Website development

So I see that Ruby on Rails is becoming all the rage.  I have some ideas on tap that I'd like to just get up and running but the programming methods, even with Ruby on Rails, is still a bit laborious.  I have an RFQ out for one of my latest ideas because I just don't have enough time in the day to work with membership, file transfer, etc.

So, .Net, Ruby on Rails, LAMP, etc. programmers, tool developers, etc. take note.

Create a tool that lets me put together a visual representation of what I want done, then write general code with documentation and I'll beat a path to your door!  Specifically let me work with file systems and membership databases and we have a deal!

I'll blog some about how this goes – maybe it will help someone out there get their idea actually created.  I'm code capable, but I'm going to get this project going with the notion that I couldn't code myself out of a paper dialog box…

Until next time. 

CableCARD view on Vista?

Now that we're getting down to 6 months on the VISTA schedule it might be good to look at what is on the horizon for Media Center.  Specifically, CableCARD capabilities.

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/2199/more_concrete_details – this is a good start.

So it looks like we'll be getting CableCARD support in Vista just when the cable companies are abandoning Cable Card 1.0.  Great.  So now we're stuck in a grey area of support – CableCARD 2.0 should be out, but no guarantees.

And they won't allow home-built or older Media Centers to be upgraded to CableCard with any kind of support.  Even better.

HD Beat has a great set of articles – looks at CableCARD 2.0, Vista features and other HD information.  http://www.hdbeat.com/search/?q=cablecard

Well, I for one am fed up with the horrid software that cable companies and the set top box makers force on us.  My DCT6412 is very bad – I won't detail everything, but I'm glad it at least can record shows and we finally got ESPN2 HD – woot! – that only took about 3 years too long.  

Let's hope that CableCARD 2.0 is actually good – something CableCARD 1.0 was NOT.

ps – sorry about the links, I'll try to address that in future posts.

Until next time! 

Safe Journeys, Bill

Well, Bill Gates is officially passing the baton.  He is definitely the Edison or Ford of our generation.   In a hundred years the odd thing is that he may be best known not for the computer systems his company enabled or the massive spread of computer usage he foresaw but quite possibly the efforts that his foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will go through to reduce disease and improve life for everyone on the planet. 

Having started at Microsoft in 1998 it was an interesting time(Hello, Confucious?) – Bill was still firmly in charge – and the DOJ was just beginning their attack on Microsoft.  A memo from Bill could turn 25,000 employees on a dime and the energy at the company was palpable.  Everyone felt like they were changing the world every day.   People were still running around the company talking about grand ideas and how everything they were doing was going to be the next great thing.  I started in the Premier Support group and Kevin Johnson was then just beginning a stellar rise to the top of Microsoft.  He was the Director of Premier Support.  Steve Ballmer was still the head of the sales organization and everyone thought ‘The Lawsuit’ would get put to bed quickly.  That first year was probably the last year of the ‘up and coming’ organization feeling inside of Microsoft.  We were still adding market value, the stock options on paper looked like they would be awesome and the software was looking good – Windows 98 was on the horizon and everything was looking up.

Then reality slowly started to set in – the DOJ wasn’t going away.  New products had fairly mediocre receptions and there was nothing that was getting to market that was earth shattering.  In 2000 Bill handed the reins over to Ballmer and started stepping back from the company operations – people inside the company probably felt the change to Ballmer MUCH more than people outside realized.  The company certainly continued growing – 60,000 employees when I left -  new product ideas like Xbox were getting to market, but that feeling of changing the world went away.  We were locked up and monitored.  The energy and enthusiasm was slowly draining away and the stock price certainly stagnated.  My managers essentially started telling us to become role players, not entrepreneurs.  That immediately took away the feeling of having control and ownership and so this past January I decided it was time to head out and go find a new company with entrepreneurial spirit – a startup, in fact.

Bill’s energy and spirit have slowly faded from the company he founded and so it is not surprising he is picking this time to go.  The company is still moving forward and I think they will once again become a driving force, but those early days that lasted up until the late ’90s will probably not been seen there again.  I and the others who were there were fortunate to have seen those days.  1998 was one of the best years of my professional life and I learned so much about business in those days that I couldn’t even put a value on that time.  There were never a group of people better at creating something with little resources as there were at Microsoft in those days.  

I was honored to have met Bill a couple of times at Microsoft annual events and his presence will certainly be missed.  He is sticking to his word and honoring the commitment of devoting time and money to philanthropy for good causes.  It’s an honor to have worked at Microsoft in some of the years he was still actively involved and the world is lucky to have him focused on the causes that will drive him in this next phase of his life.

Safe Journeys, Bill.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with next. 

Google Browser Sync

What a cool technology that is.  Big Brother Google is watching and gleaning information, sure.

But what a great tool that is – sync Firefox between not only different computers, but Windows, Linux and OS X.  Now we're talking.

I'm sure many of you know about it, but I just found it today and I DO use OS X, Windows and Ubuntu Linux on a daily basis – what a great time saver!!

Check it out:   http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/

Brain Age getting new users

An odd thing happened this weekend.  My wife asked me about the Nintendo DS.  Actually, she asked me about "That Brain Age game".  So, as my jaw dropped to the floor, I managed to ask her how she'd heard about it.  She said she had read about it or heard about in one of her regular magazines or a news show.

Now, most of her media consumption consists of US and People for wasting time while blow drying her hair, NBC's Today Show while drinking her coffee and Radio Margaritaville on Sirius while driving.  So Nintendo must be doing something really right in their quest to get new gamers to buy their products.  Did I mention that she's addicted now to Brain Age and that she's playing Sudoku? 

BTW, I hadn't even heard much about the DS until she brought it up, so I quickly found out that the DS Lite was launching and got one on Sunday.  I have also since discovered that the Homebrew crowd is creating some cool programs for the WiFi enabled DS.  Now I just need a streaming audio application to grab the Media Center Connect feed from XP and we've got a portable media player, too.  hehe

So, kudos Nintendo!  You're getting new users – in fact, Brain Age is so cool, we may have to get another DS Lite because I haven't been able to get my hands on our current one since Sunday afternoon… 

Xbox 360 and MCE update

Quick update – I noticed that several people have been reading the site – especially on the Xbox 360, even with the long delay in posts, so I thought I would post an update on the performance so far.

The WAF(Wife Acceptance Factor) is HUGE! The 360 is housed inside a totally enclosed cabinet, connected with optical cables to my Yamaha reciever and through Component to a Sharp LCD flat panel hanging above the fireplace. In order to keep everything hidden I got a Logitech Harmony 890 – it uses RF to transmit to an IR repeater and so I can control everything with one remote while keeping everything hidden. The 890 is working well even though I had read some reviews saying others had problems – I must have lucked out and gotten updated firmware that stopped lockups and other issues.

I love having '24' in all it's HD glory recorded and being able to be displayed in either room. Not to mention the fact that all of our music and photos are fun to have on during parties – people always ask how they can do the same thing.

Well, off to hang out with the wife..

Back in Action!

Yikes! Long time out of the loop!!!

Well, hopefully that won't happen again – lot's to catch up on, but a quick note on my former employer, Microsoft.

Robert Scoble leaving the company is a big psychological blow! – the employees read his blog and when he was in Minneapolis I know a couple who personnally attended a geekdinner. Combine that with stock priced near $21.50 and I am not sad to have left, but I am very sad for the company.

As a commentor on http://www.seekingalpha.com mentioned, Fire Ballmer! – He's a sales guy. If you want strategy and ideas, get a technical guy in charge or put someone who has good marketing vision. Sales guys get things handed to them and they get a quota and they get told what mountain to go conquer with no resources. If not firing, PLEASE put him back in charge of World-Wide Sales! Kevin Johnson would be a great successor – he's been through all parts of the company(he actually directed Premier Support for awhile, imagine that), but I often wonder where the idea people are – maybe Ray Ozzie would be a good choice, too.

Well, off to relax for the evening, more to come, I promise!

Shopping with the boy

So, I took my son, seven months old, on his first trip to the computer store – Micro Center to be exact.

We were returning the Linksys High Gain antenna I bought as a last-ditch effort since it doesn’t work with their 802.11a routers.

So, after all the wireless and powerline networking devices tried in an attempt to connect the Xbox 360 to the Media Center without running wire, I finally gave up and bought a Cat 6 line and ran it through the house – thank goodness for cold air returns.

After spending a day with the boy watching ol’ dad pull fish tape through the walls and saying “ear muffs” often, I finally got the coveted HD-compatible full set of signal bars.

On to the next project. And now I can say, bring on the need for Gbe. Wireless – Bah, humbug…

XE104 a bust

Well, the Powerline product connected as advertised – no hassles there. It transferred data and connected to Xbox Live at a much higher rate than the 802.11a Linksys WRT55AG I have(which is getting RMA’d, so we’ll see what happens with that).

Then, I tried to connect to Media Center. Nothing, nada, zero. Apparently they can’t see SSDP broadcast packets or delay them enough that the MCE and Xbox 360 never get connected. It’s unfortunate, because these are otherwise great devices – the speed isn’t as much as advertised and signal drops off FAST – go more than 30 feet and you’ll be down in the 30-40MBps range. Any more distance than that and you’ll be hitting the 20s.

So, if they fixed the problem with the broadcast packets, all would be well – very impressive speed and performance – but back they are going to Amazon today.

So, be WARNED! – I have tested these with Xbox 360 and they DO NOT work with Media Center Extender functionality. But, if you are just connecting to Xbox Live, you should be OK.

XE104, I hardly knew ya…

Netgear XE104

Well, now that the Cisco has been working well for 2 weeks – no lost Vonage calls and the wireless router seems to be able to keep up, it’s time to optimize the network infrastructure for HD transmission between the Media Center and Xbox 360.

 Wireless is working great for songs from MCE to Xbox 360, but HD content isn’t getting the required 22MBps from my 802.11a router(Linksys WRT55AG).  I investigated several items – wiring the house is not an option with the current setup – it would be a total nightmare and not worth the expense if I can figure a way out around it. 

 Enter the new Netgear XE104, based on HomePlug Turbo (85MBps spec, probably 25MBps sustained throughput from what I’ve read). http://www.netgear.com/products/details/XE104.php

I have two on the way and they will hopefully help me avoid re-wiring the house.  HomePlug will become relevant, IMHO, to a lot more people when HomePlug AV products come out – 200MBps spec, no wireless style issues of dropouts or deadspots. 

Since I only have one MC Extender, that’s what I’ll test first and post how my experience goes.