Gillian Carson talks about vacation time on the Amigo blog:

'A holiday is a time for thinking, for relaxing your mind, for drinking beer and laughing and... for having ideas. The last time we went on holiday we came up with the idea for Carson Workshops, so I have great faith in letting your brain run free.'

I agree. Late last night I was working on a problem, something I had been struggling with in my spare time for a couple of weeks. I went back and forth between staring at an empty text editor and reading NetNewsWire. In other words, wasting time. I went out after midnight to get some milk and food for breakfast, and on the drive to the store I let my mind wander until my brain randomly struck upon an elegant solution to my coding problem. Back at my desk I implemented it in 10 lines of code and went to bed.

Have a happy July 4th everyone.

• Well I don’t but Flatpack Brighton does (if you’re local that is). I think there is universal agreement that going to Ikea is both a tortuous and torturous experience, and testiment to that is the very existence of a successful business created to circumvent that pain.

  And where does that pain stem from? An hour’s painful journey along the M25 to Lakeside or up the A23 to Croydon. A store packed with family outings (shall we go to the zoo, kids? No let’s go to Ikea). Riots. Traipsing around the labyrinthine displays. Hours lost hunting for furniture not in stock. Further hours spent queuing. Being charged to use a credit card. The ridiculous delivery fees (when you find you’ve bought too much for the boot). The hour’s journey back home. That’s before you have to build the things. And above all, you just get the impression that Ikea doesn’t care.

  I haven’t been for years, and have little intention of going again, but the pain is still fresh.

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We have posted 5 new samples to the Developer Center:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/biztalk/downloads/samples/default.aspx

SSO as Configuration Store
This sample provides an implementation of a sample class and a walkthrough that demonstrates how to use the SSO administrative utility and the SSOApplicationConfig command-line tool.    

Atomic Transactions with COM+ Serviced Components in Orchestrations
This sample demonstrates how atomic transactions work in orchestrations.    

Exception Handling in Orchestrations
This sample demonstrates how to handle exceptions in an orchestration.    

Implementing Scatter and Gather Pattern
This sample demonstrates how to implement the Scatter and Gather pattern using BizTalk Orchestration Designer.    

Using the SQL Adapter with Atomic Transactions in Orchestrations
This sample shows how to use the SQL adapter with atomic transactions to keep databases consistent.

• Log every usage automatically
• Ask the person to log every usage that fits certain criteria ('beeper study' or 'diary study') and then go back and revisit those examples and ask about them
• Sit with the person and ask for a guided tour of how they use some aspect of flickr
• Sit with the person and ask them to show you various features - including their impressions of things they may not use regularly, or ever
• Sit with the person and ask about flickr ('show me how you would do X....') but probe on analogous examples that they could show you (Q: Show me your contacts on flickr A: They're pretty basic, like this Q: Do you use other sites or programs where you have a list of contacts? A: Yeah, I'm way into LinkedIn Q: Okay let's take a look at that, then....)
• Show the person some simplified or storyboarded idealized version of flickr, or of a generic application, and have them walk you through how they would solve some kind of problem

Daily Innovation, Ministry Insights, and Thoughts from Todd Rhoades for Pastors and Church Leaders.http://www.MondayMorningInsight.com

• The latest posts in that category
• Reviews of related books and other resources
• Related posts from the new forums, which also run on EE. This function took some custom code, and another EE weblog was used to store the relationships between the weblog categories and forum categories.

Uninnovate.com hasan interestingarticle on Apple's new support of 'Reverse syncing' of content with the iTunes7 release yesterday:

Today, Apple released iTunes 7.0,among otherthings. In earlier versions of iTunes, Apple didits best to prevent users from being able to copy music from an iPod back to adesktop computer. Now, Apple has changed course and is marketing “ReverseSyncing” as a new feature of iTunes 7.

But there is one giant catch:

1. Music and media not purchased from the iTunes store only syncs one way, fromyour computer to your iPod.

This is uninnovation in its most frustrating form. It’s easy to spot and avoid drm-saturatedjunk, but these kinds of subtle limitations in an otherwise great product frustrateusers and drive them to alternative applications.How about trusting the user enough to let them get at their own files without thesechildish restrictions?

WMP11 added reverse filetransfer support back in March which works with purchased, and clear content.(It’s also had album art matching in WMP9, dramatically improved in WMP11). I thinkthe author is being a bit overzealous however in his claim of “uninnovation”- it'salways been easy to transfer music off your iPod, it's just a little hidden. Here it’s a little less hidden.

I’ve seen lots of chatter on iTV - Apple's Media Center Extender-esque device forstreaming video to the living room.  It feels like we’ve been here before. LongZheng at istartedsomething.com hasa good recap of the relative strengths and weaknesses of products in this space.  It seems a bit odd that Apple would break from long-time tradition and givea 'sneak preview' of a product that won't be available for at least Q1 '07, particularlywhen they could have held the announce to availability around MacWorld in January.It's clear they had to do this to try and spur purchase of movies from theirnew store- with no rental model, people just don't want to buy movies towatch on their portable players. Tell them they'll be able to play it in other placesas well around the home and their likelihood of purchase is higher.  It’s the battleof cognitive dissonance - buyer's remorse. After all, you're already dealing withthe psychological barrier in that the user is buying an intangible good, somethingwithout physical form that perceptually has less value than physical media such asDVDs. But... you're going to charge about the same as a physical DVD. Without theBonus DVD content.  Oh and the 640x480 video quality people are downloading isgoing to be between VHS and DVD quality (which offers 720x480p).  Never mindthat it will be potentially less for letterboxed content since the new iPod doesn'tsupport 16:9 (widescreen) display.  In the time it will take most customersto download one of these movies, I could have gone to the store, bought the DVD, popcorn,a 6-pack of Coke, dinner, come home, cooked dinner, and be ready to watch. Ina rental model, all of these issues can be forgiven for immediate gratification anda lower price, as witnessed by the popularity of Video On Demand and InDemand services.

The challenges in streaming TV from the PC aren't just the hypothesized need for higherspeed wireless (802.11n) which should be provisionally approved in early 2007. This might be delaying their launch, but streaming 640x480 video across the home hasbeen possible with Media Center Extender for just about two years now.  A challengeis going to be convincing consumers to buy and set up yet another single-purpose devicein the living room, another remote, another input on the TV for this thing.

Today, you can get an Xbox 360 that includesMedia Center Extender at no additional cost. Over 16 million Media Centercustomers can use this today, no additional charge. Even if you don’t have a TV tunerin your PC, you can connect a USB tuner and record TV or HDTV (OTA today, DigitalCable with equipped PCs with Vista). No additional fees.  As announced at CESlast year, multiple HDTV manufacturers are putting Media Center extender into theirdesigns, something that costs less than a night at the movies to implement.

As for another box in the living room, the Xbox 360 does HD gaming, DVD/HD-DVD Playback,Music, Photos, Video, TV/HDTV playback, runs rich media apps from a multitude of providers,and delivers an increasing amount of media content via Xbox Live, including HD.  And it's going to get significantly better with WindowsVista Premium's Media Center features – automatically updating your Xbox 360 tosupport in the family room with the same level of animation and experience. 

Either way, a saying comes to mind: “A rising tide raises all boats” and for thatI welcome Apple's foray.  But if Apple's iTV costs the same as an Xbox, offers nothing more than a 'simplified remote' and fewer mainstream features whichreally makes more sense when competing for  consumer dollars outside the Job'sfaithful?  With Sony and Nintendo's Wii also vying for that same space, it'sabout to get a bit more crowded. Or perhaps just noisy.  So begins the 'Great FamilyRoom Battle of 2007'.

(Disclaimer: I used to work on Media Center, but haven't for over a year, andspeak only for myself.)

Interoperability and DRM Are Mutually Exclusive: The music industry’s insistence upon DRM iswhat put the ITMS in the position that Apple now enjoys; the recordindustry is decrying a lock-in advantage that they themselves handedto Apple. (Via Daring Fireball.)

This article is a good start, but it gives too much credit to the music industry. They are not just misguided about the impossibility of interoperable DRM. Anyone with a clue has understood this since the original interoperable DRM efforts collapsed circa 2000. Some music industry executives may still lack a clue, but they do not have much incentive to learn because the central issue for them is not interoperability, but control. Attacking Apple here (like the publishers attacking Google, or the telecoms attacking net neutrality) is misdirection covering up that issue. The major labels don't really care that one DRM system dominates the market, they only care that the system is not theirs to do as they please, for example in introducing variable per-track pricing (shades of the telecoms and net neutrality).

I rarely buy from iTMS because I dislike its tying down to particular machines and lower quality than what I get by buying CDs and ripping them at a custom AAC rate. Not to mention the pleasure of walking down to my locally-owned record store and browsing their well-chosen new arrivals (last month's purchases):

• Trio Beyond (Jack de Johnette, Larry Goldings, John Scofield): Saudades
• John Coltrane: Soultrane
• Marc Johnson: Shades of Jade
• Louis Mhlanga: World Traveler
• Boards of Canada: Trans Canada Highway
• Thelonious Monk: The Classic Quartet
• Vijay Iyer and Rudesh Mahanthappa: Raw Materials
• Andrey Dergatchev: The Return (soundtrack of the intense, beautiful movie by Andrey Zvyagintsev)
• Christian McBride: Live at Tonic

• Waterfall Software - Typeset
  

  

  Typeset lets you preview, search, and organize your font collection so that you can always find the right style for a project on your Mac.

  Tags: type, fonts, typography, software, macintosh, mac

• Waterfall Software - Wallet
  

  

  store and organize passwords, serial numbers, credit cards

  Tags: software, macintosh, mac, wallet

This term has come to the fore in the USA and elsewhere in recent months largely as a result of hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and the Gulf coast last August. The concept is that buildings should be designed so that they can survive the loss of essential services—electricity, piped water, sewerage—in the event of a natural disaster.

It grew out of a post-hurricane reconstruction conference held in Atlanta in November 2005. This led to a set of proposals with the title The New Orleans Principles. One of these states, “Provide for passive survivability: Homes, schools, public buildings, and neighborhoods should be designed and built or rebuilt to serve as livable refuges in the event of crisis or breakdown of energy, water, and sewer systems”. Techniques include many that are also advocated by green campaigners: use natural ventilation, heavily insulate buildings against heat loss, use natural daylight, collect and store rainwater, install solar electricity generation, and so on.

Advocates point to the risk of terrorism that might lead to similar losses of public services. They also argue that possible shortages of fuel in decades to come will require buildings to use much less energy than they do now.

* Guardian, 20 Jun. 2006: There is now talk among some enlightened architects of incorporating “passive survivability” into their designs—the ability of a building to operate on its own should systems such as water and electricity ever fail by, for example, using better “thermal envelopes”, natural daylighting and rainwater storage.

* HPAC Engineering, Jan. 2006: Passive-survivability measures are so important that it may make sense to incorporate them into building codes. Most, but not all, passive-survivability features will add some cost to a building, so the impact on affordability needs to be considered if such measures are to be required by code.
read more:

Ten for February 22^nd

1. Crooked Fingers - Dignity & Shame  I think Crooked Fingers is the only band with multiple releases where I own every single one of their albums. Well, except for this one - I haven't had a chance to pick it up yet. Mark preordered and got an autographed copy. They play KEXP today. Stream the disc on the Merge site.
   
   
2. Enon - Lost Marbles and Exploded Evidence  Touch and Go's got a classy new website. They've got an MP3.
   
   
3. Jeff Hanson  Out on Kill Rock Stars. They've got an MP3.
   
   
4. Ida - Heart Like A River  Is Ida a Providence band? That's been confusing me lately. Their new disc is out on Polyvinyl. They've got an MP3.
   
   
5. Iron And Wine - Woman King  Check out Joe's review on 75 or Less. There's an MP3.
   
   
6. I ♥ Huckabees  
   
   
7. Karate - In The Fishtank  I had no idea this was being released. A nice suprise.
   
   
8. Mogwai - Government Commisions  Their live BBC material from the past few years.
   
   
9. Robbers On High Street - Tree City  
   
   
10. M. Ward - Transistor Radio  I've only heard a few tracks from the radio, but they were CRAZY good. Once again, you can stream the disc on Merge's site.

WSJ: Free, Legal and Ignored. The subhead says it all: Colleges Offer Music Downloads, But Their Students Just Say No; Too Many Strings Attached. The article is about the unsurprising-to-anyone-except-Napster miserable failure of subscription based music services to take hold in universities. Compared to the complicated barrage of restrictions on the music offered by Napster, the students come across as models of common sense:

• While Cornell's online music program, through Napster, gave him and other students free, legal downloads, the email introducing the service explained that students could keep their songs only until they graduated. "After I read that, I decided I didn't want to even try it," says Mr. Petrigh, who will be a senior in the fall...
• Purdue University officials say that lower-than-expected demand among its students stems in part from all the frustrating restrictions that accompany legal downloading. Students at the West Lafayette, Ind., school can play songs free on their laptops but have to pay to burn songs onto CDs or load them onto a digital music device.
• "People still want to have a music collection. Music listeners like owning their music, not renting," says Bill Goodwin, 21, who graduated in May from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. USC decided last year that it was finished with Napster after fewer than 500 students signed up...

There’s also a telling quotation from the director of the Campus Computing Project, who says, “The RIAA’s push to buy into these services strikes me as protection money. Buy in and we’ll protect you from our lawsuits,” which is one of the kinder descriptions of the unfriendliness of the industry that I’ve read lately.

I’m still waiting for someone in the industry to wake up and understand that their path to profitability lies in supporting good music and making their rich back catalogs available, not in fighting the fans of music tooth and nail. Today, three years after the birth of the iTunes Music Store, there are still many albums and tracks that can’t be found anywhere online—some by major artists (just try tracking down any non-album Sting tracks from before the late 90s), some by minor artists on major labels (Annabouboula, anyone?), and some by great cultural figures (I’d gladly pay through the nose for access to e.e. cummings’s Six Nonlectures as digital files, or even on CD). Instead we get American Idol and Rock Star. What, no one ever told these guys that a steady diet of candy can kill you?

BTW, for a good counterexample, check out Verve’s deep catalog—including a bunch of rare Impulse! recordings—though they don’t quite get it right; they support both iTunes and Windows Media, but no DRM-free offerings. But at least they’re opening up their catalog.

I've always owned Canon cameras and was looking around for a new small digital camera and decided on the Canon SD500.  I haven't had a small camera for a few years - the last being a Canon S100 (the original digital Elph/Ixus) which I enjoyed using.  My goal with this camera is to be a companion to my digital SLR mainly for use when carrying the SLR isn't practical, so this is more of a backup camera.

First, the basics.  The SD500 is small.  It's about the size of a deck of cards.  Small doesn't mean featureless though, it has a resolution of 7.1 megapixels and a 3x optical zoom.  Storage is via an SD card.

What's in the box?  Just the basics that you would expect, a USB cable, battery and an A/V cable.  There isn't an included cases which is a shame as the camera looks like it could get scratched easily and it would be nice to have something to protect the large LCD on the back of the camera.  Canon do sell an accessory kit though which is highly recommended as it includes a case and a battery which can often be purchased for less than the cost of the battery.

Canon include a 32 megabyte SD card with the camera which will store just 9 photos at the highest resolution and quality. A 1 gigabyte card will hold about 360 images.

The camera is pretty easy to use with an intuitive menu system operated with the buttons on the back of the camera.  When turning the camera on you'll be greeted with an irritating noise from the internal speaker, thankfully this can easily be disabled in the customization menus, which also allow you to change the noise made when a photo is taken (a shutter sound is just fine thank you) and the background picture displayed when turning the camera on - not a feature I'd ever care about.  Startup time is good, the camera is ready to be used almost straight away, which wasn't the case for earlier models.  The LCD displays is large and bright and gives a good impression of the final output of a photo.

The camera has a 3x optical zoom and a digital zoom which much to my surprise was disabled by default on the camera.  I've never been a fan of digital zoom and it's nice to see Canon encouraging people not to use it by disabling it by default.  It's far better to zoom and crop on a computer than it is on the camera.

Picture quality is impressive so far.  I haven't taken many pictures yet, but I have no complaints with the output.  The camera supports USB2.0 so transfers to a computer are nice and fast - just as well with the size of the files produced.

There are a few features I want to also mention:

Stitch assist mode.  This is a great feature.  When activated the camera gives you the option of taking photos from left to right or right to left; after the first photo is taken the result is shown on the LCD display, but shrunk so you can frame your next shot against the previous shot. The camera does not attempt to stitch the photos together for you, but guides you so that you can see what you've taken so far and don't miss part of the panorama you are shooting. 

Scene assist mode.  There are a number of presets pre-programmed with general styles of photo such as 'night' 'portrait' etc.  The camera adjusts the settings automatically to be the best for that style of shot.  Useful for quick photos that you don't have time to manual configure settings.

That's it for my first thoughts; I'll post some more once I've used it a bit more. 

I have learned a lot during the last two weeks while visiting six countries. One of the most interesting days began with a flight from Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg to Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. The Russian airports could use some upgrading of services, shopping facilities, and direction signs in English, but they are said to be quite safe. Boarding the Ilyushin-86 aircraft was an experience. Like many European airports, the first step is to ride on a bus across the tarmac to the plane. What was different was the entry -- it started by going up steps into the belly of the plane where luggage is stored. From the storage area a stairway led to the main cabin where there were approximately 350 seats arranged in three sets of three per row.

The Il-86 development was announced at the 1971 Paris Airshow and the wide-body entered service in late 1980. This particular IL-86 was showing it's age and may easily have been twenty-five years old. The interior of the plane and the uniforms of the flight attendants were outdated but the service was efficient and friendly. The four Kuznetsov NK86 turbofan jet engines lifted the plane to cruising altitude very quickly for the one hour trip. The flight to Moscow and the return to St. Petersburg both left on time and arrived at the destination on time.

The afternoon at the Kremlin far exceeded my expectations. Kremlin means "fortress" in Russian and generally refers to any major fortified central complex in Russian cities. The one we visited is the best known one, the Moscow Kremlin, where the Russian government is based and where the President of Russia lives.

Standing in the center of Red Square was a real treat with spectacular sights in every direction. Saint Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin towers are majestic and incredibly colorful. The Red square separates the Kremlin from an historic merchant quarter and the major streets of Moscow radiate from the square in all directions. The square is steeped in centuries of history. I don't recall the famous events that took place there in 1941 and 1945 nor the establishment of Lenin's Mausoleum, but I do remember when a German pilot named Mathias Rust landed a rented Cessna 172 on Vasilevski Spusk next to the Red Square in 1987. On the eastern side of the square is the spectacular GUM department store which in addition to shops offering all the top retailing brands of the world had dedicated the first floor of huge open ceiling building to the inventions of Leonardo Da Vinci. It would have been easy to spend a whole day there.

Following a one-hour tour of the Kremlin art galleries -- which rival the Vatican Library in Rome -- we had a traditional Russian dinner, complete with vodka, and then a return flight to St. Petersburg. We got back to the ship after midnight. It was a day I will never forget.More on the rest of the trip to follow.

Following Nakamura-san at the Business Leadership Forum would not be easy but Sunil Bharti Mittal, CEO of Bharti TeleVentures Limited had quite an amazing story to tell. Bharti is India's leading mobile operator and one of the top five companies in India. Revenue per month per person has shrunk from $30 to $8 and he believes it will go to $3-$4. The good news is that the number of users has gone from 2 million to 90 million. India is a huge consumption economy because there are so  many young people -- 50% are under 25. He expects mobile phone users to grow from 90 million to 300+ million by 2009-2010 and his strategy to address the market has been to give away everything except the customer ; i.e. outsource everything except the customer relationship. IT was outsourced to IBM -- a $1 billion contract. Networking was outsourced to Nokia & Ericsson. Call centers were outsourced to an IBM joint venture in India. Mr. Mittal said their growth (1 million new customers per month) could not be achieved without having outsourced to top partners. Complete alignment is achieved and the business model becomes predictable. Innovation in many areas including "Lifetime Validity" where incoming calls are free to customers for life. The theory is simple, if people receive a lot of free inbound calls, they will eventually *make* calls, which are not free. His goal is for his many partners to be happy -- not to laugh but to smile. He hopes to grow from 7 billion minutes per month to 20 billion.  

Mr. Yang Mingsheng, President and CEO of the Agricultural Bank of China, was the only speaker who did use English but the simultaneous translation to Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, German, and English allowed all of us to hear what he had to say -- which was a lot. The bank has 500,000 employees and 28,000 branch offices. Although I could not understand a word of what he was saying without the headphones, I could tell that the speaker was very articulate, enthusiastic, and confident. 95% of all bank services are available online. The bank has 400 million depositors, 12.4 million outstanding loans, and 220 million credit cards issued. They have introduced many e-banking and mobile products to their customers. This is being done by centralizing IT infrastructure. Mr. Mingsheng is both a ceo and a member of government. For hobbies he writes poetry and plays the violin. His speech covered every aspect of consumer and business banking services. I don't think a similar presentation by Citigroup or JP Morgan Chase would much if anything that ABC isn't also doing. 

Pierluigi Bernasconi, CEO of an Italian electronics retailer called MediaMarket. The company is the No. 1 consumer electronics retailer in Europe with 66 stores in Italy, more than 500 stores in more than a dozen European countries, and a new web-based business in Germany. One of their stores is the largest in the world -- it has six floors of consumer electronics products. Steady growth over the past decade has taken them from $4 to $16 billion. They have taken an innovative business model approach whereby they have two different store brands (MediaMarket and Saturn) that compete with each other. They believe that "self competition" results in better service and price to the consumer. Fifty million people per month spend time in one of their stores.  Mr. Bernasconi described an intensely competitive environment in Italy from 4,000 photography shops, 6,000 telephone stores, e-retail sites, hyperStores, and in the future new channels such as Digital Terrestrial TV.  In spite of this the company continuously outperforms the competition and gains market share. They have been using the web for sales and communications since 1995. Utilizing advanced IT the company has integrated all their distribution channels. They believe that communication is key and will result in customers thinking of MediaMarket or Saturn as the first choice as a place to get information and subsequently purchase. Their strategy is to exploit multi-channel strategies -- tying together so a person can call from land line or mobile, surf via the web  connect via digital terrestrial set top box, or visit in person and all the experiences are recognized and tracked.  

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