Alex Barnett's blog

Data Visualization tools are great. Especially when using Oreos .

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 .

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...

Cesar sayz : "folks on the web are saying that it's a Microsoft teaser campaign for Zune. It's not."

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

ehehe...

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...

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 ?

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...

<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...

Buy a Media Center, choose your poison (ingredients not included).

Buy a Mac, cook an egg . Via Mr Ou .