Year: 2007

Notes for 9/23/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

Bring on personalized Xbox manufacturing!

halo3xboxTuesday is going to be a big day for Microsoft. September 25th is the release date for Halo 3, the much anticipated third installment in the Halo video game series. If you thought Halo 2 was a big deal (it sold more in the first 24 hours after release than most movies generate during their entire box office run) you’d be right – but Halo 3 is an even bigger deal.

Everything about Halo 3 is bigger and better than before, but especially the marketing. Heck, there’s a page at Wikipedia dedicated solely to marketing for Halo 3. Microsoft seems to have figured out that blogs like Engadget are important too. Look at what they sent to Engadget editor Ryan Block:

Listen up kids — the holidays have come way early. We’ve got our hands on the special edition Xbox 360 all done up in Halo 3 fashion… but that’s not all. The boys from Redmond sent a massive, massive package our way, including a giant, custom army bag, custom dog tags, two army meal rations, a first aid kit, the Xbox itself, two Halo 3 controllers and a headset, plus some other stuff hidden in the nooks and crannies.

The photo gallery is pretty darn cool, even if you’re not a Halo fan. One photo in particular caught my eye. Not only did Ryan receive a Halo 3 themed console, but it has his name engraved on the side! How cool is that? The bag and dog tags also have his name on them.

That got me thinking. What if Microsoft offered this package for sale, instead of just sending it to the press? I am sure people would happily pay more for a personalized Halo 3 kit. In fact, they could cut out the middleman altogether. Imagine pre-ordering Halo 3 online from Microsoft, with the ability to fully customize the package – colors, your name, etc. I’d pay for that, and I don’t think I’m the only one who would.

The Halo 3 themed console isn’t the first special edition Microsoft has launched – there was also the yellow edition for The Simpsons Movie. So it seems that personalization can be done, they probably just need to perfect the process. Microsoft made a big deal out of software themes and the faceplates for the Xbox 360, but maybe the next version of the Xbox will be truly customizable? Fully personalized manufacturing?

It could happen!

Read: Engadget

Things I should have posted about already

I really don’t like these “catch up” blog posts, but they sure are easy to write. Here are a few things I’ve been meaning to post about!

The Casino
I worked at the Baccarat Casino here in Edmonton on Tuesday and Wednesday evening. The reason? Fundraiser for The Learning Centre. We raised quite a bit of money, so that’s great! My position was the banker, which means I was responsible for all the money and chips. When tables needed chips, they would call for a chip run. I would do the transaction, prepare the chips, and send them with a chip runner (another volunteer). It was also my job to ensure the cashiers had enough money to give out when patrons brought us their chips.

A few things of interest:

  • Apparently Alberta is the only province in Canada that still allows volunteers to handle money and chips at casino fundraising events.
  • Working a casino can be pretty boring. There are long stretches of time when there is very little to do. On the other hand, you get free food!
  • It is extremely hard to screw up. Not surprising I guess, but there are always at least two people doing everything (counting, for instance) and even the software I had to use was smart enough to prevent me from making mistakes (like giving too much money or something).
  • There’s a wide range of people at the casino. One person might come to exchange ten dollars worth of chips, the next might exchange ten thousand dollars worth. One or both of them might be drunk.

Not sure I would volunteer to work two days in a row again (so tired) but I am glad I was able to help out!

YRAP presents RestorAction
restoraction Another group I volunteer with is the Youth Restorative Action Project (YRAP). Our second annual charity gala is coming up on October 13th. Funds raised will go towards mentoring programs for at-risk youth. Mentors will use the funds for such things as enrollment in music or art programs and providing materials for extracurricular activities. The main aims of this program are to direct youth away from negative or criminal activities and focus their time on alternative and positive social activities and become contributing members of society.

You can find out more information at the RestorAction website. If you want tickets, let me know!

The Dollar
For the first time in 31 years, the Canadian dollar reached parity with the American dollar. That’s pretty crazy. As a consumer, I think it’s great…well as soon as prices are updated to reflect the parity. As a small business owner offering services in U.S. dollars, it’s not so great.

Developer Night in Canada III
dniclogo

John Bristowe will be in town on Wednesday evening for a session on “Bringing the Power of the .NET Framework to Your Existing Application” being held at the downtown library. John will go through some real-world tips and tricks for migrating to .NET, and he’ll cover some of the issues that you might encounter when integrating with legacy applications.

Canadian developers will share their experiences and insights, and you can too! You can find more information and register here. Also, don’t forget about Edmonton Code Camp coming up in October.

Facebook continues to strengthen The Platform

Back in July I wrote about Microsoft’s so-called Cloud OS. There hasn’t been any Microsoft-specific news since then (that I’ve come across anyway) but more and more companies seem to be gearing up to offer cloud infrastructure services. Take Nirvanix for instance, an Amazon S3 competitor that launched earlier this month with some impressive features.

And today, the blogosphere is buzzing about Facebook potentially getting into the cloud services game (some might argue that they already are). Rev2 reports that Facebook is preparing to offer data storage services:

At this stage it seems unclear as to what the precise data storage offering from Facebook is going to be. The Developer wiki indicates that the new service is in Beta, however, there are no indications around more specific details such as space limitations. Costs are also not revealed so one could assume that the data storage offered may be free for a while whilst the service is still in Beta.

AllFacebook has some interesting discussion on the topic, and Read/WriteWeb notes that the service is somewhat in line with Facebook’s earlier acquisition of Parakey.

This is pretty intriguing news on it’s own, but it gets better. At the TechCrunch40 conference today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is launching a venture fund called fbFund:

The size of the fund will be $10 million with anywhere between $25 to $250 thousand in grants available for each selected startup dedicated to developing Facebook applications. Founders Fund and Accel will get the right of first refusal for the first round of financing of any company in the fund.

Facebook created The Platform, and everyone went crazy. Anyone could develop an application that would run on The Platform, as long as they invested their own infrastructure, time, and money. Today Facebook took steps to eliminate two of those hurdles. Pretty soon, all you’ll need to invest is time.

I don’t think it’s wise to base your entire business around a Facebook application, but people will do it, and quite a few people will probably make money from it. The really good applications may even be able to transcend Facebook’s walled garden.

Looks like The Platform is just getting started.

Read: Rev2

Notes for 9/16/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

US students get Office 2007 for teh cheap!

If you’re a student in the United States with an email address ending in .edu, you can get Office Ultimate 2007 for just $59.95 USD. That’s an incredible deal considering the ERP on that SKU is about $679 USD. They call it “the ultimate steal“:

Seize the deal! Get Microsoft® Office Ultimate 2007 for just $59.95. It’s a total steal: save time and money with this premium offer. Office Ultimate 2007’s brand new features and fresh look will help you organize and get all your work done in the blink of an eye. The Ultimate Steal is finally here, so grab it now!

It sucks that the offer is open only to students south of the border. I guess students here in Canada will have to “steal” it the old fashioned way.

The other interesting part of the promo is the blogging contest. Write a blog post explaining how to you plan to use Office for your academic studies, and you could win a spring break getaway, an American Express gift card, or an Xbox 360 Elite console. Again, open only to students in the USA.

Come on Microsoft Canada, how come we don’t have cool promos like this?!

UPDATE: Disregard everything about Canada in the above text! Apparently this offer is available in Canada, and a bunch of other countries too. Their website strategy is shitty though, because the .com site totally doesn’t make that clear. The press release clearly states Canada however. I should have tried this earlier, but here it is: http://theultimatesteal.ca. Cost is $64 to buy, $22 to subscribe for a year.

UPDATE 2: Okay, either I was totally blind today, or they just added this sometime this afternoon, but there are little flag icons on the top of the website. Maybe their website strategy isn’t so shitty after all! I/O error I guess…anyway, wicked deal for students, and it lasts until April 30th, 2008.

Read: the ultimate steal

Other universities should follow Stanford's example

I was less than impressed with most of the Computing Sciences courses I took during my degree at the University of Alberta. I found the majority of the courses either too boring or too out-of-date. Or quite often both.

Maybe the image I had in my head about what university would be like was just plain wrong. I always thought that universities were on the cutting edge, with lots of cool stuff happening. I thought I’d be exposed to some really interesting research, like that of Jonathan Schaeffer who worked on Deep Blue and teaches at the U of A. Sadly, my classes never ever reflected that image.

Today I was reading some blogs, and came across this article that says Stanford University is going to be offering a course this fall called Creating Engaging Web Applications Using Metrics and Learning on Facebook. I’m very interested and very jealous:

Students will build applications for Facebook, then gather and analyze detailed information about how Facebook users actually use them. Students will focus on using detailed numerical measurements to guide software iterations, just like developers do on thousands of existing Facebook applications.

They’ll be graded based on how many Facebook users they can get actively using their applications.

I wish I had been able to take classes like that when I was in university.

It’s important to learn about hard technology problems, such as searching, but I think it’s equally important to study the technology that people use every day, like Facebook. Kudos to the CS faculty at Stanford for taking a chance on Facebook and venturing into the relatively new area of Human Computer Interaction.

Read: VentureBeat

Remember The Milk

rtmIt seems that no matter how hard I try, I am never as organized as I want to be. There’s always something I didn’t get around to doing, or something new inevitably comes up. I am getting better though, and there’s a few tools I use to make it easier. I use Outlook 2007 every day for my email and calendar, but I’ve never been a big fan of the tasks functionality in Outlook. For that, I’m an extremely happy user of Remember The Milk.

Remember The Milk (RTM) is a web-based task management application. Here’s what they say on their about page:

We created Remember The Milk so that you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. Remember The Milk makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience.

You’ve really got to try RTM to understand why it’s so awesome, but here are three of my favorite features:

  1. Keyboard Shortcuts
    That’s right, this web application supports keyboard shortcuts! It takes some getting used to, I suppose, but once you know the shortcuts you’re set. Pressing “t” will open a text box to allow you to type a new task. Pressing “n” deselects all the tasks in the current view, etc. Very handy.
  2. Smart Due Dates
    In most applications, selecting a due date is a pain in the ass. You’ve got to open a little calendar control, navigate to the month you want, and then click on the day. With RTM, you get a text box that you can type virtually anything into. Seriously. Want to make the task due tomorrow? Simply type “tomorrow” or even “tmr”. How about next Friday? Simply type “next friday”. Once you’ve used this, you’ll wonder how calendar apps could ever have worked any differently.
  3. Twitter Support
    As a self-described Twitter addict, I was incredibly happy to see RTM add Twitter support recently. Now I don’t even have to be near a computing device to use RTM! Instead, I can simply send a text message via Twitter to add new tasks, find out what’s due today, and more. Twitter’s direct message feature is what allows this magic to happen. Once you have RTM configured and added as a friend on Twitter, you can simply send “d rtm pick up milk” to add new tasks. Makes task management on the go a cinch.

You can learn more about RTM here. RTM supports multiple languages, task list sharing, offline access, and tons of other cool stuff. Did I mention that RTM is free? Quite amazing really, though they did recently launch a “Pro” account that costs $25 per year. With the Pro account you get priority support, new features (none as of yet), and “a warm fuzzy feeling for supporting RTM”. Heh.

If you’re looking for a good task management application, I definitely recommend Remember The Milk.

Read: RTM

Notes for 9/9/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Dad was in town for the weekend for business. Was nice to hang out with him and do some shopping. Oh and I went to get my eyes tested for the first time in eight years – doctor said I had very minor changes in my prescription…boo yah!
  • I am using Windows Live Writer for this post which I haven’t used since the early betas. Just downloaded and installed it using the new integrated Windows Live installer. All the apps say Version 2008 and sport a very nice “Vista” look.
  • Speaking of Vista, I got a new computer this weekend that has Windows Vista Business on it. I’ll post more about this later, but so far, I think the wireless support in Vista sucks compared to XPSP2. My computer is awesome though 🙂
  • Twitter is doing some cool stuff for the MTV Video Music Awards…congrats!
  • Windows Live Translator is on the way! Online translation hasn’t changed much in years…I hope the Live team has some good ideas for improvements.
  • I detest coins smaller than 25 cents, so I absolutely think we should get rid of the penny.
  • Like Dave Winer, I wish synching was a thing of the past. The iPod with Wi-Fi gets us one step closer, but there’s lots of work to do.

I think it’s safe to say that Windows Live Writer is my new favorite blogging client!

I'm not usually an Apple fanboy but…

Yes, today Apple launched the iPod Touch. They also dropped the price of the iPhone by $200, which is certainly one way to thank early adopters. The official iPod Touch site is here, Engadget’s coverage is here, and there’s plenty more discussion here.

Multi-touch interface, 3.5-inch widescreen display, Wi-Fi web browsing with Safari, and more. Drool…

In January I said that “the launch of the iPhone bodes well for podcasting.” Today I was proven correct. Without the iPhone, there would be no touch iPod with Wi-Fi, and make no mistake about it, the new iPod Touch is pretty much the ultimate podcasting device.

Read: Engadget