shahine.com/omar/

Did you know that you can control-click non contiguous days in the Outlook mini cal? I had no idea, a co-worker told me the other day. Not sure why I didn't discover this, but it allows you to do neat things like see Saturday and Sunday for two weekends in the calendar view.

I'm guilty as charged... I do the note pad paste a few times a day.

Here is a neat trick. When you are in Word (or WordMail in Outlook), select a bunch of text and enter control-space. This will clear the formatting and set it to the default style. However, it's a bit buggy because some times it thinks the default style is Times New Roman rather than Verdana or Calibri. This is probably due to some legacy code from when I was in diapers.

I guess this is an example of software trying to do too much. Most of the time when I cut-and-paste, I just want the text, not the formatting. I know the software is trying to do the right thing, but I usually don't trust it anyway. When I paste from Word to Powerpoint, say, I have little faith that the data is really the way it appears. Even if it LOOKS right, I'm suspicious that there is some magic code embedded in there such that when I do something unexpected (like, say, hit delete at the end of the previous line) the whole thing is going to turn purple. Yes, I know Ctrl-space is supposed to remove formatting, but I don't really believe that either. And I don't want to hunt around for the little icon with paste options, only to find that it is not offering "Paste text only" as an option.

So I do the "notepad paste". You probably know what I mean. You run notepad, copy the data in the first app, paste it into notepad, reselect it in notepad, and paste that into the other app. It works because notepad is so simple that all it provides in the source data is the text itself. So the paste operation automatically takes on the formatting, bulleting, fonting, etcing of the target document, which is what I want. It works perfectly every time.

Hopefully the next version of Office will make it a goal to eliminate the notepad paste. If not, they should make it a standard keyboard shortcut. Ctrl-N could be "notepad paste". Ship it.

Source: The Annoying Need for "Notepad Paste"

Mark Russinovich, who now works at Microsoft, has a great post on why there is a delay when opening the File->Open dialog in Vista.

When I read posts like this I think "I can't believe that in all the man hours that went into Vista, no one caught this bug". But then I also think, this is a classic example of why bugs exist. The developer who wrote the feature that grabs the user name for the bread crumb bar had no idea that some other piece of code deep in the bowels of the OS was going to choke when your domain joined machine wasn't connected to the network. And the fact that the system caches the name for 30 min makes this bug one of those hard to reproduce bugs that usually takes an extremely patient tester to persevere and find the repro case to prevent the bug from getting punted as "not repro" so that the developer can clear his bug queue.

I bet Mark opened a bug in the Vista Product Studio Database and some poor developer is going to be assigned this bug and he is going to be like "How the #$%! did he find this".

I totally 100% agree here. I LOVE the Samsung Blackjack commercial. It's on TV all the time and it's very cool. Who knew Cingular could be this cool? 

So many folks at work are snapping up this phone.

"One thing that Verizon does well is marketing. Cingular does a decent job, but not good enough in my opinion. The new Blackjack, that is so good that I bought one to keep for myself, has a nice marketing campaign starting up. There has been commencials and I have seen prominent web banner ads already."

This is one great and creative commercial. It makes me want to get a BlackJack. Oh wait, I already have one. ...

Source: Cingular Blackjack TV Commercial

This sounds a bit sordid, but I wanted to follow up on my Nokia E61 post having been an actual owner of the E61 & the E62 (I managed to own a 62 for a short while even though it's almost the same device as the E61).

Well before closing the chapter on the E62 here is what I noticed different from the E61. The E62 was easily twice as slow as the E61. I'm not sure what Cingular did to cripple this device but opening emails, deleting emails and navigating the OS was painful. The E61 did not have this problem. Cingular also managed to cripple all J2ME apps basically rendering Google Maps useless.

So there you have it. Bubba does a good job describing his brief experience with the E62. I don't agree with all of his points, but he is right about it being slow. Either way, while I was playing with my E61/62 Bubba was using a Moto Razr, Cingular 2125 and then 3125 before that died... now we both have Blackjack's and love them. I ran into Bubba two days ago and I saw his Blackjack and he saw mine and we were like "beatch, you cheated on me" and then he said that he liked the device so much he didn't want to blog about it cause he didn't want anyone else to have it... spoken like a true Gadget addict.

If you are on the market for an E series device get the E61. It has WiFi, but the 3G support won't work in the US (different frequency) and J2ME apps are usable. Since there aren't many native Symbian apps, this is an important point.

I will say this. The hardware build quality and attention to detail is great. The device sensitivity to ambient light was better than any device I've used (very mac like). But the Samsung Blackjack wins hands down vs the E62.

Oh, and if you read my E61 post again you will note that I lied about never buying another smartphone that could not do copy paste. The Blackjack cannot do this as my friend Steve Schreiber points out on his very detailed analysis of the Moto Q experience:

Cut ‘n’ Paste: Where for Art Thou?

Let’s just get this out there right away, the Motorola Q does not have any facility for Copy/Cut and Paste.  This is an issue that has been written about quite a bit already, so I won’t waste too much text on it here.

For various complicated and unimportant reasons to the end consumer, the version of Windows Mobile that the Q is based on doesn’t support this key feature.  This should be true for any Windows Mobile device that doesn’t support stylus input or have a touch screen (a key difference between Windows Mobile PocketPC - which devices like the Palm Treo run on - and Windows Mobile Smartphone - which the Moto Q uses).

WM Smartphone was originally designed for phone form factors and some Program Manager must have decided somewhere along the history of that sub-platform’s development that “no one would ever want copy/paste on a phone, I mean this isn’t a ‘PDA’” - I can almost imagine the meeting that this decision was made.  This same type of thinking is also why the Q and Smartphone platform devices don’t read Office documents out of the box today (though this may change in the future).

To the WM team, I realize I’m probably simplifying the “decision” to cut this - in my mind - key feature, but there you go.  To those that would argue “you can’t do copy/paste right without a touch screen”, I direct your attention to the Blackberry, which has done it since its inception just fine.

The lack of this feature makes a number of the other software shortcomings (I mention below) more glaring.  Instead of being able to work around a bad UI flow by copy/pasting someone’s number/name/whatever you’re left to just bitch and try to remember it in your head - or worse write it down on a piece of paper.

Hopefully Windows Mobile 6 will address a lot of the current batch of problems with Windows Mobile 5 Smartphones.

I've been using Windows Live Search for Mobile for a few days now and this application ROCKS. It's waay better than Google Mobile Maps, the previous killer app for a smartphone/pda phone.

If you have a phone with Windows Mobile or a J2ME capable device (most modern phones) then you should kick the tires on this app. 

Mad props to my bud Steve Garrity who works on that team.

Source: Windows Live Search for Mobile; it’s (a)LIVE!

My good friend (and former roommate) Jimmy Grewal's new product is on Engadget! How cool.

You can read all about Pulse on Jimmy's Blog.

I am planning on upgrading all the switches and dimmers with Z-Wave compatible ones so that I can do scene lighting and control/program the lighting in my house.

Pulse will let me use Media Center, Windows Mobile etc to control and program the Z-Wave devices (including a thermostat).

Congrats Jimmy!!!

A few months ago I uploaded my gravatar picture after signing up with gravatar.com. Till now it's still "pending". Additionally, I paid them the $5 so I could link multiple email accounts to the same gravatar. Lastly, 99% of the time the gravatars do not load on my site cause of timeouts from their incredibly slow and flaky service.

Is there a better alternative?

looking at their weblog it appears some one is working on scaling it better. I sure hope so.

Over the past few months (and weeks) I've collected a number of gadgets I will be blogging about. I've been super happy with them, and here they are in no particular order.

1. D-Link DGL-4100 Broadband Gaming Router - I'm finished with Linksys. Those routers SUCK. Their UI is older than the Palm OS at this point. This router has been running for 2 months now without a single issue or reboot. My Linksys was very unreliable. D-Link is my new favorite router company. Their Web UX rocks and they support all the good features & standards out of the box.
2. D-Link DWL-P200 PoE adapter. If you want to place a router in your attic, and don't have power up there, you can get a Power Over Ethernet (PoE) adapter and run the current over the Ethernet cable. This is a great way to put a wifi access point anywhere you can snake Ethernet cable. If you have an AP that supports PoE natively (such as the D-Link DWL-2200AP), you don't even need the other half of it, just the power injector.
3. 17 inch iMac. Got one as our "kitchen computer". Installed Vista RTM on it and it's bliss. This is a fantastic machine. I've had some "hybrid sleep" issues, iSight doesn't work, and Gigabit Ethernet required some driver updates, but all in all it's a great, quite, pretty and fast machine. More details later.
4. Samsung Blackjack. I LOVE THIS PHONE. I had no idea this phone was even coming out. I prefer the Smartphone OS over the Pocket PC OS, and since I was holding out for the Treo, I decided to get the Blackjack instead. The only way to describe this phone is that it's like using an iPod nano. You just can't believe how small and light this thing is. Again, a device that makes me smile. Kudos to Samsung for hitting a home run (albeit the 3G sucks the battery dry, I'll post a link on how to disable it when I write my review). Oh, and I love the commercials on TV for the device. Way better than the Q (both in device and in marketing).
5. Sigma 30mm SLR lens. This is a fantastic lens for low light pictures. Set your DSLR to 800 - 1600 ISO and take indoor pics in low light with very little grain.
6. New Kitchen. Yep, our 3 month kitchen remodel is done, and the kitchen is jammed packed full of sweet kitchen gadgets (Viking Range, Sub Zero, Miele dishwasher, Wine Fridge and so on). Lora and I are really enjoying cooking in this kitchen.
7. I'm forgetting something....
8. Oh, untold numbers and amounts of baby gear... to many things to blog about.

Well, Sarah is finally sleeping. It's been exactly one week since her birth and it's gone by way to quick. Soon I'll be going back to work and that's just sad. I plan to take close to 2 months of paternity leave starting in January and I'm looking forward to that. I'd like to point out that Microsoft is amazing in this regard. Dad's get 3 months of parental leave, 1 of which is paid. The remaining 2 months are taken unpaid, or you can apply any vacation balance to that portion. Since Lora and I won't be vacationing for a few months, I'm going to cash it in and spend time at home watching my daughter grow. Anyway, I think it's fantastic that Microsoft is so amazing about this. I also signed Sarah up for benefits which means she gets the same amazing health benefits that I get... which as far as I know are simply unmatched by any other company (no copay for visits, prescriptions etc).

Thanksgiving dinner was great. I spent all day cooking our 17lb bird yesterday. My family, Lora's family and my sister/husband are here visiting. My dad made a most excellent Souffle for desert and it was great. Coupled with two bottles of 1997 Clos du Val Cab's, dinner was a big success.

Sarah is also doing great. The last two days have been tough since she has been extremely fussy not letting most of us sleep very much. My poor wife is exhausted (and on strict orders to nap right now).

Anyway, I'm starting to dig out from the past week... We have a lot to be thankful of this year, and most of all the wonderful emails, cards, and messages everyone has left us! THANK YOU all for sending them. We really appreciate it.

BTW - I've been using a new Sigma 30mm Lens to take pictures of Sarah. This lens is amazing. You can shoot at 1600 ISO in dim light w/o using the flash and the pics come out amazing. Mike lent me his the past few days while I was waiting for Amazon to ship mine... (thanks Mike!). Anyway, if you want to make those indoor pics look great and hate the flash get this lens. They make it for a number of digital SLRs.

I've been a bit pre-occupied lately (t-minus 2 days till baby due date) but I need to shout out to the Brad, Frank and Deva at ClearContext for their v3 release.

I've been using v3 when they were first ready to let some folks get their hands dirty. These guys are really dedicated to making this a showcase for Outlook. They had Outlook 2007 Ribbon support within a few weeks of the Schema for the Ribbon being unveiled, and they fixed some Vista stability bugs early on. Basically, they were able to keep the product usable and stable for two moving targets while adding a ton of great new features to ClearContext. Most importantly they kept me pretty darned happy this entire time. I was even able to abandon my own ThreadKiller add-in because their is simply less buggy than mine .

Anyway, congrats guys! I'm looking forward to v4!

Thanks to Deva for the pointer. It appears that GMail has incorporated a feature I came up with for Outlook last year called ThreadKiller. They call it mute.

Oh wait, that’s not exactly right.  Officially, the new feature is called Mute Thread, or “Mute” for short.  Here’s how it works:

THE OLD WAY:
1) You’re reading some posts about the elections.
2) You were once excited about reading this stuff.
3) But at least one conversation is now on its 471th message.  You keep hitting Archive but the damn conversation keeps popping up every time someone makes a new post!
4) You’re ready to tear out your hair.  The posters’ hair.  Your keyboard’s hair.  Er, keys.
5) MAKE IT STOP!  MAKE IT STOP, PLEEEEEASE!

THE NEW WAY:
1) You get yet another annoying message in the same damn conversation that’s already been conversed to death.
2) You press the ‘m’ key.  Unless a message is written *directly* to you (e.g., your name is in the TO spot), you’ll never see that message in your inbox again!

In short, the Mute feature enables you to tell Gmail: “Archive this conversation AND all future posts in it… just have ‘em skip the inbox!”

They also implemented another feature idea I posted on my Outlook Wishlist:

When replying to a thread and a new message comes in please please please tell me that happened so that I don't create a thread fork and screw up the conversation. Geez, Instant Messaging has this baked in. Corporate Email needs it. How about a message that says "A recent reply to this conversation has arrived... would you like to include that message in your reply instead?"

GMail's version:

Embarassment-reducing [sic] new message notifications
Ever replied to a message only to find out that someone sent a better, smarter reply right before you? Now, if someone sends a reply while you're in the middle of reading a conversation (or replying to it), you'll get a notification that a new message has arrived. Click "update conversation" to see what you’ve missed.

Hmm, I wonder if they read my blog... but they should correct their spelling of Embarassment, my spell checker tells me it's spelled Embarrassment. I guess that's embarrassing for their proofing folks (har har).

I really need these two features to be built into Outlook.

How many times have you heard this (or this happened to you before you learned not to do this any more).

1. you receive a document in email
2. you double click it
3. you edit it
4. you save it
5. you close word/xl/ppt

result: where did my doc go? OH NO I LOST EVERYTHING I WORKED ON.

Why does this happen, and why is it still broken? Why do I need to first save the document somewhere else before I edit it?

Even more annoying is how difficult it us to reply back to some one with your edits. You have to:

1. save the document to the desktop
2. go back to email
3. reply-all
4. attach the document on the desktop
5. send the email
6. delete the document on the desktop

This is a pretty common workflow for millions of people (I think).

Starting November 14th, MSN Music will stop selling music. The best way to buy music these days is Amazon.com 1-click with Amazon.com Prime for free 2 day shipping. I refuse to spend more than $20 a year for downloaded music. The whole authorization mess and software + DRM makes it a hassle. I think for music subscription is still the way to go.