Rob Relyea: Microsoft

Zune: speaker docks, etc...

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:55:37 GMT

My brother just sent me a woot deal on the altec lansing Zune Speakers/Dock. He meant well...but he just wasted 30 minutes of my morning! Ok, maybe it was me...I wasted 30 minutes trying to decide if I should buy it again, before I realized that it wasn't even worth it at $40...

I bought one @ $200 or so last year when I first got my Zune. The disappointing thing about it is that the remote control is so inferior when compared with the zune remote. You really couldn't navigate the zune menu system with the remote. I returned it.

What may be even more disappointing, is that the newer model from Altec Lansing may not have fixed that...given that the writeup says 'select zune functions'. Should have told them last year!

"Full-function remote. Speaker, FM radio, and select Zune functions are at your fingertips."

What I do for Zune listening now

Home Office: usually broadcast it out my TV...see the menus on the screen...very nice (but see comment below in What I want). Sometimes run Zune client, but then only get to listen out my laptop speakers. I really need to get the wireless sync happy with my work laptop, so I don't need to move my Zune doc back and forth from being attached to my laptop and my MediaCenterPC/TV.

Rest of House: have a 1st edition Zune dock plugged into my old Sony Stereo. I can drive speakers in my home office, kitchen, master bedroom and master bath...but the Zune is in the kitchen which makes remote control very inconvenient.

Car: do without right now...have had radio transmitter with some success...looking for audio system that does Zune control in car like the Ford Sync system.

Work Office: have the first edition of the Zune dock hooked up to relatively cheap powered speakers.

Bus: use headphones (nothing fancy yet)

...2nd generation Zune Dock looks nice...

What I want

I want good audio/video throughout my house, in my car, and at work. I want to be able to drive in my car, hop on the bus, get to work, and listen to the same thing at all 3 places. I'm really happy with my Zune 30G from a year ago, especially now that the new firmware and software for my PC is making things better...love the podcast support!

However, there are a bunch of issues that I'd love to see fixed.

So although I'm loving most Zuney things, several things can be improved:

1) Zune player + Zune device don't understand my progress in a podcast. I start on my PC, get 20 minutes in. Decide to undock and go, go to the same piece and expect to pick up at the same place. Is it me, it might be?

2) When you dock and are syncing, you can't play from the Zune device...I don't like having to switch back to my PC...I like my Zune remote. Perhaps wireless sync will make this better, but I haven't gotten my Zune to be able to talk with my work laptop yet...firewall issues???

2) I love driving the menu of the zune on my TV, however, I shouldn't have to choose between seeing my Media Center UI (input 1) and my Zune UI (input 2). Somebody from the Zune team wanna see my home office/etc...?

Related Info that May be Interesting for later

Zune AV Cable Pinouts

Improved commuting to Redmond via "Microsoft Connector"

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:36:16 GMT

Microsoft recently announced that they are going to be running a free bus service to the Redmond campus from 5 locations around Seattle/Eastside. I'm interested to see how this develops. Buzzworthy from the Seattle PI links to a map and a few articles/posts.

I have gone through periods where I bike 1-2 days a week, or bus 1-2 days a week. Currently, I've fallen out of both habits. Anything to tip the scales back in favor away from me driving as a Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) would be very welcome!

I've long thought that Sammamish residents would benefit from a ferry that went across Lake Sammamish and shuttled folks to campus...wifi and coffee would naturally be part of that picture.

Windows Live Writer - Beta3 Now Available

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:02:38 GMT

I repeat...if you are blogging, or whenever you start, make sure you give Live Writer a try!

We have another new version now: Windows Live Writer Beta 3 Now Available. I'm just starting to give it a spin. I plan on updating this post with my impressions as I did with my feedback on Beta2 of Live Writer.

I'm happy they have a unified installer for this and other Windows Live software...

Spaces.live.com - nice updates in functionality, still room to grow

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:38:10 GMT

As a blogger on spaces.live.com, I'm happy with the improvements that just happened with an update to Spaces, and I'm also still eager for a few more.

Here is what I have noticed today:

What's New

The URI for What's new is mostly great. For me it is rrelyea.home.services.spaces.live.com. No QueryString! Yeah! "home.services" is a bit weird, but I can live with it...

The useful things for me on What's new:

A link to any messages that people may have sent
A link to any friend requests ...
A "Views today: ####" summary, which links to stats (the same old stats interface)
A list of the 10 latest comments, with links that take me to the article. It used to take me to the article in edit mode..and it was difficult to figure out the URI of the article, etc.... I'm a little frustrated that this list is limited to 10 comments. If they scroll off the bottom, I now need to go check every comment on every post I've ever done.

Your Space

When I am logged in and editing my Space the URI for "Your Space" is great: rrelyea.spaces.live.com.

I don't need to change these types of settings very often...there is a "More" drop down button that can navigate me to my Blog page...which has the nice URI of http://rrelyea.spaces.live.com/blog. I still occassionally see some bad querystrings (like when I click on summary: http://rrelyea.spaces.live.com/?_c11_BlogPart_BlogPart=summary&_c=BlogPart) ...but I'm sure they will be cleaned up over time.

I suspect there are a few tweaks to the blog page...is the summary/entries view new? Don't know.

List Editing

I think they have added the feature to change the order on items in my list. Very helpful. http://robrelyea.com/wpf/books was forced to have an alphabetical ordering, if I recall, even though I wanted Petzold's 3d book to come after the general WPF books.

Big Issues Still Left

I'm happy with Spaces as a blog engine. I enjoy using Windows Live Writer to author my posts. I still have 4 major issues that I'd like to see the Spaces team improve.

1) URIs for my posts are hideous...and are an embarrassment to share. They don't communicate any idea about the topic or date about my post -- in fact some times when I past them in to some blog comment tools, the blog comment tools interpret the "!" as the end of the URI, and so the uri isn't even functional. I could go on...

2) Stats could be much improved. I'd like to see more per posting details. I'd like to understand where people are linking to me from, etc...

3) It would be nice if the title of every post was a hyperlink to its permalink. (update: Karen on the spaces team told me that when you are on the rrelyea.spaces.live.com/blog page, the titles are hyperlinks. That is great...I just want that to be the case even when I am viewing one article. My common scenario is that I want to share a link to an article. I like copying the title to the clipboard with the URI wrapped inside it, rather than doing 2 copies, a ctrl-k, etc...)

4) Searchability of my posts on Live.Com - I want to use "Relyea" with other search terms to help find when I talked about a specific topic. Live.com doesn't do as good a job as Google with that. I'm not sure if Spaces could do something better here...or if Live Search should.

Bloggers/Readers: What are your thoughts?

If you blog on Spaces, please make sure to tell me and the Spaces team what you'd like to see them do to improve! If you read my blog on Spaces, is there anything I could do or Spaces should do to make it a better experience

Chicktionary: Clever game to expose folks to Live Search

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:32:07 GMT

I saw an article about Live Search's improvement in traffic, partially due to Chicktionary, an interesting word game that shows search results for words you find.

Don't bother zipping .PPTX files

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:22:10 GMT

Somebody recently sent me a .pptx file inside of a .zip file. Remember that .xps, .docx, .xlsx, .pptx files are all based on Open Packaging Convention (OPC) and thus are stored in a zip structured file, so you usually won't see any compression benefits by putting those files into a .zip file.

Update [6/25/2007]: a good (somewhat developer centric) list of the benefits of the new office file formats can be found in the Office Developer documentation in MSDN. A snapshot/rewording of those benefits for end users:

The new Office XML Formats introduce a number of benefits for users:

Robust. The new Office file formats are designed to be more robust than the old formats, and, therefore, to help reduce the risk of lost information due to damaged or corrupted files.

Efficient. The Office XML Formats use ZIP and compression technologies to store documents. A significant benefit of the new formats is substantially smaller file sizes—up to 75 percent smaller than comparable binary documents.

Backward-compatible. The 2007 Microsoft Office system is backward-compatible with these earlier versions: Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office XP, and Microsoft Office 2003. Users of these versions can adopt the new format with little effort and continue to gain maximum benefit from existing files.

Secure. The openness of the Office XML Formats translates to more secure and transparent files. You can share documents confidently because you can easily identify and remove personally identifiable information and business-sensitive information, such as user names, comments, and file paths. By default, the new Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats (docx, etc...) do not execute embedded code. So, if a person receives an e-mail message with a Word document attached, he or she could open the attachment knowing the document does not execute harmful code. The Office XML Formats include a special-purpose format with a separate extension for files (docm, etc...) with embedded code, enabling IT staff to quickly identify files that contain code.

Update 2 [6/25/2007]: an Office PM pointed me towards Introduction to new file name extensions and Office XML Formats which has good end-user level benefits for the new file formats. Here is a snapshot:

Compact files Files are automatically compressed and can be up to 75 percent smaller in some cases. The Office XML Formats uses zip compression technology to store documents, offering potential cost savings as it reduces the disk space required to store files and decreases the bandwidth needed to send files via e-mail, over networks, and across the Internet. When you open a file, it is automatically unzipped. When you save a file, it is automatically zipped again. You do not have to install any special zip utilities to open and close files in the 2007 Office release.
Improved damaged-file recovery Files are structured in a modular fashion that keeps different data components in the file separate from each other. This allows files to be opened even if a component within the file (for example, a chart or table) is damaged or corrupted.
Better privacy and more control over personal information Documents can be shared confidentially, because personally identifiable information and business-sensitive information, such as author names, comments, tracked changes, and file paths can be easily identified and removed by using Document Inspector. For details, see Remove hidden data and personal information from Office documents.
Better integration and interoperability of business data Using Office XML Formats as the data interoperability framework for the 2007 Office release set of products means that documents, worksheets, presentations, and forms can be saved in an XML file format that is freely available for anyone to use and to license, royalty free. Office also supports customer-defined XML Schemas that enhance the existing Office document types. This means that customers can easily unlock information in existing systems and act upon it in familiar Office programs. Information that is created within Office can be easily used by other business applications. All you need to open and edit an Office file is a ZIP utility and an XML editor.
Easier detection of documents that contain macros Files that are saved by using the default "x" suffix (such as .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx) cannot contain Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros and XLM macros. Only files whose file name extension ends with an "m" (such as .docm, .xlsm, and .pptm) can contain macros.

Live Writer: Beta2 Available

Thu, 31 May 2007 13:26:18 GMT

I can't tell you how much I enjoy blogging via Live Writer. I had been using an internal version for a while (I wanted SharePoint support for an internal blog), but I just upgraded to the newly released Live Writer Beta2.

If you blog, I strongly recommend giving it a try.

I wrote my feedback about Live Writer back in August 2006.

How is Beta2?

Below, I've repeated the problems I had back then along with the resolution status:

Code Samples: I'd like to see better preservation of code sample formatting when pasted in. They look beautiful in VS, but come into live writer unindented and they have lost their colorization. Update: I even tried CopyAsHtml (an addin for VS) but that didn't improve things.

Resolved: I use the "Paste from Visual Studio" Plugin...very nice.

Linking: Creating a link to a previous post should be much easier. Is "Insert Link" the best that it can do? I want to grab a url by looking at a list of my previous posts in rich ways, finding the one I want via sorting, searching, etc... and then right clicking and saying grab link. The link should have the blog title in a functional hyperlink.

Better: I now see that Insert Hyperlink has a Link To button that allows you to pick previous posts. Unfortunately, it grabs the URL, but not the title of the post for the hyperlink.

Properties/Link: No clue what the View/Properties: Link text box does. For a second, I thought it was a way to give your blog a URL...I would have loved that! [Added 8/29/2006]

Not Resolved (when does Properties become enabled?)

Post Cache is a problem - If I originally posted with Live Writer, but then modify with the web interface, I try to open it later via File/Open Post, but it seems to use the original post I had. I would think that the software would even detect when I open a recent post that it was the latest content for the site.

Resolved: I haven't tested it, but this is one of the features called out in beta2: "Automatic synchronization of local and online edits"

Font control - I want font control - mostly for Consolas for code samples...

Not Resolved

Preview in web site - it goes to my main page for previews...which doesn't work well if I am editing a piece that is no longer on my front page. I'd much prefer if the preview window navigated to the permalink of the post that I just published.

Not Resolved

Technorati tags: LiveWriter, Microsoft, Software

Microsoft Surface: direct interaction, multi-touch contact, multi-user experience, & object recognition.

Wed, 30 May 2007 09:33:44 GMT

Very happy to see that we've (Microsoft) announced Microsoft Surface. I've met with the team 1 or 2 (I forget...) times over the years (back when they called it a "PlayTable"). Several other WPF team members have had more interaction with them (see Kevin's post). After v1 a few key people from the WPF team joined their team. [1] It was amazing several years ago, I'm happy it is going to market! Sounds like they are going to have devices shipping this year.

Watch the 3 videos of the functionality @ microsoft.com/surface and read more details.

From the Fact Sheet

Surface computing features four key attributes:

Direct interaction. Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands and interact with content through touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
Multi-touch contact. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger as with a typical touch screen, but up to dozens and dozens of items at once.
Multi-user experience. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.

Nice device to leverage some of your WPF programming skills on!

Other posts open in my browser about Microsoft Surface:

[1] This is another great thing about working @ Microsoft. Work on one cool thing, make it great, ship it. If the time is right, go find another great idea to refine and ship -- or maybe the initial idea is yours this time. A few years ago, I wrote how I started @ microsoft (it got linked to from an information week article)...

MsdnBlogs.Add("Adrian Ford", "XPS Team", "Program Manger", "blogs.msdn.com/adrianford");

Wed, 23 May 2007 11:26:33 GMT

Adrian Ford, a PM on the XPS team, has a new blog @ blogs.msdn.com/adrianford.

Technorati tags: XPS

Wictor Wilén: Dissecting XPS

Tue, 22 May 2007 14:48:31 GMT

Wictor has a good series called "Dissecting XPS"

Haven't explored it all yet, but in the 2 articles I read, I already found value:

In Part 7 Wictor says "...I really hope that more applications will get a Save as XPS function..."
Part 8 mentions a tool that sounds interesting. Open Xml Package Explorer: Not really an XPS tool but Package Explorer is a nice Office Open Xml application created by Wouter van Vugt. It is created for Office Open Xml documents but since XPS files are built on OPC, which Package Explorer supports, Package Explorer might be extended to support XPS files in the future. Package Explorer is available at CodePlex. Maybe if I get time and Wouter allows it I'll have a look at it :-)

Developers looking to build new file formats should be focusing on OPC (Open Packaging Conventions)!

New User Input Device: The Desk

Mon, 21 May 2007 22:04:25 GMT

Microsoft DigiDesk was shown earlier this month.

Engadget: Microsoft shows off DigiDesk workstation of the future
Gizmodo: Microsoft's Touchscreen DigiDesk is All Work, No Play
Microsoft: Center for Information Work Virtual Pressroom

I'm all for my monitors getting huge and having touch/tablet support!

IE7: Targetting searches and navigations to a new tab

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:39:09 GMT

I use 2 different techniques to do a new search in a new tab.

I'm excited about method A, which I rediscovered again today.

A) Alt-click the search button or press alt-enter

1) change focus to search box by pressing ctrl-e
2) Type your term into the search box in the top right of IE7.
3a) Alt-Click the search button.
or
3b) Alt-Enter

A new tab is opened with your new search result

B) Open tab manually, then do search

1) open a new tab by pressing ctrl-t
2) change focus to search box by pressing ctrl-e
3) type in term and press enter

A new tab is opened with your new search result

Fun With Links

These you likely already know...

Shift-click on a link (IE4 or later)

Opens that link in a new window

Ctrl-click on a link (IE7)

Opens that link in a new tab

Targetting new tabs:

I don't like the fact that you use Alt in technique A, but use Ctrl when you click a link. I raised that issue with the IE team during IE7 development. They explained the reason...but it didn't sink in...

Update: later the same day, while searching for a different topic, I found my old related blog post. Ok, perhaps just blogging something doesn't make it easy to find...

Office 2007 - Send as PDF & XPS

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 04:39:58 GMT

I hadn't seen a set of solid numbers for PDF file sizes versus XPS file sizes...so I was scared of what I was going to find.

I just did my first real world test:

Word 2007 - created a 3.25 page document to send to a contractor who is doing some work on our house.
Send via PDF - pdf document was 471kb
Send via XPS - xps document was 375kb
Print using XPS print driver (comes with Vista or .Net 3.0) - xps document was 355kb

Word 2007 - very nice feature to be able to send as PDF or XPS. If you are a proud Office 2007 owner, install it from the Microsoft Download Center.

To learn more about XPS (Xml Paper Specification) go to http://microsoft.com/xps

Update: I just added the xps print driver numbers...wow, I had expected Word to beat the print driver...that surprises me!

Vista Tips from the How-To Geek

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 13:24:10 GMT

http://www.howtogeek.com/tag/windows-vista

IE8 Feature Idea - remember the referrer

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 13:20:01 GMT

When I am blog reading (I use IE7 for this) I often end up finding an interesting article that I want to reference in my own post. I usually want to give credit to who pointed it out to me. Sometimes I can't do that, the other tab has already been closed.

This feature idea is for IE, but really it should be applied more broadly...anytime I download something, remember where I got it from.

Live Search App for your Windows Mobile Phone

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:10:54 GMT

Jerry pointed me to a Gizmodo.com article that compares windows live search for mobile vs google maps mobile.

To run this cool client app for your phone, visit this link on your Windows Mobile phone: Product Page

Very nice!

the Microsoft Question

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:27:51 GMT

Always interesting to understand how people perceive Microsoft.

Hugh writes: the Microsoft Question
Steve Clayton adds on.

My favorite discovery as part of this article is this artwork from gapingvoid.com:

Photosynth: What if your photo collection was an entry point into the world, like a wormhole...

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 23:21:13 GMT

I've seen this on Channel9 in the past.

Looks like Microsoft Live Labs released a Tech Preview of Photosynth. Very cool! Wish I had a mouse with me...my laptop isn't as fun as a mouse would be...

http://labs.live.com/photosynth

Very cool. I especially liked walking through the artists studio. This 3d thing can be cool...

Windows Live Writer

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:36:59 GMT

[May 31, 2007 Update: Beta2 of LiveWriter has been released]

A moment ago, I just did my first post with Windows Live Writer. So far, I like it.

Things I like:

Installed: I like having the richest experience possible with a great piece of software.
Editing Surface: The blending in of the Blog Title with the rest of the article in the editing surface.
More Robust: The fact that I will lose less blog posts using this software compared to running in the browser.

Things I don't like:

Code Samples: I'd like to see better preservation of code sample formatting when pasted in. They look beautiful in VS, but come into live writer unindented and they have lost their colorization. Update: I even tried CopyAsHtml (an addin for VS) but that didn't improve things.
Linking: Creating a link to a previous post should be much easier. Is "Insert Link" the best that it can do? I want to grab a url by looking at a list of my previous posts in rich ways, finding the one I want via sorting, searching, etc... and then right clicking and saying grab link. The link should have the blog title in a functional hyperlink.
Properties/Link: No clue what the View/Properties: Link text box does. For a second, I thought it was a way to give your blog a URL...I would have loved that! [Added 8/29/2006]

I'll try to post additional likes/dislikes over time as well...

Additional issues: (added 9/6/2006)

Post Cache is a problem - If I originally posted with Live Writer, but then modify with the web interface, I try to open it later via File/Open Post, but it seems to use the original post I had. I would think that the software would even detect when I open a recent post that it was the latest content for the site.
Font control - I want font control - mostly for Consolas for code samples...
Preview in web site - it goes to my main page for previews...which doesn't work well if I am editing a piece that is no longer on my front page.

Bill and Melinda's Foundation

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 12:52:59 GMT

Testing the Times Reader

I'm reading the New York Times this morning with the Times Reader. Found several bugs in the Reader, some of which are likely WPF bugs. I also am making a list of suggestions for the application.

The great thing about testing this application is that I get to read the paper.

I saw an interesting article: "A Third of US Dropouts Never Reach the 10th Grade." I was curious about the topic and also about how the Times Reader handled hyperlinks to web content...so I clicked on a link in the article.

That page linked to a detailed set of reports that detail how each state tracks graduation rates. The study was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Again

There is that Bill guy again. I haven't had time to read many blog-opinions about his announcement to stop being the Chief Software Architect at Microsoft. Or to write mine down...

Software is important, and it is changing the world. Bill, along with a great number of people working on software, made that happen.

The world has a bunch of other problems. I'm happy that Bill has passion to help fix some of those.

Microsoft has a ton of smart, passionate, technology loving, and customer focused people. We'll be fine without Bill in a day-to-day role.

I've always admired the great work he and Melinda have started in Education, Health and more. I'm happy that they are tackling tough problems with a focus and resources that will help make major impacts in many peoples lives.

Bill/Melinda - Keep up the great work!