Michael Bazeley of the San Jose Mercury News (the paper in Si Valley) picked up on our team blog and, from the tone of the short post, was happy with what he saw. I know our beta testers are enthusiastic about the work we’ve done so far… here’s hoping the rest of the world will be too.
By Internet time-scale this is very old news: the Hotmail team is working on a new product, some people have already gotten a glimpse via the mail beta.
“Mail beta,” you say, “what’s that?”
It’s quite simple… it’s a beta of a new mail product. True to Microsoft form we’ve given our new baby a name that tells exactly what it is (think: “Word”, “Project” or “Streets & Trips”). We leave it to those renegades on the Mac team to come up with names like “Entourage”.
A while ago (Imran can tell you just how big of a while) we decided we needed to start fresh. Hotmail was built to scale to hundreds of millions of two megabyte e-mail accounts, and it does that very, very well. Hotmail is also built to work with web browsers most geeks would consider dinosaurs. We realized the landscape was changing and we decided to do something about it.
For the past year my job has been primarily one of a project manager. I attended meetings, tracked dependencies and watched documents grow and shrink. While this is a simplification of what I did (and in no way a slam on the role) it wasn’t what I enjoy most: working on the application interface. Starting in mid-July Omar took over the project management duties (working with dev and others he’s put together a pretty slick combination of SCRUM and traditional processes… he’s putting us into overdrive) and I got the chance to return to the customer-facing side of the world.
That brings me back to the start of this post: the mail beta. To go along with this mail beta we created a team space to keep interested parties abreast of our goings-on. Hop on over there and check it out.
For those of you who came to my blog from the team space… perhaps you weren’t looking for my blog… you were looking for my space.
On Sunday most people got their first glimpse of MSN Virtual Earth (well, the PR started Sunday at any rate) and frankly… it’s pretty damn cool. Imagine the useful features of Google earth… but in a web page… no software installer needed (unless, of course, you’re not running a modern browser, but then you’re probably on a 200 baud modem as well).
The site is cool for what it is, but it gets better, the Virtual Earth team thought ahead and built in some cool functionality to allow people to create custom maps… so one of our architects did. To the see the fruits of his handiwork go to the start preview, click the down arrow next to the “start preview” logo and select “MSN Bloggers Map” from the Popular Feeds/Staff picks section. Voila, a list of MSN bloggers showing their office locations on a satellite picture.
Think about how fantastic this is; we’ve made stalking accessible to the insanely lazy and clinically agoraphobic.
My DirecTV TiVo died a month or two ago so I went out and bought a new one (well… it was a shelf model but works great). The old unit I just kept on a shelf, suspecting the problem was one of the hard drives… and since I had broken the seal and added a new hard drive warranty was out of the question.
This weekend I finally got around to taking an extra hard drive, imaging it and sticking it in the dead TiVo. The process was not simple due to an intersection of no UNIX knowledge and aversion to reading instructions but it worked. The DirecTiVo is back up again!
But wait… I had the unit disconnected for over a month and DirecTV no longer recognized it. I could tune to the help channels but couldn’t get any real channels. Every channel has the same message, call DirecTV, extension 722. Crap! It was Sunday night… there was no way DirecTV employees were going to be around to help me. <sigh> Okay, time to break down and call DirecTV, wade through thousands of voice prompts and button presses only to get a “call us Monday” message.
Thank you for calling DirecTV. For English press 1, para Espanol …
<beep>
For faster service, please use our automated phone system for paying your bills or adding services. If you have a 3 digit code or extension displayed on your TV, please press it now, if…
<beep><beep<beep>
One moment while we check your configuration. Please check your TV…
What? I turn and look at the TV… the TiVo is reacquiring satellite data and then the picture shows up. Freaking magical. I dialed their automatic phone support, it recognized my caller ID, I input the code and it corrected the problem… no human required. You see, this is the type of thing people like me in the software industry want to do, but it never quite comes out right and then you end up with things like the Comcast PVR (so Omar, can you record a new show yet without a reboot?).
Well, it’s been a long time (10 years) with Network Solutions but I’ve finally gotten off my lazy butt and moved my domains over to GoDaddy. The primary reason was to get away from paying $35 a year per domain and bring it down to closer to ten bucks a year. A little effort to save a little money.
There will be only one casualty in the transfer: the history. There isn’t much documented in the Network Solutions registration but I always enjoyed being able to go look at the whois record for doe.com and find the registration date. I guess I’ll have to turn to this blog entry to reminisce from now on.
Doe.com – Record created on 27-Jul-1995
Along with this date I might as well record the story behind the registration.
Before working at Microsoft I had a job at a small “start-up” (it wasn’t starting, so I use the term “start-up” loosely) named ResNova Software, Inc. ResNova’s primary product was a BBS which, among other things, had functionality to aggregate Usenet newsgroups. Back then there was far less garbage in the newsgroups but there was, strangely enough, a large number of posting from some “John Doe” fellow with the address john@doe.com. Being the curious sort I decided to investigate who owned doe.com… turns out no one did. Being the mischievous sort I decided to register it (domain names were free back then… I’m also the cheap sort). I used to periodically check the account and respond to the occasional “are you real?” or “test” e-mail messages (and they were occasional). The account was also useful when I was a test lead on Outlook Express and Entourage for the Macintosh, lots of spam to throw at the product. Sadly, I can no longer play celebrity as john@doe.com is overrun with e-mail. Surprisingly the bulk of the mail is no longer spam, it’s bounce messages from all the test mail, junk mail and virus mail purporting to be from john@doe.com. John@doe.com can receive around 250 bounce messages per minute (my previous ISP threatened to kick me off his servers because just the mail connection attempts to john@doe.com were melting his servers, there weren’t even any accounts set up).
Today doe.com is mainly a traffic generator for my blog. People show up randomly looking for either the U.S. Department of Energy (which was doe.gov but is now energy.gov but still didn’t register energy.com, genius!) the Doe Fund (doe.org) and, at one time, the Canadian Department of Environment (which used to be www.doe.ca but appears to be no longer, it’s moved on, it’s an ex-site…*). Just for grins I let my online life flow into the real world, my Volvo station wagon has the custom plate “doe com” (if you came here because I cut you off on the freeway, I honestly apologize… it had nothing to do with you, I’m just impatient and meant no offense).
The info above covers just about everything, but it doesn’t answer the most frequently asked question: “Is Doe.com for sale?” The answer is, “yes”, of course, everything has its price. Each time I’m asked I sit down and seriously consider selling the domain name. I don’t, after all, have a mail server set up, I don’t use the domain name as the identity of my web site and even the traffic it generates is nothing but a cost to me. Why not sell? Turns out I’m very sentimental and really don’t want to sell it, but because everything has to have a price I’ve set the price at an $3 Million to cover legal fees, taxes and, of course, pain and suffering for the loss. I figure that amount is suitably ridiculous to drive off almost all buyers and if someone does come along willing to pony up the ridiculous fee (heck, it’s a three-letter, easy to spell .com domain) I’ll take the money, give half to Uncle Sam, buy something really nice for my wife and put the rest in the bank for retirement.
Oh, I’ll spend a little on my car too, I need new tires for my Volvo… they don’t seem to last for some reason. Must be something wrong with the car.
* Much love and many apologies to John Cleese
Note from Reeves to Reeves: Before moving the WhoIs showed “Little.org – Record created on 10-May-2002”. I know the domain is older than that but I’ll have to do some research to find out when I first registered it.
The various competing digital RAW formats have been a boon to professional and pro-sumer photographers but to date the support for them has been limited to the manufacturer’s software and expensive photo editing software. Yesterday’s news that MS is going to support RAW in the OS is great news, I hope it will drive some serious improvements for the format (compatibility, closed standards and more abound). Just having the big camera manufacturers talking about the same topic is fabulous.
More info:
Press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/jun05/06-01RAWWindowsPR.asp
Omar’s comments: http://www.shahine.com/omar/MicrosoftRAW.aspx
Sean Alexander’s comments: http://blog.seanalexander.com/LonghornGetsRAW.aspx
MS How-to article on dealing with RAW in XP: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/expert/rawfiles.mspx
There’s cool, and then there’s geeky cool. I think this is both.
Robots master reproduction
Andreas von Bubnoff
Modular machine assembles copies of itself in minutes.
Humans do it, bacteria do it, even viruses do it: they make copies of themselves. Now US researchers have built a flexible robot that can perform the same trick.
Cool, right? What? I’m a geek? Here, watch this video then tell me if it’s cool.
For the full story, please check out the article at Nature.com.
“Sarah Connor?”
There are times when you need to get a file out of your Hotmail account but the server has flagged the file as dangerous and won’t let you at it. This can happen if the file is infected with an incurable virus or if a noob friend sent you an uncompressed EXE (we’ll get into ways to pay your friend for the trouble in some other post).
While Hotmail has locked the file away (likely for your protection, see disclaimer later in this post) you can still get the file. An important note: you can really hose your computer if you bypass security, any security, so be sure you are ready to pay the consequences. By following the instructions below you are agreeing to take full responsibility for your actions.
Okay, now that part one of the paranoia is out of the way, here’s what you do:
Some important notes:
Now, the necessary disclaimers: files downloaded using this method will not have been scanned by any anti-virus software, I cannot be held responsible for any damage or loss of time that occurs as a result of downloading an infected file. Additionally this help is provided by me, Reeves, and not Microsoft or Hotmail… there is no warranty expressed or implied. I feel bad for anyone with a busted machine… but you’re on your own.
==========================
Example Encoded Attachment
==========================
——=_NextPart_000_0009_01C53F37.CCE02540
Content-Type: application/x-zip-compressed;
name=”potogold.zip”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename=”potogold.zip”/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAgAAZABkAAD/7AARRHVja3kAAQAEAAAAPAAA/+4ADkFkb2JlAGTAAAAAAf/b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B+t/XAu+XJM9DRmToZRQ/wAqS7H8joiNcDRbHTDUiDFi2mhg/9k=——=_NextPart_000_0009_01C53F37.CCE02540–
Did I mention that if you do this and things go bad that neither I nor Microsoft can be held responsible? Yes? Good.
Alright, you like racing but don’t have sponsors? Does going fast get your blood going but your local constabulary has you on speed dial? Will your mom not let you borrow the car?
Have no fear, the world of racing sims is here. Home PCs and video game consoles are now up to snuff and can provide you with an in-home experience to rival that of your favorite arcade. If, however, you are not satisfied with simply keeping up with the joneses and want to spray them with tire chum and leave them in your turbulence, pay attention, I’ve got the setup for you.
Gran Turismo 4 with a force feedback steering wheel? Kid stuff.
Microsim Racebase with three 17” LCD monitors? Go big or go home.
If you really want to go the full nine yards you need the Hexatech™ Racing Simulator.
The Hexatech™ experience is as close to a true race experience as you can get: Feel the real G-forces, battle the accurate force feedback steering and exact car dynamics. All placed in a multiplayer arena.
Yep, this bad boy is a motion platform with a full 6 degrees of freedom. There is enough articulation and power in the Hexatech to generate over 2 G’s of acceleration. A Corvette with a good suspension setup and sticky tires can exceed 1 G on a good day (I’ll tell you for sure, that’s a ton of fun), so there’s no doubt that if you hook yourself into this racing sim you’re going to feel like you’re really there. Combine the F1-like g-forces with 3 23” LCDs, THX surround sound and a bunch of other cool acronyms and you’ve got guaranteed adrenaline. Heck, if it can impress Jan Lammers it’ll be fine with me.
Are they allowed to do that? Sure, FCS cut their teeth by making motion simulators for aircraft. Spun off from Dutch aircraft company, Fokker, FCS has a ton of experience building high-end motion simulators. Having the military as your customer tends to give you license to generate some really, really cool stuff.
And now for the bad news: you either need to fly to Six Flags in Holland or pony up $227,000 per station. If, however, you have the bucks and roughly 8000 square feet of floor space you and 19 of your closest friends can get together for some real(ish) hard-core racing. You are 100% less likely to die… you may, however, puke.
Check out FCS’s Hexatech site and be sure to watch the video.
I’ve been jealous of my coworkers in Redmond for a while because the Seattle-area has a very cool system for monitoring traffic status. It now seems that the bay area may finally be catching up.
Traffic.com now appears to have real-time traffic reporting for the south bay (read: Silicon Valley). I honestly don’t know when they started reporting in real time as last time I looked for real-time traffic in the south bay was a year or so ago. Traffic.com offers traffic for a number of metro areas like New York, LA and San Francisco. If your city is not explicitly listed, don’t despair, look for the closest metro area. For example, San Jose is grouped in with San Francisco.
Where’s the beef? Traffic.com gets some of its funding from ads but it is also a marketing tool for Mobility Technologies to help drive adoption of its telematics technologies (you can sign up for news from them on their products when you register for your free access). Mobility’s travel data program gets federal funding (at $2M for specific metro areas) but they do end up sharing their profits with the government. Mobility focuses on 3 markets: reselling data to broadcasters, selling real-time equipment to large agencies and finally telematics equipment to consumers.
Mobility‘s Traffic Pulse Networks® are automated systems for radio and tv broadcasters. The material on their site reads like the brochures you might find on the desk of a tv or radio sales manager. In short, buy our service and you’ll make money hand-over-fist.
The solutions Mobility sells to businesses and government (and potentially consumers with deep pockets) are focused on delivering the same type of information you get from the web page but in a customizable form. I could see UPS buying into this type of service to get a leg up on FedEx.
The really cool bit for me is Mobility‘s telematics. This is where we should have been ages ago, having real time traffic in our cars that link into the GPS navigation to intelligently route us around bad spots. It’s not explicitly stated on their site but the 2005 Acura RL has technology from Mobility which links GPS with XM-transmitted traffic data. Dare I say it? That’s so boss. Now, if I could only get the service in something a little more sporty.
Sources: Mobility’s web site, Traffic.com and the clever people who keep posting confidential Mobility business presentations in locations where Google can index them.
