I just spent 30 minutes playing with Windows Vista's speech recognition while I was feeding Stella (and therefore armless).  It was pretty amazing, to be honest.  I think I've blogged in the past with how impressed I was with the speech recognition and yet I'm still impressed a year later.  It's one of those technologies that you just expect to suck - and when it works this well, it's pretty cool.  It makes you feel like we're actually making progress with the whole natural interface thing.

Check out this (old) video from Long Zheng which gives a quick overview of some of the capabilities:

 

And another thing I didn't even know Windows Vista did (I don't have a tablet anymore) is support touch natively.  There aren't any great videos of this, but this one gives a bit of an overview of one of the features.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really show "touch flicks" which let you navigate by flicking, writing with your finger tip, "pen flicks", or any of the cool ink features.  It's always fun to learn about "new" things your year-old OS is capable of though.  Can you tell I'm on a Vista kick?

 

I learned a cool little Vista hack this morning while skimming this book:

To cut down on energy bills - but still have my computer available when I need it - I'm now automatically hibernating my desktop PC every night, and then forcing a reboot in the morning to wake it up and "flush the system" so it continues to run smoothly.  I shouldn't have to force a reboot - and the reality is, I don't need to reboot daily by any stretch - but it's nice to know the machine will be in the ideal state every morning.  There are three tasks I have running on a schedule that I had to work around: OneCare tune-up, Windows Update, and SyncBack automatic backup.  So this is what I'm trying:

1. OneCare will tune up my PC every 2 weeks @ 11pm on Sunday night.
2. SyncBack will backup my personal files @ 11pm on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
3. Windows Update will check for updates and automatically install them @ 9am everyday.  I'm not sure if Windows Update is smart enough to wake the PC from hibernation and then put it back to sleep so for now, I'm running it at a time when I know the PC will be on - otherwise 3am would be fine.

And my computer will hibernate between 12am and 8am everyday and then reboot.  I know I'm going to have to tweak these times to get it just right.  Here's how I set that up.

1. Go into Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Schedule Tasks (you need to be an Administrator to do this).
2. Click "Create Basic Task" in the action bar.
3. Name the first task "Hibernate", set it to the appropriate time (mine is set to Daily, 12am), and indicate that you'd like to "Start a program".  The program should be shutdown and the optional arguments should be /h to indicate hibernation.
   
    
4. Then, if you want to, select "Open the properties dialog for this task when I click Finish" and specify that the task should "Run whether user is logged on or not" to make sure it happens no matter who is currently logged in.  What I did was also set it to "Start the task only if the computer is idle for 10 minutes" and "Wait for idle for 1 hour" in Conditions just in case a OneCare tune-up or SyncBack backup was still running after an hour.
5. Name the second task "Reboot", set it to the appropriate time (mine is set to Daily, 8am) and indicate that you'd like to "Start a program" again.  The program again should be shutdown but the optional arguments should be /r to indicate rebooting.  You can also get fancy with this one and add other switches like /t 90 which will execute the command after 90 seconds, or /c "Rebooting!" which will pop a dialog on the screen for you just in case you're on the machine and in the middle of something (since you WILL lose it).  So you'd end up with a command that looks like this: shutdown /r /t 90 /c "I'm about to reboot! You have 90 seconds." 
6. Then, if you want to, select "Open the properties dialog for this task when I click Finish" and specify that the task should "Run whether user is logged on or not" to make sure it happens.  For this one, I also checked "Wake the computer to run this task" under Conditions since my computer will be hibernating at the time.  You may not have to do this.

That should do the trick.  [One thing I love about blogging is that just by publishing this to my own blog for you to read, I make sure I don't lose it or forget how to do it!]

Update (11/23): I somehow left out Windows Live Photo Gallery which I use just about everyday.  So I added it below.

This post started out as an idea for a screencast months ago in preparation for our release, and I'd still love to do that someday, but I'd probably need a lot more dedicated time to do that how I'd want to.  I plan to take paternity leave sometime next year so I'm bunching up a few projects (some involving screencasting) to tackle during that time.  Naturally, I'm going to spend the vast majority of that time with my daughter who is the most incredible human being ever.

Really, I wanted to document how I use Windows Live because, as you might expect, I do try and use it to its fullest.  In fact, my PC at home could easily be the "reference machine" for the Microsoft lifestyle since I run mostly Microsoft software on it.  I do still use my Mac quite a bit too, and while I still use non-Microsoft software on my PC, I do my absolute best to "eat the Microsoft dogfood" when I can.  It gives me a good split between using the competition's products (Google, Firefox, Mac OS X, iPhoto, etc.) and using ours.

Aside from the Windows Live client suite, I'm also running Media Center (as part of Vista Ultimate), Zune, Office 2007, Visual Studio, Office Communicator, Expression Studio, and Money 2007.  The only non-Microsoft software I'm running regularly: Mozy for online backup, SyncBack for local backup, Firefox for the occasional browsing outside of IE7, and Paint.NET - which is built on the .NET Framework, so that may be sort of cheating.

I love this PC; it's the Velocity Micro Cinemagix Grand Theater I blogged about back when I discovered the evils of CableCard.  One of the things that's become incredibly apparent to me since setting up this machine is that when the OEM wants to, they can make one hell of a Vista machine.  This box didn't come with a single byte of crapware code on it, so everything runs exactly how it should.  Smooth, fast, and reliable.  Vista auto-updates overnight and reports back any failures to Microsoft (so it can get smarter and smarter like the sentient machine it is) and Windows Live OneCare tunes up the disks and keeps the machine free of malware.  I feel like a corporate shill saying all this, but the reality is that it's really impressive when you can have an experience like this - it just feels so "buttoned up".

Back to the point: Windows Live.  I've been working on it since it was codenamed "Longhorn Live" years ago and I think all things considered, it's the best solution out there for me.  Windows Live to me is truly what brings Windows to life; it helps me roam and access my files, stay in touch with friends and family, and keep my machine running smoothly.  Windows without Live on it feels plain these days - sort of like how Xbox must feel without Xbox LIVE.  So how exactly do I use it?

Hotmail for personal email with Windows Live Mail as my front door.  I store all my personal email with Hotmail and Windows Live Mail provides an "Exchange like experience" on multiple PCs; it connects to my mailbox and keeps it in sync with the service.  I keep all my Sent items and I archive everything I receive in a folder aptly named Archive.  That's it, it's as simple as that.  When I'm away from my desk, I use Windows Live for Windows Mobile to keep the inbox on my phone in sync with the service - and if I have a screen handy, I use the Hotmail web interface to check-in.

Messenger for personal IM (and work IM too).  Messenger and I go way back; I remember installing the first version the day it came out (I think it was in 1999) - my contact list now numbers in the mid-hundreds.  I've turned off all the annoying chimes and pop-ups, but old faithful is still my preferred way to keep in touch with friends and our family on the east coast and California.  I also love using Sharing Folders to transfer full-res photos back and forth with family.

FolderShare to roam my Favorites, OneCare notebook, and files I'm currently working on across 4 PCs.  One of the greatest inventions of all time; every time I notice that my files have synchronized automatically (usually because I'm in a panic and I need to find something) I love FolderShare even more.  I've talked a lot about FolderShare over the last year; it's one of my all-time favorite pieces of technology.

Windows Live Photo Gallery to organize and edit my photos.  Before upgrading to WLPG I was using Windows Vista's Photo Gallery, and I was using Picasa before that (long before Google gobbled it up).  I'm still working through a tagging scheme that I like (it's a LOT of work to do it right) but the fact that WLPG lets me also organize by folder, which is how I primarily organize my photos anyway, is great.  I also use WLPG to organize my videos - although I have to admit that 99.9% of my videos are still on miniDV tapes.  One feature I don't use much yet is "publish to Spaces/Flickr" even though I think it's elegantly designed.  I like sharing photos through Messenger Sharing Folders or email (using Windows Live Mail's photo e-mail) and I'm using SmugMug to power a photo site for my daughter (long story on this one - I hope to use Windows Live someday).  I'm toying with the idea of using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for more advanced manipulations, but I haven't been able to justify the steep price tag.

OneCare for virus scanning, spyware scanning (with Defender), and tune-ups.  I just installed 2.0 yesterday and so far, I'm impressed with how elegant it is.  I always have this sense that OneCare is working for me while I'm sleeping - and I love that.

Writer for blogging efficiency.  Another one of my favorite apps - this thing has kept me blogging over the years.  It just works so well!

SkyDrive for sharing large files (like video) with people.

Spaces for projecting the online "me" - mostly through my blog... but with the latest release, I'm using Spaces more and more to catch up with friends who use it for blogging and photo sharing.  Spaces Home gives me a quick summary of what's going on with my friends, and as silly as I think blogging is, I can't keep myself from writing long (pointless?) posts like this one.  Having a soapbox as customizable as Spaces is something that was sorely missing for me pre-December 2004.

I haven't used Windows Live Events for a real event yet - that's what happens when you have a baby, I guess - but I absolutely plan to ditch Evite for this.  I've set up hundreds of test events this year while we were building it, so I can't wait to have a "real" event!

And there you have it...  Of course, all is available from http://get.live.com if you want to try it out for yourself.

Many of you may have heard of Randy Pausch from his fantastic "Last Lecture" or his recent visit to Oprah.  For anyone as interested as I am in time management, this talk he gave in 1998 is an almost perfect treatise on how to manage your time effectively.  It's especially fun to hear him talk about "electronic mail" and "world wide web pages" or about how storage is cheap because he just bought a computer with 16GB (!) of hard disk space. 

One of the things he discusses is how little stress he has in his life because he archives all of his email as sort of extended memory - he knows that if he ever needs to get to anything, he can just search against it.  He goes into detail on how cheap it is to store text in the cloud and how once people realize that, they'll be storing everything there without second thought.  He uses his Dad's WebTV as the example (which used Hotmail as the backend).  Foreshadowing at its best.

It makes you wonder if he could have had a second career consulting for Gmail or Hotmail, which didn't truly figure out email archiving and search for 5-7 more years.  Or working with David Allen on Getting Things Done, as a lot of his tactics fit that mold.  Randy should have written that book first!

  

I've spent the last day and a half playing with my wife's red Zune 8 (with a burning heart tattoo on the back) and I love the thing.  Yes, I know it's technically my wife's and not mine (I'm holding out for the 80GB) but she's letting me play with it since I ordered it and set it up for her.  Yesterday we held the Zune up to my year-old iPod nano which I was so excited about last October, and the difference is remarkable.  The iPod with its arcane menu structure and tiny little screen seemed just as outdated as iTunes does compared to the Zune software these days.

Granted, the new iPod nanos aren't last year's model... but all things considered, I think the Zune 8 is a much better value, better device, and better looking than the "small, fat" new nanos.  I've always been a fan of the candy bar design.

The things that have impressed me so far:

• Wireless sync on my semi-complicated Wi-Fi network (WPA2 security, hidden SSID) took 2 minutes to setup and works like a charm.  This totally surprised me.
• Video is surprisingly watchable on the tiny screen, and it's crystal clear.
• The music that comes on the device isn't half-bad.  I find myself listening to it.
• The synchronization model is great.  I grabbed some video of Stella off of our camcorder yesterday, edited it quickly in iMovie on the Mac, and moved it onto my PC.  The Zune software immediately found it and was able to play it, so I just dragged it onto the little red Zune to sync it - and 10 seconds later, I was watching videos of our daughter on the Zune.  This is exactly how it's supposed to work.
• Radio for watching TV in the gym.  Love it.
• The Zune now supports WMA Lossless so you can get the highest fidelity music possible onto the device.  Unfortunately, I have yet to figure out how to do the auto-conversion to a lower bit rate that WMP11 lets you do with portable devices.  This is unfortunate but it could just be user error.
• The desktop software is still gorgeous and the most intuitive player yet.  I've heard more than one person compare iTunes to Excel after seeing it.
• The device software is slick and easier to use than the iPod's in my opinion.  I felt this way about last year's Zune too, but unfortunately it was a brick.

All in all, I'm really impressed with the new Zunes.  Unlike last year, no one can argue that they aren't a viable alternative to the iPod this holiday season.  They have a ways to go in terms of mindshare, but this is a huge leap forward with respect to capabilities, brand, and design.  A lot can change in one year.

The Amazon Kindle was announced today and to me, the most important news isn't the E-ink support or the fact that you can store 200+ books on the device.  It's the use of Sprint's EV-DO network as a utility that you don't have to pay for (directly).  Whether or not the Kindle will be successful, it's a fantastic example of a standalone device with a backing service, available from just about anywhere.  I love the idea of the cellular networks "renting" out their services to devices like this without requiring a separate $49/mo data plan.  I'm sure Sprint gets a cut of the books sold since they provide the transport - and they're likely to be cash flow positive in the process.  Win-Win for everyone if the device is even mildly successful.

The model is actually in pretty stark contrast to Apple's iPhone which requires a Wi-Fi hotspot to purchase and download songs.  That thing has a cellular radio and a very expensive data plan, and it can't even connect to its own music store.  Crazy.  I really do think that 5-10 years from now, we'll all look back at the Kindle as the first device that made the "network in the sky" obvious.  It's just so futuristic ;)

So far, I'm really liking what I'm seeing with the Kindle.  The price is still way too high (as was the price of the original iPod) but the promise of a 10 ounce device that can store 200+ books is really... well, promising.  I likely won't jump on this bandwagon until the DRM scheme is ironed out though - the last thing I want to do is spend a bunch of money on "books" that are tied to one device.  One cool thing they're doing is associating the purchases with your Amazon ID which means you can re-download any book if you lose or upgrade the device.

Digital books are the future.  Just like I've cleared my home of all CDs and gone 100% digital, I can't wait to do the same thing with books.  It's the side of me that just hates having "stuff" everywhere.  When given the option between a physical artifact or a bunch of bytes, I almost always choose bytes.  But until Amazon promises that the books I buy from them can be read on my PC, Mac, or a device like the iPhone or Sony Reader, I'm not sure it's worth it to invest in the Kindle.  Make this one a no-brainer; I want to *own* the books just like I do now with paper.

By the way, I totally predicted this release back in July and as usual, I have to point that out :)  "The hardware will be much more appealing to book worms - possibly with digital pages that actually flip - and the fonts and rendering technology will be wondrous.  The dedicated device will be connected to the net for instant download (via an iTunes-like store, probably provided by Amazon.com and B&N) of new books, magazines, newspapers, and other types of content."

I've been saying for years that this is the next step for Amazon.  They were beaten to digital music, but books are their domain to own.

Read more -> Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device: Kindle Store

We have a long ways to go...  as much as I love technology - and trust me, I really do - I spend a good 20-40% of my time "dealing" with it instead of having it just work for me.  Before haters jump on me and say it's because most of my stuff comes from Microsoft, that isn't the case at all.  This entry is actually about Comcast, NetGear, Motorola, and Tivo, but it could just as easily be about how my MacBook Pro keeps bugging me about some ridiculous EFI firmware update and a 131MB update to OS X.  Then again, it could be about how OneCare tells me I have 3 viruses on my machine, fails to quarantine them, and then doesn't let me see which files they occur in ;)  That one I haven't figured out yet.

Anyway, this is story is a comedy of errors.  I will try and keep it as short as I can because even thinking about it makes me want to throw my new Tivo off my balcony.

It all started with the latest Comcast DVR box - my fourth one - which was recently updated from a horrible OS to an even more horrible OS.  The second the update happened, we started having even MORE problems with the thing - and this is after YEARS of dealing with botched recordings.  Three times in recent weeks fast forwarding through recorded TV would crash the device.  But the kicker was when watching Smallville the other night, the audio track just randomly turned off.  So no sound at all.  [luckily I recorded it as a backup on my Media Center upstairs, so I used Xbox 360's Media Center Extender to stream the show to my TV downstairs - but having a backup plan for a DVR is ridiculous]

After the latest debacle, I decided to just bite the bullet and get a Tivo HD now that it's priced reasonably (unlike the Series 3).  A few hours later, a Tivo HD was ordered and a few days later, it arrived.  I budgeted a few hours on Saturday to return the Comcast DVR, get a multi-stream CableCard, setup the Tivo, get it on the Wi-Fi network, and adjust the universal remote to work with it.  A few hours, HAH.

I unbox the Tivo yesterday and plug it in - which alone took about 30 minutes because of all the cable routing you have to do.  "Welcome - powering up!" shows up on the screen.  This'll be EASY I'm thinking.  After a couple minutes, the screen goes blank and the TV says "Video input unavailable" or something.  After another 30 minutes messing with the cables to make sure they're placed right, I call Tivo Support.  The first person I talk to BLAMED COMCAST and said that Comcast is sabotaging Tivo by keeping HDMI from working correctly.  She recommended I get the Series 3 or just use composite cables permanently.  She wouldn't accept a return or exchange.

Huh?!  I just paid almost $300 for this thing and the HDMI logo is ON THE BOX and on the front of the device; it better work!  I was totally civil and spoke without raising my voice once - and she HUNG UP on me.  I called back and spoke to someone else who was some help.  He had me plug in composite cables temporarily to see if we could pinpoint it to the HDMI.  This worked - but once we went back to HDMI, it failed to "project" again.  So I kept the composite cables in just to get into Settings and see if I could play with Video settings.  This is where things got funny.

In order to setup a Tivo, you need a phone line or an Internet connection.  I don't have a landline, so I had to set the Tivo up on my secure Wi-Fi network before I could get into the Video settings.  I load up my NetGear router's config to add the Tivo's MAC address to the allow list.  The router crashes.  When it comes back online, it's restored to factory settings.  Again, HUH?!  I have to set my wireless network up again, security and all.  Once it's up and running, I realize it isn't getting an IP from Comcast.  Turns out my Motorola cable modem "forgot" how to talk to the router.  This took me another 40 minutes to figure out - which basically meant unplugging and plugging in the router and modem about 10 times in various orders until the router got an external IP.  Frustration.  I was incredulous at this point.

I go back to the Tivo, get it on the network, mess with the video settings.  Nothing.  HDMI just doesn't work.  So I went to Best Buy, picked up another Tivo HD, brought it home and set it up in 20 minutes.  I just had a defective box (despite what their support staff tried to tell me).  But the fact that the Tivo crashed my router, which in turn crashed my cable modem, is laughable.  For hours I didn't have television or Internet despite all these "magical" little devices.

And of course, once the Tivo was setup, my universal remote "forgot" how to turn off my stereo receiver.  So I had to spend another 20 minutes in advanced settings making sure it was sending the right infrared signal.  How do non techies do any of this?

As an industry, we have to do better than this.

OK, I take back every disparaging thing I ever said about the clunky old Zune device and buggy player software.  The new software (oddly named just Zune - not Zune Player) is without a doubt the most aesthetically appealing client application I've used in a long time.  Maybe ever; although Windows Vista's Media Center has to be up there.  They just got so many little things right.  I mean LOOK at the thing:

See that huge transparent image of Chris Brown behind the tracks?  The player has those kind of touches everywhere, even for the most obscure artists.  Along with subtle animations that make the thing feel "alive", six great artistic themes, the coolest type-down search I've seen yet, and a super-simple sync model with the Zune device.

I don't know if I'm going to use this all the time for playing music as it's still missing some of the basics like mini-mode, smart playlists, advanced metadata, and visualizations.  But I do love looking at it.  I'm holding out for the Zune 80 and it looks like it's not in stock anywhere yet, so it will be a few more weeks before I can really put things through their paces.  But according to the reviews I've been reading, the Zune under-promised and over-delivered overall this time with a lot of people saying they prefer it to the iPod classic and nano.  Personally, I'm just looking forward to watching Smallville (for free Apple!) and listening to TWiT on the Connector bus in the morning.

If you haven't tried it, download it at www.zune.net.  Not only is it beautiful to look at, it's also light years easier to use than it was before.  It makes iTunes look complicated.  I dig.  If the Zune Pass is really this easy to use, I may never buy music again.

As has happened quite a few times in the almost three years I've been "talking" on this blog, I've hit a bit of a lull.  I give myself a total pass given that I just became a new father 2 1/2 weeks ago, but I wonder if there's more to it than that.  I don't think I've run out of things to say, but there are a couple factors playing into the fact that I'm blogging a bit less these days (the last few weeks notwithstanding):

 

• Family and work come first.  This has always been the case, but both family and work have grown recently ;)
• Twitter has given me an outlet for "quick thoughts".  Things like a one sentence wrap-up of OpenSocial, how greedy Alex Rodriguez is, and so on - things I may have dedicated an hour and a blog entry to in the past.  I'm really, really enjoying the simplicity of micro-blogging - certainly more than I thought I would.  And since I have Twitter piped into my space (below) and into my Facebook status message, I no longer have the "no one is listening" problem we all had when Twitter first launched.
• Controversy in the tech industry bores me.  I don't want any part of it, so posting controversial things like Dare does isn't really appealing to me.  Never has been; but it did take me a little while to figure out what would rattle people's cages and steer clear.  And as a Microsoft employee, just about anything I publish can end up being controversial one way or another.

So what does this mean?  Nothing really.  Just some observations.  I expect I'll still be posting about Windows Live (which just shipped in final form!), gadgets, and digital media throughout 2008 and beyond.  Perhaps a little less frequently than 2005, 2006, and 2007.  I did just get a Tivo HD to replace the atrocious Comcast DVR that I've complained about multiple times in the past, so there may be a post in the making there.  And of course, the new Zune comes out on the 13th!  Can't wait.

By the way, thanks to everyone for your comments on the Stella post.  Fatherhood is a complete blast so far!  Much more fun - and far less intimidating - than I expected.