shahine.com/omar/

My favorite screen capture tool is Cropper. Version 1.7 fixes a bug I found where if you launched Cropper from SlickRun or AppRocket it would not work. Brian fixed it really quick, and even fixed another bug I didn’t report .

Cropper is handy cause you can measure/control the screen capture region before taking the screen shot and it has many flexible output formats (including AVI).

It’s a top notch app.

Most of the sexy stuff that you see about Windows Live/MSN is the UX and the functionality of the products. There is a ton of work that goes on behind the scenes, and much of that happens on the Passport team. As Trevin points out, it's not often that people get excited about Security Features, but when we do a good job it should be praised. In this case, Greg Hughes (who is a Security Guy) had this to say about some recent Passport work:

"But even better than that, as I typed the new password, a color-coded 'password strength' bar showed me the complexity strength of my password. It went from Red (weak) to Yellow (so-so) to Green (strong) as I typed. Nice! That's what we need more of - simple, powerful tools to help end users be more secure in real time. Great work, whoever decided to put that in, and to whoever built it. It's quite effective."

This kind of stuff is great for our consumers, as password management and security is super important. You really don't want your passport password comprimised, and this feature tells people in a very easy and friendly manner how "strong" their password is.

Trevin goes on to say:

"I've always been jealous of other products in the company that get lots of super cool press coverage (eg. Kahuna, start.com, etc).  My team always gets passed over because we're not shipping e2e customer scenarios, but rather the glue for other services to deliver their scenarios.  I'll going to go bask the warm glow of my 30 seconds of glory now... "

So Thanks Trevin and the Passport team for running a service that keeps ours afloat .

I will not miss you one bit. Good riddens.

BTW - Jensen Harris has one of the best blogs on the Internet. Back in the day I got to work a bit with Jensen when he was the Mac Outlook PM (the classic Exchange Client for the Mac OS before Entourage became the Exchange Client).

I am so impressed by his posts about Office 12. They are all must reads.

Nick, you ROCK. FeedDemon 2.0 is amazing. The UI is better and I can mark posts as read from the newspaper view.

For the past few weeks I’ve been reading Mao : The Unknown Story. I was interested last time I went to Shanghai, and decided I’d get smart about the founder of the world’s largest communist party. The book claims that Mao was responsible for over 70 million Chinese Deaths. The Communist Party seems to still believe in the good of Mao, and unlike Stalin’s death in the case of the Russian Communist Party, did little to disavow themselves of him when he died. I believe that sentiment is slowly changing and I remember the NPR story on this book where they referred to how people now say that he was 70% good which is a big change.

The book was fascinating. If you have any interest in China I’d recommend it. It’s a bit thick and detailed so I found myself board at times. Mostly because hearing about the things that he did over and over got tiring.

I think I’d like to read about Stalin next.

One thing that I found interesting was that this is now the third book I’ve read that paints a pretty grim picture for Henry Kissenger. I don’t know much about that guy, but he seems to have gotten his finger in a lot of things.

A lot of folks have asked me if I plan on getting the Treo 700w since I loved my Treo 650 so (before I kicked it to the curb due to the stability issues with Versa Mail).

The short answer is no. Here is why:

1. I don’t do CDMA. Not now, not ever. I value that I can take my phone to Egypt, Paris and Shanghai, turn it on and send/receive SMS using my US phone number. Of course I can also send/receive calls.
2. If you read Michael Gartenberg’s post comparing what I have now (the k-jam which is basically the same as the PPC-6700) to the Treo 700w I don’t gain much by getting one even when there is a GSM version.

I don’t understand the 240 x 240 thing. My Treo 650 was 320 x 320 and my k-jam is 320 x 240 which is still not enough. Also, the 700w doesn’t come with the Push Email support in Exchange 2003 SP2. No sense in getting a  new device till that stuff is burned on the ROM.

However, am I excited that Palm is developing on our platform? Heck Yeah! It means that they will continue to push us to make WM5 more usable with a single hand. The folks who tried to converge Smartphone and Pocket PC into a single platform left out a hella lot of dialogs and crap that don’t support softkeys making me use my stylus. Compare to Palm OS 5 where I NEVER had to use a stylus for anything. Plus I am sure they will get us to make the OS more usable in general. Those guys “get it” where HTC never will (not in the DNA). 

As one of the PMs on our team often says “Save your drama for your mamma”. If I could say that to Motorola I would. Looks like there is just as much drama around the Q as there was the MPX.

Every time I go to Redmond, the issues around space are apparent. It seems we hired a few thousand people in the last few years and no one told the facilities people. Same is true down here on our SVC campus where space is getting scarce. However, since there are many groups on our campus, and not a single VP that sits over every group, there is quite a bit if inequality between teams (some teams have people doubled up in offices while others are not). Now one problem that we do not have in SVC is parking. There are plenty of spots to go around, unlike in Redmond where you can easily spend 45 minutes looking for a spot (and the spots up there are all tiny. basically a standard Redmond parking spot is a compact spot in California. I’m alway amused to see a Ford F-150 or larger crammed into one of those things).

Anyhow, not sure how I missed this but it appears that we purchased the Safeco campus in Redmond for $209.5 million. This is pretty good news, but definitely not cheap. I often drive by those buildings on the way from Main Campus to RedWest. They look like very nice buildings with lots of glass and a very Pacific Northwest kind of look to them. I can just imagine that a ton of groups are wondering if they will get to move in there.

Then again, Microsoft doesn’t own much  of anything except buildings, desks, and computers.

I happen to love Wine. A few weeks ago I was lucky to finally have Chateau Margaux Margaux. If you know anything about wine then you know what I am talking about. I believe it was a 1984 or so (can’t remember) bottle and it was like nothing I’d ever had.

This is one of the five First Growth wines of Bordeaux. So it’s special like that.

I liked it so much, I’m thinking of buying at least a bottle a year and hiding it so that in 20 or so years I can enjoy them like I did this bottle.

Dare does a pretty good job explaining “The Microsoft Way”. When I started my career at Microsoft, I worked on the Macintosh Platform (as most of you know). This was about as different as it gets at Microsoft. You aren’t developing products for the “platform”, or the “ecosystem”. You lived a dual life with a Windows and Macintosh on your desk, or your lap. You have quite a bit of freedom to do things for the Mac end user, and you have almost zero “Microsoft Tax”. You do have the “Office Tax” like supporting new file formats, PowerPoint animation compatibility and so on. But you also get to do new features that may or may not ever appear in the Windows versions. The Entourage team is growing quite familiar with the newest tax, the Exchange Tax.

When you leave that little world, and you witness what it’s like supporting the ecosystem or the platform you start to feel the impact of all the Taxes. Now that’s not to say that taxes are bad; the fact that I have a highway to drive to work on, or a train to ride, or a school to send my kids, or police, fireman etc are because of taxes. You just need to understand that you HAVE to spend time on these things, and that as our company gets bigger and has more customers those taxes increase. It’s the job of the managers, leads etc in the company to make sure that you carefully pick where those tax dollars go, and that your investments are balanced (like a portfolio).

I have 60 invites to give away for Windows Live Mail. Send me an email @ shahineo AT hotmail.com with your hotmail account that you want to use in the beta and I'll hook you up.

Update: please read this post before sending me mail for an invite.

Like Andy & Trevin, I feel that bluetooth on Windows is a complete and utter disaster, or as Trevin says "Bluetooth is the devil". I feel sorry for our users.

When you buy a PC with “bluetooth support” one of two things will happen:

1. You will get the Microsoft Bluetooth Stack
2. You will get the WIDCOMM/Toshiba Bluetooth Stack

If you get #1 you are sort of lucky. It stays out of your way, and does not have a million running processes, desktop icons and other garbage. However, you will not be able to pair it with a Bluetooth Headset for use with Skype or Office Communicator. You will be able to use a bluetooth mouse, dial-up connection and other stuff. Because the Microsoft bluetooth stack lacks some “core” features, a bunch of our OEMs have decided that they can do a better job writing software than we can (and they have failed). Hardware companies should NOT be allowed to make software. Companies that are in commodity businesses should not be allowed either. They just DON’T CARE about usability and they DON’T RESPECT YOUR PC.

If you get #2 you PC will be infected by unsigned drivers (with software to fake click them anyway), shortcuts everywhere (that you cannot remove), 40 (yes 40) prefab COM ports for your use, 3 always running processes for Bluetooth AV support, Hands Free, LAN profiles, tray icons, and something else. The UI for pairing is utterly confusing, and the options dialog has incomprehensible settings with 3 rows of tabs. You will be able to pair it with a bluetooth headset but will find it impossible to use with ActiveSync, a mouse, or exchange files over bluetooth. However, you’ll be able to exchange business cards (yipee, who needs that) and a million other things in an attempt to support every single bluetooth profile on the planet.

Why is it that software vendors feel the need to put crap all over the machine in an effort to remind you who they are and that they are valuable. Why don’t they spend their R&D getting their drivers signed and WHQL certified rather than instructing you on how to click “Install Anyway”. Anti Virus Software is like this, placing shortcuts, explorer shell add-ins, outlook toolbar etc all over the place…

It’s times like these where I long for the days of using a Mac where Apple has NAILED the bluetooth experience (like 2 years ago).

What can I say, I’m an Alt-Tab guy. Tried all those Expose like utilities for Windows (TopDesk is the best) but I never end up using them for more than 7 days.

However, TaskSwitchXP Pro is simply the best Alt-Tab replacement for Windows (and it’s free).

I don't like Rain that much. Sure, every once in a while is cute. I like sun, and lots of it. I'm Egyptian after all so this sort of makes sense.

Anyway, every 1-2 years I ponder if I should move to Redmond. Sure real estate prices in the bay area suck, but I don't really care cause I own my own place (and consider myself lucky that I bought at the downturn of the dot.com bust). The bay area is a fantastic place to live in this country (which explains why it's so dammed expensive). Napa Valley, Sonoma and the Coast are an hour away, Tahoe and great skiing are a few more. It rains for about 1 month a year, and the rest of the times its sunny and nice.

The summers in Seattle are pretty dammed amazing, but the traffic sucks and people drive to slowly. A career at Microsoft NOT in Redmond limits your career growth a bit... but if you can live with that you can find creative ways to keep learning new things; one of the many reasons I made the move from MacBU to Hotmail and from an Individual Contributor to a Manager

So when I read stuff like this, I look at my wife and I say "We're not moving".