Omar Shahine's WebLog

To be continued... on my blog

Until further notice, I'm discontinuing cross posting to this blog. As always, all the posts here and future posts are published on my own hosted blog at http://www.shahine.com/omar.

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Treo 650 Review Part 3

I almost forgot that I never finished my Treo Review Series. The device is so integrated into my habits now that I don't even notice how much I depend on and value the device. It's been over a month since the last review, and that's a good thing because I have finally settled on all the applications that I deem "core" to my Treo experience, and the stability of the device has gone up as a result since I don't install/uninstall programs daily.

If you missed it, here is Part 1, & Part 2

Applications

I thought I would tell you about all the Applications I use. Personally I do not feel that the value add of the Treo is solely based on what comes in the box. Much of it has to do with the fact that there are thousands of wonderful applications. Here is my short list of must have products and what they do.

Vindigo (24.95 a year)

Vindigo is an indispensable tool and one I have used off and on since they launched. They do not have an application for the Microsoft Smartphone, only Pocket PC and Palm. Vindigo lets you get location based information for food, bars, movies, weather, maps, museums etc. It's valuable for the city I live in and many cities that I travel to.

Bart Planner (free)

If you live in San Francisco, having access to Bart schedules is a must, and this application does not dissapoint.

Caltrain+ (free)

Ditto about this, but for Caltrain instead of Bart.

Directory Assistant (donation ware)

This is an excellent Yellow Pages search application that has nice integration with the Palm OS (to create new address book entries, copy info to the clipboard etc)

FileZ (free)

This is a freeware application for managing files, memory cards, and preferences for Palm applications. It's nice if you like to hack.

KeyCaps 650 (free)

This is an indispensable application that allows you to capitalize, and enter optional characters by simply holding down keys on the keyboard, or double pressing a key quickly. Wonderful for one handed use.

Slap ($10)

If you use Getting Things Done, this is a must have. Slap is like a limitless Note, that you can use to jot anything down quickly, and then later make that into a Contact, Appointment, Memo, or Task. It's like a Sticky Note. I use this all the time to quickly capture information to be processed later much like an Inbox.

Snap (free)

Simple application for taking screen shots on the Treo.

SplashID (29.95 or part of SplashWallet)

From SplashData, a great program for managing all your passwords, credit cards, ID cards etc. Comes with a companion desktop application and can be purchased in a bundle (SplashWallet).

SplashMoney (29.95 or part of SplashWallet)

Also from SplashData, a program for managing your finances. SplashMoney can connect to your bank and download transactions much like Microsoft Money and Quicken (bank must support statement download via OFX). This is excellent for knowing how much money I have when I am mobile. Comes with a companion desktop application and can be purchased in a bundle (SplashWallet).

SplashPhoto (29.95 or part of SplashWallet)

Also from SplashData, this is a Album and Capture application that is far better than the built in Treo applications. Comes with a companion desktop application and can be purchased in a bundle (SplashWallet).

SplashShopper (29.95 or part of SplashWallet)

Also from SplashData, this is a shopping list and general list program. Jot down all the groceries, gifts, books, wine, gear and other stuff you wish to purchase. It also allows you to keep such lists as travel checklists and can be customized to your liking. Comes with a companion desktop application and can be purchased in a bundle (SplashWallet).

Tetris (19.99)

Enough said. My wife is still addicted to Tetris.

TreoAlarm (free)

An Alarm clock with built in weather updates. Wakes me up every morning!

VeriChat (24.95 a year)

An indispensable multi-stack IM client that supports AOL, Yahoo, MSN. I LOVE this product. It works wonderfully, keeps me connected even with a spotty GPRS connection, and makes my Treo a fantastic IM tool.

FieldPlus (free)

It's shocking the Treo does not support shift-select, but FieldPlus will allow you to press the Shift Key and use the 5 way navigation pad to select text keeping the stylus or your fingers away from the screen. It also adds many other useful features like a Command Bar when you hold the menu button. This also improves one handed use.

Profiles (free)

It's also shocking that the Treo does not have profiles support like most mobile phones. The Pocket PC does not either, but one feature I loved in my Microsoft Smartphone was that it would automatically vibrate in meetings. Well, Profiles will allow you to define any number of profiles that can be invoked from a number of different triggers. One of those triggers can be the start/end of an appointment. No more embarrassing ringing in meetings!

Pocket Mirror XT Standard (29.95)

How do I say this... the Palm Conduits don't sync, they mostly duplicate. On the first hint of trouble, they duplicate data. No field level sync, nothing. I don't even think there is really any kind of algorithm for determining which record is the most recent as it seems random to me. I have absolutely zero confidence in the Palm sync software, and have gotten rid of it in favor of Pocket Mirror. It just works and I don't have to think about it.

Thankfully since VersaMail does Mail and Calendar I only have to worry about Contacts, Tasks and Notes. I just have Pocket Mirror do this. Since I managed the Entourage Sync Conduit for the Palm project (design, help dev, and test a lot of it) I have intimate knowledge of just how sorry building a sync conduit for HotSync can be. However, we optimized the heck out of our conduit to NOT DUPLICATE UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. You can always do a field level compare between records to eliminate 99% of duplications.

You must take care and ensure that you do not install the Calendar Sync conduit if you are using VersaMail to sync to Exchange.

Battery Life

Battery Life isn't amazing, but it's good. If you just use this as a Phone and PIM you'll get great battery life. However, if you are syncing mail ever 15 min, using Bluetooth and browsing the web a lot you'll get about as much battery life as a comparable Windows Pocket PC or Smartphone, which for me was 2-3 days max. I charge my device every night though.

Camera

The Camera is decent. Better than my Audiovox 5600, but still problematic. I wish it were a megapixel camera, but it's fairly decent for what I use it for.

Final Thoughts

I have gotten quite a bit of interest from folks inside Microsoft about my Treo experiences. A few folks I know have even purchased devices. In all cases I do not hesitate in recommending a Treo 650 to anyone who works at Microsoft, or anyone who cannot use a Blackberry but does have Exchange 2003. palmOne's support of Exchange, and our blessing, was the real tipping point for me even considering something I had previously ignored but secretly admired. My frustration and impatience of waiting for a Windows device with a similar form factor are no longer eating away at my geek persona. When and if one exists (for sale to Omar from my carrier) I'll happily consider that device.

The Treo does have its quirks, bugs and annoyances. You are really just trading one set of problems for another if you are considering switching from a Windows Mobile device. However, the form factor, and reliability are enough of a benefit for me to deal with the issues.

It's really hard to explain, but the Treo is a digital "companion". When I am traveling, or out and about, I have a world of handy tools at my fingertips. The ease of data entry has increased my usage of mobile IM, SMS, mapping and directory tools, mobile email, even access to all of Wikipedia via Wapedia. It's even improved my continued use of Getting Things Done as I can easily access my tasks by context, take notes in Slap, and file lots of tidbits into my Memos which prior to my Treo was akin to an empty parking lot in Outlook. Now it's buzzing with Reference material, Notes, Agendas, Lists etc.

If there were 4 things I could ask Palm to improve they would be:

1. Exchange Sync that's as good or better than Windows Mobile Devices. Fix your bugs (there are many sync related annoyances).
2. Fix the anemic PIM applications. They should round-trip all the same data found in Outlook. This includes fixing your busted Conduits.
3. Improve the flow between applications. Right now it feels like using a Macintosh before there was a multi-finder. Changing context between programs should not feel like you are quitting/relaunching all the time. This is especially important when moving between Email, Web, and PIM products.
4. Fix your bugs. 99% of the crashes that occur on my Treo are related to "Web", "VersaMail", "Applications", "Messaging". These are all Palm apps.

 

Good luck Dennis!

Dennis Cheung, someone that I interviewed for his first job out of college, and someone who I managed for a while in MacBU, announced that he is leaving the MacBU for the MSN Desktop Search Team.

I seriously dig the hard work and attitude of the Desktop Search Team. They run one of the best dogfood programs inside Microsoft. Many Microsoft teams open up their product to internal Microsoft folks for "dogfooding". For those of you unfamiliar with that word, it's essentially using pre-beta and sometimes outright buggy software on a daily basis in order to vet out bugs, design issues, and solicit feedback. Some programs are better than others, and excellent dogfood programs are a sign to me that the team is excited, committed, and interested in shipping the best product. Devoting resources to an internal dogfood program are not insignificant, but doing so successfully often means that when you ship you have an army of folks who not only love your product (because they feel that their hard work is also shipping) but are also evangelists for your product.

Anyway, I have a lot of respect for the team Dennis is moving to, and I really expect great things from that product in the future. As I've mentioned before, I feel really good when MacBU veterans leave for other groups at Microsoft because I know that they always take along the pixie dust that made MacBU products so special.

This blog location

For a while now (since January 2004) I have been posting both to my personal blog (http://www.shahine.com/omar/) and another blog located at http://blogs.msdn.com/omars/. At the time there were about 140 Microsoft blogs on blogs.msdn.com. I don't actually post things twice, rather dasBlog can crosspost both to this blog and any number of other blogs that support the blogger APIs.

My main motivation for doing this was that I wanted to be part of the Microsoft blogger community. I also used to subscribe to the full blogs.msdn.com rss feed, and pretty much read what everyone there was posting. Finally, I also got a lot of great comments from folks on that blog (I supose because they did not specifically subscribe to my feed, but the blogs.msdn.com feed).

In the past 16 months the blogs.msdn.com site has grown an order of magnitude. I no longer feel like my presence is part of a small community and many of the benefits I have felt by crossposting have been overshadowed by things don't care much for. Particularly the new Community Server product. It's made managing my blog, comments, and feedback much more difficult. So much so that I completely ignore the comments on my msdn blog because I find the product unusable. It takes 20 clicks and postbacks to do simple things. I find myself lost. Additionally, the community on blogs.msdn.com is big enough now that I don't think I need to cross post any longer. Don't get me wrong, I wish Scott and company the best of luck with CS, and the fact that is powers our employee blog property is cool, but it's an experiment that is not something I think I need to be a part of.

And just to be clear. I figure that I cross posted 80% of the content on my personal blog to my msdn blog. Anything technology related got crossposted, some personal rants and such did not.

So, my question is this. Does anyone care or even find it confusing that I even do this? Should I stop crossposting? I'm leaning to just mothballing my msdn blog (leaving all the content there, but no longer cross posting). Do people who subscribe to the msdn one want me to keep posting my tech stuff there? Does anyone even care :-)?

PS - Speaking of Community Server, and blogs.msdn.com, I just noticed that Dare also stopped crossposting from his blog to blogs.msdn.com.

Wow I was slashdotted!

I never thought it would happen, but thanks to Dan Crevier's recent patent, I was slashdotted because I have a blog post that gives some background on Dan (who to this day is still one of the smartest people I've had the honour of working with at Microsoft).

I haven't read all the commotion regarding the patent and I really don't care. Dan's a good guy and that's all that matters to me. Plus dasBlog didn't tip over :-).

Newsgator + FeedDemon

Interesting indeed. I started using FeedDemon because I grew tired of having my RSS in Outlook (I do not think RSS belongs there for high volume RSS readers). Before using FeedDemon though I was using NewsGator Online, and then added FeedDemon because while I liked the benefits of online I did want a single offline client that sync'ed to NewsGator Online and well FeedDemon does this.

Congrats to Greg and Nick on the deal. I think it will result in really positive outcomes for both sides of the deal (and the customer, me!).

When the work you do is architectural (MSN mobile messaging)

The other day I had an experience with my computer, and MSN's software that just made me smile. You see, for the past year or so folks on my team have been involved on a feature that took coordination from dozens of internal teams. This was a big feature, one that I have spent countless man hours involved in, and some of my directs and co-workers an order of magnitude more time working on. It took everything from sharp technical minds, good business practice, relationships with carriers, partners, and of course operations, user experience folks and the usual suspects for any feature (development, testing, program management).

For the first time ever, I was able to use this feature with my sister, and I felt empowered. It's the kind of feature that makes me so proud to work here because I fully understand the complexity of what we did, and the simplicity of the feature to the customer. It's really my favorite kind of work, and it's incredibly satisfying to have been a *small* part of it.

So what is this feature? Let me first explain the scenario.

Today, when two people have SMS enabled mobile phones, it's possible to send an SMS (Short Text Message) from one phone to another phone. This is a fairly old system that was built years ago and was initially a hallmark of the GSM mobile phone system pioneered in Europe. Many years later we finally have SMS between all sorts of different carriers and technologies and in most cases it works world wide.

SMS requires a lot of inter carrier technology, billing support, and queuing technology. It's a widely popular system and something I use a lot to communicate with my friends and family.

Now we also have this MSN Messenger thing which allows you to do many of the same types of things between two users sitting in front of a computer. Today it's not a queued system but one that requires both sides be "online" at the time. So if I want to send a short message to some one who is not signed into MSN Messenger I have two choices: to send them an email, or to wait till they return online. In many cases my communication is not appropriate for email as a communication medium, and if I wait, I might forget about it. The current system does not allow me to continue the conversation with the person (even though that person may have a mobile device capable of having a text based conversation).

In the past few years there have been an effort to port the IM stacks to mobile devices to enable the same experience as the PC. However, there are millions of mobile devices that do not have IM stacks, and even if they are available, it's sometimes too cumbersome to sign in to the mobile IM stack. Finally, that system suffers from the same problem as MSN Messenger on the PC. The communications require both parties be online.

So what to do? Enter MSN Messenger to SMS communications (we call this Enhanced mobile messaging). The feature we've been working on for the past year (or longer) was to allow a user of MSN Messenger on a PC to send a message to some one that is not signed into MSN Messenger but has an SMS enabled Mobile device AND to reply to that SMS message and have a real time chat (in otherwords, a two way conversation between MSN Messenger and Mobile phone using SMS as the wire protocol). This last part is important, but to understand it I need to explain one more thing.

For the past few years part of the scenario above has been available through what I will call a hack. Most phones that have SMS also have an email gateway that can take a message sent to a special email address and forward that message to the phone. For example, an email sent to <phone number>@mmode.com will forward that message via SMS to the <phone number> of an ATT Wireless subscriber. However, the user cannot reply to that email enabling a 2 way chat. Furthermore, it breaks the SMS user experience that mobile phone users are used to.

So, to fix this we set out to build all the necessary carrier infrastructure, SMS infrastructure, and build the technology and carrier relationships to ship the ability for users to have a two way conversation from MSN Messenger to a Mobile device that has nothing more than SMS capabilities (practically every singe phone on the planet). Not only that, but we support "Offline messages" so that if a Mobile phone device replies to an SMS from Messenger, and you have signed out of MSN Messenger, the next time you sign in the message will be delivered to you allowing you to continue the conversation. This is EXACTLY the same experience you get with a Mobile phone since it can queue SMS messages if your phone is off, and always deliver them when the phone is on. Now we have the same capability in MSN Messenger, and I'm happy to say that this is possible because of Hotmail's participation (we are the store for all these offline messages, as well as delivery of the messages to Messenger). As a result of all this, two days ago, when my sister was "offline" from MSN Messenger, I was able to have a conversation with her from my Desktop PC and I had no idea where she was. That is super powerful and empowered me to do something that was not previously possible, and something I wanted and makes sense to me as an end user. One of the many reasons I love building software.

I write this because a lot of what I do at Hotmail is this kind of work. This isn't a big splashy feature with a lot of chrome. But it took some super hard work from so many people across Microsoft, and shipping it is really a testament to how we can build interoperable features across organizations, technologies and overcome numerous obstacles to deliver something that makes a lot of sense to our users :-). This feature is particularly interesting as well due to the numerous SMS billing models world wide. In the US we have Recipient Party Pays (the person receiving the SMS gets billed) and in many other countries Calling Party Pays (where you must pay a small amount of money to send the mobile IM from Messenger to the SMS device). These two models are negotiated with the different carriers depending on the prevailing business model in that market. Today in the US this feature works for Verizon and T-Mobile users. It's coming soon to other carriers near you.

You can read about how to use this feature in the mobile messaging help topic.

Yahoo Music

Here is why Yahoo Music is cool. Yes I work for MSN, and sure I wish MSN Music had this same feature, but I'm super excited that Yahoo Music launched their business. Why? THEY ARE BUILT ON OUR PLATFORM! Let me explain.

A few months ago I wrote this post about Technology Camps. Let me point out my favorite paragraph:

"Now contrast this to Microsoft. For the past few years the focus has been on building a world class platform. From the codec's, to the encoding technology, to the protocol for moving bits from the computer to the device, to the encryption technology, policy enforcement of digital rights, and servers to manage those rights it's all been spec'ed and delivered in a manner that any software developer can utilize. You can create your own Music Store and sell content to anyone with a compatible device. You can build a device that can play rich video and audio. You can build software that can manipulate that music, and organize it for users, or even a new shell that can present that media to the user who is sitting on their couch and interacts via a remote control. You can even buy a cell phone that can consume these media files! Talk about a rich eco system. But that's what it is; a platform for anyone with a desire to build on. Microsoft participates in this eco system via the MSN Music Store, and other various properties, but we do not dictate how much you will pay, and what device you will use. We give you choice, and history has shown time and time again, that choice is always more powerful. Choice and flexibility always wins. Consumers want choice."

A bunch of people made some very valid comments about my perspective on how this all relates to Apple regarding Choice. I'm not going to disagree with them. However, this is so utterly cool because Yahoo was able to build and bring to market their own music store that leverages our platform end to end.

1. Microsoft Technology for encoding and DRM
2. Microsoft WMA 192 KBps 2-Pass CBR Encoded files (iTunes is STILL 128KBps AAC)
3. Janus to deliver subscription audio to PlaysForSure Compatible devices
4. Sync to those devices via Media Transport Protocol

And they offer this all for the cost of 3-4 music CDs a year with access to their entire Music collection. They are far cheaper than Napster-To-Go which I complained as being to expensive and buggy for my tastes.

Now how much do you want to bet that Apple is going to eventually have to offer subscriptions? I bet that the reason they have not yet done so is because Steve doesn't believe it makes sense.

"Steve Jobs, has dismissed the idea of subscription-based services, saying people want to own their music"

I'm not so sure about that. Me thinks that Apple is going down the exact same path with the iPod as they did with a Mac. They have build a phenomenally successful and wonderful CLOSED ecosystem. Just like the Mac. And we all know what happened there.

Yahoo does things that have potential positive revenue impact. They did not have to spend their resources building a platform, delivery mechanism, tools, services and whatnot to make this happen. They had to licence content, create a user experience and launch it. Anyone can do this.

My iPod is an island. My Creative Zen Micro just had a new bridge built to Yahoo that gives me access to a million songs for 5 bucks a month. Apple isn't competing with Microsoft, they are competing with potentially dozens of companies, and now a big internet media powerhouse.

How do you like them Apples?

Vacation over, Maui rocked

Well I returned from a 10 day break from work this past Saturday, and on Monday I hit the ground running. Of course before I left for work I made two big mistakes. I subscribed to these two mailing lists at work and I didn't want them filling up my inbox so I created some rules. Well I made a mistake, rather than filtering mail sent To a DL I filtered the mail From a DL. Well this is interesting in that if you do that and you get a message from some one who is a member of a DL, then the rule kicks in. I guess that makes sense, but the end result was hundreds of duplicate and redirected mail to these new folders. Ick...

Anyway, by the end of Monday I had managed to go from about 400 messages in my inbox to 5 messages. I did not check mail while on vacation. Not once, and that was the bomb. Not only did I go from 400 to 5, I did this on a rather busy meeting day. This was all possible because of:

1. Getting Things Done
2. ClearContext

Much of the email was thread based where I needed only the most recent version, so those were easy to delete. A bunch were questions I needed to answer, so I did. A big chunk were reference type information. This is where I love ClearContext. I can easily assign a topic to a message and hit Alt-M which files that message automatically to a topic based folder. This is FAST. No expanding folders, drag and dropping a message etc. Saved me a lot of time.

This made me realize something else. This was the second time this year I went 7 work days w/o checking email. You know what? It worked. I trust that when I get back to work I have a system that allows me to process all the stuff and get back in the game w/o increasing my stress level and ruining my vacation. Microsoft gives me 15 days a year where they pay me to do nothing... doing email on vacation is essentially losing out on time my mind needs to not do anything work related. I can tell you that I started Monday with a lot more energy and excitement specifically because I avoided thinking or doing work while relaxing.

Back to Maui. We thought we would do all this stuff on the island, but the place we stayed was in Kapalua which is about an hour north from the airport. Not close to anything really. So we basically sat on the beach, sat by the pool, drank good stuff, ate good stuff and had a good time hanging out.

Oh, and I learned to play Golf. I think I like it. I'm going to start going to the driving range near my apartment, maybe even get some clubs since I'm so tall and was told not to mess around with short clubs or I would develop bad habbits. My wife happens to be an excellent golfer (golfed since she was 8), so she is pretty happy about all this.

Vacation in progress

If you are trying to reach me over the next week, I will be unavailable. Many have asked me why I'm on vacation so much these past few weeks. Well, my wife has been in Oahu for the past 9 weeks doing a rotation at Kaiser Permanente. One of the things that a lot of residency programs do is "farm you out" so that you can get surgical and other experiences at other hospitals. Why Oahu? It's a long story, but I've been without a wife for the past 9 weeks and have been attempting to visit her as much as possible. After all, that is why we get 3 weeks vacation a year (next year I get 4 weeks, since it will be my 7th year at Microsoft).

Anyhow, I will be headed to Maui tomorrow for 6 days with my parents, and sister/boyfriend where I plan to learn how to play golf, and read a few books whilst soaking in the rays and getting a tan.

So, see you all when I get back. In the mean time do not expect any "online" activities from me.

BTW - I have to say. Hawaii is fantastic. This year was the first time I ever visited Hawaii, and I think I could easily live here. I feel so recharged when I get back from work. In fact I have been so much more productive the past few weeks, and I think that has a lot to do with relaxing in the sun, swimming in the ocean, and just being a bum. I haven't gone on a beach vacation in over 3 years and as a result I think my batteries weren't fully charged.

I'm not alone with my Comcast DVR woes

I'm not the only one who thinks the Comcast DVR with TV Guide software is buggy. I should call Comcast and ask for a refund. That will surely get them to notice the issues. Money talks...

Fixing Outlook Red &quot;X&quot; Problem

Every few months, Outlook 2003 will get into a situation where it will no longer render images in the preview pane or the message window. If you reply to the message, then you will see the image.

Perplexed by the problem, I would take the brute force "Detect and Repair" solution but that isn't always desirable as it resets all the Outlook settings and takes a while. Months ago, some one posted to an internal DL that the problem can be fixed by deleting the Outlook Temporary Cache folder. Since then I had forgotten this solution, and noticed the problem re-appeared. I was talking to Reeves today and he mentioned that he is having the same problem.

Anyway, here is how you fix the problem.

1. Locate the Outlook Temporary Items folder by opening the Registry and locating HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security\OutlookSecureTempFolder
2. Navigate to the value of this Key. It should be something like: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK3D\ where OLK3D is some randomly generated string that always starts with OLK
3. Quit Outlook
4. Delete the contents of the folder
5. Launch Outlook

Problem solved! I could not locate a KB article on this topic.

Interesting things Jimmy did see

My good buddy, Jimmy (a.k.a. JimmyG) who no longer works for MS, spends all day taking spy photos of interesting things in Dubai, U.A.E. He happend to grab a pic of a very rare Mercedes G Class, and Microsoft's CEO walking with the Crown Prince of Dubai.

New VP of HR for Microsoft

Lisa Brummel was just named Vice President of Human Resources at Microsoft. Previous to this role Lisa was Corporate Vice President of the Home and Retail division, which is where the Mac Business Unit has been located for the past few years (before that, MacBU was in MSN for a few brief months, and before that in Business and Productivity Group or BPG).

What I found more interesting is that the mention that Ken DiPietro, the former VP of HR, was replaced is in the middle of the press release. It didn't say where he went or what happened to him. Not sure what to make of that. The only thing I remember about Ken was 1) He was the dude that changed our benefits last year by altering our ESPP program and altered our prescription drug program a bit, and 2) can't remember, but I think I took some on line training as a result of some email that was sent out.

"Brummel replaces Ken DiPietro, who served as corporate vice president for Human Resources for the past two years."

I think the cuts could have been a LOT worse. But needless to say they were not popular. As it stands, the ESPP program isn't really very worthwhile compared to the old program.

But anyway, Ken was in this role from Dec 2002 till now. He was hired outside Microsoft and is being replaced by a long time Microsoft veteran that Steve has a lot of respect for (you could tell from listening to Lisa that she was highly regarded by Steve and Co.).

I'm sure Lisa is excited about her new role, and well I wish her luck! She has lived and breathed working in Product Groups most of her Microsoft Career and probably understands us employees better than anyone.

Photoshop CS2

First of all, a big shout out to Adobe for creating an awesome upgrade for Digital Camera owners. I still don't understand why you insist on installing Adobe ImageReady when I never use it and curse it when I accidentally double click a PNG and watch it take forever to load. However, you fixed one of the biggest problems for me. Changes to Orientation of RAW files were never persisted to the XMP MetaData files, but thankfully you now write the tag:

<tiff:Orientation>8</tiff:Orientation>

Which makes a world of difference cause lots of my photos previously edited with Nikon Capture 4 trashed this data, and I was unable to fix the problem in Photoshop CS1 or Elements 3.0. Now these changes will persist across machines, and stick around with my photos.

First impressions. Adobe Picture bridge is worth the upgrade alone. The new Camera RAW editor is great. But best of all, THANK YOU for allowing me to use a product that is infinitely more usable and polished than every other product on the market that can edit RAW photos. They all suffer from any kind of normal and intuitive user interface.

The bottom line is that unfortunately for me, and fortunately for Adobe, I will continue to shell out money for every upgrade till I feel that the art of Digital Camera Workflow is mature in these products. I think CS2 is a huge step forward, especially with the guidance of many of the auto settings for editing RAW photos that are great for quick and dirty "make this not look like a raw file" type editing. But I still think we have a long way to go.

If you are currently an owner of a product that qualifies for an upgrade I would easily recommend the CS2 upgrade. If you are not an owner, and can't or don't want to shell out $500 for the full version, I suspect most of the core feature for managing Digital Photos will arrive in a new version of Photoshop Elements 3.0.