shahine.com/omar/

TripIt has become an indispensable tool in my Web 2.0 arsenal. I use it to:

1. Organize my trip plans
2. Organize my business trips so my wife knows when I'm out of town
3. Plan travel
4. Share travel plans with my extended family
5. Build cool fun trips

This past month the family took a trip to the east coast. This was a complicated 8 day trip with the following items in our itinerary.

1. Limo pickup to the airport
2. flight from SFO to IAD
3. Rental Car Pickup
4. Drive to Washington, D.C.
5. Hotel Checkin
6. Day Trip to visit friends and National Zoo
7. Drive from DC to Charlottesville for lunch with friends
8. Drive from Charlottesville  to Winston-Salem, NC to stay with the in-laws
9. Drive to airport to drop of rental car
10. Flight from CLT to SFO
11. Limo pickup to drive us home

TripIt managed all the details for us. It even helped me out in a pinch when I lost the print out and I needed the phone number for the limo company. I was able to email trip it from my phone and get back the info I needed using Trip To Me. It's like having a virtual travel agent.

Well, just a few days ago, I was email with Andy Denmark about some Hotmail issues TripIt was having, and I mentioned that it would be cool if Microsoft's Travel system was supported by TripIt. I forwarded him a sample email that you can get from our travel system (text/html not the PDF one) and he had coded up a solution a few hours later. SWEET! (FYI to the Microsoft peeps).

Now whenever I am going to Redmond, I can just forward the email to plans@tripit.com and my wife can automatically see my travel details right in her calendar (via subscribing to the TripIt iCal url). As you can see below, I'm going to be in Seattle next week:

wOOt! what a timesaver.

Oh, TripIt just added OpenTable support. Sweet.

Email is the new API of 2007.

If you've been ignoring the AMT this year, you might be in luck. It looks like the IRS finally told Congress that they better get their ass into gear and pass an AMT Patch for 2007 (like they did the past several years) because they start printing tax forms in November.

Last week, the IRS warned that if Congress does not act by early November, up to 50 million taxpayers could see serious delays in the processing of their returns and their refunds when they file their 2007 taxes.

The proposal simply raises the floor at which the AMT tax kicks in:

In a letter dated Oct. 30, top members of the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee said that they anticipate the exemption levels for 2007 would be $44,350 for individual filers and $66,250 for married couples filing jointly.

Without a patch, the 2007 exemption amounts would be 33,750 for individual filers and $45,000 for joint filers.

So, if you are married you are getting a one time $5,525 gift and if you are single, a $2,756 gift.

This is mostly for people who live in states like NY and CA with homes (under the AMT, you are not allowed to deduct property and state income tax from your income).

What a scam. I recently had a credit card number stolen somehow, so I went to FreeCreditReport.com to check my credit report and place a fraud alert (placing a fraud alert required that I get a credit report).

However, what I did not realize is that by getting a free credit report, you are forced to also get a "free trial" of their Credit Monitoring Service.

There is no way around that.

And the only way to prevent getting a monthly charge for the service, you HAVE TO CALL THEM to opt-out.

What a scam.

Here is what they state on their web site:

However, if you only wish to receive your free credit score & report, and do not want to continue the Credit Monitoring service at $12/month, just call the toll free number provided on their site, and cancel the membership before the 30-day trial is up. This way you will be able to view your credit report and credit score at absolutely no cost.

So, let me get this straight, to actually get my free credit report, I can sign up but I have to call you to then opt out? And my guess, is that most people don't do this till they notice a charge on their credit card, which ensures that the folks at Experian actually get paid $12.95 for giving you your own information, FOR FREE.

This kind of thing pisses me off to no end. For whatever it's worth I submitted a complaint to the Attorney General's Office of California.

update: many of you have pointed out to me, in comments and in person (thanks Ben!) that the only place that you should be going to get your free credit report is http://www.annualcreditreport.com

You can see this from http://www.ftc.gov/freereports

"Important information from the Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency: annualcreditreport.com is the ONLY authorized online source for you to get a free credit report under federal law. You can get a free report from each of the three national credit reporting companies every 12 months. Some other sites claim to offer "free" credit reports, but may charge you for another product if you accept a "free" report."

Thanks to all for leaving comments about this.

It appears that while no one was paying attention, Adobe went and fixed Acrobat Reader to be less evil. What does this mean?

• No more weird Updater5 folder in your Documents folder
• No more "shortcuts" in your Startup Items folder to make Reader launch faster by having always running processes on your machine.

Get it here.

I have already broken a world record by owning the same phone for 11.5 months (BlackJack I). However, I just saw that this bad boy is coming soon.

• Windows Mobile 6 (already have it on my BJ I)
• GPS (wohoo)
• bigger screen
• smaller
• 2 megapixel camera? Extra pixels that won't make the picture any better looking.

I am SOO excited that Windows Live Events has launched. My favorite thing about my job is that Mike Torres and I were talking about this service only last year, and we couldn't wait till it shipped... Evite has set such a low bar for this kind of thing that we knew that we could do a better job, and IMHO, the v1 of this service is just that. I expect WLE will only get better.

Also, WLE shipped in the nick of time. I just set up an Event Space for our daughter Sarah's One Year birthday (previewed on the right). I'm already in love with the site. I've got:

• Event Details
• Email Notifications to guests
• The ability to make my wife an "organizer" giving her full control of the space
• The Highlights from the past year in photos
• Some Videos I have hosted on soapbox
• A map to our house with event details.
• A custom URL for my event.
• Attendee list
• No Windows Live ID required to respond to an invite
• The ability for our guests to upload the photos they have taken after the party.

Big Congrats to the folks who got this service out the door!

As a geek, I install, update and did I say update a lot of software.

I can't stand when I'm installing something and I get this dialog:

First of all, this dialog is not friendly. Second of all, Processor ID? Exweese me? What do I do with that information? Third of all, why isn't there a big FAT EASY BUTTON.

Can like the installer use Shadow Copy or something to replace the files it needs to replace and have it all just work the next time I launch Outlook?

Installers that are horrible about this are anything that relies on Outlook or IE for integration.

What's weird is that some installers on Vista ask you if you want to automatically quit the running applications and continue.

I have to admit, for the past few years, Firefox has been mostly a curiosity for me. I usually had it installed on one or two computers, but it wasn't my default browser and I rarely used it for things other than checking compatibility issues and seeing if IE bugs reproed in Firefox. Lastly, when IE 7 shipped with Tabs, that kind of sealed the fate of Firefox for me... I didn't need it enough to use it a lot.

I have also collected a lot of t-shirts over the years. A few years ago, before there was an IE 7 I purchased a Firefox t-shirt. I did so for a few reasons.

1. I  wanted to support a browser that had a number of features that I found critical to my web surfing needs (tabs, extensions)
2. I wanted a cool looking t-shirt
3. It was cheap.
4. I thought it would be fun to see what happened. I mean who would care?

And I wore the t-shirt to work. I got a lot of interesting comments. Most folks on my team sorta laughed. However at the time the climate at Microsoft wasn't Firefox friendly. In fact, Windows Live Hotmail didn't even render well on Firefox. Today that's a different story and Firefox is a fully supported browser on both the Full and the Classic experience. Most Live Services generally support both Firefox and IE parity.

However, as the shirt is fading, a lot has happened in that time. IE 7 released, with the most prominent feature being tabs and improved standards compliance, two hallmarks of Firefox. IE 7 has also gained a substantial amount of marketshare. Interestingly, over that time period, my usage of Firefox has actually increased since the release of 2.0.x with features such as inline spell checking. In fact on at least one of my machines, Firefox is the default browser... not so on my laptop or work desktop since IE is necessary for rendering and authenticating to intranet sites.

My favorite Firefox features today are:

• Extensions. Google Browser Sync allows me to sync all my cookies, saved passwords and favorites between all my computers. This is AWESOME. I cannot stand re-personalizing my web surfing experience on new computers. I also use things like GreaseMonkey to mashup Amazon and Google Reader. Neat stuff. There are dozens of other useful extensions.
• Inline Find. Love this.
• Spell Checking... I need this more than you know it.
• This is a weird one, but I can keep Firefox running when I install programs on my machine. I've lost count of how many programs and updaters require that I quit all instances of IE and Outlook. This is a sorry PITA and a reason why I can't stand updating software. FireFox updates much better.
• I'm curios and View Source pretty prints HTML.

What does this have to do with my t-shirt?

Well, a few weeks ago my old college roommate asked me if I was wearing a Firefox t-shirt. I was like, um yeah, how do you know what that is? He is a pilot for Virgin America and just got his first laptop a few months ago... but yet he had Firefox installed and he said another pilot told him about it. I was not expecting this.

The other day a developer that used to work on Hotmail looked at my t-shirt and was like "Firefox t-shirt"? and I was like, yeah, so what (smiling of course)? As far as I know I can't buy an IE t-shirt, and if I could it wouldn't mean the same thing.

I guess I bought the Firefox t-shirt to make a statement. That statement was that I support Firefox for what it represents... an attempt to continue to bring innovation that us web users need and to ensure that IE doesn't go for another 5 years without an update. It's a really nice product.

I find it amusing that I almost always get a comment on the t-shirt no matter where I am.

We took Sarah (and Lora) to the Monterey Aquarium for the first time this weekend. This is by far my favorite Aquarium in the country. The architecture of the buildings, the exhibits and the presentation is outstanding. Oh, they also have a fantastic cafeteria. If you ever visit the San Francisco Bay Area, this is well worth a trip.

Here is Sarah having just touched her first Star Fish.

My favorite exhibit is the jelly fish one.

Also the huge sea tank where you can see the huge Sun Fish and Tuna.

Working at Microsoft, and not working in Redmond means a few things. 1) I spend a fair amount of time traveling back and forth, 2) I spend a lot of time calling in to meetings and usually can't hear what is going on and 3) I spent a lot of time trying to get our VTC system to work (50% of the time it doesn't).

Let me tell you... calling into a meeting is very unfulfilling when you are collaborating with folks.

Even though Microsoft is a technology company, when it comes to collaboration, 9 out of 10 times you need to get your butt in a plane and go if you care to participate in planning.

Well today I saw, and used something that changed all that. For the first time in 9 year I participated in a meeting that was held in Redmond while sitting in my Office.

Some of the new conference rooms in Redmond have a Microsoft RoundTable. RoundTable is a combination conference phone like a PolyComm but it also has a set of cameras arranged in a circle. A person in the room connects their laptop running Live Meeting 2007 and what I can see on my end is a panoramic view of the entire room AND a camera view of the person who is talking. You can see this below.

I can't tell you how natural this feels. I can literally feel like I am there. And the folks in the conf room can see me on the projector since I had a webcam. No phone was used at all.

This technology is simply amazing. It is going to have a huge impact on me and I hope a lot of folks in Redmond take advantage of this.

It's days like this where I come to work and just go Wow... I can't believe we made this. There is a pretty good review of it here.

PS - If you haven't tried Office Communicator 2007 you should. It's the best IM/Collaboration software I have ever used. It has killer features like delivering missed conversations to your inbox and letting you reply later. More on that in a future post.

I have fallen in love with Amazon.com's new MP3 download service. Here are the facts:

• DRM free music from EMI and Universal
• $.89 a track
• $8.99 for most albums
• 256 kbps Variable Bitrate MP3
• Application that downloads tracks and transfers to iTunes or Windows Media Player with Album Art

Before this service I was still firmly a "CD only" purchaser. DRM was too restrictive. For example, how would my wife and I share music on our iPods? Our current solution was to use my iTunes accounts on my machine, her machine etc. But this got to be a pain in the butt.

Another thing that rocks? Amazon customer service. I had a problem with a credit card on file due to some one-click thing. So I clicked on the help link, and then clicked "call me", entered my phone number and within 3 seconds I was talking to a live human being who already had all my account info. It was actually kinda funny because I was buying my wife the new Fergie Album she asked for and the customer service lady was like "So you're trying to get your fergie"?... awkward!

Anyway, lets see how this stacks up to iTunes:

1. Cheaper
2. More DRM free music selection
3. No DRM on all tracks sold
4. MP3 format, so it works on all music devices.

Sold!

Let's face it, the ATM is pretty dammed awesome. I remember when I was a kid and used to go to the bank with my mom and wait in line to withdraw money for the weekend. If you ran out of cash on a Sunday, or in a foreign country? Tough luck.

Over the years I assume most of us have just come to expect the ATM to be everywhere. We are used to the process of sticking card in, picking an amount, and watching as the $20 bills POP out.

Well, I was about to write about the new Wells Fargo technology marvel in the Microsoft SVC Cafeteria but Bubba beat me to it.

These new ATM machines are "envelope-less". What does that mean? Well when you make a deposit you just take your pile of cash or checks and stick them into a slot. A few seconds later they recognize all the stuff you inserted, show you the amount for confirmation, and print you a receipt with a digitized version of what you inserted.

Amazing.

Unlike Bubba I am not ditching Wells Fargo any time soon. Why? Well I have my mortgage with them and as such I qualify for the highest level of checking with them which translates into very few fees these days.

Anyway, it's great to see technology keep getting better.

If there was one thing I wished though was that you could pick denominations other than $20 bills. After all, $50 is the new $20.

Over the past 6 months I've just been amazed at overhearing people talk about directions... and MapQuest. It seems that people still use MapQuest.. I haven't touched that thing in years. Almost all the conversations I've heard regarding Mapping and Directions have referenced MapQuest.

I've never heard anyone reference Google, Yahoo or MSN/Windows Live/Microsoft/Virtual Earth Maps.

It seems like the old Web 1.0 companies still maintain a lot of mindshare. This includes Ofoto and Shutterfly as well.

It's official, flying sucks.