A View from Elsewhere

Well, well. After doing all the research, we learned yesterday that there's a class-action lawsuit against Maytag for problems with the Neptune washers -- evidently they develop mold in the door gasket, the motors break, and other things go wrong. So...

After seven years in developer division marketing, I'm making a transition into the product team to work as a program manager to help define what a "Live" version of Visual Studio might look like. If you think about Office Live and Windows Live , you...

When do I use which?...

Right now, ClickOnce is a code name. We need a real name. What should it be?

The other day I got into an argument with someone about programming languages and their users. I don’t know why – it’s one of those conversation topics like religion or politics or the Yankees that will only end badly for all involved. I guess I was in...

One of the things I own is the “Software Enthusiast” scenario for Orcas as well as a bit of work around the Express products (VB Express, C# Express, etc.). Each language team and the Visual Web Developer is still responsible for their Express product...

If you haven't already seen it , you should. Not the funniest trailer-recut I've seen, but there's something there for everyone.

One of the charters of my team is to try to make the process of learning to program more fun. There are a lot of things we can, should, and will do here. One thing that has stood out for me is how many people have told me they don't understand object...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista...

Google got it right with Froogle (the site for searching for the least expensive products), but missed the opportunity with news, creating news.google.com instead of noogle. Here is my list of proposed names for sites Google could run: Google: the...

Locally in Seattle, thanks to a Comcast/Microsoft deal, Comcast has begun a broad trial of a digital cable receiver that's also a DVR (a la Tivo). I'd always wanted a Tivo, but the addition of another remote control, the cost of the service, and the fact...

One of the nice things about the .NET Framework (particularly vs. Win32) was its discoverability. There were 108 namespaces and about 3,800 types. There were just a few top-level namespaces and really only a few you needed to think about (System.Web,...

How did you learn to program? Especially if you’re not a professional developer and never had been (I already have the data that says that something like 70% of professional developers got degrees in computer science or engineering). I’m wondering how...

This came up in the context of the development experience we’re working on. One of the objects we supply to work with is a maze – you can create a new maze, take a step in the maze, check to see if the direction you’re facing is a valid move, turn, and...

Each year I interview upwards of 200 people for various positions at Microsoft. Joel on Software recently posted an article on how everyone thinks they're hiring the top 1%. Leaving aside the the tech interview questions , Chris Anderson (Avalon architect...

Building on my Principles for First-Use Tools , I'm thinking about Principles for Express. Express is a tougher job because its customer base spans so many people -- from professionals coding after hours to students to people who aren't developers using...

MSN Messenger does it. Quicken does it. There’s a fair amount of Windows client software that has advertising – the same kind of banner ads present on most Web sites. But there are challenges to ad-powered client software, ranging from technical (how...

My team has an open headcount for a developer and, if things go as planned, my team will have more open headcount for developers, so I've been talking with lots of developers. Coming from a marketing team and previous to that being a writer/editor for...

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...

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...

In this short screencast , I'll show you how to take a Popfly application (in this case, a mashup) and turn it into a full Facebook application using the ".facebook" feature of Popfly. Technorati Tags: Popfly , Silverlight , Facebook , Screencast

After my previous posts on language where several commenters pointed out that language is an evolving thing and that I don't get it and I retorted that it's my blog and I'll be a curmudgeon if I want to (Ed Note: not exactly an intellectual conversation...

Every day members of the press get to write about their interactions with Microsoft -- often interactions with me. What would happen if I blogged about my interactions with them? Hmmm.

Recently, someone reforwarded me this CNet article on the “smart“ client -- a client that's not just rich, but also uses local processing power wisely, local resources (like the disk drive or peripherals), and can go online and offline smoothly...

We need better commentators....