Rob Dolin's space: Technology

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

More coverage of Windows Live Events

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:40:49 GMT

My colleague Chris just posted a coming soon notice about "Windows Live Events" on our team blog, the Space Craft. Here's some more coverage:

Seattle P-I: Microsoft launches 'Windows Live Events' site
Seattle Times: Microsoft adds social events service to Windows Live
Wikipedia: Windows Live Events
eWeek: Microsoft's Social Events Planning Service Goes Live

Coming soon: Windows Live Events

We are in the process of releasing the new Windows Live Events service. Please stay tuned over the next few days for the new service as well as a blog post here detailing all of the new Events and Spaces features.
If you are interested, the updates have been covered by some news organizations below:

News.com
Techcrunch
Liveside.net

We look forward to releasing these new features for you to enjoy.
-Chris Keating
Product Manager, Windows Live

Technorati tags: Windows Live Events, Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live, Events, Social Networking, Microsoft

Pricing, Features announced for new Zunes

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:07:04 GMT

cNet has a great, detailed write-up on the upcoming Zunes:

Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it will offer three new models of the Zune in November, including two equipped with flash memory. The 4GB and 8GB versions are iPod Nano look-alikes that will sell for a suggested retail price of $149 and $199 respectively. An 80GB player equipped with a hard drive will sell for $249. The pricing scheme for the devices exactly mirrors that of Apple's iPods.
Some of the other changes include a complete overhaul of the device's software and a redesign of Marketplace, Zune's music store. Other interesting features include wireless syncing and the new Zune Pad, a touch-sensitive technology that enables users to slide their finger across the main navigation button instead of always having to click....

The full article is at: http://www.news.com/Microsoft-unveils-revamped-Zunes/2100-1041_3-6211357.html and you can track other news coverage via: http://search.live.com/news/results.aspx?q=zune.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Zune , music , mobile , iPod , DRM

Universities using TXT and online ads for emergency notifications

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:23:39 GMT

'Interesting article about use of TXT and online ads (ex: facebook) to notify students of emergencies: Texting, Facebook used to alert students - Security - MSNBC.com

Office 2007 Ultimate for $60

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:27:21 GMT

Holy cow! I just read that Microsoft is offering Office Ultimate (yeah the whole kitchen sink of Office applications) for only $60 for students. That's cheaper than even employees can purchase it for.

Get started on your download here: http://www.theultimatesteal.com/home.asp and if you don't believe that this is real, check-out: http://www.microsoft.com/education/ultimatesteal.mspx.

Enjoy--
--Rob

Windows Live Spaces P3P

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:33:49 GMT

I recently learned about machine-readable privacy statements (P3P's) and in case folks are curious about Windows Live Spaces, you can find the P3P file at: http://spaces.live.com/w3c/p3p.xml.

Talking about Xbox 360 Gaming with a Wiimote

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:16:05 GMT

Wow, this is pretty impressive. Play Halo with a Wiimote (from: Xbox 360 Gaming with a Wiimote)

Video: Playing Halo 2 (Xbox 360) with a Wiimote

Download all of the Windows Live client apps (Beta) at once

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 23:09:14 GMT

Congrats to Becky, Spike, JJ on Writer and all of the folks that made this happen: http://get.live.com/WL/config_all. It's all there:

* Gallery

* Mail

* Messenger

* Toolbar

* Writer

I hope you'll try the Betas today and send feedback.

iPhone: Less (features) is more ($$) :(

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 06:37:37 GMT

I believe it was pioneering architect, Mies van de Rohe who said "Less is more" where referring to the Bauhus or International style. It seems that is also Apple's philosophy with the iPhone which seems to compare unfavorably with Helio's Ocean: http://compare.helio.com/ or the upcoming HTC Kaiser (thanks Mike Torres.)

Congratulations SkyDrive / Windows Live Folders

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:59:39 GMT

Big Kudos to Jason, Doug, Hamze, and all of the good folks on the Windows Live Folders / SkyDrive team on shipping today. Check out their product at http://skydrive.live.com and their team blog at http://skydriveteam.spaces.live.com.

Technorati Tags: SkyDrive, Live Folders, Windows Live, Microsoft

iPhone got scrolling physics right

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:30:16 GMT

I stopped in the Apple store this evening to check-out the iPhone. One thing that I really like is the physics of scrolling. These guys did a great job with their flick-like interface to make scrolling on the iPhone (whether it's with Google Maps, a long list of YouTube videos, or a long web page.)

Get your voice mail via TXT

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 09:12:26 GMT

I tried CallWave about a month ago as a way to unify my voicemail and email inboxes and I've been very impressed; but they just released a new feature that is absolutely awesome: They translate voicemail to TXT and send to your mobile phone.

From: Callwave
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 7:39 PM
To: Rob Dolin
Subject: We've just upgraded your account

Dear Rob Dolin,
Good news! We've just added our highly anticipated Vtxt^sm voicemail-to-text service to your CallWave Visual Voicemail account for free during beta.
The result: Now you can read your mobile phone voicemail on your handset, your email or online.
That's because Vtxt transcribes and summarizes a voice message into a "gist" and then delivers it in one text message to your handset and email. But being able to quickly read your voicemail is just one of the benefits of our new, modernized voicemail. You can also:

Hear it. . Listen to messages in full in your email, on your mobile phone or your personal Vtxt PhonePage, a permanent, searchable web-based portal.
Respond to it. Reply to any message with voice or text via your mobile phone, email, PhonePage or CallWave Widget
Organize it. Search, save, sort, and delete your voicemail on your PhonePage - just like email

Your Vtxt PhonePage is ready.
Experience modernized voicemail for yourself - check out your Vtxt PhonePage now. Of course, if you ever want to opt-out of this service, just log-in to your account to get the de-activation code.
Happy messaging!
The CallWave Team
P.S. We've appended a prompt your outgoing phone greeting to let callers know their messages will be translated into text.

AOL Users: Stop Truncating Your Email Threads!

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 23:45:15 GMT

I've been involved with a number of email threads with AOL users and one of my biggest frustrations is that these people have their email setup to not include the previous correspondence in their reply. I realize that this is probably a default of AOL going back to AOL's days as a dial-up Internet Service Provider, but if you're still an AOL user, it's time to finally change this.

Unfortunately, when I logged-in to my old AOL account, I could not find a way to change this. :( If AOL doesn't give users the opportunity to change this, I would strongly recommend moving to an email service provider that offers this option. Here are a few free email service providers that I would recommend:

www.hotmail.com (Microsoft)
www.yahoo.com (Yahoo! Inc.)
www.gmail.com (Google)

Thanks--
--Rob

P.S. If you do know a way for AOL users to include the full thread in their emails, pleae leave a comment.

Choosing the strongest option/candidate in many-to-many match-up

Tue, 29 May 2007 15:47:43 GMT

A few weeks ago, I sat-in on a meeting for a non-profit that was setting its ~15 funding priorities. The group had brought-in consultants who took us through an exercise where we did a pair-wise comparison of each priority against each of the others. Our input of n*(n-1)/2 comparisons (number of diagonals in an n-gon) was entered into a large Excel macro and the resulting priorities were presented.

I have similarly been interested in the question of who are the strongest canidates for U.S. President for each of the two major parties. This morning, I recieved a note about polling data (below) that I belive may hold an answer to my question. The answer comes from a pair-wise comparison of each of the possible match-ups. We're still about 18 months out from the actual election, but for people interested in choosing the strongest possible representative of their party, it's very interesting data. Cheers--

--Rob

(from http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15905)

Rudy Giuliani (R) 42% - 48% Barack Obama (D)
John McCain (R) 43% - 46% Barack Obama (D)
Mitt Romney (R) 35% - 52% Barack Obama (D)
Fred Thompson (R) 35% - 52% Barack Obama (D)

Rudy Giuliani (R) 48% - 43% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)
John McCain (R) 47% - 43% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)
Mitt Romney (R) 40% - 48% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)
Fred Thompson (R) 41% - 48% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)

Rudy Giuliani (R) 47% - 43% John Edwards (D)
John McCain (R) 46% - 41% John Edwards (D)
Mitt Romney (R) 36% - 50% John Edwards (D)
Fred Thompson (R) 40% - 48% John Edwards (D)

Rudy Giuliani (R) 50% - 35% Bill Richardson (D)
John McCain (R) 52% - 31% Bill Richardson (D)
Mitt Romney (R) 37% - 40% Bill Richardson (D)
Fred Thompson (R) 40% - 39% Bill Richardson (D)

Talking about Spaces API, Feeds, and Gadget updates are here!

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:09:55 GMT

Folks probably know I'm a big fan of RSS and Mashups. I'm really glad that the latest Spaces release includes a whole bunch of new RSS functionality:

Spaces API, Feeds, and Gadget updates are here!

As you might have seen on TechCrunch or LiveSide, Windows Live Spaces released a new version of our service early this morning. However, we didn’t just ship features this time around… We shipped a lot of new updates to our APIs, RSS Feeds, and Gadget support. Additionally, we will be spending some time at Mix07 this year talking about why developers should start partying on our platform.
We will be updating this site in the coming days to bring you API, Feed and Gadget documentation that will help you start building some cool mashups, or gadgets on Spaces. Until then, check out some of the feeds we added and the new features for gadget support. Of course, if you have questions or comments, visit our forums, ....
Enjoy!
John
RSS Feed Updates – We added several feeds with this new release. Each public space that syndicates will offer these feeds. Just substitute your alias in the examples below and you are ready to go!

Top Level Feed – .spaces.live.com/feed.rss
Minimal Feed – .spaces.live.com/minimal/feed.rss
Blog – .spaces.live.com/blog/feed.rss (all blog categories contain sub feeds now)
Photo Albums – .spaces.live.com/photos/feed.rss (each album has a sub feed with photos)
Profile – .spaces.live.com/profile/feed.rss
Friends – .spaces.live.com/friends/feed.rss
Updated Spaces - spaces.live.com/changes.aspx (provides XML feed of recently updated spaces)

Gadget Updates – We added the ability for gadgets to be configured with a initialization parameter when being added to a space. Now, a simple RSS gadget could take a different feed URL when it’s added to a space rather than ask a user to configure one manually!
New APIs – We added several new APIs to our offering with this release, and will be providing documentation in the coming days on MSDN that speaks to how best to leverage them.

Add Gadget

Add Module

Send Private Message

View Space

View Updated Spaces

View Settings

View Lists

View Communication Preferences

Add Friend

View Friends

Invite Friend

View Pending Requests

View Photos

View Profile

How to report a bug

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 20:08:15 GMT

I maintain a number of sites for non-profit groups and I frequently find people emailing me with bug reports that contain insufficient information to understand and diagnose the bug. Below are my recommendations on essentials of a bug report.

Repro steps (i.e. steps to reproduce the bug from scratch) - Imagine you're explaining the bug to someone who is familiar with technology but unfamiliar with the particular site. These should be step-by step instructions for reproducing the bug. For example:

1. Open a new browser

2. Navigate to http://blog.robdolin.com

3. Click "Subscribe to RSS feed" (middle right)

Result and Expect - Describe the result that got from the repro steps and what you expected instead. Continuing the example from above:

* Result: Browser goes to: http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

* Expect: Browser goes to: feed://robdolin.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

Screenshot - A picutue is worth a thousand words. Attach one to your bug report showing the erroneous result that you recieved. A quick way to do this (on a Windows PC) is to:

1. Click in the window with the bug

2. Hold the ALT key and click the PrtScn key (this will copy the window to the clipboard)

3. Open an email program that supports HTML email

4. Paste (Edit | Paste or CTRL - v) into the email body

(If you're a Mac or Linux user and know how to take a screenshot, please leave a suggestion in the comments)

Config - A brief description of your system configuration would be helpful:

* OS major version (ex: Win XP, Mac Jauguar, etc.)

* Browser major version (ex: IE7, Opera9, Firefox2, etc.)

* Connection speed (ex: broadband, dial-up)

Thanks for taking the time to read this; and if you're reporting a bug in something I've worked on, http://contact.robdolin.com. ;)

New phone toys: Callwave and Jott

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 05:48:54 GMT

I'm all about consolidation of inboxes. Within a few weeks of recently joining a relatively active social network, I asked the people who were messaging me to simply use my email. I also don't check my voicemail very often. It's not that I don't want to hear messages from people; it's just that I feel like I have too many inboxes.

I was pleasantly suprised when Mike Torres pointed me to Callwave. It's a service that emails your voice mail to you just like I get at work, but without having to setup an Exchange server.

Another cool service that Mike pointed out is Jott. It lets you record a voice message to yourself and it emails it to you transcribed. The latency (I wonder if they're using Amazon's Mechanical Turk) seems on the order of two hours, but it's pretty nice for when you don't have paper and pencil handy (or when they might cause an accident. :)

BTW, check-out the slick Technorati tags feature from Windows Live Writer:

Technorati tags: mobile, technology, dot-com, Jott, Callwave

Just like PhotoShop, but free

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 06:32:59 GMT

It looks like a senior project in Computer Science class at Washington State University turned into a really impressive image editing program: http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html.

Vista security worked for me

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 02:27:28 GMT

Yeah, Windows Vista can be a bit annoying when it prompts you to allow a bunch of actions, but this afternoon, I browsed to a page of a start-up with some musical add-on that they don't prompt to install. I just wanted to see their site, not install their add-on and I was glad that Windows Vista gave me the choice to block this over-zealous dot-com.

Alerts is now available

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:14:18 GMT

I'm very excited to let folks know that Windows Live Alerts for Email, IM, and SMS are now available for spaces in the USA (and many other english markets.)

If you see a space that you think is interesting and want to subscribe to it, you just need to find the "Visitor Tools" module and click the Alerts icon (look for the yellow bell.)

In addition to "Gleams" in Messenger and the What's New page, this is another great way to get notified of updates to the Spaces you care about. Enjoy--

--Rob

You are the person of the year

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:13:02 GMT

Kudos to Time magazine for recognizing the importance of user-created content (UCC):

“For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you,” the magazine’s Lev Grossman wrote.

Don't Download This Song

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 15:49:39 GMT

My junior and senior years of undergrad, the original Napster was huge and many people I lived with had massive pirated MP3 collections. Then I remember the RIAA started suing people.

First, let me say that I don't have a problem with people who create art or media or any new piece of creative work whether bits or atoms getting paid for their efforts. A combination of reading The Long Tail and listening to "Dont' Download This Song" at http://www.myspace.com/weirdal got me thinking back to the RIAA lawsuits.

I'm hopeful that the music industry (and generally the entertainment industry) is finally starting to "get it" when it comes to leveraging the Internet as a marketing and distribution engine and not looking at the Internet as an evil place where their content is "stolen."

There's a no man's land in between hard copies (CD/DVD/etc.) with hardcore DRM locks and freely traded unlocked copies with no royalties to the artists, producers, or marketers. This is where the content circulates primarily on public, reputable content sharing sites like MySpace and YouTube run by major media and technology corporations. Fans upload the content to the sites and use the content to personalize their own Social Networking profile pages or blogs.

I've heard this called "Tolerated Use" since the content owners tolerate it since hey, it's their fans virally spreading the word about the artist. Eventually, if the content owner feels the desire, they can notify the hosting sites that they own the content and ask for take-down. I heard this done in the case where the Daily Show found that they were losing viewership (and thus advertising revenue) to people watching on YouTube. IMHO, they should have just tried to strike a deal with YouTube for a revenue share agreement instead of asking to have their content pulled. They could have also uploaded their own clips and ended with pointers to their site.

I hope that more content creators will look to the Internet as a way to enable their fans to spread the word and look for creative ways to work with social technology rather than fighting it.

Presentation from Ignite Seattle

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 16:12:13 GMT

Yesterday, I attended an event of Seattle techies called "Ignite Seattle" organized by by former microsoftie, Brady Forrest. It included a popsicle stick bridge building competition and a series of 5-minute presentations titled "ask later." I gave one of these on "Political use of web 1.0 and 2.0 technologies" including a call-to-action to get involved in applying technology to civic engagement for whatever party is of interest. I posted a PPT from my talk here: http://www.wuxx.com/robdolin/documents/rob%20dolin%20presentation%20for%20ignite%20seattle.ppt (3MB.) Note that the format was for the sides to advance every 15 seconds for 5 minutes so it's a bit of a whirlwind.

Free SharePoint training

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 23:42:06 GMT

As many folks who work with me know, I'm a big fan of SharePoint techologies. I like that SharePoint enables creation of document libraries, custom lists, and other such content without having to program. I found out that Microsoft is offering free online trainings on SharePoint Services 3.0 (aka 2007?) Here are some links:

What is Windows Live Spaces?

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 05:03:20 GMT

I was in a meeting today where one of my colleagues asked what are the competitors to Windows Live Spaces and it really got me thinking.... Well;

Spaces is a blogging service so I guess Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress could be competitors.
Then again, Spaces is a photo sharing service, so I guess Flickr could be a competitor.
Spaces is also a place for lists of your favorite blogs, books, and more like 43 things and 43 places.
AND Spaces is also a social networking product with profiles and the friends list, so I guess MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, et. al. could be competitors; not to mention dating sites like True and Match.

At the end of the day, I look at Spaces as a place for individual personal expression. It's my personal place on the Internet and I have the tools to express how I feel and what I care about in words, pictures, lists, music, video, HTML, and more. (Read The Space Craft for info on how to add some of the "PowerToys" to your Space.) I can also show my friends and explore other (shared) friends lists. There's a ton of work that the development team needs to do to make the service not just good in all of these areas but excellent; and I believe we're up for the challenge.

Why Net Neutrality is important

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:54:50 GMT

One of the most interesting technology policy issues currently under discussion in Congress is "Net Neutrality." As I understand it, the phone and cable companies are seeking a change in the regulations of the Internet that would allow them to charge content providers for reliable, fast delivery of content. For example, if the New York Times did not pay Comcast, content from nytimes.com could be slowed-down (or effectively slowed-down by routing choice) by Comcast.

While this might tip some money from one set of large companies (content providers like media outlets and online commerce sites) to Internet providers like phone and cable companies; there are two much more interesting (IMHO) potential consequences:

Smaller sites could have their traffic slowed-down - Imagine if local political meta-blogs like http://www.soundpolitics.com/ (on the right) or http://www.washblog.com/ (on the left) were caried on a second, slower tier of the Internet if their owners did not pay-to-play.
Traffic Discrimination curtailing freedom of speech - If Internet providing companies were allowed to discriminate in how they routed traffic, they might choose to not route certain traffic. Imagine if a YouTube video was getting very rapid distribution (likely via viral distribution) but the video was in opposition to the Internet provider, without a strong Net Neutrality provision, the Internet provider could potentially throttle the video.

If you're interested in learing more, YouTube has a great video from John "I'm a PC" Hodgeman and Wikipedia has a very detailed article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality.

If you want to take action, I recommend contact your home state Senators (http://www.savetheinternet.com/=senatemap) and asking them to support Net Neutrality.

Update 9/27/06: Removed some custom HTML that FeedBurner was having trouble with

Should Windows Live Spaces support non-Passport comments?

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 14:59:39 GMT

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend who works on protecting a Search engine from Spam. He pointed-out to me that Spaces had one of the lowest spam ratings of any service. My friend's theory was that there was a relatively high hurdle of creating a Passport (now Windows Live ID) in order to comment on a Spaces blog. Limiting spam comments (which can be a pain for customers who want relevant comments and also a pain for Search crawlers engines that follow the links in those comments) is good.

On the other hand, enabling a service for open dialog is also very good. Some blogging services enable totally anonymous comments without any check to make sure that the commenter is not a spam bot. Some blogging services support a "HIP-check" (where you have to enter the characters in an image before you can post a comment.) Some blogging services (like Windows Live Spaces) ask users to create an ID once (usually a HIP-check is part of the ID creation process) and then login with that ID in the future when they want to comment.

I'm posting this as an open question to Spaces users, what do you think Spaces should do? Thanks--

--Rob

Technology Evangelism in Second Life

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 14:44:09 GMT

A bit ago, I commented on Presidential Candidate Mark Warner's venture into the virtual world, Second Life. Seperately, I have been reading the blog of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Evangelist, Jeff Barr, who seems to be very enthusiastic about Second Life. Jeff pointed me to a great write-up he has on his blog at: http://www.jeff-barr.com/?p=584. If you're considering some sort of outreach in a 3-D virtual world, I highly recommend his blog entry.

Update 21 Sept. 2006: Corrected spelling error in Title and added Category

Netcraft: Windows Live Spaces growing faster than Google's Blogger

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 23:23:05 GMT

According to Netcraft, Windows Live Spaces is again growing faster than Google's Blogger; this time by more than 2x:

Month (of Netcraft Survey)	Monthly Spaces Growth	Monthly Blogger Growth
September	1.3 million	459K
August	858K	568K

Book lists on Windows Live Spaces

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 20:44:46 GMT

Today, I finally decided to try out the Book List module. I really like that I can just type a title of a book and the full info including picture and link to Amazon.com shows-up.

Here are some book lists I created:

* Fiction and Humor - some fun reading

* Sports - Growing-up in Chicago, everyone is a sports fan

* Strategy - Business, technology, politics, and their intersections

* Technology - Books I recommend if you're interested in software design and usability

If you're new to customizing your Windows Live Space, here's some step-by-step instructoins on creating a book list

Part I. (Optional) Setup an Amazon ID

1. Login to your Space

2. Click "Options" (top right)

3. On the "Space Settings" tab, scroll down to the "Amazon Associates" section

4. Enter an Amazon Associates ID (if you're feeling extremely generous, use wuxxevents-20 )

(If you don't have one, you can follow the link to create one)

5. Click "Save"

Part II. Create a blook list

1. Click "Customize" (top right)

2. Select "Modules" then "Lists" then "Book Lists"

Part III. Add Books

1. (When in Edit mode), click "Edit list" on your Book List module

2. Click "Add Item"

3. Enter a bit of information for your book and click "Save"

4. A background search of Amazon is done and you should see your book's cover

ShiP or get off the pot

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 15:43:35 GMT

How frequently should a software product or service "ship" or "release?"

Before joining the Spaces team, I worked on Microsoft Publisher. We shipped every 2-3 years along with the rest of Microsoft Office. This was frustrating sometimes because we only really got to deliver new features to customers every few years, but we also usually delivered a product that had been through very thorough testing.

Before Publisher, I was Online Editor for a newspaper. We "shipped" five nights a week and we could do a new feature or make a change every night if we wanted. The paper usually went live about 1am and I remember many mornings getting early calls that something was broken.

If you ship frequently you have many opportunities to address customer feedback. On the other hand, the longer your release cycle, the more complex features you can build and the more testing ou can do.

As Windows Live Spaces grows its customer base and increases its functionality, I think the team will need to move to longer cycles (or a limited opt-in Beta system) as the Windows Live Spaces service will be more compex and testing will be a more challenging task.

There are extremes to both frequent and infrequent shipping. For example, I would really like the Windows Vista team to finally ship.

Before any of these jobs, I delivered pizza. I remember asking the owner if I should try to get every pizza delivered in 30 minutes like Dominos. His perspective was something like: "I don't want you to go too fast and get into an accident, but the faster you get there, the bigger your tip."