shahine.com/omar/

While reading this great Engadget Interview with Steve Heiner from Nikon, I noticed the mention of a new Nikon DX mount telephoto lens. I've been waiting for Nikon to release a lens like this for ages, and thankfully Amazon.com has it for sale (in stock soon). Soo exited. It's a 55-200 mm DX Lens.

I actually love how hard core the Engadget folks got when asking about DNG and the Encrypted White balance fiasco.

If you are trying to reach me over the next week, I will be unavailable. Many have asked me why I'm on vacation so much these past few weeks. Well, my wife has been in Oahu for the past 9 weeks doing a rotation at Kaiser Permanente. One of the things that a lot of residency programs do is "farm you out" so that you can get surgical and other experiences at other hospitals. Why Oahu? It's a long story, but I've been without a wife for the past 9 weeks and have been attempting to visit her as much as possible. After all, that is why we get 3 weeks vacation a year (next year I get 4 weeks, since it will be my 7th year at Microsoft).

Anyhow, I will be headed to Maui tomorrow for 6 days with my parents, and sister/boyfriend where I plan to learn how to play golf, and read a few books whilst soaking in the rays and getting a tan.

So, see you all when I get back. In the mean time do not expect any "online" activities from me.

BTW - I have to say. Hawaii is fantastic. This year was the first time I ever visited Hawaii, and I think I could easily live here. I feel so recharged when I get back to work. In fact I have been so much more productive the past few weeks, and I think that has a lot to do with relaxing in the sun, swimming in the ocean, and just being a bum. I haven't gone on a beach vacation in over 3 years and as a result I think my batteries weren't fully charged.

I'm not the only one who thinks the Comcast DVR with TV Guide software is buggy. I should call Comcast and ask for a refund. That will surely get them to notice the issues. Money talks...

I really need to read more, cause I really enjoy it. I picked up Ask the Pilot last week at the very excellent SeaTac Terminal A. It caught my eye, and after I read the description I had to have it.

You see, I have this thing about flying. I LOVE to fly. I mean every time I get in a plane and take off, I sort of still feel amazed and special. I've always loved flying since I was a kid and would travel to Egypt every summer for most of my life. I never got tired of it. I feel the same way about traveling to new places. Love it.

This book is like an FAQ about flying. It answers many obscure questions about take off, landing, planes, turbulence, automated landings, training, life as a pilot, the airline industry and so on. It's highly recommended if you are at all curios about what the airline industry is like, and what makes a plane go up and down .

This is just so funny to read, because my PSP came about in much the same way as Steve's. I just got up one day and got one after spending 2 minutes playing with one. I had ZERO plans to get one of these things and actually ignored 100% of the press on the thing. I think everyone who has played on my device thus far secretly wants one.

So far I own two games, Wipeout Pure and Untold Legends. I love Untold Legends, it's just like Dungeon Siege, which was a great game I was addicted to for 8 hours and then never touched it again. I just don't like sitting in front of my computer playing games, the PSP empowers me to do it anywhere I want.

Every few months, Outlook 2003 will get into a situation where it will no longer render images in the preview pane or the message window. If you reply to the message, then you will see the image.

Perplexed by the problem, I would take the brute force "Detect and Repair" solution but that isn't always desirable as it resets all the Outlook settings and takes a while. Months ago, some one posted to an internal DL that the problem can be fixed by deleting the Outlook Temporary Cache folder. Since then I had forgotten this solution, and noticed the problem re-appeared. I was talking to Reeves today and he mentioned that he is having the same problem.

Anyway, here is how you fix the problem.

1. Locate the Outlook Temporary Items folder by opening the Registry and locating HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security\OutlookSecureTempFolder
2. Navigate to the value of this Key. It should be something like: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK3D\ where OLK3D is some randomly generated string that always starts with OLK
3. Quit Outlook
4. Delete the contents of the folder
5. Launch Outlook

Problem solved! I could not locate a KB article on this topic.

My good buddy, Jimmy (a.k.a. JimmyG) who no longer works for MS, spends all day taking spy photos of interesting things in Dubai, U.A.E. He happend to grab a pic of a very rare Mercedes G Class, and Microsoft's CEO walking with the Crown Prince of Dubai.

Lisa Brummel was just named Vice President of Human Resources at Microsoft. Previous to this role Lisa was Corporate Vice President of the Home and Retail division, which is where the Mac Business Unit has been located for the past few years (before that, MacBU was in MSN for a few brief months, and before that in Business and Productivity Group or BPG).

What I found more interesting is that the mention that Ken DiPietro, the former VP of HR, was replaced is in the middle of the press release. It didn't say where he went or what happened to him. Not sure what to make of that. The only thing I remember about Ken was 1) He was the dude that changed our benefits last year by altering our ESPP program and altered our prescription drug program a bit, and 2) can't remember, but I think I took some on line training as a result of some email that was sent out.

"Brummel replaces Ken DiPietro, who served as corporate vice president for Human Resources for the past two years."

I think the cuts could have been a LOT worse. But needless to say they were not popular. As it stands, the ESPP program isn't really very worthwhile compared to the old program.

But anyway, Ken was in this role from Dec 2002 till now. He was hired outside Microsoft and is being replaced by a long time Microsoft veteran that Steve has a lot of respect for (you could tell from listening to Lisa that she was highly regarded by Steve and Co.).

I'm sure Lisa is excited about her new role, and well I wish her luck! She has lived and breathed working in Product Groups most of her Microsoft Career and probably understands us employees better than anyone.

First of all, a big shout out to Adobe for creating an awesome upgrade for Digital Camera owners. I still don't understand why you insist on installing Adobe ImageReady when I never use it and curse it when I accidentally double click a PNG and watch it take forever to load. However, you fixed one of the biggest problems for me. Changes to Orientation of RAW files were never persisted to the XMP MetaData files, but thankfully you now write the tag:

<tiff:Orientation>8</tiff:Orientation>

Which makes a world of difference cause lots of my photos previously edited with Nikon Capture 4 trashed this data, and I was unable to fix the problem in Photoshop CS1 or Elements 3.0. Now these changes will persist across machines, and stick around with my photos.

First impressions. Adobe Picture bridge is worth the upgrade alone. The new Camera RAW editor is great. But best of all, THANK YOU for allowing me to use a product that is infinitely more usable and polished than every other product on the market that can edit RAW photos. They all suffer from any kind of normal and intuitive user interface.

The bottom line is that unfortunately for me, and fortunately for Adobe, I will continue to shell out money for every upgrade till I feel that the art of Digital Camera Workflow is mature in these products. I think CS2 is a huge step forward, especially with the guidance of many of the auto settings for editing RAW photos that are great for quick and dirty "make this not look like a raw file" type editing. But I still think we have a long way to go.

If you are currently an owner of a product that qualifies for an upgrade I would easily recommend the CS2 upgrade. If you are not an owner, and can't or don't want to shell out $500 for the full version, I suspect most of the core feature for managing Digital Photos will arrive in a new version of Photoshop Elements 3.0.

I can't even begin to explain how happy I am that we recently released the Office 2003 PIA download. I've known about this for a while but I had to keep my mouth shut . Why am I excited? Just read this and you will understand.

Not being able to install the PIAs is the single biggest deployment issue I've had with my Send to OneNote from Outlook PowerToy. I have about 10 emails in my inbox from users who could not install it and up till now I had nothing really to tell them except "sorry".

Well, I plan on releasing a new version of Send to OneNote from Outlook that includes the redistributable, as well as a few dozen bug fixes and minor features.

I really appreciate the work that the office folks did in releasing this. They listened to me yell and scream for a few months about this problem, and they fixed it. Thanks guys!

I just found this app called Image Converter 2 made by Sony, that will convert a wide variety of video and photos to playback on the PSP. It supports DVR-MS, the file format that Windows Media Center records TV. It costs $19.

Now all I need is a 1GB Memory Stick Duo. NEVER in my life did I think I would purchase a Memory Stick. Sigh...

Just got this email from Adobe. Wohooo!

Your Adobe Store order has shipped!

Product:	Adobe Photoshop CS2 Upgrade for Windows
Ship Date:	April 21, 2005
Quantity:	1
Price:
Price:$149.00
Item Subtotal:	US$149.00

Motorola finally cancelled the MPx [via Steve Makofsky]. I just pulled up this post I wrote last year on the subject:

I remember when I used to see announcements or rumors of Pocket PC and Smartphone devices and I would get so excited. I'm at the point now where I just don't care any more.

I've been dreaming of a smartphone or Pocket PC device like my wife's Treo 600. I desperately want a thumb keyboard since most of what I use my phone for is e-mail. So when I saw the Motorola MPX I was extatic, then today when I saw this new BenQ device I was, initially happy, then just plain depressed.

...

Hopefully in 2005 I can get a Windows Mobile powered device with a thumb keyboard for less than $500 dollars. I can dream can't I?

That was over a year ago that I wrote these words. Has the world changed in that year? Not really, except that I no longer use Windows Mobile and am loving my Treo 650. It's going to take a sub $500 device with a keyboard and a 320x320 screen that is as small or smaller than the Treo 650 to win me back.

Greg Hughes has a great write up on a bunch of "smartphone" PDA type devices. I have never used a Blackberry, and probably never will because it requires that middleware be installed, and Microsoft just isn't going to do that. So I am stuck to chose between Windows based Mobile devices and devices that support Exchange ActiveSync (The Treo 650 is one).

I think Greg raises excellent concerns about the Audiovox 5600 and the Siemens SX66 (or whatever your carrier calls this thing, there are at least 3 different companies hocking this device, and none of the companies who place their name on the device actually make it).

Greg has this to say about the Audiovox 5600:

"But the software apps are a little glitchy, and I lost count of how many times this thing either reset itself or required me to pry the battery out of the back and replace it in order to get it started and working again."

"Audio quality was good. It's small and compact and has a certain "neato" quality. But it doesn't allow me to quickly and efficiently communicate, except via voice calls."

And this to say about the Siemens SX66:

"Bluetooth worked better than any of the other devices in hands-free mode, and the keyboard makes it more accessible and usable than the Audiovox device by far. But the keyboard's pimple-style chicklet bubble layout was painful to use in the real wold - keys are tiny and way too close together unless you;re six years old (probably not the target market). Battery life was pretty awful, especially if you use the WiFi at all.

"To top it all off, this morning I grabbed the device and went to turn it on, but it did not respond. Yet, the little green service light was flashing so I knew it had power to it. I pulled the battery put it back (the Windows Mobile version of CTRL-ALT-DEL), but still no response. I started driving to work and tried it again while I was stopped for coffee at the local store. Voila! Up it comes, but totally reset, nuked, blown away, default ROM settings - everything I had set and stored before was gone. Good thing the important stuff was on my SD card... I've read and heard rumors of serious software problems with this phone, and when you combine that with the lame keyboard that looks cool but isn't at all usable, well... Returned, with prejudice."

And this is my point. These devices are not reliable enough to use as a phone. My Treo has missed a single phone call in 30 days and that was due to some third party application that I run that is buggy (but I can't live without for now).

Greg was not a fan of the Treo 650, and I agree that they keyboard is a bit cramped, but the Blackberry is no option for me, and I happen to like the 650. The number of excellent applications available for the device + the form factor are what hold the device ahead of every available Windows Mobile device.

I do agree that the usability of the Palm OS could be better. It takes to may steps to do simple things, and the OS constantly launches and quits applications since you can only run one at a time. This makes multitasking or even doing a single task across multiple apps take longer than it should. Windows Mobile is much more efficient across applications.

Zinio released an updated version of their Magazine Reader. It's much improved over 2.0. One of the things I actually do religiously with my Tablet PC is read PC Magazine in Tablet mode. I can't tell you how cool it is to sit there and read the magazine, like on an airplane, or in bed. It's one of the few times I use my tablet in portrait mode.

I do still wish that Zinio used ClearType rather than Adobe's "Blurry Type" technology.