Another Microsoft Blogger

Why I resigned from Microsoft today

Removed=342783 — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 01:32:00 GMT

I resigned from Microsoft today after six great years. I hope some of you will subscribe to my new blog (see URL below). I know this blog has been very quiet over the last couple of months and I intend to blog a lot more frequently from now on!

cheers!

Cameron Reilly

Website: http://reilly.typepad.com

Email: cameronreilly@gmail.com

IM: cameronreilly@hotmail.com

Phone +61 400455334

information technology evolving similar to how American cities have evolved?

Removed=342783 — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 18:27:00 GMT

I love essays like this that stretch my thinking and give me new conceptual models for understanding what I see happening each day. According to Pat Helland's “Metropolis“ article, “we are at approximately the early 1880's in urban development in our parallel IT shop's growth!“ I also like his explanation of why “shared services will not be achieved by trying to put all of your applications on one version of one platform”. I'm going to use his material for my next series of discussions on “why SOA“.

Source: Steve Kirk

Making web forms easy with InfoPath and "InfoView"

Removed=342783 — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 19:31:00 GMT

InfoPath makes developing XML forms much easier than ever before. But how do you quickly make those forms available to people external to your organisation who may not be running InfoPath on their desktop yet? Enter InfoView.

A partner of ours in Sydney, Unique World Software, has recently released an exciting new tool called “InfoView”. InfoView uses the files created by Microsoft InfoPath to convert the InfoPath form to an ASP.NET web form able to be delivered through the browser. The XML data generated by InfoView is identical to the XML created by InfoPath, so BizTalk can easily be used for routing and workflow.

The CEO of Unique World and I were talking last night about potential applications of InfoView for our customers. I particularly can see lots of opportunities for enterprises who have customers they want to complete browser-based forms (let's say a telco who wants an online customer self-service system) and then route the data in those forms to back-end transactional data systems such as their ERP and CRM using BizTalk 2004.

Activewords scripting guide in PDF

Removed=342783 — Sun, 11 Apr 2004 05:46:00 GMT

I might actually figure out how to make this scripting stuff work! AW have recently released a guide in PDF format.

Source: Marc

VoIP Now Available on Pocket PCs For Free

Removed=342783 — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 23:11:00 GMT

This article on Skype for Pocket PC mentions that Skype was founded by the two guys who in vented Kazaa! That's news to me. Wow, talk about two guys changing paradigms...

Channel9 gets media coverage down under!

Removed=342783 — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 22:57:00 GMT

Great to see ZDnet Australia giving Channel9 some early coverage!

a look under the covers of Gmail - Google's new email service

Removed=342783 — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 02:06:00 GMT

I'm all excited reading miscoranda's drill-down into Gmail. This is big. As big as OutlookMT, Scoble? I dunno. But it's big. Oh, I know, web mail is old hat. Yeah but so was “search” when Google jumped into the pond.

Also laughing at Kevin Fox's post assuring everyone Gmail wasn't an April Fools Day joke and about why he loves working at a company like Google. Hey Kevin - if you're looking for more testers... give me a yell!

Source: http://weblogs.asp.net/pleloup/archive/2004/04/04/107442.aspx

why migrate from Microsoft ASP to Microsoft .NET

Removed=342783 — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 01:58:00 GMT

A few months ago I linked to an article in a local paper which mentioned that one of Australia's largest e-tailers was still running on Microsoft ASP and SQL 7. Nothing at all wrong with that, as far as I'm concerned - plenty of businesses out there are happily running on even 20 year-old technology. The challenge for vendors, though, is to make the new technology compelling enough to create a business justification for organisations to upgrade their infrastructure.

Today one of the developers at this e-tailer, Paul, posted a comment making the point that “any form of radical technology shift is going to require a pretty compelling business case to justify the expense (and, in the case of the SQL 7 -> SQL 2000 migration, it's a fairly enormous expense)“ and letting me know that they are “doing pretty amazing things with the old technology“ and I'm sure he's right on this last point. The folks at Wishlist are a very smart bunch who have a great site and an even better business model. Let's face it - any “dot com“ who survived the crunch are smarter than your average bear.

So anyway, I was wondering - what business justification have other organisations have used to migrate from ASP to ASP.NET or from SQL7 to SQL 2000? Is it compelling enough? Do we need to do more to either make the new technology compelling or to communicate the more compelling features of the new technologies? Is it really to do with price? Or with the cost and complexity of the migration?

the customer is in charge

Removed=342783 — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 22:51:00 GMT

McNealy (about why the deal came about): “What I think is happening, is that the customer is getting more in charge. I challenge you to find large enterprise customers who are unhappy with this deal”.

What do customer's think of the Sun - Microsoft deal? Does it matter to anyone besides Sun and MS? Does anyone else care? I've just spent ages scrolling through the comments on /. and I can't see much analysis or opinion worth anything. I've read a few press comments and, again, no analysis which sparks my interest.

Bungie announces HALO 2 product placement. Allegedly.

Removed=342783 — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 16:05:00 GMT

Revealing a brand synergy unprecedented in next generation gaming, Bungie today announced a list of vendors to be featured in-game in "Halo 2" the exciting sci-fi adventure heading to Xbox game systems this fall.

Gee, I can’t seem to find “Mungo McIver, a Microsoft marketing expert” in the GAL. How about that….

Why Buffett bought Clayton

Removed=342783 — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 07:16:00 GMT

Been reading Warren Buffett's Letter to Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders in their 2003 Annual Report. It contains a great anecdote about how a group of students from the University of Tennessee helped him decide to purchase Clayton Homes. Really worth a read.

newsflash: the internet is popular with Gen X & Y

Removed=342783 — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 22:26:00 GMT

I had a laugh to myself reading this article today about a study conducted by the Online Publishers Association which analyzes the Internet habits of 18-to-34-year-olds, and guess what it found?? Gen X and Y have embraced the Web in a big way. Wow. No kidding. Humour aside, there are some good numbers in the report:

25 percent of this group sends or shares video via the Web, compared to 6 percent of all Internet users
42 percent burn downloaded music to CDs, versus 24 percent of all Internet users 18 and older
The 18-to-34-year-old demo turns to the Web for entertainment. In fact, 30 percent visit entertainment sites daily, compared to 32 percent who read newspaper entertainment sections and 19 percent who read entertainment magazines.

I just make it into this demographic (turning 34 in October) and it isn't unusual for me to spend 18-20 hours a day in front of a PC (and therefore the web), so of course it's going to be an integral part of how I live, work and play but I guess this is still big news for some baby-boomers who didn't grow up with a PC in front of them (come to think of it, neither did I).

Playing around with Anagram

Removed=342783 — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 08:46:00 GMT

Thanks to Buzz who introduced me tonight to Anagram. Anagram instantly and intelligently translates the meaningful text from any application into Outlook Contact, Calendar, Task and Note items. Great app! Just what I've needed for YEARS. The amount of time I spend cutting and pasting people's sig files into contacts... I hate to think!

I notice Omar's been talking about Outlook as a platform with Anagram as one example. And of course Marc covered it a couple of weeks ago. Gee, I stop blogging for a couple of weeks and the world kept moving without me...

final word on the burglary

Removed=342783 — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 06:09:00 GMT

Here's a shout out to AAMI! This week we received the full payout from the recent burglary. Today we picked up the replacement video camera and I pushed in the only video cassette left behind, one I thought was blank. I pressed play and guess what? It's got Xmas. It's for all of my footage from Xmas eve up until the burglary. The funny thing is that the little "save" latch on the tape wasn't pressed over to "save" - it was still on "record". Now, the first thing I do when I remove a full tape from the camera is to press the "save" latch to prevent it getting recorded over. So I'm thinking the thief took the time to remove the cassette from my video camera and left it on the floor. Wow.

I also splurged a bit today from my mid-year bonus - picked up a Waveterminal U24 Audio Interface and a pair of Sennheiser 212 pro headphones so I can finally improve the quality of the recording of the tracks I'm working on. Now all I need is the new PC - but that's next week's project.

the "Father" of Information Engineering

Removed=342783 — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 18:42:00 GMT

Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of meeting a living legend - Clive Finkelstein. Clive Finkelstein is acknowledged worldwide as the "Father" of Information Engineering (IE), having developed its concepts from 1976 - 1980 based on original work carried out by him to bridge from strategic business planning to information systems. Many of his papers and some projects are available online at http://www.ies.aust.com/~ieinfo/. I'd love to get Clive to speak at some Microsoft events.

CIOs see increased IT spending: Gartner

Removed=342783 — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:35:00 GMT

A survey of 956 chief information officers around the world shows they are confident about increases in IT spending in 2004 but do not intend to increase spending until business shows a recovery, a unit of the technology research firm Gartner said in a report released today.

The survey found that the business priorities for CIOs were still security breaches, operating costs and data protection and privacy.

<Source: The Age>

Do kids blog?

Removed=342783 — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 08:23:00 GMT

Mitch Denny asks: I wonder what would happen if we encouraged school students to keep an open log of their thoughts about their studies that was accessible to teachers and parents where they could ask questions. Parents and teachers could then read the blog entries to help identify ways to help the student learn.

And I was wondering, what % of school kids currently blog? Has anyone seen a stat (in Pew etc) that pulls out that stat? I can think of a bunch of reasons having kids blog would be a good thing. There was lots of crapola that I went through as a kid which would have been good to communicate with someone outside of my immediate circle about.

Why do bloggers kill kittens?

Removed=342783 — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 05:34:00 GMT

To find out why, jump over to the Blog Epidemic Analyzer FAQ at hp.com .

And just to prove I'm not a "Blog Vampire"... source: Word Soup

The Twelve Steps of Blogaholics Anonymous

Removed=342783 — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 04:56:00 GMT

What would the 12 steps look like for a recovering blogaholic?

(with apologies to BillW).

The Twelve Steps of Blogaholics Anonymous
01	We admitted we were powerless over blogging - that our lives had become unmanageable.
02	Came to believe that only pulling the plug on our Wireless Access Point could restore us to sanity.
03	Made a decision to turn our blog and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him... but BillG didn't comment on our post.
04	Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our blog and realized that most of it had been covered by /. first.
05	Admitted to our manager, to ourselves, and to another blogger the exact value of our blog... and discovered most people's spare bandwidth is flat out coping with Scoble's daily bursts anyway.
06	Were entirely ready to have Scoble give our blog new purpose when he had THE LONG WEEK OFF... but then he came back, then decided to obey his real boss and only post six posts per evening... and then reneged on that idea as well.
07	Humbly asked Watermasysk to remove comments from .TEXT so we wouldn't feel compelled to respond personally to each one.
08	Made a list of persons we had ignored whilst writing our blog, and became willing to make amends to them all... and NOT by including them in our OPML.
09	Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would involve revealing whether or not they worked in the IE team.
10	Continued to take personal inventory of our blog and when we posted something not directly related to .NET, promptly admitted it and prepared for comment flames.
11	Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our blog as we understood It, praying only for knowledge of It's will for us and to post that on a daily basis.
12	Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to blogaholics, and to blog wisely in all our affairs.

Buzz on books

Removed=342783 — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 23:09:00 GMT

Buzz says: "..having a library of books that you have read is like keeping a six-pack of empty beer bottles. I have come to give away the books that I read so that others might enjoy them".

As a result of the recent burglary, I've just started to put all of the books in my library into an Access database. I've spent 15 years building up a library of books that shaped my brain and they mean a lot to me. Not only because I like to refer to them regularly, but because I hope someday they will be a source of education and inspiration for my kids. If they were ever stolen, or lost in an accident, it would take years to replace them. Many are first editions, some Napoleonic histories 200 years old, etc. I've got shelves full of books, must be somewhere near 1000.

So I don't lend them out, but I do often give copies of some of my favourites as gifts to people I care about. Recently I've given away books by Ayn Rand, Noam Chomsky, a biography on Napoleon by Vincent Cronin, and a Rimbaud. I like to give people books that changed my view of the world. I'm not much into fiction, unless it is fiction with purpose.

Microsoft's marketing

Removed=342783 — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 05:37:00 GMT

Dylan Greene on Windows 2003 Server: "I'm sure there's a bunch of other features we could be taking advantage of, but as usual it seems that Microsoft's marketing department would rather keep them a secret."

Which reminds me of a comment a colleague of mind in Sydney made to me after a couple of tequilas a few years ago.

He said "Five years ago Microsoft had average products but great marketing. Today, we have great products but average marketing. The biggest problem is - people think it's still the other way around!"

I don't know if I agree, but I'm glad Dylan's keeping us on our toes.

I've been un-Googled

Removed=342783 — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 01:53:00 GMT

I recently changed the title of my blog to improve my googlerank for the search "Microsoft blogger". And it worked... for a couple of days. I went from #40 to #4. And now? Apparently my blog doesn't exist. If I google "microsoft blogger", Scoble is still there, Frankarr is still there, I am… nowhere. :-) What's up with that?

the one about blogs and tipping points

Removed=342783 — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 01:44:00 GMT

I recently finished reading "The Tipping Point" and I came away from it wondering if Scoble is a connector? The ability of a popular blogger to create a memetic epidemic seems plausible. Especially if they are connected to other connectors. Are bloggers influential just because they are widely read? If Scoble says "read this book", will you read it? Well, I read "The Tipping Point" after I read about it on someone's blog and I've ordered quite a few other books from Amazon after reading about them in various blogs lately. I don't think this in itself is enough to cause a global epidemic. But the impact of this "word of mouth" promotion of new technologies is something I can imagine.

A very small example that surprised me, was a few months ago when I installed Taskline and mentioned it on my blog. Since then the guys at Taskline tell me they've received a number of downloads of their software from my blog post. No epidemic yet, but who knows who else will read that blog entry and post on it themselves.

At the moment there are lots of bloggers talking about new products like LookOut. By the way, I installed LookOut last week on my laptop and it rocks. It's the fastest way I've found to search through my mail.

My mother doesn't read my blog

Removed=342783 — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 22:49:00 GMT

LOL. Spoke to my mother today for the first time in a couple of weeks. I said "did I tell you about the insurance settlement from the burglary?" She said "what burglary?" Funny to realize the thousand or so people around the world who read my blog knew about it but my mother didn't. Mum - read the blog.

SenseCam is watching

Removed=342783 — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 22:44:00 GMT

Frank Arrigo links to Microsoft Research's overview of "SenseCam".

I've wondered for a while about when we will have devices like this. I'd ultimately love a wearable device that records the audio-video of my life every moment I'm awake and archives it for future retrieval. I hate missing those little moments of my kids lives when they say or do something classic and I don't have my camera on them. I've to be able to sit down at the end of the day and review in fast-forward the days events, tagging moments as I go "oh yeah, that one goes into 'classic moments'." Then you could pull those up later on "open classic moments file".

I've also thought something like this might simplify the legal system. Imagine having a handshake agreement with someone that both of you capture on AV. It would make future dispute resolutions less complicated.

How would these things work? Will memory compression continue to improve until we get to a point where you will be able to store a day's worth of AV on a wearable device? Or will the device continually back-up the AV wirelessly onto a server somewhere? Will we be able to perform some sort of speech-to-text recognition on the AV that enable us to search for certain segments by using keywords (show me that conversation I had with the police about the burglary")?

I hate running into people I haven't seen for a while and forgetting what my last conversation with them was about. I'd love to be able to watch a video of it before I see them the next time.

Anyway, cool to see MSR is working on such stuff. I imagine pure R&D on this kind of thing is going on in other places, but I don't know where.