scooblog by josh ledgard

After helping Scott fix his images I can now point you to his requests for feedback on the Whidbey Help Toolbar and Screen Resolution . It's funny that the toolbar doesn't even have Dynamic Help listed but the user hatred lingers. If my vote counts, and...

I'm planning on spending as much time at the MVP summit next week as time will allow. I won't presume to have a fan base rushing to meet me as if I were Don Box or even my wife , who will also be attending several of the events. But I will be there chatting...

Dan has a great post that points to information explaining how people and contact lists will be 1st class objects in Longhorn. These API's could be used by ISVs who want to party on your one list. Of course, the number of people that actually take advantage...

It you have a Table PC I strongly encourage you to download sp2 RC1 for windows XP. It actually installs the Tablet 2004 version of XP and I was actually able to write this post with it. I may actually use my Toshiba in Tablet mode again! The floating...

Today I took a stab at creating a prioritized feature list for the 2.0 version of the site. If I missed something or you think I have the ranking wrong let me know. Note: It is not a goal of ours to provide a tool upload mechanism. Tool downloads...

I've formed a virtual team inside Microsoft whose mission is to shape the future of the Visual Studio PowerToys site. Since this site was created for customers we figured we might as well involve customers in the design of the PowerToys 2.0 site. Consider...

Over at jobsblog they took their first stab at describing the different job roles at Microsoft. They started with the SDE . Here is my .03 on their post. They missed the career choice that involved simply continuing to focus on code over time...

It seems the tech industry is not the only one starting to bypass traditional media for marketing. Here are some examples from the Boston Red Sox. All Star pitcher Curt Shilling seems to have a huge on-line presence described here . You can also read...

Dan seems to have started the information flow and now I’ve received IMs from at least four people asking me some questions on the subject. So, in the interest of heading some questions off I decided it would be better for me to ask for forgiveness...

In the grand Microsoft tradition of “if you complain about or suggest something you own it” I’ve been asked to organize actual updates to the VS 2002 and 2003 start page. We have the ability to prop new content to the “What’s...

Two topics I’d been asked to cover were tackled today. Gunnar explains “How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot With Code Coverage ”. Some choice quotes that I have also found to be truisms: To efficiently use any of this a time...

I believe most people have a love/hate relationship with the ads that they are barraged with. Having an Ultimate TV device means I’m not always up on the latest in advertising. For the most part I now live my life in blissful ad free ignorance....

At last count I have at least 12 separate contact lists. There is one list each for Outlook, AIM, MSN Messenger, private Exchange IM, Orkut, Hotmail, MSN Groups, GotDotNet Workspaces, my blogroll, Outlook Express, my banks billpay services, and even my...

Scott Swanson just started a blog. He is the PM who is orchestrating the “Help Experience” for Whidbey. Having been partially involved as the SDET lead on the project I can confirm that Scott does not have an easy job. I'm sure he'd be happy...

Sara has been missing out on our full test pass to participate in the CSUN conference down in LA and hang out with famous people. She has allready posted some good content on the conference and should be posting some more soon. Stop by her blogspace and...

Sven pointed out in my last post that while he enjoyed my postings he had problems with all of the TLAs that I have been taking for granted. Thankfully, .TEXT has the perfect solution for this. I created “keywords” that will automatically...

Software Design Review: Typically a meeting where we present the current state of our plans or bits to a group of customers in order to gather their feedback. Generally the number of customers is kept small enough to permit collaborative discussions,...

Having recently joined a team focused on Developer Division community participation and product integration I thought it would be a good exercise for me to look at recent history and in-roads made in this space over the last four years since I joined...

Having spent the last two years in my previous role of Test Lead in a LOT of triage meetings I found this post to be both hilarious and educational for people opening bugs. If everyone would do the opposite of the recommendations listed there when opening...

I recently attended a recent Microsoft Research talk on the subject of the Microsoft public newsgroups. This was put on by the people behind Netscan . I must admit I’ve never liked NNTP newsgroups. I don’t like the anonymity , posting rich...

Scoble is so fast I can’t even beat him to a post when I have advance warning from a family member. My wife Gretchen , who works as a recruiter, has recently been working on several cool projects designed to “increase the talent pool”...

I’ve “joined the Dark Side”, as my more technical friends would say, and decided to become a Program Manager . After spending four years as an SDET and then SDET Lead working on Visual Studio IDE features, I’ve decided it was time...

From AT , in my comments , came another interesting look at the project language numbers on sourceforge… Using filters on SF.NET (it allow to select projects based on multiple criteria) I've what: Stage...... Java C# Java/C# Ratio Planning...

I was already linking to Tim's blog, but now Saurabh is blogging as well. For starters he'll show you how to get “ Relief from CE Documentation ”. It's a race to see who will post next. I'm sure Saurabh would also love to hear any feedback...

Alex left a good comment in my post that responded to his original assertion that .Net coders code for money more so than they code for “the love”. His points have made me a bit curious. So I did some digging. First I looked at Sourceforge...