Posted by eileenb on October 31, 2008
I’d never heard about Kirill before – but I got a mail from my good friend (and fellow karaoke-er) Michael today telling me about it
It looks a bit Killzone on Playstation with a dash of The Matrix thrown in amongst other influences – according to one of the comments I’ve read. There’s a lot of stuff to do, background reading, blogs like Viv’s and Stuarts , following all the comments and the discussion – See what the blog herald has to say about it.
Pubdog said:
This is interesting. It is so obviously a drama, but its well thought out. I like how its a mixture of both live action and blogs – it not only encourages the viewer/ reader to emotionally connect with the characters but it also encourages deeper investigation. It also assumes that the reader/viewer is not stupid. Anyone who is not really into sci-fi probably will not like it but other than that bravo! I haven’t been entertained like this for ages… Bring on episode 2!!!
So why does it appeal to me technically?
It combines MSN video proposition, creativity from Endemol - the TV company who does Big Brother, TV-quality, a Silverlight interface so you can see other episodes as they appear and browse the site. There are blogs with the background story and extra information and they’ve dreamed up some really original content. It’s also supported by both Xbox and Windows Vista. Amazing mix of technologies all together in one web drama.
I’d really recommend that you to have a look at it on http://www.msn.co.uk/kirill – and you need to learn about the story, the characters and try out the extras (particularly “deep zoom” and wallpapers)
Conspiracy theorists will love it…
Posted in General musings, web 2.0 | Comments Off
Posted by eileenb on October 30, 2008
I installed Bluehoo when I was working from home the other day. A nice easy install onto my mobile device and I want to meet new friends!
What bluehoo does is uses your bluetooth stack to scan around and see whether there’s anyone else using Bluehoo in range of your bluetooth scanner. If it finds someone (pink hoo’s are girls by the way, so you need to edit your profile).
As this has just been launched at the PDC, there’s not much chance at the moment that a little hoo is going to pop up in your vicinity just yet. But install the application – which uses Azure and Silverlight by the way.
So download it – you need to go to http://m.bluehoo.com from your mobile phone, navigate to your phone model and download the install files.
Then turn it on and wait to find new friends in the area.
I’m off to London later to give it a whirl on the bus…
Posted in General musings, Social networking, collaboration | Comments Off
Posted by eileenb on October 29, 2008
I’ve been watching all the buzz around Windows Azure since the we announced this at PDC on Monday – and trying to talk about what it is – in simple terms and what it will mean to ordinary people – not developers, software houses and hosters – but the software really making a difference. So I was really touched when I saw one of the UK case studies that was used in the PDC keynote this week.
When I worked at sea, the words everyone used to really dread were the words “Man Overboard”. Even if you actually saw the person go over the side – the chances of recovery in the North Atlantic were really slim. I once spent 4 harrowing hours searching for a man overboard in the Bay of Biscay and the feeling of despair when we decided to call off the search was immense. UK seafarers feel a real affinity and try to support the charity that operates around the coast of the UK – the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, all staffed by volunteers that go to the aid of people and ships in distress around our coastline.
So what is Azure? Well it’s our Cloud based operating system , the Azure Services platform extends that operating system with a set of services that developers can utilise to both build new applications and extend existing applications to run in the cloud.
Over the past few weeks in the UK We’ve been working with a number of customers and partners with the Azure Services Platform, one such partner is Active Web Solutions. AWS are the creators of the (RNLIs) MOB Guardian system.
MOB Guardian is an award winning sea safety system that provides fishermen and other seafarers with a simple to use GPS based alarm system that enables the RNLI to know if vessels or their crew members get into difficulty whilst at sea.
We have worked with AWS and RNLI to explore the impact that the Azure Services Platform could have on a system such as MOB Guardian, you can find a video explaining the motivations and experiences here and above – there’s also a more detailed technical discussion of some of the issues faced during this exercise on Channel 9.
So something that appears to be just a concept – a cloud operating system – actually helping to save real lives, turns our vision and strategy into a worthwhile example of the value of this concept.
And that’s really worth taking a look at…
Posted in General musings, collaboration, web 2.0 | Comments Off
Posted by eileenb on October 28, 2008
Hmmm,
It looks like my hunch about tracking travel by mobile phones was correct. According to the Register, Transport for London (TFL) have announced that they’re ditching the current Oyster cards earlier than planned and may use contactless mechanisms like phones to pay for tube tickets. They had too many issues with the cards not working correctly for them to complete the contract apparently. Not good.
Good by me – the less stuff I have to carry around the better. no more fumbling around in my bag for the Oyster wallet. I’ll just need to fumble around for the damn phone instead!…
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Posted by eileenb on October 27, 2008
Heck. I forgot to blog about the R2 release of Office communications server and the mail reminding me to do so has been sitting in my inbox for a week. No excuse at all. So here’s the facts.
OCS will be 64 bit only as per the announcement from the unified communications team – by the way – this link takes you to their new blog URL if you’ve been wondering where their old blog went… There’s a lot of videos planned for on Technet edge too – here’s a list of the planned Edge release (week one has been published so far)
We announced OCS R2 at Voicecon in Amsterdam last week – see here for the press release here’s a list of features:
Dial-in audioconferencing. on-premise audioconferencing bridge,managed by IT.
Desktop sharing. Share your desktop, initiate audio and collaborate with others outside the organization on PC, Macintosh or Linux platforms through a Web-based interface.
Persistent group chat. Collaboration by participating in topic-based discussions that persist over time. Provides a list of available chat rooms and topics.
Attendant console and delegation. Allows management of calls and conferences on behalf of other users through a software-based interface.
Session Initiation Protocol trunking. Set up a direct VoIP connection between an Internet telephony service provider and Office Communicator 2007 without requiring on-premise gateways.
Response group. Manage incoming calls based on user-configured rules
Mobility and single-number reach. Extends Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile functionality to Nokia S40, Motorola RAZR, Blackberry and Windows Mobile platforms, allowing users to communicate using presence, IM and voice as an extension of their PBX
If you didn’t manager to get to Voicecon – or Interact 2008 this year – we’ve created a Virtual launch event for OCS where you can find out just what’s in R2. All you need to do is click here to register – it’s available in 11 languages too.
The UC website has some extra information if you want more information – but there’s no hints about Interact 2009 – yet. Watch this space though……
Posted in General musings, collaboration | Comments Off
Posted by eileenb on October 24, 2008
Well I’ve finally had a chance to properly listen to the podcast I did with Mary Jo the other day when she came on Campus. I also forgot to link to Mark’s fantastic write up too when I blogged about this yesterday.
One thing that struck me though when I was listening to the podcast again. Mary Jo has enormous problems getting access to the Windows team at corp. She is an advocate for Windows apps, is very anti Apple, uses a PC – and feels that Vista “just can’t get a break” because after we’d “came clear and basically apologised”and issued service pack 1, and delivered a good marketing campaign with the I’m a PC ads, she feels that we’ve “finally turned around” and gives the team kudos for admitting what they did wrong, but that we came to this so late she doesn’t think we can “undo the market damage”
Well I could understand the Windows team not wanting to talk to one of our competitors – or one of our detractors – but I’d think that as Mary Jo is already responding to blog comments criticising Windows Vista – so she’s therefore an advocate, then sharing information with her about our next products for her to report on makes a lot of sense to me…
Whenever she blogs about Vista, and gets complaints about how awful Vista is – she goes back to the commenter with “have you used it? Have you even tried the product? And most of them haven’t” She gets 300-400 comments on blog entries with just “pure attack” but when she tries to go back to see who some of these people are, to email them and to ask “so you say none of your apps work then? Which ones don’t work?” “No one answers. A lot of the email addresses are fake. So who’s out there stirring the pot?”
And she challenges anyone to “come to her with a list of 5 apps that don’t work on Vista and she’ll write about them – if it’s true”
So I’m baffled. Come on guys – you’ve got a great opportunity here with a positive influential blogger who can write about our future stuff – why don’t you take Mary Jo up on her offer?…
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Posted by eileenb on October 23, 2008
Mary Jo Foley came to Microsoft yesterday to talk about her new book on Microsoft 2.0 and to answer any questions about why she’s been reporting on Microsoft for over 20 years now.
We had a great session and Mary Jo was really candid about what she thinks we’ve done wrong in the past – where she thinks we’ll be in another 5 years time – she’s convinced that our software plus services story, when it’s told at the PDC next week.
As the interviewer, it was my job to manage the flow of questions coming our way, so I didn’t have much time to take notes. Fortunately Mark took loads of notes and recorded everything. Mark I need to hire you as my secretary 
I might even get round to posting the podcast that I did.
Mary Jo – great to see you – dinner in new York next time perhaps?
but all in all – a very interesting session…
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Posted by eileenb on October 21, 2008
Well Techcrunch don’t seem to like the Mac ads in response to our recent Windows adverts – Harvey pointed me to the Techcrunch comments which do seem to backfire on Apple – in fact Josh calls them hypocritical and mean-spirited.
Techcrunch says:
…It is also hypocritical. Apple’s advertising budget is also pretty massive. I mean, I see more Apple commercials on TV than ads for Barack Obama. Apple is on track to spend more than $3.5 billion on SG&A (selling, general, and administrative expenses) for its fiscal year that ended September 30. How much of that was spent on advertising? I don’t know, but 10 percent doesn’t seem unreasonable.
So what do you think? do you think we should have stayed quiet whilst Apple continued to create these ads stereotyping all PC users? Or should have we responded sooner?…
Posted in General musings | 4 Comments »
Posted by eileenb on October 20, 2008
It is time to advertise the November 2008 MMMUG meeting.
This event will be held in London at the MSFT offices in Cardinal Place near Victoria.
This month we have a topical session led by Clive Watson, Brett Johnson and Julius Davies from Microsoft. We will be discussing the new support statements surround the issue of Virtualising your Exchange environment. Having understood which pieces of Exchange are now supported we will look at some of the key design issues facing those Virtualising Exchange.
The meeting will be held on Tuesday 11th November and starts at 18:30.
For more information and to sign up please see the link below:
http://www.mmmug.co.uk/forums/thread/23926.aspx
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Posted by eileenb on October 17, 2008
I encourage my team to work flexibly and work from home when practical which is why sometimes the office is really empty. But I like Bruce’s points about home working here and the savings to an employer.
I try to use RoundTable whenever I work from home – so I can get the face to face experience – no matter where the team happen to be – but I’ve not considered this from an employer perspective before. but a saving of 38.6 million euros is not to be scoffed at – and think about the carbon saving too.
Well done BT…
Posted in Office, collaboration | Comments Off
