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September 2006 - Posts

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Instant Search in Vista and I'm using it more and more to speed up my access to application, files and more. Once you get used to search - for documents in particular - you'll me amazed at how much crap you still store on your Read More...
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I was chatting with Long today and it reminded me of something I've been meaning to blog about for a while - some of the cool UI fit and finish that is coming through in Vista build. One I really like a lot is the ability to customize the icons for the Read More...
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Hope you like my Zune bunting :) I just watched the video of the guys at on10 with a couple of pre-prod Zune devices showing the wireless sharing. Cool demo and then I noticed the small icon they've added beneath that blog posting - download of the content Read More...
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We're going on the road and taking on the Casino Royale bandwagon! IDC predict partner services opportunity to be around €47billion euros on Vista alone and we're keen to get that message out to our UK Partners on their doorsteps. We've been working on Read More...
I spoke with AMD about her slow down on the blog front today. She's back from holiday and back blogging soon...looking forward to it after a great start. Maybe I should have just sent her the latest bLaugh cartoon Technorati tags: annemarieduffy , blog Read More...
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I presented at our UK Partner Conference this week and was due to talk about solution selling. I decided to change my pitch slightly to talk about how the group I work with can help partners make more profit and have less pain in doing so. I also changed Read More...
I don't think the thong is really me but I like Karen's change list. Some of it is obvious stuff but I've been thinking a lot more about giving presentations over the last few days and this list would be a good reference to use as part of a future presentation Read More...
Nope, not of the stolen kind but the fiery battery kind. Seems Toshiba has joined the battery recall frenzy which means I need to go check my stash of kit as I'm pretty Toshiba heavy and not sure I have fire insurance in Clayton Towers. Link to BBC NEWS Read More...
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I read an email on James Senior's blog this week that made me think about how I deal with the volume of email I receive. Although I own the steve@microsoft.com email address I thankfully don't get the email from it directly hence don't have his external Read More...
I know I blogged this earlier in the week but I couldn't resist doing so again just to highlight the great looking site - and it has content too :) The guys have tried to mimic the Vista Aero look and feel with Flash and have done a pretty good job I Read More...
At the UK Partner Conference yesterday, I was asked several times when is Vista readiness & training material going to become available? Well it's coming thick and fast and this is the latest offering we have for UK Partners: This one-day session Read More...
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James blogged about this last week and I downloaded and played with this cool new application this week. I only hope that The Times of London adopts this technology as it really does make reading a newspaper a very pleasant experience on Windows by using Read More...
[check out other photos on my Flickr photostream ] The annual gathering of the great and the good from the UK IT industry happened last week in Cowes, Isle of Wight. After a Thursday evening of merriment and a few small glasses of sweet sherry we set Read More...
I've noticed several postings about free tickets to DigitalLife in New York next month at the Javits Center but I have something a little juicier - 4 free VIP tickets . Ahhh, VIP...one of my favourite TLA's. What do these Willy Wonka style golden numbers Read More...
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I've been waiting to talk about this site for a while and today it went live - great work from the guys and girls in the UK partner team that I work with. The site looks terrific I think using the Aero Glass look 'n feel from Vista and packed with lots Read More...
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I've tried my best to explain RSS to lots of people recently with varying levels of success so this is a welcome guide in Winfrey style. I like the BBC guide too but this one is great and I love the graphics. If you don't know what RSS is or want a good Read More...
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I don't think it's completely crap but Hugh's latest cartoon was nicely timed as a I spent last week removing some of the clutter from my blog such as the ZoomClouds image that showed what I am talking about most regularly in keyword/cloud format. All Read More...
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This is going to be my newest category on the blog - a blatant copy from Wired 's long running column and I'm likely to nick a few from there (being a scouser and all it seems fair). My first one though is largely unknown as far as I can tell from a deeply Read More...
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Weird...I heard this was coming and expected it to be on Connect but it's publicly available which is great news :) I hear from others that it's better than RC1 which really should be something. Off to download myself now whilst watching the Ryder Cup. Read More...
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When I worked in the mobile group on Smartphone and Pocket PC, I used to get asked this question all the time by operators and press. Well, it's finally happened - but not a handset partnership. Nokia will use Live Search for N Series and S60 series phones. Read More...
Weird things happen in the blogosphere. At the same time I was finishing up a post about our Virtual Partner Conference and trying to squeeze in a Senna link, I read Matthew's blog and he's referenced the great one. Spooky...this stuff happens way too Read More...
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I have huge admiration for this man - not simply because he produces stunningly designed products like the iMac, Powebook and iPOD range but also because he's British. What this interview highlighted though is the humble manner in which he and his team Read More...
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Next week we're running a UK Partner Conference at the Williams F1 Centre in Wantage. Not only will around 400 partners get to drool over some expensive machinery but they will also get to hear from the great and the good of Microsoft UK (and me) about Read More...
Nice find by Sean Alexander that over on Casey's blog he's detailed how you can control your Media Centre remotely using a bot in Live Messenger - so with Messenger on my Windows Mobile Smartphone I can now control my media centre from anywhere. Nice...though Read More...
Blatantly off topic for me (what's "on topic" for me you may ask), I love listening to Peter Moore not only as he talks about cool stuff on XBOX but he's a man from me (sic) hometown - Liverpool. I only learnt this from Wired this month when I read that Read More...
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I LOVE this tip for Vista from Jon Hicks, author of the Official Vista Magazine (thanks to James for passing it on). I posted an blog entry a while back on shortcut keys in XP but this is just fantastic if you're a big user of the shortcut tray on the Read More...
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I just noticed this on Eileen's blog and if you're a medium sized business (aka 250-1000 employees) this is for you...or if you're a partner selling to these companies of course. What is it? "Essentials 2007 is a new management solution in the System Read More...
CRN cites a selection of Microsoft Partners across the globe who are running RC1 and enjoying the experience. If you don't have at least a selection of your staff (sales and technical) out there running Vista right now I think you're missing a trick. Read More...
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Wow we finally came up with a pretty cool name for a product (oops, service) that looks like we'll stick with past beta. Soapbox is our foray in to the online video market and Rob Bennett (ex IE team) talked to the BBC about it. The site is open by invitation Read More...
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This is the kind of stuff that brightens up a tough day - when someone is expecting a crappy experience from Microsoft and gets the opposite....and then takes the time to talk about it. Most people I speak with have had bad support experiences from IT Read More...
IT people “twice as likely” to wear heavy metal t-shirt as other people Wow, I feel left out as I don't have a single heavy metal t-shirt. Lets see if I fit any of the other stereotypes in this industry critical research: Black jeans are 63% more popular Read More...
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Steve Jobs has taken some press heat now for the last 2 Apple announcement gigs though having watched his performance from last week I thought it was actually pretty good. The iTV device looked lot like Media Centre to me (and Scoble ) but overall I thought Read More...
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A colleague asked me last week how you can open multiple home pages when you start IE7 now that we've got tabbed browsing. It took me a little while to figure this when I first used IE7 but now I couldn't live without it as a useful start to the day. Read More...
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If you're doing much playing with Vista, this is a handy utility to be aware of and have in your back pocket. I'm having some issues upgrading my Sony Vaio PCG-K215Z at the moment which means I have a boot menu that defaults to Vista when I really want Read More...
Nobody said anything about cameras when the PTS team went out for a few Christmas drinks last year - I just came across this photo on David Overton's blog . That's me far right with a pint of Guinness outside The Toucan in Soho (London) and about 30 seconds Read More...
I read during the Zune coverage this week that most people don't download music to portable media devices from online stores. I wasn't too sure on that given Apple has over 1b tunes downloaded from their store but it seems this has been substantiated Read More...
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With billion dollars of investment coming to market later this year in the shape of Vista, Office and Exchange we're set to see a massive opportunity for the IT channel. IDC has studied the potential impact and estimates that Vista alone will generate Read More...
Vista RC1 is now available for general download - yep, that's right, everyone can give it a go now! My advice - if you can, you should. Seriously, I don't know which oven this build came out of but it's light years ahead of beta 2 and I'm running it in Read More...
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Chris has added a couple of great cartoons to bLaugh this week. The first is a timely reminder that I should get out more this weekend and stop spamming my team with email. Chris's inbox is creaking under the load :) The second reminded me of a conversation Read More...
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I came across Matt's blog after looking for some Microsoft UK references on Technorati this evening and found it a very interesting read - not least that Nick McGrath went to a football game!! but more for the broad and objective coverage of the Open Read More...
I blogged about this a while back but though it was worth revisiting as this another great (but extremely well hidden) toolkit for Microsoft Partners. It's focused around our Infrastructure Optimization Initiative which is designed to help customers realize Read More...
Lots of Zune details came out today including plenty of images at the Virtual Press Room and quite a number of videos too. Anna's first reaction: "ooh it looks just like an iPod" and mine was "ohh, brown...the new black". The videos are the best part Read More...
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Whilst everyone is flapping about the latest stuff from Steve , I got this cool service/application forwarded to me by Katie and like it a lot. You enter an artist or song that you like and they use that to build a track listing of other music you'll Read More...
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I finally took the plunge with some GapingVoid business cards to add to my WeeMee cards . Not that I don't like our corporate cards but whenever I give a partner or journalist both cards, they always hand me the corporate one back. Very good of them to Read More...
We're really starting to ramp up the courses available to help partners get up to speed on Exchange, Vista and Office. You'll see a new innovation from us soon called Learning Paths that will make this courseware and other resources like our blogs even Read More...
Who else but Mr Akrigg to explain this highly technical concept and he also covers 'Social Engineering' as part of the software development process and 'Contextual Information Services....intrigued eh? I'm off to exercise my geek gland now :) Link to Read More...
A few people, including my fellow UK blogger Darren Strange , have asked me about the look 'n feel of my blog recently and I have to admit that I learnt all I know (and copied heavily) from Josh Ledgard following his excellent pimp your blog post a while Read More...
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The guys have found a pretty unique way of posting the job - with a video interview with Jeff. Maybe I should have done that for the Exchange Tech Specialist position on my team :) So...who's applying?? I know a few people who'd be great but my guess Read More...
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I found unsanity via a feedback post to my blog and it prompted me to have more of a look at their site. They build some very cool "haxies" and for Mac OS and OSX. iconfactory to do similar stuff and I and a few other folks in Microsoft UK have been looking Read More...
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Looks like a great new blog from the Windows Client team and if they're going to share some insights on the Vista shell design they'll have me as a loyal reader. Thanks to MS Tech Today for finding this. As you would expect, the site looks cool - lets Read More...
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Wow, that looks a lot like WMP11 to me and this next slide looks almost like one of our PowerPoint's and for once Apple hasn't come up with a cool name for their new device and iTV is a placeholder which I'm sure is going to help ITV get way more hits Read More...
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Funny how things change. When I started out in the mobile business at Microsoft, the Palm 5 was our nemesis and we even had those "Friend Don't Let Friend's Use Palm" stickers about the building. 5 years on and Palm just announced with Vodafone the Treo Read More...
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Why? Even I don't have one of these ;) Link to Live shots of the Black Diamond $300,000 smartphone - Engadget Read More...
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This is happening far too often for my liking - I chat an idea through with some friends and even post about it on my blog and then the next Sunday it appears in The Sunday Times. I opened their gadget section this weekend and there was a piece about Read More...
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I like Live.com and Live Search a lot - they have come a very long way since first jumping in to the playground and with subtle tweaks along the way search now has pride of place as my preferred search engine in IE7. My main gripe is it could still be Read More...
Over the last few weeks I have rambled on about potentially buying a Mac and before that how jealous I was of my brothers and Katie's Sony SZ laptops. Why? Because I like design. My flat is full of books on design and though I know nothing about design Read More...
If you want see see what a great looking application can look like using Windows Presentation Foundation, look no further than our own Max application. Last week it was updated with RSS feed reading capability that turns a blog in to a newspaper in front Read More...
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I thought this was a good post by Eric over on the SMB blog who is busy meeting with UKSMBgirl Susanne - he explains very simply the different versions of Vista that are applicable to the small business space and in particular what Windows Vista Enterprise Read More...
I looked at this all day on Vista and decided to capture the moment. Hugh captured it too on GapingVoid. I can't believe it's 5 years on already. RIP Read More...
I've started reading Wired again as they seem to have broken out of their technolust for the bioscience industry and got back to more mainstream technology coverage with great articles like Can the PS3 Save Sony? In Issue 14.09 they have a great StartUp-O-Tron Read More...
Another solid manifesto from changethis.com that I enjoyed. I can't say I agree with it all and had a second read of the "Walk Away From Free" point after a good chat with Mike Pegg and concurred with him that this one was a bit shaky. Plenty of other Read More...
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I've been thinking about this for a while now and read it in two places today so decided it was time to post it before it became a Techmeme topper. Over at Satisfy Me , mthree posted on the Slate story that I'd also seen from Wired. Their take is that Read More...
I thought this whole Save to PDF deal was off but what do I know? If you're running the 2007 Office System you can download an Add-In to allow you to do this. Tip of the Fez to Jeremy for the heads up on this one Download: 670k Read More...
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I approached this article in today's Observer with my usual cynicism around Vista articles these days - another simple Microsoft bashing exercise I thought. Surprisingly not as it gives a fairly honest, albeit short, view of why Vista is so late and what Read More...
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After spending the day yesterday lamenting the fact that Banksy does much of his work in Shoreditch and Farringdon hence I haven't seen it first hand I then bumped in to some in Chiswick today - almost literally. Right next to my favourite coffee shop Read More...
Every now and then when I'm in London I drop in to the Apple Store on Regent Street and today I knew I was going in to have a look at a MacBook. I've mentioned before that I think Apple hardware is great but with bootcamp and Intel chips now allowing Read More...
I finally got around to setting up my permanent Flickr home - you can now check out my slideshow which tracks my travels around this planet. I'm really quite hooked on Flickr for a number of reasons but mainly the simplicity of their service. I used my Read More...
I really enjoyed this interview with Bryan Lee (Corp VP in our entertainment division). We could definitely be accused of overpromising and underdelivering at times (Vista anyone?) but Bryan takes some tough question on the chin and resisted the temptation Read More...
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Okay I admit it, I'm addicted to making adverts with this cool HP site . I found some additional features that let you personalize the ad even more so couldn't resist :) They still don't have my hairstyle on there so I had to go with a cowboy hat this Read More...
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With billions of dollars of R&D coming to market this year in the shape of Exchange, Vista and Office we have a major focus on helping our UK partners get ready for " EVO " wave. This is a big team effort from the UK partner team and you will see Read More...
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I bumped in to Neil Holloway this week and he asked me what I love about Vista - both as a consumer and a business user. A simple question but one that got me thinking and wondering about the so-called "elevator pitch" on Vista which is explained well Read More...
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For a long while I always had the latest new mobile device having worked in that group for 4 years or so. I've seen Jason sporting the new HTC S620 for a while and like it a lot. The photo below doesn't really do it justice but I neeeeeeeeeeeed one....now!! Read More...
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Following a CTP back in May, Expression Web went in to public beta yesterday and is our foray in to the land dominated by Adobe Dreamweaver and others and is part of the Expression family. If like me you're mourning the departure of FrontPage, this is Read More...
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Oh oh...he's changed the colour scheme of the page from last time I looked so the first post can't be far off now. Meantime, you can see that Mr Akrigg is something of a prolific speaker BSG Event Bytes Event Tectura newsletter Tikit event and his excellent Read More...
Need I say more? Go grab the ISO and burn away. You will like it...I hope :) Link to Windows Vista RC1 tags: RC1 public beta Read More...
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Sarah just pointed me to some photos from the recent Girl Geek Dinner in London. Check 'em out for innovative use of a .NET t-shirt if nothing else. You can also check out a stream of Abigail's talk When's the next on Sarah?? tags: GirlGeek London Read More...
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If you haven't seen RC1 yet, Computerworld has put together a pretty good visual tour . The fit and finish is really starting to show with thie 5600 build. I'm a bit of an icon geek so love the look of the new control panel though some Win 9x style icons Read More...
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It's a powerful thing to have in your armory and nicely covered by Keith Ferrazzi who points to Mark Goulston. There are a tonne of other useful things on Mark's site and I've listed a few below but I like the apology one - and I'm about to go use it Read More...
All in dollars but you can do the conversion to your currency of choice and get an idea I'm sure. Vista home basic is $199 or $99 on upgrade and $239 for home premium. Now you want to know what's the difference right? Check out http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecla01/archive/2006/08/0... Read More...
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Nice find my Tim - my old friend Open Command Prompt here - which used to be a PowerToy in Windows XP is available with a Shift & Right Click in Vista. Link to command prompt here in vista tags: Vista , RC1 Read More...
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Well, kayaking I think the be precise but I'm off to Ross on Wye for a couple of days and going there sans laptop (shocker!) so will not be posting here for a day or so - though I will send photos to my Flickr stream so feel free to check that out or Read More...
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flowerchucker Originally uploaded by stevecla . I went a bit Banksy mad this weekend and then started playing aroudn with Flickr. This is the result - a test post to my blog from Flickr. I'm going to follow up with a post later today I hope on what I've Read More...
Well what could I do...when HP asked me to star in their latest ad campaign for The PC Gets Personal Again I just couldn't resist. I even waived my usual fees given the new haircut they gave me in wardrobe. Oh and check out my Steve Jobs style turtleneck. Read More...
Not something you see everyday and when I spotted the big yellow fella had moved last time I was home I decided to snap him. We don't have Banksy graffiti in Liverpool but we do have a large lambbanana thing. You can get your own from SuperLambBanana.co Read More...
Check out this very cool screencam demo of Vista speech recognition . It didn't work at the Financial Analyst Meeting but thanks to Camtasia, Oscar has done a fantastic job of showing how to play Solitaire hands-free :) Link to Vista speech recognition Read More...
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More fun from the guys at eWeek. I have some interviewing coming up in a few weeks so sage advice for my candidates :) Inappropriate dress doesn't both me though. I do it all the time myself! Link to Top 10 IT Interview Blunders Read More...
Another great manifesto from ChangeThis.com Tom Peter's provides 111 Ridiculously Obvious Thoughts on Selling. You should read it. It takes 10 minutes. And it's free. It's 10 minutes worth taking. Trust me. Then send the link on or print it out and leave Read More...
Off topic but hey it's Sunday. I just posted a reply to Hugh's GapingVoid site about the commercial potential of his cartoons/art/stuff. I know Hugh is happy with giving his stuff away but I think he could make a wee bit of cash here and not compromise Read More...
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James pinged me about a few hours ago to check if we were supposed to tell the world and the answer is yes - RC1 is now available on Connect and will be made available more widely next week. Jim Allchin has released a statement about RC1's completion. Read More...
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I'm probably slow on the uptake here or maybe I just don't watch enough TV but I just caught the new HP ads on VH1 and instantly grabbed my PC in the hope they would be available online (and of course they are on HP's site and on YouTube). My favourite Read More...
Includes a new media sharing feature (though I thought you could do this already) as my brother does to his Roku... Anyway, grab it here unless you're running Vista and waiting on RC1 :) Link to Microsoft releases latest version of WMP 11 | CNET News.com Read More...
If you don't get the prompt within Live Messenger to update, just a brief note to let you know that a new version is available. Leah says "Think of this release just like that little dash of salt on your big delicious breakfast. Almost nothing has changed Read More...
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I enjoyed seeing this article in the channel press mag, Microscope , this week. We're really trying to use technology like blogs and podcasts within my team (and now wider) to reach out to the 30k Microsoft UK partners and I wrote about this a while back Read More...
 
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