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Outer SpaceA space that's out there, somewhere...
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?
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