June 22, 2005
@ 04:59 PM
One of the reasons I came to work at MSN is that I believe strongly in the power of software to connect people together. I recently found a post entitled Spaces Friends which shows exactly how strong these connections can become. The post is excerpted below

The Importance of Spaces

 One should never expect the good fortune that has come my way since I was first aware of the MSN Spaces wide beta release last fall.  I first started writing on December 4, 2004, as I recall on a Spaces blog with a different title and editorial theme.  My experience since has been both personally rewarding and life-expanding.

I published (posted) the first poetry I ever showed to anyone in this life here on Crackers.  I’ve made some attempts at humor in some entries.  I have written some serious stuff as well.  All of it is pretty strange coming from an old Electrical Engineer/Physicist/high-tech manager/pilot/geek.  But other guys I’ve known with similar histories have done even more bizarre stuff.

More important than publishing fledging writing has been some remarkable friendships that have developed by magic from initial contacts left in the comments to entries.  The first of these came in late December, 2004, and remains one of my strongest adult friendships, and there is every reason to believe that it is a life-long association even though we may never see each other face to face.  Geographical distance can be a real barrier at times, but one that is breaking down rapidly because of Internet-enabled communication.  Who knows?  We might meet in person someday down the road.  Along the way a few other friendships have developed which span great distances.  Each has been an asset to my life.
...
Now, as I find myself in a situation I simply can’t manage without help, my friends have made a selfless commitment getting me through the initial phases of my cancer treatment.

As my first Spaces friend said the other day, “Isn’t it interesting how God places people in our path at important points?”  It’s more than interesting, B.  It’s going to help save my life.  MSN Spaces has been of the utmost importance to me.  Maybe it will continue to be.

A number of us working on Spaces read Bill's blog and our thoughts definitely go out to him in this time of need. It is really humbling to see how the work we do is changing people's lives.



 

Categories: Social Software

From the press release MSN Continues Investments in Search With the Launch of Local Search we learn

Starting today, consumers in the United States will see a new Local category added to the MSN Search options on MSN.com. When consumers search for local information, they will receive results from city- and region-specific White Pages and Yellow Pages directory information. For example, a local search on “auto mechanics” could bring up listings of nearby mechanics, repair shops and towing companies.

Each local search result is shown as a numbered pin on a corresponding map provided through Microsoft® MapPoint® Web Service, and digital aerial images are supplied by TerraServer-USA when available for a given search result. The TerraServer-USA Web site is one of the world’s largest online databases, providing access to a vast data store of maps and aerial photographs of the United States. Originating at the Microsoft Bay Area Research Center, TerraServer is operated by Microsoft as a research project for developing advanced database technology.

The new MSN Local Search functionality is an evolution of the Near Me search feature that debuted on MSN Search in February of this year and allowed consumers to receive search results tailored to a geographic location. Those interested in trying the beta of the new offering should visit http://www.msn.com.

Kudos to the MapPoint/VirtualEarth and MSN Search folks for getting this out the door. My first test was trying a search for "pizza" in my area.  I decided to figure out how to specify my location with more accuracy. Come to think of it I'm not sure how it even figured out to look in Seattle. Anyway I followed the link from the phrase How do I change my location? and saw that I can specify my city, state and zip code in the settings page which is stored in a cookie.

There are two minuses here. The first is that I can't store my exact address. When I'm looking for a pizza place I want to find one that delivers in my area not just one in the same city as me. The second is that I can only store one location which is one better than Google Maps but quite poor when compared to Yahoo! Maps. It looks like I'll be sticking with Yahoo! for now. I will send the MSN Search folks some feedback about needing to add these features.

By the way, a more direct link to the service is http://search.msn.com/local.


 

Categories: MSN

Joe Wilcox has a post that has me scratching my head today. In his post Even More on New Office File Formats, he writes

Friday's eWeek story about Microsoft XML-based formats certainly raises some questions about how open they really are. Assuming reporter Pater Galli has his facts straight, Microsoft's formats license "is incompatible with the GNU General Public License and will thus prevent many free and open-source software projects from using the formats." Earlier this month, I raised different concerns about the new formats openness.

To reiterate a point I made a few weeks ago: Microsoft's new Office formats are not XML. The company may call them "Microsoft Office Open XML Fromats," but they are XML-based, which is nowhere the same as being XML or open, as has been widely misreported by many blogsites and news outlets.

There are two points I'd like to make here. The first is that "being GPL compatible" isn't a definition of 'open' that I've ever heard anyone make. It isn't even the definition of Open Source or Free Software (as in speech). Heck, even the GNU website has a long list of Open Source licenses that are incompatible with the GPL. You'll notice that this list includes the original BSD license, the Apache license, the Zope license, and the Mozilla public license. I doubt that EWeek will be writing articles about how Apache and Mozilla are not 'open' because they aren't GPL compatible.

Secondly, it's completely unclear to me what distinction Joe Wilcox is making between being XML and being XML-based. The Microsoft Office Open XML formats are XML formats. They are stored on the hard drive as compressed XML files using standard compression techniques that are widely available on most platforms. Compressing an XML file doesn't change the fact that it is XML. Reading his linked posts doesn't provide any insight into whether this is the distinction Joe Wilcox is making or whether there is another. Anyone have any ideas about this?

 


 

Categories: XML

I was chatting with Mike Vernal a few weeks ago about the various outcomes we've seen from writing a Bill Gates Thinkweek paper. We came up with the following taxonomy

  1. Increased Visibility for the Author: These are usually the papers of the form "Here's a Cool Idea from [my buddies and] me". The most common result for a ThinkWeek paper is for the author to get a virtual pat on the back from BillG and to get their name noticed by their management especially since some product groups have an internal review of these papers before sending them up the stack to the big man himself. 

  2. Increased Visibilty for a Product Group: These are usually the papers of the form "Here's a Cool Idea from [my product group]". Sometimes a product group wants to lay out its vision for their product or technology space to the big guy outside of the usual executive review + PowerPoint format and a ThinkWeek paper is good way to do that. A great example is the MapPoint team which submitted the "Virtual Earth" paper recently.

  3. The Fire Drill: These are usually of the form "Here's a Cool Opportunity that Microsoft is missing". The best example of this is the "Internet Tidal Wave" memo that Bill Gates sent in response to J Allard's thinkweek paper a decade ago. Many people who send in a ThinkWeek paper are expecting this reaction and in fact I've seen a few that actually have "send Internet Tidal wave-style memo" as one of the recommendations in their paper. Of course, the chances of such reactions to the average ThinkWeek paper are the same as getting a record deal from sending Dr. Dre a copy of your demo tape.

  4. Spreading a Meme: Sometimes the ideas in a paper are so powerul it seems that they take a life of their own as they spread from person to person. It is hard to point to any direct action being taken as a result of them but their influence is felt by many. This is my favorite outcome from a ThinkWeek paper.

A recent ThinkWeek paper entitled "10 Crazy Ideas to Shake Up Microsoft" is exactly the last kind of paper mentioned above. The MiniMicrosoft blog mentioned this paper a while ago in a post entitled Think Week, the WSJ, and those Ten Crazy Ideas. According to Mini the 10 Ideas were

  1. Schedule Unscheduled Time into Performance Reviews
  2. "Break Up" the Company
  3. Encourage Loose but Prominent Couplings
  4. Exile and Empower Incubation Projects
  5. Offer Super-exponential Rewards
  6. Offer Different Risk-Reward Compensation Profiles
  7. Cut Back on Bureaucracy
  8. Review Cost Cutting
  9. Reduce Headcount on Large Dev Projects
  10. Eliminate Exec Reviews

Why I like the list [and why I assume it's been so popular at work] is that it succintly summarizes the major problems facing folks trying to get stuff done at Microsoft today AND proposes solutions. I suspect these problems exist in every large corporation and are not limited to Microsoft or even software companies.

If you work at Microsoft and you haven't read the paper, you really should. If you work at a medium sized to large corporation and you are a decision maker you should staple that list to a bulletin board in your office and ruminate on its points. 

 


 

Categories: Life in the B0rg Cube

June 20, 2005
@ 02:35 PM

I saw Batman Begins this weekend and I'm still trying to decide whether it is the best Batman movie of all time or not. Although there is no villain who gives a performance as commanding as Jack Nicholson's in 1989 Batman movie, Christian Bale is a better Batman than Michael Keaton and Michael Caine plays Alfred better than I imagined possible. Morgan Freeman is also great as Lucius Fox.

The movie is over 2 hours long which is to be expected given that it spends the first 45 minutes or more on the back story leading up to Bruce Wayne deciding to become the Batman. Though the movie is a bit long it makes up for this by hitting all the right notes when it comes to exploring the Batman mythos. My favorite themes from the comic are there from the night and day difference between Bruce Wayne's playboy lifestyle and Batman's ongoing war on crime to Jim Gordon questioning whether the existence of Batman encourages the existence of the more "theatrical" criminals (e.g. Joker, Two Face and the Riddle).

I definitely can't wait to see the next movie in the series.

Score: **** out of *****


 

Categories: Movie Review

In today's issue of the Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg reviews a number of blog hosting services in the article Taking the Mystery Out of Blog Creation. The article describes the experiences of Walt and his assistant Katie in building their test blogs including  http://spaces.msn.com/members/wmossberg and http://kaboehret.blogspot.com/. He writes

This past week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested three of these free blog-creation services to see what they offer. We tried the popular Google-owned service, Blogger.com, as well as Microsoft's new MSN Spaces service, each of which is estimated to host millions of blogs. We also tested Yahoo's Yahoo 360 service, which still is in its test phase. We quickly learned how simple it is to set up a blog, and how addictive they can become.

While using these three sites, we paid careful attention to how each blog-creating service handled four basic tasks: publishing text entries, or "posting" as it is called in blog land; adding photos; publishing links to other Web pages on our blogs; and providing privacy (if desired) online. We also took note of the overall style and formatting options provided on each site.

Our verdict: Microsoft's MSN Spaces did the best job of performing these tasks in a way that was organized and self-explanatory. Yahoo 360 was almost as easy, but it tries to tie in the use of too many other Yahoo services. Blogger.com has a long way to go until it becomes as easy to use as the others.

It's great to see the validation by both our users and reviewers like Walt Mossberg of the design choices we've made in attempting to bring blogging to a more widespread audience.

I'd like to thank all the folks who've been giving us great feedback; reviewers like Walt, various folks who leave comments in my space or Mike's or Scott's, the people who've added stuff to the MSN Spaces wiki, and the good people at work who send mail to the various Spaces mailing lists. You're feedback makes us better. Thanks.


 

Categories: MSN

A few months ago, Omar Shahine wrote about how various folks in our org came together to get the MSN Mobile Messaging feature to work. This feature allows people to have IM conversations with people using a cell phone via SMS using MSN Messenger. In his post When the work you do is architectural (MSN Mobile Messaging) he talks about the feature and how it was implemented on our various back ends. Some of his post is excerpted below  

So what to do? Enter MSN Messenger to SMS communications (we call this Enhanced mobile messaging). The feature we've been working on for the past year (or longer) was to allow a user of MSN Messenger on a PC to send a message to some one that is not signed into MSN Messenger but has an SMS enabled Mobile device AND to reply to that SMS message and have a real time chat (in otherwords, a two way conversation between MSN Messenger and Mobile phone using SMS as the wire protocol). This last part is important, but to understand it I need to explain one more thing.

For the past few years part of the scenario above has been available through what I will call a hack. Most phones that have SMS also have an email gateway that can take a message sent to a special email address and forward that message to the phone. For example, an email sent to <phone number>@mmode.com will forward that message via SMS to the <phone number> of an ATT Wireless subscriber. However, the user cannot reply to that email enabling a 2 way chat. Furthermore, it breaks the SMS user experience that mobile phone users are used to.

So, to fix this we set out to build all the necessary carrier infrastructure, SMS infrastructure, and build the technology and carrier relationships to ship the ability for users to have a two way conversation from MSN Messenger to a Mobile device that has nothing more than SMS capabilities (practically every singe phone on the planet). Not only that, but we support "Offline messages" so that if a Mobile phone device replies to an SMS from Messenger, and you have signed out of MSN Messenger, the next time you sign in the message will be delivered to you allowing you to continue the conversation.

I was reminded of this today because of his follow up post MSN Mobile Messaging for Cingular, which let me know that my girlfriend's cell phone carrier is now supported. Sweet.

Omar's original post has some interesting details on some of the issues they faced in bringing this feature to the market. This is an awesome feature and I'm definitely going to get a lot of use out of it.


 

Categories: MSN

June 14, 2005
@ 02:32 PM

So it looks like I'll be attending Gnomedex 5.0 next week. I had expected to sit it out but a chance to attend fell in my lap last week so I took the opportunity. The conference will be in walking distance from my apartment and will be all about blogging & RSS related topics so it is doubleplusgood that I'll get to go.

I exchanged some mail with Nick Bradbury and Chris Pirillo about being part of an aggregator developer get together during the conference so that should be fun too. I'm looking forward to meeting a bunch of folks who I've only exchanged mail with over the past few years.

 


 

Categories: Ramblings

I stumbled upon a blog post on Wil Wheaton's blog via Penny Arcade yesterday that I found interesting. It seems there was a recent threat of a strike by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) on behalf of voice actors in video games which got them improved pay. This seems to have led to somewhat of a backlash from some video game developers. Wil writes

Since I wrote about voice actors the other day, I've been personally attacked, called names, and vilified all over the Internets, often by people whose work I respect and admire.
...
It seems like many developers are angry with SAG because SAG stood up for its members, which is what a union is supposed to do. It just doesn't make any sense to me that SAG is being viewed with such animosity, just for doing its job. Actors represent less than 3% of the total budget on games, so it's incredibly unlikely that if SAG were able to make some residual gains, it would even affect developers' pay. I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt that producers are going to tell developers that they can't afford to pay them, because actors are now taking up 4.5% or 5% of the budget.
...
I don't understand what developers gain by spending energy attacking SAG, when SAG is just doing what its membership expects it to do. As far as I can tell, voice actors and developers have the same ultimate goal, and I just don't get why developers are so angry with SAG for trying to reach that goal. It seems like a lot of developers and gamers are pissed at SAG because SAG has the ability to stand up to our employers and ask for better wages, and from an Art of War standpoint, that is an awfully huge waste of energy. It makes much more sense to me for developers to take that energy and those resources, point it at producers, and take the fight to them. Because, ultimately, getting angry at SAG, or me, or other working actors, isn't going to get developers better contracts or profit-sharing. All it's going to do is take focus away from the people who can make those things happen.

Given that video games seem to have the same hit-centric characteristics of movies and music I can see why there is the school of thought that expects developers to get a percentage of the take if it is a hit. I doubt the status quo will ever change without some organized effort on the part of video game developers.

The comments in response to Wil's post also contain some interesting viewpoints for and against his position. I was actually surprised that there was anything in his post to take offence at but people have a way of surprising me.


 

June 14, 2005
@ 05:14 AM

There's been a bunch of hubbub on certain blogs about MSN Spaces and some of the content filtering that happens on the site due to a recent Financial Times article entitled Microsoft bans 'democracy' for China web users. I've seen a lot of rhetoric about this topic and have avoided commenting on it since it is a sensitive topic that has evoked rather emotional and inflammatory responses from commenters including some Microsoft employees.

I will say two things though. First of all, the behavior of MSN Spaces isn't something that is tied to any recent ventures in the past month or two by MSN in China as the article purports. In December of last year Boing Boing ran a post entitled Chinese editions of MSN Spaces censor political terms which covers the behavior described in the Financial Times article.

The second is that the response to the initial feedback on the "censorship" on MSN Spaces made by Michael Connolly in his post Comments on Content Moderation is still valid. Specifically he wrote

There have been a lot of observations since we launched on how we moderate content on Spaces.   Just so there aren’t any misconceptions floating around, here is exactly what we do, and why.

One of our main goals for Spaces was to create a platform for people to share their thoughts and feelings with their friends and the outside world.  However, we wanted to make Spaces usable by not only the people who are blogging today, but also be approachable by the general internet user, who might not have heard of blogging previously, or been given an opportunity to try it out.

Unfortunately, whenever you create an open platform for people to say whatever they want, and open it up to the wide world (14 languages, in 26 different markets), there is always a handful of people who spoil the party, and post a bunch of inappropriate (and in some cases illegal) stuff. And to make matters worse, what exactly is deemed “appropriate” or not is very subjective, not only from person to person, but from country to country
...
We block a set of specific words from being used in 3 areas: the url you select, the title of your Space, and the title of your blog entry. These three fields are reused and displayed in a variety of areas, like search results, so we thought it would be a little thing we could do to cut down on the obvious cases that would most easily offend.

MC made his post in December of last year and this is still the state of affairs today. I don't know if any official statement will be made in response to the article but I did think it would add some perspective to the various discussions to actually get the facts and as opposed to hearsay.

Quite frankly I've been saddened see the kind of language and rhetoric used in posts like Tim Bray's Microsoft and China to describe the above situation. We have lots of Chinese users who use MSN Spaces to share their lives with friends, family and the rest of the online world. Read their blogs, view their photos and try to see things from their eyes instead of letting the rhetoric blind you to reality.


 

Categories: MSN