The short interview that Chris and I recorded while I was at the Search Champs event is now online for your listening pleasure. We talked about the move to 64-bit Windows operating systems, MSN Search and Desktop Search, as well as the Search Champs event in general. While at Search Champs, Chris recorded some other interviews as well: Mick Stanic – (aka SplaTT) whose blog was one of the first I subscribed to. Buzz Bruggerman –of ActiveWords fame. Marc Orchant – Master of all things...

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So I was reading Kevin Daly’s comment to Chris Pirillo’s response to Andre Da Costa’s rebuttal to Chris’ post about WinHEC and Longhorn. Let’s try that again… So I was reading something. As I read Kevin’s comment, this part got me thinking: Something to consider: much of what people eventually interact with in Longhorn will be built on Avalon, but Avalon as all of us who've installed the CTPs know is not yet nailed down - so the more code you write around...

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I made this so I could link to it to explain to people how Windows versions relate to each other (since microsoft doesn't always make it very clear). http://photos9.flickr.com/1

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Chris Pirillo blogged about Microsoft and Power Users having experienced the Longhorn presentation at WinHEC this week. Now, I’ve been commenting a lot on Neowin, Scoble’s Blog comments, and other places about how this is a hardware engineering conference, and how the build of Longhorn that was distributed is meant only to provide those hardware engineers with what they need to start building drivers for Longhorn. A lot of people who have seen the screenshots of this build have complained...

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I never thought I'd hear myself say those words. Disclaimer: I haven't tried it myself, and I'm sure it's got plenty of flaws. You don't need to tell me about all of them. But hear me out. Real has finally one thing right (being a first for Real since the company's inception, this is a big event): With their newest update to their Rhapsody service, they're supporting multiple codecs, even those made by their competitors. They even have Rhapsody To Go now which supports “janus” Windows...

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Sweet

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And never wanting to see one again? I seriously have spent hours over the last few nights trying to figure out a seemingly random error that would occur every few searches (sometimes every 10th, sometimes every 40th) in the search app I’m building. It turned out the problem went back to that self-inclusive length property that’s part of the SHITEMID structure (ie. the IDL part of the PIDL). So I’ve fixed that. As such, my current code won’t support queries over 92 characters...

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The WinHEC build (5048) is in the hands of some visitors already. Here’s the scoop at Winbeta

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I’m sorry… this just isn’t very impressive. I hope tomorrow’s keynote and the rest of WinHEC is more exciting

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This is why I love developing in .NET Hopefully later this week or next I'll be able to post a beta version and start looking for some feedback (although feel free to post any right now, just know that this is very early work)

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After painstaking effort (If I never see another PIDL it'll be too soon)... I have bent the MSN shell extension to my will! Edit: Just noticed this was my 100th post. Fancy, that. Oh and don't worry, I have much prettier/more useful plans for this application given its new abilities. I've also fixed some bugs in the shortcut creation routine (even what I posted the other day still has a ~100 character query limit)...

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Apparently some G-mail users now have access to “Google Clips” – which lets them view RSS feeds inside of Gmail

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I wrote this on the plane, but didn’t get around to posting until now. Take it, Brandon from 2 days ago: Seattle was an absolute blast. I understand 100% why Chris Pirillo decided to move there after the first Search Champs program. I’m writing this now from the jet while we’re about an hour from home. I’m offline, so I won’t be able to link to other Search Champs related posts until I’m home. First, let me tell you a little more about Seattle. As I mentioned in...

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They finally figured out how to get geeks to watch ESPN… http://www.easports.com/gam

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My post Calling MSN Desktop Search from your Application has been updated. A major flaw was discovered because I wasn't updating the length fields in the PIDL structures. Since I didn't do very thorough testing (ie. testing input strings longer than 7 characters) the problem wasn't immediately apparent. This has been fixed

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http://www.flickr.com/photo

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“Personalization means different things to different people.” - Ken Moss

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I forgot to check at the airport, so I’ll do that when I leave on Wednesday. But sadly, I’ve yet to see the big 1X icon change to a beautiful Ev (signifying a 500kbps data connection) on my phone anywhere. Oh well, at least we know it’s coming J

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I’m not usually a Starbucks kind of guy. I prefer the local coffee joint Uncommon Grounds (two locations in Albany and Saratoga). They have real flavored coffees instead of syrup, and free wi-fi. Oh, and you can use normal English words to place an order (ie. “I’ll have a large vanilla coffee.”) and they don’t always assume you mean latte. I tried to talk the Starbucks talk, it went something like this: Brandon: “I’ll have a Grande vanilla coffee please.”Girl:...

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So a friend dropped me off at the airport early this morning, and check-in was a breeze. My plane from Albany to Detroit left on time and arrived about 20 minutes early, which I believe violates several FAA regulations. The second leg of the flight from Detroit to Seattle followed the guidelines to the letter… leaving nearly a half hour late. We did, however, arrive on time. I’ve already met Liz Lawley and Liz Liddy, as the three of us shared an aLLiterative car ride to the hotel. All...

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Other Search Champs that are blogging from Seattle include: Loic Le Meur – blogging from 36,000 feet! Halley Suitt likes the W hotel, and I can’t say I blame her...

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Outlook never crashes! Sometimes it seems to have more important priorities than obeying my will… but today it crashed and I wasn’t even there! And here I thought the blogosphere had come to a stop in my absence. Back in reality, I knew something wasn’t right. When I RDP’d into my home computer I saw a big ugly “Microsoft Office Outlook generated an error and needed to be closed” or whatever. Oh well, all is well again. ...

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So I’m in the Detroit Metro airport, awaiting my flight to Seattle. And these people dare try to charge me $7 to connect to their wireless network. For shame! Luckily, my trusty Bluetooth + cell phone combo is working fine. No EV-DO here though, maybe in Seattle?

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About to leave for the Search Champs summit. I’ll be on a plane most of today (yippee), and I’m coming back Wednesday night. I’ll update while I’m there (but there is an NDA, more on that later)

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Looks interesting… http://www.startsomethingpc... Just another reason I wish I was staying in Seattle long enough for WinHEC...

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Some very smart people have figured out how to get WMP 10 on my PPC-6601, even though there’s no official patch. They’ve also figured out how to get EV-DO working, which Sprint has just begun offering (but not officially for this phone yet). No word yet on where EV-DO service is available. Airports are supposed to be one of the first roll-out points, and it just so happens I’ll be at a few of them tomorrow J ...

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It’s not that I think copyrights are meaningless or that those who illegally share music/movies/etc are innocent victims… But this kind of thing makes me sick: RIAA file-sharing suit focuses on Internet2 405 students at 18 of our leading educational institutions are being sued by the RIAA this week. What has happened to our country? This is not how we should be treating our best and brightest. More in my newest rant article...

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I thought it was time for a change. That, and I think I like the menu stuff being on the right

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UPDATED 7/08: We released our official SDK with the launch of Windows Desktop Search 2.5 (mostly an international release, plus the SDK) last week, and updated it today with .NET interop assemblies and a C# sample! Check it out! http://geekswithblogs.net/b... The stuff below is OLD. Don't use it. Use the official SDK linked to above! Here’s the C# code, you'll need to be using at least the “System.IO“ namespace: private void parseShortcutString()...

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When it comes to desktop search, Google has the right idea. Right now I use the MSN Desktop Search app. I think it’s great, and I think when you compare the base install of MSN DS to GDS, MSN wins. But that’s not the end of the story. Today I found this: http://desktop.google.com/p... Just look at some of the plug-ins that other people have written for GDS. Right at the top, there’s one that hooks it into the normal Explorer search bar. MSN should offer you that option right...

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http://wiki.planetamd64.com... I’ll make some contributions later (it’s brand new). But for now, sleep

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A list of who will be attending the MSN Search Champs v2 summit next week is here: http://microsoft.blognewsch... I got the list a while ago but didn’t know that it had been posted publicly. They list me as “geek blogger” – which I guess is better than the poor guy who is listed as “unknown” J Did I mention I have a hunch that I might be the youngest attendee...

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The creation of a search shortcut was a little tricky. But it works! Unfortunately, I've yet to find a way to return search results in my own app. Right now my options are: 1) Send a keystroke sequence (user editable) to open the DeskBar followed by the search string.2) Create a temporary search shortcut, and open it (spawning a new Explorer search results window). I'm leaning towards the latter. Also, it seems you can search by setting date boundaries (ie. Before:1/1/04 After:1/1/03) - but there...

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So I awoke very early, and very cold. A crappy beginning to a crappy day I guess. It's all but certain by now that yes, I am in fact sick. I also showed up very late to a class today because of a bad accident on the highway. Beyond that, it just seems like all sorts of little things aren't right today. My shoes have come untied a dozen times, I keep dropping things, I even came close to forgetting to put the parking brake on in my car just now. So yeah, it's just a cold, but I hate being sick. I'm...

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Recently I’ve begun investigating the possibility of writing a tool to extend the MSN Desktop Search program. I believe I’ve determined that what I want to do is possible. I’ll get to coding up a real test version tonight. Here are my goals: 1) To have a simple interface for building searches that use the Advanced Search Syntax features of MSN DS. 2) To be able to create shortcuts to those search queries (basically Search Folders) in a simple way. Really it doesn’t sound that...

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I’m really happy to see the x64 community organizing so strongly around the AMD64 release of Windows. You can see Extended64’s blogging page here

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Scoble wrote today about the “Map Wars.” He asks, “What's next?” in this field. Well I know what I think should be next... A Map Wiki. Think about it... Take a good map implementation like Google Maps, or something like Microsoft's TerraServer combined with MapPoint - and add a Wiki-style overlay to it. Let people add places that are important to them to the map server, just like wikipedia.org lets people add information. With links. And the ability to find specific place....

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I think Asheron's Call was perhaps Microsoft Gaming Studios' biggest mistake. What do I mean by that? Asheron's Call was developed by some amazing guys who basically built their company, Turbine Games, from scratch. Their first project was so excellent that Microsoft signed on to distribute, host, and publish the game. Initially the game met with very good success. It's still legendary as one of the only games in the genre to have a 100% successful launch. But after a couple years, Microsoft put...

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LINKS FIXED It looks like there's a new ilovebees type of site, this time it appears to be the beginnings of a viral Xbox 2 campaign. I must say, I'm excited. Ilovebees was a phenomenal success and I was completely engrossed in the lore behind Halo 2 for a long time. In fact, my two favorite game series right now both have deep, rich backstories. One is the Halo series, the other is Asheron's Call. So check it out (Link goes to article at GameSpot) Ourcolony.net...

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Shell integration fixes Programs that add to the Windows Explorer context menu will fail to do so on 64-bit Windows. Here are some workarounds: WinRAR - I've created a .reg file that will add an “Extract here“ menu option for all WinRAR supported file types. This assumes that you have WinRAR installed in the default directory “C:\program files (x86)\winRAR“.I've included Slipmatt's “Extract To...“ registry hack in the .ZIP as well. I haven't tested it myself so...

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