Andrew Ma's WebLog

TFS 2008 export to Project 2010 beta1

ajma — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:41:00 GMT

Last week, I was fighting with TFS 2008 export to Project for a while and was unable to find a resolution anywhere. Turns our that I had MS Project 2010 beta1 installed and upon switching to Project 2007, it started working again. Hope this might be able to help some folks. I don't know what the status of this issue is for anything post-beta1.

From Search to XNA

ajma — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:29:00 GMT

One of the great things about working for Microsoft is the variety of things that someone can work on. Back in November 2004, I made a switch from one team to another within Microsoft. This past month, I made another change back to an area which got me first involved into computers. I've joined the XNA Communities team which is responsible for a new feature which will be available in the upcoming new Xbox experience on November 19th. We'll be giving users the ability to make their own games and publish them in a special channel for user generated content. This will give Xbox users a whole new source of games.

For more details on XNA and what will be available for customers, Major Nelson sat down with our Community Manager, Kathleen Sanders for a chat: http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/10/17/new-xbox-experience-community-games.aspx

Windows Live Search - Products

ajma — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:39:00 GMT

It's been 6 months from the last time I posted about Product Searching in Windows Live Search. Our team is still well and kicking. To prove it, today you can go to our newly revamped site (http://search.live.com/). In the past, you would have to look for the "Products" tab. When you do searches now, you'll notice that you get search results directly inline above the search results (based on your keyword). Here's a Halo 3 search.

(BTW, if you're looking for a co-op player to do the legendary campaign, here's my gamertag)

If you have an Xbox 360, most of you will likely get Halo 3. (Aside: watch Halo 3 commercials, they're great) But let's say you're looking for something else and you want to do some product research before making the purchase. Here's where our team has made changes that really shine.

Above, you'll see a screenshot of a search for a Canon Rebel XTi. The user reviews show you it's an excellent camera. We don't base this of our own recommendation, but rather we crawl the web for user reviews. This is where the real magic is. You'll see something like "99% positive" on the left side under "Photo Quality". You may be wondering: "but he said it was crawled reviews". Yup, it's crawled and categorized automatically. This Opinion Index feature has the capability to determine whether our crawled reviews are positive or negative. This should give you, the user, a great number of reviews to go by. Many other review sites will give you something like "5 stars (based on 2 users)". The 2 users may not be a very good sample, but now with Live Search, we're providing you with tens, sometimes hundreds, of reviews together in one location.

If you have any feedback, feel free to post it below. We'd love to hear from you as we're hard at working at some cool feature improvements that we want to make. Got something you want added? Leave me a comment below and I'll pitch the requests to the rest of the team.

Andrew J. Ma
Windows Live Search
SDE/T

More Images, More Relevant

ajma — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:17:00 GMT

The Product Search team is still hard at work. Imran and Ling give some details on some relevancy and image improvements we've done.

Check it out: http://productsearch.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D789A2CD819EF461!197.entry

Product Search Grid View

ajma — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 01:50:00 GMT

Sorry for being so silent on this blog, but we've been hard at work on product search. A lot of it has been backend work, so you won't see too much, but one notable thing we've added recently is the Grid View. Now when you search for things you buy, you can see a lot more items all at once.

Give it a try: http://products.live.com/

Windows Live Product Search

ajma — Fri, 05 May 2006 09:16:00 GMT

In a post last week, I mentioned that there was more to come. Earlier tonight, we unveiled yet another product that the MSN Shopping team has been working on. We released Windows Live Product Search. Now folks searching on live.com will be able to search for things they are looking to buy. Please keep in mind this is also still a beta. We put a lot of hard work into this and this was a fun and challenging experience.

Firefox users will be glad to know that the site does indeed work for Firefox. And for those who think MS is out to screw firefox, know that there were questions from management to ask if Product Search supports firefox. The answer is yes. (unless you got an old version, we found a few problems if you're running an older build of firefox).

We have a team blog set up here: http://spaces.msn.com/productsearch. There's a post with our lead PMs introduction to what Product Search is about. I'm in one of the team pictures. Also, there's another picture of me really relaxed in our daily scrum meeting.

Windows Live Shopping Beta released today

ajma — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 11:13:00 GMT

Sorry for being so quiet for such a long time, but we've been hard at work to provide a great new release. Even thought it's only been a short time since our last release, today we have launched Windows Live Shopping. It's currently in beta right now and we're aware that there's some browser compatibility work to be done, but take a look and tell us what you think. I'm especially happy with the addition of the shopping list feature.

In addition, don't forget to also check out http://shoppingguides.live.com/. This is great new thing we also added today that works in conjuction with Windows Live Shopping. In the past, we've provided you with content, but we know some of you have more expertise in some areas and now's your time to show it. With shopping guides, you can write your own guides and share your shopping knowledge with the world.

That's it.... for now.... stay tuned for another release from the MSN Shopping team shortly.

New Window Live Shopping gadget

ajma — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 02:20:00 GMT

A small group of coworkers on my team have been working on a Windows Live gadget and today, the fruits of their labour is available for all to see.

It's available to be added to your live.com page by going to "Directory -> Gadgets -> Shopping (beta)" from the sidebar.

Who loves start.com? Introducing live.com

ajma — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:30:00 GMT

Today, Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie announced a new strategy for Microsoft into the service space. Leveraging the technology from start.com, today, we introduce:

http://www.live.com

I've been to the internal meetings about this and there's a lot more coming down the pipes in the future. What you see today is really only the tip of the iceberg. Sure there isn't that much on there now. So if you want more gadgets to stick on your page, visit here : http://microsoftgadgets.com/. I added the virtual earth one to my live.com page. You could even write your own gadgets. Have fun.

Removing an offline folder share

ajma — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 10:24:00 GMT

Tonight, I remapped some of my redirected folders (my docs and desktop) and after that happened, the offline folder sync was stuck trying to sync both shares (the new and the old), one of which doesn't exist anymore. This post doesn't have anything to do with what I work on, but I thought I'd share this anyways because I couldn't really find a solution on the web and found a few others looking for this solution.

I first tried scrubbing the registry thinking that it might be there. After rebooting, it still came back (which is what other users reported as well). I tried disabling offline folders but once I turned it back on, it tried syncing the old share again. Eventually I found a solution:

1) disable offline folders
2) delete all the files in c:\windows\csc
3) turn offline folders back on

I'm not Windows expert so proceed with caution (Disclaimer line: No gurantees about this solution and don't hold me responsible if something goes wrong.) but this solution worked for me.

Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Connector for the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) 2.0

ajma — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 03:31:00 GMT

One of my tasks in the MSN Shopping group is the our test automation. I helped create our small lab environment for daily automation and having to manage so many computers makes it a bit difficult for me to keep up with what computers have which patches installed.

Today I found a plugin to Visio which leverages the Baseline Security Analyzer. This makes it pretty easy for me to quickly scan a bunch of computers and visually see which ones need patching.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tools/mbsavisio.mspx

InfoPath C# Node binding Controls tips

ajma — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 03:41:00 GMT

I got a request earlier today to help out with writing a node-binding C# control for InfoPath and I thought I'd share with people the two important parts.

1. Make sure you have the MSXML reference
Microsoft XML, v5.0 is what you're looking for in the References dialog (in VS)

2. Make sure you have a binding property which is an MSXML node:

public MSXML5.IXMLDOMNode Value 

{get { return node; }

set { node = value; }

}

Windows Desktop Search Deskbar Shortcuts (creating one for MSN Shopping)

ajma — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 21:39:00 GMT

One of the features I like about Windows Desktop Search is the ability to create shortcuts for the deskbar. Since we just released our MSN Shopping beta, I thought I'd create one to search the site.

Just enter this string into the Deskbar:

      @shopping,http://beta.shopping.msn.com/results/shp/?text=$w

And then you can quickly search MSN Shopping in the deskbar by typing something like:

      shopping canon 20d

Beta MSN Shopping site (Part II)

ajma — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 04:15:00 GMT

Months ago, I wrote up a tiny blog entry about a preview of our upcoming MSN Shopping website. Today, as the msn shopping team blog says, we get one step closer to that actual release with a refreshed beta site. There are quite a few changes between that Feburary preview and today's beta. There are even more differences between the current http://shopping.msn.com and our beta http://beta.shopping.msn.com. We've come a long way since our last release and there are a lot of new features to show for it.

Some of my favourite features are:
- the new "Grid" view (number 1 feature on my list)
- the recently viewed section at the bottom.
- ratings! I love trying out new stuff and I put a lot of weight into what people say about the products.

And finally .... more stuff! there are now millions more things to buy.

In the last few days, people here have poking around the site and searching for things that interest them. It's been interesting to see what my co-workers are interested in. One of my hobbies is digital photography. Here's a comparison of the Nikon D70 vs the Canon Digital Rebel XT.

For the rest of the new features, here's the official page on the new feature set for the site: http://beta.shopping.msn.com/content/shp/?ctId=265

Finally, this is still in a beta stage, but we're getting there and the site looks pretty good itself today. Again, tell us what you think, either by leaving feedback here or in the comments section below.

Enjoy.

Creating an InfoPath Custom Control using C# and .NET

ajma — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 02:56:00 GMT

A while ago, I helped write an article for the InfoPath team on how to write InfoPath Custom Controls using C#.

http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2005/04/15/408728.aspx

Warning, there isn't really full support for C# Controls in InfoPath, so beware, you might need to write workarounds. The supported languages are VB6 written controls and C++ ones.