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The good and bad things in life - not just technology

Windows Vista Sidebar - like MSR Sideshow, only better

Posted Sunday, September 18, 2005 10:45 PM by jonathanh
Four years ago a wonderful application called Sideshow came out of Microsoft Research. It was the standard docking-bar-full-of-applets-on-the-side-of-your-screen (way before Apple Widgets and Konfabulator), but the part they really nailed was how natural Read More...
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A community-based marketing experiment - Microsoft gets on board the Cluetrain!

Posted Monday, August 08, 2005 8:18 AM by jonathanh
The Visual Studio 2005 evangelists have created a new community marketing experiment: High Five Wikisheets . Microsoft marketing has taken some flak in the past (ahem), but this wiki seems to be pure Cluetrain Manifesto material. Risky, radical, and all Read More...
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What's the longest Microsoft product name?

Posted Friday, August 05, 2005 7:45 AM by jonathanh
We've done the " silly Microsoft product names " thing before, but in an internal discussion Larry Osterman upped the stakes with the following contender: " Microsoft Windows Server Base Operating Systems Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager Read More...
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I love the smell of a banhammer in the morning

Posted Sunday, July 17, 2005 9:50 AM by jonathanh
It's no secret that there's been an increasing amount of cheating on Halo 2. Evidently when Bungie released the new downloadable maps they weren't far enough ahead in the developer-vs-cracker arms race, and modded versions started showing up on XBox Live Read More...
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Cultural change at Microsoft, or, "What was the point in keeping quiet?"

Posted Wednesday, July 06, 2005 9:30 AM by jonathanh
In an anonymous comment on “ Patch for tcserver.exe memory leak on Tablet PC - at last! ”, zzz asks: What was the point in “keeping quiet”? Is there some kind of NDA that stops from stating the obvious thing (holy cow we have a bug in our perfect product!) Read More...
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If you think Microsoft uses silly product names, you're in good company

Posted Wednesday, June 08, 2005 9:10 AM by jonathanh
I've ranted before about Microsoft product names, so it's nice to see that I'm in good company : CNET Interviewer : “You made a comment this morning poking fun at a Microsoft product name. Do you think Microsoft is good at marketing?” Steve Ballmer : Read More...
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New Tablet PC feature on Channel 9 - ink-enabled posts!

Posted Wednesday, April 13, 2005 10:24 PM by jonathanh
Charles and the gang just showed off a new feature for the first birthday of the Channel 9 community site - readers can now post handwritten comments using a Tablet PC! Or a mouse, plus sufficient determination :-) Here's the first of many ink posts in Read More...
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Ohhhh, I want Microsoft Forums for my product, too...

Posted Thursday, April 07, 2005 7:46 PM by jonathanh
Jim Glass just announced Microsoft Forums , the next links in the Microsoft developer division’s “ virtuous feedback loop ”. The idea is pretty simple – “hey, why don’t we give our users web forums in which to talk, as well as newsgroups” – but Jim does Read More...
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Category feed URLs all changed - sorry

Posted Monday, April 04, 2005 10:44 PM by jonathanh
As Josh Ledgard and Brian Johnson have noted, the upgrade of blogs.msdn.com to Community Server 1.0 changed the URL format for all of our category feeds. If you were subscribed to any of my individual categories, those feeds are now failing with no redirects Read More...
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New comment policy on this blog - thanks to Betsy and Scott!

Posted Saturday, April 02, 2005 9:07 PM by jonathanh
Congrats to Betsy and her team on completing the second half of the March Blog Massacre : blogs.msdn.com is now happily ensconced on shinier servers running much shinier software (in case you missed it, the first half was the migration of some IT Pro-focused Read More...
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The Ides of March - a bad time for bloggers

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2005 10:52 PM by jonathanh
This has been a bad time for a couple of bloggers that I read. First Jeremy Wright was refused entry into the US by a customs agent who couldn’t believe that blogging is a paying job (and didn’t believe any of that newfangled Skype stuff, either). This Read More...
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"Remember, February is a short month"

Posted Monday, February 28, 2005 10:32 PM by jonathanh
Not enough blogging this month - I've been getting back into coding. And, as those of you who read Channel 9 might have spotted, breaking the build . In fact, the dev team didn't even get their bagels for another week after that post, which shows just Read More...
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“It’s the weirdest thing, but my thumbs are tired.”

Posted Saturday, November 20, 2004 12:21 PM by jonathanh
No sooner did I mention Blogjet than Dmitry Chestnykh announced a new version . So if you're looking for a great WYSIWYG blogging tool, go grab the beta of version 1.2 from his downloads page . And this post isn't really about Halo 2 multiplayer tactics, Read More...
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Best. Halo 2. Game. Ever. (Until the next one)

Posted Wednesday, November 10, 2004 12:28 AM by jonathanh
This was one of those games where you immediately realize, based on long and hard-won knowledge, that you should quit right afterwards. Because that's as good as you're gonna get all night, and if you play even ONE MORE ROUND, you'll be there for hours Read More...
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Uh oh

Posted Monday, October 11, 2004 11:11 AM by jonathanh
It's official - I'm a WikiGnome Read More...
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