The MossyBlog Times Archives 2007 - 2009

Here's a little Silverlight riff. ".. The only history that is worth a technologists damn is the history we make today.." I get a lot of feedback from all walks of life. I read 1000's of blogs a month and my job is to essentially be a compete...

I had to laugh tonight, as the Adobe folks decided to burst Mozilla folks bubble around the whole Download Mozilla Day event (classic gimmick to get Mozilla penetration numbers up, nice marketing ploy though..). Ben Forta @ Adobe.com: There have been...

It was in April 2007 we launched Silverlight 1.0, and it's now May 2008 and we're already looking forward to a v2 release (exciting amount of great features). It personally feels like the 1.0 launch was 2-3 years ago, but it's kind of surreal to think...

  I like the rest of the world read about our Windows 7 Multi-touch capabilities and personally thought it was brilliant move on our part. As this paves the way for mainstream use around multi-touch devices, something that the next generation of...

Just arrived to my new home in Seattle. The apartment Microsoft have provided is quite nice actually, roomy, warm and with a nice fast cable modem to cap it all off. We spent some time prior to arriving in Seattle at Disneyland (Highly recommend folks...

Most folks whom know me would agree I am quite lazy at times. This being true, I've discovered a product which will help me out to become even lazier. Voice Activated Commands is a product which retails for $18 USD and what it enables you to do is type...

The house is on the market, the cars are being sold and the passports are ready to be stamped with "Welcome to the United States Mr Barnes". The biggest move of my life/career is in full swing, and I'm both SH@*T scared and excited at the same...

I just had a curious thought, what is it that you'd like me to talk about on this blog. In that, given I have access to various amount of information, people and technology within Microsoft (externally as well) - what is it you'd like me to discuss in...

Michael Kordahi - aka DelicateGenius decided to interview me on my last day at Microsoft Australia. It just occurred to me that I've never really done a video interview before (I usually turn them down), mainly because I'm a shy guy when it comes to camera...

When I first started the RIA Evangelism role in Microsoft, I had this nagging feeling that the term RIA was just all over the place. Depending on which technology you are backing and which stream of alliance you uphold, the truth is the term was destined...

I noticed the blogsphere/emails internally and externally are running hot over a supposed "internal Vista video". Let me simply say this, the first I saw it and along with others I work with was via external blogs, so how internal it is is new to me....

You know those skateboards in the Silverlight intro videos, well Shane Morris (Shanemo aka UX Bloke) is about to give one of these away at ReMIX08 . This is a rare piece of schwag, in that we only have a limited number of these in place, so think of these...

I like most folks read a lot of blogs from all walks of life. Everyday I see a blog post or two around Facebook or Twitter, simply echoing either some news or why it either sucks or is the greatest thing in the world since slice bread. We, the world,...

I was giggling at this Video I found on Google Video. It's basically a PR video for the Wang Freestyle. I initially made a joke that it's Adobe's new PR video for LiveCycle (heh sorry couldn't resist). One thing that did stand out about this video however...

I used to play World of Warcraft a lot, and my character lived in the Horde realm (therefore I was part of the Orc Community). I generally preferred to hang out at the Orc City (Origrammar) as to me that's where I belonged. That is until I began to think...

Anand Iyer , an Evangelist in our ever swelling ranks of evangelism army, asked a basic question. "Q.What would you do if you were a Microsoft Evangelist". I myself have wondered as to what folks perception of Evangelism really is all about and...

I'm obviously not just thinking of buying a property in the US but I'm also selling property in Australia. In doing this, I've scoured all the websites I can find, that carry out listings in both regions. The one thing that really has stuck with me are...

I'm currently browsing the interweb, checking out houses to either buy or lease in the Seattle area. I came across this site via colleague and I must say, it's quite a great concept and technically well executed. WalkScore.com simply rates the walking...

The title - " 7 reasons not to consider using Adobe Flex ". I saw this and went "ok, I'll bite, what are they". I began to read them, and figured ok, I can see the authors perspective, if these 7 items are crucial to him then I won...

Long ( istartedsomething.com ) was tipped off by a certain mutual friend (yes I know the source Long) around this mystery woman whom keeps appearing in tech sites that have a focus on servers or virtual servers at that. Well, she's been spotted on 3 different...

I stumbled upon this site, which basically sounds like it's a pitch to change the way we Microsoftee's get around Redmond campus. I love it's concept and wish it were being implemented, but I've not heard or seen anything that would indicate this being...

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was excited to be promoted to a Product Manager role on the Rich Client Platform Team (Silverlght/WPF). Well, whilst I was at SxSW I bumped into some folks at PIXAR whom I shared a few beers with. Cut a long story...

I asked all for this last time , but I'm going to do it again now that you've all seen Silverlight 2 (well if you haven't do so!). Feel free to leave your wishlist(s) for Silverlight 3 and don't be afraid to ask for crazy stuff either  example "Can...

I will admit one thing, we at Microsoft at times have a lot of online brands to cater to the Silverlight, WPF and Expression Studio ecosystem. There are a lot of moving parts to our UX Platform with events, communities etc all having niche requirements...

Shane and Michael spent a week in a program called "AiR" (Not the Adobe kind - Artists In Residence). It's a program headed up by Arturo Toledo (Expression Team) which enables folks to come to Redmond and spend some time building some UX prototypes...