Every once and a while I look at trying to optimize how I handle email. After 10 years at Microsoft I have a few tricks but I like to the force myself out there and change things every once in a while. This time I used a number of techniques from Scott...

Stumbled across a great article in FlowingData about the about the 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year – 2009 .  I liked all of them but I particularly liked “ The Jobless Rate for People Like You ”. A beautiful interactive graph – especially...

SlickRun is a great utility written by two of my friends at Microsoft ( Anson and Eric ). Anson has been using this forever and has tried several times to get me to use it. I never really got into it but the other day I downloaded it and have finally...

As a PM in Microsoft’s Developer Division, I always try to make sure that my presentations are relevant and accessible by developers. Mike Taulty does a great job of describing MEF (a great new technology in the .NET Framework) in a very clear and programmer...

Scott Hanselman has a great series of posts about how to enable booting from VHDs in Windows 7. As a PM at Microsoft, you often need to do demos of software in various stages of development. This can present a problem in terms of hardware as most PMs...

I have quite a long commute to work which means that my Zune HD is an essential part of my day Personally I think that the Zune HD is an awesome experience - the hardware and software are simply outstanding and everyone that I have shown the device to...

It’s been a long time since I last blogged, but with the New Year I have decided to start up again. I want to blog about things I find interesting especially about things outside of the direct products I work on – more along the lines of personal productivity...

One of the guys on the team just forwarded a great video from a GSE game "The Dishwasher : Dead Samurai". It looks amazing and I love the visual style. It's great to see games like this popping up from the community. I think the Dream Build Play...

I didn't get a lot of responses to my previous XNA Game Studio Express blog entry (perhaps because I let this blog die to inactivity:-() but I thought I'd try to spice things up with a different Visual Studio focused question. As we finish up the refresh...

I've been suffering from a very painful audio problem on Vista. Towards the end of all my songs the sound would suddenly start to skip and the sound would be very jittery for the last 20 seconds or so. Initially I put it down to driver issues but after...

Customers have used our product forums and Microsoft Connect to tell us that adding support for all versions of Visual Studio (Standard, Professional, etc) is a major feature they would like in the next major release of XNA Game Studio Express. Delving...

It was a dark and gloomy night in Netherstorm when FJ (Rogue) and Devnul (Druid) escorted a poor wanderer on his appointed task. After a short walk, a great battle was engaged and after the dust had settled the Invasion Point Gate was finally closed....

I gave into temptation the other day and bought some Nike+ runners and the iPod extension thing so I could run and get feedback. I've turned into a bit of a shoe freak, so I actually ordered one of the Nike ID shoes where I could customize everything...

I recently answered a number of questions about XNA Game Studio Express from Alistair Wallis at GameCareerGuide and the article has just appeared .

Michael came into my office this morning and made a comment about my lack of blogging over the Xmas/New Year break. I informed him that I spent way too much time playing WoW, watching the NFL and College Football to have any time to blog. But I am back...

Visual Studio SP1 has just been released . I'd encourage anyone using XNA Game Studio Express to install it. This SP has a number of fixes in it and from personal use it unblocks some Vista related issues. Remember to install the Express version of the...

My five year old told me this the other night as I was putting him to bed :-). It's amazing how many things kids understand. Hey, I asked a team for a feature the other day and they said maybe...

As a programmer I can understand code but I have little/no artistic talent. One of the key things we wanted to address with XNA Game Studio Express is making content a first class citizen in the IDE. A lot of people today have two completely different...

Relatively old news (well 12 hours to be exact) but we shipped the first version of XNA Game Studio Express today. Michael has some information about it here . Shipping always makes me a little reflective and I wanted to share the fact that I have been...

I always look forward to the Escapist , it's always well written and it has interesting topics. If you haven't seen it you should take a look.

I moved my main laptop over to Vista about two months ago and overall I'm really happy with the switch (I have been using Vista on my second machine for much longer on various builds available inside the company). I really like Vista, it has major upgrades...

I posted an entry on the XNA team blog about how XNA Game Studio Express won an award at the recent DEMMX awards . Boyd and I had a lot of hassles actually getting there because of a unfortunate flight time and then delays at the airport. The hotel the...

Kind of a strange title I know, but I started to the write a long blog entry about project systems (which I will post at some stage) but I wanted to get to the heart of a matter that members of the team are currently talking about. The issue we are discussing...

XNA Game Studio Express has been nominated for awards in the following categories at the Digital Entertainment Media and Marketing Excellence awards : Innovator of the Year Game Innovation of the Year I'll be flying down to LA for the event and let you...

One of the most interesting business books I have read lately has been the The Long Tail . Given the planning work I'm doing with XNA Game Studio Express (getting close to shipping now!), it was a fascinating book and really helped articulate the "gut...