I'm on the plane, headed home after a quite successful UC Metro event. A good time was had by all :)
While I was in Reading, I stayed at the Hilton St. Anne's Manor, Bracknell (which is actually in Wokingham, go figure). It's an old manor house that has been converted to a hotel, and quite nicely at that. The hotel sits on about 25 acres of land, including both wooded and open spaces. On arrival, the desk clerk upgraded me to a room in the "Buckhurst Club" area of the hotel; apparently that's where they put HHonors members. My room was quite nice, with a small patio that looked out onto the (grass) tennis courts. When I arrived, there were three fat rabbits outside my patio, munching happily on the lawn. However, the air conditioner didn't work. Normally this would not have been a problem, except that the kind souls who prepared my room had turned on two halogen lamps, apparently early that morning. Between that and the fact that the room faced south, the room temperature was about 85°. I slept on top of the covers with the door open; after an undistinguished hotel breakfast the next morning, I headed out, asking the clerk to fix the air conditioner during the day. I got back to the hotel about 11pm after visiting the local mall cinema to watch Iron Man (summary: it's made of win!), but the air conditioner wasn't fixed. The surly night clerk sent one of the housekeeping staff to look at it, and she concluded that--sure enough-- it was broken. As a result, I moved to another room, just as nicely outfitted as the first but with working air (and, thankfully, no halogen lamps). The staff quality varied pretty widely, from ignorant and surly to helpful and pleasant, but the weather and grounds made up for that. In the photo below, if you look closely you can see my laptop on the table under the umbrella... sure a lot nicer than working in some drab office somewhere.
Tuesday was uneventful: I got up, went to work, taught, and went back to the hotel.
Wednesday I repeated the pattern, at least until the class was over. I had intended to stay at the London Temple accomodation center, but they close the doors at 7pm. By the time my class was over, I had to catch the 5:35 train to Gatwick, which put me there right about 7pm. Instead, I booked a room at the Hilton Gatwick: the last-minute rate was cheap, and I hoped that I'd be able to easily get to the terminal in the morning. It turns out to be quite a hike from the terminal to the hotel, but then the same is true of the Sofitel, so no big deal.
The Hilton itself was quite nice-- just a basic airport hotel (albeit with terrible, fuzzy TV reception). They upgraded me to the "executive floor" (ha!), with a small lounge with a nice variety of drinks and snacks. I wanted a real dinner, though, so I roamed the airport shopping area, looking for food, and found a place to have a panini while watching the UEFA Cup final. I then discovered that Marks & Spencer had a small "Simply Food" convenience store, where I bought some snacks for the boys and... drum roll... a two-pack of scotch eggs.
Let me describe the joy of scotch eggs. First, you boil an egg. Then you wrap it in minced sausage (spicy is better, of course), bread it, and deep-fry it. Delicious! Unfortunately, the custom is to eat them cold; Simply Food keeps them in the cooler, and I didn't have any way to heat them up. However, they were still delightful. I'm glad I finally got to try them. (I also had fish and chips while in Reading, but I understand they don't really taste right unless you eat them out of wax paper at the seashore.)
At lunch on Wednesday, I told the class attendees that this was my first visit to the UK. This sparked a lively conversation about how my expectations matched up to the reality, and what surprised me. So, in no particular order, a few thoughts:
- Everywhere I went, I saw electricity-saving devices like speed-sensitive escalators and individual light fixtures with motion sensors. However, nowhere did I see any water-saving devices like automatic faucets. (And speaking of faucets: for some odd reason, many of the restrooms I saw lacked dividers between urinals, but had floor-to-ceiling walls on the toilet stalls... a little TMI to brighten your day!)
- At the hotels, airports, and shops, I was surprised to see how many jobs were taken by immigrants from Eastern Europe.
- I loved the ubiquity and ease of public transport, although it seemed rather expensive. The office park where I was teaching had a free bus that ran between the offices and the town center (where the train station is), and the train system was easy to figure out and use.
- Shops and businesses close much earlier than I had expected. For example, there's a large mall near Gatwick (well, it's in Croydon), but it closes at 5pm. Hard to get much shopping done on that kind of schedule.
- In the mall, on the train, and on the street, women tend to dress better than they do in the US. Not so much for the men, however.
- Over and over I heard how unusual the nice weather was. That's a bit scary.
- I was very surprised to find out that this is not only legal but widely available in England.
Executive summary: I love, love, love this device.
It has been exceptionally useful to be able to read multiple things from the same device. When I bought an iPod, I was able to stop carrying multiple CDs around with me, and I was enchanted with the variety of musical choice that gave me, no matter where I was. I have the same feeling about the Kindle; now I can do exactly the same with books. I have probably 25 books and magazines loaded on it right now, and so everywhere I went-- the plane, the train, the taxi, the hotel restaurant, the bus stop-- I had something interesting to read, all in a single small package.
The screen quality is fantastic. It is extremely readable, and the ability to adjust font sizes is a nice bonus. The page-flicker effect is barely noticeable to me now.
As for content, I couldn't buy anything from Amazon because there's no Whispernet service in the UK. I was able to hit up manybooks.net, the Baen Free Library, and fictionwise.com to add a number of free and purchased items through the USB disk mode, though. While waiting for lunch, for example, I was reading the first part of Joe Haldeman's new novel "Marsbound" in either Asimov's or Analog (they run together in my mind).
Bad points: yes, there are a few. The device itself feels a little plasticy, and the "next page" button on the right edge of the Kindle feels downright flimsy. The included case is pretty much worthless, as the Kindle won't really stay in it when it's opened. I found to my dismay that trying to charge the Kindle via USB actually drains the battery. I also noticed that two titles I'd bought, Snow Crash and Count Zero, aren't actually on the device-- apparently they didn't get downloaded yet, so I couldn't read them.
Boom shaka laka! According to this press release, Microsoft is releasing SP1 for Office 2008 at noon PDT today. It should be up on Mactopia shortly.
Nice to see that noted security guru Crispin Cowan has a blog.
On the China earthquake, from a friend who manages the Chinese manufacturing and development teams at a large company:
It’s much, much worse than what you hear through western channels. Think of 80% of downtown Seattle destroyed at 3PM on a weekday. Give if you can.
I'm in Reading to present one of the UC Metro events, and I have to start setting up the lab first thing Monday morning. That means I had to fly in on Sunday, but my flight arrived in the morning and I didn't want to just hang around Reading. Solution: make a side trip into London, where I'd never been before, and see some sights. I only had about eight hours, and I didn't want to do anything too expensive; in fact, in the spirit of it being the Sabbath I wanted to focus on low- or no-cost activities; I definitely wanted to see Westminster Abbey and attend Sacrament meeting at a ward somewhere in the Metro area. Here's how it all turned out.
I started the day by arriving, thankfully uneventfully, at London Gatwick on DL 58 from Atlanta. Nice flight, decent sleep, decent food. No one at Delta, ATL, or LGW mentioned it, but it turns out that the Sofitel Gatwick is an arrivals lounge for Delta. Translated, that means I got a free shower and free Internet access, both of which I took advantage of before dropping my luggage at the Excess Baggage shop in the North Terminal, then taking the tram to the South Terminal to catch the Gatwick Express. This was partly a good move. The Gatwick Express part, that is; I should have left my bags in the South Terminal version of the Excess Baggage shop, but more on that later.
The Express, as its name implies, whisks one from LGW to London's Victoria Station in about half an hour. There's not much to see along the route, although I was somewhat surprised to see a trailer park, looking very much like its American equivalents, somewhere along the way. I didn't have any concrete plans of exactly where I wanted to go, except to church, so when I got to Victoria Station I grabbed a Tube map, bought an all-day Tube pass, and started trying to figure out how to find a nearby ward.
This would have been trivial with the iPhone, which actually has a real web browser. However, it also has a well-known habit of making spontaneous data connections, and I didn't want a jillion-dollar bill. I also needed my Treo's ability to keep my calendar and contacts up to date over the air, so the iPhone stayed home. This meant that I couldn't (despite my concentrated attempts) use Pocket Internet Explorer to find a ward; instead, I had to find an Internet cafe near Victoria and look there. I quickly found the Wandsworth Common ward, and arrived there via cab about 5 minutes after Sacrament meeting had started. It was wonderful to be able to attend and take the Sacrament, and the whole experience was quite familiar (even given the unusual accents). However, the demographics of the ward are quite different to what I'm used to in Ohio: the Wandham Common ward had about a third the overall attendance, with relatively few men. Lots of women, many with small children, and a good proportion of different ethnicities (there's a Spanish-speaking ward too, which I didn't really expect).
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On the way back towards the City, I decided to walk to the Clapham Common Tube station. This was made more complicated by my inability to read a map; I walked the long way around. In this case, taking the long way around a 220-acre parcel of land ended up costing me an extra mile or two of walking, but it was OK because I was able to enjoy seeing all the people using the Commons as a park. I saw people playing Frisbee, soccer, rugby, cricket, and softball, along with lots of (mostly pale) people lounging on the grass and enjoying the sun. I was a bit surprised by how many people were in the park-- it was packed-- and by how much trash there was along the outer boundaries of the park. No doubt it takes the sanitation crews all week to deal with the excess of garbage produced on the weekends.
I eventually made it to the Tube station and started meandering around trying to figure out where to go next. Did I mention my map-reading problem? It was made worse by the fact that I bought a "London A-Z" atlas. This was very useful for finding a particular street, but fairly useless for finding landmarks (e.g. the American embassy) if I didn't already know their general location. I decided to skip the Tower of London, as the promo brochure I picked up said it took 3-4 hours for a full tour. Instead, I made my way to the London Bridge area, where I saw the bridge itself (see proof below) and had a delicious Cornwall pasty for lunch. From there, I went to see the Royal Exchange, wandered around the Bank Street area for a while, and took the Circular Line to Westminster.
Naturally, the first thing I saw was Big Ben. A short walk took me past the Parliament complex and to Westminster Abbey. It's hard for me to imagine exactly how old London is. In the US we tend to think of anything dating back more than 100 years or so as historic, but the Abbey has been there for much, much longer. Unfortunately, the church itself is closed to visitors on Sunday except during services, and there were none scheduled during the time I was there. I made do instead with a walk around the grounds, which were (as you might expect) both lovely and crowded. (Check out this overhead view, which clearly shows the cross-shaped structure of the Abbey in a way that ground-level photos don't.) The Westminster grounds have the fattest pigeons I've ever seen, as sleek-looking as dolphins and iridescent as WD-40 on water. They are also utterly unafraid of humans. |
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I walked through the Victoria Tower Garden and along the river until I got to the Vauxhall Bridge, then crossed over and walked back along the other side. Because it was late in the afternoon, the setting sun was backlighting the things I wanted to take pictures of, so no joy there. I did have a lovely walk, though. The Thames has a much faster current than I expected. For some reason (I blame Jane Austen) I've always thought of it as a slow-moving, somewhat lazy river, but not so (at least not near the bridges!) I crossed back over at the Lambeth Bridge, near the London Eye, which I briefly considered riding. However, because the lighting would have made it impossible to get a good picture, I decided against it. Instead, I bought an ice cream cone. At least, that's what the sign said, but perhaps the nice lady who sold it to me made a mistake, because it tasted like it was a semi-frozen Cool Whip cone-- not exactly what I expected, but still welcome due to the warmth of the day (there were announcements on the PA in several of the Tube stations cautioning people to drink plenty of water because it was a hot day).
As I was eating my ice cream and walking past Big Ben, it started chiming the hour! This was one of the coolest serendipitous things I've ever experienced.
Next, I walked up Birdcage Walk and past the lovely St. James Park. No surprise, it was full of people too. Birdcage Walk has a splendid set of shade trees, so it was a delightful walk to Buckingham Palace. By that time, unfortunately, my camera battery was deader than a doornail because I forgot to charge it after letting Tom take wedding pictures. Sadly, I didn't get to take any pictures of the Victoria Monument or the gate guards.
After my walk, I was too tired to bother going by the American Embassy, especially given that I couldn't take any pictures of the Marines there; instead, I walked back to Victoria Station and took the Express back to Gatwick. The North and South terminals are separated by a tram, and I had foolishly left my bags in the North Terminal, so I had to take the tram from South to North, retrieve my luggage, take the tram again, and then catch the train to Reading. I tried to buy a Gatwick-Reading ticket a few weeks ago online, but the web site wouldn't sell me one without a UK billing address. The train wasn't an express, so it took about an hour and a half to make 30 miles or so between the two stations. Then it was into a cab, to the hotel (more on which later), a quick dinner, and reading in bed (yay Kindle!)
I had a heck of a time finding the downloadable version of the OCS 2007 Speech Server component, which you can use to build interactive voice response (IVR) and text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities into your own applications. We use it extensively in the UC Metro training, and I needed to reinstall it-- but it was nowhere to be found.
Cut to the chase: it's available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BB183640-4B8F-4828-80C9-E83C3B2E7A2C&displaylang=en. Don't try searching for "speech server 2007 download" or you'll only get some old, obsolete microsoft.com pages that offer a broken beta version.
Well, nothing yet, because it doesn't get here until tomorrow. Amazon sent me a mail telling me that I can start ordering content, though, and it will be automatically delivered as soon as I unbox and boot the Kindle. With that in mind, here's what I'm putting on it:
- Snow Crash
: I've been wanting a copy of this for a while because I no longer have one
- A Fighter's Heart
: looks like a really interesting tour of the MMA circuit
- Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
: I can't wait to have a searchable electronic copy of this!
- All of Cory Doctorow's fiction
- The two books of the Lost Fleet series that I haven't yet read: Courageous and Dauntless
- Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Betrayal: hey, it's free, and the boys will enjoy reading it.
- Count Zero: another oldie-but-goodie. I had my hand on this the other day at Books-a-Million.
That's enough to get me started, I reckon.
Heaven help me. I just ordered an Amazon Kindle, the electronic book device. Given how much I travel, and how much everyone in the family reads, it seems like it would be a really good deal. I have some qualms, though, like the fact that I can't resell (or loan) books once they're bought. However, I routinely spend $15-30 per trip on paperbacks to read, and I love the idea of being able to grab a new book on demand. I'll give it a try. Expect a full review once I've had a chance to play with it some.
Devin has earned big props in two ways.
First, his session on using DPM 2007 with Exchange at MMS was the second-highest-rated session of the day yesterday. Given the quality of the other sessions, that's saying a lot.
Second, yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of Devin's start date at 3Sharp. Devin has really matured and grown his skills since his start, and he's been a major contributor to our growth and success. I look forward to having him around for the next five years-- thanks, Devin!
Now this is pretty slick: a Visio 2007 connector that can connect to an Exchange topology and automatically generate a set of topology diagrams drawn from what it finds on the network. I'll be looking forward to seeing how this works in more complex environments than my own single-server lab in the basement.
My friend Jason Buffington (XBL: DarkJediHunter) is now famous after writing this review of SceneIt! for Xbox.com. We loves us some SceneIt here, and I encourage you to check it out if you like family games or movies.
I thought I'd posted on this Tuesday night, but apparently I didn't. Anyway...
I've been speaking on Exchange and other topics professionally for about ten years. During that time, I've probably spoken at more than a hundred events, ranging from the small to the gargantuan, and I've only cancelled one. Tuesday afternoon, I made the really difficult decision to cancel another, my appearance at Connections. My wife has been ill for the last week or so, and I just wasn't comfortable leaving her alone. She's feeling somewhat better now, and three of my four sessions were covered by people who are even smarter than I am (thanks to Jim, Jüergen, and John!) so I feel better about my decision. I still hated to miss Connections, though, and I'm really looking forward to the Vegas version! My apologies to anyone who was disappointed by my absence. I hope it never happens again :)
Arlene just found an ad for a new gluten-free product supplier: TastesLikeRealFood.com. They sell several kinds of imported flours and mixes from Norway. With a name like that, no doubt their stuff is good, so we ordered the sampler to try it out.
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So this is what the future looks like. Microsoft released Mac Messenger 7.0 yesterday. The big deal about this release is its support for OCS 2007. In fact, if you're not an OCS user, there aren't a lot of new features here (though you can set nicknames for Live Messenger contacts, a useful feature). However, if you are using OCS, there's a ton of good stuff. Let's start with the obvious: there are some new icons in the toolbar that weren't there before. You can now place, and answer, audio and video calls through OCS. For example, if someone on my team calls me with Communicator, I'll get a toast telling me that there's an inbound audio call,and I can answer it, then escalate it to a video call at any time. Second, you may notice that the "pawn"-style presence icons from previous versions have been replaced with the OCS-style "jellybean" icons. The coloring and shading of these icons is subtly different from those in Communicator, but they fit in well with the overall UI. The large jellybean next to the account name lets you change your presence status to the states supported by OCS: available, busy, do not disturb, "be right back", and away. As in previous versions of Messenger, you can choose whether or not you want to synchronize the presence states of your MSN Messenger and OCS accounts, although these states don't necessarily have a 1:1 mapping. |
| Third, there's a way to search the GAL! The search field works just like you'd expect: when you enter a full or partial name, you get a list of results in a search pane at the top. I haven't been able to get this feature to work for federated contacts yet (although I can add federated contacts directly if I know their e-mail address). The utility of the GAL search feature varies according to the size of your GAL: the bigger the GAL, the more useful this feature is. Fourth, we finally get support for multiple points of presence (MPOP). If you're logged in to more than one OCS endpoint (say, a Tanjay phone and Messenger), all of the endpoints will publish their local presence states to OCS, and OCS will aggregate them and publish a composite presence state. For example, let's say that I'm using my Tanjay to place an outbound call. Its presence will show as "in a call", but my Messenger presence may be "available". OCS will take both states into consideration, decide that "in a call" trumps "available", and publish a presence for others to see of "in a call". This is particularly useful when you consider that OCS has a mobile client (Communicator Mobile), a web client (Communicator Web Access), and two desktop clients, plus devices like the Tanjay. It's common for a single user to be logged in at more than one place. One feature I haven't tested at all is Bonjour support, in both the OCS and personal portions of the client. This might be great if you work for a large company or frequently travel to places where there are lots of other Mac users; neither of those is true of me, so I have no idea if this feature works or is useful. Stay tuned; I'll try it on my next couple of business trips and report back on what happens. There are some Communicator/OCS features that aren't included in this release. For one, you cannot place outbound PSTN calls like you can in Communicator. there's no way to change the access level of a contact or to tag a contact for status change alerts. At present, there's no way to join an OCS-hosted conference; Messenger has very limited AppleScript support, and it is not as well-integrated with Entourage as it could be. Overall, though, this is a solid release, and the price ($0) is certainly hard to beat. |
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Exchange 2007 supports three codecs for Unified Messaging voice messages. I knew that you could choose which codec Exchange uses at the dial plan level, but until recently, I didn't know that you could change this setting for individual users. The key is to use the CallAnsweringAudioCodec switch with the Set-UMMailbox command, like this:
Get-UMMailbox "paul" -CallAnsweringAudioCodec gsm
Of course, you can do lots of more interesting things with this cmdlet by using filters or other means to apply this setting to a group of users... say, your Entourage users, who can't listen to UM voice mails recorded with the default WMA codec.
Technorati Tags: Exchange 2007, Unified Communications, Unified Messaging
One of the tough things about the MVP Summit is that practically everything there is covered under NDA. That makes it hard to adequately convey how cool some of the stuff we saw and learned was. Suffice it to say that it's going to be an exciting year in the unified communications world, and I've got lots of article topics queued up for the future!
My summit attendance pattern is a little atypical: I usually skip all of the executive keynotes, so this year's organization was perfect-- the keynotes were on the last day instead of the first. Monday had some open/birds-of-a-feather sessions, so I used that time to fly in and hit the office, where I spent some time planning the details of how we're using (and customizing) Microsoft CRM. CRM makes me frustrated because I know so little about how to use it, and I'm not a professional salesman. However, I'm excited about better automating our sales process, as well as some of the UC integration features that we can deliver.
Tuesday and Wednesday were all deep technical days. I can't say much about those, except that they were awesome. Thanks to the Exchange and OCS product teams for coming to talk to us!
Thursday was executive keynote day. I skipped the keynotes and flew home on the Wednesday red-eye, but after reading the transcript of Steve Ballmer's talk it doesn't look like I missed anything.
But you probably knew that already.
A survey out today by the organizers of the tech-security conference Infosecurity Europe found that 21% of 576 London office workers stopped on the street were willing to share their computer passwords with a good looking woman holding a clipboard. People were offered a chocolate bar in exchange for the information. More than half of the people surveyed said they used the same password for everything.
There are a lot of skeptical comments over at the WSJ blog. However, a friend of mine who is a well-known figure in the security community said this in e-mail:
...we did a similar chocolate bar or $2 pen hand out in London to collect passwords. Our gathering password rate was 84%. We then contacted each security domain (we asked for their related email address to send them a free voucher entry for more candy bars). We asked the domain administrators (ISPs, businesses, etc.) to simply review the list and send back the percentage of correct collected passwords. Our response rate from the domain administrators was only 30% or so…I can’t remember the exact number…but it was less than half and more than a quarter. The ones that did respond confirmed that over 60% were the actual passwords.
To this day, if I hadn’t participated in the survey and collected the results myself, I would not have believed it.
So, clearly if you want to fish for passwords, your odds of getting something useful in exchange for a chocolate bar and a few minutes of face time with a good-looking woman are pretty darn good. Scary!
Wow.
My mind is being blown by some of the things the Exchange team is showing us. One of the best things about being an Exchange MVP is that we have a really good rapport with the product group. Some groups have bad intra-group relationships, and others have friction between the product group and the MVPs. In this case, though, the product team does a stellar job of soliciting and accepting feedback, and it's been to both our benefits. Can't wait to talk about some of the things they're showing!
(and funny side note: the space bar on my MacBook Pro is sticking, so I keep typing compound words like "keeptyping" and "productplan". This makes me feel vaguely German.)
David managed to break his Nintendo DS Lite; he snapped off part of the headphone plug fairly deep inside the jack. I didn't want to tackle taking it apart, and I'd heard rumors on the intertubes that Nintendo offered drop-off service. Because Nintendo customer service center. It's conveniently located a few blocks away from Microsoft's campus, so I took the broken DS with me and drove over there yesterday afternoon. It took less than 10 minutes for me to walk in, show the busticated DS to the friendly guy behind the counter, and get a refurb unit with a fresh 1-year warranty. David is now back in business. This is the best customer service experience I've ever had at a store-- I wish Microsoft would take some lessons from this and apply them to the Xbox 360 service process.
I'm in coach on a Delta flight from Cincinnati to Seattle. Delta recently started a new food-for-sale program called EATS. The folks over at FlyerTalk seem to like it pretty well. I had Chik-Fil-A in CVG, and I'm headed to a lunch meeting, so I didn't want a full meal, but I did buy a Clif Mojo bar. It's pretty good-- sort of like a light pretzel with some peanut chunks. However, I'm a little disconcerted by the label, which has a blazon proclaiming "70% organic". What does that mean? Is the other 30% inorganic? Did I just get my RDA of aluminum and silicon? Should I have only eaten the first 2/3rds of the bar and left the remaining 33% behind to make sure I didn't eat anything unhealthy?
Eileen Brown of Microsoft was kind enough to organize a bloggers' lunch at INTERACT 2008 today. There was a good crowd, including some folks I knew and many that I hadn't previously met. I got there late and had to leave early, but in between, we got a great presentation on the inner workings of the Exchange team blog, plus a panel discussion with several senior Microsoft folks from the Unified Communications Group. As a closing surprise, we got permission to talk about a previously unannounced product that has heretofore been under deep NDA: the Mac business unit at Microsoft is close to releasing a new version of Mac Messenger, version 7.0, that adds some impressive new functionality.
Like earlier versions, the new Messenger release can simultaneously connect to the Windows Live Messenger service and corporate IM networks. In this case, Messenger adds support for OCS 2007 using the same enhanced presence model that Office Communicator uses. Better yet, it supports voice and video with other OCS users! I've been using this feature for a while and it rocks. Combine it with OCS' ability to federate contacts across multiple organizations, and it rocks even more. Voice and video quality in my tests has been excellent, and the OCS support carries on Messenger's tradition of providing a very Mac-ish user experience. I hope to get permission to post some screenshots in the next day or two; more news when there is news.
The boys and I went to grappling class this Saturday, for the first time in a while. It showed :)
Our school does grappling in an hour-long block, starting with about 20 minutes of position rounds. In these rounds, you're not allowed to actually force your opponent to submit, and we usually use those times to practice. I was rollin' with Jerry, who is about my height but quite a bit stronger, so I was a bit tired by the time we got done with that part of the class. Next, we do 15 minutes or so of instruction and drill; the instructor will teach a move or technique, and we'll partner up and practice it. Missing this has hurt my performance the most, because I've fallen behind in my technical knowledge. This was well demonstrated when we went to the final part of the class: freestyle grappling, with submissions not only allowed but encouraged. In my first round, Adam (who's about my build but a bit shorter) tapped me out twice. In my second round, I managed to prevent my opponent from submitting me, but that was because it was my son Tom :) I hope to do better next week.
This week, I'm getting ready to attend INTERACT2008, Microsoft's new community event for unified communications. I think of it as a replacement for the long-departed and much-missed Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC), but it's not really the same thing. INTERACT is more focused, with a much higher technical session level. Press aren't invited, but MVPs and other community influencers are. There should be a large presence from Microsoft's engineering teams, which is always good. The whole event is structured around trying to reinforce the growing MS UC&C community and help it grow-- a worthwhile goal.
I'm presenting two sessions and proctoring a hands-on lab. The sessions are both on UC development: one on the APIs you can use across various parts of Microsoft's UC product line, and one on Exchange Web Services. The hands-on lab is really cool: it's a distillation of the two days' worth of labs that 3Sharp built as part of the UC Metro project for Microsoft. If you come do the labs, you'll be getting the same training that Microsoft provides its ISV partners. If you're going to be at INTERACT, drop me a line and let me know.
Technorati Tags: 3sharp, Exchange 2007, Unified Communications, Unified Messaging
I knew it was coming, but I missed the formal announcement. Microsoft has the details here, along with this handy feature comparison chart. Notable improvements in 6.1 include support for System Center Mobile Device Manager, cut-and-paste support for non-touchscreen devices, Exchange account auto-discovery, and a revamped home screen interface for non-touchscreen devices. There's a list of devices that will receive the upgrade. Sadly, my Treo 750 isn't on it, so no SCMDM love for me.
Technorati Tags: Windows Mobile
One of the things I like best about the martial arts school we attend is that they offer a variety of elective classes. In reality, some of these electives are actually required for advancement beyond a certain rank. For example, to earn a black belt, you have to show proficiency in several grappling and striking techniques that aren't taught in the basic curriculum. Coincidentally, these electives are usually lots of fun; the boys and I really like the Saturday sparring and grappling classes. There's also a "Fight Class" elective that offers fewer restrictions: strikes to the legs, groin, and head are permitted, and so are some types of takedowns and ground fighting. The class is only open to students age 13 and over, so David and I have been going for the last two weeks. It's a blast! It's really energizing to get in the ring and apply what I've been learning for the last year or so. David and I have had fun sparring with each other, and it's fun for me to show him that youth and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.
I didn't post this yesterday because no one would have believed it (and I was skeptical myself). Here's a video of a Finnish rock group, the Leningrad Cowboys, singing "Sweet Home Alabama"-- accompanied by the Red Army Choir. Yes, that Red Army Choir. No word on whether the audience demanded an encore of "Free Bird".
Apparently IBM has been suspended from participation in any contracts with the US federal government. Declan McCullough has the story here. It appears that the suspension is unusual in that IBM hasn't had a chance to respond to the original charges. More news as it develops.
The latest release of the iPhone SDK includes a version of Interface Builder that understands Cocoa Touch objects.
Fortunately, Muthu Arumugam has a solution. It didn't work at first because I had created my first nib as a view, not as a window. (I understand that it was also in the release notes for IB, which I will go back and read as penance.)
Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, is opening his own checkbook to help cover the cost of treatment for veterans at Atlanta's Shepherd Spinal Center:
Marcus got involved in January after he heard of a soldier who was treated at the Shepherd Center and was improving, but faced the loss of funding. "It angered me," said Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot and now a billionaire philanthropist. "It is disgraceful and it is not something that we should have to tolerate in this country."
I don't know about you, but I plan to go spend some money at Home Depot tomorrow.
Microsoft has posted a very useful document called "Certificate Use in Exchange 2007 Server" that outlines pretty much everything you need to know about how Exchange 2007 uses certificates. In particular, it nicely explains the use of subject alternative name (SAN) certificates. Check it out.
Here's how much I like the GN 9350
The 9350 is a lightweight wireless headset that features two connections: a USB plug that enables it to work with Communicator or other computer applications, plus a conventional headset connector. Two buttons on the headset base let you switch back and forth between modes. This allows you to quickly switch between a regular desk phone and applications like Skype, Mac Messenger, or Office Communicator.
Audio quality is excellent, as is range. My base unit is on my desk, in the northeast corner of the second floor. I can talk on the phone from anywhere in the yard, or even in the southwest corner of the basement. I particularly like this feature for long phone calls, as it means I can grab a diet Coke when I need one. (Sadly, there's no mute button on the headset itself, so ix-nay on wearing it into the athroom-bay.) I easily get a full 9 hours of battery life, and the battery is replaceable so you can keep a spare on hand.
The 9350 features two headbands: one goes over the top of the head, and the other wraps around the back. I prefer the wraparound, but I appreciate that I got to make the choice. There's also an optional remote handset lifter, the RHL-1000. I haven't bought one because it's only useful if you're close enough to the phone to hear it ring, which generally I'm not.
At an MSRP of $299, this is an expensive piece of equipment (though you can find refurb units at Hello Direct for $199 or so). However, it's made a huge difference in my ability to talk for long periods on the phone, which has ultimately made me quite a bit more productive. I give it two thumbs up.
Mad props to John and Becky, who are celebrating the first anniversary of the Flying Bean. I'm not a coffee drinker, but I am an aviation enthusiast, so I love going there. John and Becky are superbly friendly, and they actively support the local community. (Plus they make great hot chocolate!)
So, I left my partner meeting early today to get home before the snow. First we arrived early but had to wait about half an hour for an open gate. Then I found that I'd lost my drivers' license, so the fine folks at Alamo wouldn't give me my rental car without it. They called me a cab, only to find out that it was some random guy (not a licensed cab) who already had a fare... in downtown Detroit. Somewhere along the way, I also managed to lose my headphones. Plus I missed supper. Grrrr.
Microsoft licensing confuses lots of people, me included. Fellow Exchange MVP Michael B. Smith has two great posts covering Exchange licensing and OCS licensing. They make for interesting reading if you're not up on the intricacies of these licensing terms.
We just got back from a draining trip to visit my aunt Debby, Dad's sister. She was diagnosed earlier this year with small cell lung cancer, no doubt brought on by a combination of a lifetime of smoking and a lifetime of living in Louisiana. Recently her health worsened quite a bit, so we moved up our plan to visit her during the kids' spring break. Instead, Arlene and Tom left Thursday (TOL-CVG-ATL-BTR) and Matt, David, and I left first thing Friday (DTW-IAH-LFT). It took a lot of fancy dancing on the part of Delta's Medallion desk, but we ended up with five frequent-flyer tickets, though we couldn't get in to New Orleans because of the Jazz Festival. Sadly, Debby passed away early Friday morning, so we extended our trip to attend her funeral on Monday.
Debby was a very practical, level-headed woman with a wonderful sense of humor. When I was a kid, she used to call me "Professor" because of my bad habit of correcting everyone around me (fortunately I don't do that much any more!) I wish I had videotaped her description of her trip to Rome to visit the Pope last year; she had us all in hysterics with her descriptions of Italian men and her banter with the priest from her home parish who organized the pilgrimage. She really helped a lot as we struggled to come to terms with Dad's death last year, and I will forever be indebted to her for teaching my dear wife how to cook a number of Cajun dishes, as well as how she welcomed Arlene into the family and made her feel immediately at ease.
It was really great to see everyone, though it was under sad circumstances. (Well, OK, I admit it: I was only somewhat pleased to see John, Lee Anne's dad there. He kept going on about how great Texas is for some reason.) On the bright side, we got to meet Doug's wife Shawn (who is a real keeper! welcome to the family, Shawn!), and all of us got to play with Russ and Allyson. That helped take the sting out some.
Having recently experienced it myself, I know how hard it is to lose a parent, the more so because Jody and Eric lost their dad in 1986. That puts them in the unenviable position of having to handle all the estate details themselves, precisely at the time when it's most difficult to do so. Fathers Ron and Pat conducted a beautiful funeral mass, and that helped, as did having so many extended family members around. As always at any family gathering, the food was excellent. We made a side trip to Dave's Cajun Kitchen, which I recommend in the strongest possible terms.
I'm inaugurating a new feature here: the Tech Toy of the Week. Heaven knows I have enough of them to post a short weely review of one of them.
This week: the Speck line of cases for laptops. In particular, the SeeThru cases, which are essentially plastic clamshells that snap around your laptop to protect the actual case from abrasions and dirt. I have the clear SeeThru for my MacBook Pro (see some example photos here) and it works very well. Minor annoyance: the clear color shows dirt. I should probably have gotten the red one instead; the colored ones look great with the monochrome silver color scheme of the MBP. Speck also makes lots of other cases for laptops (notably the Sony Vaio series), iPods, and iPhones. Check 'em out.
Craig Hockenberry is a smart guy. He's been around for a while, and has an impressive track record in the Mac software world. I don't, but that's not going to stop me from arguing with him about background apps on the iPhone. His argument has two parts.
Part 1 (here) essentially says that gackground apps will kill the battery life and usability of the iPhone by allowing application developers to willy-nilly make network connections, thus keeping the device radios on more than needed (or wanted).
Part 2 (here) says that even if we could magically solve the problems he describes in part 1, the user experience on the device would quickly get out of hand.
Why don't I agree with part 1? I have experienced just the opposite with Windows Mobile. There's a great deal of institutional knowledge around exactly these two problems in the Windows Mobile world. I get better battery life with my Treo 750 running Windows Mobile 6 than I do with my iPhone, despite the fact that the Treo has an HSDPA radio. This is despite the fact that I run a number of always-on apps on my Treo, including Communicator Mobile and Outlook Mobile with Direct Push enabled. If you take a look at the Direct Push protocol, you'll see that it's designed to keep a connection alive while still allowing the radio to go dormant when there's not actually any information to transfer. The same thing is true of the UC AJAX protocol that Communicator Mobile uses. This is not a new idea, and Microsoft's not the first to implement it. Craig's argument-- that ill-behaved or poorly written applications will kill your battery faster than Eliot Spitzer's political career-- is true. However, that's not necessarily an argument in favor of blocking background applications. Let people ship background applications, then let the market decide which ones should survive based on their performance. (Note to Craig and others: remember, when we get that Exchange ActiveSync support we've all been jonesing for... it's a persistent network connection!)
I give Craig's arguments in part 2 a little more credence. The iPhone offers a lovely UI, as pleasant to look at and touch as any other well-designed, well-engineered artifact (whether a Glock, an engine block, or a summer frock.) It is a bit painful to think of having all sorts of buzzing, boinging, and screen flashing horning in on SJ's Zen-like user experience. However, Apple has already solved this problem, at least in part: look at the way that the SMS, phone, and e-mail applications notify users of available data by using a number superimposed on the application icon. This paradigm works well for some sorts of applications. For others, the solution isn't to ban applications from posting notifications-- Craig rightly points out that several different notification-brokering APIs exist on the desktop Mac platform. So where's the API for the iPhone? Where's the mobile equivalent of Growl, or (better yet) a supported framework from Apple? That's essentially what WM has, and it allows application developers to post notifications that the user can control. My Treo makes one distinct sound for a new SMS, one for a new e-mail (well, actually, two: for high-priority e-mails, Voice Command reads me the subject line), and one for a device or calendar alarm. Simple, powerful, and easy to customize. Given how good a job Apple has done with almost every other aspect of the iPhone UI, it sure seems like a problem they could solve if they wanted to.
I'm personally very disappointed by Apple's decision not to allow background apps. I was planning on using UC AJAX to build an OCS client for the iPhone, but I probably won't bother if there's no way to background applications; a foreground-only IM client would be pretty worthless. I do have a few other projects in mind, though...
