Channel 9 - Discussions by Jeremy W

Coffeehouse - Playing Flight Simulator from the "10 foot view"?

Jeremy W — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 22:57:28 GMT

jonathanh wrote:

When MSR Cambridge moved to a new building a few years back, we got a nice auditorium with a couple of kick-(I need to watch my language) monster projection screens. This was also when the XBox had just been released in the US, but wasn't out yet in the UK. And it just so happened that I had a trip to Redmond planned, with some room in my carry-on luggage on the flight back...You can see what's coming next, right?You got it, one of the first games of Halo ever played in the UK, in glorious 20-foot tall color Gave the sound system a good workout, too!

We did something similar at work the week Xbox came out. Sound system wasn't as good as the Halo Room at the MS Museum in Redmond though;)

Coffeehouse - Best blog hosting?

Jeremy W — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 22:25:59 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

Jeremy W. wrote: greater flexibility and greater portability should you want to move the blog later.

...how, exactly?

Your blog would be stored on another database that you don't have access to, so how is it easier to move your blog posts from a shared database to your own website?

Ignoring RSS Export/Input, of course, since virtually all blogging engines can do that now.

Flexibility: in themes, in full access to the presentational code, in the ability to add your own themes, in full access to all of the Options panes of Wordpress.

The deal with WPMU is it gives folks the full power of WP, without having to host it themselves. So everything that makes WP better than any other hosted app is present in WPMU. Done.

In terms of portability, WP will import/export to any service. I have no idea what you mean by "RSS Import/Export", in terms of moving the site to another service, however WP is part of every major standards project out there from FeedMesh to the new OPML work being done to the new syndication work being done. Going with WPMU or Wordpress.com gives you the benefits of all of that, as opposed to just a massive XML file (if you're lucky) from the other services.

Again, with any WPMU-based system, you could literally do a WP backup, then a WP restore and you'd be set. Your theme would come, your posts / comments / authors would come and you'd be set. If you wanted to move to another service, you can pull your theme code and images down through WP, export your posts / comments / categories / authors and be set.

Many other services allow some of this, but the strength of WPMU is that it's WP, just abstracted out so that each blog is its own unique environment. You don't lose any of the features in the transition.

It makes Typepad et al look like crap.

As I said before, though, if you're looking for a more social app, then an WPMU-based host won't be the best way to go. Yahoo 360 or Spaces or whatnot will likely be better.

Coffeehouse - Best blog hosting?

Jeremy W — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 21:32:48 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

fergbrain wrote: Wordpress

Wordpress is an engine, not a hosting provider.

It's both.

Wordpress is an engine. Wordpress Multi User is a hosted solution for Wordpress 1.6 alpha (not stable yet). Wordpress.com is running WPMU.

And, yes, my recommendation would be to go with a hosted WP solution. It should provide you greater features, greater flexibility and greater portability should you want to move the blog later.

Getting an invite is pretty easy. Just ask one of the dev guys

Coffeehouse - Playing Flight Simulator from the "10 foot view"?

Jeremy W — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 21:29:49 GMT

Detroit Muscle wrote:

MS Flight Simulator used to be good, but is now seriously outclassed by its competitors. Check out IL2 Sturmovik.

IL2 isn't the same class of game at all as Flight Sim. Do you have air traffic control in IL2? Real landscapes, cities, airports and planes? IL2 is a combat sim. Flight Sim is a huge, awesome flying sim.

I have a number of friends who are real pilots / ATC's and they use Flight Sim to get themselves acquainted with new equipment before beginning training on it (generally to find out if they like the plane first).

Coffeehouse - Blog craziness

Jeremy W — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 02:15:14 GMT

/me rolls eyes.

Welcome to blogging. I know you're new. But there are established conventions.

One of those is that people can blog however they want. Besides that, though, there are a number of "standard" types of blog posts. They include, but are not limited to:

1. Pointing to interesting things somewhere else (with or without commentary)
2. Talking about your daily thoughts and ideas
3. Posting longer, original, thoughts

If the only reason you read a blog is for "new information", you're missing a hell of a lot of great blogging. Blogging is about people, not just about disseminating data.

I know this'll come across grumpy, but it's well past my bed time.

Your blog can be whatever you want. But there's obviously a huge market for just pointing to interesting things that others have posted. Memeorandum. Slashdot. Instapundit. Every mainstream newspaper out there.

New doesnt' mean best. Old doesnt' mean worst.

Coffeehouse - Avatars Freaking Out?!

Jeremy W — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:47:40 GMT

Are avatars freaking out for anyone else?

For me, in any thread, it's showing the same avatar as the the thread starter's... Really weird...

Coffeehouse - Post Your Desktop Screenshot! :o)

Jeremy W — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:46:49 GMT

Here's mine (a bit more cluttered than usual).

Coffeehouse - Dearth of XBox360 Games by Launch Date (11/22)?

Jeremy W — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:02:20 GMT

And, for the record, on a console I can move the tank (left thumbstick), swivel the turret (right thumbstick), change weapons (black/white buttons), select targets (left trigger) and fire (right trigger) all at the same time.

In FPS's, I can run, jump, throw grenades, fire my weapon, move, strafe and block all at the same time. Which'd be much more difficult (and cumbersome) to do on a PC game.

Coffeehouse - Dearth of XBox360 Games by Launch Date (11/22)?

Jeremy W — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:00:59 GMT

Why use consoles? They're cheaper. They're more social. XBox Live is killer. You can play them more comfortably. Controllers are far more natural for gaming than keyboard/mouse, and comfortable in the hand.

PC gaming is good. But I much prefer console gaming. I suppose if I wanted to I could hook my PC up to my TV, and hookup a wireless controller to the PC as well and have the same experience. But, I wouldnt' have Live, and play with multiple friends would be rather difficult.

If that ever happens, I'd happily ditch consoles. But I haven't in nearly 20 years, because the experience is totally different.

And, for the record, most console launches outperform the PC hardware of the day. Typically for about a year.

This generation may lengthen that time, because of the new architectures. But, it's hard to say right now.

Back to the original post, though, I'm disappointed in the 360 lineup. I'll be getting one at launch, because the controllers are far more comfortable, but the first round of games isn't that impressive.

I'm sure in 3-6 months it will be, though. By the time Sony's console comes out, there are meant to be more than 100 Xbox 360 games on shelves.

Coffeehouse - Google and Sun

Jeremy W — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 21:50:46 GMT

robojamie wrote:

This pissed me off today. I was expecting something exciting... Typical Sun P.R.

Typical Google PR too.

Coffeehouse - We're Hiring!

Jeremy W — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 12:41:33 GMT

andokai wrote:

W3bbo wrote: Do companies accept PDF or XHTML CVs over *.doc or printed paper thesedays?

I doubt there's a difinitive answer to that question.

The best format for Micrsosoft is Word or plain text resumes, as they ultimately get converted into play text once they make their way into the resume system anyways.

I'll tell you, the video position was one of the ones I nearly considered. Too bad it requires moving. Having done filming, editing, interviewing, makeup, sound and lighting for a number of national television shows for a year. Plus, the fun of meeting more Softies would be great.

Sadly, I'm very, very happy both in my current gig and in my current locale.

Ah well, maybe in 5 years

Best of luck to the other applicants

Coffeehouse - Upcoming Blogging Seminar in Toronto / Montreal

Jeremy W — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 18:52:27 GMT

reedracer wrote:

Jeremy, good to see you are still around! I somehow misplaced your feed transitioning to the various RSS clients I've tried over the past several months. (Currently GreatNews). So I just re-subscribed to Ensight and added the book blog.

Congrats on the book! I'm adding it to my Christmas list as we type!

Haha, thanks! I never left, but I'm glad we found each other again (that sounds so... Missing Persons...)!

Coffeehouse - Incorporate RSS into the next version of Windows Installer

Jeremy W — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 17:20:08 GMT

I would far rather have the installer ask me if I want to subscribe to the release blog for the product.

Coffeehouse - Upcoming Blogging Seminar in Toronto / Montreal

Jeremy W — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 16:59:58 GMT

Hey everyone,

Just a heads up that I’ll be doing a half-day blogging seminar in Montreal and Toronto on the 11 & 12. It’s basically the same subject matter as the book I just finished, Blog Marketing. It’s designed to give business and technology people a solid grounding in what blogging is, what it does for their business, why conversations, relationships and creating positive experiences matter, etc.

So far, the registered turnout for the event has been lower than expected, so if you or anyone in your network is interested, feel free to register. I wish I could give a discount to list members, but I’m not actually running the event.

Anyways, it’s a great pre-cursor to the book, and should provide lots and lots of information to companies who have just entered blogging or who are considering looking at it.

More information can be found at the website: www.blogbiz.ca.

Coffeehouse - Limit one can delete in Outlook at a time

Jeremy W — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 13:53:22 GMT

j0217995 wrote:

I figure this is the easiest place to ask this question. I have a mailbox that all my spam goes into to filter any false positives out of and each day I clean it up. But that usually leaves 2k-3k messages left, sometimes more. Is there a limit to how many messages one can delete at a in Outlook? Is it limited to RAM or something like that?
I'm talking about actually deleting them, not moving them to the trash or deleted items folder.

... I've deleted 40,000 at a time... It takes longer, but Outlook does a pretty good job of not coughing too hard when you delete large amounts of data. It's unusable while doing so (which sucks), but it doesn't die or anything.

Coffeehouse - Is Microsoft capable of honesty?

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:52:10 GMT

Karim wrote:

Jeremy W. wrote: Alternate definitions include "promoting a product, service or viewpoint".

Ok, so if someguy posts to a newsgroup, "This Microsoft product SUCKS!" and a Microsoft employee says, "No it doesn't!" then the Microsoft employee's reply can be dismissed as "marketing" because he is "promoting a viewpoint?"

No...

Well it is, loosely, marketing. But you wouldn't say that the dev's job was a marketing one just because he did that on occasion. But, if the guy's job was to monitor communities for that type of feedback and then respond to it, then yes he would be in a marketing position.

Or, if it was his job to create a community where people who be able to see ways in which that product DIDN'T suck, then yes, he'd be in a marketing position.

You don't have to be in Marketing to do marketing. Many, many positions at MS are marketing positions without being part of the Marketing organization, including Product Managers, Evangelists, Architects and GPM's (and to a lesser extend PM's).

...

I have no idea why there's so much pushback on this. Channel 9 was designed to improve relations with developers. That's a marketing definition if I ever heard one. Scoble's job is to empower Channel 9, to blog and to act as an ambassador for MS to the developer (and wider) world. Sounds like marketing to me.

You don't need to be hired as a Marketing Manager to have marketing as part of your job description.

Coffeehouse - Viral marketing

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:45:42 GMT

... It ain't viral if there ain't anything to spread around but a URL...

Care to at least share a few tidbits about it? Otherwise it's hard for me to know what to tell my readers

Coffeehouse - Validate or not to Validate?

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:31:20 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

Karim wrote: 1) The TCO could be possibly be lower. Let's say your tech makes $40/hr. (salary + benefits). If he spends 8 hours messing with a computer (over its lifetime) because it has some hax0red version of Windows instead of a legit version, he has cost the company $320, which is more than a legit copy of Windows costs.

But he would only be messing around with that box because it doesn't pass validation.

And BTW, here in the UK, Retail Windows XP Professional SP2 costs a lot more than $320.

Businesses shouldn't be paying retail pricing... If you are, you haven't contacted your MS sales rep. In fact, if you have more than 50 users, you should be able to get into site licensing deals, whereby you're only spending like 50-100$/seat (your mileage may vary) for all the software you require on the desktop.

Coffeehouse - Is Microsoft capable of honesty?

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:25:52 GMT

scobleizer wrote:

Like the videos coming up tomorrow of the Computer History Museum. Those have absolutely no marketing value whatsoever.

Sure it does. It's you with the camera. Marketing value. It's more people coming to Channel 9. Marketing value. It's people associating Microsoft and Channel 9 with the entire computing industry (not just Microsoft). Marketing value.

Everything that happens on C9, and just about everything you do, period, has marketing value Robert.

Coffeehouse - Is Microsoft capable of honesty?

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:23:55 GMT

scobleizer wrote:

If it's a marketing position, why isn't it in the the marketing org? I don't work for Mich Matthews who runs marketing.

All evangelism is marketing. It's not Marketing (Mich's division), but it's marketing, ie:

"Marketing means to make a communication about a product or service a purpose of which is to encourage recipients of the communication to purchase or use the product or service"

Alternate definitions include "promoting a product, service or viewpoint".

Evangelism is really all about increasing visibility, increasing adoption and increasing community.

Which is all marketing.

And if your job isn't marketing, why is it that everything you do is marketing (Channel 9, interviews, blogging, conference speaking, plugging developers in with the right people, making connections, encouraging internal people to be more blog and customer aware...)?

If it wasn't marketing, why is every TE job on MS Careers under the category "Marketing"?

Here are some examples:

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=a8fc9788-a2f8-46be-a7e7-bfffaaf6d612

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=f62eb1ed-7741-4b8a-93c6-579badd52bac

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=b933fc1a-12aa-4ba0-aaf4-05ed43773b2a

Coffeehouse - Scoble makes today's Dilbert ?!

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:16:58 GMT

scobleizer wrote:

Yeah, it does remind me a lot more of Mark Jen (who now works for, and blogs for, Plaxo).

Hell, it reminds me of me... But, I laughed quite hard at the cartoon

Coffeehouse - Is Microsoft capable of honesty?

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 21:19:54 GMT

scobleizer wrote:

My title? Technical Evangelist. Not marketing.

To be fair, you know as well as I do that a TE IS a marketing position. Also, Channel 9 IS a marketing site: it's designed to help create greater awareness amongst developers of how Microsoft actually works, and to put a more human face to Microsoft.

I'm not sure who said it wasn't a marketing project. It's not a Marketing project (with caps). But it still has marketing goals, marketing power and marketing potential. Huge marketing potential.

Nothing wrong with that in my books

Coffeehouse - Is Microsoft capable of honesty?

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 18:32:44 GMT

billh wrote:

Shh...I won't tell them about your exaggerations.

[...]

I was referring to this:

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=84387

That post wrote: There is no such thing as privacy or security (at the personal level), unless you actually live "off the grid". I have family who do this (not out of fear, they've just always lived that way), so it'd be impossible to do this kind of thing to them.

No exaggerations Myself, along with 4 others, led the youth ministry at www.tacf.org for almost a year. Before that I was part of the core leadership team for 3 years.

And gotcha @ living off the grid

I have no reason to exaggerate here. Several folk have met me, several of my friends read the forums. It'd be silly to exaggerate, and at the end of the day it wouldn't prove anything.

Several times in the past I've been pointedly told I didn't know what I was talking about, so I'd simply list some reasons why I did. Sorry if it sounded like I was bragging or whatever. I guess when you look back on someone's history of 1000 or whatever responses it's easy to find some weird stuff, likely written while I was either upset or only half coherent.

All of that said, I do have a natural penchant for exaggeration, so if it happened it likely wasn't intentional

Coffeehouse - A history of Sparkle

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 18:19:09 GMT

billh wrote:

Jeremy W. wrote:

billh wrote: Now that Microsoft has acquired Sparkle, there is no longer any "previous history" for the product.

???

I should clarify that...thanks for pointing that out. I should have said "Acrylic".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Acrylic

Gotcha. I was under the impression (I could be wrong) that Sparkle was an all-MS product, so I was confused.

Coffeehouse - What's your bandwidth?

Jeremy W — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 18:17:17 GMT

Tyler Brown wrote:

borosen wrote:

Jeremy W. wrote: ...unlimited long distance).

Is this to say, your provider does not charge you for how much of the internet you are using, ie they don't charge different if you visit a server in Canada or South Africa?

Perhaps his service is bundled with VoIP?

No...

My provider is www.aliant.net. They do DSL, they do satellite TV, they do phone services, they do wireless... This type of combination is very common in Canada. I have a package that is my DSL + free long distance on my phone line for 75$/month (CDN). My total phone + cable bill is about 125$/month, and I pay 25$/month for cable TV as well.

Hopefully that's a bit clearer