scobleizer

Wix team: The most used piece of software at Microsoft (and it's open source!)

scobleizer — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 19:54:05 GMT

What piece of software is used in Windows, Office, MySQL, and many other places? The Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset.

But even better, did you know it's open source? And, did you know that it is developed by an all-volunteer team.

It's developed after hours, come along and meet the team and attend one of their developer meetings.

Rob Mensching's blog talks more about it too.

Sorry about the bad video right at the beginning.

Jeff Barr - Amazon Web Services Contest Winners

scobleizer — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 01:56:43 GMT

Jeff Barr, Web Services Evangelist at Amazon, dropped by my office the other day and showed me the winners of the Microsoft/Amazon Web Service Contest. Cool stuff, congrats! More details are up on the Amazon Web Services blog.

Jeff Barr - Amazon Web Services Contest Winner

scobleizer — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 01:53:05 GMT

Jeff Barr dropped by Scoble's office the other day and showed us the contest winners from their recent Web Services contest that they held with Microsoft. More details on the Amazon Web Services blog.

Jim Carroll, Dan Manrique - Two dev's story of helping Katrina victims

scobleizer — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:24:02 GMT

Jim and Dan are two seemingly normal Microsoft employees who I've been watching from afar (they work for Microsoft Consulting Services). When hurricane Katrina hit they dropped everything in their lives and got in a plane and flew to Austin, TX. Hear their story about the technology they deployed (they architected, and developed the Katrina Safe Website for the Red Cross within hours of the disaster) and the heck they overcame -- all voluntarily.

That story starts at about 4:30 into the video. Before that you'll hear about the kinds of things they do as part of their jobs at Microsoft Consulting.

Thanks guys for all the help you gave victims in a tough time. You're our heros. More info on KatrinaSafe is on J Sawyer's blog and on Dan's blog. The Jim and Dan Show covers more too.

Charlie Owen - Your first Media Center/Vista application (and a look at their secret room)

scobleizer — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 02:17:37 GMT

Over in building 50 there's a secret room. It's never been shown in public before. What is this room for? Testing audio devices. It is a special room where it's completely silent and the walls have been treated to minimize sound wave reflections. After giving us a tour Charlie Owen, PM on the Media Center team, gives us a little taste of Windows Vista's Media Center features and shows us how to build your first Media Center application. Great discussion of Xbox 360 and the latest in Media Center functionality. The Vista demo starts at about 19:00 into the video. The Web site we talk about is the Media Center Sandbox, which is where you can learn more.

Richard Anderson - Interactive teaching with Tablet PCs at University of Washington

scobleizer — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 21:10:48 GMT

Recently I visited Richard Anderson's classroom at the University of Washington and watched how he used Tablet PCs to teach his computer science class. It is really cool. Students can send him notes, post their thoughts, and interact with him, via their Tablet PCs. This technology came out of Microsoft Research's ConferenceXP Project and the UW Classroom Presenter has a site which has more details and downloads too. The first minute of the video shows off his classroom then we start an interview with Richard and a few others who use or helped build the Classroom Presenter.

Ric Merrifield - Microsoft gets down to business with Motion initiative

scobleizer — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 00:55:03 GMT

Ric, director of strategy on the top secret Motion Incubation team, runs the Motion initiative. What's that? It's a group at Microsoft that studies how businesses work and looks for opportunities to help them do their business better. They made an entire map of how business works.

Motion's research led to the acquisition of Great Plains, too (which led to the Dynamics suite of services/applications).

Enjoy this look into a team you've never heard of before today and see how Microsoft approaches new markets and new acquisitions, and how it learns from other businesses.

Mike Hall - Network Enabled Refrigeration Device (and pranks at Microsoft)

scobleizer — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 07:09:06 GMT

April 1, 2006 -- Mike Hall uses Windows CE for everything. Including building a network enabled refrigeration device (NERD) with the NERD feature pack, released today.

While you're watching that video, we also have some other videos for you to consider this weekend (sorry, downloads won't be available for these videos). These are all about fun pranks that have happened at Microsoft over the years:

Larry Osterman and Dave Norris
Dave relates old-school Microsoft pranks, including the fact that he started the "blibbet"!

Habib Heydarian and Anson Horton
A joke that only works at Microsoft: creating a bogus spec for a brand new Whidbey feature months before release.

Mike Arcuri - More business intelligence in Office 2007

scobleizer — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:38:30 GMT

This is a second, deeper look at Excel 2007's business intelligence capabilities (Satya Nadella, who is the corporate vice president of the Dynamics team. Executive alert! But, he's pretty cool and tells you what's up in the Dynamics team and what they are bringing out. Also, what makes a good acquisition and why Microsoft got into this space. These interviews give you a good look inside the Dynamics team (which spans three continents and have thousands of people).

What is Dynamics? Supply Chain Management. Customer Relationship Management. Financial Management. This is Microsoft's enterprise team and their tools are used by businesses all over the world.

Why now? Next week is the big Convergence conference where Microsoft meets with its business partners and we wanted to get caught up on what was up on the team.

If you want to see more about Dynamics, here's the other interviews:

Jakob Nielsen, Dynamics/UX.
Dynamics Day on Channel 9. Here's Mike Ehrenberg, architect on the Dynamics team talking about what he's working on.

Jakob Nielsen - Directing the Dynamics/UX team

scobleizer — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:32:31 GMT

It's Dynamics day on Channel 9. Here we meet Jakob Nielsen, director of user experience on the Dynamics team. Wait a second. Don't enterprise apps always have ugly user interfaces? We talk about that and more.

Don McGowan - Technology law at Microsoft (and the software industry)

scobleizer — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 22:48:12 GMT

Oh, oh, it's one of those evil lawyers! *

Microsoft has hundreds of lawyers, but one of our favorites is Don McGowan. He is now a lawyer over in the game division but worked in Windows for a long time (he was trained as an anti-trust lawyer, but performed a variety of tasks at Microsoft).

We sat down recently for a fun conversation about what practicing law at Microsoft is like and get his take on technology law. Patents. What software entrepreneurs should do to protect themselves.

Anyway, here's Don, raw and unedited!

* = Just kidding!

Chris Muench - writing managed 3D app for mobile devices

scobleizer — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 03:10:03 GMT

Usually we have Microsoft employees on here, but Mike Hall met a talented MVP, Chris Muench, a Mobile and Embedded MVP. Here he shows how to write a managed Direct3D application for Windows Mobile devices and thought it deserved being on Channel 9.

Vijay Rajagopalan - SAP converts to Visual Studio 2005

scobleizer — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 02:37:18 GMT

Vijay works in the VSIP program that works with companies to help them convert to our latest technologies. Recently he, and the team he works with, was on campus (all the way from Israel) to port SAP (famous software!) to Visual Studio 2005. You get to see inside building 25, where we work with partners, as well as meet the team working together. You'll also get to hear uncensored views from SAP's engineers on what they think of Visual Studio 2005.

Craig Jensen - Windows Embedded for Point of Sale

scobleizer — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 20:33:36 GMT

Did you know that Windows Embedded operating system runs many of the world's cash registers? Well, Mike Hall takes his camcorder over to meet Craig Jensen, a developer on the Embedded for Point of Sale team and he takes you through coding up a point of sale system.

The team, this week, released Windows Embedded for Point of Service 1.1 and Mike Hall has more details on WEPOS on his blog.

Craig Jensen - Windows Embedded for Point of Sale

scobleizer — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 20:31:53 GMT

Did you know that Windows Embedded operating system runs many of the world's cash registers? Well, Mike Hall takes his camcorder over to meet Craig Jensen, a developer on the Embedded for Point of Sale team.

The team, this week, released Windows Embedded for Point of Service 1.1 and Mike Hall has more details on WEPOS on his blog.

Otto Berkes - Origami's Architect gives first look at Ultramobile PCs

scobleizer — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 08:35:14 GMT

Otto Berkes is the architect (now general manager) behind the Ultra-Mobile PC team, code-named Origami. We have a conversation about Origami and the vision behind it. More on what was announced today is found here on Microsoft's Presspass site.

Manuel Clement - Sparkle CTP Released (er, Expression Interactive Designer)

scobleizer — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:50:23 GMT

Manuel Clement called us over yesterday to see the latest build of Microsoft’s new Expression Interactive Designer (aka Sparkle). He had some interesting news for us. Today Microsoft is releasing a beta to the public! Here you get to see the latest version, understand how they build things in it, and get an in-depth demo.

Why should you care? This changes a LOT about how designers and developers will work together to build applications in the future. Watch the video to get a hint for how.

You can download the Community Technology Preview (CTP) here.

Don't miss Target Indy Race Team (Chip Ganassi Racing) to find out how the Target team uses the technology.

OK, OK, a Microsoft employee, Eric Maino got us tickets and introduced us to the team. We knew the Target team uses lots of Microsoft stuff, so we were very fortunate to get into the garage and other behind-the-scenes areas.

The interview starts in the garage. It got a bit noisy, sorry about that (keep watching, the interview starts at about 1:30 after we stop and start). You meet Brad who's an engineer on the team.

More than 30 sensors on each car spits out tons of data on each car on all sorts of things. How high the car is off the ground (all four wheels). Fuel flow. Speed. Temperatures of tires and brakes.

Oh, and show this one to your kids! This will get them to go to University. You don't get on this team without a technical college degree.

Later, at about 33:00 you'll meet the race engineer. He runs the entire team from a Tablet PC.

There's actually three videos in this series. This one, a look at the equipment in the pits.

Sorry these took so long to get to you. We had some troubles encoding the video off of our new HD camcorder.

We want to thank the Target Race Team (Chip Ganassi Racing). They treated us very well and gave us access every kid dreams of.

Target Race Team - Driving an Indy car team

scobleizer — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 06:36:38 GMT

On October 15, we traveled to the Toyota 400 Indy Race to meet with the Target race team. We had some problems encoding the video (we used a new HD camcorder that wasn't that easy to encode properly) but we think you'll find this one pretty fun. Here we interview Jacques Lazier, the driver of the #10 team, and got a look into just what it's like to drive an Indy car. Unfortunately he crashed the car the next day. Cost of one car? Oh, about $1 million. Yikes.

In the pits with the Target race team

scobleizer — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 06:31:27 GMT

Ever been in the pits with an Indy race team? Well, the Target team invited us along. Here's just some raw shots we took while they were practicing for the Toyota 400. At about 4:30 in the video you'll see the application they use to track the cars as they go around the track (and see data from the more than 30 sensors on each car). We were at the race to see how the team uses Microsoft technology (they use SQL Server, .NET, and Tablet PCs, among other things). Oh, and at 7:30 you'll see a cool peelout.

Robert Fripp - Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session

scobleizer — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 22:09:46 GMT

Robert Fripp was on the Microsoft campus a few weeks back. He's the famous guitarist and composer, known for his founding role in the band King Crimson. Charles Torre (a big King Crimson fan) was invited over by Steve Ball to film the session.

So, what was he doing on campus? Recording the various sounds we'll all hear in Windows Vista.

This is a different kind of Channel 9 video. We needed to be quiet during the recording session so you can just follow along. It's a little audio preview of what Windows Vista will sound like.

Sorry it's a little dark. It was a dark room! Hope you enjoy it.

Check out Fripp's web site!

Ryan Donovan (and team) - What is Commerce Server?

scobleizer — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 01:48:36 GMT

Why use Commerce Server? Lots of big-name retailers do. But, what the heck is it? Now that the Christmas Shopping season is over we sit down with the team that builds the product that runs a lot of the commerce-oriented Web sites out there. Fun discussion with part of the team that makes Commerce Server.