shahine.com/omar/

I grew up in New York City. You don't really become an environmentalist living there. There isn't much natural beauty, if anything, NYC represents the far end of the achievements man has made around urbanized living, economic power, social and cultural influence and concrete & glass.

Now that I live in California I can't help but love and appreciate nature. The California Coast is simply stunning and all the amazing natural resources out here on the west coast are easy to take for granted, but every time I pay my property and state income taxes I think... what a small price to pay for such an amazing place.

This brings me to my point. Now that I live in a house (first time in my life, I spent the rest in apartments) I can't help but see and feel the amazing amount of waste our society produces and we consume. The amount of trash and recycling that comes out of our house is shocking. When you live in an apartment this stuff just disappears down the trash shoot and you never see (only hear) the garbage trucks at 6am.

So, Lora and I do what we can to recycle. But that was just the beginning. I feel that I've turning into a Hippie . I remember the first time I went to Whole Fools and I was like, what is this place good for? They don't have good trash bags or Coke. And look at those weird bags people bring to the store for their groceries. Well now I'm one of those people.

I am HIGHLY IRRITATED when I go to Safeway and the bag people insist on placing one item in every bag. I come home and end up with like 20 crappy little plastic bags that you can't even recycle. These bags are made from oil and we consume an enormous amount of oil to make something that will sit in a land fill or end up somewhere on a freeway or beach cause it's cheap (about 1 cent a bag). However, San Francisco recently became the first city in the nation to BAN the use of plastic bags in Grocery Stores and Drug Stores.

Now, many can argue how bad this is and how it will drive up prices and blah blah blah. I say SHUT IT! Bio Plasic Bags (made from corn starch) cost a few cents more per bag. If this really bothers you buy a re-usable bag and keep it in your car. Whole Foods makes awesome reusable bags. They are large and have study handles and most all of your groceries will fit in 2-3 of them vs the 500 bags Safeway insists on giving you. In fact if you use such a bag at Whole Foods OR Safeway they will credit you a few cents per bag.

It's about time we start to pay for the very real cost of cleaning up the trash and mess and waste we spew into the world. Now that we have a child I'm even more sensitive about what we are not doing to ensure that she will enjoy this place as much as we do.

IMHO San Francisco is on a role. First they ban Baby products that contain harmful Bisphenol A (BPA) from things like baby bottles, and now plastic bags. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy that our irresponsible behavior to our natural resources and our over reliance on plastic and petroleum at the cost of our health and our planet is starting to trend back in the right direction.

I grew up as a cynic of recycling. Now I buy my tooth paste from Whole Foods and use my green bag. Go figure. I drove a Prius for the first time the other day, and while I still think it's ugly, I can't help but feel ashamed for driving a car that gets such terrible mileage.

Well, it's been a REALLY long time since I've posted about stuff I'm working on. One of the reasons I haven't posted about work related stuff is that I stopped working on Mail back when the M8 milestone was starting up (last summer). I worked on another project, then went on parental leave, and when I returned there was an opportunity to work on Mail Hotmail again and I took it. Moving forward my team and I are going to be responsible for the core mail features for Windows Live Hotmail. Think of this as a big chunk of the "application" which in our case consists of the server and the rendered HTML or AJAX code. Hotmail is a really significant project and there are LOTS of people that support developing and maintaining the service so I don't want to trivialize the fact that there are many other moving parts and areas of responsibility that my peers manage as part of the service.

I had a lot of fun on the other project. A small part of me is sad that I'm no longer a part of the team, since it's filled with so many talented folks and a really amazing future. However, coming back to work on Hotmail reminds me just how much I like working in this space. I'm an e-mail nut at heart, and it's what I've done for the majority of my 8+ years at Microsoft... and it's what ultimately brought me out to the west coast.

Anyway, the team just finished releasing M10 to the entire site today. M10 is a milestone along a remarkable journey that started in 2004 when I joined the MSN Hotmail team. I'm really proud of the work the team has done, and the polish and performance found in M10. We wrote the product from scratch (practically zero code reuse from the current MSN Hotmail) on .NET inventing and using technologies along the way to deliver a rich and fast experience that leapfrogs our current free mail product. The challenges we faced and the things we learned are really profound.

In fact you might notice that Yahoo Mail beta seems to be taking a few cues from our playbook (ignoring their storage announcement for a moment). There are some hard and fast facts around performance of Rich AJAX applications that a small number of major services are dealing with. And I'm talking about services that need to scale to hundreds of millions of users (with tens of millions of logons) across thousands of servers in hundreds of markets and cities across the world. There are no wide spread "best practices" out there to borrow. There is a lot of hard work in finding the right balance between performance and richness and deploying a service to a world wide audience with very little downtime.

Anyway, I just wanted to write this post acknowledging the excellent work the team has done, and mention that I'm back working on a project that I helped start with a group of amazingly smart and dedicated folks. It should be a fun summer watching the user base grow.

PS - I'd like to point out that Windows Live Hotmail M10 was recently positively reviewed in PC Mag and received an editor's choice award (along with Yahoo).

I'm so screwed. I haven't stayed up past 11 pm for the past 4 months. Why? Cause I have a baby that wakes up at night and requires feeding. I also have to wake up at the ungodly hour of whenever she wakes up (usually around 7am) which for me is about an hour earlier then I'm used to.

Wah Wah you say. Well you know how when your up waay past when you are normally up you realize your past the point of no return. You see my body needs 8 hours of sleep minimum or bad things happen later in the week. Now when I go to bed at 1 am the following will happen:

1. my wife will notice and go "What the hell"!!
2. When the baby cries and it's my turn to go feed her, she will either a) go do it herself even though it's my turn or b) I'll do it and get even less sleep making me even grumpier tomorrow
3. In the morning my wife will ask me what time I went to bed at which point I will make something up but then reluctantly tell her I was up late "working" when in fact I was working and writing blog posts because I never have time to do either any more

Either way I'm screwed and will require even more coffee then normal (which is bad since my caffeine intake has only gotten worse since those dammed Starbucks iCup machines appeared at work).

Sigh.

This is just HOT.

The other day I ordered an iMate Momento 100 Picture Frame. This is a 10 inch 800 x 480 picture frame that has built in WiFi. It can connect to the Momento Live Service and stream photos that you and your family can share. It can also talk to your Vista or XP Computer using Windows Media Connect and get photos that way. If you lack geekiness you can just plugin a memory card or USB drive with photos on them (boring).

But the best part is, Momento supports Vista SideShow Gadgets (not SideBar). This means that you can download and use a bunch of gadgets on the Windows Live Gallery and enable them for use on the picture frame. The data then renders very nicely (translucent) over the photos as the slide show goes.

Setting it up was a bit of a pain since the device currently only supports WEP and WPA for Wireless Encryption. Since I use WPA2 (who doesn't?) I wasn't able to connect. I had to temporarily downgrade security to connect and register the frame. Once I did that it appeared on my computer like a UPnP Router or any other computer on the LAN. I right clicked and selected Install and it pulled down the drivers from Windows Update and I was able to navigate to the screen below and turn my gadgets on.

I had to turn on SideShow support in the picture frame but that was easy.

This frame is waaay more geeky than the Philips Picture Frame I got last December.

One thing though, this frame is huge. I mean I thought the bigger the better, but now I kinda wish I got the smaller one.

I might have to get one of these for each sets of parents so I can stream them photos of their granddaughter.

If I had infinite time I'd write a SideShow Gadget for SmugMug. I'm sure Scott Hanselman is salivating right now, probably has Visual Studio 2005 already launching to hack this thing up.

BTW - Vista rulez. This is just kick ass. We never get credit for this kind of magic.

No soup for me. I guess all the buzz out there fails to mention Vista isn't supported.

Maybe I should get a Mac so I can be a fanboy again?

BTW, I'm with Torres. The video on the Apple TV looks like crap. And Scoble, it's not a sharpness issue, it's the fact that the iTunes videos are 640 x 480 and generally look fine at 480p but not anything greater.

I'm not even sure why they have them on display in the store. What I saw would not convince anyone I know to buy one. Maybe it's good for Music and Podcasts, but not for TV Shows. Right now I can play my iTunes Video on my Vista Media Center in full screen using iTunes and it works fine.

I was in the Apple store the other day and the output was correct.

Not sure why the Apple TV has HDMI since it's pretty much useless given the video quality sux.

I was kinda floored this week, when talking to the SmugMug folks at ETech, I found out that Thomas Hawk (a pretty prolific blogger and amazing photographer) uses a Pen Name. His real name is NOT Thomas Hawk. Maybe I'm the last person to find this out, but I had no clue.

He actually says so right on his blog (I never noticed). He explains why he uses a Pen Name in this article.

Scott: Why the pseudonym? Can you discuss your decision to go with a pen name in the context of the emphasis on transparency in the Web 2.0 world?

Tom: I use a pseudonym because I have a day job in the investment business (in a non technology related field). Because the investment industry is highly regulated and because if I used my real name I would have to have my boss review everything that I write, I have chosen to blog under a pseudonym. Many people know my real name and it's something that I openly share with friends. I state that I'm blogging under a pseudonym publicly on my blog and it is the only pseudonym I use. I don't particularly hide my identity (anyone can do a "who is" search) and if I were ever to leave the investment business I would be more open about my identity. I feel that I'm pretty transparent about my situation and have found most people accepting of that. My salary at Zooomr is $0 as we try and build it out so I still need to pay the bills somehow.

Now here is the kicker. As far as I know he really is the CEO of Zoomr, an online photo site like Flickr. I think it's very strange that some one using a Pen Name can use that when acting as the CEO of a company. I guess if the company is private who cares right? Oddly enough he isn't mentioned anywhere on the About Zoomr page.

I don't know, I just think it's weird. I would imagine that he would have to have some kind of moonlighting agreement with the investment company. Does it really make it OK to do all these things just by using a Pen Name? That seems to easy. I know that if I engaged in any side activities at Microsoft I'm required to complete a Moonlighting Agreement and get that approved by my manager. This includes any official positions at any company... using a Pen Name doesn't make this requirement go away.

Do other's find this just strange?

I love the name, I love the product. I've been using it since December and it's my 2nd favorite Windows Mobile application right after Windows Live Search.

You can find out more here.

Josh Einstein is a poster child for pushing the envelope with new Microsoft Technologies.

Josh, the creator of TEO (Tablet Enhancements for Outlook) was pushing the envelope with ink and Outlook a few years ago... his latest app is a program that renders your OneNote Notes in a Calendar view inside an application.

What I find interesting is that this program:

• Is the first application I have ever used that is a ClickOnce application.
• The install experience is how it should be. No downloading some temp MSI/ZIP file to some folder that I can't get to later etc
• Takes advantage of the new OneNote 2007 APIs
• Uses the new Vista Control that you see in Media Player and Photo Gallery

All things that I've not used before in any third party applications.

Nice work Josh!

Last year I had an awesome time at ETech. I'll be going again this year, and it looks like it'll be a fun conference. I hope that it's sunny and warm this year in San Diego.

I'm sure I'll be using twitter like everyone else.

Yes, everyone out there has seen Tim Heuer's Foxit PDF Preview Handler. This allows you to preview PDF files in Outlook 2007 or the Vista Preview Pane.

Well I didn't install it cause I stopped using Foxit now that I can install Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 without much of the prior annoyances.

Anyway, Ryan Gregg, has released a PDF Preview Handler that uses Adobe Acrobat's ActiveX Control. I've been using it for a few weeks (Ryan works on the Outlook team and had an internal version for a while) and it's fantastic.

Thanks a bunch Ryan for releasing it.

I have been meaning to blog about BitLocker since I set it up on my new ThinkPad T60. Why did I use BitLocker? In case my laptop is stolen then my hard drive will just look like a bunch of unintelligible 1s and 0s. I would not use BitLocker on a desktop machine, but for a Laptop, especially one with confidential Microsoft info it's a no brainier.

BUT WHERE WAS THE BIG FAT EASY BUTTON?

Setting up BitLocker was a PITA for me. I followed the step by step instructions to enable BitLocker but each time I installed Vista I was told my drive configuration was not suitable. Finally I gave up, created a big fat partition and installed Vista. I then got the new Windows Vista Ultimate Extras BitLocker enhancement and it did all the dirty work for me. Why oh why didn't I know about this first? It would be nice if the Technet article mentioned this easy tool.

Anyhoo, I write this today because Lifhacker has an article comparing BitLocker to Apple's FileVault. Now I dig and respect Lifehacker but Gina totally missed the most important aspect of BitLocker. YOU DON'T NEED A USB Key to use BitLocker. My Laptop came with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM Chip). Most PCees come with one these days. They are usually disabled in the BIOS so you must turn them on (not sure why they are disabled as they are pretty benign when not being used). In fact I would never have considered BitLocker if I had to use a USB key (BitLocker does allow to you use a PIN and or USB Key in addition to the TPM Chip).

Anyway, with a TPM chip the "key" is essentially a chip on the motherboard. However, if the system detects and significant change it will force you to manually enter the key and disable/re-enable BitLocker. This ensures that if some one lifts your laptop and takes out your hard drive it won't be readable. This mode of operation is called Transparent Operation Mode:

Transparent operation mode: This mode leverages the capabilities of the TPM 1.2 hardware to provide for a transparent user experience – the user logs onto Windows Vista as normal. The key used for the disk encryption is sealed (encrypted) by the TPM chip and will only be released to the OS loader code if the early boot files appear to be unmodified. The pre-OS components of BitLocker achieve this by implementing a Static Root of Trust Measurement – a methodology specified by the Trusted Computing Group.

I had to experience this fist hand the other day when some kind of change caused my BIOS to think that my machine changed enough to require me to enter my key (I suspect it was one of the early boot files being modified by an OS update). Now you can insert a USB KeyChain with your key (which didn't work for me, not sure why, need to muck with the bios to find out) or enter it in manually from a print out or in my case the key that was backed up to the Windows MarketPlace Digital Locker (another Vista Ultimate Extra).

So, while it's nice that Gina gave BitLocker the win over FileVault, she neglects the two coolest features:

• Support for the TPM and hardware key
• Support for backup of your key to the Digital Locker on Windows Market Place

BTW, if you do use BitLocker with a TPM I highly recommend that you have a copy of your key somewhere you can get to if all you have is your laptop. In my case I store the key on my Samsung Blackjack using eWallet. I would be pissed if I were on a plane, tried to boot my laptop and I was locked out.

This is genius. My metrosexual self needs hair stuff, and I happen to love Bumble and Bumble Sumo Tech. Only problem is I always forget to re-order it and run out. It's not easy to find and I don't know or frequent the women's beauty shops to know where to find it.

Anyway, I just noticed Amazon now has a new feature called Subscribe and Save.

What Is Subscribe & Save?

When you order through Subscribe & Save, you'll automatically receive a new shipment of the item in intervals you select at a discount on our everyday price. Plus, all subscription orders ship free. We'll charge your credit card for each order only when the item is shipped, and you may cancel at any time.
To start a subscription for this product, choose a quantity and delivery schedule, then click "Subscribe now!" You'll be asked to provide a shipping address, credit card, and billing address. Once the order is placed, your first shipment will be processed and your subscription activated.

I LOVE YOU AMAZON! .

Jott is a great service for GTD type folks. When you are out and about, you call a phone number and leave a message. Within seconds you will get an email with a transcription of your message.

For example, I called  the Jott number (after the registration process) and left a message "Call mom about her flight tomorrow". A few seconds later this appeared:

Very cool indeed.

[via Scoble]

Brilliant... Ordered my t-shirt.

Ok, I happen to like "The Wow" ads that Microsoft is running for Vista. However, in the last week I have seen/heard at least two people say something like "Where is the Wow in this product" and "The wow effect".

I have a bad feeling that this silly phrase will be repeated for a long time to come. I find it annoying.

"The Wow" is clever marketing. It should not be used to describe or promote your feature product IMHO. I'm pretty sure people building Vista weren't thinking about "The Wow" when they were writing specs and code. Maybe I'm wrong though.