One Man Shouting

Matt and Patrick have both posted recently that our team is still looking for more full-time hires.  Patrick points out many of the perks, and Matt highlights how working for Microsoft in Charlotte can be a great opportunity.

I just wanted to add my thoughts into the mix.  I've only actually worked 2 weeks, and now I'm out on "ICL" which is how they refer to Infant Care Leave at Microsoft.  In addition to all the stuff Patrick highlights, this ICL thing is by far my favorite benefit so far.  Even though my youngest son was born before I joined Microsoft, they allowed me to take the same 4 weeks off that any new Microsoft dad gets.  (I'll refer any questions about how this works to someone in HR, I believe you just have to take it within 6 months of the child's birth.)

In the first two weeks, the team has been awesome, helping me get machines set up the right way, teaching me the tools that we use to manage workload, bringing me up to speed on the messaging technologies we support.  I'm very psyched to get back to work, but for now I'm making the best use of my ICL by getting the family moved down to Charlotte.  The truck left today with all of our stuff, and if all goes according to plan, we'll be starting the new year in a new (to us) house down in Charlotte.

In summary, the benefits are awesome, lots of great perks, challenging and interesting work.  If you have ever thought about working for Microsoft but didn't really want to consider moving to the west coast, seriously consider these openings, and feel free to contact me via the link on this blog if you have any questions for a "new-hire".

(Warning, semi-rambling post ahead...)

Lately I’ve been thinking about how we use media.  A little over a year ago, we joined the DVR revolution with DirecTv’s DVR option, and this taste of flexibility has highlighted exactly how far behind technology we’re lagging in consumer experience.  The DVR is a nice little island utopia.  As long as we’re at the TV with the DVR, the kids have their pick of their favorite shows.  My wife and I can watch a show that we missed, or that we recorded because it was too late for us to stay up.  Unfortanely as soon as you sail away from the island, all is lost.  The DVD player in the car can only serve up movies that we have physical discs for (what an archaic concept!).  My Zune only holds music, videos and pictures that I explicitly put onto is (I don’t keep a lot of media on my computer, so I have to go out of my way to sync stuff.)  My family pictures, home movies, and other digital media mostly lives on our Windows Home Server, which makes it very accessible to our home computers, but not very useful on the road.

What would utopia look like?  Media shared everywhere. If my family owns it, I want it available wherever.

In practice, it’s not this simple.  How would data get from the DVR to the server?  How do you deal with devices with limited storage (come to think of it, every device has some sort of limit)?  How does data get onto the Zune, into the car, etc.

I’m thinking that a simple provider-subscriber model could work.  Each device would advertise it’s content using a format that could describe the media in enough detail that subscribers could make sense of it, and then they could make decisions about retrieving the media (RSS with enclosures might work as-is or with minor extension).  Each device would also have a configurable subscriber profile that would define what it would actively retrieve, or what it would make available by reference.  So, for example:

• DVR Records a bunch of shows.
• DVR publishes listings with metadata via RSS.
• Windows Home Server retrieves RSS from DVR.  Based on its settings WHS will actively retrieve some shows that I’ve set to archive and save them on the server.
• These shows will be added to WHS’s published RSS, with some sort of UID included so that the DVR doesn’t think it needs to copy them back.

or:

• WHS stores some home movies.
• WHS publishes a listing of home movies via RSS.
• DVR subscribes to this listing, and makes them available via the DVR _by reference_, basically it doesn’t make a local copy, but you can view the movies on your TV by selecting them through the DVR interface after which they are streamed from the WHS.  (Wouldn’t want to waste the DVR’s limited drive space by making a local copy.)

The scenarios go from there.  You could set priorities for devices with smaller storage like my Zune30.  It could actively retrieve the most recent 2 episodes of each of my kid’s favorite shows, as well as the most recent episodes of Las Vegas (the one show I try to watch each week), and maybe also a few podcasts that WHS has downloaded for me. 

Ok, that last sentence made this a bit more interesting.  The subscriber/provider model extends. I can subscribe to internet feeds to acquire content.  If I want to, I can publish a feed of select home movies and my family members can subscribe to them.  The data flow might go:

• Digital Camcorder uploads to Client computer. 
• Client computer publishes via RSS. 
• WHS subscribes to RSS and retrieves and archives media (archive action might actually remove it from client depending on settings). 
• WHS adds home movies to its published feed.  
• After reviewing the movies on the server I tag a few as “Share_Family” and they become available on a feed that is accessible from the internet. 
• My extended family then can subscribe via their own WHS or a client application and the content will automatically be transferred to their local repository.

Feeds should be configurable, so that I can build custom feeds that filter by tag, time, format, media type, etc.  So basically each provider will have a single subscription endpoint, but the feed can be filtered, or alternately the client can retrieve the entire feed, and filter locally.  Also, authentication should be an option so that you can make a public/private distinction, or even control access in a more granular manner.

Ok, this has devolved into a bit of stream-of-consciousness rambling, but hopefully it conveys that the technology to do this is available today, but that the implementation is lagging.  DRM is a hurdle to open integration like this, but it’s not an insurmountable one.  Hopefully media companies will realize that if they make their content available and give consumers the freedom to use it in flexible ways, then the consumers will actually be more likely to consume the content.

(Disclaimer:  This post is pure speculation by me.  It does not convey any information from my current or future employers.  I do not know if anything like this is in development, I just wanted to throw out some ideas that might make the consumer experience better in the future.)

Back in June, I switched from a first-gen Motorola Q to a non Windows Mobile phone, a Samsung SCH-u740.  I’m still using the u740, and have some thoughts about how it stacks up to my previous phone.

Overall, it’s a bit of a mixed review for me.

Things that are much better about the u740:

Unlimited Mobile Web w/ VCast – Instead of paying $40 a month for unlimited data, I get unlimited Mobile Web by paying $15 a month for VCast.  My phone data use centers mostly around checking email and reading RSS feeds.  The mobile clients for both Live Hotmail and Gmail are very usable.  I recently switched form Newsgator to Google Reader, and while I used to read feeds all the time with Newsgator’s mobile reader, the mobile version of Google Reader is painful enough to use that I hardly ever open it up.  Regardless, Mobile Web is more than capable of allowing me to consume information (aka waste time) when I have a spare minute, and offset some other time that I would’ve spent staring at a regular computer.

Fast Application Startup – When you hit the camera button, the time to ready is very speedy compared with Windows Mobile.

Things that I miss about the Motorola Q and WinMo in general:

Pocket IE – As much as I cursed the partial compatibility of Pocket IE, it was leaps and bounds above the browser in Mobile Web.

QVGA Screen – Simply put, more pixels means more data on the screen, period.

Open platform – I like to tinker, and being able to try different applications, or even write some code every once and a while is nice.  No such luck with the u740

Summary

If not for the difference in data costs between the two, I would probably be back on Windows Mobile already. I know Windows Mobile data users probably actually use considerably more data than Mobile Web users, so I get the reasoning behind the price differential, but it’s too big of a monthly hit for me to justify it right now.

What I’d really like to see is a Windows Mobile 6 device in the same form-factor as the u740, and then if Verizon could cut their data plan back to $20 to $25 a month, I’d probably be sold.

Let’s see… Since my life wasn’t busy enough with a new baby in the house, writing a book, trying to keep up with the whole MVP thing, and just in general having a very busy life, I have decided to add one more layer of complexity into the mix.

As of December 3rd, 2007, I will be joining Microsoft as an Escalation Engineer working in the Charlotte, NC office.  An unintended consequence of this is that I’ll no longer be able to hold the Microsoft MVP title for Windows Home Server.  From what I understand, I can continue to "serve" as an MVP until I take my spot as a FTE, and then my MVP status gets retired. 

Various friends and readers who have communicated with me in the past may know that I’ve had ambitions about working at Microsoft for a long time, and this final “fit” came together over the last couple months.

It’s a busy time, so I’m not going to promise anything quickly, but I have some rough notes around which I’m formulating a few blog posts about the Microsoft recruiting process and my own “journey”.  I think my “To Blog” list is at about 6 posts deep, and I’m not sure when I’ll get around to it.

In the mean time, if anyone is looking for a great family home in the Lexington Park MD area, check out: http://45693Spruce.com

Also, we’ve confirmed that one of my older kids has a bad cat allergy, so we’re trying to find a home for the last of our three cats, details can be seen here: http://www.animalrelieffund.org/animals/detail?AnimalID=321793

Over the last couple of days, the listing of WHS MVP's on Microsoft's MVP Site has been slowly growing.  It looks like most folks received notice of the award late on Monday, but they won't appear on the listing unless they mark their profile to be visible to the public.

At this time I'm seeing Grey Lancaster, who has been on the listing since the category was added to the MVP site.  I'm guessing he may have been an MVP that was previously assigned to a different competency, but who got moved over to the WHS group.

Other appearances include Ken Warren.  If you ever frequent Microsoft's WHS Forums, it seems that Ken manages to answer 90% of all questions posted. (Totally made-up statistic, but that's the way it seems).

Also included is Terry Walsh, who runs the We Got Served blog.  Terry manages to collect and generate a great deal of information and news about WHS. His site is often the first place I see new information on WHS.

I'm very honored to be included in the list of awardees as well!  I'm not sure yet what all this MVP status really means, but I'm looking forward to finding out over the next year!

Hopefully the listing will grow a little bit more as WHS MVP awardees fill out their profiles and mark them as visible.  There has been some very strong community involvement in WHS since the early Beta days, and it's great to see that Microsoft recognizes the positive impact of folks that make time to be involved.

As has been pointed out, I am the author of a new book about Windows Home Server for Wiley Publishing.  The book is titled Windows Home Server: Protect and Simplify Your Digital Life, and it should be available in January '08.  The book focuses on teaching computer users how to make the best use of Microsoft's new Windows Home Server line of products to protect their data and simplify their computing experience.

The Amazon.com write-up covers things pretty well.

I've got a bunch of blog posts in my head covering what I've learned so far as I'm going through the authoring process for the first time.  The editors I've been working with at Wiley are great, and I'm really looking forward to completing the process and actually holding a real printed copy of the book in my hands.  I've found writing to be very enjoyable.  The technical research, and the setup for screenshots and such takes a lot of time, but it's a geeky kind of fun.  It's great to have an excuse to "play around" with my home server and computers each night.

Obviously, blogging is going to be pretty slow until I finish up the book, but as I've said before, that really shouldn't matter.

I'm late to the party, but if you haven't heard, Windows Home Server has RTM'd.  Lot's of bloggers already covering this.

From the outside looking in, this seems to have gone more smoothly than other Microsoft projects as of late.  Maybe Charlie Kindel can give us a post-mortem of how they managed to to keep things on track, or at least maintain the appearance of staying on track.

I'm looking forward to seeing the OEM machines actually hit the street, and see how they fare in the market. 

1. Memory Stick Backups - A service that will run on my desktop or laptop and automatically back up my USB memory stick whenever I plug it in.  Each memory stick should be backed up to the same location on the server no matter which computer I plug it in to.
2. Download Manager - Automatically hand off regular downloads from Internet Explorer to be downloaded and stored on my home server.
3. User Account Sync - Automatically create user accounts on client PCs for each Windows Home Server user account.  Automatically update passwords.
4. Favorites Sync - Sync my favorites to a folder on WHS. (I know I can do this with foldershare.  Add-in would be much better.)  Also include Desktop Sync, My Documents Sync, etc.

For many years, I've been a paying customer for Hotmail.  Now this isn't as big a benefit as it used to be, but still, I like the service I get, and usually don't have any issues.  Tonight, after sending an email, I tried to use the "Add Contact" feature, and was denied.  Instead of the expected result, I got the following:

This prompted me to check how many contacts I've got squirreled away.  Evidently, I've accumulated 999 contacts.  While I admit that it's a lot, every one of those contacts was added for a reason, and now Windows Live Hotmail is telling me that I have to purge something if I want to continue adding contacts.

Now I'm in total agreement that my Address Book could use some serious spring cleaning, but I don't like being forced into it.  Besides that, my current "Mailbox Usage" is resting at 6% of 4GB used.  This is not a space issue.  This is an arbitrary limit that was placed on Hotmail.  My question is: What is the functional or business requirement that caused them to set this limit at 999?  Basically, this tells power users and communicators that if they have more than 999 legitimate contacts, then Hotmail isn't good enough for them.

For the better part of 5 years, I have carried a Windows Mobile device on a daily basis.  My first Windows Mobile device was a Dell Axim X5 (And for the nitpickers, it actually ran Microsoft Pocket PC 2002).  I had a short run with an SMT5600 Smart Phone, and an even longer run with an Axim X50v.  Since last May I have been a happy Motorola Q owner.  We've had some good times, checked email well over 1000 times, read blogs, navigated the eastern US.

But tomorrow, I'm saying goodbye, or at least fare-well to my Windows Mobile days.  I've got an order in for a Samsung SCH-u740.  When I first saw this phone, my initial gut reaction was "That's going to be my next SmartPhone", but after I realized that it didn't run Windows Mobile, I brushed it aside.  Yeah it's a cool phone, and the form factor is pretty innovative, but what about all the cool Windows Mobile apps that it can't run?  You see, I had become a Windows Mobile snob.

Lately though, I've come to realize that Windows Mobile to me is like having a 800 watt home theater speaker setup.  You don't really need that much volume, but there's some geek appeal to knowing that you could shake your neighbor's fillings loose with a simple turn of a knob.  Sports cars that can do 200mph fall into the same mental category for me.  Same with giant SUV's that never set a wheel off paved ground.  It's excess capacity, and frankly I don't really need it.

My new SCH-u740 will let me check email, and I can browse blogs.  And it's supposed to be a pretty good phone as well.  Plus it can do all of this without having Verizon's outrageously priced unlimited data plan.  I'll sign up for Mobile Web 2.0, and that will give me all I need.

Now I'm sure there are many Windows Mobile fans out there that are thinking "He just doesn't get it".  I used to be one of you.  But now I feel like I do get it.  My phone is a tool that I use to communicate, and I've found a phone that will let me communicate the way I like, at a lower cost, and in a form factor that I love.  Just because I usually prefer Microsoft technology doesn't mean I'm going to blindly follow the Microsoft brand, when better alternatives exist.

There's a 30 day window where I can return the new phone if it doesn't live up to my expectations, so I guess Windows Mobile and I are really on a trial separation.  I'll write up my post-Windows Mobile experience after I've had time to get used to the new phone, including what I think works better outside the Microsoft umbrella, and what I miss. 

Google Maps has released some street-level imagery with Street View. One interesting note is that this feature seems to have sidestepped Google's typical protracted "Beta" phase. (Seriously, why is Gmail still in Beta?  Did they just forget to edit the logo?) 

The Street View interface is pretty usable and intuitive from a first take, I'd even say quite a bit better than the initial "driving game" style interface seen at preview.local.live.com

There's been a bit of confusion about what the imaging vehicles look like with Engadget posting reflected images yesterday, and then later posting images of Immersive's non-stealth imaging vehicle.

First shot of the van, captured from Google Maps

Immersive's VW, from Immersive Media Website

Some are arguing that one or the other is incorrect, but the likely case is that the initial imaging was done with unmarked, inconspicuous vehicles and that future imaging will be done with those cute VW Beetles.

This same pattern was seen with Microsoft's Streetside imaging vehicles (actually run by Facet Technologies)

Stealth Van: (found in a reflected image back in March 2006)

Non-stealth Truck: (spotted on the OH turnpike in June 2005)

Whatever the case, it's very interesting to see competition in this space.  I'm just waiting for the 3d-city views and this street-level imaging to converge through some marriage of Photosynth-like technology, huge datasets, and lots of processing power.

Terry Walsh over at We Got Served posts a theory that Microsoft's Code2Fame competition has driven all Windows Home Server add-in development underground.  Looking at the activity on the forums, I'd have to say that his theory appears to be correct.

I just wanted to echo Terry's suggestion that the team should pony up a small prize for a Community Choice Award, and let the Beta/CTP/RC community vote for a favorite.

If you follow the videos that come out of Microsoft Research, Microsoft Surface doesn't contain too many surprises.  Still it's a very intriguing concept, and I can see how it really can change the way we interact with information.  For announcements like this, I usually point to the press release, but the text description seems totally dead compared to the actual concept.  Head over to the Microsoft Surface website and watch some videos if you really want to understand what it's about.

And the developer in me wants to know where the SDK is!  I'll have to do some digging on MSDN and see if it's already out there.

My Windows Home Server machine has become such an integral and reliable part of my home network that it is easy to forget that it is not released software.  Early on, I set up some "extra" protection for my data.  All of my irreplaceable data is synchronized to other machines via Microsoft's Foldershare (although I bumped my head on FolderShare's arbitrary 10k file limit a couple of times, it was mostly a smooth process.)

Tonight I received a notification email from the Beta program that contained some very important information.  We are all expecting a new build, RC1, to be released soon, and when that happens, anyone who wants to update to the new build is in for some beta-induced pain.  Due to a bug in the CTP code, installation of the RC1 build will not support the "Server Reinstall" mode.  What this means for users is that your data may not be preserved if you blindly click through the installation.  The email states that all data should be backed up to another medium before you dive into the installation.  Reading through the details, it looks like there are circumstances where the data may remain intact, and if you have folder duplication turned on, it looks like the chances are better for preserving the shares. Hopefully testers will heed the warning, and back up all of their data just in case.

Another interesting point is the shutting down of the feedback section on Connect, which totally makes sense given that there has been a lot of duplication of info between the forums and Connect ever since they opened the forums.

For the curious, the full email is below:

Windows Home Server Beta Participants,

We wanted to briefly touch base with you all to help you prepare you for the upcoming Windows Home Server Release Candidate (RC) and also to say, thank you for your help and participation and for helping to make Windows Home Server even better! We have had a fantastic response to our beta program and we truly appreciate all of your efforts in helping us build a better product.

As of 5/23/07, we will be disabling the ability for you to submit feedback via Connect and will begin our transition of feature requests and problem reports to the Windows Home Server Forums. This is a natural evolution of our product development cycle. The forums are a very active community and we encourage you to participate, learn and contribute. You will still be able to query on feedback that Insider

We also wanted you to be aware of changes we made in the RC release that will impact you if you have large amounts of data that you do not have alternate backups of. In the RC the default option for Server Setup is going to be "New Installation." The effect of this is you will not be able to easily upgrade from Beta 2/CTP to RC or RTM. This is going to be painful for some of you who have large data sets and we apologize up front for that. However, the changes we made were essential to ensuring a great user experience for the product moving forward and as beta testers we are sure you can understand.

For most of you, moving from Beta 2 or the CTP to the RC will involve backing up any data you don't already have stored somewhere else and then copying it back on after you have "clean" installed the RC. If you have followed our guidance that you have backups of anything you were storing on the Beta or CTP you will have another copy of all of your data somewhere else anyway so the initial step of copying data off of your old installation should involve only recent changes and thus a small amount of data.

Server Recovery (the mechanism used to recover a Windows Home Server when the primary drive has failed and replaced) will be a choice in the setup UI in the RC and RTM. However, using this as a way of "upgrading" from Beta 2 or the CTP to RC is not officially supported. There are significant known issues (e.g. due to a bug in the CTP, using Server Recovery to move to RC or RTM will result in a loss of all Home Computer backups and any non-duplicated shared folders may or may not be preserved). We strongly recommend that you clean-install the RC.

We know this is going to be a painful situation for some of you. We tried to make it clear in our documentation and messaging that you should always have backups of any data you are storing on Windows Home Server during the beta and we also were very clear that while we would try to enable an easy upgrade path we could not promise it. We also know that some of you have very large data sets where having another backup is practically impossible and/or the act of copying such a data set is extremely time consuming (our instrumentation tells us that one of you has over 6.5TB of data!). However, based on beta testing feedback we determined that we had no choice but to make some changes to the system that broke the easy upgrade path. We appreciate your feedback as beta testers and thank you for your understanding and continued support.

At this point we *can* confidently say that we will support upgrading from the RC to the RTM version.

Thanks again for all of your hard efforts and contributions to making the Windows Home Server Product the best product possible.

Kevin Beares

Windows Home Server Community Lead

Looks like Dell is finally jumping on the TabletPC bandwagon.  It's about time!  Dell posted the following video on their blog.

(Click here if you can't see the video)