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August 2006 - Posts

Sir Tim: Calm Down 2.0

This is what The Register said Sir TBL said about Web 2.0: "You should thank Tim Berners-Lee. Not just for giving us the web, but for articulating what's gone wrong in the lexicon and thinking of Silicon Valley. Hopefully, his standing in the web community Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 31, 2006 7:20 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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I've not met Frank, but I know about his shirt.

I've not met Frank Arrigo in person, but I know about his shirt. In the latest episode of the 'Frank and His Shirt' reality show series, the hunt is on for an apparent posuer . The background to this rather potracted saga is a story unto itself, even Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 30, 2006 8:18 AM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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Windows Live QnA service - public beta

Congrats to Betsy and the team : the Windows Live QnA service is now in public beta. I've been on the private beta for a little while and turned to it for help for a couple of things when I got stuck. One example was asking for good seafood restaurants Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 29, 2006 9:43 AM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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I still love the smell of comment spam in the morning.

I love the smell of comment spam in the morning. I did then , I do now. Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 27, 2006 9:36 AM by alexbarn | 7 Comments

YouTube video - How to - using Windows Movie Maker

A video on how to make a YouTube video using Windows Movie Maker, on YouTube , made using Windows Movie Maker ... Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 26, 2006 2:31 PM by alexbarn | 11 Comments
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Top 10 Ways to Light Up Your Windows Vista Apps

Somasega introduces the ' Top 10 Ways to Light Up Your Windows Vista Apps ' 1. Follow the Windows Vista style guidelines 2. Enrich the user experience 3. Enable users to visualize, organize, and search 4. Run securely 5. Design for reliability and manageability Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 26, 2006 12:58 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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RSS feeds, OPMLs and Grazr

Kevin Briody of the Windows Live team has published the RSS feeds he subscribes to as OPML files for your feedreader. Some good feeds worth checking out there, including a bunch of Windows Live individual employee and team blogs. Kevin, one way of displaying Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 26, 2006 12:37 PM by alexbarn | 5 Comments
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Private equity buyouts and crack

Mitch Ratcliffe spotted a column published ealier this month on the FT. The article, written columinst John Plender , proposes that a leveraged buyout of Microsoft by private equity bankers would be a good thing. As Mitch points out, this scenario would Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 26, 2006 11:52 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Windows Live WiFi - beta testers wanted!

Laura John (who I used to work with while we were both at MSDN / TechNet), has blogged about something I've not heard of before...Windows Live WiFi: "We provide dial-up access to a ton of users across the United States but we've also been working on a Read More...
Posted Friday, August 25, 2006 10:10 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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oh yeah, I'm back...

From Yellowstone that is. Land of volcanos, bears, tents, and scary sounds at night. I nearly killed a coyote. Don't mess with me. Read More...
Posted Friday, August 25, 2006 12:17 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

IE7 - RCs, Changes and CSS

As you probably know by now, Dean Hachamovitch announced this morning that Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is ready for download . So what is the difference between a 'Release Candidate' (RC) and a 'Beta'? Here's the short answer from Dean's Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 24, 2006 6:04 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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150 cool Windows XP downloads

150 cool Windows XP downloads . via JoshBlog Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 19, 2006 8:00 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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1 line in XAML

Tim Sneath asks : "What's the most impressive WPF demo you can construct in a single line of XAML? Can you improve on these?" Read More...
Posted Friday, August 18, 2006 10:00 AM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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On CodePlex, Open Source and Microsoft

Korby on CodePlex : "My take, from the trenches, is that CodePlex is Microsoft doing what it has always done: quietly supporting the needs and expressed wishes of our most important customers: developers developers developers developers, the fine folks Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 17, 2006 10:55 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Meet Erik Meijer on Channel 9 (and why he keeps a penguin in a box)

Meet Erik. Erik Meijer is an Architect in Microsoft's Data Programmability team. As you can see from these pics he let me shoot in his office, Erik keeps a penguin... I first knew of Erik when he was starring as the 'Head in the Box' on VBTV . (I wish Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 17, 2006 3:41 AM by alexbarn | 6 Comments
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I'm not here

....on a little vacation, so comments are on moderation - will be approved when I get back in a week. Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 17, 2006 1:30 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Instant IM Translation and other winners

The Made In Express Contest is reaching its conclusion - there are a total of 10 finalists' projects and now it is time to pick the winners...Who will win? Well, that's really up to you . My personal favorite is the Instant IM Translation . I confess Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 16, 2006 10:55 PM by alexbarn | 5 Comments
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0% off!

0% off . Yay! Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 16, 2006 10:30 AM by alexbarn | 4 Comments

What is not RSS?

What is not RSS? In case you were wondering. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 16, 2006 7:21 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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ADO.NET vNext - a load of links....

The ADO.NET vNext Community Technology Preview ('CTP') went live today...Hopefully I can convince Tommy Williams to write up his 'from the trenches' post once he's recovered ;-) Anyways, on to the LINQs links: Today Announcing: The ADO.NET vNext August Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 15, 2006 8:44 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Tag, Tags, Tagging, Categorization, Classification and Laziness

Clearly a classic post on the topic of tagging, but I've not seen it before: A cognitive analysis of tagging (or how the lower cognitive cost of tagging makes it popular) , by Rashmi Sinha : "The rapid growth of tagging in the last year is testament to Read More...
Posted Monday, August 14, 2006 7:37 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Taglocity 1.0 for Outlook

I blogged about a tagging tool for Outlook 2003, Taglocity , when it went to beta earlier this year. Well, the team has released Taglocity 1.0 ! Congratulations to David and his team. Click here to watch the Taglocity screencast ' href="http://www.taglocity.com/" Read More...
Posted Monday, August 14, 2006 4:29 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Plugins and Atom for Windows Live Writer

A few more links for you... 'Hirlpoo West' points out one of the two plugins Tim Heuer has already developed for Windows Live Writer - a plugin that makes it a doddle to insert Flickr images. The other plugin Tim has developed is a Technorati tagging Read More...
Posted Monday, August 14, 2006 1:59 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Windows Live Writer (my first post)

This is my first post on my MSDN blog using the new Windows Live Writer released today by J.J. Allaire and his team (download the .msi here ). I took me around 2 minutes (including the download and setup) to get it talking to the MSDN blog (using the Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 13, 2006 8:37 PM by alexbarn | 7 Comments

Tubular 404

Tubes not found . via Digg . Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 12, 2006 11:09 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Drive-by blogging

Although Judge Edward Fadeley didn't use the term, his warning is clear : 'Drive-by blogging' is out of control. He described the blogosphere as: "a veritable Wild West of verbal ambushes and shootouts, with very little fear of legal recourse to keep Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 10, 2006 5:47 PM by alexbarn | 5 Comments

Pac-man on Xbox Live Arcade - today!

Oh goodie! Pac-man released on Xbox Live Arcade today. As much as I love all those mutli-million dollar production shoot-em-ups and RPGs, there's nothing quite like retro monster munching to soothe away the stresses of the day. Via Major Nelson . Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 09, 2006 10:19 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Gates calls reporter's bluff

Bill's favorite pastime is to play Bridge. Via Todd Bishop , here's a pic of him playing last week . I think the cap is real - Photoshop anyone ? Talking of bluffs and the bizarre, I was amazed to read this story of a Norwegian journalist, Bjørn Benkow, Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 09, 2006 9:19 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Remember: links are dead

Mathew Gifford points out that Steve Gillmor has a new blog. And like Mathew , I'm not pointing to it - remember: links are dead. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 08, 2006 11:47 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

Zero 7, Gonzalez and Seattle

<off topic - Music this time...> Ok, so I've got my tickets to Bumbershoot , so it's safe to blog ;-) Jose Gonzalez is touring the US with Zero 7 and they are hitting Seattle as part of the Bumbershoot lineup in September . I saw them play in Brighton Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 08, 2006 10:26 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Good luck Niall :-(

Well, I just read Niall's post explaining that he is leaving Microsoft . Niall was recruited in April to help the Windows Live team build an RSS / Atom based syndication platform for consumption across devices. Like Scoble , I'm sorry to see Niall go. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 08, 2006 2:50 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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Wonderful, Wonderful Web (www) - 15 years young

1991, August 6 : " Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the " World Wide Web ." Here is the 'Executive Summary' mail he sent to alt.hypertext Thank you, Sir , for the Wonderful, Wonderful Web. (and to Justin for the reminder). Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 05, 2006 11:56 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Parking @ Microsoft

From what I've seen over at Joshua's blog , it's no wonder we have parking problems . Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 05, 2006 11:47 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

LINQ to Amazon

Yes, you read that right. LINQ to Amazon . "This example introduces Linq to Amazon , which allows querying Amazon for books using Linq! It uses Linq's extensibility to allow for language-integrated queries against a book catalog. The Linq query gets converted Read More...
Posted Friday, August 04, 2006 1:06 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Programming Language Trends and more

Tim O'Reilly's series of posts on book sales are giving up lots of interesting data and trends from the Nielsen Bookscan's top 3,000 Computer Books report (means: all publishers not just O'Reilly sales, but US sales only). Yesterday's post was no different Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 03, 2006 8:58 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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10 Common ASP.NET Pitfalls

Classic Digg bait: Keep Sites Running Smoothly By Avoiding These 10 Common ASP.NET Pitfalls: "Here are 10 of the pitfalls that litter the path to releasing your production ASP.NET applications, and what you can do to avoid them. All of the examples draw Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 03, 2006 8:57 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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What is Web 2.0?

Assaf @ Supr.c.ilio.us has the answers . Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 02, 2006 9:57 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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If you like microformats and RSS you will love this.

If you like microformats and / or RSS you'll love it. If you don't know about microformats and / or RSS you need to watch it. Channel9 interviews Matt Augustine and Paresh Suthar about Live Clipboard and Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE). Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 02, 2006 4:04 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Syndicated search engines broken - Part II

A few days ago I grumbled at the poor state of the search engines specializing in syndicated (RSS'd or Atomized) content. Today, Michael Marshall Patrick is enthusiastically supporting a proposed standard by Bloglines that is trying to solve an apparent Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 01, 2006 10:34 PM by alexbarn | 17 Comments

OOF

I've been OOF since the beginning of last week, back in tomorrow. Adam was also OOF last week and has pic to prove it: While on the topic of email @ Microsoft, check out Joe's 1 year @ Microsoft post . Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 01, 2006 5:53 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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