – the iPhone is just so appealing to grab and play with that the camera on it is seeing a lot more action than any of my previous cameraphones. Unfortunately, Apple didn’t put a good camera here so I’ve picked up CameraBag to improve my photos with a variety of filters and effects that really make a difference. The filters offered here do a variety of neat little edits such as black and white, sepia tones, super-saturation of color and more. Best of all, the effects can be easily layered. This is about as complex as I’d like to manage when editing photos on the iPhone and it works beautifully. I use it and love it.
Tweetie ($2.99) – I really enjoy social networking. I use it a lot, talk about it a lot, and have even co-authored a book about it, Social Computing with Microsoft SharePoint 2007. In my social networking life, Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. On my iPhone, I’ve tried out several different Twitter applications and in my mind the undefeated champion is Tweetie. Tweetie offers a great deal of features including the ability to save individual tweets and searches. These last two are favorite features of mine.
Stanza (free) – By far, this is the app I use the most on my iPhone. I’ve got a small library of e-books which I’ve been carrying around for years. This little tool can consume a wide array of formats and offers access to a number of built-in book stores, including a huge amount of free content and the Fictionwise premium store. I’ve never really used a Kindle or the Kindle iPhone app, but I can’t envision myself switching to that given the free content available and the online Google book search stuff recently released.
Facebook (free) – I freely admit that I like Facebook. I even like the new UI with the live feed on the home page. This app makes it easy to keep up on the go with a view into your feed, notifications, and inbox. You can even use this to send photos from your iPhone directly into Facebook (which has dramatically increased the number of photos I upload) as well as to chat with online friends with Facebook Chat. I actually use this mobile application more than I do the website these days.
LiveStrong ($2.99) – This calorie tracker integrates bi-directionally with the Daily Plate feature of LiveStrong.com. I’ve been using this website for nearly a year now and it’s helped me lose (and keep off) nearly 30 lbs since June of 2008. The UI is simple and the food database is enormous (and frequently full of duplicate items). This fits my needs as I’m not looking to count points or strictly regulate anything – I just need a way to keep an eye on what goes into my body so I know when I’m in danger of overdoing it. I managed to scoop this app up while it was still free a while ago.
WootWatch (free) – I love Woot.com. Take a product and discount it, write funny stuff about it, and sell the heck out of it! Great idea! Woot seems to have become a wildly successful little website, so much so that now there is a shirt.woot and a wine.woot. This fantastic little application lets me check in on each one of the woot sites every day and should I so desire, purchase the product right from the app. This is one of the most intuitive and easy to use apps on the phone and I regret that there will not be future updates because the application’s developer was hired into Apple.
Crayon Physics Deluxe ($4.99) – The first game I purchased for the iPhone and still the one I turn to over and over. The game is based on a simple concept – get the little ball to the little star. The trick is that you can draw crayon lines with your fingers and these lines have strength and weight which are affected by physics and gravity. Draw lines, ropes, pulleys, catapults, etc. Get the free desktop demo of this award winning independent game at www.crayonphysicsdeluxe.com. No, really. Go get it. Show it to your kids. Watch the videos on the blog about some of the clever Rube Goldberg solutions.
Lux Touch (free) – Risk for your iPhone. Lots of fun for a free game. I keep coming back to this one when I’ve got time to kill. This is the free version of an $8 game which looks good, but not worth $8 to me (yet).
Wolfenstein 3D Classic ($4.99) – How could I resist this one? The grandfather of first person shooters fully reproduced on the iPhone by the original designer, and completely open source. The game was fun back in the day and the iPhone version has this really amazingly clever touch control that makes it a blast to play. Hunt down some *** today!
Other apps I use (or at least have downloaded and not deleted yet)
Easy Wi-Fi (free) – I’ve not actually used this yet, but the claim is that this tool will streamline the connection to AT&T WiFi (which comes free with the iPhone) whenever you happen to walk into a place that offers AT&T WiFi (Starbucks?). Having attempted to manage the irritating connection details for AT&T wifi when wandering through the airport and such, I have to say that I’m really hopeful that this application lives up to its claims and I never have to deal with that junk again.
Wi-Fi Finder (free) – WiFi is faster and easier on the battery than 3G, so why not use a tool like this free Wi-Fi Finder to locate the nearest publically available and advertised Wi-Fi. Eat lunch there. Browse the web faster and for free on your iPhone at the same time. Good stuff. I’ve used this app once. It turns out that for me, I’m never really just wandering around in parts unknown looking for a wi-fi connection. I always have a destination in mind.
Microsoft Tag Reader (free) – I have no idea if this concept will take off or not, as I’ve only seen a single Microsoft product with a colorful Microsoft Tag on it (and that was a copy of the Halo Wars Xbox 360 game) but if it does take off I’ve got an app which can read them and react accordingly. For those who are unaware, this is similar to a barcode – except it’s a code readible by the terrible cellphone cameras. If we all had high resolution lenses capable of capturing a barcode, I’m sure we’d just be snapping photos of those. Since we don’t, the fine folks at Microsoft Research have come up with this clever information sharing tool. I’ve used this app once, inside the Microsoft store.
Cooliris (free) – search for pictures from a variety of locations like Google and Flickr. If you find one you like, Cooliris lets you set that as your iPhone wallpaper. The UI is pretty neat but there is a ton of data flowing through for this app so be prepared to be a bit patient when on a 3G connection. I use it and love it, although the speed at which it resolves some of the images does occasionally leave something to be desired.
SnapTell (free) – The promise of this app is great – find the book, DVD, CD, or video game you’re looking at in a store more cheaply online. It’s got great reviews in the iTunes AppStore but I’ve never actually used this. I think the reason is that I very rarely buy books, DVDs, CDs, or video games and when I do it’s always online. Come to think of it, that very logic might cause me to uninstall this app and clear out some space
Shovel (free) – Digg news aggregator. Works pretty well, but I’m not a huge fan of Digg so I don’t use this app very frequently. I have another news aggregator I prefer – Mobile News. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with this app, its just that I tend to think that most of the stories which get to the top of Digg are terrible and in general, a waste of time. But that’s just me. I also don’t like that you have to click the story twice to get to the story, the first click takes you to people talking about the story, but that emulates Digg itself.
TED (free) – Unfortunately I have been unable to devote the time I’d like to this app and the associated website. Basically this presents a very compelling UI for access to the video and audio content of the TED convention. The TED convention is a gathering of the best and brightest in the world discussing solutions to real significant problems. The problem is that I’ve never been able to sit around and watch stuff on my mobile devices. Maybe someday, perhaps in an airport.
NPR Mobile (free) – Do you listen to NPR? Do you like the stories and perhaps want to be able to listen to them at your convenience? Would an easy to navigate set of categories help you find what you’re looking for? If you answered yes to these questions, this app is for you! Some content is audio only, some is text and audio, and all of it is pretty darn good. I still tend to use the AP Mobile News app more frequently, but I do like this one b/c I can find the programs I like and see what I’ve missed.
Pandora (free) – Personalized radio on your iPhone. Brilliantly easy and familiar to anyone who uses the desktop version. I’ve never really been a user of this app on the iPhone or desktop b/c I have my Zune with me, but if I need it, I’ve got it.
Shazam (free) – This app is pretty remarkable. It’s able to listen to a song (radio, TV, restaurant background music, whatever) and identify it. It can get a bit screwed up by loud ambient noise, but when the area around you is quiet enough, Shazam is dead-on accurate. Very cool. Once you’ve identified a song, the app will bookmark it for you with a tag which you can refer to later or use to find the song in iTunes for purchase. This is slightly cooler than the Zune FM purchase capability b/c this app recognizes songs from anywhere, not just songs which are coming from a radio station broadcasting RDS.
BargainBin (free) – This app scans through the iTunes AppStore to find the apps which are free or have been marked down. I’ve been able to download at least one application for free which otherwise would have cost me about $3 so it’s been a worthwhile addition, although in general it’s of dubious value in that it mostly reveals applications I don’t care about.
More apps
Other apps I’ve installed and just ran out of patience trying to write a paragraph description for. I’ve included links at least!
Stephen, Ken and I wandered down to the SweetWater Brewery for their weekly tasting event yesterday. I was blown away by how many people came out for this – maybe 200 to 300 people in total.
Stephen and Ken
Backstage tour of the giant brewing tanks
We even witnessed a couple getting engaged
Why is this significant news? While there, with Ken’s help, I managed to secure a donation from Sweetwater Brewery to the Atlanta Code Camp – 1 free keg of beer! This wonderful sweet nectar will be available for all comers to the after Camp dinner
I bought an iPhone game today – an awesome game called Crayon Physics Deluxe. This little app is incredibly cool. You get to draw shapes and lines with your finger and have these amazing Rube Goldberg Crayola machines spring into action. I showed this to a few co-workers and they’re off to grab the desktop version of Crayon Physics (free demo available here). This is really worth a look.
Now imagine this thing on a Microsoft Surface table!
User Interface design sessions typically start on a white board if everyone can be in the room together, but what's the next step? How do you capture that UI mockup effectively and modify it according to user feedback? Some folks turn to Visio for some deep and deeply complex user interfaces. Others turn to drawing tools in Office programs like PowerPoint or Word. Photoshop is too pricey and complex to really be useful. Now there is a better option! Balsamiq Mockups has become a tool which I can not live without. Whether I'm trying to communicate simple concepts or complex concepts, the ability to quickly whip out a representation of a user interface is invaluable. The best part is that the mockup is clearly that, a mockup. The layout is implied but design is not. I don't have to have conversations about "can we change the color of this box" but I can have conversations about which elements should be where on the screen or if the user is requesting so much data that it can't live on the same screen in a readable format. Thanks to the ease of use of this tool, every document I write which attempts to discuss a technical topic will likely feature a mockup generated from Balsamiq. I'm also going to see if I can't get a copy or two to give away at user groups or at the upcoming Atlanta Code Camp.
Here are a pair of mockups I've generated with the tool to illustrate simple concepts:
This simple mockup illustrates a Proof of Concept application which can translate text from one language to another.
This sample mockup represents a fictitious organization's Intranet home page
During this time of year it is always nice to thank and give thanks to the sponsors who make this site possible. We would like to thank MaximumASP for their continued efforts to make this a great community.
The recently announced a new offering for their MaxV program to support Microsoft HyperV so I thought the least I could do was post the info and let everyone know. Here is a press release from PDC.
MaximumASP Launches “MaxV” Virtual Dedicated Hosting Accounts
Free 30 Day MaxV Introductory Accounts Debut at Microsoft Professional Developer Conference
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MaximumASP, a Microsoft Gold Certified Provider of web hosting and IT services, today announced that it will provide free 30 day introductory accounts on their new MaxV platform featuring Windows Server 2008® Hyper-V™ virtualization technology. The introductory offer will debut at PDC (http://www.microsoftpdc.com/) October 27-30 in Los Angeles.
PDC attendees from around the world will receive sign-up information for a MaxV account free of charge at MaximumASP Booth #1018 and at various locations throughout the show.
The MaxV Virtual Dedicated Plan is hosted on either WS 2008 or 2003 Operating Systems with 32- and 64-Bit Editions, Recurrent Backups, Remote Desktop, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB Disk Space, and 200 GB monthly bandwidth. MaxV supports SQL Server 2008 and 2005 or a high-performance Shared SQL server is also available.
MaxV provides a quantum leap in server virtualization features and resources, while still providing the same high level of Superior Support for which MaximumASP is known in the industry. High Availability, Intelligent Monitoring, Recurrent Backups and Scalability are already included on the MaxV platform.
MaxV Virtual Dedicated Servers are isolated and secure “server instances” that occur on a single physical server, enabling better server utilization while also ensuring that applications do not conflict with each other. Each MaxV instance performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; MaxV can be rebooted independently and provides independent root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processor utilization, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files.
Silas Boyle, Managing Partner of MaximumASP explains, “The MaxV virtual dedicated server provides a lower priced alternative to our dedicated server offerings without making any compromise on quality of services.” Each MaxV virtual dedicated server performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server for its users and applications. Boyle also said, “MaxV is an outstanding way for customers to take advantage of many of the benefits of a dedicated server at a lower price point until they are ready to upgrade to a truly dedicated server.”
The light overhead, efficient design, overall completeness and proven performance of MaxV also make it the right virtualization choice for server consolidation, disaster recovery and production servers with live applications and data.
Dominic Foster said, “As a managed hosting partner focused solely on Microsoft technologies since 2000, we are uniquely qualified to provide the superior support that our business is built on. Our unmatched expertise with Microsoft technologies lead to direct involvement with Microsoft as first to offer IIS 7 and SQL 2008 betas in a hosted environment; partnering in the Go Live Program for Hyper-V; and product co-launches built on WS 2008 with Hyper-V technology.”
MaxV Key Benefits
- Revolutionize your infrastructure! Don’t waste valuable time rebuilding applications and rewriting code.
- Don’t compromise on your preference of development platforms, software, or security options. Install and run the applications and services you want without server and infrastructure management worries!
- Add capacity as your business needs it to reduce costs and minimize energy consumption.
- Manage from anywhere in the world utilizing Remote Desktop.
- Don’t worry about it (whatever IT is. . .) – with MaxV it is probably included.
- High Availability clustering
- Scalability
- Intelligent Monitoring
- Recurrent Backups
- Superior Support
- Never worry about failed hardware again – Rely on MaximumASP for around the clock, superior support.
About MaximumASP
MaximumASP based in Louisville, Kentucky. was founded in 2000 as an outsourcing firm for Microsoft Windows based hosting and IT services. The company currently hosts more than 48,000 domains for customers in over 60 countries. With a strong focus on hosting solutions that combine advanced monitoring and management tools, MaximumASP has become a top choice for Microsoft developers seeking a robust hosting platform for mission-critical web applications. For more information visit www.maximumasp.com
I make not secret of the fact that I'm a Microsoft fanboy. I use a Microsoft Zune. I have several Xboxes (I kept 1 and gave 2 away). I use a Windows Mobile phone. This morning, my Microsoft Life got updated.
I fired up my Xbox 360 and downloaded the new Xbox Experience - an entirely new dashboard which introduces the "twist" style navigation familiar from the Zune and Windows Media Player. Now I have dozens of screens to look at and a generally improved way of navigating through the content. I spent all of about six minutes playing with it b/c I was excited to set up my most anticipated feature - integration to my NetFlix Instant Queue. Unfortunately I didn't get to demo that functionality as the NetFlix device activation web site was down. I'll hit that when I get home tonight. I also created an avatar, which I'd show you but apparently the Xbox Live site is still being worked on - I can't log in or look at my stats and friends.
I checked Twitter and saw Mike Gannotti talk about why he loves the Zune, including that he just got an update to the 3.1 firmware. This update includes new games like Soduku and some new listening features which I have yet to explore fully but anticipate loving the hell out of!
I'm thrilled with the new updates and can't wait to waste unbelievable hours of what would be marginally productive time listening to music, watching movies, and playing games. All I can say is that if the NetFlix integration is as awesome as I hope it is, I'm going to cancel HBO and ShowTime (and save a bucket of money). Next up - Windows Mobile 6.5. Rumors indicate we may finally see Zune software integration on handsets which will give me yet another way to kill my battery superfast. Yay!
Ryan Housley, one of the Atlanta community members that helped start and run MOSSmosis, a SharePoint user groups, is now going to help another great cause. He is helping HeroBox.org to send custom care packages to American soliders. Help support him in his cause.
You can find out more at their site:
www.herobox.org
http://heroboxblog.blogspot.com/
If you want to have lists of items to track that you can make public and private check out
Remember The Milk
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
It is funny they have a very similar logo to ours. The great part is that it is available from many different sources and all you have to is send it an email.
Anyone else have any good sites for keeping up with lists?
If anyone doesn't know, the DevCow calendar is actually manually updated every month. I have been updating the calendar for about 3-4 years now every month. The process I take is to go directly to the websites of the user groups that we list on the site and make sure they are having a meeting for the month. Sometimes if the web site is not updated but I know the user group leader personally I will update the calendar based on what they tell me.
Recently I have been busy and the calendar has been one of those things to get behind. I have always wanted to automate some of the calendar, but that would still require a person to enter information at some point in time so it can only be as up to date as the knowledge or the group.
The reason I am letting you know this is because many of the groups have mailing list you can subscribe to. This will allow you to make sure from the user group leader the exact details of the meeting. I will get the calendar back on track now and hopefully we won't get behind again. Sorry for the delay.
It has been a rough week or so for Kim and I recently. It started a week or so back with Kim's car. I took it in to get the oil changed and found that the car needed a bunch of expensive fluid changes. I spent a bunch of money on that, took the car home, and the next day it wouldn't start. We called AAA to come out and jump the car in the garage and I drove it back to the mechanic where we determined that the battery was completely dead. A new battery later and this morning the car wouldn't start again. This time AAA came out and got the car started. The problem now appears to be something to do with the fuel line. Who knows what that repair will eventually cost me, although it appears not to be an emergency as Kim now knows how to get the car to start if it's being stubborn again.
Last Friday a terrible storm blew through the area and for 30 minutes or so we had what felt like gale force wind gusts blowing rain sideways. During the storm we had a significant water leak through one of the window frames in the kitchen, a minor leak through another window frame in the kitchen, and at least two and perhaps up to four leaks in the roof. Part of the roof is under warranty and will be fixed for free, but the roofing company was so busy they couldn't even estimate the costs to repair the rest of the roof. The roof is covered with cedar shake shingles and is going to be expensive to repair. I went into the attic and found and "fixed" one of the leaks but it had already damaged the ceiling drywall, which had actually just been repaired and repainted. Now there is a nice little hole which needs to be patched in the kitchen and I think that the ceiling in our master bathroom is about to need to be replaced.
Monday, Memorial Day, I went outside and did five hours of yard work - mowing and trimming all things green. When I came back in, I noticed that the A/C was making funny noises. Downstairs in the basement, I noticed ice on some of the lines coming out of the furnace and the motor running the blower in the furnace was not able to start, although it kept trying. I managed to get a repair guy to come out and look at the unit. He declared the blower motor dead and in need of replacement. Of course, he didn't have a part to fit and getting a replacement would be hundreds of dollars. Kim and I knew when we bought the house that the furnace was over 30 years old and the air compressor outside was over 20 years old. It didn't make a lot of sense to cobble it back together so we just bit the bullet and replaced the entire set. Now we have a nice new Lennox furnace inside and quiet new air conditioner outside, both of which should be WAY more energy efficient. Even so, the cost was enough that I could have purchased a Toyota Yaris.
Kim and I have decided that my mother is the jinx and she's probably not going to be allowed back! She's been staying with us for these past few weeks and has been helping us with the baby. The baby who is now sitting comfortably in efficiently conditioned and cooled air. When he turns 16 I'm sure he'll wish we'd bought him a Yaris instead...
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