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June 22 My CybertwinI just thought I would give this a try. It's pretty funny actually, and of course, just like me!
February 13 Get on your SoapboxYou may not have heard of it yet, but MSN has had a YouTube equivalent service for a few months now, and today it finally took the sign-up process out of the way of their Beta Soapbox video sharing service.
Just like YouTube, you can upload your own videos, tag them and share them with friends etc., but the videos load very quickly and can be of a much higher quality than you may be used to on YouTube.
Take a look around. It's pretty cool, and there are already a large number of videos uploaded.
Here's what the team had to say about it:
1) Always be watching
Soapbox allows users to browse and watch videos at the same time. This is huge and it makes browsing Soapbox videos a joy.
2) Amazing video quality A lot of independent bloggers are giving us feedback on the quality of our video and saying that is amongst the best (or the best) of all the user video services.
3) Go full screen without restarting the video How many times have you been watching a funny video that you wanted to share with an office mate, so you click full screen and then you have to download and restart the video ALL OVER AGAIN?!? Not with Soapbox. Go full screen with a single click of a button.
4) Beautiful embedded player We put a lot of thought and effort in designing this player. We wanted to make something that a user would be proud to have on your blog. (Also, for some cool undocumented features check out the team blog – link is also on the bottom of the Soapbox page).
5) RSS feeds for everything!
Get an RSS feed for a tag, a search, a users videos, anything.
November 30 November 27th 2006Well, I never thought I would say I appreciated Humvees until today. At around 3pm on Monday November 27th, it started to snow. Just a little at first, but then it came down faster and faster and started to cover everything in sight. I had meetings at work until 5pm, but I left as soon as I could after that - around 5:20pm. I had 10 miles to travel home. It took 3.5 hours.
From the start, it was a standstill on the roads leaving Redmond and for most of the time I made great progress at 1 to 2 miles per hour as the volume of traffic, the icy roads and lack of visibility through the snow storm kept everyone at low speeds.
I don't have a particularly good car for this kind of weather. It's basically a sports car with low profile tyres and rear wheel drive. At least being a manual (stick shift) I was able to keep it in 1st gear most of the way home. However, it's not grippy in the snow and ice and at the first hill downwards, I slid a little way, luckily nowhere near other cars. I took the main roads all the way, and then came across a jam of people trying to get up a short hill eastbound with traffic lights at the top. Once you stop on a hill like that, 2 wheel drive cars just couldn't get going again and just slid around. I managed to avoid that hill by cutting right, going for a while, then left and left again to take the same hill from the south side which was less steep and continuously moving.
A little farther on, still doing an average of 2mph, and still on main roads, I needed to get over one more major hill before reaching the next main road home. I decided to chance it, since any alternatives were much worse, and being a main road, I was hoping that most of the ice and snow had been swept away by other vehicles.
Well, I made it most of the way, but about three quarters of the way up, the car lost traction and couldn't make any forward progress at all. The back end started sliding out towards the other side of the road and I just had to stop and try to get lined up again and take another run at it. All the while there was a line of traffic behind me, just as I had been behind a line of traffic ahead of me, which was now way over the other side of the hill.
By this time, 2.5 hours had passed, and I was about 4 miles from home. I was seriously considering letting the car back down the hill into the grass bank to the right and park it there. I was holding up too much traffic and would have to walk home.
Just at that point, coming the other way, was a Humvee, the kind that looks a little like a Land Rover with no rear cover. It had huge winter tyres with thick tread and chains on every one of the 4 wheels driven by the engine. The driver stopped as he lined up with me on the other side and asked if I needed help. Yes! Thank you! I couldn't believe my luck. At just the point I would have had to spend another couple of hours walking home, here was someone in the only practical car for this weather, offering to tow me up the hill. Well after a few minutes involving the locating of the tow hook, which is stowed in the boot (trunk) and needed to be screwed in, we were soon making progress up the hill and just at the brow we stopped and he unhooked me, turned around and left after profuse thanks from me.
I then proceeded to make my way over the rest of the hill and back down, where I then sat for 45 minutes not moving at all behind another line of traffic. Apparently the same thing as I had been doing, had been occuring on this side of the hill where other cars unable to make it up the hill, had just been abandoned and caused a hold up on the other side of the road and cars and SUVs that could make it had to go around them.
After 3.5 hours I finally got home. I was so relieved and the car was covered in a thick layer of snow. It was so nice to be home, and I was thankful I didn't have further to go, otherwise it might have resulted in a night in the car. September 13 Online Search and Calculator?You're going to think I am biased, but really, have you tried making http://www.live.com your home page for Search (instead of your no doubt current favorite http://www.google.com)?
The search results are more relevant, it's just come out of Beta, and seems just as easy to use with more custom options than Google. There is a blog entry available on MSDN that lists the enhancements to the new Live.com Search service.
However, the thing that surprised me recently, was that the Live.com search page, can also be used as a Calculator. In fact you can enter quite complex mathematical equations and it knows what to do with them.
Just to experiment, I tried entering “25 * 5 + 45 / 78 - x + 9.2 = 56.7769231” in the search box of Google and Live, and I was amazed by the results, Google gave me “your search did not match any document”, but Live Search gave me “25*5+45/78- x+9.2=56.7769231 : x=78”.
Live executed that mathematical equation and gave me the value of X. Pretty good I thought.
I'm hoping that eventually, it will also generate graphs on command e.g. y = x2 + 2x − 3, but it doesn't do it yet, and sometimes, just entering an equation into a search box would get tricky without some kind of ability to draw brackets etc. Still, you have to start somewhere I guess.
August 19 Gone Phishing?
August 02 Live Spaces are LiveWell it's finally here. The promised switch to the Live.com version of Spaces. Originally it was spaces.msn.com and now it's spaces.live.com.
Along with the change in the website address, is a major overhaul in the look and feel of the Spaces application. We can now add a public list of Friends to our Space, which then enables you to navigate to their Spaces or Profiles etc. There are new tools for the visitors and the owner too.
You can even add Gadgets, of the sort you might know from http://www.live.com which should by now, be your home page
 More details about the changes today can be found on The Space Craft - the Space maintained by the team who brought this to you. March 09 Origami UnfoldsWell, it's officially launched now, and it's pretty much as I expected. A small tablet PC with a host of wireless and media features.
On the Microsoft Ultra Mobile PC (the official name of the products being produced) website the functionality is explained, including WiFi networking, Blue Tooth, touch-screen, TV, MP3 player, Games, Movie Player and Hard drive for storage. It will run Windows Live Messenger, Mail, Internet Explorer etc., just like any other regular PC, but with plans to make it no more than 1 Pound in weight, and a 7" display, it will easily replace that laptop you only use for viewing Ebay or answering email too.
The price range, of between $500 and $1000 looks good too. I may wait for the later versions to come out but Samsung is committed to producing one by April this year. The early models are going to have some problems too, like battery life, being around 3 hours at first, but later models are bound to resolve this over time. The inclusion of 2 USB ports means that you don't have to use the screen to enter text when you're not travelling, you can easily attach an external Keyboard.
Looks like a great idea for Christmas this year!
Here's a link to an interview with the architect for the project: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=169962
John Tokash also has an entry in his blog all about the UMPC: http://blog.tokash.org/2006/03/08/channel-9-origamiumpc-video-is-up/ along with a video on MSN Video.
March 02 Origami ProjectA lot of buzz has recently been generated by references to the new Microsoft Origami project. It seems to be a nice self-contained tablet computer about the size of a paperback book.
I've seen hardware like this before, but either the market wasn't ready for it, or the software and operating systems were clunky, or the screens were too small, or used too much power etc. However, the timing of this indicates that maybe, finally, the stars are aligning and all the parts are in the right place to make this a success. Let's see what you think.
It will be interesting to see this project unfold...  February 22 Philosophy of LifeI came across this little gem today, and thought I would share this rather unique way of looking at what's important in your life as you live it.
When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee...
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar.
He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full.
They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.
Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.
The students responded with a unanimous "yes".
The professor then produced 2 cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, filling the empty spaces between the sand particles.
The students laughed.
"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, " I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.
The golf balls are the important things-your beliefs, your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.
The sand is everything else - the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.
The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend." January 28 Is your Space slow? Remove the Media Player Powertoy.Based on some early investigations where some people's MSN Space was running really slowly whenever they tried to open a photo album, or leave a comment, or almost anything that required an action on a Space, we have discovered that removing the Media Player powertoy from your Space will improve matters in most cases.
The problem is not related to the servers delivering the content, but something about the Media Player toy which is making your computer work hard whenever it has to render it and remove it when moving onto another page.
I have just temporarily removed it from my Space here, and it appears to have resolved the problem.
I will put it back on my Space, when the Spaces team have had a chance to find out why it causes this problem, but I thought I would share the workaround with you. January 27 Live ContactsYou may already have seen that a major update of MSN Spaces took place yesterday, and all the new features are listed on this site.
My favorite feature though is Live Contacts, not least because I helped it come to fruition.
Basically, you can go to your Profile through your Space, and update your Personal and Business contact information. Then you can invite your friends to subscribe to changes.
If they subscribe, then in their online Address Book, such as that shown in Hotmail or in Messenger, there is a link created between your Profile, and their Contact record about you.
Whenever you change your details, such as a new phone number, then anyone subscribing to your changes, will see them in their own Contact record about you - automatically.
You still have control of course, of who can see your Profile, so you can easily make sure only your friends can subscribe to changes. Basically, if they can't access or see your Profile, then they can't subscribe to changes to it either.
This link has more information: http://spaces.msn.com/thespacecraft/blog/cns!8AA773FE0A12B9E3!3891.entry January 17 Stitching your best Group Photo togetherCame across this piece of news today and had to share. Have you ever spent time taking 6 or 7 photos, just trying to get everyone's faces turned correctly and smiling correctly? Ever wish you could take the best parts of each photo and glue them together? Well now apparently, you can with something new from Microsoft Research, called "Group Shot". MSR's Group Shot helps you create a perfect group photo out a series of group photos. With Group Shot you can select your favorite parts in each shot of the series and Group Shot will automatically build a composite image. It's free, and available to the public to try: http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/
December 14 In time for Christmas? UPS says yes, no matter how late!Not feeling 100% well yesterday, I went to bed and turned the light off around 10pm last night. All was quiet. It was getting foggy outside despite being a relatively clear night, so the moonlight was washing through the air, reflected off the tiny water droplets, giving the ground a strange white hue. It looked almost like daylight out there.
I drifted off to an uneasy sleep, since the common cold soreness I was getting, was tickling the back of my throat, making me want to cough every minute or so. This eventually subsided and I was fully asleep by 11pm I'm certain.
An hour later, at 12:07am, the dog barked, and I was roused to the sound of a truck engine idling nearby. Since we live on a country road, this is highly unusual, so I was naturally concerned and jumped out of bed to look out through the blinds to the driveway at the front of the house.
There, in the semi-twilight still bathed by the whiteness of the moon and the fog, was a large dark brown UPS van, clearly trying to turn around at the top of the drive.
The poor guy had actually delivered a package from JC Penney at midnight to our house!
Watching him finally get the van turned around and drive off, I was relieved it wasn't something more sinister, and with heart still racing I returned to bed. It took another hour or so to get to sleep, and of course the dog was jumpy and kept growling from time to time by way of warning.
So, I write this with mixed feelings this morning. Wonderful service by UPS. Amazing dedication by that driver. I will definitely use UPS for urgent packages in the future. However, surely both the driver and myself deserve to sleep undisturbed after midnight?
Thanks guys, but can you please let your drivers take the night off from house to house deliveries after say, 10pm? November 29 Is Google your Friend?I'm not one to blast competitors, but I am all for fair competition where the consumer is able to make fully informed decisions. There are times when I use http://search.msn.com and if I don't find it there, I do use http://www.google.com, but recently I came across a good reason to use Google as infrequently as possible, on this site: http://www.rinf.com/news/nov05/googlefacts.html. Take a look. It lists the following interesting points:
1. Google's immortal cookie:
Your choice of course :-) Here's a collection of Google Watching articles: http://www.google-watch.org/ November 09 Got Photos?Quite a few posts ago, I displayed some photos I took of the general feeling of panic and extra security checks going on in London when the second (and thankfully flawed) bombing attack took place during the summer.
Well, it seems that I, along with many others, could have made some money from my photos!
I have just come across this site, which I also saw reviewed in Wired Magazine, and they will accept Mobile Phone Photos and any other photos you submit, of anything you consider either newsworthy, or providing additional views or evidence of events and actions around the world. Just like a newspaper photographer, even your mobile phone photos can be submitted and used by newspapers and television anywhere in the world.
So, I recommend you sign up on http://www.scoopt.com and if you find yourself near to the action, don't forget to snap a few photos with your mobile phone, and submit them to the site. You could get anything from $50 upwards for your photos if they manage to find a buyer for you. Unless you feel like peddling the photo yourself, this company will provide a valuable service for even the grainiest photo, so you don't have much to lose by just sending them your views of the news.
November 01 What is live.com for exactly?If you are used to having your home page as http://www.msn.com or even http://my.msn.com then you are probably happy with the programmed content provided to you by MSN which is personalized content presented in a very magazine-like manner. You can think of it as a TV and you get to hold the remote to select what content you want to see on there, but you are still only provided with a limited choice of what the TV company wants to provide to you, when they want to provide it.
http://www.live.com however is more like the DVR (Tivo) of the online information world. This site, in addition to pulling in your Windows Live Mail inbox (previously known as Hotmail Kahuna) lets you set up Searches and RSS feeds which are automatically refreshed whenever you view the site. You get to choose what is going to be on the site, and you are in control.
http://my.msn.com - the programmed feed
http://www.live.com - your personal window on the world
Have a look around http://www.live.com - I think you will love the control you have over it. It's really nice to be able to add regular searches and have the results updated every time you visit. This is definitely going to be my home page from now on. How do I convert from start.com to live.com?If you have already been using http://www.start.com and have populated various sections with RSS feeds and gadgets, you probably don't want to have to search and enter those again on your new http://www.live.com site.
There is a way of exporting from one and importing to the other, all of your stuff under My Web.
On your Start.com page, if you click on the Advanced link at the bottom of the page (it looks like it's part of Search but isn't), you will see an option to Import an OPML file, and immediately below that, an option to Export your feed subscriptions to an OPML file.
If you click on the link, you will get a new window with the XML containing your feed information. Select File, Save As and save it as an OPML file.
You can then either send it to friends or yourself at home etc., and then on the live.com page, you can click on the Advanced Options link and Import the OPML file you created earlier. Voila! All of those feeds are now selectable under the "My Web" menu on the left, for you to drag and drop onto the page where you want them.
Don't forget to Sign In first though, otherwise all your settings won't necessarily be remembered.
What is Windows Live?I don't usually simply quote other sites when making an entry in my blog, but the following quote (from Microsoft Presspass) says it all. I'll be trying it all out over the next few months, as I hope you will too, and I'll be sure to tell you what I find. :
Windows Live Windows Live™ is a set of personal Internet services and software designed to bring together in one place all of the relationships, information and interests people care about most, with more safety and security features across their PC, devices and the Web. Some Windows Live services entered an early beta phase on Nov. 1, 2005; these and future beta updates can be found at http://ideas.live.com. Microsoft’s research shows that people increasingly are spending more time online, but many are frustrated with the fragmented nature of their Internet experience. Windows Live is designed for people who want to easily manage and create their information, interests and relationships, saving them time and effort and allowing them to better manage their life and their world. Designed to put the individual in control by offering complete choice and customization, Windows Live looks to seamlessly bring together the information, relationships and interests they care about along the following four pillars. Find and Discover Information Windows Live will provide individuals with the tools to easily find and organize important information, no matter where it is:
Enhance and Deepen Relationships Windows Live will provide users with a set of new and more meaningful ways to communicate and share with the people they care about:
Explore and Find New Interests Windows Live will deliver new ways for customers to discover and explore:
Protection and Performance Windows Live will offer consumers a set of tools and services to help keep their computing experience safer:
October 19 Are you Insured? What defines an accident anyway?If you have listened to the news on the radio over the past few days, you couldn't help but hear about the plight of poor 60 year old Ethel Adams, who was innocently driving down the road last March in her little Hyundai, when a truck suddenly appeared on the same side of the road coming the other way, and hit her car head-on, crushing it, and nearly killing Ethel.
Ethel spent the following 9 days in a coma and a further 5 months in hospital and a nursing home recovering from her injuries, generating over $500,000 in medical bills, and continues to receive physical therapy in the hope that she will walk again.
Apparently, another driver by the name of Michael R. Testa was in a rage with his girlfriend and was responsible for ramming his girlfriend's truck from behind whilst she was driving, forcing it onto the other side of the road, whereupon it hit Ethel's car coming the other way.
Michael Testa was not insured, which is of course, against the law, but the fact remains.
So, in these cases, the victim rather than the person causing the crash, has to claim on their own insurance. We carry a special "Uninsured Driver" coverage on our driving insurance policies (by Law) for just this kind of thing.
Ethel was insured through Farmers Insurance. A very well known and hitherto, respected insurance company.
Farmers Insurance refused to pay. In their view, the crash was caused by a deliberate act, and therefore was not an accident. They only pay out in the event of an accident.
What a cruel and unfeeling time to play with symantics and refuse to pay! As we all know, insurance companies in general, will do anything they can to get out of paying out. You can be paying in for years and get nothing in return. They are one of the unique industries who actually hope you will never use their product.
In my view, the initial ramming may have been deliberate, but the crash was not deliberate, not matter who started the process. If you think this way, then you could start going all the way back to Michael's birth, and ask if that was planned or accidental eh? Given his apparent IQ level, you might wonder!
This might be the scenario in that case: Dear Farmers Insurance - please pay up, since Michael's birth was an accident, and he caused the crash :-) (I don't know of course, this is just conjecture).
Anyway, you may be happy to learn that Farmers Insurance were forced to pay up in the end. Today, the Insurance Commissioner, Mike Kreidler told them to pay, so they paid.
What a shame they had to be forced to pay out, but we wish Ethel a speedy recovery and live in hope, whilst we pay our insurance premiums, that we may never be in the same situation.
Farmers Insurance though, is definitely not going to see a penny from me. |
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