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March 2006 - Posts

Microformats Podcast

Microformats Podcast Here's a great podcast for you. All about microformats ... Joining me are Tantek Çelik , Dan Connolly and Rohit Khare . I think it's safe to say these guys know a thing or two about the web and microformats. As usual, show notes and Read More...
Posted Friday, March 31, 2006 8:59 PM by alexbarn | 23 Comments
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RSS 101 screencast (en française)

Claire Ulrich has created a French voiceover version (.avi) of the my RSS 101 screencast . Bon apetit. Claire Ulrich a créé une version française de commentaire (.avi) du mon screencast de RSS 101 . Enjoy. - Tags: RSS française screencast Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 29, 2006 9:01 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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RSS + SLE (real world) examples

Sean Lyndersay over on the IE team blog posted about the RSS Simple List Extensions (SLE) and how they are being used today. (Note you need IE 7 to see the SLE functionality in-browser. Since not everyone will (or can) try out the IE7 beta, I've created Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 28, 2006 11:05 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Geometry Wars - video nuts.

I've been playing Geometry Wars (Evolved) on my 360. It got to the point where I thought 'this is just getting impossible!'. Too many nasties trying to do me in... So I hunted around for how I might improve and came across these videos by some total Geometry Read More...
Posted Monday, March 27, 2006 9:23 PM by alexbarn | 4 Comments

My 6 predictions on microformats

Joshua Allen helped organize the microformats and structured blogging unofficial session at Mix this week with Marc Canter and Tantek . Joshua has posted 6 predictions on the topic of microformats that are worth a read (thanks to Tommy for the pointer Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 25, 2006 12:25 PM by alexbarn | 11 Comments
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I'm getting one of these.

Shawn reminded me of something I showed him this week. The t-shirt , that is. I'm ordering too. Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 23, 2006 10:08 PM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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On Jigsaw

On Jigsaw, what Michael said . Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 23, 2006 9:47 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Recommendation and the Harry Potter Problem

Greg Linden used to work at Amazon. From time to time he'll recount one of his 'early days at Amazon' stories on his blog giving some insight into the development challenges in building the world's largest online shop. In his latest post , Greg talks Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 23, 2006 9:25 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Mix06 - that's a wrap!

Here's some Mix06 day 2 and 3 pics, links and stuff... Scott Guthrie's presentation went down well - Wallace McClure liked the Atlas features he saw and met up with some Microsoft folks after the Atlas session. eBay's Alan Lewis presented on using eBay Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 23, 2006 12:43 AM by alexbarn | 5 Comments
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Windows Live Developer Center, now live

The Windows Live Developer Center site is now live at MSDN , where you can find stuff on the MSN Messenger API , MSN Search Web Services and more... Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 21, 2006 5:02 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Mix06 Day 1

I've uploaded a bunch of my Mix06 pics . My favourite is this one of Marc Canter advertising his microformats and structured blogging session he is running later today. Yesterday Marc asked Bill Gates a question around open APIs. I think he liked the Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 21, 2006 11:59 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Bill Crunch

Following the Mix06 keynote speeches earlier this morning and a spot of lunch, I attended a session called 'Web 2.0: Show me the money'. Before the session started, I noticed Michael Arrington on stage with a little bit of time on his hands, readying Read More...
Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 11:59 PM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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New IE7 build ready for download

I'm at Mix06. Here's a quick hit - from the IE team: 'New IE7 Build Available at Mix06' "It is build 5335.5 and it is now available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/ . This build is for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and shows the current Read More...
Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 3:06 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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The Pre-Fighting Philosopher's Problem

I mentioned Brian Beckman in my 'What am I doing at Microsoft' post. The following is a sample of what I meant by saying that talking to Brian was like watching one of those Channel 9 videos , from Brian's latest post - The Pre-Fighting Philosopher's Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 19, 2006 11:57 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

10 Random Thoughts. #3 Worry.

10 Random Thoughts. #3 Worry. Do not worry about anything that you can not do anything about. Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 18, 2006 7:17 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

The Microsoft paperclip video

Quick video Microsoft paperclip - warning - lewd language. Probably been around while but I've not seen it before...here it is . Via guuui.com . - Tags: Microsoft Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 18, 2006 4:57 PM by alexbarn | 5 Comments
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I'm a coffee heathen

Have you seen this? I saw it on the shelf at my local Starbucks - it's an 'Iced Coffee' in a can. Tastes better than it looks - on the front of the can it says 'A premium coffee drink with a hint of nonfat milk and sugar'. From the can blurb: "A true Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 18, 2006 11:01 AM by alexbarn | 5 Comments

Mix06 - here I come....!

I'm heading off to Mix06 tomorrow. My first time to Las Vegas... Other Microsoft attendees have started making their way down too: PeteL , Visual Web Developer Design View Tester; Cyra Richardson , Program Manager at IE; 'Vibro' Architect Evangelist and Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 18, 2006 8:22 AM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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10 Random Thoughts. # 2 Repetition engines

10 Random Thoughts. # 2 Repetition engines New media is rapidly becoming like old media . 'Memetrackers' (newstrackers) are dragging 'new media' into the land of the repetitive, the shallow and the incestuous. They are not what I meant when I described Read More...
Posted Friday, March 17, 2006 8:50 AM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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The Next Big Thing is: There is no Next Big Thing.

The Next Big Thing is: There is no Next Big Thing. Baloney. I liked Don Dodge's response to the 'there is no Next Big Thing' : "The Next Big Thing does exist...it just doesn't look BIG to IBM. That is a common problem with large companies. When you have Read More...
Posted Friday, March 17, 2006 8:05 AM by alexbarn | 5 Comments
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What am I doing at Microsoft?

I've not blogged very much (at all) about the new role I started about 8 weeks ago, so I thought it was about time I did. In January, I joined the Data Programmability (DP) product group. My official title is 'Community Program Manager'. What this means Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:17 PM by alexbarn | 9 Comments
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More OPML experiments

Two cool OPML experiments I've come across this morning and wanted to point out. OPML Cloud The first is OPML Cloud , an Alex Bosworth creation. This OPML Cloud is an html + Ajax rendering of the Web 2.0 Workgroup OPML file : The grey represents the start Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 16, 2006 9:27 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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The middleman won't go away

Via Findory's personalized page , I came across this , which led me to this , which then led me to this and this post by Matt Terenzio , speculating on the future disappearance of infomediaries: "If I want to sell my bike, I expose a blog post with the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 15, 2006 9:05 PM by alexbarn | 7 Comments
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Nanotech helps blind hamsters (see)

BBC reports on another breakthough in the fight against hamsters' hardships: "Nanotechnology has restored the sight of blind rodents, a new study shows." The researchers originally planned to experiment on three blind mice. However, the trio's agent refused Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 15, 2006 12:12 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Help with Tag Hell

James Corbett suggests Raw Sugar may help out with the Tag Hell I described a little while ago: "Raw Sugar is already on the case and providing both hierarchical tag clusters and tag similarity detection." I'm playing with now... - Tags: tags , tagging Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 14, 2006 11:37 PM by alexbarn | 6 Comments
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10 Random Thoughts. # 1. The interview.

10 Random Thoughts. # 1. The interview. Interviewer: I want you to move Mount Fuji. How are you going to do that? Interviewee: It depends. You have Scope, Resources and Time. You can pick any two. Which two? Interviewer: I'll have Resources and Time Interviewee: Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 14, 2006 11:26 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Amazon Launches Simple Storage Solution (S3)

Amazon has been up to some interesting things of late . Its most recent play is the Amazon Simple Storage Solution (S3) , launched just a couple of hours ago. TechCrunch has the details It's not free, but it seems like pretty good value . Any data format Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 14, 2006 1:59 AM by alexbarn | 6 Comments
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500 mashups

That's right, 500. That's how many mashups John Musser has listed at his ProgrammableWeb site . Read More...
Posted Monday, March 13, 2006 8:28 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Microsoft Watch is podcasting

Microsoft Watch is now keeping its beady eye on, er, Microsoft, via a weekly podcast . - Tags: Microsoft , podcast Read More...
Posted Monday, March 13, 2006 8:15 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

RSS + Simple List Extensions for the enterprise

Here's a prediction by Charlie Wood : "As more enterprise applications become RSS-enabled, I predict that an RSS reader that doesn't support Simple List Extensions will become as retrograde as a web browser that doesn't support tables ." Charlie, let Read More...
Posted Monday, March 13, 2006 7:55 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Brain Computer Interface

Seattle PI's Todd Bishop has written up good story on Microsoft Research 's Brain Computer Interface (BCI) project: "Many computer scientists around the world are involved in the same field, commonly known as brain computer interfaces, or direct neural Read More...
Posted Monday, March 13, 2006 7:13 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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on10net, live

Robert Scoble and Jeff Sandquist explain why on10net is worth checking out. Jeff asked me to test out last week and I loved what I saw. Also, congrats to Duncan - this is the first major product that's shipped with his code since leaving the MSDN team. Read More...
Posted Monday, March 13, 2006 8:33 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Fun with OPML in ASP.NET

' Fun with OPML in ASP.NET ', by Peter Bromberg . Via Lisa Williams . Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 12, 2006 9:02 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

Here's an OPMLish podcast for you

Here's an OPMLish podcast for you, recorded tonight with me , Joshua Porter , Adam Green and John Tropea . It's all about the draft OPML 2.0 spec and a few other things thrown in such as structured blogging, OPML tools, namespaces and microformats. We Read More...
Posted Friday, March 10, 2006 10:47 PM by alexbarn | 17 Comments
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'the OPML sketch of who I am and how I got here'

As I've already mentioned, I had the pleasure of meeting a certain gentleman by the name of Dennis E. Hamilton earlier this week. He's a fascinating chap. As we were talking it became apparent to me he was a true hacker - one of the originals. Dennis Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 09, 2006 10:30 PM by alexbarn | 6 Comments
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eBay invests in Meetup.com

I checked my mail just now and got a message from the CEO of Meetup.com , Sott Heiferman, explaining that his company has just closed an investment round with eBay. He doesn't say how much, and stresses that they've not been acquired. Here's the relevant Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 09, 2006 6:55 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Windows Live Search, with Macros!

The Windows Live news just keep coming....this time it's Windows Live Search, with Macros! Nathan over at Inside Microsoft takes a look ... Microsoft Gadgets has a collection of them to play with.... Brandon LeBlanc created two Macros himself . Niall Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 09, 2006 1:20 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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More on Origami. This time on Channel 9.

More on Origami. This time on Channel 9 . "Otto Berkes is the architect (now general manager) behind the Ultra-Mobile PC team, code-named Origami. We have a conversation about Origami and the vision behind it. More on what was announced today is found Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 09, 2006 11:45 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Project Origami team blog

You may or may not have come across the Origami buzz in the last couple of weeks... Well, the mastermind behind the campaign, a chap called 'Dustin', has posted a quick explanation of the campaign and its planning over at the Project Origami team blog Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 09, 2006 10:14 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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That's one hairy lobster

The BBC reports: "A US-led team found the animal last year in waters 2,300m (7,540ft) deep at a site 1,500km (900 miles) south of Easter Island, an expert has claimed." What surprises me is how quickly they found a hairy lobster expert. - Tags: Hairy Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 08, 2006 11:05 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Live.com upgrade

Tailrank , Memeorandum and Megite (no permalink, sorry) have a bunch of links to posts relating to the Live.com news . Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 08, 2006 1:57 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

'There are no back doors into Vista'

Niels Ferguson, developer & cryptographer within Microsoft's System Integrity team posted earlier this week : "Two weeks ago BBC News published an article speculating about a possible “back door” in BitLocker ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4713018.stm Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 07, 2006 5:58 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Ray Ozzie: 'extend the clipboard user model to the web'

Ray Ozzie had an idea he's taking further: "The idea was based on using a simple and consistent user model to wire-the-web that would assist individuals in creating their own mesh of interconnections - both web-to-web and web-to-PC. ...Simply stated, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 07, 2006 9:21 AM by alexbarn | 8 Comments
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Pet Shop Boys protest at ID cards

Pet Shop Boys protest at ID cards . We're saved. Read More...
Posted Monday, March 06, 2006 10:00 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Record-your-own-attention toolkit

Now here's an Attention data experiment. This time by J Wynia . "I’ve read several times that if they have age, sex and zip code, they can get really pretty accurate targeting to an individual. So, why is the information about me not easily available Read More...
Posted Monday, March 06, 2006 9:40 PM by alexbarn | 7 Comments
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Annotated Reading List

As Matt Terenzio has noticed, Adam Green is playing with some dynamically generated OPML files he's creating using a variety of services. Adam call the current output an Annotated Reading List . During the development process he discovered some 'undocumented Read More...
Posted Monday, March 06, 2006 9:00 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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A bunch of blogs.msdn.com/* bloggers

This was a fun night - a bunch of blogs.msdn.com/* bloggers having dinner last week. Left to right: Josh Ledgard , Gretchen Ledgard , Alex Barnett (er, me, focusing on food...), Raymond Chen (who apparently writes like a girl ), Betsy Aoki (who apparently Read More...
Posted Monday, March 06, 2006 8:02 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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O'Reilly's ASP.NET 2.0 Training Center

You can now get advice from top O'Reilly and Dr. Dobbs Journal experts and authors on the brand new ASP.NET 2.0 Training Center . It is sponsored by Microsoft, but as Tim O'Reilly points out , it's not just ASP.NET pitch: "What's particularly interesting Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 04, 2006 5:40 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Kids Programming Language

Unless you're a kid or teacher, you've probably not heard of the 'Kids Programming Language' ( KPL ). KPL is not a Microsoft language like C# or VB, but a language Microsoft started to support and promote 'officially' last year after some Microsoft folks Read More...
Posted Friday, March 03, 2006 9:07 AM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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The Web 2.0 uncertainty principle

What originally caught my attention was # 7 of Scott Karp's 'You know if you're a geek if you...' But then I read Mark Devlin 's comment on Scott's post: "The Web 2.0 uncertainty principle: If you understand it, you don’t know it." It all suddenly fell Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 02, 2006 10:04 PM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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Cool little Greasemonkey script - it fixes MSDN titles

Julien Couvreur has cool little Greasemonkey script - " MSDN Fix Titles" . It, er, fixes MSDN titles. So the titles are more usable. And readable. Which is cool in one way, but another way, it is uncool in that it is needed in the first place. Anyway...a Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 02, 2006 9:34 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Singularity - I'm SL5. You?

On the Singularity, I'm SL5 . Pretty sure of it. You? Via the learned JWB . Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 02, 2006 9:26 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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UK online start-ups, where are they?

Time to get a little patriotic... Fellow Brit, James Governior, moaned the other day (quite rightly in my opinion) about the lack of gusto and activity happening in the web start-up space in the UK. Now, it may be just a perception thing, but it seems Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 02, 2006 7:30 AM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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OPML 2.0

Dave Winer announces a draft OPML 2.0 spec for review: "Today the public review of OPML 2.0 begins, with the publication of the DRAFT spec and the opening of a mail list for the purpose of reviewing the spec." Here's the the draft spec . From the Roadmap: Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 01, 2006 8:56 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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There's good news and bad news...

Information aesthetics points out a site that categorizes BBC News Headlines as 'good', 'bad' or neutral" called Mood News : "a linguistic system categorizes news headlines as different 'moods' using keyword scoring from a vocabulary of 160 words & Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 01, 2006 7:24 AM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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