Rob Dolin's space: Blog

Five ways to stay in touch with your friends and family with Windows Live

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:33:45 GMT

As many folks know, I'm about to complete a trip with H to Brazil. I've really enjoyed meeting many of H's family and friends from her time studying in Brazil and I~m looking forward to keeping in touch. Give the distance (even with my parents in Chicago or family spread across the USA), it's not always easy to kep in touch with extended family, distance friends, former classmates, colleagues, etc; but when you share your experiences on Windows Live (USA) (Worldwide), there are a number of ways your family and friends can keep-up:

Email

The Windows Live Alerts functionality built-in to all public Spaces makes it easy to get an email every time a new blog entry, photo album, or list is posted on a space. When visiting a space, just select "Tools" ("Ferramentas" in Portuguese) from the top right and then "Sign-up for alerts" ("Inscrever-se para alertas" in Portuguese)

RSS

Public Spaces also have RSS feeds. If a space is http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/, then the RSS feed will be http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/feed.rss. There are even individual feeds for just blog entries, just photos, just lists, and just blog entries from a particular category. More on this in a future blog entry.

IM "Toast"

The WL Alerts functionality also lets you subscribe via IM. If you're on IM frequently, you'll get a "toast" popping-up in your lower right to let you know that the person you're getting Alerts from just added new content.

Text Message

WL Alerts also let's you subscribe via text message so you get a brief text letting you know that there's new content.

What's New

Finally, my personal favorite way to stay in touch, is via the "What's New" functionality. You can see newly posted blog entries, photos, lists, (shared) SkyDrive flies, and profile updates from your Spaces friends and Messenger contacts.

Thanks for reading; especially if you're someone from the trip, I hope you'll Sign-up for alerts or subscribe to my RSS. Obrigado--

--Rob

Video: RSS in Plain English

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:59:18 GMT

I've recently become a fan of CommonCraft, a two-person video production team from Seattle that makes very simple videos that explain social media. Since I think RSS technology has the power to change electronic communication from a push to a pull system, I'm especially fond of their RSS in plain English video: http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english.

Windows Live for Windows Mobile

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:26:07 GMT

In addition to the web-based mobile version of Windows Live (ex: http://robdolin.mobile.spaces.live.com/), I'm trying-out a new program on my (Windows Mobile) Treo 700w: Windows Live for Windows Mobile. I'm probably going to get a bunch of use of it on the bus commute this coming week, but if there are folks currently using it (or interested in trying), I'd be all ears for some tips.

If you want to try-out Windows Live for Windows Mobile, you can download the USA version from: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/mobile/wl/download-en-us.mspx and you can find a bunch of other markets/languages at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/mobile/wl/languages-en-us.mspx

Enjoy--
--Rob

Windows Live Tags: clubhouse, How-to, Mobile, Hotmail, Spaces, Windows Mobile, MoSoSo

Just posted: Additional ways to clean-up comment spam

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:41:10 GMT

Thanks to one of my commentors for pointing-out that you can delete recent comments using the mobile interface.

Details are in: Faster ways to clean-up Comment Spam on Windows Live Spaces

Cheers--

--Rob

Windows Live Messenger for Blackberry?

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:21:49 GMT

I was IM'ing last night with the head of Live Sino (LiveSide China) and PicturePan2 mentioned that was using WL Messenger on Blackberry. Even though I'm a Windows Mobile user, I was intrigued as I have a bunch of friends (mostly from outside the tech industry) who use Blackberries and it would be great to IM with them.

Conveniently, LiveSino just posted screenshots of the Blackberry experience and I've included a few below. Check out the full post for the rest. Cheers--
--Rob

P.S. If you've used functionality like this in the USA, please let me know what you think.

P.P.S. If you're on the team that makes this application, leave a comment (or send a message) and I can try to get you the list of codes for the I'm making a difference campaign for *komen, *red+u, etc.

Hard drive getting full? Check outlook.ost

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:22:15 GMT

I've been wondering why my 40 GB hard drive on my laptop was nearly full when I only have ~27 GB of system files, pictures, and documents.

Then Outlook hit an issue that helped me to figure out the problem. One of my Outlook files got corrupted and I got this message:

This led me to open the C:\Users\robdolin\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\ folder and find that I had an outlook.ost file that was nearly 10 GB. I guest that's the 27 GB --> 37 GB difference :)

I ended-up deleting this file and in the process of re-sync'ing my email with the Exchange server, I deleted a few GB of old email.

The laptop feels like it's running a bit faster, I've got more free room on the hard drive, and the Outlook file corruption is resolved. I guess I'm sort of glad the file got corrupted. :)

What do Robert Scoble and I have in common?

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:09:37 GMT

We both Like Dare's blog entry that "Giving Sh*t Away is not a Business Strategy."

Gigapixel Image of Obama made-up of Supporters

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:49:54 GMT

Donovan West put together a really cool Gigapixel (1000 Megapixels) image of Barack Obama that's made-up of the faces of Obama's supporters. They talk abou this being a people-powered campaign and this is a cool representation of that idea. Check it out at: http://www.deepzoomobama.com/. If you're interested in the technology behind this (or doing it for your favorite candidate, check-out West, Donovan West.

Lack of career path at Google?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:49:11 GMT

My colleague Dare Obasanjo has an interesting post on The GOOG -> MSFT Exodus that I think uncovers some interesting issues with Google's system of tons of individual contributor developers and extremely flat organization hierarchies.

I'm not the biggest fan of a ton of career levels (it's nine promotions from starting individual contributor (59) to partner (68) at Microsoft); but having levels and offering opportunities for advancement is nice when you're actually planning to stay at a company for more than a few years.

RIP George Carlin; thanks for "Seven Dirty Words"

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:09:52 GMT

Earlier this evening, I got a twitter from one of the founding members of the Spaces team that George Carlin just died. I was surprised that the MSNBC article did not link to an actual transcript of the routine and thanks to Live Search and Justin R. Erenkrantz: http://www.erenkrantz.com/Humor/SevenDirtyWords.shtml.

Carlin, like Lenny Bruce, pushed the boundaries of comedy and free speech. To this twentysomething, in addition to hearing and reading the "seven dirty words," my two key memories of Carlin are as Rufus in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and as the Cardinal (right) in Dogma.

Organizing on Facebook 101

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:01:05 GMT

You may have heard that Facebook surpassed MySpace as the largest Social Network in the world. If your political organization or non-profit does not have an outpost on Facebook, now is a great time to get started.

Two of the biggest reasons to use Facebook (or other Social Networks) to promote your organization are:

Virality features - features like the "news feed" and "status updates" provide mechanisms for passive sharing so when user A joins your group, (some of) the friends of user A get a news item
Contacts built-in - many users already have hundreds of contacts in the social network so it's easy for them to invite those contacts to your group or event (rather than having to look-up emails or phone numbers for those contacts.)

So what should you do? It depends on the scope of your organization or event:

A) One-time Event - If you're just doing a one-time event:
    1. Create the Event
    2. Update your Status with a link to the Event
    3. Invite Friends to the Event (see right)
    4. (Wait a few days then) Ask attendees to Invite their Friends

Note: Be sure to make your Event Global so anyone can participate.

B) Local Group (<1,000)- If you're building a local group that you expect to be less than 1,000 folks, you can use a "Group" in Facebook. Similar to above:
    1. Create the Group
    2. Update your Status with a link to the Group
    3. Invite Friends to the Group
    4. (Wait a few days then) Ask members to Invite their Friends

If your group is likely going to have many events that you would want to invite people to, these two suggestions may be useful:
a) Create a Friends List for your friends potentially interested in the Group for easy invites
b) Create Events for the Group as opposed to stand-alone Events

C) Large Group - If you expect a massive group (ex: targetted Congressional race), you will likely want to use a Page instead of a Group. Pages cannot message their members using the standard private messages, but they can push "Updates" that their members see. Most of the same suggestions as B) apply to Pages.

I hope folks found this helpful. Please leave a comment if you have other suggestions. Thanks much--
--Rob

P.S. Kevin Bondelli has a great related article on how to find potential members for your Facebook Group.

Windows Live Spaces - Frequently Asked Questions

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:35:24 GMT

Kudos to my colleague Chris who compiled this lengthy FAQ: Windows Live Spaces - Frequently Asked Questions

Get paid for product placement in your YouTube videos

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:27:08 GMT

It looks like the first 1,000 people who post a YouTube video with Sprint's new Instinct phone will get $20 for "product placement" in their movie. IMHO, this seems like a great long tail play by Sprint; and for $20,000 it's probably a drop in the bucket for both the movie and the phone's marketing budget. I'd be interested to see if the marketers find this promotion to have a strong return on investment.

Faster ways to clean-up Comment Spam on Windows Live Spaces

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:13:28 GMT

Windows Live Tags:

One thing that really bugs me is comment spam. I hate when some random spammer or black SEO artist attempts to drive traffic to their site by leaving jibberish on my blog. One way that I try to fight this is the bulk delete functionality in Windows Live Spaces:

0. Sign-in :)

1. Go to your blog (ex: http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/blog)

2. Click "Summary"

3. Click the "Comments:" or "Trackbacks:" links to list comments or trackbacks for a given blog entry

4. Check the comments or trackbacks that you want to delete

I've heard a rumor ;) that folks on the team are brainstorming additional comment improvements too; so if you have suggestions, please leave a comment. Thanks--

--Rob

Updated 2008-07-24

Thanks to http://myrpsh.spaces.live.com for also pointing-out that you can clean-up recent comments:

0. Sign-in :)
1. Go to your mobile space (ex: http://robdolin.mobile.spaces.live.com/)
2. You can see the "Delete comment " link below every comment
3. Click "Delete comment" for comments you want to delete

Windows Live Tags: clubhouse, Spaces, how-to

Does the Associated Press (AP) not understand Page Rank?

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:13:15 GMT

BetaNews reported that the Associated Press is going to start attempting to charge bloggers for excerpting their articles. IMHO, this move exposes either massive ignorance about both Search engines (particularly page rank algorithms) or a business model inconsistent with their website (www.ap.org.)

Page Rank and similar algorithms are used by search engines to determine relevance of a particular web page by looking at the inbound hyperlinks to that page. Thus, if a web page representing a news story gets a bunch of inbound links (like from bloggers) then the story will rank higher in search engines like Google as well as in news and blog search engines like Technorati.

If the AP wants their content to be the content that is as the top of the list when a major story breaks, the should let bloggers excerpt quotes (and link to it.)

Alternatively, maybe the AP sees itself as a news sharing network for traditional media outlets. If so, that's totally cool; but then they should not be posting content on their websites as it under-cuts their news agency customers.

If the AP is a news source catering to newspapers, TV networks, and other mainstream media, then they should not post their content on their own site so that the primary content source (and link destination) is the websites of their customers.

I hope someone at the Associated Press wakes-up and smells the web 2.0 before they alienate either their likely most avid readers (bloggers) or their customers in the media industry.

Social Network Wars Video

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:32:54 GMT

Thanks to one of my co-workers for sharing this video. I enjoy the personifications of the Social Networking services.

Can Vote Pledges go Viral?

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:59:56 GMT

You've of course seen viral video like the diet Coke and mentos or Vote Different. Yesterday afternoon, I participated in a both real-world and online scavenger hunt to get people to make a vote pledge for the 2008 election.

There was a face-to-face component of teams with clipboards walking around downtown Nashville, but there was also an online component where people were Emailing, TXT'ing, Facebook Messaging, and Twittering their friends to complete an online version of the vote pledge form. I was really impressed that the organizing group had implemented the complimentary online component to the offline; but it makes sense that both virtual and real-world components are important for organizing young people (whether it's politics and activism or advertising and consumerism.)

The question that this raised in my mind was what would be necessary to push something like this to go viral. More specifically, what additional tweaks would be needed on the vote pledge system to get the cycle to self-perpetuate. I've got a few thoughts, but I'd love to hear what other folks think too. Please leave a comment with your ideas or suggestions.

Thanks--
--Rob

Technorati Tags: Politics,YDA,YDANashville,Social Networking

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Weekend Projects: Twitter for Politics and SiteMap improvements on TestMash

Sun, 25 May 2008 03:07:48 GMT

As a way to break the week and recharge, I try not to do any work for my day job on Saturdays; but I really like technology so I find myself playing around with "weekend projects." Two things I've been messing-with today:

Twitter for Politics

My friend Kevin has been talking a bunch about twitter for youth organizing. I'm curious if Twitter (and opt-in SMS blast services in general) will be useful for political organizing. I've created a Twitter account for the 43rd District Democrats in urban Seattle: http://twitter.com/43rdDems and cross-posted about it to the 43rd LD Dems (Windows Live powered) blog and Facebook group. If you're curious to see how this is working-out,
send a TXT message of "follow 43rdDems" to 40404.

SiteMap improvements on TestMash.com

Given the number of people who use keyword search as one of their primary web navigation mechanisms, I've been interested in the area of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or how to optimize content for crawl by search engines like Google, Yahoo, Live Search, etc. as well as how to increase page rank and improve display of content on search results.

Over the past few days, I've re-written the SiteMap (and SiteMapIndex) generation code on my experimental site: http://www.TestMash.com/ with a goal of improving coverage of some new view "item" pages that I've created like:

I've put some special MetaKeywords on these pages and I'm looking forward to seeing the impact. Cheers--
--Rob

Live Search MetaKeywords and TestMash.com

Fri, 09 May 2008 23:26:10 GMT

Back 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--
--Rob

For students: FREE Visual Studio, Expression Studio, and win2k3 Server

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:13:41 GMT

Back 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:

Visual Studio 2008
Expression Studio
Windows Server 2003
XNA Game Studio

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--
--Rob

Mobile-friendly listing of Microsoft Prime Card Restaurants

Sat, 03 May 2008 16:50:54 GMT

I'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--
--Rob

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Technorati tags: Food, Restaurants, Dining out, Seattle, Redmond, Microsoft, Prime Card

Eight Quick Thoughts on Email Politeness

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:05:51 GMT

In 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 meaning

Please 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 thread

Many 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 reply

I'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 individuals

If 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 recipients

If 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 recipient

Many 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-All

If 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 name

Unless 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.

Talking about YouTube - BARACKY: THE MOVIE

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 01:43:15 GMT

I'm really impressed by whoever put together this video merging Rocky with Campaign 2008:

YouTube - BARACKY: THE MOVIE

Code Monkey.mp3

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:23:01 GMT

Wow! I really enjoyed this song: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/mp3/Code%20Monkey.mp3.

Obama may have picked-up a national delegate at LD Caucuses in King County, WA

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:17:09 GMT

Looking 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:
LD Caucus Results 2008-04-12.xls. Look at the light-blue row for the results.

Background

Here's how it breaks down.

At the Precinct Caucuses around the state on Saturday, February 9 around 20,000, delegates and alternates were elected.
These delegates and alternates then go (or went) to their LD (Legislative District) Caucuses held in April and do the same caucus process to elect around 2,000 delegates to the CD (Congressional District) Caucuses.
The CD Caucuses on May 17 (directly and indirectly) elect ~75 national delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver from Washington state

At each level, delegates may not attend (in which case alternates are seated if they are present) and delegates may change their candidate preference.

Results

All 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.

Details

Originally, 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 you

Most 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 Analysis

If you have questions, suggestions, or feedback, please leave a comment. Thanks.

PA and NC Polling or "Why Size (of victory) Matters"

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:45:30 GMT

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:

Clinton will win PA by 11% x 158 delegates --> 17.38 delegates net for Clinton
Obama will win NC by 18% x 118 delegates --> 20.7 delegates net for Obama

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--
--Rob

Pennsylvania Primary (April 22) Match-up

Clinton	51%
Obama	39%
Undecided	10%

American Research Group poll; 3/26-27; 600 likely primary voters; +/- 4%

Clinton	49%
Obama	39%
Undecided	12%

Rasmussen poll; 3/24; 690 likely primary voters; +/- 4%

North Carolina Primary (May 6) Match-up

Obama	49%
Clinton	34%
Undecided	17%

Insider Advantage poll; 3/26; 406 likely primary voters; +/- 5%

Obama	55%
Clinton	34%
Undecided	11%

Public Policy Polling survey; 3/24; 673 likely primary voters; +/- 3.8%

Now Available: What's New Options

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:04:15 GMT

Early 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--
--Rob

Your feedback = Changes to Windows Live Spaces

First, thanks again for all of your feedback. There's nothing like receiving comments and ideas directly from some of our 115 million monthly Spaces users worldwide.
Based on what we've heard from you, here's the latest round of changes we've made:

You now have the ability to remove updates from specific people in the what's new area of your Spaces home page.

At the bottom of your (signed-in) Spaces home page, you now have an “Options” link.

Clicking “Options” will take you to a “What’s new Options” page where you can choose who of your Spaces friends and Messenger contacts show up on your home page.

We've added back your list descriptions for all lists when they are displayed in the narrow column
The font for custom lists is no longer bold by default
We changed the Sponsored Results module to reflect the transition of our partnership with Kanoodle
We've made some additional smaller changes which you won’t see but which will further improve the Spaces service

We hope you enjoy these changes. As always, keep the feedback coming. We are listening.
- Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live
Technorati Tags: Windows Live Spaces,Windows Live

Peer-produced Caller ID: WhoCalled.Us

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:54:38 GMT

I 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

Top 5 Recommendations for Mayan Riviera / Yucatan

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:57:11 GMT

Having just returned from a trip to Mexico, below were my top 5 experiences of the trip.

Snorkeling a Cenote - a cenote is an underground freshwater stream. I saw this translated as sink-hole and grotto, but those words don't do this justice. These are unbelieveably beautiful caves both above and below water with amazing rock formations and (to my surprise) fish. We went to Hidden Worlds Cenotes Park which provided a guide to two cenotes and snorkeling equipment.
5th Ave in Playa Del Carmen - This pedestrian-only street includes some nice shopping and restaurant and stretches for more than two miles. It's great in the late afternoon and was like a cleaned-up, mature version of Burbon Street.
Tulum - Mexico's most popular tourist site was sure popular, but totally worth the heat and the crowds on the afternoon we visited. Though climbing to the top of the main mound is off-limits, everything else was surprisingly open to the public; including a beach below.
John Gray's Kitchen Restaurant in Puerto Morales - a former Ritz-Carlton chef has set-up his own restaurant in this small town between Cancun and Playa. The food was unreal; easily comparable to the best restaurants in Seattle. We enjoyed drinks, goat cheese flatbread (translated as "pizza"), swordfish, duck, and a decadent chocolate dessert; and all for under $100 (before tip.)
Relaxing under a palapa (cabana) by the beach - whether it was a the off the beaten path, public Playa Soliman or the beach at the hotel where we were staying, it was great (for this red-head) to sit in the shade by the beach relaxing, sometimes reading, and taking a dip in the ocean to cool-off.

I decided to limit to a "top 5" but below are some runner-up activities that we also took-in

Xel-Ha - I've been to some pretty big water parks before, but this was amazing. An all-inclusive (including food and drink) water park has been built-up around an inlet. My favorite parts were the natural lazy river and the rope swing. H liked the "Cliff of Courage" and the included margaritas. We arrived in the morning so we could take advantage of the full day (and enjoy three meals) and we were successful in both including the aforementioned plus some canoe'ing and some resting in the provided hammocks.
Oscar y Lalo's restaurant - from what I could tell, this restaurant's former location was at the Soliman beach, but it had now moved to the side of the highway. The roof was still palapas and the fish was still very good (according to H.) I enjoyed the chicken quesadillas and the enchiladas de mole.
Valladolid - this is the smaller but closer of two former colonial towns (the other is Merida.) H was impressed by two of the oldest churches in the western hemisphere. I really liked the town square / park where we sat and enjoyed some "pan cubano" (literally Cuban bread but was like pound cake) from a local bakery.
Wave jumping in the ocean - when I was a kid, we used to go to the local beach on Lake Michigan and me and my friends would wade out almost until we couldn't stand and then jump as the waves came by. In Washington state, there either aren't such waves in Puget Sound or the weather is too cold in places like Ocean Shores. It was a great treat to go wave jumping; although I should have been more careful to use waterproof sunscreen. :)

Three of the bigger locations we decided to skip were Cancun, Chichen Itza, and Cozumel. Hopefully we'll get to those on a future trip. Mexico was great, but I'm also glad to be back home and thankful to friends and co-workers who kept everything in the air this past week. Cheers--
--Rob

Characters you meet in Cyberspace

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:35:51 GMT

My aunt forwarded this great site with cartoons of the "Flame Warriors" you meet in a forum (or increasingly a blog comments thread.) http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/index.htm

Distributed phonebanking at http://my.barackobama.com/call

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:27:44 GMT

About eight years ago, I remember our little office in Fort Dodge, IA where the Gore 2000 campaign had people stop-in to make phone calls from weeks-old printed lists in binders. The Gore campaign's voter file for the entire state of Iowa was an Access file managed by a two-person team in the main office in Des Moines. I remember folks being impressed that I got a CSV dump for our 11 counties and did some basic targeting in Excel.

It's nice to see politics is catching-up with the technology tools available. Particularly the Obama campaign has really understood the power of web interfaces to databases. In addition to the basic groups and social networking features of http://my.BarackObama.com, they have an interface for potential volunteers to do download a list of calls and a call script for virtual, distributed phone banking.

This evening, there were opportunities to call into Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Wyoming and specific opportunities for women, Spanish speakers, and students.

I'm excited to see future developments as the Obama (or Clinton or Kucinich?) and McCain (or Huckabee or Paul?) campaigns move into the general election.

If you know of (or have ideas for) other integrations of technology and politics, please leave a comment.--
--Rob

Technorati tags: Politics, Technology, Barack Obama, 2008

From Dare: Change the World or Go Home: Why I Love Working at Microsoft

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:51:43 GMT

Totally worth the read: Change the World or Go Home: Why I Love Working at Microsoft

MashUp: Comedian vs. Candidate

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:34:34 GMT

Through a friend's recommendation, I stumbled across a mash-up of an 8-bit Nintendo game, a stand-up comedy routine, and Mike Huckabee debate footage. It's pretty rough, but it's an interesting juxtaposition (and I'm a big fan of the 8-bit Nintendo graphics and music :) ):

In loving memory: Nikita

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:14:09 GMT

Around this time yesterday, we found out that our cat, Nikita, had Acute Kidney Failure. At about 1am this morning, after most of the day keeping vigil at the animal hospital, we got a call from the doctor that they had done everything medically that they could and that her kidneys just would not re-start. We let her go about 2am.

We had adopted Nikita about nine months earlier when I saw a flyer at work that listed "Loving Kitty Needs Tranquil Home." After visiting with Nikita's owners, we found that Nikita had Bronchitis and took the same drug for it that I had been on when I was a kid for stomach problems. We decided Nikita was our cat and adopted her about a week later. Nikita was my first pet (aside from some goldfish as a kid) so I guess I was more attached than usual for a twenty-something.

Nikita marked her territory in our home including peeing on my tax forms...twice. :) H remakred that we could probably send them in since the IRS had probably seen much worse. Nikita also pooped on H's PDA which was covered and safe but a source of humor. After four litter boxes, two brands of litter, and two bottles of carpet clearner, we got the routine down.

As H's dad remarked, Nikita was a great cat. She came when called, liked to sit and be petted or brushed, and was warm and friendly to guests. I remember many nights sitting in front of the computer and Nikita would come over and meow and I would reach down and pet her. While H was in the middle of finals, Nikita would go to bed with me while H would stay up for another few hours. She would wait for me to fall asleep and then go back to where H was studying; driving her crazy with another one of her antics: eating paper.

Nikita loved to eat paper - parking tickets (civil disobedience we called it), bills, cards, tissue paper from gifts. If it was paper she had to have a crack at tearing it apart. No document was safe if it was within reach of Nikita. And she preferred bath water and puddles of dirty rain water on our deck to her carbon-filtered kitty water fountain. And cheap grocery store treats to her all-natural, home grown, Mudd Bay food and treats. She did not do much during the day aside from stalking paper, drinking dirty water, and asking us for treats. She had about a dozen of kitty toys that she mostly ignored unless we were playing and then she would sometimes ignore and then (uh) fericiously? swat or grab for it. Nikita was more of a napper than a doer. She was a great, calming companion after a long day.

I am thankful for the encouragement and sympathy of Dare, Deepa, and Jason who I saw briefly on Friday and to MG who comisserated with me yesterday evening after having recently lost his dog. Also, my officemate, Eric, who pointed-out Asthmatic Kitty Records which has been a source of humor for H and me.

H and I loved Nikita very much and we will miss her warm softness and friendly smile.

Facebook should add POP & SMTP email support

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 18:05:10 GMT

Over the four-day weekend, I've been catching-up on the latest features on Social Network Services (SNS's) and one big feature that I'd really like to see is support for downloading private messages into an email program (POP) and ability to reply to said messages from the email program (SMTP.) It's not that I think this is necessarily a killer feature that will drive viral adoption and ad revenue for any of the SNS's, it's more that I believe end users would really appreciate this feature.

Most email client applications (like Outlook) allow users to check email from multiple inboxes, thus making a better experience for users and sacrificing some potential revenue from lock-in (imagine what a pain it would be if Microsoft's Outlook only worked with MS Exchange or Windows Live Mail (formerly Hotmail) and not with other email systems and services like Yahoo! mail or Google's Gmail)

Now I can totally appreciate the desire to have "blind" email where someone can email you without needing to know your address. This is a great feature of MeetUp. But MeetUp integrates their "blind" email solution with actual email instead of requiring users to go to www.MeetUp.com to read their messages.

So here's are two calls to action:
1. If you work for a SNS service (and I know a bunch of folks who read this blog do), please consider enabling "blind" email or POP/SMTP support. You might lose a bit of ad revenue on page views, but it's a better experience for your users
2. If you're a normal user, encourage your friends to use an open system like Email - Not only will you be making a statement that you support an open ecosystem where users of different services can collaborate, you'll hopefully be encouraging SNS's to remember that their users (and not advertisers) are their primary customers.

Happy Holidays--
--Rob

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SEO Tip: Add you (real) Friends on WL Spaces for more search coverage

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:34:17 GMT

I was looking at data of what impacts indexing of Spaces page by Live Search (since they have a nice API) and it looks like the strongest correlation (among a statistically insignificant limited sample) :) is number of friends:

As you can see, while there is a general correlation between Blogs, Photo Albums, and Friends, the number of friends is the strongest indicator of a larger number of search results.

If you're a Messenger or Hotmail user, you can go through your Messenger or Hotmail contacts and invite them to be your Friend on Live Spaces. You can also:
1. Go to http://spaces.live.com
2. Sign-in
3. Click the "Invite a Friend" link (top right)

Happy Winter Solstice :) --
--Rob