I work at Microsoft, specifically on Windows Live. Sometimes, people ask what the heck is Windows Live.
If you are looking for the non-corporate definition, you can just read all about it on Wikipedia. What is Windows Live
Year: 2006
Blog Maverick
I’ve been reading Mark Cuban’s blog for a while, and this is just to pump his blog. While he does call himself a maverick – he really does think differently. Read his blog, and you won’t read the same old way of thinking… If you don’t know who he is, he’s the founder of a number of various companies, most notably broadcast.com, and now the owner of the Dallas Mavericks (there is that word again) basketball team.
There is a phrase that “great minds think alike“, which as far as I can tell is patently false. It’s the great minds that specifically don’t think alike…Mark thinks different, and that is cool.
I enjoyed this article recently: Don’t Blame Me – I’m just a Stupid Shareholder
Dumping Google
An article was forwarded to me about Alexa (part of Amazon) dumping Google.
Google’s roots are in indexing other site’s content. They did that really well, but the content belonged to others. You could quibble about whether the Google Cache was Google’s taking of content, but most users liked the feature for perf and out-of-date reasons, so it’s a bit different.
Going beyond search, Google is now showing clear steps that not only do they want to index the data, but they want the content too. Google Base is the biggest example of that. I’m not sure why Google Base even wants the content. Seems like a liability to me. But they do, so far. And Google Base is probably about the smallest of the Google services.
Google services that want to own your content include gmail, google talk, froogle, google base, picasa, google calendar, blogger, etc.
I’m not sure if this really leads to major players shifting away from Google, but it might. It certainly may end up “restoring balance to the force”.
Prediction
Housing prices will drop at least 10% by end of 2006. With the East Bay particularly hurt.
Ray Ozzie Quote
I just love this quote from Ray Ozzie’s Internet Services Disruption. It needs nothing further:
Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration. Moving forward, within all parts of the organization, each of us should ask “What’s different?”, and explore and embrace techniques to reduce complexity.
Dell Coupons and a free one from me
I just purchased a couple of monitors online from Dell. Before buying, I went onto ebay and purchased a $35 coupon for $0.99. I’ve seen these before, but never used one. Given that it only cost a buck, I tried it. I paid for it via Paypal, and the coupon works great!
Only caveat – look out for shipping charges on ebay. Some of these guys want as much as $5.99 to send you an email with your coupon. “Shipping charges”? Ebay ought to ban fees on electronic delivery, as its nothing except misleading to the consumer, and makes purchasing take a lot longer due to reading the fine print.
On to the FREE STUFF – I ended up purchasing two coupons for the price of one (with $0.49 shipping), so if you want to use my second coupon, please take it. It expires on April 5th – the coupon number is 9DSK9N$0919$SL – I make no warranties, and the first person to use it gets it. It requires a $300 minimum purchase, and then you’ll get $35 off. Oh yeah – and no shipping charges 🙂
BTW – despite today’s date, this is not an April Fool’s Joke!
Scary CodeProject Discovery
One of my favorite websites is CodeProject. It’s got all sorts of great code examples, tutorials and explanations for pretty much any topic. As I was perusing their Top Ranked Articles today, I discovered something very scary.
Of the top-20 articles, 2 of them are ones that only a spyware writer would want to read:
Three Ways To Inject Code Into Another Process
API Hooking Revealed
I’m pretty saddened by this. It means there are a lot of programmers out there writing software to steal your keystrokes. Scary! There certainly are a few legitimate reasons to inject code into foreign processes, but there is no doubt in my mind that thievery is the most common…
Glorious Carpool Lane
Glory to thee, foolish politician,
For creation of our traffic congestion,
For the only roads which don’t flow free,
Are those where you made a carpool lane be!
And now, for $25K and a sticker,
I drive straight through this traffic that’s thicker.
I used to frown and snarl, and grumpily complain,
About those selfish, fast pacers in the H-O-V lane.
But now that it is reserved solely for me,
I sing as I drive and I smile with glee!
I even say, “Let more carpool lanes be!”
You might think me unwise to not fear you’ll change laws,
But I know that you won’t due to your tree-hugging cause.
I really don’t care that my car helps with clean air,
I just want to drive without fear and without care,
That my routes will make me just sit there and stare.
To those who do not yet have their free passes,
Let it be known that it’s not for the masses.
If you were to come into my god-given space,
I’d end up put-putting all over the place.
So for now, I’m ecstatic to drive with such speed,
Past all of you suckers with politicians on weed.
Dlink 524 vs Linksys WRT54G Review
I’ve been running a DLink DI-524 wireless router at home for the past year or so. I’ve liked it, but I’ve had connectivity “glitches” – dropped connections, short delays when computers come onto the network, etc. Further, the wireless shared-key mode never worked, which wasn’t a huge problem, but definitely undesirable, as it forced me to use cable drops when I hadn’t intended to originally. Fortunately, my home is already wired. Reading reviews online reveals that lots of other people have similar problems with the DI-524.
I finally decided to get a LinkSys WRT54G router. I bought it for $49.99 at Fry’s. Wow. What a difference! Immediately, I’ve noted a speedup of download performance (annecdotal). A link testing program that I used to run and have consistent connectivity failures with now never fails at all. It’s clearly better right out of the box.
Setup of the Linksys was easy – I was back up and running in less than 5 minutes of downtime. The user interface on the Linksys is good, although the submenus are hard to discover at times. On the administration front, the DLink does a better job of logging dropped packets and such, which the Linksys doesn’t do at all, but its not a feature I really use much. I also thought the DLink had a slightly better UI for configuring access filters and such. The functionality is available on both routers, but easier for novices on the DLink.
But who cares about minor UI differences. The reliability of the router is what is key, and its a feature which the Linksys has and the DLink does not.
Now I just have to decide if I can overcome my conscious and sell the DI-524 to some hapless soul via ebay! (let me know if you want it!)
Windows Live Image Search Rocks
You may have read some of the many announcements about the latest Windows Live Beta that went out today. There is a lot of good stuff in there, and I can’t possibly mention it all. But there is one new feature which I really find innovative, functional, and just plain better than anything else out there.
That is the new Image Search. Try this search for our fearless leader.
Now, pull the scrollbar a bit. See that?! Whoa! That is AJAX at work. No more next-next-next navigation taking foreever. Just tap the mouse and keep browsing until you find what you are looking for! That rocks!
On the room-for-improvement side, the beta still has a few shortcomings. In particular, I think the ajax usage is almost gratuitous – sometimes being used maybe more for its techie-cool-factor than for actual functionality. I’ve found that bookmarking pages is difficult at best, and sometimes pages render slowly. There could be a whole bunch of reasons for this, so I’ll defer to the Live.Com guys to sort that out – but there is no oubt that this image search is better than anything else I’ve seen.