I am tickled pink 'n honored to announce the third release of Microsoft Tagspace *, a social bookmarking solution for technical professionals, like you. With this release, Tagspace becomes Microsoft’s first true social bookmarking application for the whole World Wide Web Web. Learn more about Tagspace...

Ted Haeger , aka ReverendTed of Bungee Labs (purveyors of the most kill-killski development toolkit for Web 2.0 developers, in the world), just published a thought provoking blog post asking his readers: Can we...? Trust Microsoft with Claimspace Ted has personally challenged me to respond and...

Clay Shirky recently published a post on Corante, entitled "Against Well-designed Reputation Systems (An Argument for Community Patent)" that I've been meaning to respond to, for awhile. His thesis, which I agree with wholeheartedly if I understand it correctly, can be summed up as 'Don't do it. Don...

Robert Rebholz is not only my boss*, he is also my muse, ideological sparring partner, alter ego, and mentor. Bob is possesed by a special kind of genius, with a sort of Jeffersonian breadth and intensity that makes it a pleasure and honor to collaborate with him, on a day-to-day basis. In my opinion...

In coordination with Taylor Development, which among other things owns an undeveloped 60 acre parcel of land that is zoned Manufacturing Park (MP) along Union Hill road in Southeast Redmond ( see Redmond zoning map here and Live.com Map here ), City Staff has presented the Redmond Planning Commission...

A few months ago, Alex Barnett excitedly told me about a project he was working on with Pablo Castro , of the Microsoft SQL Server team. Like most things brilliant and game-changing, their invention is shockingly simple. As Alex explained it, project codename " Astoria " would enable anyone to expose...

In early June, we will launch a new social software service for technical professionals called Claimspace (codename, "Rapport"), which will join Tagspace , Blogs , and Forums as the newest member of the Microsoft.Community family . Our development lead, Doug , mentioned Claimspace a few weeks ago so...

Tagspace * is a social bookmarking service for software professionals** that encourages sound sleep and sweet dreams by enabling you to be better informed, better connected, and more productive. The more you use Tagspace, the more you'll wonder how you survived for so long in the cramped quarters of...

Today, I took a much needed break to attend a Microsoft Research talk by Paul Dietz , who is a scientist at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab ( MERL ). In describing one of his inventions, a system that automagically pings your waitress when your glass is half empty, Paul described RFID tags as...

With a farewell quote from the greatest American writer of all time, my friend, neighbor, and idea-mate, Alex Barnett has announced that he is leaving Microsoft and Redmond to join a startup in Utah: Bungee Labs. [Lump_in_throat]. If they had any idea of the potential that Microsoft is losing, with Alex...

In the wake of a recent announcement by Redmond Mayor Rosemarie Ives that she will not seek another term of office, I was invited to and personally interviewed her two most viable successors: Councilman Jim Robinson and former councilwoman, Holly Plackett . I support both of these fine and experienced...

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My holiday dinner party went pretty well, by all accounts. Dinner was a little late in coming due to the amazing length of time required to bake a 5lb slab of sea bass at 350F. None of my guests seemed to mind, however. There were plenty of pupus and drinks. Conversation was pleasant. New connections...

For the first time in a couple of years, I've decided to host a holiday dinner party for a few of my best friends, at my home in Redmond. For the sake of posterity and to give you some ideas for holiday meals you might want to prepare for your friends and family or request of that special cook in your...

I can imagine Microsoft's venerable CEO, Steve Ballmer, ringing bells for the Salvation Army in front of some suburban grocery store. I can picture him with a pair of white gloves, energetically ringing in a Christmas concert. But I can DEFINITELY see him ringing the the NASDAQ bell to open trading...

Woohoo.....But wait! What about Redmond? From FierceWireless : "Microsoft announced that it will partner with MetroFi to build a free wireless Internet service for Portland, Oregon. Microsoft will provide targeted content to the service's users through its new online platform adCenter--a rival platform...

You can get your Zune tomorrow, November 13, at one of 30,000 retail outlets across North America or you can order one online .

If you live or work in Overlake and you want to help define how it gets developed over the next 20 years, I encourage you to attend this event. Meeting place is right next door to the Microsoft Company Store on 148th Ave NE. I'll be there 'cause this is the kinda thing us planning commissioners...

AJAX vs. Atlas ASP.NET Atlas ATOM C# C++ CodePlex coolgadgets database Dave Morehouse FoxPro Huong Nguyen J# LINQ Marshall Lin MSO .NET .NET2.0 PERL.NET Rapport REST RESTful RSS Ruby Sharepoint socialsoftware tagging Tagspace Taylor Parsons VB.NET VFP Vista VS2005 VSTS WikiWiki Win64 Windows Mobile Zune...

Francesco is shutting down URL123, as a free service. :-( "Dear Member, First I would like to thank you for your support of URL123 over the past two years. Unfortunately, over the past 6 months, the use of URL123 as a spamming tool has risen exponentially. Spammers have been using and abusing the system...

My good buddy Rob Connery, of Commerce Starter Kit fame, has started a groovy new project on CodePlex called ASP.NET ActionPack . ActionPack consists of a set of ORM tools, code generation and dynamic query tools. Inspired by the magic of Ruby on Rails, ActionPack provides a BuildProvider that reads...

UNO: This just in: CodePlex on Channel9 DOS: When we first launched CodePlex , one of our most frequently asked questions was, "How open are you planning to be with regards to projects that might compete with Microsoft products or run on different platforms?" My response was always some variation of...

Where has Apple been since the second invasion of Iraq??? Recently, Apple decided to jettison its forum support team and turn over control of their heretofore well-moderated Apple Discussion Boards to customers with apparently few, if any tools to self-police or a heritage of self-governance to inform...

"Charlene" is a 26 year old "goofy goddess" with a terrific body and 2 Siamese kittens. Her user profile is well-formed, complete, and as far as her favorite dating site, CaliDate.com* is concerned, completely legitimate. However, Charlene's profile is a counterfeit. George is a 28 year old office manager...

Like tens of thousands of other people, I am an avid and daily reader of my good friend Rob Caron's VSTS blog . He is way plugged in, clearly. But Rob is more than that. He is a bloguoso. Lately however, Rob hasn't seemed himself. As possibly occurred with with Raymond Chen's Old New Thing blog last...