shahine.com/omar/

are now listed http://get.live.com/betas. Of note are a new version of Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Messenger, and Windows Live Mail (desktop mail application).

If you are using Windows Live Writer with dasBlog you'll want to "update account configuration" so that you can create new categories from Writer in posts.

Mike recently lost his cell phone and talks about how easy and effective using Remote Wipe was.

Basically it works like this. You lose you phone with all your email, calendar, contacts on it. You are worried that this data may get into the wrong hands. You log onto OWA and select Wipe My Device and your device information is nuked from the phone.

This is a very cool feature of Windows Mobile 6 and Windows Mobile 5 with the Security and Push software.

I think this will be our next point and shoot camera, our first non-canon point and shoot camera.

Notable Features:

• Wide Angle (28mm)
• HD Video (1280 x 720) as well as Wide Screen Video (848 x 480)
• Image Stabilization
• 1920 x 1080 photo resolution

update: the actual model number if DMC-FX100K and DMC-FX-100S

This is cool. Bringo will take care of navigating a phone tree for you and then calling you when it has reached a human.

One of the reasons I love Lenovo is the fact that they blog. Not only do they blog, they make great laptops. And not only that but they come up with innovative solutions to problems that seemingly get no attention from any other OEMs. A few weeks ago I wrote about how they create a nice single application for downloading and installing all the drivers and such that a laptop needs to function. They also break things out by Critical/Recommended/Optional etc. Finally, the craplets that they do produce look like they are part of the Operating System, not some tumor that is just festering on your machine...

Well, their latest post about what the Thinkpad has in common with the Owl is a testament to what I've said above. They are looking at innovative solutions to a problem I hate... noise and heat on laptops. Kudos to them for doing this and letting us know.

Another plus is that Lenovo was recently rated as the Greenest of the laptop makers. I like that.

I wonder if other laptop makers will take notice and start to blog? To me the fact that Lenovo does such a good job blogging about their products is a reflection of how proud they are of their work and their desire to own their story.

This are freaking hilarious.

Suspicious Male

Reading Pane

Hot Male

Drag & Drop

My Vista experiences to-date have been nothing short of fantastic. However, I did experience a very annoying problem where my Thinkpad T60 would awake from sleep... but only half way. The screen would never come on.

Very annoying as the problem seem random and I could not reproduce it. Well, I was able to track it down to 2 things.

1) I was not using the OEM version of the ATI driver.

In the past I have not ever installed the OEM Video Driver as it was always "behind" the latest ATI or nVidia one. Well as it turns out, there are occasions where the OEM version has custom bug fixes. Installing the Lenovo ATI driver resolved part of the problem.

I still experienced the problem, albeit much less frequently. But when I did I went berserk. There is nothing worse then seeing all these blinky lights saying your pc is awake as well as all the sounds and stuff working. Well I did some research and stumbled upon this KB Article.

2) I installed a hotfix for bluetooth.

What does bluetooth have to do with standby?

SYMPTOMS

When you wake a Windows Vista-based computer from sleep, a Bluetooth device may no longer work correctly. After this problem occurs, the computer may stop responding when you try to put the computer to sleep again. Or, the computer may stop responding when you try to shut down or restart the computer.

CAUSE

This problem may occur on a system that supports selective suspend if the computer goes to sleep shortly after the Bluetooth device's power is cycled.

Sounds familiar... I installed the hotfix and have been running smooth for 2 weeks now. Getting this hotfix is annoying, you have to email support to get it.

In addition to being my favorite smartphone todate, the Blackjack has a number of useful features.

Data Tethering

Plug your blackjack into your Windows Laptop, launch Internet Sharing and hit connect. Bamo, you are connected to the Internet. It does not get easier than that.

Here is a screen shot of the bandwidth I got when I was in San Diego a while back.

319 kps up? Damm, that's as good as my cable modem and probably better than your DSL.

Mad props to the Windows Mobile Team for adding Internet Sharing to AKU3.

Answer Calls while Tethered

Someone calling you while you are tethered? Aint no thing... just answer the call and you are still connected to the Internet. Holy Cow...

Voice and Data

A feature of the 3G network on Cingular is that you can do voice and data at the same time. This is super useful... a lot more so then I expected.

The data tethering feature comes in really handy. I use it all the time, especially when traveling and in airports. I don't even bother with hotel broadband. In fact, I canceled my dedicated Cingular Broadband Connect plan in favor of tethering the few times of the month that I need it. If you do the same just make sure you have the right data plan.

BTW - for all you hecklers who will point out that I will have a new phone soon and will be singing the praises of that. Not likely. I've had the Blackjack for almost an Omar Gadget world record... 6 months. And with the Windows Mobile 6 Upgrade coming I see nothing else more compelling.

Back when I shipped versions of Mac Office it was obvious when you were done... it was also obvious when you could walk into a store and see a shrink-wrapped copy of your software sitting on a shelf. Man what a cool feeling.

Well, when you've continually shipped updates to a product over a 2 year period, you can almost miss the moment when you can say you are "done", but knowing that "done" is completely relative. You're never done and we'll ship an update to Windows Live Hotmail a couple more times this year (everything from small hotfixes to releases).

But... today is the day we are launching Windows Live Hotmail world wide. I've worked on this project since the very beginning and I'm really proud to have been a part of this first complete re-write of the hotmail frontend code base since its inception. It's been an amazing opportunity and one I'm glad I was fortunate to be a part of.

The best part of it all is how much I've learned from the folks I work with, and from the customers and beta testers that gave us feedback. We worked tirelessly the past few years to deliver something that our users want, and something that is architecturally sound...

We made a big bet on .NET and a lot of new Microsoft technologies along the way. We are running all of these things at a massive scale and have hopefully improved a lot of the technology and infrastructure that ends up shipping in lots of other products.

You can head on over to the Hotmail blog and read more.

One of the things I'm most excited about is that we are FINALLY going to deliver rich connectivity to Outlook 2003 & 2007 for FREE. As an Outlook user you will have a first class experience interfacing with your Hotmail account. I plan to blog more about this in the coming weeks. IMHO this experience will be unmatched by any of our competition.

Well I'm off to bed now, but tomorrow will be a fun day.

PS - if you look through all the team pictures on the hotmail blog you will find one of me reading a .NET My Services book. I thought that would be pretty funny.

It's nice to see one of our features in Windows Live Hotmail called out. We added the ability to unsubscribe to newsletter type email a while ago. All mass email senders should make use of the List-Unsubscribe Headers.

"Microsoft has recently made a small adjustment to its Windows Live Hotmail unsubscribe function that should mean good things for marketers.

Microsoft last August answered e-mail marketers’ calls to include an unsubscribe button in its interface so consumers will be less likely to mistakenly report permission-based commercial e-mail as spam.

The unsubscribe link appears in place of the report-and-delete button on some e-mails in Windows Live Hotmail, the free e-mail service replacing classic Hotmail."

[Source: Darren Straight]

Here is a screen shot of an email from a brick and mortar store that I've bought furniture from in the past. If I no longer want to receive messages from them it's a one click operation.

Notepad2 gets a nice update. I was trying to figure out how to replace notepad.exe on Vista with Notepad2 and was not having much success. Then I found this post and it looks even easier than my instructions for how to replace Notepad on XP:

1. Download and extract Notepad2.
2. Rename Notepad2.exe to notepad.exe.
3. Find c:\windows\notepad.exe and c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe and set the owner to ‘Administrators’, and grant Administrators full control.
4. Using Windows Explorer, drag and drop the renamed notepad2.exe to c:\windows and c:\windows\system32.

To take ownership of the file get properties on notepad.exe and select Advanced on the security tab. Then go to the owner tab and change the owner.

Unclutter is a great blog so far. Started by Jerry Brito, originator of the Moleskine GTD Tabs Hack.

Why don't I think of things like this? Hmm.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Microsoft used to purchase truck loads of Odwalla Juice for the employees of Silicon Valley. This was a tradition started by many of the smaller splinter groups around Silicon Valley before Microsoft pulled them all together into our Mountain View Campus. I loved me some Orange Juice every day.

Well, Microsoft is also known for giving away all you can drink sodas. We also get these sodas, but this was a tradition Microsoft started in Redmond at some point.

Anyway, when the dot com bust happened Microsoft took away the Odwalla as well as a few other things. Why did they do that? Well, honestly, it was expensive and they didn't need to give it to us any more. Attrition went from 30% or so a year in Silicon Valley to record lows of 7% or so. I mean what were you going to do? Quit cause we took away Odwalla? I think most folks didn't really miss it much.

I remember one time an employee at work decided to take all the green superfood Odwallas out of the fridge on a Friday before a long weekend because they "expired". This was before Odwalla flash pasteurized the juice and it had a very short shelf life. They also used the bottle tops similar to the plastic milk cartons. Well, we referred to these things as Odwalla Bombs. The term was coined when we returned to our break room kitchen on Tuesday morning and it was covered in Green stinky plankton looking superfood. YUCK! In fact if you left pretty much any Odwalla out of a fridge for long enough it would explode.

Microsoft tried to set up Odwalla vending machines all over campus but no one purchased from them. After all, none of use were used to paying, and when we found out how much those little 12 oz bottles from heaven cost, we didn't buy. Instead we happily consumed all sorts of sugar water. We did however start getting Talking Rain, which is basically soda water with a hint of fruit flavor. Personally I don't like the talking Rain.

Over the past few years I have stopped drinking soda. For one thing it was rotting my teeth (really). Instead I have water or Welches cranberry juice.

This year I am trying to avoid consumption of high fructose corn syrup (HFC). What is that you ask? Well it:

1. tastes like sugar
2. costs a heck of a lot less
3. Is considered "unhealthy" and some believe contributes to obesity.

You'll be surprised at just how many things are sweated with HFC. Just look at the ingredients next time.

I have found that most things labeled organic don't have HFC and are sweetened with good old sugar. Anyway, recently our Cafeteria started selling Naked Juice for about $2.20 to $2.70. Now at first I thought this was expensive till I found out this stuff costs $3.99 at Safeway and Whole Foods. Creepers! That's more expensive than a Jamba Juice.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I decided I was going to start having this stuff at lunch. Since Microsoft is subsidizing it a bit I might as well.

The good news is, this stuff is DELICIOUS. I mean, I love it. It's much better than Odwalla. So far I've tried the following:

• Mighty Mango
• Pomegranate Acai
• Orange Mango Motion
• Power-C

and my fav is Pomegranate Acai.

I also found that Safeway often sells them for $2 each. I stopped by this weekend and loaded up. This stuff is yummy and good for you to.

The bad news is that this stuff is at least 100% more expensive than Soda sweetened with HFC and obviously not free .

Just heard about this on the radio and I just signed up.

For $41 they will take care of getting rid of most of your junk mail (the old skool kind that shows up in your mailbox).

Lora and I must get a recycle bin full of this stuff each month. It's amazing.

We'll see how this works out, but for $41 it's worth it to me.

Oh, and Lora and I haven't received any credit card offers for at least 3 years. How did we do it? Call 1-888-5 OPT OUT and you can essentially block the companies like Equifax from selling your info to them. I asked for a permanent block.

If you are using a ReadyBoost drive iTunes video is unplayable/unwatchable due to horrible perf.

I wonder who's at fault here?

I tried a few dozen things to get things working and then stumbled on a solution.... no ReadyBoost for me. Good thing I upgraded to 2GB of RAM on my Vista PC.