dan_t

• Ping 177: Female CFO, Barnes & Noble, Facebook App, Working at Microsoft

  May 14, 2013 at 6:09 PM

  Good show. The Nook is an android device so I don't see MS going after that directly. One interesting thing I heard about the Barnes and Noble rumor (I think from Paul Thorrott) is that it's not so much about the nook tablets themselves as it is about the college e-textbook business. I'm not sure what else to make of it though.

  I've never had a job I was embarrassed about or was crazy in a fun way. My history mostly consists of a long string of restaurant jobs until I graduated. Then I worked as a Developer at an ISP and then as a Developer at my current job. In a small way I guess I may regret the straight forward, obvious path I've taken to get here. It might be nice to have a more interesting past. On balance though I'm very happy with the way things have turned out. Maybe I'll have an interesting retirement.

• Defrag: Explorer Won't Run, Network Limited Access, Touch PC's We Like

  May 10, 2013 at 10:09 AM

  Glad to hear the Surface pen is working well for you Larry. I really want a Surface Pro for all the reasons you listed. I just need to get final approval from the Spending Committee (aka my wife) first. She gets my hand-me-downs too and is still using my old Toshiba M700 that just refuses to die. That thing is a little tank. So an upgrade for me will be an upgrade for her too.

• Ping 176: Windows Phone goes mainstream, Best ad ever, Facebook Beta app, MS exec makes a difference

  May 07, 2013 at 2:29 PM

  • I'm liking the FB beta so far, aside from a few minor bugs. The metro design language has its place and I think works well but since FB is already an established brand it's fine to let it have its own feel. This has been true of the twitter app as well.
  • Best ad ever? False. This is the best ad ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WPkByAkAdZs
  • I try to avoid flame wars irl but I have attempted to convince my wife to switch to Bing a few times. This is because she will look over my shoulder when the daily picture comes up and say how neat that is etc so I feel like she really should give it a try. I even made her take the challenge and I think bing won but only slightly so she still wouldn't switch. Being the home IT guy I did upgrade her to WIn8 when it came out. There was some frustration and gnashing of teeth for about a week and then she was mostly fine with it. Easy access to lots of free games in the store helped smooth things over.

   

• Introduction to building games with Unity

  Apr 21, 2013 at 3:50 PM

  Thanks. Really interesting. One request, at the end if people ask questions off mic please let us know what the question is.

• Defrag: Uninstall leftovers, IE Crash, Watchdog Bugcheck

  Apr 17, 2013 at 3:42 PM

  Gov works in building 7? Sure he does.

• TWC9: Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 RTW's, BUILD, modern.IE and more

  Apr 05, 2013 at 5:03 PM

  Like the app. In app comments would make it even better.

• Ping 172: MVP Program, Developers get paid, TMall in China, Xbox hacked

  Mar 26, 2013 at 8:31 AM

  I'm working on a game but I'm stuck and I don't think an extra $100 is going to help. I suppose it may be good as an incentive to get someone started though.

  One of my goals is to devote as little brain power to taxes as possible.  I just can't deal with it, at all. The thought of trying to read through the rules and fill out the forms makes my eyes roll back in my head. I stick all the relevant paperwork in a manila folder and hand it to an expert to deal with.

   

   

• Ping 171: SXSW wins, Flash & IE, Cross-platform gaming, Office 365 FREE

  Mar 20, 2013 at 4:14 PM

  We had unix systems so I spent most of my time in vi and used pine for my email. When I needed to write a paper I used Word Perfect at home. I'm old.

  Now days I really like One Note. I like that I can just print stuff to it that I might need and it's right there on my phone. And I'm with IRB, I like pens.

• Ping 168: Gamerloop, Bing & the State of the Union, Xbox Xpanding, Tablet size

  Feb 18, 2013 at 10:37 PM

  Good show. Here are my thoughts about smaller devices; Win Phone8 missed the boat. It should have been merged in with RT from the start so there wouldn't be three different development targets. It would have been so cool if my Lumia 920 could access and run all the same apps as my Surface. It also would have made the idea of a mini surface a no-brainer. As an outsider it clearly seems like you're working towards a unified platform and I think that's the right direction but you're not there yet. And until you are I don't think phone sized or near phone sized rt devices makes sense. What I *really* want is a RT Phone, not a phone sized Surface RT.

   

  Spent a long weekend on the Oregon coast. Weather was perfect.

   

  Also, just catching up from last week, don't change what's working. I think the setup with Paul being remote works much better than I thought it would at first. The show is still great in fact. Adding a question at the end was a nice idea, so keep doing that. The heart of the show is really pretty simple so I don't think there's much that needs improving. It's really just witty & informative banter around a handful of current MS related topics. Adding anything more risks overdoing it imo. Keep up the good work!

• TWC9: VS 2012 Update 2 CTP3, Save Project As, Zooming Windows 8 and more

  Feb 17, 2013 at 7:55 PM

  Good show.

  The Blink app is a great potw. I discovered this weekend that it's also really great for capturing waves crashing into the Oregon coast. Hard to do otherwise with one photo because the perfect splash is only there for a moment and then it's gone.

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