A View from Elsewhere

Everyone loves the iPhone, so of course Gartner had to go and spoil it for us . Technorati Tags: iphone , gartner

Last night at the University Bookstore in Seattle, Lois McMaster Bujold was in town talking not about her latest book , but about other random questions, like the cover art on her books and whether she'd write another book in the Barrayar series. She...

We've pushed the latest update to Popfly.com. The team blog lists the top features, including, evidently, "More cowbell." Gee, I wonder who wrote that...

Well, we saw a lot of people at Maker Faire, but the biggest thing we did was the ducks. Sure we gave a lot of demos, but for every demo we gave we had four kids painting ducks. Here are some of the ducks that the kids painted, Popfly-style.

Drew Bollman has posted his mashup wish list . He had me at #1.

Tonight a lot of my team and I head down to San Mateo, CA for O'Reilly's Maker Faire . I've never been and am pretty excited to see what people are up to -- things like the Fab@Home look neat. We'll be in the Microsoft Coding4Fun booth giving demos of...

Channel9- Popfly Scoble- Microsoft releases neat mashup tool TechCrunch- Microsoft Launches Popfly- Mashup App Creator Built On Silverlight Digg- Microsoft Launches Popfly- Mashup App Creator Built On Silverlight Somasegar's Blog Anand...

No product is complete without a top-ten list of cool features, so here's mine for Popfly. It's easy to get. All you really need is Firefox 2 or IE 6 or 7. Oh, and Silverlight, but that's pretty easy to get. It's easy to use. People have talked...

Some of you have been following this blog more closely than others. Well, a few of you. OK, there are like four people who read this regularly. (Hi, mom!) But for those of you who have been reading it, you've probably noticed that I've been suspiciously...

Today (that'd be Friday) we're announcing Microsoft Popfly(tm) , which is the project my team has been working on. It's a simple, web-based tool that makes it easy to create mashups, web pages, and so on. We also have a Visual Studio 2005 package that...

In this era of networks and USB keys, why does Visual Studio show a throbbing floppy when it's saving work? Just wondering.

Updated Thanks for waiting: the patch that will enable VB Express and VC# Express April CTP to create WPF applications is available. VC# Express: http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/2/6/8267fa5a-e725-4bb8-850a-2f5fee4702db/OrcasVCSAprilCTPWPFPatch...

The first Community Technology Preview of all four Visual Studio Express "Orcas" products are available for download now. You can go to Channel 9 to see Soma's video , or just go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/future to download and install...

A long time ago, this phrase was the watchword of those radical hacker types. Today's appearance of lots of web services (and I mean the term in its loosest meaning -- RSS feeds, REST APIs, SOAP APIs, and anything else on the web) tells me that information...

Suddenly, antitrust law all makes sense.

Dinosaur . I love these guys.

Another thought from reading Peopleware : As a manager, how much effect do you have on people? Here's a quote from the book: "A recurrent theme through all the novels is Hornblower's gloomy presentiment that achievers are born, not made... In...

One of the cool things about working at Microsoft is that when you have a question, you can pick from an array of really smart people to get an answer. Want to know why C# does whatever strange thing that annoys you? Ask Anders. Want to know when Windows...

I believe that people want the ability to control their digital experiences – not just setting backgrounds or uploading photos, but the ability to completely change any aspect of any product or website they use and reconfigure them at will. In other words...

You can get away with a lot just by asserting strongly enough. I'm thinking specifically of a section from a book I read recently -- Peopleware . One of the PMs on my team got it out of the Microsoft library and gave it to me to read. I didn't take it...

MARCH 06, 2007, REDMOND -- Microsoft today announced the creation of a new super-secure encryption technique, doubling previous techniques. Dubbed "ROT-26," the new technique applies a complex mathematical algorithm recently created in Microsoft Research...

Please maintain your awareness of cute dog photos and (mostly) happy endings.

The new "i'm" program that the Live team is running is truly clever. Beyond clever: it's brilliant. Every statistic I've seen indicates that most people don't contribute to charity for one reason or another -- maybe they don't have the disposable income...