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July 2006 - Posts

Data Visualization, using Oreos.

Data Visualization tools are great. Especially when using Oreos . Read More...
Posted Monday, July 31, 2006 7:12 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Mouse party.

Not this kind of mouse party... but this kind of mouse party ... "Dude, tell me that hand isn't for real". or "What's your poison?" Via apophenia . Read More...
Posted Monday, July 31, 2006 1:32 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Starbucks Interactive Cup Brewer (iCup) @ Microsoft

The real Microsoft news today is not that Microsoft (and Google) want to dominate the web , nor is it *real* news that Microsoft today announced (along with the likes of BEA, Cisco, IBM and others) a draft of a new specification that describes the modeling Read More...
Posted Monday, July 31, 2006 12:56 PM by alexbarn | 10 Comments
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Microsoft teaser campaign for Zune. not.

Cesar sayz : "folks on the web are saying that it's a Microsoft teaser campaign for Zune. It's not." Read More...
Posted Sunday, July 30, 2006 9:50 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Syndicated content search - still broken

For a few months now, Randy Charles Morin has been tracking and grading the performance of search engines specializing in syndicated (RSS'd or Atomized) content. These search tools can be invaluable when you are trying to keep track of what customers, Read More...
Posted Saturday, July 29, 2006 10:34 PM by alexbarn | 7 Comments
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Wormholes and photo collections

Remember the Seadragon Software acquisition in February ? Well, some of that technology and talent has turned up in very cool project called Photosynth , under development within Microsoft Live Labs . "What if your photo collection was an entry point Read More...
Posted Friday, July 28, 2006 10:38 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Quick thyroid update

Just a quick update to let you know that my surgery went very well on Tuesday and am recovering nicely. Already feeling much healthier :-) Thanks for all your best wishes. Read More...
Posted Thursday, July 27, 2006 3:53 AM by alexbarn | 7 Comments

Long Life

Raymond was kind enough to think of me when he received a carton of 'Long Life' cigarettes from Taiwan from some out of town visitors. Since Raymond wants a long life and is generally a sensible chap, he doesn't smoke. So he passed them on to me at a Read More...
Posted Tuesday, July 25, 2006 8:28 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

I have invites for Windows Live QnA...

Well, lucky me and lucky you. Betsy , Krista and co have been good enough to let me have some invites to give away for the Windows Live QnA Beta (hidden behind a beta door right now) If you’ve not heard of this service, check out this summary by TechCrunch Read More...
Posted Friday, July 21, 2006 8:13 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Let's REST!

A bunch of links to RESTful resources I've collated here and there - should be a good starting point to get a handle on some of the basics of REST, with links to example APIs / documentation as well as some posts ReprESenTative of the discussion in this Read More...
Posted Friday, July 21, 2006 5:11 PM by alexbarn | 17 Comments
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Video - ADO.NET Entity Framework: How. What. Why

Britt Johnston, Mike Pizzo and Pablo Castro are interviewed by Charles Torre in this Channel 9 video - ADO.NET Entity Framework: How. What. Why . Also, see: Pablo's intro post to the video: ADO.NET Entity Framework on Channel 9 Britt's posts providing Read More...
Posted Friday, July 21, 2006 1:21 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Using the Flickr API with .NET

MSDN's Coding4Fun has a good intro article on playing with the Flickr API using Flickr.Net API library : "the actual mechanics of communicating with Flickr are relatively simple. The hard part is coming up with the idea for a groovy new application." Read More...
Posted Friday, July 21, 2006 12:45 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Interview - Xbox 360 'developer top gun'

Ars Technica gets on an interview with Matt Lee , a software engineer in the Game Technology Group at Microsoft. Matt's job is "to help game developers make better Xbox 360 games". One of a team of about 12 with the same role. The interview itself goes Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 19, 2006 10:30 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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MSR does Minority Report

Microsoft Research gets up to some very cool jolly swell stuff. Check out this video of some Minority Report -esque UI work (video hosted on the new look 10). That's gangsta crackerjack. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 19, 2006 8:32 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Microsoft Announces 'Windows Principles'

Links and snippets below... Press release here: "Recognizing the important role the Windows ® operating system plays in the global information economy, Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of voluntary principles to help guide the future development Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 19, 2006 2:32 PM by alexbarn | 6 Comments
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Best Browser - Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7, or Opera 9?

ExtremeTech has written up the most comprehensive comparison between recent versions of three browsers that I've seen. Now, in case you're wondering - 'oh yeah, you are blogging this because IE7 comes up top, right?' , I'm not, because that is not the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 19, 2006 11:12 AM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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A crack in this fine social scene?

John Udell has raised a point triggered by the Share Your OPML (SYO) OPML experiment that I've not even come close to thinking about regarding the 'my data' meme. "I presume there is no longer any argument about data export. If I contribute to blip or Read More...
Posted Tuesday, July 18, 2006 10:17 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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An inside, non-biased view of life at Microsoft.

Via Mitch Tulloch "Some humor to start your week–check out this recruiting video targeted toward naive, unsuspecting college grads whom Microsoft would like to assimilate into their evil collective." <evil laugh> agh, agh, haaaaa </evil laugh> Read More...
Posted Tuesday, July 18, 2006 9:26 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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OurSS

ehehe... Read More...
Posted Monday, July 17, 2006 7:06 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Microsoft's Ultimate Beta Tester?

Microsoft's Ultimate Beta Tester? Itself: 60,000 machines were running Windows XP Service Pack 2 during its beta phase By mid-June Microsoft had 16,000 Windows Vista Beta 2 users (I'm one of them) 25,000 on Office 2007 Beta 2 (I'm one of them) 6,000 mailboxes Read More...
Posted Monday, July 17, 2006 6:52 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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PLOJ or POJ?

In the age of Ajax this and Ajax that, just remember - for some things, plain old Javascript ( PLOJ ) may be all you really need. Or is it POJ ? Read More...
Posted Monday, July 17, 2006 6:21 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Here comes the widgetsphere

Deirdre Molloy of NMK has noticed something...and I like it... She's got the details , so I won't repeat here... ...but if you know the UK online scene at all , the names Bowbrick (my blogdaddy ) and Pope ( recently in Seattle ) should be familiar to Read More...
Posted Friday, July 14, 2006 7:16 PM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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Adobe's First 'Web 2.0' Application ! :-/

<snark alert>Now I wouldn't describe myself as a snarky sort of a blogger, but I confess, my snarky inner me is jumping up and down screaming: "snarkbait!!". So I'm going to succumb.</snark alert>. Oh, and this is IMHO, IMO, not the view of Read More...
Posted Friday, July 14, 2006 7:00 AM by alexbarn | 6 Comments

Buy a Media Center, choose your poison.

Buy a Media Center, choose your poison (ingredients not included). Read More...
Posted Friday, July 14, 2006 4:18 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Buy a Mac, cook an egg

Buy a Mac, cook an egg . Via Mr Ou . Read More...
Posted Friday, July 14, 2006 4:10 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Excel 2007 charting UX design

Sander Viegers is a user experience (UX) designer in the Office Design Group who contributed to Excel 2007's development. Sander has guest blogged on the Excel 2007 team blog this interesting post describing the process of creating the new charting experience. Read More...
Posted Friday, July 14, 2006 3:28 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Windows Live buggy

Nah, not that kind of buggy, this kind of buggy: Read More...
Posted Thursday, July 13, 2006 10:08 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Amazon S3 / MSDN

Jeff Barr shows off some highlights regarding the Amazon S3 service I blogged about a little while ago. It turns out that Microsoft's MSDN Direct Student Download program is one of the customers using the Amazon S3 service. From a press release : "We Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 12, 2006 9:50 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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'most create use of a kitten to help illustrate a technical point' award

Danny Ayers is a good read at the worst of times. This post on the REST / RDF /XML discussion has my vote for 'most create use of a kitten to help illustrate a technical point' award for 2006. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, July 11, 2006 5:46 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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New rule

New rule. Very simple. If it's on techmeme.com I'm not blogging it. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, July 11, 2006 2:04 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Can't sleep, so thought I'd blog.

Can't sleep, so thought I'd blog. oh well... I've been meaning to post this for a while actually, so now is as good a time as any I suppose... Did you know about blogs.technet.com ? It's like blogs.msdn.com , but different. Technically, the TechNet blogs Read More...
Posted Tuesday, July 11, 2006 1:57 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Video - The wonders of international business (at Microsoft)

I've worked on both sides of the Microsoft international equation - in the UK as the sub rep on various projects trying to get corp to understand the local market 'situation and challenges' and more recently in Redmond as the 'Corp' program manager acting Read More...
Posted Monday, July 10, 2006 11:59 AM by alexbarn | 5 Comments
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Blogger runs for Mayor. With no money.

One of my favorite bloggers, J Wynia, has decided he's going to run for Mayor of the Minneapolis suburb he's been living in for the last year - Brooklyn District Center. Now, I've never heard of Brooklyn District Center. I've never been even close to Read More...
Posted Saturday, July 08, 2006 2:12 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Scoble - the Channel 9 exit interview

Charles Torre grabbed Scoble for one last go on Channel 9, this time Scoble is the interviewee . Read More...
Posted Friday, July 07, 2006 8:53 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Office supports OpenDocument - early reactions

Stephen O'Grady of Redmonk provides some in-depth analysis on the news than Microsoft will sponsor an open source project to build tools that enable the conversion between its Open XML formats in Office 2007 and OpenDocument (ODF). Official press release Read More...
Posted Thursday, July 06, 2006 9:03 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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More FeedBurner statcrunching

As you might know, I like to keep an eye on my Feedburner / RSS / Aotm / feeds stats . Neville Hobson has just shared some of his Feedburner stat data and I thought it was interesting how similar some of the trends are compared to mine. Some differences Read More...
Posted Monday, July 03, 2006 2:00 PM by alexbarn | 8 Comments
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Ads on BBC.com - good / bad?

Ben Metcalfe is very concerned with the BBC's plans to add advertising on their International version of BBC.com . Ben outlines the reasons for his concerns and I've read them, but I still don't know enough about the ins-and-outs / pros vs. cons on the Read More...
Posted Saturday, July 01, 2006 6:27 PM by alexbarn | 6 Comments
 
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