Ken Levy's Blog : Miscellaneous

Moving on to something new, but staying close

klevy — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:48:36 GMT

After working at Microsoft for over 7 years as an employee and almost 5 years before that as a contractor/vendor, I’ve decided it’s time for me to do become independent and start my own company. My official last day at Microsoft is July 18^th. I’ve enjoyed all the years working at Microsoft since the early 90s, especially with great people making many friends along the way.

I will continue be involved with Microsoft plus other technologies, attending various developer/technology events, and being active in the communities in general. I’m very enthusiastic about the developer community growth around extending Visual Studio and the plans Microsoft has around upcoming versions of the VS SDK as well as various community member projects recently started. I plan to attend the VSX Developers Conference this September in Redmond and I’m looking forward to talking to many VSX developers and VSIP members there.

My new company is called MashupX, new blog is at http://mashupx.com/blog/, and new email address is klevy@mashupx.com. I will be blogging about my startup company activities, travel, gadgets, movies, and technology in general. I’ll post more details on my blog later this month, so check there soon for more details.

Using Ctrl+F1 in Office 2007 to hide/show ribbon toolbar

klevy — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:19:47 GMT

I recently found a useful hotkey tip using various applications in Office 2007. Just toggle Ctrl+F1 to show and hide the ribbon toolbar area. This is similar to the F11 hotkey in Internet Explorer to toggle IE full screen view on and off.

Sara Ford commands ScooterCam-1 at TechEd07

klevy — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:51:00 GMT

At TechEd 2007, Sara Ford drives what she calls ScooterCam-1 to get around the conference due to her injured leg from a recent hiking incident (see her blog post Not broken after all). The name ScooterCam is derived from the fact that she hooked up a camcorder to the scooter using duct tape to record first person videos while driving the scooter around the conference. C# developer Rob Robertson of Intel, who Sara and I got to know at the MVP/Influencer party the night before, jumps on the back of ScooterCam for a free ride. The ScooterCam turned out to be a mobile social community gathering during the breaks between sessions.

Video: Sara Ford commands ScooterCam-1 at TechEd07

RSS subscribers include the reader, the addict, and the pack-rat

klevy — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 13:11:00 GMT

As more people start creating blogs and more web sites that distribute new content provide RSS (and Atom) feeds, there is more and more opportunity to subscribe to content using some type of feed reader. I've been using the NewsGator add-in for Outlook since soon after it was released. I now subscribe to 252 feeds total. Most are blogs, some are news/content update items from sites like msdn.com, msnbc.com, CNet, PC World, eWeek, etc. Generally when I find a new blog or web site that provides an RSS or Atom feed, I review the overall content provided and determine if it is something that I may want to keep up with when new items are posted. Or I may decide to subscribe it is something I may want to reference later via a local offline content search.

What I have found is that there are three basic types of feed subscription behavior patterns: reader, addict, and pack-rat.

The reader: Someone who subscribes to a blog or site feed and actually reads the content. It could include just skimming the title and skipping through the content, browsing it quickly, or reading it carefully. Generally a manual delete is done for each feed item.

The addict: Someone who sees interesting information on a blog or page and subscribes to not miss out on future content posted there, but... never ends up finding the time or interest to actually read the content. Generally the result in this case is going to a folder of offline feeds and deciding that none of them will ever get read or they are just too outdated.. then a 'select all' and [DELETE] is performed removing the downloaded feed content without ever reading it.

The pack-rat: Someone who subscribes to a feed and doesn't read it right away or even ever... but keeps it archived in their offline reader folder for possible future reading or reference - basically an offline archive.

I exhibit the behavior of all the of the types above. Of the 252 feeds I subscribe to as of today, a rough estimate for me is that I read or quickly browse through about 50%, archive about 30%, and end up deleting without reading about 20%. The ones I delete without reading is generally news or article type content from a news or publication site rather than a blog. We often see statistics on how many web views and how many feeds a particular blog or site receives. What data we don't see is how many feeds are actually read after content feed is downloaded.

It appears that the number of blogs being created is increasing far faster than the overall quality of blogs available. RSS feeds available today somewhat remind me about how cable and satellite TV systems now have hundreds of channels available as compared to only around 12 channels available 30 years ago. When I grew up, channel surfing involved clicking the channel changer remote control up or down and scanning through each channel one at a time. Today, channel surfing is usually more like menu surfing by scrolling through a menu before selecting a channel to change to. The benefit of more channels available means there is a bigger selection to choose from to watch. The downside is that it is much harder to find what is on at a given time and easier to miss something you would have liked to have watched.

I know many executives have administrative assistants who read throw their inbox and filter the content for the executive to read, delegating and deleting other content. Maybe in the future there will be administrative assistants who simply scroll through feeds and save and delete subscription content for executives to read. So to those developers out there who have created a feed reader program, if you see a post saying "Wanted: Feed Reader with at least 2 years experience", they may be looking for a person and not a program.

I think I was subscribing to under 100 feeds a year ago. And I'm thinking that for most people, subscribing to over 100 feeds is too many (at least for a type reader above). Now I've become interested in the growth of new blogs started and more interested in finding the highest quality blogs (based on my personal and work related interests) that exist. Now if only there was a feed that I could subscribe to that would provide me with all the new blogs that I'm interested in subscribing to.

Very cool illusion

klevy — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 08:10:00 GMT

This very cool illusion from an animated set of images shows how complex the relationship is between the eyes and the brain.

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink. If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating if you're lucky! It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. This should be proof enough, we don't always see what we think we see.

01:02:03 04/05/06, Pacific Time

klevy — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 11:02:00 GMT

The time/date is... 1,2,3,4,5,6. I'm posting this entry at 3 seconds after 1:02am on April 5th, 2006 - 1:02:03 4/5/06. For those in Europe and other parts of the world who format dates using day/month/year, they can post look forward to this once in 100 years moment next month on May 4th.

Behind the camera on Channel 9, take 2

klevy — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:36:00 GMT

Since my blog post Behind the camera on Channel 9 last November, I have been behind the camera on Channel 9 for three video interviews with Visual Studio 2005 team members before I moved to the Windows Live Platform team in late February:

Cameron Slade - QA Testing of Developer Tools
Ken Levy interviews Cameron Slade who is the Test Manager on the VS Data team. The topic is on how Microsoft tests developer tools internally (process, tools, feedback, etc.) which directly relates to most of Microsoft QA (quality assurance). Discussion and demos about how QA test works at Microsoft including details of test cases, automation abstractions, bug reports, product feature impact, and how design and development works in the product development cycle.

Scott Nonnenberg - Visualizers in VS 2005
Ken Levy takes his camcorder into the office of Scott Nonnenberg, a program manager on the C# team, to discuss using Visualizers in VS 2005 debugging. The demos include easy steps to create your own custom Visualizers.

Developer Solutions Team - Demos of MSBee, Managed Stack Explorer, and TFS Administration Tool
The Developer Solutions team invited Ken Levy over to check out their first 3 power toys for Visual Studio 2005. In this video, you’ll meet the team and catch demos of MSBee, Managed Stack Explorer, and the TFS Administration Tool.

Many of the Developer Solutions Team members in the VS 2005 power toys video (above) blogged about the video they are in (video is conference room meeting style meeting):

On the topic of the most viewed Channel 9 videos and some of my favorites in front of and behind the camera... If you go to the Video blog on Channel 9 and select the Most Views dropdown for the Arrange Item field, you'll see that at the time of this posting that the video of Scoble interviewing me for the First look at Visual FoxPro 9 video just passed 250,000 views - now ranked #5 out of 750 videos on Channel 9 (top 1% most viewed on Channel 9). My favorite Channel 9 video where I'm in front of the camera is the video of Scoble interviewing me in Showing off his gadgets - a fun one under 4 minutes talking geek talk about portable media devices and high quality headphones, which has just under 20,000 views. My favorite Channel 9 video where I'm behind the camera is Channel 9 Behind the Scenes video where I interview Channel 9 team members Robert Scoble and Charles Torre - with just over 20,000 views to date. It appears that the videos that are viewed the most are the ones that are linked to on various blogs and web sites since the link visibility remains high compared to links scrolling off the Channel 9 home page.

Channel 9 Behind the Scenes video

klevy — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 02:34:00 GMT

There is a new video interview on Channel 9 called Channel 9 Behind the Scenes, where I take my digital camera behind the scenes of the making of a Channel 9 video and interview Robert Scoble, joined by fellow channel 9 team member Charles Torre. I had the idea of a 'making of a Channel 9 video' over a year ago, which I suggested to the Channel 9 team. Now that I'm creating Channel 9 videos, I ended up doing this one which was fun.

For those interested, I record Channel 9 video interviews using my Sony DCS-M1 digital camera which has native MPEG4 support. Using a 512MB memory card, I can get 72 minutes of 320x240 30fps (frames per second) video or 22 minutes of 640x480 30fps video. I carry around one extra battery since one battery gives about 45 minutes of power in video record mode with the LCD on (a bit more with the LCD light off). Once recorded, I insert the memory card from the camera into a memory stick USB 2.0 reader and copy the file directly, then convert the MPEG4 video to AVI using the included Sony software and then use Movie Maker to put the video together and save as a WMV. This camera is also a regular 5MP digital camera, but it is a great design for a small and portable digital video camera. I also use a Quantaray QSX EZ Pro monopod for steadiness (to avoid camera shake but still allowing full mobility). What is also cool is that the MPEG4 video in 320x240 30fps video file (MPEG4 format) created by the Sony DSC-M1 can be copied directly to play on a Sony PSP or the new iPods that support video without any conversions.

Behind the camera on Channel 9

klevy — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 03:54:00 GMT

Recently, at the suggestion of Robert Scoble, I started going behind the camera on Channel 9 doing interviews and video recording. Listed below are the recent Channel 9 interviews I've done behind the camera. The most recent ones listed first along with Scoble's comments when he posted them on the Channel 9 web site. I have more videos in the queue to be posted soon and future ones planned on various Visual Studio, .NET language, and VFP topics.

Soma - Conversation with Visual Studio's vice president
S. Somasegar is the corporate Vice President of the Developer Division at Microsoft. Ken Levy took his camcorder over and had a nice chat with him to celebrate the launch of Visual Studio 2005. Soma also is blogging his thoughts on Visual Studio 2005 and other things.

Using Visual Basic as a Dynamic Programming Language
In this video Paul Vick and Erik Meijer talk about the dynamic aspects of programming in Visual Basic, both in Visual Basic 2005 and Visual Basic 9.0.

Future Directions for Data Programming in Visual Basic
Join Paul Vick and Amanda Silver as they discuss some of the features coming in Visual Basic 9.0 in this video.

Paul Yuknewicz - Working with VB Community
Do you use Visual Basic? Well, you should get to know Paul Yuknewicz. He's a program manager on the VB team (he's worked there for more than five years). Talks about his experiences working on the VB team, and what his team is doing to make the VB community a great one. At about 10:26 he gives a demo of extensions that you can get online to make VB.NET better. It all starts at http://msdn.com/vbasic.

Lisa Feigenbaum - Code Snippets in Visual Studio
Ken Levy takes his camcorder over to interview Lisa Feigenbaum and get a look at the new Code Snippets feature in Visual Studio.

Jay Schmelzer - Working on the VB Core team
Ken Levy took his camcorder over to see Jay Schmelzer, lead program manager on the Visual Basic.net team. They have a nice chat about what the VB team has been up to lately.

Somehow the video of me interviewed a year ago on First Look at Visual FoxPro 9.0 has now moved up to be the 3rd most watched Channel 9 video out of 640 total, with over 232,000 views. You can see this by going to the Ch9 Videos page and then selecting Most Views in the dropdown list filter.

Scuba-Man speaks at Seattle Code Camp

klevy — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 03:19:00 GMT

In late August, I got into scuba diving by getting PADI open water certified just before my first visit to Hawaii (Maui). Last Friday night after work I went to Underwater Sports in Bellevue in a class with 3 others from 6pm-9pm for my advanced certification as well as special nitrox certification (higher mix of oxygen, like 32% or 36% rather than normal 21% allowing more time under water with no decompression needed). I did a 2 dives Saturday morning starting at 7:30pm, one deep dive to 100 feet, then another dive in the early afternoon on navigation using a compass underwater. Later that day I spoke at Seattle Code Camp in Federal Way (40 miles south) from 4:45pm-6:00pm on XML and XSLT tools new in Visual Studio 2005. Turns out that 4 of the people in my session were into scuba diving and I had to press on after lots of early chatter saying "maybe we can have a Scuba Diving session for coders at the next Code Camp". :) I left at 6:05pm after my session and went directly to Alki Beach for my first night dive. That was amazing, only seeing what the light shines on. What you see is far better color, since there is no blue/green sunlight underwater and only what the bright handheld light shows. We were swimming along and then had to stop as we approached a sunken boat maybe 20+ feet, it was all rusty and was only a 10 feet away when I first saw it, had to concentrate not to be nervous and scared. Diving at night is very cool, lots to see, calm waters, nice colors when you shine the light on stuff. It is a bit nerve racking not knowing what is around you unless you are shinning the light on it.

I was at the Bellevue Underwater Sports store again at 10:00am on Sunday to swap tanks for filled ones, then went 40 miles south to a beach dive near the Tacoma Narrows bridge by 11:00am to do a drift dive. That was cool, moving underwater without swimming, lots of sea life there and stuff to swim around (like a sunken VW bug car with star fish and such on it). Then after lunch we met another beach dive spot for a search and recovery dive, we tied a bag to a small 12 foot sunken boat in the middle then filled the bag with air using our regulators (using our backup for breathing while doing it) and lifted the boat off the ground a few feet (to show how to bring something up from the surface). So now I have certification on dry suit, nitrox air use, advanced level, and I may go diving once or twice this weekend (we have wed-fri off this week at work). I have 16 dives now, and all these certifications after only 8 weeks since I started scuba. I need 50 dives total plus 3 more specialties plus rescue+CPR and I will be at master level, something I should be able to do by early next year (within 6 months). Code Camp is a nice free event, but it is not like an annual conference with lots of people who know each other and not near as much networking (often the best part of any conference event). I don't think a Code Camp replaces a good formal conference, but they add well to the mix of options out there for learning about new products and technologies.

For a intersting blog post from a few months ago by Michael Rys (program manager for XQuery, Relational Database, SQL/XML, SQL), see Scuba diving in the South of France - Plongee a la Cote d'Azur.

Currency conversions on the go

klevy — Tue, 24 May 2005 13:03:00 GMT

I find myself checking the XE.com web site about every other day just for fun to take a quick peak to see how the U.S. dollar is against the Euro. When I was in Europe last November, it was around 1.31 $ per Euro. The $ was down to 1.34 per Euro maybe a month ago. But the $ has been doing better over the last week. It was hanging around 1.285, but today it is up to 1.259 per Euro. An 8% differential is significant, especially for traveling in Europe. Gas is actually cheap in the U.S., by perspective. One thing Americans who are complaining about high gas prices should realize is that during my drive through much of western Europe last June, I did not find one country (out of 9 visited) that sold gas for less than $6 per gallon. That probably helped explain why I saw less than two vehicles on the road that were either large pickups or SUVs in over 2500 of driving from Norway to Germany to Austria to Switzerland, and many countries in between.

The coolest new Smartphone application that I have on my Audiovox 5600 phone is called Calc-1. It is not only a great calculator with metric and temperature type conversions, but it has a cool tip calculator. The best best feature in Calc-1 for me during travel is a currency converter that lists all world currencies and auto updates every time I sync my email over the air. So while I travel, I can select the local currency and have the local currency rate calculation up to date.

Wandering bear takes dip in family's pool

klevy — Tue, 24 May 2005 05:27:00 GMT

This photo of a bear in someone's backyard pool in L.A. is one of the funniest I've seen in awhile.

More on blogging benefits and Ultimate Ears

klevy — Sat, 21 May 2005 05:38:00 GMT

It wasn't that long ago when querying a top search engine on my name (Ken Levy) resulted in many top links to people other than me, I was pretty far down the result page. I notice now that both MSN Search and Google both have the #1 search result linking to my blog, with other top results mostly linking to content related to me. I found the same to be true for many people I know or work with who have been active on their great blogs within the past year. Just a few examples include Calvin Hsia (MSN Search, Google), Rick Strahl (MSN Search, Google), Cathi Gero (MSN Search, Google), and Rod Paddock (MSN Search, Google). A year ago, search results on these names would not have resulted in near as many links to content related to them personally. Having a search result from someone's name link directly to their personal blog is significant.

Ultimate Ears are listed at #3 on Network World: Top 10 Gift Guide insights:

3. Putting goo in your ear is worth it. In order to try the Ultimate Ears personal monitors, we had to travel to an ear specialist who had to take an impression of my ears in order to create the device. While the process was odd, getting something that enhances the digital audio player trumps it.

Good things come to those who blog

klevy — Sat, 21 May 2005 00:20:00 GMT

There are many stories about people who have great blogs and as a result have had a door opened for them to get a better job, obtain new business opportunities, make new friends, and more. Often these opportunities would have have occurred if it wasn't for their blog. Blogging is not for everyone, but blogs are a great free medium for people who have something to say, a desire to educate, and a passionate to communicate.

I recently blogged about how Ultimate Ears deliver on how music is meant to be heard. I am obviously a big fan of the Ultimate Ears headphones and I feel strongly that they are well worth the cost over any other headphones (used for portable or home, office, etc.). I had been reading Robert Scoble blog about how he had thought had the best headphones available (an off the shelf pair). Late last year when Scoble interviewed me for the Channel 9 video on First look at Visual FoxPro 9, I had my Ultimate Ears on my desk at work and pointed out to him that I thought these were the best earphones I'd ever used, by far. That was six months and since then that video interview online has 100,000 views and is now the 6th most watched Channel 9 video out of 445 videos total.

Robert Scoble received his own pair of UE-10 Ultimate Ears last night and he blogged with Unbelievable headphones arrived today. He now shares the same enthusiasm I've had since I first used mine. Scoble's blog post was also picked up today on WebPronews.com.

So is this blog entry about blogs or about great headphones? Well, there three morals to the story here. 1) My friend Robert Scoble can now enjoy music, podcasts, movies on the go, etc. like he has never experienced before using his new Ultimate Ears. 2) As of today, tens of thousands of people have learned that there is an option available for obtaining the highest quality earphones ever designed. 3) It is only around noon pacific time today, and already within the past 12 hours since Scoble's blog entry linked me, the visits to my blog are over 5 times more as normal with a very large number of people reading my blog for the first time.

Microsoft TerraServer maps offer more detail than Google Maps

klevy — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 02:08:00 GMT

I recently posted a blog entry called Satellite views of Microsoft and more from Google Maps. While Google Maps is cool for getting driving maps and directions online, I found that Microsoft TerraServer map images have many times more up close detail in some of the photo images it provides. Here is a link to satellite view of Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, WA which I had linked to with Google Maps, for comparison. Click on the + to zoom all the way in to see detail so up close you can see the colors of cars on the road at the time. Refer to the TerraServer About page for more details on how this web site works.