From Spaces to WordPress…

Well, I migrated my Spaces blog to WordPress, due to the fact that Spaces is shutting down. I’m not sure I’m a fan of this UI–it’s kind of confusing. Anyhow, WordPress was kind enough to move my posts and comments over as well–all 300+ comments, of which 99% are spam. Nice. Please re-subscribe to RSS feeds.

I haven’t blogged here in over a year and a half. Ouch.

Windows Live Essentials is now released, which includes Windows Live Mesh. Woot! And it’s going to be installed on Dell machines this fall!  It’s been a long journey.

Happy New Year!

As if on cue, LiveSide’s got an interesting New Year’s post.  Happy New Year!

Big Red Pushpins

There’s been so much hubbub going on lately about the iPhone, I’m sure it will make a very interesting case study.  Here’s another marketing blitz I thought was brilliant: What’s with those big red pushpins all over town?

I haven’t seen these in person, (they look more like giant spools of thread on a sewing machine than pushpins to me,) but I think this is a really cool marketing promotion.  MS isn’t even paying for the installations either.  We need more promotions like this, than stupid puzzle games where we send some random geek into space.  I love this quote from the article: "It has come to this in Microsoft’s online struggle against Google and Yahoo: oversized office supplies."

I’ve been playing with the Virtual Earth API lately, and found it surprisingly quite easy to work with (although limited in its functionality).  I haven’t played with Google Maps‘ API so I can’t compare the two.  I’ve always been a fan of Live Maps (better aerial photos in spots; collections) but started using Google Maps recently as well (the latter can plot GPS co-ords; the zoom based on mouse location is a nice add-on to the copycat zoom feature).

I would love to have one of those giant pushpins in my office.

Windows Live Writer, Take II

So I’m sitting here in my office with two folks from the Windows Live Writer team.  And they’re asking me to blog on demand.. it’s kinda weird (like peeing into a cup).  It sounds like how Scoble blogs (I’ve never understood how someone could blog and seemingly interact with people at the same time; I always blog after the fact once I collect my thoughts).

I’ve been using Writer pretty exclusively since it came out a month or so ago–it’s been pretty good to me–and they were looking for lab rats (ahem, volunteers) to be observed to see how they could improve the product.

* * *

Whew.. ok so they’re gone.  Proves that I can’t write under pressure.  But wow, I learnt so many things about Writer that I didn’t know:

• inserting/tweaking images from disk;
• inserting maps (yeah I can’t say that I really explore the "Insert" menu);
• why publishing to my FTP didn’t work;
• why it doesn’t prompt for my Blogger password (but it does for Passport);
• how it does the "Update Weblog Style" (they even had me run through a trial run).

It turns out a lot of features just weren’t really discoverable for me.  I also learnt I’m a pretty atypical, "minimalist" blogger.  And most of the other nits were fairly common:

• sloooooow startup time
• using way too much memory
• spell check on-the-fly
• no "Ignore All" button in spell check
• blue is nasty
• pretty-printing HTML
• [And, as I just discovered (comments aren’t very discoverable in Spaces), and as LV pointed out, if only it did grammar checking!]
• And, I had noticed that sometimes it leaves an instance of Writer around, after exiting… ^o)

I realized while thinking about this last night, that one of the reasons I like Writer is that it accomplishes exactly what I had wanted to do myself ever since I started blogging.  I’ve always wanted to write my own light-weight client-side app that owns the whole editing-publishing workflow of blogging–I just never found the time (read: lazy) to do it.  But as an engineer, learning how this stuff works (especially that "Update Weblog Style" thing) is just so dang cool!!

It was a great way to spend an hour on a Thursday afternoon.  I love talking to people that "get it."  I’m ready to evangelize this product!.. (Download!)  Good job Live Writer team.. I can’t wait to see what they come out with next!

Windows Live for Ganstas!

A Product Designer (RonG) sent this in an internal e-mail thread discussion last week, and it just cracked me up.  I checked with our legal department and got the green light to post it.  For some strange reason, I think it’s just pure genius.  In its unedited glory:

For Windows Live gang sign:

With your right hand hold up your first 3 fingers knuckles facing forward. With your thumb hold your pinkie behind your hand so they are hidden. That forms the W when it is seen from the front.

With your left hand make a fist with knuckles facing forward. Raise your first finger straight up and extend your thumb straight out to your left. You have formed the L.

Now push both hands together so they touching and look like two fists side by side. That is the sign. When someone sees you, they will see the W and the L.

Yes, totally unofficial and blah blah blah.  Usual disclaimer please.

I can totally picture geeks flashing these WL gang signs on the street (or computer labs or what-have-you..)  Hahaha..  Someone please make an emoticon out of it.