April 2005 Archives

TiVo is running an interesting promotion: buy a $155 12-month subscription and get a free 140-hour TiVo unit. This post at the TiVo Community has the details. Even if you're an existing customer, this is a pretty good deal, since the $155 subscription turns into about 22 months at the $6.95/month rate. Heck, if you buy a lifetime sub you still come out about $200 ahead, since that's normally what the 140-hr boxes cost. Want one? Email me, but do it before 4/30, when this expires.

I had to go back to Chicago (or, more precisely, to Downers' Grove) last week for the next stop on our collaboration and communications roadshow. This event was the first one we've held in a hotel instead of a Microsoft office, so I was a little leery-- the Microsoft office facilities tend to be quite nice, and they're usually already set up for our presentations. This event was booked at the Marriott Suites in Downers Grove, which turned out to be a wonderful hotel. I was predisposed to like it as soon as my cab turned the corner: just up the street, there's a Fuddrucker's and a Brazilian churrascaria, and directly across from the hotel there's a Fry's Electronics. Nancy and the rest of the hotel staff were extremely competent and helpful, and John and I got everything set up quickly. The rooms were spacious and comfortable, which is always a nice bonus. We had a team dinner at Sal e Carvão, the churrascaria, and it was excellent. Our event the next day went well, and I got to take an early flight home so I got home just before the kids went to bed (instead of at zero-midnight-thirty). All in all, a good trip.

Singlefin announced today that they're giving away their hosted spam filtering service, free, to organizations with 10 or fewer mailboxes. The press release (which isn't on their site yet) quotes their CEO as saying "Of course, we know that small companies can become large companies and if we extend this generous offer now while they are still growing, we are confident it will translate into brand loyalty and solid customer referrals down the road". Here's the most interesting part:

Any organization anywhere in the world is eligible to take advantage of this protection without the need for cumbersome software or expensive hardware. Singlefin solutions are 100% managed or “hosted” meaning protection for customer networks is all enabled through network redirects. One simple change to a customer’s DNS enables 100% protection from spam, viruses and other malware via Singlefin’s Enterprise Email Filter. The Web and Instant Message Filters are enabled through similar network changes.

This is a terrific move on Singlefin's part; the incremental cost for them to host these small organizations is low, but the brand-building value is very high. There are so many anti-spam solutions on the market that it's hard for vendors to differentiate themselves, but this should definitely help build awareness of Singlefin.

Want to destroy the Earth? Here's a handy guide. (Illodium Q-36 explosive space modulator not included).

TiVo is running a promotion for people who have referred customers to them: I can get up to 5 140-hour TiVos for free with the purchase of a 12-month subscription ($155) or a lifetime subscription ($299). This is quite a deal, since the TiVo box itself normally goes for $199. I don't need one, but if you're in the market for a new or replacement TiVo, drop me a line before 4/30 and we'll talk.

My partners at 3sharp have been involved in a huge project over the last few months: building credible enterprise-level sample applications using Office as a development platform. Behold: Fabrikam, a Microsoft Office System Solutions Learning Platform! Hats off to Peter, John, Anup, Kevin, David, Chris, Greg, and Phil.

It doesn't look like much, but this rock is one of my favorite things. It's a relic of our summer 2000 trip to NAS Whidbey Island with our friend Brian (that's Commander Albro to the rest of you). There's a stony little beach not far from a pedestal-mounted EA-6B that we stopped to see. Brian let his dogs out to run, and Arlene and I walked on the beach with David and Thomas. I grabbed a rock to throw it in the water and was immediately struck by its texture and heft, so I brought it back home.

I keep it on my desk, just under my phone, so I can pick it up and hold it while I'm on the phone, or when I'm thinking about something. Some people doodle; I play with my rock. It has a wonderful texture, slightly grainy but smoothed by untold years of wind and wave action. It's oval in shape, so it fits well in my hand. I don't know why I like it so well (and I sure don't know why I felt like blogging about it), but I do. It's wonderful to me that of all the beautiful creations on God's earth, I have this little nonperishable piece that I can keep nearby for days when I don't make it out of the bunker.

• The Kaiser Chiefs, "I Predict a Riot" (and it's free on iTunes!)
• Solomon Burke, "Make Do With What You Got". I've always loved Motown and soul, and apparently Burke (whom I've never heard of) is an old-school Motown singer who's, well, not mounting a comeback, because he never really left. Great stuff, with an expressive growl, a hot horn section, and more Hammond B3 than you can shake a stick at.
• Too much stuff to list from Amazon's free MP3 downloads section (including Kid Loco and Yo La Tengo)

The scene is sometime in the old era when cockpits had round dials plus flight engineers and navigators. The crusty old-timer captain is breaking in a brand new navigator. The captain opens his briefcase, pulls out a .38 and rests it on the glare panel. He asks the navigator, "Know what this is for?"

"No, sir," replies the newbie.

"I use it on navigators that get us lost," explains the captain, winking at his first officer.

The navigator then opens his briefcase, pulls out a .45 an sets it on his chart table. "What's THAT for?" queries the surprised captain.

"Well, sir," replies the navigator, "I'll know we're lost before you will."

I hate it when this happens: "Orthopedists say they are seeing an increasing number of patients with similar symptoms, a condition known as 'overuse syndrome' or 'BlackBerry thumb.'" I guess I'd better worry about using my Treo with SnapperMail.

Wow.

Star Wars Revelations is a fan movie, made without permission or assistance from George Lucas and his merry band. was a better Star Wars movie than the preceding two official movies put together. The technical quality of the movie is excellent, with brilliant special effects. The plot's a bit opaque, and the actors are clearly not Hollywood megastars. On the other hand, the acting here is no worse than that of The Phantom Menace. C | Net has a pretty good story that features some background on the larger phenom of fan-created works, but for now you should hop over to Panic Struck Productions' web site and grab the film for yourself. (Better yet, get the torrent).

Now this is pretty slick: the Visio 2003 Connector for MBSA turns an MBSA scan into a color-coded Visio network diagram. (Actually, you have to create the network diagram first, but that's trivial with Visio 2003 Professional). What a great add-on to MBSA's built-in scanning functionality. Get it here.

Greg Hughes has a great dissection of his recent search for a replacement for his BlackBerry. In the end, he went back to the old familiar BlackBerry, but not until after he tried the Audiovox 5600, the SX66/XV6600, the Treo 650, and the BlackBerry 7100 series. He started with a BlackBerry device and tried the others to see how they compared as mobile email devices and as phones. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he ended up with his same preferred device. It's fascinating to see how big a role inertia plays in PDA/smartphone selection, compared to the larger mobile phone market. Of course, device cost (and the cost of installed software) make a huge difference. I considered the BlackBerry 7100s, but since I can't run any of my stable of useful Palm apps, that wasn't going to happen. (I still have to post a longer review of the XV6600, besides my initial thoughts).

Huge news from the Real-Time Communications product team at Microsoft. First, we'll be getting a Live Communications Server client for Windows Mobile devices sometime in the second half of this year. I've been happy using the MSN Messenger client that comes with the Windows Mobile-powered Audiovox XV6600, but being able to communicate with other corporate LCS users will be a huge win-- right now, if I want to IM with someone inside Microsoft's perimeter, I have to dig out the ol' laptop. MS hasn't yet announced pricing or functionality; I think it's safe to assume that the Windows Mobile client will have a subset of Office Communicator's functionality, in the same way that Pocket Outlook is a subset of desktop Outlook.

The other news astonished me: Research In Motion, producers of the BlackBerry line, have signed an agreement with MS to produce a Live Communications Server client for the BlackBerry platform. This is terrific news for the LCS team, and great news for BlackBerry users who want to combine their existing mobile e-mail service with IM and presence. Of course, it raises the bar for the Windows Mobile team, who now have to contend with the loss of what would otherwise have been a significant capability advantage. With Magneto around the corner, though, I bet they have some other tricks up their sleeve.

Update: looks like RIM's been busy; yesterday they also announced an agreement with IBM Lotus to provide a native Sametime client for BlackBerry. The plot thickens...

The Greater Toledo chapter of the American Red Cross is low on blood... again. They're operating a blood drive at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints building on Ohio Route 795 in Perrysburg. The drive is on Saturday, April 30, from 10am to 3pm. If you're eligible to donate (over 17, over 110lbs, good health), please come by and donate-- donated blood saves lives. If you want to reserve a specific time, feel free to email me and I'll get you signed up.

Amazon has a new feature with which they do various kinds of analysis on (many of) the books in their catalog. One of these analyses is the "statistically improbably phrase" test; this shows phrases for a given book that appear much more often in one book than in the whole corpus of books in their Search Inside program. For my book, here are the SIPs Amazon found:

relaying configuration, antivirus product vendors, relaying settings, archive sink, htr files, perimeter scanner, constrained delegation, check pox, default response rule, mailbox database, key archival, attachment access, perimeter network, message tracking, mailbox administrators, messaging security, retention categories, smart card enrollment station, machine certificates, delegate access, dialog hox, segmentation value, privilege escalation, inbound mail, event sink

Note "check pox" and "dialog hox"; those are probably my favorites. I can't wait to see what the list for the Cookbook looks like!

Devin just got his first OS X machine. I thought I'd make a list of a few helpful tools he might want or need. In no particular order:

• TextWrangler, a powerful but easy-to-use text editor, plus it's free!
• GraphicConverter, a useful tool for editing and converting various graphic file formats.
• WeatherPop: put weather and forecast information right in your menu bar (free for the basic version!)
• ChangeDesktop: automatically updates your desktop background with a random picture, plus it's free
• Huevos: hit a hotkey to search any number of search engines, or customize your own.
• LaunchBar: terrific keyboard application launcher. Not free, but well worth it.

Since he's running Windows, he'll also want the Remote Desktop Client from MS (hint: make two copies of the app, give them different names, and run them at the same time to get two concurrent sessions). He'd also better run the MSN Messenger client so I can give him work assignments :)

Hitachi has a very funny Flash video called Get Perpendicular that explains their new perpendicular recording technology. If you ever laughed at a Schoolhouse Rock cartoon, go see this now. Great for kids: Matt just asked if we could get a season pass for it.

There's a fascinating thread of comments over at Ed Brill's blog on this post. Ed and Alan Lepofsky, along with various other luminaries in the Notes communities, have been having a generally professional discussion with Cliff Reeves of Microsoft. David Madison of Microsoft may have gotten the last word, though, as Ed has promised to turn off comments on the post. It's his blog, and so of course it's his right to do so, but I'm sorry to see it, since I think the exchange has been very illuminating-- particularly since Ed has (quite fairly) criticized Microsoft in the past for not taking part in strategy debates at various public conferences.

If Cliff, David, or any of the other participants in the thread who don't have their own blogs want to carry this on, I'll be happy to guest-post their comments here.

I can't wait to get one of these! IBM and Sanyo are showing a prototype fuel-cell laptop power station. You put in methanol and get out electricity and water vapor.

So, I went to Washington this week. I was there for about 18 hours, during which time I drove by the National Cathedral at night, saw the Washington Monument from a distance, woke up at 4am and was violently sick in my hotel room, and taught my scheduled class anyway. On the return trip, I paid Delta $130 to switch to an earlier flight-- which was delayed, so I got home about midnight. A very helpful "service excellence coordinator" (SEC) refunded the money once I got to Cincinnati-- after I eventually found one, that is. (Hint: Delta's famous "redcoats" are no more; SECs are redcoats without the red coats). Not one of my better travel experiences.

Another week, another event! This time, I was in DC, where I had a great group of attendees. The highlight was probably during my demo of Microsoft Office Communicator, when I accidentally called Devin. I'd forgotten that the SIP-to-PSTN gateway was active, and I right-clicked his name and used the "Call" context menu to show that his contact information was there, prefilled from my personal Contacts folder. I was quite surprised when Devin's phone started ringing in my computer speakers (and so was he), but we had a short call and the crowd loved it. It's always great to surprise people like that-- I think I may work it into my demo script as a permanent item. Live Communications Server 2005's voice and telephony integration is pretty compelling, and I'm glad that came out in the demo.

Microsoft has established a good pattern: they've been taking tools that they use internally, polishing them up, and releasing them as free tools through their web release (WR) program. This flow most recently brought us ExBPA 2.0, and now a new tool joins the family: the Exchange User Monitor, or ExMon. The cool thing (as Chris points out on the Exchange team blog) is that ExMon can both aggregate data and show you user-specific performance data. If you have a user or two who consistently complain about performance, ExMon gives you a quantitative tool to ID and fix the underlying problem. Check it out.

Wow, that's gotta hurt. This article, by Daniel Lyons, effectively claims that the air is going out of the Notes balloon, citing market share and revenue data from Gartner, IDC, Ferris, Meta, Radicati, and ITRG. It'll be interesting to see how IBM/Lotus respond to the article; with their 2004 numbers not yet released, the public data to refute some of Lyons' arguments may not be available yet.

Good news: Apple is giving away 29 free songs on the iTunes Music Store. Bad news: you don't get to pick 'em; they're bundled into two sampler albums. The "Atlantic/Lava Edition" album has 16 songs; the "Universal Motown Edition" has 13 more. Are they any good? Beats me. I'm having the infamous "502" problem, which prevents me from downloading any iTMS songs for the nonce.

First, let me say this: if you haven't read Gould's Jumper, you're missing one of the five best science fiction novels I've ever read. The protagonist of Jumper is a teenager, Davy Rice, who unexpectedly discovers that he can teleport himself. He discovers this as he's about to be beaten by his drunken, abusive father; the story of what happens next is naturally and wonderfully told. Reflex is the sequel to the 13-year-old Jumper, and it's every bit as good-- if not better.

Davy's married now and working occasionally for the National Security Agency. When he unexpectedly disappears, his wife Millie (whom you'll meet in the first novel) sets out to find him, aided by her unexpected discovery that somehow she's "caught" the ability to teleport from close contact with Davy. A nefarious group has kidnapped him and found an ingenious (and stomach-turning) way to control him (here's a hint). Of course, Davy's not inclined to go quietly, and Gould expertly cuts back and forth between his efforts to resist and his wife's efforts to locate him. Gould is so good at this milieu: his characters are rich and real, their dialogue is crisp and honest, and the technical details he includes are accurate-- but he's content to leave them out when doing so helps the story. This is strictly an action yarn, though; there's very little philosophical depth, which means Gould misses out on exploring some interesting themes (like whether Davy has a responsibility to use or explore his special ability more than he's done in the past). The ending is unsurprising; unfortunately, the book just sort of stops, clearly leaving room for a sequel. I just hope that it doesn't take Gould as long to write it.

Any time a book is advertised in the Wall Street Journal, I make an effort to check it out. This has led to some real treasures (including Finder's Paranoia, which I need to review on of these days) and this book, which as far as I can tell is Robotham's first novel. The protagonist is Joe O'Shaughnessy, a British psychiatrist with Parkinson's disease, a beautiful wife, an adoring daughter, and a problem: the police think he killed a former co-worker.

Robotham spins an extremely complicated plot, but does it so effortlessly that it seems very natural as circumstances unfold. Of course, O'Shaughnessy's not the real killer, but finding out who is-- in time to stay out of jail-- takes Joe through a very rapid series of plot twists and turns, including a couple of additional murders for which he's blamed too. The first third of the book moves slowly, but after that the pace picks up steadily. O'Shaughnessy is a smart and acerbic self-observer, which makes him far more interesting than the typical ordinary-guy-turned-detective. I'll be looking forward to Robotham's next book-- but this one is highly recommended.

Verizon loaned me an VX6600 to write about. I haven't used it much, but so far, a few first impressions:

• The ringer volume is way too low. Even at max, I can barely hear it.
• Verizon shipped me the device with an old firmware version on it. As shipped, the phone absolutely refused to recognize my GN6210 Bluetooth headset, either with hands-free or handset profiles; about 80% of the time, it refuses to launch the Bluetooth Manager applet.
• After I updated the firmware, I was able to pair with my 6210 and make and receive calls. I haven't tested this as much as I want to, but so far it seems to be working well.
• The built-in keyboard doesn't feel as good as the Treo 650, but it's better than nothing at all. I think I'll just have to get used to it.