Yesterday morning I got a call from my old buddies on the IE team asking me to help out with a cake delivery. I was happy to help out, and Gerry’s Cakes (www.gerryscakes.com) in Menlo Park was able to pull together an awesome 3D cake with only a couple hours notice. Mozilla’s offices are 2 minutes away from the MS campus in Mountain View, so it was a short drive over to drop it off.
Al Billings wrote up the delivery on his blog, and it got picked up on Techmeme this morning (and on Lockergnome, Ars Technica, and Gizmodo – read the comments, they are hilarious).
Apparently though, according to those in the know, all this pales into comparison, when, earlier today, the cake attained the official status of “dope” earlier today when Trent mentioned it on PinkIsTheNewBlog.com.
I’ve been using Media Center for about 3 years as my primary TV viewing solution. One of things I love about using Media Center (vs., say, Tivo or some other PVR solution) is that since it’s a PC, I can install new things on it, and, when I want, surf the web (which can be useful if I want to watch online videos or on-demand shows on the big screen).
One of my favorite add-ons for media center, Big Screen Headlines, just had an update which makes it better than before, with deep integration into Vista. I highly recommend it to Media Center users (and not just because it supports the Windows RSS Platform :).
One of the interesting things about the new IE8 WebSlices (read Jane Kim's overview of both Activities and WebSlices on the IE blog for details) is that it uses an updated version of the Windows RSS Platform. In many ways, WebSlices are just a different form of an RSS feed.
The advantage, of course, is that developers can integrate WebSlices into their applications just as easily as they can integrate RSS feeds. To illustrate this, and to try out developing a gadget, I created a WebSlice viewer gadget. Without further ado, here it is:
Install the Alpha (verison 0.3) of the WebSlice Viewer Gadget
Note: This is a Skydrive link -- click the big icon when you get there, and install the gadget.
The screenshot below shows three WebSlices on my desktop, specifically the Facebook Status, MSN Slideshow and eBay WebSlices.
Alpha 0.3 release notes
0. You'll need Windows Vista (for the sidebar), IE8 (install from here) and some WebSlices (find some at the bottom of this page).
1. Only WebSlices already added to the the Favorites Bar can be added to the WebSlice Viewer.
2. Each instance of the WebSlice Viewer shows one WebSlice. Open multiple gadgets to show multiple views.
3. Errors will occur if you delete a webslice that a viewer is viewing. Dismiss them and close the gadget.
4. By default, the gadget will refresh from the platform once every 5 mins. However, this has nothing to do with how often the WebSlice is refreshed from the originating site. To control that, right-click on the WebSlice in the Favorites Bar and select Properties. The 5 min refresh time in the gadget means that the gadget content will update no more than 5 mins after the content has been refreshed from the site.
5. By default, the gadget will size itself to the same size as the WebSlice in IE. In case you didn't know, you can resize WebSlices in IE by just grabbing the corner and resizing the box. The gadget will pick up the new size when it next refreshes (5 mins by default). If you want the WebSlice to have a different size from IE, just clear the checkbox in the settings and enter the new size you want.
6. WebSlices tend to be pretty big, so I don't recommend docking them to the side of the screen. Instead, put them in the middle of the desktop (or, if you're so inclined, on another monitor).
7. Some handy keyboard shortcuts: Win-spacebar will bring all of your sidebar gadgets to the front. Win-G will cycle through them.
8. Report issues, or feature requests in the comments below.
Have fun,
Sean
PS. I'm no longer on the IE or RSS teams, so this is just something I'm doing on my own for fun. Complaints to me, not them. If it's an IE issue, I'll pass it along :)
Disclaimer: The information in this blog post, and the linked code are provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confer no rights. The code is copyright Microsoft (because they are my employer), but otherwise Microsoft has nothing to do with it.
Great news from the IE Blog:
Back in April 2006, we made a change to how Internet Explorer handled embedded controls used on some webpages. Some sites required users to “click to activate” before they could interact with the control. Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas, removing the “click to activate” requirement in Internet Explorer. Because of this, we're removing the “click to activate” behavior from Internet Explorer!
I'm not going to comment on the underlying issues that led to IE being forced to make this change in the first place, but I'm glad that it's over. I've been using pre-release versions of Vista SP1, and was thrilled to see this change make it into the builds a few weeks ago.
Many years ago, I worked on the Exchange team. We used to have these conferences called, imaginatively, the Microsoft Exchange Conference.
The marketing team created this video to use at the conference. In part because I was playing with Silverlight Streaming, and in part because I've always liked this video, here it is:
In honor of my arrival in Mountain View, the weather has turned ridiculously rainy today. I updated my blog's header image to reflect the view from my office today.
For those of you keeping track, I'm living in Mountain View, CA, home of, among other things, the Googleplex, MozCorp/MoFo, and Microsoft (Silicon Valley Campus). Here's a nice map of the whole area just for you. One day, we're all going to rumble over by the local Starbucks.
Speaking of which, there are nowhere near enough Starbucks in this area. This is the way to run a Starbucks' business. As a sort-of-Seattleite, I expect a person-to-Starbucks ratio of no more than 7-to-1. California needs to buck up.
I left the IE team in Redmond last month, drove down the coast, and ended up here to join the Live Search team, which has a small (but growing) group down here in the Bay Area doing some super-secret stuff. Yes, that's right, I'm working on Project Stealth Search Engine.
No, not really.
Or... am I...?
The mystery thickens.
Well, if I am building a stealth search engine, the first feature I'm going to put in it is one that ensures that Starbucks' are easily discoverable... oh, that's already done. On to the next thing, I guess. Maybe a search engine can bring my coffee to me...
In this article about Bill Gates' transition, we find this gem:
For much of Microsoft's existence, its two biggest money-makers, Windows and Office, have been firmly rooted on the PC desktop, where they enjoyed little meaningful competition.
Wow. Someone hasn't been paying attention for two decades. I'm sure that IBM, Novell, Sun, Apple, Mozilla, Netscape, AOL, Lotus, Real, WordPerfect, Digital Research, Ashton-Tate, Borland and the various companies that sell and support Linux don't appreciate being called "little meaningful competition."
Definitely one of the interesting things about working at Microsoft is that we have always had very strong, talented, and determined competitors.
The other interesting thing is that we're apparently always about to be finally beaten by another company. In fact, I'm sure there's an article to be found somewhere out there for each company above that assures its readers that the company has beaten Microsoft.
Now, I've been reading Jonathan Schwartz's blog for a while now (he's CEO of Sun Microsystems), and always appreciated his candor and openness.
But this announcement reminds me of this.
Not too long ago, Jan Miksovsky wrote about how confusing OpenID is to users due to the way sites expose it, and the overly developer-centric focus of the OpenID.net site.
He makes a number of interesting points, most of which I agree with. In particular, I think that OpenID while interesting in concept, is attempting to solve a problem that most users and businesses don't think they have (the notion of a common identity that is free from "lock-in", or something like that).
This is a common problem in technology: we identify a problem -- a real problem, mind you -- and we set out to provide a solution. The problem is, we fail to take into account whether the people with the problem actually care about having that problem solved. This is particularly important when our solution requires them to do something different from their normal routine. OpenID is, I think, an example of this sort of thinking.
As an aside, earlier today, I was looking at some new site (dopplr.com, to be exact) and noticed this weird little eye staring at me:
Turns out, naturally, that this is the OpenID logo. Okay, now that's just a bad logo. It looks like a freaky little eye with an exclamation point in it. Not exactly a warm-and-fuzzy feeling which i'd say is important when dealing with the idea of credentials. Call me crazy.
Regular readers* of this blog will know that I have a thing for definitions of program management (see mine, Chris Pratley's, and Steven Sinofsky's).
The Exchange team recently put up a recruiting site, called ExchangeYourCareer.com. On it, they have a typically irreverent, but insightful description of the job of PM. I've reproduced it below:
You are the center of the hurricane, the eye of the product development storm. You have passion and more, you have vigor. You are fueled by pure energy and endless drive. You are reading this and wondering why it's not in bullet-points because that would have been more efficient. You are working on a game that merges poker with chess in your spare time because neither game uses your full capabilities and talents. You have no use for extraneous clutter or mundane activities and you wonder what is holding up the full-scale integration of robots into the home – its 2007 already and doing the dishes remains as mundane and inefficient as it ever was. You are thinking that this job description is taking too long to read, and you are right. So, here is the rest of it in bullet points.
Qualifications:
- You are passionate about working directly with customers, able to clearly articulate customers requirements and pains to executives, architects and developers.
- You have experience building strong teams and have a passion for mentoring.
- The ability to work with multiple teams to develop a plan to provide this value to the customers.
- You understand how software features will impact and/or modify the marketplace once they are shipped.
- You have a love of innovation and the ability to think through big, long term ideas.
- Demonstrated expertise at prioritization and project management.
- You are hands-on with software development, and passionate about user experience, both as an end-user and administrator.
Descriptions of other roles in a similar style can be found on the site.
Enjoy.
* Oh, stop laughing.
Some years ago Chris Pratley, an Office GPM, wrote an interesting article that talks about some of the mid-90s competition in the word processing space from the point of view of someone working on Microsoft Word.
The thing about these comparative reviews is that they tried to evaluate the products each release as if you were a Martian - that is "objectively", as if you had no previous experience in any tool - which of course did not reflect reality. I also put "objectively" in quotes because, well, these reviews were really totally subjective and reflected the bias of the reviewers pretty strongly.
They rarely connected with real customers to see what mattered - instead they prioritized what they thought was important (for example to them "word count" was such a big deal but it is rarely used among the real user base outside of students and professional writers - we have quantitative proof of that. Naturally it turns out reviewers need it all the time, so it became one of the "critical features" of a word processor according to these reviewers). [emphasis mine]
I've always remembered last comment because it reminds me to be cautious about doing what "reviewers" say that we should do (but also the importance of sometimes pandering to reviewers because reviews do matter, to some degree).
Twelve years later, it looks like nothing has changed. From today's Walt Mossberg's Wall Street Journal article about Apple's iWork '08, under the headline Apple's iWork Package Is Elegant but Wimpy Compared With Office:
[Pages, the word processing application in iWork], still de-emphasizes some writer-friendly features. For instance, its auto-correct function is much weaker than Word's. Another example: In Word, to see how many words your document contains, you just glance at the bottom of the screen. In Pages, you must dig down into a submenu to find the answer. The command for showing invisible formatting marks also is harder to find than in Word.
I have to say, Walt disappoints me here. He usually tries to be a "man of the people" (with decent success), but he's lost sight of that with this review. Maybe word processors are always going to suffer from this problem since reviewers are almost always also journalists.
Now this is how powerful software gets made.
Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side -- because it's well-fertilized with bullsh*t.
or, for those with a more intellectual bent: Caveat Emptor.
[dedicated to various colleagues who are changing or have changed jobs recently :-)]
Monday: Safari for Windows (beta) announced .
Tuesday: Six vulnerabilities found.
Thursday: Safari 3.0.1 released.
Friday: Another pair of vulns.
Next Friday: Safari 3.0.2 released.
Monday morning: Another vulnerability.
- Sean
PS. Kudos to the Safari team for fast patching. I hope the iPhone can be patched as quickly.
(with apologies to Tony for stealing his idea)
I install and uninstall dozens of pieces of software weekly. I also (perhaps as a result of the first statement), rebuild my laptop from scratch about once every three of four months. So, it's a rare piece of software that lasts on my PC time after time. I thought I would highlight one of those today.
Taskbar Shuffle is a great little tool that lets you get drag-and-drop buttons on your taskbar. Simple and efficient. For that alone, it gets the honor of being re-installed everytime I rebuild my PC.
As an additional bonus, it supports a grouping feature that fixes something that I hate about the XP and Vista taskbar: grouping taskbar buttons from the same application together without ever collapsing them into the annoying "group menu."
It has a number of other features, including system tray reshuffling (but, I like to make everything on my system tray hidden, so this doesn't matter so much to me).
Go check it out. It's free. :)
