Steve Clayton: Geek In Disguise

Great to see the microsoft.com guys give our homepage a good look for CES keynote day and likewise with the Windows Live guys (below). I think they’ve made some great improvements with the design, look and feel of Microsoft.com over the last year or so.

Do I want the new Sony Vaio P? Yes of course…do I need one? Nope….my Samsung NC10 is less money and does the job. Runs Windows 7 beautifully too!

Sony Walkman NWZ-X1000 – their new touch screen iPod Touch competitor. Do I want one? Yes, of course. Do I need one? Nope…my Zune 80GB is just the job…and I have an (iPod Touch).

Maybe I’m getting responsible in my “old age” or maybe the credit crunch is making me think more about what I need vs. want. I suspect it’s actually more of the latter and unfortunately for many technology vendors, I suspect that is going to hold true for 2009.

Kudos to Sony though. Beautiful kit as usual and as always, review units gladly accepted :)

Further to the Microsoft Online whitepapers I mentioned had been released this week, another has been added.

Microsoft SharePoint Online Standard Developer Guide

It’s all getting jolly serious this Online business. Coming to a country near you…soon!

CES was much more than just Windows 7 for Microsoft. We also announced Microsoft Tag as a beta and like Seadragon it’s available on iPhone….though I’ve yet to find it on App Store even through http://gettag.mobi directs you there.

Now available from http://tinyurl.com/7jj3lb

Microsoft Tag is similar to some of the other barcoding tech you may have seen such as QR Codes. Long Zheng gives a good explanation of the differences but a key difference is the tag doesn’t store the data itself – it’s a redirector. What this means is you can provide a lot more info to people - especially in a world of more capable mobile devices where they can connect out to a website. Plus, you get reports on who is connecting and using the link you provide.

A very simple example is my Tag below which is you snap it using the phone software we provide will redirect you to my blog. Frankly not that useful but imagine this tag was on a huge billboard (lets say for Windows Without Walls) and snapped the image and then got redirected to a site that allowed you to enter a competition to win a hot new PC.

There are way more creative opportunities for this tehcnology and you can now go play with it for free. So here is what you need to get playing:

1. To get Microsoft Tag on your phone - free of charge, visit http://gettag.mobi using your mobile browser. It’s available for Windows Mobile, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry, and Symbian S60 phones.
   
2. To create Tags head to the Tag Maker service

Tonnes more info at http://www.microsoft.com/tag/

I wanted to post this earlier but sleep caught up with me. Meantime, Scoble and Long posted about it so I’ll keep the details short but suffice to say I expect us to get a call from Simon Cowell anytime now. This should be a part of the next series of X Factor for sure :)

 

What is Songsmith?

Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC’s microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

A free trial download (98mb) is now available

Nice post over on the new look Windows Team blog by Brandon about Device Stage. It’s a new feature in Windows 7 which about one of the fit and finish things that really make a difference in this OS release. To call it fit and finish is probably a bit of an understatement for those who worked on it but this is the kind of stuff that doesn’t make people go “wow” but just makes the whole experience smoother.

Hoping for many more partners to add this cool feature support – here’s the current list of supported devices. Disappointed that Zune isn’t in here though :(

Okay you all sorta knew this was coming but yes, it’s here. Windows 7 beta 1 is available for download from MSDN/Technet and will be broadly available for all from Friday onwards I believe.

I’ve been running this build for a few weeks now and it’s outstanding. I have it on a Vaio TZ and a Samsung NC10 Netbook and it works beautifully on both.

What’s To Like?

• speed. the overall system just feels snappier
• stability. can’t put my finger on it but again, it feels more stable than Vista (even SP1)
• fit and finish. this is what I wanted in Vista. Some of the UI touches like Aero Peek, Aero Shake, the display control panel, jump lists, desktop preview are all elegant and simple.
• UAC is now under your control at the click of a mouse

The reviews on the web of builds of Windows 7 that have leaked out have been solid. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with this build and now the march is on to get this baby out of the door. Some things I’m hoping for at RTM

• a more snazzy boot screen. That’s the geek in me
• an even faster version of IE8
• one new killer feature I hope they’re hiding. I have no clue here but something tells me there is more to come

If you have an MSDN or Technet subscription you can go grab it now. If not, sit tight for 48 hours…it’s worth it…but, bear in mind the download will be limited to 2.5m downloads which ain’t much these days. Also the beta will expire on August 1st, 2009. Just so ya know!

[image credit: Wired]

Kate Carruthers has a pretty solid set of rules that you could use for deciding who to follow on Twitter. I have some similar rules but just for the record they go something like this:

Green Light Questions – i.e. they increase the likelihood to follow

• I know you personally
• You’re a company or a person who I admire/am interesting in learning more about
• Does your blog have interesting stuff
• A friend recommended you as a top Tweet!
• Are you funny

Red Light Questions – i.e. oops, fail.

• Your timeline is private – really, what’s the point?
• A cursory glance at your Twitter feed shows mainly @’s – that’s what DM and IM if for
• You have no bio information on your Twitter page or link to your blog/website for me to learn more
• Your timeline is filled with RT – if I wanted to know everything on PopURL’s I’ll follow them myself
• Your timeline is filled with the banal – okay we all do that sometimes but really, I don’t want to know that you just went to the loo

This may seem a bit harsh given I don’t follow everyone who follows me but the same is also true of everyone I follow – they don’t always follow me back. No problem.

The above rules get applied within about 30 seconds I think and the the ones in italics are the key principles for me with a timeline full of replies (@’s) being a personal bugbear at the moment.

thanks to Mike Butcher for the link to Kate and yes, I just followed her :)

[update] a much better list than mine FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter

No surprises there but an education post all the same from the Windows 7 team blog that includes some quick tips…some obvious but some perhaps less so

Quick tips: The easiest way to save power on a desktop PC is reduce the display idle timeout to something very aggressive, such as 2 or 5 minutes. If you have a screen saver enabled, disable it to allow the display to turn off. On a mobile PC, the easiest way to extend battery life is to reduce the brightness of the display in addition.  Also note that many of the new all-in-one machines use laptop components and thus from a power management perspective look like laptops.

a quick tip, the disk cleanup wizard, or powercfg –hibernate off, can remove the disk space pre-allocated to hibernate

As always, an educational read from Steven’s boys.

[image credit: Wired]

Kate Carruthers has a pretty solid set of rules that you could use for deciding who to follow on Twitter. I have some similar rules but just for the record they go something like this:

Green Light Questions – i.e. they increase the likelihood to follow

• I know you personally
• You’re a company or a person who I admire/am interesting in learning more about
• Does your blog have interesting stuff
• A friend recommended you as a top Tweet!
• Are you funny

Red Light Questions – i.e. oops, fail.

• Your timeline is private – really, what’s the point?
• A cursory glance at your Twitter feed shows mainly @’s – that’s what DM and IM if for
• You have no bio information on your Twitter page or link to your blog/website for me to learn more
• Your timeline is filled with RT – if I wanted to know everything on PopURL’s I’ll follow them myself
• Your timeline is filled with the banal – okay we all do that sometimes but really, I don’t want to know that you just went to the loo

This may seem a bit harsh given I don’t follow everyone who follows me but the same is also true of everyone I follow – they don’t always follow me back. No problem.

The above rules get applied within about 30 seconds I think and the the ones in italics are the key principles for me with a timeline full of replies (@’s) being a personal bugbear at the moment.

thanks to Mike Butcher for the link to Kate and yes, I just followed her :)

I still love this cartoon from Hugh. One of my favourites

I met up with my chum David Gristwood to chew the fat in the lukewarm atrium of building 4 in Reading today and he mentioned that the UK team are doing some Azure briefings soon. Splendid work chaps.

If you’re interested in coming to one of these check out the deets at Azure Technical Briefings for Jan 2009 just announced and hopefully I’ll see you at one of them.

This event will cover:

· Windows Azure – The operating system for the Cloud

· .Net and Live Services – Mesh, Service Bus, Access Control and Workflow.

· SQL Data Services and data access

· Next Steps

The briefings will consist of technical discussion, demos and interactive discussion and will focus on how Azure can be used as a platform for development. The sessions will be small, typically less than 25, to keep the flow of conversation going, and are suitable for Technical Decision Makers, Application Architects, Senior Developers and CTOs. There will be time after the event for more detailed one to one discussions on any topics related to this session.

Regular readers will know I’m all about Software plus Services and with Microsoft Online gathering pace I thought it would be useful to share some useful document that are up on the haystack that is Microsoft.com. Here I present you with 3 needles

• Exchange service description
• SharePoint service description
• Security whitepaper

I also noticed Eileen referenced another handy document over on here blog today - Migrate to Microsoft Online Services.

Forgive me for Microspeak for a moment but if you’re looking to move along the IO route quickly, Online is a great way to do so and if you’re looking for cost effective ways to get Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007, ditto.

Okay…just kidding. i found this image in my archives and couldn’t resist.

feel free to add your own caption and if you know where the photo originated let me know so i can add a credit!