Vail, or Windows Home Server 2011 is close to being released. With the RC available for testing, I decided to plunge in a give it a try. The big change from Home Server v1 to v2 is the removal of Drive Extender. It was a very useful feature but the lack of it isn’t a deal break for me.
It’s important to leave an Out of Office message when you’re going to be out on vacation\holiday, especially when it’s for 5 weeks. For our Honeymoon I knew that it would require some creativity. So I recruited the help of the OOF Message Services here at Microsoft to pen me a suitable message:
Last month the Hotmail team had an excellent White Water Rafting trip down the American River . Once again I found an alternative use for my underwater camera case and I snapped a couple of hundred photos along the way.
Today I offered to buy our Dev and Test teams a Starbucks . Little did I know they’d take my suggestion of a “ Iced Single Vente, 7 pump Peppermint, Caramel Sauce Top and Bottom, Light Ice, No whip, Mocha ” seriously! What I ended up with was 28 completely different drinks. It took me 15 minutes to order them and created a twenty person queue behind me. I’ve always wanted to order one of those silly complicated drinks people order, having order 28 today I’ve had my fix.
Hotmail’s getting a bit of press recently, both TechCrunch and Cnet posted articles today. It’s always nice to see some positive press about something you've been working on for over two years. I also got to see first hand some of the Ads we’ve started to run in Seattle last week. Just as I got back to SeaTac I also heard the radio ad.
Arnie (aka The Govenator ) had a flying visit to the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus today. He was here to launch California’s Elevate America program. I think I grabbed one of the last seats before it started and was able to take a few photos. Amusingly, Just before he entered I heard one of his protection detail say on his mic “He’s not with me, I thought he was with you”….
Since the Photography@Microsoft book was released last week it’s made quite impression. I’m not going to release the actual numbers but it exceed the committee’s expectations on day two! I thought I’d share a couple of the ways it’s popping up across the web: Picked up by Ina Fried at Cnet “… the photos are all amazing.” http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10371366-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 and on the front page!
Earlier this year I had my first photo published in a magazine and now I’ve had one published in a book ! Some clever people in the Photography club at Microsoft decided to create a book and donate the profit to our Giving Campaign . I don’t think they realised how much effort would be required because they received hundreds photos and had to plough through every single one to pick the best. And I was fortunate to be chosen! You can see a preview of the book here . Look on page 117 to see my Jelly photo taken at the Monterey Bay Aquarium :
For those of you who pay any attention to the Windows 7 launch, you’ll have seen two amusing ads from Kylie , Microsoft’s four year old ambassador. Kylie is a little kid who is out to make a slideshows using quotes from all the positive Windows 7 reviews ! It started with Kylie’s Good News a few weeks ago and the latest instalment is Kylie’s Conversations . I thought it would be amusing to grab the images and use them on my laptop. It turns out this was a great idea because people immediately started commenting and asking where I got them from! It really wasn’t complicated to use the Windows 7 Snipping Tool and YouTube but I thought I’d share them on my blog for people’s amusement (and so you proudly use them to). Kylie’s Good News
Bing is getting plenty of press recently, and one of the most popular features is the home page photos. In partnership with Facebook they’ve started a competition off so people can submit their own photos. I immediately submitted my Sea Nettle Jelly photo from last months visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium . In just one day it’s rocked up to number five in the list! And that’s despite the horrendous cropping that’s happened after I submitted the photo:
I’m a huge fan of Windows Live Mesh and it’s completely revolutionised the way I store my files. When my x300 solid state hard disk died it was a life saver. Whilst I do use Windows Home Server to backup my machine. The backup can still be a few days old.
I’ve done my best to make my site ‘indexable’ by Search Engines but I’ve never really tried to optimise it. Martin Peck got me thinking about it more when I shared my analysis of my IIS logs last year. Back then my referrer list looked something like this:
It amazes me how creative some of my colleagues are. Last Friday we had an Art Exhibition for everyone working on Windows Live ( Hotmail and Calendar ), down in Silicon Valley. I entered five photos, making a total of 37 pieces entered by the team. Everyone was allowed three votes and the winners announced at the end of the day.
I’ll get the bad news part of this blog out the way first. My 18-month-old Zune died. These things happen and generally speaking my electronics last for a long time, so I wasn’t that peeved. American Express Extended Warranty Lisa said I should look at American Express Extended Warranty because it might cover the replacement.
In a recent blog posting Steven Sinofsky talked about how the Windows 7 team has really gone to town on personalised content. The Release Candidate has just launched and the new backgrounds are now available for everyone to see. In each country there’s a different pack of photos, the US ones are awesome. Here are my two favourites:
Ok so I’m no longer the PM Lead for Calendar but I really enjoyed by 4 months stint on the team and I’m looking forward to the work I’m going to do with them next Wave. So it’s really cool to see the plan I helped build has finally delivered and Windows Live Calendar is no longer a beta product. Here’s the blog post David (the new lead) did today: ------------------------------ Over the past several months, Windows Live Calendar has been in beta. We’ve been experimenting with features, listening to your feedback, and polishing up the service.
Ok so I work for Hotmail, and this might sound me I’ve been drinking the company kool-aid but hear me out. If you’re using Gmail or Yahoo! then you can also tune out now, I’ll tackle that conversation for another day! But if you’re using a random ISP and you have your own domain name then read on. When I joined 8 months ago I was using an ISP that gave me POP3, IMAP and Web access to my email, that’s pretty good.
It’s the 20th July 2008 and today I have been working at Microsoft for ten years! I thought I’d share one useless fact for each of the years I’ve devoted to Microsoft. 1 million emails - Last year I worked out I had received 100,000 emails that year, an average of one every 37 seconds in a very theoretical working day. Things have changed over the years but I don’t think the volume has really changed that much, so it’s safe to say I’ve probably received\sent 1 millions emails since I joined! 2 hundred and 30 Flights – I’ve flown roughly 230 times for Microsoft, including 42 flights across the Atlantic. This also shows that I’ve been tracking 10 years of my life in Outlook. 3 dollar drop in share price!
For the last two months, I’ve been the Lead Program Manager for Windows Live Calendar. So far it’s been one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve done at Microsoft, and it’s nice to see people appreciate the work we do. Here’s two postings today on the web about our latest upgrade: CNet:
I’m just about to roll off the Calendar team but we’ve just done another update, so I thought I’d share the good blog we just posted: The Windows Live Calendar team has been working hard the last few months on a cool update to the Windows Live Calendar beta. After many more bowls of udon noodles, lots of lattes and many late nights …we’re live! Everyone on our team is fired up about the release and we’re looking forward to your feedback.