Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

So I finally caved and decided to try out the always on instant status craze. Now I pretty much update my Live Messenger PSM all the time, especially when my Now Playing is turned on. However, I used to only update Facebook once in a while. Never updated MySpace. That was it, I didn’t (and still don’t really) care about any of the other sites, which frankly seem like a fad.

Like I said, I caved, logged into my Twitter account that I apparently opened a year ago, set it up so that Facebook and Twitter would communicate. Then I added the Messenger application to Facebook so those two could talk. I then updated my status in the Live Messenger dogfood, saw it updated Facebook and was amused, but looking at Twitter… saw nothing. How very lame.

Then I remembered reading this article on TechCrunch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/31/pingfm-centralizes-status-updates-but-is-it-enough/

Hoping that maybe, possibly, someone would’ve managed to have the services in place to spread a status message across all services regardless of origin. This concept while simple and something that has been touted as the future for some time still eludes us… None the less within 30 seconds I was registered at HelloTxt, yet another website with yet another login to manage.

I then gave my login details to the 4 other social services that I have accounts with. This seems odd considering how much phishing is going on. Heck I bet there’s a lot of money and data to be had if someone were to create a cute Web 2.0 site that gathered account data like HelloTxt does then just sell it to the highest bidder.

After some additional reading and browsing I found this blog which discusses differences between HelloTxt and Ping.fm:
http://masontechbeat.blogspot.com/2008/07/title-fight-pingfm-vs-hellotxt.html

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for this reinvigorated interest in the web, if anything it seems geek is now chic, can’t go wrong there. But seriously? How on Earth do the 21 networks that HelloTxt communicates with manage to attract and keep users using their services? What value do any of them really have or add? Where’s all this VC coming from and can I have some please?

Now the point of all this is that it seems like there’s a lot of cool stuff going on, but the key issue to really making everything work is a central service for which all services communicate. There’s no central standard like RSS to make it all take off. In my mind all it’s going to take is Google, Yahoo, Facebook, or whoever to release a true framework that will be the platform for future services to grow. Google seems like the obvious candidate here with their ad platform and fingers dipped into everything you can think of.

It would seem like now is the prime time to make a move leverage the hundreds of millions of Live Hotmail and Messenger users and create an open platform for these Personal Status Message(PSM) sites to communicate. I’m sure that most people already have a Live ID so that won’t even be a major caveat. I tried finding a plugin for HelloTxt or Twitter for Messenger, the best I could find was this:
http://www.msgplus.com/scripts/search/?q=twitter
Sadly this will only update Twitter and since HelloTxt doesn’t seem to pull from Twitter the rest of the sites I’m on won’t get updated. FAIL.

If Microsoft has 300 million active Live Messenger users there must be at least half a billion or more PSM’s set every day. I’m going to guess if Microsoft had the open platform it would get used. Update your status on Windows Live, have it updated everywhere. Simple concept. This seems like a much better use of resources than changing bitmaps, adding more winks, and confusing users with design changes. Microsoft has Live Spaces, Live Messenger, and Live Mobile, what more is needed? Not to mention the close ties with Facebook. That’s a pretty fine start imho. Get tied to Twitter build some momentum and you’ve got the workings for real added value to Windows Live.

Now considering my PSM in Live Messenger doesn’t update my status on Zune or Xbox despite using the same Live ID. I’m just a little nervous that Microsoft may be latecomer to the conversation it should have started. Are there any conversations going on like this in Windows Live right now?

We shall see…

Went to refresh my camera equipment listing on Expo and instead got this...   

Windows Live Expo will discontinue service on 31 July 2008. In preparation, the following features are no longer available:

• Create a new account.
• Post a new listing.
• Extend a listing.
• Upgrade a listing to a premium listing.

All current listings will remain on expo.live.com until they expire.

We thank you for your patronage and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
-The Windows Live Expo Team

Annoying, but not too unexpected. I've never actually seen anyone use Expo outside of the Seattle/Redmond area. Oh well. Back to Craigslist. Unless of course Microsoft buys them out and does a redirect :).

This is a fairly common problem which leaves a lot of users scratching their heads as to how to just make things work. There are a couple reasons one would encounter this. The most common is because an application or process still has the file open (technically it's called a 'handle to the file'). Another possibility would be if the permissions on the file you were trying to delete were invalid. Without getting too in depth into the how and why there are two quick things to check on when trying to get around the problem.

I'll go over the first reason in this post. In the Windows SysInternals suite, there is a tool called Process Explorer, which is an amazingly powerful app. It will allow you to view what's going on behind the scenes of most everything running on the system. Just doing quick search will show just how powerful this tool is. For this issue though, what we'll do is find any open handles on the file we're trying to access and delete.

1. First, start Process Explorer.
2. Press CTRL+F to open a search window.
3. In the 'Handle or DLL substring' field type in a portion or the complete name of the file you are trying to delete and press Enter to begin the search. In my case the file was "08 mer du japon.mp3".
4. You should now be presented with a list of open handles. Next double click on the handle in the search window to show the file handle highlighted in the lower pane along with all the other open handles on the system.
5. Right click the row for the handle and click Close Handle.
6. You should now be good to go.

In this particular case it would seem the handle to the .MP3 file wasn't properly closed by Windows Media Player despite it having finished playing and updating the metadata. Because of this I was unable to move the album folder. By using Process Explorer I was able to find the culprit and close down the handle which allowed Vista full access to move the file and folder. There are some other third-party tools available as well as other tips and ways of doing the same thing. However, I highly recommend the method I just described, as using and further exploring Process Explorer and the other tools available in the SysInternals suite of applications will allow you to gain a much greater understanding of your system.

This, combined with a few good search queries, a deep curiosity through Wikipedia, and the Microsoft Knowledge Base will help turn any enthusiast into a real power user. Check back shortly for part two where I discuss how to take back ownership of your files and folders through permissions in Windows Vista and Server 2008.

Well it's crazy how quickly things can change. Only two months have gone by since I wrote about the so called quarter life crisis that I feel I've been going through. In that time I've sat and thought, a lot, and I've still not really come to a firm gut feeling on the subject. Maybe I'm not supposed to and that's the entire purpose in life anyway.

One hundred day breaks which Microsoft contractors are required to take after a year of gracious service have become a total love hate thing for me. I love that it's like a paid vacation sort of. I hate the struggle to pay bills. I love that I can get stuff done. I hate that I don't get enough done. I love the time to relax and think. I hate that after that's done I can get bored. I've heard full time employees (FTE) that go to contracting praise the decision as the best thing since MSFT's closing price xmas '99. Meanwhile contractors, myself included, can complain like mad knowing the income and benefits could be better plus for some there's always the hope a FTE position will open up.

With that said, I guess I've not felt one way or the other about the direction I've been taking lately. The best I can do is just go with the flow like always, kick back relax, and just do whatever my gut says is right for me in this moment.

On January 3rd from noon till around 3:45pm I let God roll those cosmic dice as I entered into my interviews for a FTE position at Microsoft (yeah that sounds ominous doesn't it). First off, I was expecting the interviews to last a lot longer, I've done a full 8 hour interview at both Apple and Microsoft before, so this seemed short. The questions all felt straight forward and I think I did an okay job of staying relaxed and actually enjoy the entire process. Since really it should be enjoyed and experienced so that regeardless of outcome I can learn from it. Oh and it certainly helped I had a 40oz water bottle filled and refilled, water == moist mouth and calmness. Though, I will say, it's a good thing I had a chance to use the loo. One thing that did stick in my mind is that early on I was asked what my 1, 5, 10 year plan was. Geez, what an open question, you want to give your honest answer but want to make sure the answer you give gets you the job as well. How to word it, how to make it right. Then later, in my closing interview I was asked if I wanted to revise my answer since I've had some time to think about it. Well crap, was this a chance to correct an answer they weren't quite looking for? Who knows. Maybe I'll get to ask at some point. But the point I was going to make was that when this question was asked twice I didn't even really think about my previous post or thoughts regarding all that. Maybe my brain just kicked in and without consciously realizing it I verbalized exactly how I felt about my next 1, 5, and 10 years. I really don't know about the next 10 years, seems impossible for me to visualize at this point in life. I have an idea of where I'd like to be so long as I continue down the road I'm now. So yeah, I'll go with that for now.

Five days later I got a voice mail that started my neurons firing with analysis a couple hours after that I got a reply to my email. Just like that at 2:56pm, definite direction... Interviews went well and I was being offered the position. Like my original offer to come up and work with the eHome team, I think I took about 14 seconds to make a decision. Two days later I got everything in writing and finished up my side of the paperwork. Right now I'm just waiting for the 28th to come by and the real stuff to kick in then.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess after I've settled, I'll feel like the entire experience, and the 13 years leading up to this point is akin to falling in love. Or maybe that's just the romanticism coming out in me. What I'm trying to say is that it seems like so many things, like falling in love with the right person, is a struggle that has no end in sight. After that moment where everything clicks into place looking back in hindsight one might think, "well that wasn't so bad".

Maybe in 10 years I'll be doing something completely different, maybe I'll be completely embedded into the road I'm currently paving, who the hell knows. Right now I'm definitely feeling energized and have a renewed sense of enthusiasm about everything. Yeah, I'm still a cynic, but heck, maybe even that will change.

First, Jon points out the BSOD screenshot in OS X. And now tonight I notice the same music from a Zune viral used in an iPod ad during Heroes.

Even more amusing is the story behind the ad.

This is a common question on XP and even Vista. If you do a basic search with Google or Live you'll actually get mixed information with many people (including some Microsoft sources) saying that sharing of networked content is not possible. However let it be known that it is possible and this information is available directly from Microsoft's own sharing FAQ's.

If you want to share files in a monitored folder that is located on another computer (for example, a folder on a network share), the remote folder must have the appropriate Windows access permissions assigned to it and the computer that contains the library you want to share has remote content sharing enabled. You can enable remote content sharing by performing the following procedure on the computer that contains the library you are sharing.

1.	Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2.	In the registry tree (on the left), expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Microsoft, MediaPlayer, and then Preferences.
3.	Right-click HME, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4.	Type EnableRemoteContentSharing, and then press ENTER.
5.	Right-click EnableRemoteContentSharing, and then click Modify.
6.	In the Value data text box, type 1, and then click OK. If you later decide to disable remote content sharing, you can repeat this procedure and change the value to 0.

For more information, see Windows Media Player FAQ.

I should also note that typically you need to make sure that WMP is monitoring the network share via the UNC path so \\SERVER\Music, while you can certainly have the share mapped to a network drive this will cause issues in certain cases. So if you add M:\ for example, make sure WMP is monitoring and using \\SERVER\Music instead. Issues that come up include the networked content showing up on first use but not being able to play back, and after the machine starts the content not being up to date. For more info check out this post.

This is a mod I did a while ago. I randomly use 24-hour time and sometimes my brain just doesn't quite associate 20:05 as being 8:05pm and what not. Getting tired of figuring it out (yes I'm that lazy and don't want to subtract 12) and having a Skagen wristwatch (I rarely wear it now) that has both 12 and 24 on the face, I figured the Clock gadget in Vista should have a 24 hour face as well.

So click here to download it.
Note it is provided free without warranty or support.

I've been playing around with other ideas as well for new and modified gadgets so will post updates as they become available. Oh and while you're downloading the Cojugo 24 hour clock, also download the uTorrent Gadget... Works great, only thing missing it seems is the ability to set Labels for your torrents.

Jon ordered a new Microsoft LifeChat ZX-6000 from Amazon (using some major credit) which arrived today. There's little information about this headset, I didn't even really know it existed till he brought it up. So yeah, no real information about the base unit but we figured it was free credit so might as well try. Opened it up and sure enough the base unit reads Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver for Windows. Plug it in, Vista sees it, it doesn't find drivers, Jon downloads the drivers from Microsoft Hardware. Install takes a good 5 minutes for the 3MB setup, totally lame, especially on Vista. The headset worked perfectly, pressed the button and up came WLM8.1, we then tried pairing the Xbox 360 Wireless controller, it paired just fine as well. Then did a short Skype call after setting the input and output to echo123 and that also worked perfectly. So awesome, a good solution to kill two birds with one stone. Only caveat that I can see is that after testing with the Xbox 360 itself I can't find a way to pair the headset with the 360. Regardless considering the receiver is $20 normally getting a nice headset and a good way to do wireless calls with Skype is worth the $30.

It's been driving me nuts ever since I started using Vista but it's finally been fixed. Apparently not caused by Plus! Live for Messenger nor WLM 8.1 itself but some bad bits for the Microsoft wireless mouse I've got. The fix went up on Windows Update the other day and since then things have been fine. The KB article for the fix is amusing to me since it talks about the issue possibly being caused by CyberLink software. Cute since this is a clean install and nothing other than WLM and Office 2007 have been installed. Either way the "HID Non-User Input Data Filter" fixes the auto away status in Messenger. My power management for disabling the monitors after 15 minutes has worked fine and the update hasn't changed that. Jason Tsang also has a bit more information regarding the update.

I just got back from my local QFC/Starbucks and sadly that free Vista/T-Mobile Hotspot access wasn't working today though according to the Vista blog it should've been. I'm going to go back tomorrow and again on the 30th to test for sure. But apparently whatever new access site that should've gone live hasn't as the gateway page didn't look any different and there was nothing special that said, "hey look you're using Vista here's some free wifi". To verify things I logged in using another account and checked skysurprise.com. Nothing really special other than that very fine print that says starting from the 30th. So either the Vista blog is lying or T-Mobile are just getting lazy and waiting till the 30th.

So why bother walking the 400 yards or so to the Starbucks when I've got perfectly good WiFi at home. Well, Dom, Jon, and I all thought that they're probably be lazy and determine the Vistaness of any given laptop by just checking the user-agent. So I went with my Vista PC in hand with the user-agent set to spoof MSIE 6.0 and NT 5.1 thinking that even though I was running Vista it should think I'm running XP. If it worked then obviously running a XP machine and spoofing your user-agent to something like this:

Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+ MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+6.0; +SLCC1;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727;+Media+Center+PC+5.0;+.NET+CLR+3.0.04506;+InfoPath.2;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322)

Should also work to get you free acess on a XP machine because they've got no other way (other than to use some ActiveX control or client-side app) to determine whether the client is XP or Vista. I kinda doubt their hardware is going to be determining it. That would be too much work.

So anyway if any of you get bored just pop open regedt32 and go for it:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
"Version"="MSIE 7.0"
"Platform"="Windows NT 6.0"

I'm also curious if they'll be good and let Firefox on Vista users in for their free WiFi or if they'll have to spoof their user-agent as well.

UPDATE: Looks like Engadget got the same idea. However contrary to the earlier idea and what Engadget claim, just changing your user-agent doesn't get you free WiFi. It seems that a key is generated after you install the required tmobile.cab ActiveX control. When viewing the properties for this add-on you find that it's actually netdiag Class. Here's a little code snip from the accountLogon page:

<body onload="checkit()">
<object classid="clsid:A448E34F-EC78-4277-BDC5-DFA68C83C401" id="tmvista" codebase="https://service1.hotspot.t-mobile.com/vista/pages/tmobile.cab" ></object>

<script language="javascript">
<!--
 function checkit() {
  var result = tmvista.CheckSpeed('hardcd');
  window.location.replace("checkVista.jsp?ticket=" + result);
 }
-->
</script>

I'm a bit surprised they actually thought of the user-agent hack. But using an ActiveX control is a bit predictable. I've not had a chance to see what the tmobile.dll actually does.

All that being said. When you have your user-agent set to NT 5.1 (XP) it does indeed redirect you from the /vista page to an awareness page. If you switch to NT 6.0 and IE 7.0 you instead get redirected to this page to create your trial account. Once your trial account has been created you're then redirected back to the login page. After you login it sends you to a page to install the ActiveX control above. Once that is done it creates a ticket which is then passed to whatever proxy gateway they have which enables your untethered access to the Internet whether that be in Firefox or IE7. If you do not install the ActiveX control (say for example by spoofing in Firefox) you get a message like the following: "You are trying to log in with an operating system that is incompatible with your account. Please try again with the Windows Vista operating system installed on your laptop."

Now I'm going to guess that it's probably pretty easy to see what's going on with that ActiveX control and just pass your own ticket. But I'll leave that to someone else.

If you want to download the 655KB ActiveX control click here and have fun.

UPDATE: Again people this DOES NOT WORK. It's not a question of just downloading the ActiveX control it has to run and it has to pass on a Vista machine before T-Mobile allow you fully onto the Internet. Even if you switch your user-agent and create the trial account (which you can do on a Mac, PC, or Linux, and in IE or Firefox or whatever) by changing your user-agent to NT 6.0 and IE7.0 you still won't get onto the Internet until you validate your Vista install by installing the ActiveX control. Think of the Windows Genuine Advantage stuff on downloads.microsoft.com.

UPDATE: After talking to Jon and someone else who has far greater will than I (wtbw) for all things related to debugging and disassembling there are some more details to provide. From what can be seen it looks like the ActiveX control is simply using the value of  _time64 which is the number of seconds since midnight 1/1/1970 dividing that by 300 prefixing that string with hardcdPadded then making it a nice hex MD5 token for the /vista/pages/checkVista.jsp page.

It's possible that the ActiveX control is looking for the referral from TMO's own servers but it would be worth a shot to write a standalone app to do the above then send the request and token over to this page. You could do this from a web page however you'd have to host that locally since well, you can't really get to the net until you bypass the ActiveX control anyway. So a quick non-complete example in one line of semi C# would be:

System.Cryptography.Thingy.MD5Hash.HashThisThing("hardcdPadded" + (DateTime.Now.ToSeconds/300).ToString())

Obviously you'd want this to be cross platform or whatever. But I'll leave that to the reader...

Dom sent me this link to a Flash demo of Y! Messenger for Vista. Three things I notice right away:

1. It's got glass.
2. It's got tabs.
3. It makes use of the Sidebar.

I really don't get why the WLM team got lazy and didn't bother doing anything special for Vista with glass and the Sidebar, makes no sense considering the amount of time they knew they'd have before Vista shipped. I suppose they had other priorities though like adding more winks and other things that they can charge for.

Oh and the way Yahoo has done the tabs, from first impressions, they've got it down just right. Being able to drag and drop them seems really nice.

The last few times Jon and I have met with the MSN/WLM folks they seem to dislike the fact that so many people use Plus! Live despite the fact that many of the same people on those teams use the app themselves. Now what I don't understand is that if they were so against the add-on app then why don't they just start taking some of the features that clearly people want and add them in? It's like half the work has already been done. Features that if done would make me drop Plus! Live for WLM are:

1. Tabs
2. Logging that works as well as Plus, including an option for plain text.
3. Larger text buffer so I can send at least 1100 characters (and yes this isn't just a geek thing, my grandma likes to type whole letters out in IM form).

Finally get moving and implement glass! And as a final suggestion, never ever say "good suggestion, thanks" ever again.

So I just got done doing a second clean install on my main PC. This PC for the softies out there is pretty much identical to one of the systems used during the Media Center TakeHome Program. I had just clean installed yesterday morning because my last install was just odd, for example plugging in a SanDisk Micro into the USB and it would never be detected. Ditto with the USB hub / memory card reader on my Dell 2405FPW. Plus the fact that I kept getting blue screens 2 to 3 times a day was enough for me. I did a full memory test with extended 2 pass and verified the memory was fine but kept getting page errors and the like. Needless to say I just figured it was a lemon install so I installed yesterday.

When I reinstalled I kept the full 4GB of RAM in the system and I left the USB hub and SanDisk Micro plugged into the USB. Unfortunately after I finished installed neither of these devices were being detected. The BIOS still showed 4GB of RAM and Vista still showed 2.75GB of RAM usable (the usable RAM I know is normal). So then I set the PC to tripple mon. Then I installed WLM 8.1 beta. Then I restarted. Got back up and noticed an error report. Looking further I noticed I already had 43 to report! Still no USB hub showing up (even though the BIOS sees it fine), but the Micro finally shows up. So I try and format the device from Computer by right clicking then go to Format. The dialog window never appears, even after waiting 5 minutes. Frustrated I just shut the system down. Unplug both of the USB devices mentioned, pop open the system then I play around with the RAM, I try doing 2GB in single channel, then 2GB in dual channel, then the other 2GB in both modes, then 1 chip from 1 set and the other from the other. Basically just making sure I wasn't forgetting to test everything (with the last installs BSOD's fresh in my mind). It's fun to note that every time I booted with 2GB of RAM both USB devices showed up. I then tried going back to 4GB and again the USB devices are unrecognized by Windows (they appear as unrecognized in Device Manager). Enough fiddling I go back to 2GB in dual channel. I just want this bloody thing to work right.

I get the USB hub working finally, I'm able to format some SD from the memory reader for the first time since installing Vista on this system. The dialog to format the SanDisk Micro comes up immediately on the first try and I'm able to format that and enable ReadyBoost to use the extra 1.8GB it provides.

So this morning in a New Year I'm feeling pretty good about the system, not wanting to throw it off my balcony. I get a link from Mark pointing me to a new music vid on YouTube. Click to go there, then click to install Flash from Adobe. And now the frustration is back again. Having only used IE like 3 times (once to get beta drivers for the Creative XFi) I've not had a chance to change any settings from default. So what's the first thing I see when I go to install Flash? Hmm well, I can't it won't let me. The first thing you should notice about that screenshot is that IE says Protected Mode is Off in the bottom right. According to the default settings in the Security dialog that's incorrect and the setting is Enabled. Even when I toggle this setting on and off and restart the system the status does not update in the bottom right.

Next I put on my "I'm now going to be my Mom" hat and go well beyond my capabilities by adjusting the settings and lower everything to the lowest possible options without going into anything too advanced. Now my son knows that this should now basically put me at the same level as IE7 on XP would since the default back then was Medium and Protected Mode isn't even an option. Sadly for me, the Mom, I still can't watch anything off YouTube because Flash won't install. I try calling my son but he's being a jerk and isn't answering the phone or my IM's. So I then go in and figure out how to add adobe.com to the trusted sites. Sadly this still doesn't work. I then find the Advanced button and decide to start messing around. Not knowing what any of these things do I just set everything to Enable. I do finally get my Flash to install so I can watch stuff on YouTube. But when I do finally get a hold of my son he says he can't believe how big of a security risk I've put myself in and that it's no wonder I get spyware all the time.

Anyway, besides having just exploded into a rant I hope the point did get across. WTH is going on here? This is a bloody clean install, I shouldn't be needing to go through hell just to get a signed ActiveX control to install and run. There's no way in hell my Mom would ever be able to figure this out and sadly because the damned Remote Assistance NAT issues still haven't been resolved in Vista I'm still inclined to tell her that it's a waste of my time and that she should either use Firefox or just buy a Mac.

UPDATE: I just set the IE7 security settings back to default for a third time and for the second time reset after having done the change. Sure enough Flash now installs with the default settings. Still note that Protect Mode shows as being Off in the bottom right. Now I'm willing to concede that it was probably just some minor quirk and the setting might not have taken even after setting it twice and restarting. But what type of user experience is that?

I can't for the life of me understand why Microsoft wouldn't include the release notes for Exchange 2007 on the DVD instead of just having the htm be a fwlink to some MS downloads page for the actual relnotes htm file. I mean if the intention was it always provide the most up to date release notes doc why not at the very least provide the original on the DVD then at the top of that page provide a note saying "go here for the most up to date release notes".

I guess timing was off and not enough attention could be paid to something as insignificant as a release notes doc. Here's the text of the doc and link to the actual release notes:

\E2K7EN64\relnotes.htm
Exchange Server 2007 Release Notes   
Release notes for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 are available as a stand-alone .htm file from the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Release Notes Web page.

Or just click here if you want to go directly to them. At least there isn't some WGA to get in the way.

Anyway, now that I've got that out of the way it's time to do a test deployment .

With a minor addition to the Find Album Wizard pipeline hours of frustration are gone. Before one would go through the wizard for any random album and hopefully find all of the tracks one by one. Sometimes on random albums random tracks would just be gone because of common word removal and a complex search algorithm. That for the most part has been taken care of now...

What we have now is a nice new check box option and a single new page in the wizard. This new option is labeled "Use the album selected below to update all tracks in wizard." It does exactly what it suggests. Click that one box then click on the correct album below and WMP/WMIS then presents a confirmation page with all the tracks listed, all you have to do is click Finish and it then updates all the tracks for the album with the correct metadata.

Awesome with a capital A.

UPDATE: Looks like there's a minor bug with international characters like the umlaut (ü) and others as well. I think it's in during the process of grabbing the information and pulling it into WMP that the characters aren't being encoded right in the HTTP or something along those lines. To work around the problem simply do Find Album Info once more on the track in trouble and it shoud be the only track listed and should have the correct characters in the right spot. When I get into work tomorrow I'll be checking to see if a bug on this issue exists yet, if not consider it filed.

I was just reading about the Vista upgrade matrix on Ars. You know, it actually makes sense. There's really no point in offering upgrade pricing to pre-Windows 2000 users since well, there's no point in them upgrading.

1. They'll have to clean install anyway.
2. Their machine will perform so poorly with Vista that the upgrade costs alone will equal that of a new PC.
3. It's probably about time they get a new PC preloaded with Vista anyway.

Really it's a big deal for all those OEM's that will now be getting loads of new PC purchases. Would imagine they'll even be getting some from XP users that bought those ~$500 PC's two or three years ago that figure it'll be another $500 to upgrade to a good Vista experience. So they might as well buy another ~$500 Vista machine.

Now just to convince both my parents to just sit and wait so that they don't waste more money replacing their dying PC's.

Dear Corey,

This email confirms that you recently changed your URGE subscription plan. The change has been processed and your plan has been successfully upgraded.

You can now enjoy all the great features of All Access Pass To Go.

So I'm driving back from Northgate Mall to pick up one of these devilishly delicious apple pie apples from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I get a call from Justin saying that I need to get to campus. It's around 10pm so I figure this must be interesting.

Get my way over there and there's 100's, 1000 even, of these big blue Vista pearl exercise balls everywhere. Sadly I don't have my camera with me so I can't take any photos plus it's too dark anyway.

I grabbed one, put it in the car, made my way home. Can't wait to see just how massive the roll out is and to see how many are left tomorrow morning.

I'm going to say it now. Mark my words. Vista and beyond, what's going to make and break it for people is the ease with which metadata is assigned to their files and work.

Why am I throwing this idea out into the open now? Well, I just finished indexing my 30,000th file through Windows Media Information Services (WMIS) to get metadata into my MP3's and WMA's via WMP. It wasn't the easiest experience to say the least. I'm not even halfway done.

Oh and I haven't even started putting lyrics data into the tracks either. That's a process that's just too daunting to even begin at this point.

I've got over 30,000 photos as well that are totally void of metadata. The only thing they have going for them is that they're in some sort of decent folder structure and still have the emedded EXIF data from my Canon 20D. Other than that they lack any details about the people in the photos, the location of the photos, the objects in the photos, or any other information one would hope to have.

So with the way we interact with digital media going into Vista and beyond totally changing there's a real need to improve the way we interact with and really start using metadata. Things are changing a bit inside Microsoft that's for sure. If you're in any way involved with building software for digital media now would be a darn good time to investigate what Microsoft is doing moving forward and start adopting some of the same practices and developing some new practices of your own to take advantage of the metadata boom in the next three to five years.

But hey, who am I? Well I'm just ahead of the average consumer by a couple years and I'm already asking for things to improve...

Was randomly trying to find out how old Jem was when I noticed that the results at the top of Google were actually for their Music search service. Quite cool really. Not quite the same amount of information as AMG's results as the example here shows, so really Google should do something with AMG to create some partnership there. At any rate the point is that the search works really well, not just for artist but albums and songs as well. Instantly blowing WMIS's search right out of the water for just pure search. Maybe MS should drop the current search algorithm and start taking a better look at integrating MSN Search with MSN Music and then creating a nice synergy with WMIS.

I've been getting some spam on my blogs alias through Exchange despite the fact that I obfuscate the address on the site and despite the fact I've got the Exchange Intelligent Message Filtering turned on pretty high. So every so often I go into the Blogs folder in Outlook and hold SHIFT+DEL to get rid of that bloody email that's trying to sell me 0EM copies of Office and W1ndows. This last time I accidentally thought the email was highlighted but instead I got ahead of myself on Remote Desktop and the entire Blogs folder was deleted.

I thought I was out of luck but swore I remembered that Exchange had a way to come to my rescue. I thought it might be through the Mailbox Recovery Center but oh no. There's an even more elegant solution. With Outlook 2003 closed do the following:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedt32, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options
   Right-click the Options subkey, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
3. Type DumpsterAlwaysOn for the DWORD name, and then press ENTER.
4. Double-click DumpsterAlwaysOn.
5. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
6. Quit the Registry Editor and start Outlook again. You should now have Recover Deleted Items under the expanded Tools menu.

It should be noted that this works specifically with Exchange when an email rentention policy has been set up. I've just gone and changed my server to not permanently delete email from the message store for 14 days instead of the default of 7. Here's a link to one of the KB articles I've found with a little more information and another via Office Online. For more information on how to configure Exchange to match your ideal storage limits see this KB article.

After doing a couple quick searches via MSN and Google it appears I'm actually rather late with coming up with this information. But it's nice to learn littles bits and pieces like this when you make mistakes .

In my last post about FLAC I talked about how to convert FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) using Adobe Audition. That works just fine. But what I wanted was to not have to run the individual files through Windows Media Player manually entering in data. So this time around we'll do it much more fluidly.

Basically what we do is take our copy of Nero then download and install the plugin for FLAC. Default location for plugins being C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\AudioPlugins.

At this point go through the normal Audio CD creation process using Nero. If the FLAC comes with a CUE file, just drap and drop the CUE file. If not, hopefully the tracks will be numbered, just drag and drop those.

Burn the project using the Image Recorder setting. Save the NRG file somewhere. Then mount the file using Nero ImageDrive. Once this is done open up Windows Media Player and enjoy. You should find that by going to the Rip pane WMP automatically finds all the track information with album art. Hug the wonderful code behind this one that analyzes things for you. Then rip to WMA VBR or MP3 and not have to worry about the metadata.

I should also mention that if you're a fan of the SHN (Shorten) codec you can download this plugin. Then just convert the files in the same way.

If you're a fan of WMA and the way WMP manages your media as I am this is probably the easiest solution for making sure WMIS (Windows Media Information Services) gets things right.

Then 106,435 shares were sold and I'm still waiting and seeing if I should sell my 100 shares. I want $28.50 now, fingers are crossed.

Jon and I were both shocked this morning when we noticed that Dom actually updated his blog on MSDN. The shocking part was probably that one of the many Microsoft blogs that have made their way into our "Abandoned" folders actually got a new post. Dom's post gap? 10 months to the day, 304 days total! The shame. What's the point?

So I've got a question. How many blogs at Microsoft and other corporations and such have been like this? I ask why bother? I mean so many softies have blogs that are like this. They post 5 or 6 posts within the first 2 months. Then every so often (every 304 days) they post a random thing asking for opinions or feedback or about a meeting or something along those lines. Then expect to get some sort of response or readership.

Dom, I already know your argument for not posting so often. You want there to be some value for your reader and yet you can't talk about some things that are under NDA. Plus you don't want to mix personal life and work. Plus you don't want to drop your other commitments at work. Make up your bloody mind already. Keep the blog and post something or just kill it.

There is of course the exception. But generally I think the majority of softies that started a blog have probably just let them die.

So many personal blogs are like this as well so corporate blogs definitely aren't in the minority. I suppose I'm not one to talk either, if you look at my archive you can definitely see the gaps and low posting trends every so often.

My closing point may be that could it be a good time for corporate bloggers to change the way they go about blogging?

I honestly can't believe Jon's web app still isn't up on the World's Best App contest. He showed it to me before the contest was even started and continued to improve it till they opened up the submissions. With the admission that Jon isn't the only one having issues getting their app even added to the site wouldn't that lead someone to say, "hmm this contest isn't quite going right is it". Then just postpone the timeline till things are sorted. At the same time whoever is running the contest doesn't seem overly concerned with their rules as there's at least one non game app that totally ignores them. At any rate, you'd think even a simple contest could be pulled off without issue but I guess not. Maybe they should take a lesson from other MS contests that seem to be doing well...

UPDATE: After nearly a month, 29 days, since Jon submitted his app it's now live. So click here to check it out and vote for the world's best messenger app.