shahine.com/omar/

I finally put v1 of Send RSS to OneNote up GotDotNet a few weeks ago but forgot to mention anything.

You can download it here.

For many years I have HATED and complained that when you Reply-All to an email sync'ed via Exchange ActiveSync, you get a copy of the message. No email product on the planet behaves this way. Typically when you reply-all to an email, your address is not included in the reply (the mail client filters you out from the to or cc line).

Well, long ago I filed a bug, and it was not fixed. The reasoning was always that when you use Exchange ActiveSync the device does not know your address (which is sort of true, it just knows your logon credentials). Either way it was annoying to get responses to emails that you replied to.

Well, on the Treo 650 using ActiveSync they had a clever solution. They asked you what your email address was . Now there is a cheap solution! It appears that when you install AKU2 for Windows Mobile 5 we finally get parity with the Treo 650! However, I never noticed because the dialog where you input your email address is hopelessly buried in ActiveSync->Menu->Options->E-mail->Settings->Advanced. There you can enter your primary e-mail address (note that it is case sensitive).

Note to the WM folks. Why not ask the user as part of account configuration?

Wohoo! Best bug fix, err, new feature evar!

[via Pocket PC Thoughts]

note: make sure you enter the email address that your mobile device sees on emails in your inbox. For example, my email address comes in two forms, my username at microsoft.com and FirstName.LastName at microsoft.com. I had to enter the latter in ActiveSync.

A few days ago I downloaded and installed SpeedFiler.

SpeedFiler is an add-in for Outlook that “turbocharges” a core aspect of email triage: Filing Messages.

I figure that I file about 30% of the email I receive. I probably reply and delete 50% and defer/create tasks out of the remainder.

I also have a few hundred folders in Outlook. Many of these folders are for Distribution Lists, and I never file to those. However, I have a Project Hierarchy detailed here and I file things there a few times a day. Doing so via Drag and Drop is inconvenient (because I usually keep the folder list collapsed) and the Outlook Move To drop down is to small and the dialog too limited (not all the folders are expanded and I can’t figure out what rules it uses for persisting state).

Anyway, SpeedFiler is a beauty of a program because it makes filing fast. Basically, SpeedFiler will override Outlook’s Move To Shortcut Keys and pop open it’s own dialog. Once open you just fire off a few characters in the folder name and it collapses the list of folders to any matches. This works great when you also have collisions (more than one folder with the same name) as it shows you all the matches with their full paths.

I happen to use SpeedFiler in conjunction with ClearContext. They actually compliment each other quite well. You see, when I file something into one of my Topic folders, CC automatically assigns a topic to that item. Since many of my topic names are things like “Hotmail/Kahuna” etc, I have to type the full path in CC’s Assign Topic button. This requires that I type most of the topic name, but with SpeedFiler I just type “Kah” and get a match. I can also file messages to any folders in Outlook (including those in my Hotmail account from Outlook Connector).

SpeedFiler has a another nifty feature which allows you to navigate to a folder quickly in the same way that you might file a message to a folder. This is also a big timesaver.

SpeedFiler is simple, well written, and saves me a few minutes a day as well as makes Filing emails fun.

Here is a quick example. I get an email that belongs in the “Reference” folders.

1. Type Control-Shift-V
2. Type Ref
3. Hit Enter

in step 2 you get this dialog.

Doesn’t get easier than that.

I have a few feature requests for SpeedFiler, namely that I can turn off the toolbars in Outlook (I just use the shortcut keys) and the other is that the Outlook boot scan get faster.

Oh, I also recommend subscribing to the author, Itzy Sabo’s blog, Email Overloaded.

For a very long time now I've been under the impression that there is just something wrong with the WiFi support in XP. Frequently my laptop and my wife's would just refuse to get an IP address from our router. I usually have to do a repair, reboot of the base station or reboot of the laptop. This happend with 3 different laptops that I've owned.

Needless to say this was just plain annoying.

Then a few weeks ago I installed this update to get WPA2 support since my Airport Express supports that new standard.

Lo and behold I have yet to experience any wireless problems. Rock solid.

I suspect there were some bug fixes in there. Since the update is optional though I bet you don't have it.

The other day I decided to take some pics of my cat and test my Black and White Photoshop Skills. The gallery is here.

For the past few months some of my former co-workers were working on a release of Entourage that integrates with Apple’s Spotlight and SyncServices.

Just to put things into perspective. Oh, about 3 years ago we tried to get support for iSync in, but there was no API and well, I guess SyncServices was the answer (but it didn’t appear till the last OS update).

Anyhoo, I have to say, the reason I’m writing this is because of what the folks at TidBits just published (yes I still read and subscribe to TidBits) an article with glowing praise for this update. It says such things as:

“One's overall impression, in short, is that the Microsoft folks have done this exactly right, and despite the extra hard disk space that the implementation requires, we're not at all sorry to have the contents of the Entourage database (which is in a proprietary and always at-risk format) reproduced in a form that any text processor can retrieve.”

 

“Overall, this seems on first meeting to be an extremely well conceived and implemented update. Entourage has suddenly become a far better Mac OS X citizen.”

 

“Nevertheless, it's no exaggeration to say that a great weight has been lifted from the minds of Entourage users. To the Microsoft team that brought us this update: bravo.”

 

[Microsoft Entourage Gets Spotlight and Sync]

 

Seriously, coming from TidBits, this is about the best you can do .

So congratulations to the Entourage Team!

Well, I guess I can’t say I’m surprised that my post got a lot of attention.

In the past few days I’ve gotten a lot of very nice emails from people from Apple, my readers, and people who found the post linked to by some one else.

You know you’ve bought a product that is good when you get emails from folks who work on it asking if they can help with any of the problems you’ve encountered, or just plain say “thanks and we’re hiring” .

The other day I was trying to explain to some one just what makes some gadgets more successful than others. What makes TiVo an amazing DVR but makes the Comcast and DirectTV DVRs suck? What makes the iPod rock, but makes every single other MP3 player mediocre? I think it boils down to Employees that care, Employees that eat their own dogfood (and are end users), Employees empowered to make changes, and selling the entire experience to the customer. I’d also add that you also need some special amount of pixie dust and laser like direction and focus from the top on the customer experience.

I’m a firm believer in “eating your own dogfood”. If you are on a product team and you are not dogfooding the next version of your product I emphatically feel that you do not deserve a place on your team. If you are not dogfooding other products that your company produces you should be ashamed. And if you are not using your competitors products, at least monthly, then you’re never going to win.

Principles for Success

The reason I think the iPod, TiVo, the Treo are best in class devices is because:

1. The employees that work on those products care a great deal about what they are building. It’s not just a job.
2. Other employees in the company also dogfood said product and care a great deal about the product and give plenty of feedback to the product team.
3. The product team is responsive and reacts to the feedback the receive.
4. The product team listens to what their customers say, and create a two way conversation with them.

Where Things Fail

The place where this breaks down is when:

1. You do not own the end to end experience (you make the software but not the hardware in the case where the hardware is > 50% of the experience).
2. Your customer is not the end user, but another company is your customer.

Some Examples

Reasons #1 and #2 are why:

1. XBOX 360 is better than the XBOX and every thing else currently out there.
2. The iPod will always be better than anything we produce the software for, but not the hardware (Portable Media Center is great, but the devices are no match in size and popularity)
3. The Palm Treo 650 is easier to use with one hand than the Treo 700
4. TiVo is better than Comcast or DirectTV’s DVR
5. my k-jam requires a reboot every day (as does my Cingular 2125).
6. The Windows PC is a flea market for pre-installed OEM software you don’t need that degrades your user experience.

Now there are exceptions when you don’t own the end to end experience. Media Center 2005 is great because greater than 50% of the experience is the interaction with the software… so the box I built in my living room is great because the software UX is great. I consider it better than TiVo but I’m also realistic that not everyone will build their own Media Center and that reason #6 from above can screw it all up.

I have yet to coin a phrase for this. But as a general concept, I believe any good technology products follow the basic principles above.

Awesome movie… So awesome.

It’s up there with the first Matrix. I’d see it again.

Today Windows Live Mail surpassed the 1 million user mark.

We’ve been working on this product now for a little over a year and I can’t begin to explain how incredibly proud and happy I am with the folks who helped get us here… especially the 1 million users that helped shape the work of the past milestones as well as the work we plan to do the rest of this year.

Scaling a service is hard… especially one that’s only a year old . next stop 10 million.

PS – if this kind of stuff excites you, we have a ton of open positions.

Music is a very emotional thing for people. It’s a form of expression. So it’s no shock really that the device you play your music on is also a form of personal expression.

After I wrote my iPod envy post the weirdest thing happened (you’ll have to read to the middle before I get to the actual thing). On a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon I happily drove my car down to Costco. I was on a mission. I was coming home with a 4GB iPod Nano in Black. I’ve also been looking for an Alarm clock that didn’t suck, and it just so happened they had the iHome Clock Radio. This gizmo will ensure that my iPod is always charged, and I can listen to my podcasts from bed. It also doubles as a clock that synchronizes to the atomic clock. cool.

I know I said I would wait for the Toshiba Gigabeat S and Urge… I lied. I do not want a big 30GB player. I want impossibly small and I want it now!

I haven’t been this gadget happy in a while. I could not wait to go home and play with my new toy.

The experience of opening a nano box is unmatched. I didn’t have to break out a sledge hammer to get through some 8 inches of sealed plastic. It was simple, easy and inviting. The device itself is impossibly small (like they say). If it were any smaller it would be hard to use. I turned it on and immediately knew what to do. The navigation mode is so very simple to use. The tactile feel of the click wheel is perfect. I know that at least a dozen Apple folks AND Steve Jobs agonized for days and days about how the click wheel felt. The tiny screen is a marvel to look at and read. I love it. There weren’t any warning signs in the box that said:

“STOP! Having Trouble?”

[via Larry Osterman]

After un packaging I downloaded and installed iTunes. It’s been about 2 years since I last used iTunes. I have to say I’m very impressed. The Podcasting support is simply fantastic, and of course, the iTunes music store and built in streaming radio with such entries as KCRW (my fav radio station) are a big plus.

So, off I went to transcode all my audio. This was a simple process of dragging my Music folder on my desktop PC (with about 160GB of WMA lossless music) and dropping it onto the iTunes window. Off it went to transcode all my audio to AAC 128K. In the mean time I started to load up some songs on it and I went for a walk.

Then I went to fetch my Etymotic 6 headphones, but they were no where to be found. I usually keep them with my Philips GoGear HDD1630. I lost both of them on the way back from San Diego last week.

Was this Fate? Who knows, but I bought the Nano before I knew this. And that is the weird thing I mentioned up above.

Anyway, lemme get to my point.

I am now reunited with the iPod. I feel happy and enjoy using it. My wife is EXTREMLEY jealous so I’ll have to get her one too. I really don’t feel bad about this. You see I now had a reason to go to the Apple store rather than be a bystander. I’m part of that cult of the Mac again, but this time it’s the cult of the iPod. As I was walking to the store, I heard a bunch of people say, “lets go to the iPod store”. That’s right, they don’t even call it the Apple store.

When I entered the store I was greeted by a dizzying array of accessories for my iPod. All of them beautifully packaged and presented. Even the non-Apple accessories are made and presented as well. Apple sets a very high bar, and if you don’t meet that bar in any way, customers will not purchase the product (this is also true of Mac software).

This is the iPod Economy, the iPod Culture, the iPod Ecosystem. The realities are that my music is now unlocked and can be plugged into all sorts of cars, cases, docks, chargers, in a manner that is seamless. Since I lost my headphones I decided to treat myself to this amazing headphone + laynyard combo. I can also buy accessories in almost any store or airport in the country. Accessories made by companies that are constantly finding new ways to get me to experience my music and hand them some money for the privilege.

I can’t tell you how darn convenient this clever headphone is. I can just take my charged iPod from my iHome Clock Radio in the morning (where it will be fully charged) and throw it around my neck for the train ride. No mess of headphones with a 5 ft cable to get tangled, no place I need to park the nano. It just hangs out around my neck like an accessory. And it’s freaking cool.

The usability of the iPod has improved a great deal in the past few years. The device powers on instantly, and is very fast. There is a separate menu item for Podcasts which is convenient (as well as read/unread state) and some nifty little programs like a stop watch, world clock, and some games.

What have I learned on my quest?

Designing a good user experience across hardware and software is hard. There are very few companies which are capable of making the necessary level of investment to make something that’s arguably a work of art, but also a functional music player.

I have learned that in a commodity business, you will never find a company that will make that level of investment unless they own the entire value chain (Macintosh, XBOX, PlayStation etc).

Music is an incredibly personal thing, and people have high expectations of what that experience is like on their computer, in their hands, on the plane, in a car and everywhere in between.

If you have to think to operate a portable music device then your interface sucks. If you repeatedly make the same mistakes, press the wrong buttons, or accidentally press skip or skip to many songs when interfacing with the device then you’ve also failed.

Creating an open ecosystem where anyone can sell music or create a music business does not matter if 1) the devices that are required to play that content are hard to use, hard to charge, or require a firmware update to function correctly 2) you don’t have the content, 3) cannot interoperate with the world’s most successful portable music device.

iTunes still has a ton of problems. It doesn’t import any album art when transcoding WMA and all the little solutions I’ve found require a lot of manual intervention and baby sitting. Apple has made many improvements though. Microsoft still wins on meta data… but of course, we are a platform company.

The iPod is successful because it’s a great easy to use product. It’s also successful because it’s instantly recognizable in every respect. As a result of it’s success it’s pervasive and you can find iPod solutions for the car, home and when traveling. People buy them for the same reasons they buy sexy phones.

I sincerely hope some one figures out a way to get us out of the DRM headache whereby I am locked into a device platform. Well if Apple offers a subscription version of iTunes this problem gets bearable. I think this is one area where Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should get together and decide to make all our lives a little bit better by supporting interop between iTunes and PlaysForSure. Everyone wins (at least I think).

At the end of the day, at least I gave it a shot. I explored all the reasonable options out there. Sure I was naive at times, schizophrenic at others, but I got a lot of great experience living many different devices. It took 17 months and 22 posts to get back here.

Last week Lora and I went to the Scharffen Berger Factory in Berkeley. One of my friends is actually the President of Scharffen Berger.

They have a fantastic restaurant and tour. I recommend both. It’s the only chocolate factory that gives tours.

link to gallery

Entrance

Omar and Jim (president)

The “Red Elephant” roaster

Finished goods

Two weeks ago I took my camera on a trip. When I tried to use it I got the “blinking green light of death”. Why is it that every form of electronics has a way of saying “I’m dead” and this usually involved a blinking green light?

Anyway, it turns out that a few first generation Nikon D70 cameras may malfunction. My Camera was of course out of warranty. However, the good folks at Nikon repaired the problem for free.

Now that’s a company that cares about it’s customers. Because as bad as this problem was (I shudder to think of what would have happened had I been in a foreign country with nothing to do but take lots of pictures) at least I’ll never think twice about buying another camera from Nikon.

Anyway, last week I sent my camera to Nikon, and 5 days later it’s back in my possession all fixed and cleaned. Thanks Nikon!

This is one of the most amazing videos I have ever watched. You can only feel one thing: Sheer excitement and awe of the limitless capabilities of man.

I can only imagine just how proud all those involved in making the world’s largest commercial aircraft must be. Congratulations to Airbus.

[via Digg]

Walter Hsueh (one of our dev leads) has a good post on best practices for building AJAX applications. I’m assuming there will be many more since this is labeled part 1 .

Here is the deal.

For over a year now I’ve been trying to look for a device that is > the iPod. In that time Apple has constantly moved the needle forward in a number of areas. We are still far behind, and in all likelihood, when we catch up, Apple will have something like this.

• Design
  • The new generation of iPods and Nano are smaller, prettier and more feature rich
  • All iPods have a readable color screen with album art
  • The UX  and Interaction Design are still better than anything out there
    • I’d argue that the Portable Media Center has a much better and more usable interface, but it doesn’t matter when you can’t buy it or when the OEM screws it up with their agenda (like jog dial or some nonsense).
• Features
  • The iPod has such new features as an FM radio remote
  • There are about 100,000 new accessories that have appeared since I started looking for a replacement. many of this are just awesome.
• Pervasiveness
  • Staying at the W Hotel? forgot your iPod charger or Sync cable? They have some for you to borrow in the same way they have plug converters if you are in a foreign country. Have some cryptically named Philips device with a massive brick? You are out of luck.
  • Staying at your friend’s house and forgot your iPod charger? Yeah, well they have a charger too.

I’m beginning to change my mind about things. Even though we have a great eco system for music stores etc, the reality is that our OEM partners are never ever going to create a product like the iPod. They are simply no match for the iPod Dock Connector, which as generated an ecosystem of hardware that’s probably more lucrative than the online music business. 

Game over.

I’m not such a zealot that I’m simply going to go out of my way to make myself miserable when the answer is probably an iPod. I don’t sync my music very often (like once a month) so using iTunes might not be so bad (eeek I can’t believe I said that). All I have to do is have my pc transcode all my music to mp3 or aac in a few days.

For now I’m going to hold out for the Gigabeat S. But if it’s big and ugly and has crappy battery life or a bad FM radio I’m out. I’m 90% of the way there. I’m also going to hold out for urge.com and Windows Media Player 11. But if any of these things suck, I’m off to the Apple Store to smack down a few hundred on some bling bling.

[update: I gave in and got a nano and I love it]

Beyond the obvious, when I was chatting with Robert last week as he was visiting our team, it occurred to me that there is no one quite like him at Microsoft. He is a front line dude, and he roams around with a video camera forming relationships with as many people, teams or groups that want to tell a story.  I enjoy talking to him because on may levels we feel the same way about Microsoft, blogging, technology and we only talk to each other 2–3 times a year.

Some people like him, some people don’t. But the reality is, Scoble is an incredibly unique kind of employee in the same way that Bill Gates is a unique kind of employee.

Adam Barr just posted about what kind of impact this is starting to have. It’s a fascinating observation to say the least. Some people at Microsoft (I call them the power brokers) are very good at getting tokens. It seems like this is starting to change the dynamics of what “power” means as a currency to get tokens.

I got to play with an Origami a few weeks ago and was impressed. I was mum on the topic cause I wasn’t sure how much I was allowed to say about it. Anyway, I want one and plan to get one for my home/kitchen/roaming pc scenarios.

Anyway, today I was waiting for my flight back to San Francisco when my father called. He was screaming on the phone to me that he wants me to order him one as soon as they are available. For a while I could not even make out what he was saying cause I wasn’t listening for it (it’s not a word you hear every day).

If my Dad knows what the heck Origami is, and called me out of the blue asking me to get one for him, I know it’s going to be big. This is very uncanny for him. He calls me and mentions stuff about Microsoft about once a year.

ETech 2006 was a great time. One of the things I love about conferences is that they take you out of your office, out of your personal life and stick you in some pretty intensive learnings with like minded people. The thing I hate about conferences is that you put everything else on hold, and when you come back, you have to pay the price of not being on top of your mail, rss feeds, errands, etc.

Anyway, there is a lot of stuff I plan to write about ETech. I’ll try and spread it out over the next few days as I find some spare cycles.

Some broad observations.

• Hanging out with a bunch of really cool Microsoft folks and former Microsoft folks were good times. I always forget just how wonderful it is to spend some time with folks that you don’t really know that well. This is especially true for me since I’m based in California and most folks are in Redmond. You guys know who you are and you all rock.
• Microsoft is fairly irrelevant to the alpha geeks (the company is simply not in the periphery). It reminds me a lot of going to Macworld or WWDC.
• Yahoo has street cred
• FireFox is the only browser I ever saw at the conference except for Christopher Payne’s Search talk.
• Email is synonymous with GMail or Yahoo Mail
• Wireless NEVER works when there are 1000 people in a room. As a result the cell network is clogged and wireless data also sucks.
• Walking the floor with Dare is kind of like being in Entourage.
• Christopher Payne was the only guy who wore a suit (that I saw)
• Ray Ozzie is the best thing going at Microsoft (and he demoed using FireFox). Mad props.
• microformats are cool. So is the logo.
• Second Life is scary as all heck.

When I first saw the Ribbon I was like… wtf.

However, after a few months of using Office 12 I can say that it’s really unlocked the power in Office. For one of the best examples, refer to a recent post by the Excel team. At first I was very confused about where things were (that I had basically memorized how to do cause they were impossible… like formatting a chart) but now it’s so freaking easy. And you don’t get lost in a sea of modal dialogs stacked on each other with enough tabs to make you have a fit!

People will think that the Ribbon consumes more real estate than the old toolbars. Not true.

Anyway, I love it.

Outlook 12 is turning out to be fantastic. I’ve been using the product and reading the Tasks and Time Management blog.

• Color Categories is fantastic.
• Send and Track is also fantastic. This is very similar to the Clear Context 2.0 feature that allows you to do something similar, but the integration in Outlook 12 is much better. I use this all the time.
• Task List on the Calendar is huge but the To-Do bar is kick ass. I customized my to-do bar to only show me tasks in specific context like @Office, @Read/Review at work so I can have a filtered view of my work.

I can’t wait to start writing more in depth about these features.

Simon Fell posted about Money 2006 and Wells Fargo. I’d agree with his feelings here. Money 2006 runs my life, but I can’t stand using it. I’m seriously thinking of switching to Quicken next year if Money 2007 continues in the same legacy of Money 2005 and Money 2006.

Also, yes, Wells Fargo is in the “Nickel and Dime” business. No matter how much money you keep with them, they charge you $3 a month for the privilege of using Money to download your statements. Sadly I’ve found that Wells Fargo provides the best Money/OFX sync support of any bank. I tried to switch to a free bank before, but the reality is that we have a Wells Fargo ATM in our cafeteria and it’s dammed convenient.

These guys really inspire me and I don’t even know who they are. Their software is simple yet powerful. I feel like going to work for them. They totally “get it”.

Lora and I love Backpack… it’s our home command center and I just started playing with Basecamp. Their blog is one of my top 5 favorite blogs and I just found out that they published a book. Now to go buy one.

I dusted off my k-jam and installed the new ROM which includes AKU2 with Direct Push E-mail (aka MSFP).

I’m pretty dammed excited. I loaded all the latest hacks for my k-jam, and it’s sweet. The best hack is the press and hold override for the softkeys that emulate the start and ok buttons.

There are a number of improvements that came along with the new ROM:

• New Radio Stack (version 2). Seems much better.
• Nice Communication Manager for managing WiFi etc
• Bluetooth headset can actually wake the device to make a call
• Bluetooth ActiveSync works
• Better camera app
• Keyboard no longer pops up inappropriately

Only time will tell if the radio stack is really any better or just as flakey as my Cingular 2125 and old ROM build.

The interesting thing about this ROM upgrade is that the apps in Extended_ROM did not get installed.

http://blogs.smugmug.com/onethumb/2006/02/25/best-commercials-ever/

The third one is my favorite.

Wohooo, our release is live.

On to M6. See you in about 2 months .