Torres Talking: Blog

Evernote – Web, Windows, Mac, Windows Mobile, iPhone!

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:15:06 GMT

I'm using a new note-taking app for project notes, personal notes, goal tracking, checklists, and random brainstorms: Evernote.

Evernote is really the definition of software plus services working harmoniously together to get things done. Similar to Remember The Milk, which is also available just about everywhere, it’s just a shining example of what can get done with a small, dedicated team of people.

I’m currently using Evernote on a couple Windows PCs, a Mac, and my new iPhone (and before this, on my Windows Mobile phone!) and changes made to notes on one device are almost immediately available on all the others. The iPhone app is optimized for quick note-taking on the go (with video + audio, and even location tagging!) while the Mac and Windows apps are fully-featured note-takers. Frankly, neither of them compare well with OneNote’s elegance and ease of use (I don't even really like the Windows app - and I love OneNote)... but the fact that my notes can be accessed and even edited from so many different places makes up for that. I’ve always wanted OneNote for the Mac (and web) for the times that I’m not on a PC, but more importantly having my full notes available from my phone without ever having to connect to a PC is just a killer feature. (Anything that doesn’t sync wirelessly with an online service is dead to me these days)

The all-time coolest thing happens when you hook Jott up to Evernote though. I called Jott and just started speaking to see how it would work, and about 5 minutes later the following note appeared directly in my Evernote notebook:

I'm just testing out the note taking feature from Jott to Ever note(?). I really would like this to work because if it does, it would be a fantastic way for me to be able to take note on the go, in the car, and so on. Thanks.

Perfect example of what technology can do for you.

New Xbox 360 goodies - Dashboard + Netflix

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:57:18 GMT

For almost three years I've used my Xbox 360 just about every day - yet I haven't played a game for more than 10 minutes since 2006. We use it in our house for renting movies (great quality, skimpy selection), watching DVD/"old" HD-DVD movies, streaming Zune Pass and WMA/MP3 music from the PC upstairs, and about once a month, streaming photos for a traditional slideshow for guests. In our house, the 360 is our entertainment hub - we could almost care less that it plays games too.

Yet I have to admit, when I was in the Apple Store amidst all the chaos the other day, I yearned for an Apple TV. The visuals are great, but the thing that almost had me is the selection of content (movies mostly, which is what we care about in our house). Xbox Live Marketplace just doesn't have the same quantity/selection. Yet did I really want yet another set-top box? Remote? Wi-Fi endpoint? Not really. I wanted my 360 to just *do* this. Because no matter how great the Apple TV would end up being for us, we would still need to use the 360 for the Media Center capabilities + the WMA Lossless support, and adding yet another piece of hardware to the fold always complicates things for me. With my luck, it would crash and destroy my router like the last time I tried connecting something.

Well... Wish granted two days later. I love technology.

The 360 will have an all-new dashboard (check out the video) updating it's slightly dated look with snazzy new visuals, avatars, and an all-around more immersive experience. But the kicker: Netflix queue integration. Add a movie to your Netflix queue on the web and it appears in the queue on your Xbox with direct streams that start in 30 seconds. It doesn't look like it's HD quality yet, but it's something - and I can't imagine HD is too far off.

This is cool stuff - I seriously thought my 360 would be obsolete by 2008 (I bought it in 2005) but it looks like it's getting another BIG upgrade. It'll feel brand new again (although the fan is still too loud!)

And a great write-up:
http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/14/netflix-comes-to-the-xbox-360-did-microsoft-just-destroy-the-apple-tv/

I’m now an iPhone owner :)

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:42:05 GMT

I swore off the iPhone for at least a year when it was first announced. I had good reasons (to me at least). To recap:

I couldn’t synchronize with Exchange over the air (ADDRESSED)
Couldn’t swap the battery out for a better one
The EDGE network was/is so slow to be unusable (ADDRESSED)
It was a closed platform (ADDRESSED)
It was ridiculously, insanely expensive (ADDRESSED)
It was a v1 from a company that’s never built a phone before (ADDRESSED)
Typing on something without feedback won’t work
I didn’t want a phone that could get scratched easily
Functionally, it didn’t do more than my current phone (ADDRESSED)

I compromised on a few of these things – but Apple addressed the important ones. So I ended up waiting in line for 2.5 hours (I think it was actually more like 3!) yesterday morning to get one. I don’t even know where to start with this thing, I dig it so much; it’s easily the most excited I’ve been for a toy since I got my first PalmPilot in 1997 (the thing that started this addiction).

I likely won’t be writing too much about my iPhone though, for a few reasons: 1) I don’t want to gush, and I will end up gushing 2) I’m not blogging that much anyway - even though the iPhone is inspiring me to, 3) It’s been covered to death, 4) Anything I write can’t do justice to this little marvel.

So, just in case anyone cares, I now have an iPhone (syncing it with Windows Vista and Exchange Server of course). Using it is like having a magic wand ;)

Integrate Remember The Milk into Outlook 2007

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:28:18 GMT

I got tired of waiting for the great folks over at Remember The Milk to build a real Outlook add-in to sync tasks. So I hacked something together myself now that I’m using RTM exclusively for tasks (the iPhone syncs with Exchange – but of course, not for tasks) As I’ve written about before, I absolutely love RTM – I have Quicksilver and Dashboard widgets for my Mac, I have it working with Jott for “voice tasks” while I’m driving, and I now have it pseudo-integrated into Outlook 2007.

How to do it:

Click “Configure buttons” in the Navigation Pane and hide the standard Task list button
Open up the Folder List from the Navigation Pane
Create a new Folder in the tree and call it “To Do”
Right-click on “To Do” and click Properties –> Homepage
Enter www.rememberthemilk.com and click “Show homepage by default for this folder”
Click OK
Go back to your Inbox
Right-click on “To Do” again and click “Add to Favorite Folders” to get it to the top of the pane
Click To Do

This is what you end up with (upper left corner of Outlook)

It’s a total hack, but I’m going to give it a whirl for a while. This doesn’t let me attach email threads to tasks which I will sorely miss, but it’s good enough given all the other benefits of RTM – most importantly, the ability to access it from anywhere (phone, web, Mac, PC!)

Happy Father’s Day!

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:00:19 GMT

On my first father’s day (as a father) I felt it only appropriate to give a shout-out to the old man who got me interested in all this computer nonsense in the first place. A truly inspirational individual – even if he doesn’t know it – my dad’s responsible for who I am as a father, a man, and… well… a technologist!

We ran our first bulletin board service (BBS) on the Commodore 64 twenty-some odd years ago on a 300 baud modem (then 1200, then 2400, then 9600!) using Ivory Joe’s 6485/Ivory BBS software. Which we eventually got the BASIC source for and hacked up ;) From that moment on (sometime around 1986) I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Cool, eh? At some point I’ll write something up that’s a more complete history… because a lot of what my dad taught me about over 20 years ago set the stage for what I’m working on right now. We had IM, forums, email, page designers / homepages, and all that jazz back then!

Thanks Dad! Happy Father’s Day!

Windows Live Writer Technical Preview

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:01:20 GMT

Hello? Anyone out there? ;) I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything of substance. Certainly longer than I’ve gone with respect to blogging since late 2004. Again, I expect I’ll be posting just as sporadically in the future as I am now given my “life priorities” and how they’ve expanded since welcoming a baby girl into the world back in October.

I did want to spend a minute or two giving folks an FYI post on the latest release of Windows Live Writer (Tech Preview). If you’re a blogger and you’re NOT using Writer… well, you should be. The new features include new formatting for photos, inline videos, word count, auto linking, and more. It’s really a solid, solid product and one that makes the life of a blogger a lot easier.

Check out this pic of Stella using the new tilt + “reflection” features of Writer for photos:

Cool. Interested in doing this yourself? Get the Technical Preview of Windows Live Writer

Live Mesh

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:53:42 GMT

Not too long ago (Jan 07) I blogged about wanting an Exchange Server for the rest of my life. This week, something similar was announced called Live Mesh. Yes, I know I'm days late to the party - but participating in blog chatter isn't top of mind for me anymore ;)

If you haven't been following the buzz around Live Mesh, here are some links to catch-up:

In short: this is one of the most ambitious platforms I've seen come from Microsoft since Silverlight or the original .NET Framework. It has serious, serious potential to redefine computing. The concepts resonate with me in a way few things do, particularly because they aren't an either-or approach (cloud vs. client). Only time will tell.

Leaving Mozy, testing Carbonite

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:29:24 GMT

As usual, Omar is a couple weeks ahead of me here. But Mozy has been an absolute dog for me over the last few weeks, and it's time I move on. Of course I'm going to wait until I'm completely backed up elsewhere before ditching Mozy - and I've "sold" Mozy to a number of people, all whom I now have to cross my fingers and hope they're not having the same problems. To sum it up, look at this one screenshot:

There are like 4 “bugs” in that one screenshot.

Why 15 days? That's like a lifetime when you take pictures of a 4 month old.
ConnectionError1 – that’s great. Wha? Sometimes it says this, sometimes it doesn't. Nothing else on my machine has trouble connecting to the Internet.
Look at the bytes next to the # of files backed up (-86744233809... a negative number?)
224GB remaining even though I’ve been running this thing every single day since last summer? A couple weeks ago it said 0. What happened?

I'm not patient enough to deal with customer support - there are just too many problems here to deal. So I'm going to give Carbonite a go.

PS. Yes, I know. My blogging is slow. But I warned you ahead of time a little while back! Just subscribe to my RSS feed and don't bother checking back regularly; that way quantity or frequency of posts don't matter at all.

Remember The Milk + Exchange = My Tasks Super System

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:19:01 GMT

I've been playing with Remember The Milk quite a bit this week, all the while wondering how I could fit it into my task/to-do workflow without complicating my life more than I need to. It's dangerous when you spend too much time in the "meta zone", thinking about how you're going to complete your tasks instead of actually completing them. So I gave myself a deadline (today) to figure out if and how Remember The Milk was going to work for me... and this is what I came up with.

<If you don't know what Remember The Milk is, check it out at www.rememberthemilk.com. It's an impressive service for task management/getting things done. I'm going to refer to it as RTM from now on.>

Since I rely heavily on Outlook + Exchange for work, any solution that took my tasks out of Outlook would be a non-starter. I need the ability to attach PDFs and (more importantly) emails to tasks for quick follow-up and I need them in my face all day long. At the same time, there are aspects of RTM that would make me more productive on a day-to-day basis so I wanted to find something that would work across both systems. So I started with this:

I continue to use Outlook tasks & my toolbar macros (from 2004, wow) to create tasks while at work. Obviously this syncs to Exchange and to all of my other Outlook installations; I think I'm up to 4. Using my macros, I'm able to attach emails to tasks automatically so that when I'm sitting in front of Outlook on any of the machines I regularly use, I can pull up tasks and act on email immediately.
I continue to sync my tasks with Exchange on my phone. I use Oxios ToDo List on my smartphone; when I complete a task on my phone it synchronizes immediately to Exchange and to Outlook at home, work, on my laptops, etc. It's a great system that I've been using for a long time.

And this is what I'm now doing a little differently:

I also use MilkSync on my phone (which works well) to sync my tasks back to Remember The Milk. I have it set to every 15 or 30 minutes (experimenting) which means RTM now has all my tasks, complete with notes and categories. But since RTM doesn't support email attachments, it doesn't store any of the email I've attached. Which is fine with me because a) it would violate corporate policy to store Microsoft email on another company's servers and b) I only need those attachments when I'm sitting in front of Outlook anyway.
I setup Jott to publish directly to my “Next Actions” category. So now when I’m driving and I need to remember to do something, I just hold down the number 3 and say “Task” followed by what I need to do. It then just flows into the system and shows up in Outlook, my phone task list, and on www.rememberthemilk.com.
I added an RTM gadget to my new Netvibes homepage. No escaping my tasks.
I added an RTM bookmarklet in IE and Firefox so I can grab any date or text on a web page and make a task out of it. That task then flows through the system.
On my Mac, I'm using Quicksilver to add new tasks to RTM with just a couple keystrokes. I don't have to actually open anything at all to create a new task. And I have a Dashboard widget running that gives me a quick snapshot of my current tasks if I ever remember to hit F12.
I can now interact with tasks on every platform via the browser if I have to (Mac, PC, etc.) including going offline. Ditto on the flowing through the system bit :)
I setup a special email address for my wife on RTM for "honey-dos". When she sends an email to this address, it will be added to my "Next Actions" list and sync to all my endpoints. So if she really wants me to remember something (like the milk!) this is a great way for her to get into my head without spamming me with SMS or email. TBD if this is good enough - or if IWantSandy is a better solution for us.

As you can probably tell, the killer feature for me is the fact that all of this stuff is talking to each other. Everywhere I am (web, PC, Mac, phone) I'm working against the same task list. As I add a task in one place (even via voice using Jott), it's available everywhere.

So basically, I have RTM and Exchange in sync using my phone (running both ActiveSync and MilkSync) as the sync hub. It isn't the perfect solution, but it's working well. And yes, I realize I'm a little "over the top" when it comes to time management! But maybe one person will get value out of this post ;)

Pay-as-you-go TV getting closer

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:26:49 GMT

Back in September 2006, I wrote about moving to an ala carte model for television instead of relying on the increasingly expensive and unreliable cable companies to provide content for us. With each passing day, I get more anxious about the fact that we're not doing this in our household - because we watch even less TV now than we did before, and we're still paying Comcast monthly for the privilege.

I just looked at my Comcast cable bill. We have HD support but none of the special channels like HBO or Showtime.

$68.23 + $6.80 taxes & surcharges (approximated since my Internet access is on this bill too). Add $10.75/month for Tivo (annual prepay) and you have an astounding $85.78/month just to watch TV. If I were to translate that into iTunes or Xbox LIVE purchases, you're talking an average of about 42 television shows/month for that price.

Yet I think we watch about 8-12 shows monthly depending on the month (Smallville, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Office, and maybe a few others). Seriously, why in the world are we paying $85/month when we could just drop $2-3/each to watch the shows we want to watch when we want to watch them? How could things NOT be moving in this direction over the next couple years?

The catch for me is that sports content isn't available through either iTunes or Xbox LIVE - which means I'm either relegated to watching baseball on my laptop through MLB.TV or not watching it at all. Neither is acceptable - so until there's a solution to this problem (and I suspect it will be in the next 24 months somehow) I won't be able to switch completely. And of course, neither iTunes nor Xbox have Smallville... and iTunes doesn't even have TV shows in HD yet :(

So the dream will probably be on hold for a short while. But I'm really looking forward to the day when I'm not paying $85/month for less than 8 hours of television watching. Ugh.

Mint.com

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:53:58 GMT

I've been giving Mint a try over the past few days. It's not quite feature-rich enough for me to switch from MS Money Plus just yet, but I do see a day when 100% of my banking and financial management moves to the web. I've been waiting for this day for about a decade, so it's a long time coming.

Mint is unbelievably friendly though and has a great UI for getting up and running in less than five minutes.

And it tells you things you sort of wish you didn't know. Like this:

Great.

Photo organization - more on tagging, folders, and captions

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:52:09 GMT

It's been a few months since I last posted about photo tagging and asked "how should I use metadata on photos?" There were some great responses, both in person as well as in the comments, and I filed that task away for a future project. Well, the future is now. We took over 1700 photos in the last couple weeks alone (having an 11-week old will do that to you) and our "filing system" is starting to show its age. Not having things like ratings, dates, or even the basics like "this is a picture of Stella and Mike" is starting to bug me since I'm spending a few hours each week just dealing with photos.

So this is what I'm going to do with our entire gallery, starting right now:

Keep the photos organized by event in folders. So "Christmas 2007 in Seattle" remains - it turns out that's how my wife and I like to browse our photo collection, and since I'm not a hardcore photographer (yet) it's easiest for us to keep it like this.
Rename all the files to something like "Title (#) mm-dd-yyyy" where title is the name of the folder (i.e. Christmas 2007) and the # is the sequence number.
Make sure all the photos have the capture date set. Since some of them are scans or were taken with a 9-year old 1MP digital camera, there's a good chance dates aren't captured across the board. So I'm going to correct this.
Make the title on the photo the same as the filename for now. There are some instances where I'll type more than this like "Stella laughing at her zebra toy", but just to be consistent I'm going to keep it simple in the default case where there's nothing better to use as a caption.
Add creator and copyright metadata. The creator will be something like "Torres Family" and the copyright is used just in case the photos find their way onto the web. I know it doesn't actually protect anything, but since it takes 2 seconds to add it, why not? I'm also going to use the creator tag to indicate who took the photo since I have rolls from just about every family member over the last few years. So instead of using sub-folders for this, I'm going to use the creator tag and filter on that.
Add two basic ratings to photos - 5 star for amazing, 4 for great. I may have a few that use 3 as well, but to me that's the equivalent of not having a rating at all.
Flat out delete all poorly shot or blurry photos while I'm doing this.
Convert BMPs to JPGs since I have a bunch of images from the mid-90s using the bitmap format.
Opt to write all the XMP data to the file of course!

And finally: 10. Apply tags to all the photos! Talk about tedious :)

I realize that a few months ago I said "I'm not going to go crazy with this and spend hundreds of hours applying tags to previous photos"... but I rethought that [I know Jay is laughing right now thinking "I knew you would"]. But the photos we had pre-baby are all actually pretty easy to apply metadata to, and being the neat freak that I am I knew I wouldn't want to have half of my photos cleaned up and the others just sitting around unusable. So I came up with a very basic tagging scheme based on what I've seen others do online. I'm going to use hierarchical tags (even though most apps including Windows Live Photo Gallery don't visualize them like this) and I'm going to use capitalization and spaces in the tags. This is the basic format I'm going to use:

Places -> Seattle, La Grulla, Glen Ridge, etc.
People -> Full name
People -> Stella Torres -> Birth, 0-3 months, 3-6 months, Smiling, Yawning, Sleeping, etc.
Nature -> Flowers, Landscape, Ocean, etc.
Things -> Car, Plane, Bike, etc.
Portraits -> Pregnant, Fitness, Funny, etc.

To perform all of the steps above, I'm going to use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom since bulk edits like these are cake in that tool... and any changes I make, including applying tags, will immediately appear in Windows Live Photo Gallery for basic viewing/editing. As I get more serious about photography (and trust me, I'm really not that serious) Lightroom is becoming an essential part of my workflow. I love how I can use Lightroom to do all of this and not only does my desktop software (WLPG) pick up the changes immediately, but Media Center does as well!

To illustrate how slick this is, soon I'll be able to pull up pictures of any family member sorted by date in 3 seconds on the HDTV in my living room thanks to Xbox 360 and Media Center. Love it! It's like magic.

Of course, this is going to take me quite a while. But just like I did when I ripped 900+ CDs, I'm going to take it week-to-week ;) I'll spend about 30 minutes each Sunday working through 5-10 folders until I'm finished with everything. It should only take a few months provided I'm disciplined about it. And then I'll never have to do it again; it just becomes about new photos at that point, which is much, much easier. And if it's anything like my encoding all of my music, it'll be boring and tedious... but I'll be pretty thrilled when it's all done. Just in time for CES 2009!

Speaking of CES, be sure to watch Bill's keynote at 630 Pacific at www.microsoft.com/ces! This is my favorite time of the year - CES and MacWorld... geek heaven.

Amazon MP3 Downloads

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:02:01 GMT

Where will you soon be able to get music from all of the major labels, without any DRM restrictions, at moderate bit rates? Amazon MP3 of course. Fantastic. Sony BMG has finally entered the fold.

I've spent years berating DRM and buying nothing but CDs, which feature both higher quality sound and zero restrictions on how they're used. But Amazon's MP3 Downloads have me slowly thinking about sacrificing a little quality (most songs are 256kbps variable rate) for convenience [of course, I do wish they would support lossless formats].

I'm not sold on the design of the store - it feels a little bit too much like Amazon.com and not enough like a fun place to hang out (see Zune for this) - but all things considered, it's the best store on the block. As their catalog grows, I can't see anyone favoring the current iTunes model over straight cheap, DRM-free MP3s. The subscription model is still a better value (and I expect music junkies will still use that to sample music) but for ownership, Amazon is doing a fantastic job.

Happy Holidays!

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:16:28 GMT

Lots of stuff to post about in the new year - like just how great Amazon's MP3 store is now and how I'm a Photoshop Lightroom addict - but for the time being, I'm just enjoying the holidays with family and trying to stay off the computer. I hope everyone has a wonderful New Years!

Windows Vista: Speech and Touch Interfaces

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 03:06:11 GMT

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?

Automatic hibernation & reboot

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:12:52 GMT

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:

OneCare will tune up my PC every 2 weeks @ 11pm on Sunday night.
SyncBack will backup my personal files @ 11pm on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
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.

Go into Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Schedule Tasks (you need to be an Administrator to do this).
Click "Create Basic Task" in the action bar.
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.
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.
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."
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!]

How I use Windows Live

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 06:57:00 GMT

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.

Time Management: Randy Pausch

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:21:59 GMT

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!

Zune 8 is fantastic

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:22:19 GMT

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.

Amazon Kindle - a revolution?

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:00:54 GMT

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.

Things rarely "just work"

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:00:34 GMT

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.

Zune software - gorgeous!

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:37:03 GMT

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.

Lull?

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:20:08 GMT

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.

Beautiful Stella!

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 01:49:49 GMT

Life.CommenceChange(DateTime.Now);

Windows Live Events and Windows Live Spaces updates

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:32:33 GMT

Talk about a lot of updates! Last night we finished the deployment of a bunch of new features including Windows Live Events, a new service for "party planning". I've been working on this for most of the year, so it's only appropriate that it ships on my first born's due date (the 11th!) Still no sign of the baby though.

Check out the Space Craft entry for all the details. Below is just some of the event specific fun. Rob and Dare have been posting more about the specifics of the release and what to expect; if you're interested, you should check it out.

Easily create a great-looking website for your next event
To offer you more ways to connect and share memories with the people you care about most, the team that brought you Spaces would love to hear your feedback on Windows Live Events, our new, free social event planning service. With Events you can easily:

Plan that next baby shower, birthday party, or family reunion
Create a great-looking event invitation and website using one of over 100 fantastic templates
Invite anyone with an e-mail address and track who’s coming
Make your event unique with familiar customization features - choosing a friendly web address (like http://kates1stbirthday.events.live.com), using custom colors, fonts, and background images, or adding modules and Windows Live web gadgets
Let guests and organizers share photos and stories before and after the event

Click on Events from the new navigation and then click Create event to get started!

Share photos and stories after the party’s over
Ever notice that your guests take more and better pictures at your parties than you do because you’re focused on everyone having a good time? And, if you remember to even ask, there is a mad scramble afterwards to try to collect everyone’s photos over e-mail. Well, we want to make that A LOT easier with features like:

Photo album creation by the event organizer AND any of the guests
Stunning full-screen photo slideshows
Ordering prints through our partner, HP Snapfish
One-click download of a photo album into Windows Live Photo Gallery

After the event, return to the event website and click Add album in the Photos module to share those photos!
In addition to making it easy for everyone to share photos after the party, Windows Live Events allows guests to share memories in other ways, including a discussion board, guestbook, and sharing videos you upload to Soapbox on MSN Video or other popular video sharing sites.

AT&T Tilt finally here!

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:12:41 GMT

Well that took a lot longer than I had hoped. The AT&T Tilt is finally here. It's fun when AT&T says this, knowing full well they're comparing it to the iPhone:

"The AT&T Tilt is the most comprehensive wireless device on the market today," said Michael Woodward, vice president, Business Voice/Data & Mobility Products, AT&T. "In addition to its innovative design, there is no device on the market that packs the number of features that are available on the Tilt."

I'm a little concerned going back to Pocket PC (although I've always liked it more than Smartphone for my needs). I bought the Q because it was small and light. This device isn't small or light. But hey, it's almost the winter and I'll be wearing a coat most of the time. The beauty of AT&T vs. Verizon (which I use now) is if I want to get a used "dumb" phone for $50 and swap the SIM card out for those times when I don't want to carry a computer in my pocket, I suppose I could.

This phone really is very close to my perfect device from a year ago. I'm calling AT&T tomorrow to see if they'll have it on Friday. Now I just have to make sure the kid knows to wait another few days before arriving so I can play with one last toy.

Zune 2 arrives!

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 04:23:48 GMT

I'll admit that I was expecting to be let down by this announcement after Apple's big iPod push. But I've soaked in all the data I could over the last 30 minutes about the 2nd generation Zune and while I'm not blown away, I'm happy with what we're offering. There are a few things about the new Zune that caught my eye, especially considering I don't see a viable video player in Apple's lineup right now.

First, the Zune 80 has a huge (3.2") screen and 80 gigabytes to work with for $249. Those three facts working together can't be underestimated; it means you can carry around full length movies, TV shows, and tons of photos alongside what's probably most, if not all, of your music library. And you get a nice big screen to watch video on for less than $250. Second, the device supports WMA (of course) including (I expect) automatic downsampling which is important if you're weird and use WMA Lossless to archive your CDs like I do. But perhaps more importantly, it supports automatic synchronization with recorded TV via Windows Media Center. The ability to take Sportscenter on the Connector bus everyday is just too cool to pass up, especially because it'll synchronize automatically over my Wi-Fi network! And the long awaited podcast support has hit the Zune too, so there will truly be no need for iTunes anymore in my house. Finally. And since you can exchange podcasts via Wi-Fi, I expect I'll learn about new programs from co-workers.

Zune 2 also carries over the FM radio support - which sounds pretty uninteresting until you consider it's the only way most gyms broadcast sound from the TV sets. Not having FM built into my iPod nano has frustrated me more than once while being stuck on a treadmill.

One thing I'm cautiously excited about is this new ZunePad thing. Touch screens are nice, but I've heard from just about everyone I know who has an iPod touch that not having direct control over the volume is a total PIA. And of course, the screen gets smudged. Now, I don't know how this ZunePad will work in action, but there is a great video of it on the Seattle PI blog. This may be the only Zune 2 video out there. It looks like fun - and I especially love the album art. But it could suck if it doesn't work exactly right, we'll see.

All in all it's a solid, while not revolutionary, v2. I don't expect the new Zune to win over a ton of iPod fans, but having 80gb of recorded TV, podcasts, and automatically downsampled WMA music in my pocket, synchronized over the air while I am sleeping, is probably enough for me... and it probably will be for a lot of people. Again, there isn't a similar model in Apple's lineup at all - the closest thing is the comparatively insanely expensive 16GB ($399) or 8GB ($299) iPod touch. $399 for 16GB or $249 for 80GB... Hmm...

So I expect I'll get a Zune 80 for the bus - and maybe a small, cheap ($149) one for the gym or for my wife. Employee discount service, get ready!

Photo tagging, folders, and captions

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:55 GMT

The "nesting instinct" has kicked in for both my wife and me with the bebe arriving any day now. While she's focused on the nursery, strollers, and clothes, my focus is in the digital realm. I'm getting ready to share photos and videos of our first born, of course! So far we've upgraded our cameras (and entered the world of digital SLR photography, which before this weekend I knew nothing about - thanks Trevin!) and figured out how we're going to get photos to our family distributed all over the U.S.

But the nut I haven't cracked yet, now that this project has grown beyond its original intentions, is how we're going to organize the billions of photos we're going to take. To-date, our organization system is really pretty simple: when we import photos from our camera, they get a name + date which maps to a folder (something like "Boat ride, August 2007"). We have 805 of these folders now since we've been taking digital photos and scanning others since the late 90s. But is it enough? Will we ever want more than this?

Windows Live Photo Gallery supports tags, ratings, and captions, writes this data to the file via XMP, and has a "truth is in the file" mentality so you can rest easy that metadata you add to your photos today will be useful tomorrow or in another application like Photoshop or SmugMug. This leads to local photos being the "master" copy (aka digital negative) since you can apply captions and tags once, and then use them elsewhere with no additional effort. Spaces doesn't support this yet, but I'd bet people are talking about it in the halls.

Photo Gallery even makes it easy to do this when you import - check it out:

Which leads me to my question: how should I use metadata on photos? I'm not going to go crazy with this and spend hundreds of hours applying tags to previous photos (at least I don't think I am) but I do want to come up with a mental model that works so that when I find a photo that I want tagged, I can tag it on the spot without cluttering some other view up. This is what I'm thinking:

Use the folder name as a title/category (i.e. "Christmas Party, December 2007")
Use the file name as the "name" of the photo (i.e. "Jay and Robin")
Use the caption as the "description" of the photo (i.e. "Can you believe she's gotten so big?")
Use tags to describe the contents of individual photos (i.e. skyline, smiling, happy, funny)
Use tags to indicate who is in the photo (i.e. Mike Torres, Jay Fluegel, Trevin Chow) using standard names. Of course I don't know if multiple words is part of XMP but I'll find out.
Use geotags at some point in the distant future to describe location (once GPS is as prevalent as Wi-Fi as I'm not doing this by hand) In the meantime, use tags for location (i.e. Seattle, L.A., New Jersey)

So the question is: what am I missing here? I'm not even sure this is right. Should the caption be the name and the description be something else? I don't know.

Shared spouse calendars - FINALLY!

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:15:17 GMT

Back in 1997/1998 when we were building out Jump.com, one of the "killer scenarios" we were hoping to enable with our new online calendar was sharing between spouses/families. Fast-forward a full DECADE and today marks the day that I am finally able to see my wife's calendar, and have her see mine. It's glorious.

The reason it took so long was because we both rely 100% on our office calendars, and both of the companies we work for use Exchange servers. Exchange was designed to make intra-office calendar sharing a piece of cake, but never had any real support for sharing calendars between two "Internet users" until Outlook 2007 calendar sharing via iCal arrived. This is one of those features that for some reason no one I talk to even knows about, but it's great. Sure, we could have enabled calendar sharing over the years with MSN Calendar (which is the evolution of Jump.com!) or with Google Calendar, but neither of those calendars work at all with our calendars at work.

Today, my wife's company upgraded to Office 2007 and we immediately setup calendar sharing between us. Now when I go into my calendar, my wife's calendar appears right next to mine - I even turned on overlay mode just for fun, so I can see her appointments super-imposed on top of mine. Looks like she'll be in my building later today ;)

The reason this is so exciting is that it will likely cut down on ~20% of our random IMs and emails about scheduling dinners, travel, "what are you doing tonight?", etc. Gotta love those little life hacks that make life a little easier!

This is an overview of how Outlook 2007 calendar sharing works if you're interested: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA100398301033.aspx

DreamScene and DeskScapes

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:30:49 GMT

This is wild.

DreamScene, which most of you probably know about from CES in January, has just been released as a Windows Vista Ultimate Extra. It's truly breathtaking when you find the "right" video to use. What I didn't realize was that Stardock came out with a plug-in to the plug-in called DeskScapes which not only gives you access to hundreds of Dream files for your desktop, but also does some crazy stuff:

DeskScapes enriches and extends ordinary Dream files by allowing users to add dynamic content to their animated wallpapers. For example, have your Dreams change automatically based on time of day or local weather.

Slick. If you have Ultimate and a powerful enough machine, this stuff is hypnotizing. It's really worth seeing in action. All of a sudden, my Vista machine became a lot cooler looking than my Mac -- which looks surprisingly dated! More information on Dreams:

Dreams are high quality animated wallpapers that run exclusively on Windows Vista Ultimate and transform the static desktop users spend all day looking at into a world of motion and activity.

Dreams are subtle, looped motion videos or animations that bring new life to the desktop without slowing down your PC. Watch a serene nature scene while you type an email. Glance at a meteor shower as you work on a document. Make your desktop interesting again with Windows DreamScene and Windows Vista Ultimate.