Brian Groth's Life at Microsoft

Need to type in Arabic?

For Arabic speakers who are sitting at a PC with a Roman-based keyboard (such as English), your life will now be easier. Microsoft Maren is a Windows extension that comes to the rescue, allowing you to type Arabic in Roman characters (Romanized Arabic, Arabizi, Arabish or Franco-Arabic) and have it converted on the fly to Arabic script.

This works in Windows Live Messenger and most other Windows applications. Notice how the Messenger client pictured here is in English, but the person typing is given the option to select the word in Arabic.

Congratulations to Microsoft’s Innovation Lab in Cairo for building this!

Easily Update Your Windows Live Profile

Now that I have been using it for a few months, I have to admit that I am loving the fact that when I update Facebook, Twitter, Zune, and iLike (the social networking sites I use the most) that my Windows Live profile is updated. Here are a few of the links to help get you started by adding these to your Windows Live Profile: 

• If you use a social networking service worldwide, you can add your updates from:
  Facebook, Twitter, Arto, Daum, Fotolog, Hevre, wow.ya.ru, Zoo, and more
• If you share photos online you can now add updates to Windows Live from:
  Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, SmugMug, Metroflog, Bilddagboken, and more
• If you have a blog, you can add it to Windows Live from:
  Wordpress, LiveJournal, Typepad, Overblog, and a custom blog activity, which works with Blogger and others.
• If you use any of these sites for information, music, video, or radio service, you can add them to Windows Live:
  MSN, iLike, Pandora, Last.fm, Dada, and Dailymotion, and more
• And if you use a variety of different review sites, you can add them to Windows Live from:
  Digg, Flixster, StumbleUpon, Tripit, and Yelp, and more

19 Reasons Why Microsoft Is Huge with Developers

Microsoft certainly does have a breadth of products and programs for developers. This sums up 19 of them:

Application Development: 19 Reasons Why Microsoft Is Huge with Developers (and 1 Reason Why Not)

My Presentation in Finland of Windows Live

Here is my video for the launch of Windows Live in Finland

I do look comfortable on stage, but I say the word “um” too often and refer to the screen too often also. Watching the entire thing might be somewhat dull to anyone watching it here online, but if you are interested in our new products then you might like it. Personally, I use it as a training tool – watch myself present so I can do better next time. 

Microsoft and HSBC help startups

This too cool not to share: HSBC and Microsoft’s BizSpark program have partnered up to help technology-based startups: See http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/bizspark. Just imagine starting your own company with the support of HSBC and Microsoft! 

I found this on Twitter via @bindik who found it via @bizspark

Testing links to Zune

At http://social.zune.net/links/ZuneLinks.aspx you can search for all sorts of entertainment and get a URL that you can then include in your blog or web site. So, here are a bunch for a band I like called the Wombats.

• Artist on the Zune Marketplace (launches in the Zune desktop client)
• Artist on Zune Social
• One of their albums on the Zune Marketplace (launches in the Zune desktop client)
• The same album in the Zune Social
• A playlist on the Zune Marketplace (launches in the Zune desktop client)
• One of their music videos on the Zune Marketplace (launches in the Zune desktop client)
• We don’t seem to have podcasts or TV series featuring the Wombats, so I don’t have sample links for those.

Normally, all of these would get the cool little icon:

Welcoming a new blogger

I work with Stephen Kennedy in London and he’s just started a new blog on MSDN. His first entry is about twitter, which is something he is very interested in and uses quite often for communications and for meeting new people. I look forward to other geeky blog entries, that will probably be focused on other online products, such as Windows Live, MSN, Live Search, and others.

Microsoft Technologies Available for Licensing

Back in May of 2005, I created a blog entry that listed the 20 technologies that Microsoft licenses. I now see that Microsoft licenses 47 technologies (as of December 2008), which I think is pretty cool. Think about it: you can license Microsoft technologies (Microsoft Intellectual Property Licensing) that Microsoft is willing, and wanting, to have you include in your own solution.

The Cluetrain Manifesto

OK, the book is 8 years old now, but still has some very good marketing tips. Specifically, regarding how to connect with your customer. Since I focus on consumer products (Windows Live), these ring especially true to me.  I like the following tips from the book:

1. Companies must communicate “conversationally” with their markets in a real voice, not in “marketing speak”; and it must be genuine.
2. Product positioning means taking a position that reflects the values that the market cars about, which means it needs to help create an emotional connection to your product.
3. To develop loyal customers, companies must participate in their customer’s communities: online and offline.
4. Companies must participate in the conversation happening about their products, not just push out messages.
5. Public relations needs to be private relations with individuals in the press, specific analysts, and influential bloggers.
6. Be human, play, and be what you say you are. I internalize this to “live your company’s values”.

Transparency

Every once in a while I like to summarize my skills so I can remind myself of my strengths and weaknesses. Then I can go work on improving those weaknesses. In the spirit of being open and letting the world know about this one Microsoft employee named Brian Groth, here goes: 

1. Leadership: I have good leadership skills as reviewed by those around me, or at least I did back in 2005. Hopefully I still do, but this is something I need to update. I still need to work on “selling the vision”, but I think I’ve gotten better at it in the last year or two.
2. Business & Marketing: I like to share a variety of business and marketing tips, including book reviews, but I have a stack of books in mind that I need to read. 
3. Technical: Since this blog is on MSDN, you could easily argue that I need to get back to some technical blog entries. I would love to, and I see this as a weakness, but being in a marketing role I find it tough to make time for writing code!

I also have my resumé/CV posted online (just updated) so people can see my work history over the years at Microsoft.

Windows Live Announced

We just announced the next generation of Windows Live. You can read about it at the Windows Live Wire blog. I just spent two days with the press and some analysts explaining the new products and hope to see articles in UK and European newspapers soon. Here’s a good video that highlights some of the top new products and features:

It will be a couple of months before everything is available for you to try, but I look forward to getting my friends and family to use all of my new products.

Live Mesh in the real world

I took this photo with my phone yesterday while out walking the dog (Milo) and when I got home, it was already on my PC. I then used Windows Live Photo Gallery to auto-correct a few things like color, light, and straighten the photo and I gave the file a name instead of something like IMAG0053. Later in the day, I showed the photo on my phone to a friend and it was the fixed-up version from my PC.

I never had to synchronize anything. I just used my smartphone’s camera (HTC Touch Dual) like normal and my PC to edit the photo like normal. Live Mesh did all the work for me.

How did I do this? With Live Mesh. You can go to www.mesh.com to get started or read a variety of Mesh reviews/info/how-to articles via LiveSide.net and some good in-depth technical articles and videos about Live Mesh at Angus Logan’s blog.

Manhole Covers, Part 2

A couple of years ago I wrote up “Why is a manhole cover round?” and got a few good comments on it. Now that I live in London, I see how American that question really is.

Notice these two that I saw when walking through Wandsworth the other day. I still think a round cover is the better option, but is it really worth anyone’s time to think about it this much? (please don’t answer that)

Explore Windows Live

As I noted in my last blog post, there are new versions of the Windows Live clients available for download. Related, if you haven’t already seen it, check out http://www.windowslive.com/Experience to learn more about the products.

My favorite is Messenger for video-to-video chats, but Mail, Photo Gallery and Writer are great too. I use Mail every day, but only Photo Gallery and Writer when I need them, which is probably a few times per week.

You can get the latest versions at http://download.live.com

New Windows Live products to download

If you didn’t already see it, you can now get the latest versions of the products I work with at http://download.live.com/ The seven products, and a short description for them are: 

Chatting and e-mail: Messenger and Mail share a single contact list and work together. Plus, your calendar and multiple e-mail accounts are all in one place in Mail.

1. Messenger beta
2. Mail beta

Photos and movies: Use Photo Gallery and Movie Maker to edit and organize your digital images and movies, and then post them online or send them to friends.

3. Photo Gallery beta
4. Movie Maker beta

Sharing stories & Blogging: With Windows Live Writer, blogging is a breeze. You can add photos and videos, format everything just so, and publish to most blogging services.

5. Writer beta

Browsing the web: With Toolbar, you can customize your browser and find anything, fast. And Family Safety helps you keep your kids safer online.

6. Toolbar beta
7. Family Safety beta

Two of my favorite features are: Sharing photos in Messenger and tagging people in Photo Gallery

In Messenger, drag photos right into the conversation window and show them off while you’re chatting. You can also let contacts save your photos on their computers.

Photo Gallery automatically finds the people in your photos so you can add a name to the face. Then later, all you need to do is type in someone’s name to see all the photos of that person.