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5/9/2008 Live Search MetaKeywords and TestMash.comBack in October 2006, I wrote a blog entry about how the MetaKeywords functionality from Live Search can be used to filter a people search query on Windows Live. IMHO, support for these MetaKeywords is one of the coolest features of Live Search and I'm not aware of anything like it from Google, Yahoo!, Baidu, etc.
I've been playing around with this idea on a small (personal) test site: http://www.testmash.com/ to build search results pages that pull together content from Windows Live. For example:
So as you probably noticed, the site is a pretty rough prototype, but if you think the idea is cool (or is lame), please leave a comment. Thanks-- 5/7/2008 For students: FREE Visual Studio, Expression Studio, and win2k3 ServerBack in 2000, I was a student rep. for Microsoft at the University of Illinois and they wanted to make sure students had access to the latest dev tools so they shipped me something like ten cartons of Visual Studio to distribute to folks in computer science and computer engineering. At the time, it was probably a reasonably efficient system, but it was a bit awkward. Not only was having thousands of dollars of software stashed on the loft in my room in the fraternity house a bit awkward, but moving these over to the CS building for distribution at events like the WinDevils (Windows Developer ACM SIG) meeting was a bit of a logistical pain. It's nearly eight years later and things have indeed improved; and not just the software; but the distribution mechanisms. The folks at Channel 8 from MSDN are offering FREE DOWNLOADS of:
All of this is at: https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/ To whoever the folks are running the student outreach programs, kudos on a much improved software distribution system. Cheers-- 5/3/2008 Mobile-friendly listing of Microsoft Prime Card RestaurantsI've personally always wanted to be able to browse the listing of prime card restaurants on my phone but the prime card site does not seem to be mobile-friendly; so I've written my own at http://wuxx.com/prime. The page is of course really simple so it loads fast on a mobile browser and in addition to seeing all of the restaurants by name (so you can check if the restaurant you're at takes teh Prime Card), you can also browse by cuisine or by neighborhood. For Neighborhoods, I've build support for a few of the downtown Seattle neighborhoods and the neighborhoods near Microsoft main campus. The site includes restaurants from a few other neighborhoods but I haven't explicitly added filters for these. If you'd like a filter added for your neighborhood, please comment. For Cuisine, I've added restaurants for American, Asian, French, Indian, Italian, Japanese, and Mediterranean. If there's interest, I'll add Mexican, Steak and Seafood, Thai, Other, and possibly fast food. Please check-out the site at http://wuxx.com/prime and leave a comment here with your feedback. Thanks--
4/26/2008 Eight Quick Thoughts on Email PolitenessIn the course of cleaning my personal email box this weekend, I realized there are are desparities in email customs people follow. I've tried to compile some of what I see as best practicies below. If you have other suggestions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks--
--Rob
1. TO and CC have meaningPlease take a few seconds to consider which recipients of an email might need to actually reply to the email and for which folks this is just FYI and they are carbon-copied. If someone is in the TO line, there should be an action for them like replying, adding an event to thier calendar, etc.
2. Reply on the same threadMany folks (particularly users of Outlook or Gmail) have the option for their email to group by subject. Be courteous to these people and reply to the original thread.
3. Always include the thread in your replyI've noticed some people, especially AOL users, don't include the previous email. For gosh sakes, don't just send me an email with "yes", include what you're replying yes to.
4. Use BCC (or email merge) to send announcements to a large list of individualsIf you're sending an announcement to a large group, please put folks on the BCC. Disclose your recipients' email addresses and you'll soon have fewer recipients.
5. Use BCC to trim the individual recipientsIf there are folks who don't need to be on the thread, especially if they are traveling without access to email, when you reply, move them to BCC. You should also let the thread know you have done so intentionally so folks don't re-add them. For example, I'll often use a first line of (Mike --> BCC) when I'll cover an email thread and my manager is traveling.
6. Don't use BCC to trim a listserv recipientMany folks have email processing rules for mail to listserv's. Respect these and don't BCC the listserv email address. Instead, let the thread know that you are working with the appropriate folks off-thread and you will circle-back to the thread with a resolution.
7. Don't attempt consensus via Reply-AllIf there is something controversial or requiring a bunch of input from a group, instead of attempting to reach consensus via everyone replying to the thread, one person should send a mail announcing the question, recieve and coallate the responses, and then circle-back to all participants with the results of the thread / discussion. This does require a bit more work on the part of the coallater, but it makes it easier for all of the participants so they only need to reply with their vote / perspective / availability instead of also attempting to parse all of the responses.
8. Use your real nameUnless you're intentionally sending email under a pseudonym, please set-up your email program to use your real first and last name. While I might know who mickymse or lechayim are, it's not easy for email recipients to keep all of their contacts' nicknames straight. 4/18/2008 Talking about YouTube - BARACKY: THE MOVIEI'm really impressed by whoever put together this video merging Rocky with Campaign 2008: 4/14/2008 Code Monkey.mp3 Wow! I really enjoyed this song: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/mp3/Code%20Monkey.mp3. 4/13/2008 Obama may have picked-up a national delegate at LD Caucuses in King County, WALooking at the results of the April 5 LD Caucuses across King County, it seems that Barack Obama may have picked-up an additional national delegate over Hillary Clinton. I've put together the numbers (including links to LD Caucus results) in a file on my SkyDrive: BackgroundHere's how it breaks down.
At each level, delegates may not attend (in which case alternates are seated if they are present) and delegates may change their candidate preference. ResultsAll of the LD Caucuses in King County happened on Saturday, April 5. Analyzing the results, it looks like Obama gained 18 delegates to the CD Caucuses. Depending on in which CD's these gains happened, Obama may have picked-up one or even two additional national delegates. DetailsOriginally, there were 3950 Clinton delegates and 9755 Obama delegates elected from precinct caucuses in King County. Using the LD by LD percentages of these delegates from the Precinct Caucuses, Clinton was expected to take 220 delegates and Obama 531. The actual final results have Clinton with 202 delgates and Obama with 549. A swing of 18 delgates or potentially a total difference of 32 delegates. Depending on which CD's these delegates are from (and of course turn-out of CD delegates on May 17), the Obama folks may be able to turn their gains from the LD Caucuses into an additional national delegate (or two.) Thank youMost of the LD's posted their LD caucus results on their websites this past week and I have linked to these when available in the XLS. For the LD's that did not post their results. I was able to find contact info for their officers via the King County Democrats website. Additional AnalysisIf you have questions, suggestions, or feedback, please leave a comment. Thanks. 3/29/2008 PA and NC Polling or "Why Size (of victory) Matters"The Democratic party's nominating process is highly complex and each state has its own rules for selecting their pledged delegates. For example, Washington state's full delegate selection plan runs more than 60 pages. One of the interesting aspects is that delegates in most state are allocated proportionally to the size of the candidates support. The impact of this is that candidates don't just need to get more than 50% of the vote, but they want to get as big of a blow-out as possible since their net delegate gain will be the size of their margin of victory multiplied by the number of delegates from each state.
Based on some recent polling numbers I came across via forwarded email (below), it looks like:
Even after a double-digit win for Clinton in PA, Obama could end-up even (actually up 3-4 delegates) by holding his lead in NC. For folks interested in mathematically modeling the Democratic nomination contest, there's a great resource at: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/29/delegate.counter/index.html Cheers-- Pennsylvania Primary (April 22) Match-up
American Research Group poll; 3/26-27; 600 likely primary voters; +/- 4%
Rasmussen poll; 3/24; 690 likely primary voters; +/- 4%
North Carolina Primary (May 6) Match-up
Insider Advantage poll; 3/26; 406 likely primary voters; +/- 5%
Public Policy Polling survey; 3/24; 673 likely primary voters; +/- 3.8% 3/27/2008 Now Available: What's New OptionsEarly this morning, the Windows Live Spaces team released an update that includes a new "What's New Options" page where you can choose which Messenger contacts and Spaces Friends you want to show-up in your What's New. Details from the Spaces team blog are below. Cheers-- Your feedback = Changes to Windows Live Spaces 3/26/2008 Peer-produced Caller ID: WhoCalled.UsI missed three calls yesterday from a random number that I didn't recognize so I did a live search for the number and was glad to find a site that seems to provide a peer-produced directory of phone numbers. In particular the one that called me was described by two users as a fraud / phishing site targeting Verizon customers. As a Verizon customer, I'm glad I saw this before returning the call. I'm glad people are coming-up with sites like these that enable the wisdom of the crowd. Cheers-- --Rob
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