shahine.com/omar/

First rule of Google AdSense. Don't talk about Google AdSense . Needless to say I am not pulling in $10,000 a month. If I were I'd probably quit my job and move . At first I was just happy if the program could pay my hosting fees. It pays a bit more than that . Good way to feed my gadget habit, as well as allow me to increase my yearly charitable contributions.

I'm finding the AdSense program to be really interesting. I actually find the results that they place on my blog to be very complimentary to my content. Contextual Advertising is cool.

This is pretty neat. I wish Vonage had a web API, but they do not. However, they do have a HTTP GET and POST based API for initiating a phone call from your Vonage phone.

Simply create a custom URL for your account:

https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=username&password=password&fromnumber=fromNumber&tonumber=toNumberWhere:

username

The name that you use to log in to the Vonage dashboard

password

The password that you use to log in to the Vonage dashboard

fromNumber

Your Vonage phone number, this must match one of the numbers returned from the getnumbers request above

toNumber

The phone number you want to dial

When executed, a call will first be placed to your Vonage number. The system will dial the outbound number after the Vonage phone is answered. The Vonage customer will hear ringing as if the number was dialed from their phone and the two parties will be connected.

The neat thing about this is you could hack up some ASP.NET code, place on your web page, and allow people to call you for free. Basically they would go to your web page and initiate a call from your phone to their's. When you answer your Vonage phone, the account will then dial their number.

Here are some handy shortcuts. The will allow you to type dial 18005551212 to dial a number. Replace the items in red with your settings.

SlickRun

magicword=dial
filename=iexplore.exe
parameters=https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=username&password=password&fromnumber=fromNumber&tonumber=$W$

MSN Desktop Search

@dial,https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=username&password=password&fromnumber=fromNumber&tonumber=$W

Yesterday I received my Treo 650. I'll post a full review later on (compare it from the perspective of some one who has used Pocket PC from 1.0 to 2003 SE and SmartPhone 2002/3). The last Palm I used was a Palm V many years ago. And before that I used the US Robotics Palm Pilot 1000 (upgraded), a Palm III and finally a Palm V and Vx.

My intial thoughts:

• Form Factor ROCKS
• Not much bigger than my Audiovox 5600
• Much more stable when making/receiving calls than Windows Mobile
• Exhchange Mail Sync/Calendar Sync mostly works. Lots of missing features, and some that are better.
• The screen resolution rocks
• Not having a multi-threaded OS sucks
• Having 1 bagillion apps to chose from is good. Everything I used on the PPC is available on the Palm.
• Limiting Categories to 15 characters SUCKS! Common Palm!!! you fixed Contacts by adding support for 3 addresses and more than 5 phone numbers but you left this part BROKEN.
• Bluetooth Sync with my Tablet PC is 5000% better than trying to make Bluetooh + ActiveSync + Audiovox work. In fact I never did get it to work and I spent an hour on it. With my Treo I spend 2 min.

I already love the device. But, it's 4:53 pm, and it's 85 degrees in San Francisco. I'm out of here!

You can thank a pretty hard working developer in MSN for fixing this.

The site now says:

Now in new Firefox flavor!

Two new incubation projects in MSN.

• start.com/1/
• start.com/2/

What is an incubation project? Its basically a prototype, a snapshot on the way to something.

[via Dare]

This is most excellent news. The folks at Netcentrics are going to be updating the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-in. I applaud them for the transparency with which they are presenting their plans. I purchased the add-in last year and grew frustrated with it, so I wrote my own implementation in managed code (don't ask me for it, I'm not releasing it). However, I still struggle with various Outlook Interop issues and just don't have the time to deal with them.

Interestingly enough, a few weeks ago I got in touch with Scoble, who got me in touch with David Allen, who got me in touch with Jeffrey Phillips who does Marketing and BizDev over at Netcentrics. I wrote up a lengthy email of all my issues, and sent him the work that I did as well as my source code. A few days later I got an email from another employee at Netcentrics letting me know they were planning on releasing a new update this summer and asked that I continue to send feedback. I'm really happy that they were open about getting any feedback from me. GTD is so very important to me that having excellent software in Outlook is critical.

Needless to day I anxiously await the new version!

[via Marc Orchant]

A few years ago I purchased TopStyle. It's simply the best CSS editor on the market. Before that I loved HomeSite, which is now owned by Macromedia. I mean really, both products rock. Nick Bradbury has always been a talented developer in my mind, and I've closely watched his FeedDemon RSS application since it first entered beta. I was a NewsGator Outlook Edition user at the time, and have since switched to using NewsGator Online Services (see my post on the subject). Latley I've been sort of wishing I had a rich Win32 client to use, and well when Nick announced that FeedDemon 1.5 would support synchronization with NGOS I figured I'd give it another shot. Well I was a few days into my trial, and generally digging the product. I love the integration with de.lico.us, NewsGator, and the NewsPaper styles. But best of all, I love that when I post about a problem in the support forums, I get a personal exchange with the author, and a quick resolution to my problem. Anyway, I am now a proud owner of both FeedDemon and Topstyle.

Nick writes his software using Delphi, which is really interesting. Till Windows actually ships with the .NET Framework, I'm not sure he will enjoy the same deployment/install experience he does today (if he does decide to move to C#). Not to mention that his working set with increase 10x due to the ovehead of the framework. I love that the app uses up less than 4 MB.

Anyway, I love shareware. Thanks Nick!

I found this great freeware utility, png2ico, which will take a png and create an ico file. I wanted to create a favicon for my web site, and this made it super simple.

This will also come in handy when I need to make icons for my .NET applications. the VS.NET 2003 editor can't handle 32 bit icons.

The last time I owned a Palm device was in 2000. Since then I have used a variety of Pocket PC devices, and for the last few years I've tried one Pocket PC Phone and owned two Smartphones. My friends laugh at me cause the most important function of my phone is not to make calls, but to do email and sms. That sort of works out well because my experience with all Windows Mobile devices is that they suffer from enough problems and idiosyncrasies that at least a few times a week I get the dreaded "Unable to answer call" or I can't dial numbers. I assume that these are just core architectural problems with the platform, or buggy hardware firmwares that I can't do anything about. Geting bug fixes for these devices requires you to buy a new device running the new OS, and well, that happens infrequently and you are still at the mercy of the wireless carrier.

My wife has used the Treo 270 and now owns a Treo 600. I've always loved the form factors of the device but loathe the Palm OS as a PDA and Email platform. For one thing, the Contacts application was limited to the same schema that existed on the Palm Pilot 1000 (which I was a proud owner of). Most of my contacts have more than one address, and more than 5 email addresses/phone numbers. Additionally, the Palm was incapable of connecting to my work email server over the air. This is the killer app of the Windows Mobile Platform, but alas, it now exists in the Treo 650. Palm also updated the new OS to support the same contact schema as Outlook. Finally! Plus having a hardware keyboard and square screen is a new requirement of any device I plan on getting. T9 just sucks.

I was browsing around in the AT&T Wireless store today and found myself quickly getting the device itch. The Treo 650 is much sexier than the Treo 600. The screen is beautiful, the keyboard is even better, the camera takes great pics, and best of all, the email and calendar can sync to Exchange over the air. Sadly, it will not synchronize contacts, but that's ok as my Inbox and Calendar change with greater frequency then my Contacts.

So here is the thing. I could get this device now or I could wait an indefinite amount of time for the iPaq Mobile Messenger. The Treo has a better screen with more resolution (I can see more of the email), is smaller, and likely does not have the issues making and receiving phone calls that the Windows devices do. My wife's Treo has never said "Unable to answer call". I can't believe that there is even an error string in the Windows Mobile OS for that. For a while now I was thinking the Motorola MPX was going to solve all my needs, but that device is vaporware. If it does ever ship it won't matter cause it's a joke. Motorola never should have announced it.

Am I crazy for thinking of getting a Palm device? I won't be able to write .NET Compact Framework apps, but that's fine, cause the only one I ever wrote silly. Unlike Scoble, I have no intention of ever carrying around a PDA that cannot make and receive phone calls or check email wirelessly. If I am going to carry around a device it sure as heck better do it all. The last thing I need is a PDA, that was soooo 2002.

For the past few months I used the Rio Carbon. While it fared well, there were a couple of things I didn't like about the device. There was no hardware hold button, and the audio menu was not sticky and always dropped you back to the audio list, rather than your last selection. So, I decided to give the Creative Zen Micro a shot. I happen to love the device, and in many ways I find it's feature set to be better than the iPod. The build quality and fit and finish aren't as good as the iPod, but this device comes closer to anything else I've tried. I suspect that it will be a matter of months, or a year before Creative and iRiver have matched Apple in every way while providing some features the iPod still doesn't have.

Dominick Baier has posted two security bullitens for dasBlog:

Security Advisory: Log File Path Predictability in dasBlog Community Edition

This issue may or may not affect you. On my host, this does not occur as they lock down /logs from anon users.

Security Advisory : New XSS Vulnerability in dasBlog Community Edition

This issue was fixed in the latest version of dasBlog.

Special thanks to Dominick for his work in this area.

Unbelievable that for the past few weeks I have been stumped as to why my desktop pc and laptop can take minutes (like 5) to resume from standby. On a hunch I uninstalled Skype, then found this and this.

If you write software that messes with my power management shame on you. Sometimes I hate computers. Two strikes with Skype. First the bad installer, now this. If you were on my Skype list, you can call me on my phone. It's listed on my Messenger Contact Card.

Mark Luckofsky's post is sure making its rounds on the web and inside Microsoft. Joshua Allen posted some of the most insightful comments in reaction to that post. I don't think I could have said it better myself.

You know, when I joined Microsoft we shipped software every few months. Outlook Express shipped at least 4 versions in my first year at Microsoft. I got to ship version 5.0 which was probably the most fun I ever had, and went on to claim about 60% of the Macintosh e-mail market. Then OS X came out, Apple shipped Mail.app and the rest was history. Off into Office land we went, shipping every 18-24 months. Watching Longhorn the past few years, I can understand how many of Mark's points are valid. However.... that is one of the main reasons I came to MSN. In case you haven't been paying attention, MSN is shipping a lot of software. Both Win32 bits, and web bits. I think over the next few years you are only going to see an increasing amount of stuff come out of MSN. What you see today is really the beginning. MSN has gained quite a bit of credibility inside Microsoft for succesffully shipping software, and increasing revenues. We are competing in a super competitive market place, with Google and Yahoo shipping some really great stuff.

Anyway, I love to ship software Mark, and that is why I'm working on Hotmail. A bunch of my old Mac buddies, Dick Craddock, John Tafoya, Michael Fullerton, Gil Gordon, Reeves Little, Kristin Bromm are all working in Hotmail now. We spent 1999, 2000 and most of 2001 working on Outlook Express, Internet Explorer and Entourage. Up in Redmond there are also a lot of new faces in MSN; a lot of folks who used to work in MacBU. Some of my favorite things about shipping web software is that you can move your entire user base forward, there are no legacy bits sitting around. When you fix a bug everyone gets that bug fix immediately. Furthermore, you get to use the .NET Framework w/o having to install any software on the end user's machine.

Oh, we have 18 job openings at Hotmail, positions in Program Management, Product Management, Quality Assurance, Development and Operations. All in the Bay Area. If you like shipping software, submit your resume .

Now here is something you don't see every day. These big cranes are headed for the port of oakland. It takes special conditions to allow them to clear the Bay Bridge. You can see my gallery of photos here.

My buddy Rob just posted pictures he took of the Mavericks surf contest with his brand spankin new Nikon D2X. Rob is simply one of the best photographers I've known, and his sports photography is incredible.