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Microsoft Surface and Decision ‘08

Some cool use of Microsoft Surface by MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.

He’s using two key apps:

Electoral Map – Todd will use Surface to quickly and easily view historic voting results, polling insights and demographic data for each state. And by placing an object on the display, Todd will be able to instantly change the map to showcase results from previous predictions or to identify up-to-the minute changes.

Battleground States –This application will allow Todd to visually demonstrate the impact of various potential voting outcomes in key states and the effect they have on the number of electoral votes needed to win the election. This will be a great tool for Todd to lay out various electoral scenarios.

Check out more deets over at the Microsoft Surface blog.

Celebrity Pitchmen

Saw this funny reference from Mr. Gartenberg on his new forum on Mobile Devices Today – William Shatner pitching the new VIC-20. Can Seinfeld do better with Windows?

And for more Shatner stuff, this Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds user generated video was a blast.

Blackjack II

I'm not very good at Blackjack. I know there are some hard and fast rules to help you "win" but in the heat of the moment I always forget them and lose anyway (unless it's just dumb luck).

None of this has anything to do with the new Samsung Blackjack II that I started using last week.

I switched to AT&T a few months ago to get 3G but I didn't really find any 3G phones that suited me. The Blackjack2 is a 3G phone so I figured I would take it for a whirl.

First impression is that this is a good upgrade from the original. Just in the design I see more tapering of the device at the bottom, a slight curve of the bezel up top, and more slimness. I also like the extra high gloss finish and the pair of chrome rails down the side. This thing looks quite polished.

There are two ports on this thing - one is for the microSD card (good) and the other is for the proprietary IO cable that used for syncing, powering and headphones (not good). The little doors snap on there well.

The QWERTY keypad has an extensive set of firm buttons including a dedicated camera, email, and "silent" buttons (good) and dedicated "at&t logo" and "cellular video" button (huh?). It would be good to re-program that at&t button to the home page of my choosing rather than their MEdia Net page. I hit the silent key but the mode stays in "normal" - not sure what it is silencing exactly.

There's a 2MP camera on the back in a bit of a bulge along with a mono speaker. No connectors on the bottom so this isn't docking with anything.

This runs Windows Mobile 6.0 and with all of these phones I do a few things:

• Set up my Exchange server connection - just add my mail server address login name and password. This gets my contacts, email and calendar populated and synced immediately.
• Load up my fav apps -
  • NewsBreak for RSS feeds
  • Live Search for . . . searching
  • Shozu for auto-upload of my photos and videos to their proper place
  • WIndows Live Mobile, which didn't come pre-installed (darn). This app syncs Hotmail and my Live contacts onto my phone, including merging them with duplicates on my phone from Exchange - nice.

The apps that come with the phone are a mixed bag. Under "Applications" there's Camera (doh), Download Agent (?), File Explorer, Get TeleNav (promo), Java (??), MobiTV, PDF Viewer, RSS Reader, Smart Search, Speed Dial, Task Manager, and Office Mobile. Whew! Some of these just run when you open a PDF file or a Word doc or a Java app, some need to be run. A bit confusing. There are also a  bunch of apps not in "Applications" including "My Stuff" which is like a File Explorer that doesn't show all of your files. The browser works well but i suggest selecting View and shifting it into Full Screen mode. Interestingly AT&T music takes me a folder with eight other different apps in it. Oy!

I heard it has GPS but I can't figure out how to turn it on or do something with it. Any clues, folks?

I was pleasantly surprised when I landed in Tokyo on Monday and the phone worked. I set the sync to "manual" so I could limit the data charges but otherwise I was good to go unchanged. Windows Mobile warns you of data charges when you try to sync when roaming - handy.

In general the battery life is pretty good. I am definitely getting more than a day of use out of it. The call quality is eh - the audio sounds a bit compressed without much high end. I wonder if anyone runs these things through a "golden ears" test like they do headphones. Speaking of headphones this works with Bluetooth headsets if you are into looking like a geek.

So where do I end up with the Samsung Blackjack2? Well, it looks cool, and aside from the extra app goo, the eh call quality and the funky power connector this phone is a good step forward, especially if you are connecting to Exchange.

Podcasts on the road

I am on the road this week, hitting focus groups in San Diego, Chicago and New York over three days. Quite a run.

As you know I've been beta-testing the new Zune software, which rocks, and a new Zune 8 is available for me to test when I return to the office. I can't divulge much more but one thing that the new Zune software re-introduced for me was podcasts and I am listening to them on the plane as I write this. 

Podcasts have been around for a few years, initially popularized by Adam Curry of former MTV fame. They are basically a big long MP3-type file that is typically spoken word or sometimes video. You subscribe to them and get fresh ones downloaded every so often, depending on how prolific the author is.

The Zune software does a great job of finding these and pulling them in to your PC or Zune using wireless sync. I've loaded up my Zune 30 (new firmware load) with a few of these. They do make for good entertainment on the plane and i suspect commuting as well. Part of their charm is that anyone can publish podcasts, so you get a wide range of topics, production quality and content. I'll give you two examples.

The first is the Writer's Almanac, published by Garrison Keillor. Some of you may know Mr. Keillor from his Lake Wobegon books or his Prairie Home Companion radio show on NPR, both highly recommended. The Writer's Almanac is published daily and is only five minutes long. Mr. Keillor runs through famous authors' birthdays and provides some good commentary and back story on each one. He ends the podcast with a poem from a famous or not-so-famous author. Cool.

The second example is Trucker Tom. He is a trucker that drives around the US and is pretty tech-savvy. The recording is very casual and somewhat rambling, running around 45 minutes. I heard him eating his breakfast on a recent episode and scraping the empty plate into the sink as he described buying a new router and sending back his Skype phone. His plain-spoken discussion of technology was entertaining.

That was the first part of his show. The second part included him reading listener email and the tone changes a bit. Tom appears to be a bit farther right than G.W. Bush and it sounds like his listeners may be even farther. To each his own but at that point it went from entertaining to uncomfortable so I stopped listening.

In any event, I will dig into these podcasts a bit more and find a good subscription list. I'll also be looking for some that are appropriate for young people as my eight year old son might enjoy hearing these as he goes to sleep. If you have any recommendations then please send them in.

Off to Chicago!

Virgin's Linux in-flight system barfs

Nice article in the New York Times on Virgin's Linux-based in-flight system. Maybe they can get some open source volunteers to fix all of the bugs. Notable quotes:

"She asked the flight attendant to reset her terminal, but that actually made the problem worse. Every 10 seconds for the last four hours of the flight, a small graphical box popped up on her screen that unhelpfully said: “Fork failed: error 12. Can not allocate memory.”

Is this related to the food service? Here's another good one:

"The header on the message declared, “Airplay Error” – which in my opinion is a little too close to “Airplane Error.”

Well, at least Virgin saved a bunch of money because the software was free. Nice.

Rockin' with the Dell m1330

You may recall the battery problem I had with my IBM ThinkPad and the resulting customer service inquisition. It turns out the the battery was OK - it was the ThinkPad that was broken, refusing the charge batteries in general.

As it was busted and getting long in the tooth, I did a bit of research to find a new notebook that could take the punishing Microsoft corporate environment. I needed something with the following criteria:

• Not too big and heavy, under 4 lbs.
• Decent size screen, widescreen a plus
• Serious horsepower and storage
• Good battery life with extended battery options
• Cool-looking a plus

I ended up with a Dell m1330, loaded up with a 2.2Ghz processor and 4Gb of RAM. It also came with an LED backlit screen, 13" wide screen and 3.8 lbs. It also has a slot loading DVD drive. I bought an extended battery for it on eBay. As a bonus, it's red with brushed aluminum keypad area.

As soon as I ordered it I started reading about production delays - problems with white paint and red paint, LED part shortages. Mine was supposed to show up August 8th and the day before it was supposed to arrive I was informed it would be two weeks late. Several days later, however, it showed up "early." Nice trick, Dell.

I took off the various apps and stripped it down to its Vista Ultimate goodness before getting it on the Microsoft domain and loading up the corporate apps. Net net, it is a screamer. Going from my old ThinkPad to the Dell m1330 is like going from a tricycle to a Harley. It boots fast, it runs fast - the index searching on the PC and in Outlook 2007 is basically instantaneous. Jaysus!

Battery life is solid -a few hours on a standard battery and about six hours on the extended. The screen is very readable, sharp and bright. It has an integrated camera in the screen that I haven't used yet. It also has a fingerprint reader that I set up and is an easy way to log in. I use the HDMI out to connect it to my 24" widescreen display - nice.

It doesn't have a docking connector (the "docking station" that Dell sells is useless - it's really just a USB port replicator), but i created a poor man's docking station by bundling the HDMI, power, USB and the ethernet cable into one big cable with a twist-tie. I just plug those four in the side and it works. Frankly, the IBM doc was always a hassle to undock and dock anyway.

So far, so good!

Family Controls for Windows Live

Pretty good stuff here from LiveSide - Messenger can now be set so that your kids have to get your permission to add any contact.

You need to be running the latest beta - v8.5 of Messenger - get it here.

Annual Tech Support Call

Part of my trip back east every year is also to check in on my Dad's set up and see how things are faring - kind of an annual tech support call. He has signed up for broadband Internet in the past year, which is a big step up.

This year I brought some goodies - Microsoft LifeCam and a copy of Windows Vista. The plan was to take advantage of the broadband by adding the video camera, with the handy call button on top and do a general upgrade, mainly due to Vista's vastly improved photo handling and easier methods to find stuff.

Problem #1 was that the system, although it had plenty of horsepower, had only 512Mb RAM. Yes, Vista would run, but it wouldn't be great, so I suggested an upgrade to add two more 512Mb sticks to the system at some point.

I set him up with a LiveID and installed the LifeCam (why not LiveCam?). Worked well and he has the latest Messenger on there now as well.

I also simplified the set up by taking two logins and making them one, eliminating the login screen and consolidating the Documents and Pictures folders into one. Much easier. I also added IE7 and Windows Media Player 11.

The IE7 upgrade was problematic. It all worked fine and I even set up a simple live.com homepage for him (which seems to handle RSS feeds much better than mymsn). However, IE7 had a problem printing a Northwest boarding pass for my brother and printing AOL emails in a tiny font. That last one required my Dad to install Firefox and I had to talk him through that on the phone - bummer!

Other tech support items includes a wireless router, which will enable him to use his huge Toshiba schleptop around the house, a new 2.4Ghz phone system (snagged this one from Amazon and I hear it works well!), and finally his Sony multi-CD player is on the fritz - better to just a buy a new one.

Whew.

Being a Microsoft employee on the road Part 2- "Shove It"

I attended a Kiwanis breakfast this morning with my Dad here on Cape Cod with about thirty people, mostly men, mostly over 70.

My Dad introduced me around, like he does every year, and I had small talk with his fellow "Kiwani." They asked where I was from ("Seattle is a long way from the Cape!"), my family, and where I worked. It was a very friendly New England atmosphere.

I met one gentleman who used to work for IBM as my Dad introduced me as a Microsoft employee. The gentleman shook my hand, smiled, and said that Microsoft can take their new release (Vista) and "shove it." Apparently he has five PCs, bought a new one that came with Vista and said it has a number of small issues.

I wasn't going to get into it with him and simply said that I was sorry to hear that. He softened his stance a bit, went on to say he knew Bill Gates, had done the original DOS deal when he was at IBM, etc. I had a strong feeling he was not having tech support issues so I didn't pursue any particular outreach. He wanted to vent, or something, I guess.

Have a nice day!

Being a Microsoft employee on the road

I enjoy the reactions I get when I tell people outside of the Puget Sound areas that I work for Microsoft. I always get some sort of reaction like "wow, that is interesting" or "oh really? I use Google" or sometimes it's an odd tech support question.

Some interesting snippets from recent wedding visit back east:

• My good friend (the groom) was explaining to me how he liked OpenOffice, since it was free. He has a small engineering business. However, when he used it to create a sign up sheet for the hotel/wedding site shuttle, he couldn't get the table to print out with lines around the boxes. He went through menu after menu, option and after option, but still couldn't get it to print right. He finally switched over to Word on his PC and printed it in five minutes. I guess free isn't always "free."
• I was chatting with one of the groom's friends and he noticed my Windows Mobile phone (T-Mo Dash with Windows Mobile 6). He asked what it was and I ran through a few scenarios - follow up flags in Outlook mobile, seeing attendees in meeting events, etc. He showed me his Treo - a hulking mass with the extra battery taped to the back, which was loaded with the Good Technology email client. I mentioned that with Windows Mobile you don't need any extra clients or servers - just type in your exchange server name and you're good to go, plus the Dash is about one third as thick as his Treo. For the capper I showed him Live Search for Windows Mobile, which rocks, as I had heard him talking about Google Maps on his Treo.

One customer at a time. :)