Blogging

Apple WWDC Keynote Highlights - My Observations

Chris Haaker — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:54:40 GMT

I wanted to take a moment and jot down some of my initial impressions on the announcements coming from the Apple hype machine today at the keynote. Not being able to attend - largely due to it selling out in two hours - made me especially bitter that Apple would not allow the event to be streamed live. Steve said during the keynote that if they sold more tickets he didn't know where they would hold it. Considering it takes place at Moscone West, the smaller of the two centers, try moving it across the street to the full sized Moscone Center. So I scrambled around the web watching small feeds here and there until each was suddenly dark after being discovered by the roving Apple police at the keynote.

New in iOS 5:

Notification Center – this is a very welcome addition and one that people have been asking about for quite some time. I cant say I always understand the priority Apple gives to improvements in the iOS. I had jailbroken my iPhone for a while for this one function alone. I hated having to unlock my screen each time to see who an email was from or its importance. PS This has been in WP7 since day one.

iMessage – I didn’t see this one coming since the phone has the ability to SMS text – although those of us with unlimited texting probably take this for granted. And I know my kids hate not being able to text from their iPod Touches. Users of Blackberries love this feature on their devices as well so I will be curious to see how it goes on the iPhone. Apparently the different chats (iMessage and SMS) are color-coded. Hopefully iMessage won’t be limited to Wi-Fi like FaceTime is.

Newsstand – I think this feature will go over very well and is essentially iBooks for magazines and other periodicals. For this to work though the pricing has to be right. Hopefully the publishers will be smart enough to realize they can go to a lower price point without all the massive physical infrastructure needed to print and distribute a paper edition. Volume should allow them to make the same or more margins without gouging the customer for fear of lost ‘print revenue.’ If I have to pay the same price I do for Men’s Health on the newsstand, I am not buying.

Twitter – Integration of Twitter in to the iOS was something leaked early and turned out to be true – a rare win for the prognosticators. Basically, Twitter identity is a system setting and then Twitter integration is set throughout the iOS blurring the need for a separate Twitter ‘app.’ Hopefully they included all the functionality a good app does. PS Also available in WP7 since day one.

Reminders – This is a home run for me and my, honey-do, er, wife. Since I got the iPhone many years ago I have been looking for a good ‘to-do’ app. Having it built-in may be just what I was looking for. Previously I was using Google Tasks, but always had to launch and go to the web to get to it. Built-in alarms and reminders are just my cup of tea. Does it go to the iCloud? That would be another big bonus so I could access it, or my wife could add to it, from anywhere.

Camera – Apple added the ability to access the camera without unlocking the phone (yet another feature in WP7 since day one – sorry I cannot resist when Apple takes such pleasure in bashing MS and Google). They also added a suite of additional photo enhancing tools like cropping and auto-enhance..

Safari Reader & Tabs – The introduction of tabs was a welcome one in mobile Safari for iOS. Apple also introduced a streamlined ‘reader’ view that allowed all the other parts of a website to be stripped away making reading of articles or other stories more easy and enjoyable. You can also create a list of articles to read later on and it will sync across iDevices.

All in all, a good set of feature improvements. I have to say though, as a person who uses his device to a large extent for email I am still mystified by the lack of view filters for email. You can show only unread or only flagged\important messages. Perhaps we will see this in iOS 10.

Technorati Tags: iOS,iOS5,Apple,iPhone,WWDC

Blogging From the Bloggers Lounge at TechEd 2011

Chris Haaker — Tue, 17 May 2011 16:18:21 GMT

Geeks With Blogs has been given the opportunity to host a blogger’s lounge at MS TechEd 2011 this year. I highly encourage anyone who loves to blog about technology, Developer or IT Pro, to head on over and introduce yourself. I have been blogging off and on (as life and time permit) with this group for a long time now and you couldn’t find a better bunch of guys that are passionate about both community and technology and their site really supports this. Be sure to say hi to Jeff and John. They are located in the Expo Hall over by the TechNet Edge big stage. Speaking of the TechNet Edge big stage, Speaker Idol is going on right now and this is another wonderful program that Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin run giving aspiring speakers a chance to strut their stuff and earn a trip to TechEd 2012 as a speaker all expenses-paid. As someone who has tried to break in to conference speaking I can really appreciate the opportunity they are providing to those that love to speak.

Technorati Tags: GeeksWithBlogs,TechEd,SpeakerIdol

Windows Live Writer Goes Mobile

Chris Haaker — Tue, 26 May 2009 23:19:29 GMT

Windows Live Writer for Windows Mobile has been released in alpha on CodePlex. I am going to fire it up later on today and see how it runs. If it is even has as nice as the desktop version I am going to be psyched.

Gearing Up for PDC 2008

Chris Haaker — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:16:29 GMT

Having not ever been to the PDC before, only TechEd (x9), MEC (x2) and WWPC (x2), and I am curious to attend my first one. I have also never been to LA before so this should be a double mint of traveling pleasure. I hope I see some celebrities eating ice cream at a sidewalk cafe like in the magazines my wife always reads! :) Plus I love me some Mexican food and there has to be some good stuff in LA!

I started up the TweetDeck filter for PDC and there is a lot of traffic and a good buzz going already. The weather looks to be nice as well, and since it is getting tres cold here in Ohio some more extended warmth will do me good.

I am looking forward to all the sessions on the cloud services, mesh, soa, windows seven and anything architecture and messaging related. If anyone wants to chime in the comments with some tips on the PDC feel free.

I have missed the last two TechEd so I am also happy to see the GWB team again and say hi. Less than a week away! Moo.

Technorati Tags: PDC,PDC2008,Microsoft,LA,Los Angeles,TechEd,TweetDeck

Still Searching for a Good Mac OS X Blog Editor

Chris Haaker — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:37:57 GMT

I am writing this post using the ScribeFire Firefox plug-in. I am still on the lookout for a blog editor that come close to all the features and ease of use found in Microsoft's LiveWriter - but runs on Mac OS X. I have found some close ones -- MarsEdit and X -- but their big achilles heel is that they don't recognize SharePoint blogs running on MOSS 2007 (sp1 or otherwise). Natch Microsoft would build support in to its tool - no one else does though. And I will be damned if I can find a way to manually configure it to work. Grrrr

Technorati Tags: MarsEdit, ScribeFire, LiveWriter

My Shared Links Feeds From Google Reader

Chris Haaker — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 03:44:52 GMT

I have switched over to Google Reader (after being a long time FeedDemon user) and am loving the browser-based access anywhere experience. While FeedDemon had great offline reading abilities, if I switched computers I was out of luck. It also doesn't have a sweet Blackberry reading option as does the web-based Google Reader.

Part of this switch also means that instead of laboriously re-posting items I want to share to my blog I can SHIFT + S and easily add them to my shared feed. You can read it in a web view or subscribe to the RSS feed. Be warned: these are things I find interesting. Mileage may vary!

Aggreg8: Exchange Working Group

Chris Haaker — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 22:32:31 GMT

I have started for some time now an Exchange working group on the Microsoft\Culminis community site Aggreg8. It now has a decent amount of traffic and conversation with lots of questions posted that many in the Exchange community may find helpful. You may also be able to share your experience with others. Please stop by and take a look. I can also give out some invitations if they are needed. Leave a comment.

Update: Okay, so while traffic spiked I had been remiss in looking at post dates - nothing since 11/2006! Let's get the posting back up!

Need to Explain RSS to Your Mom or Dad?

Chris Haaker — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 02:55:09 GMT

Point them here. This is a great 2 minute explanation on how to set up a reader and subscribe to feeds. No computers were harmed in the making of this video.

River of Mail?

Chris Haaker — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:58:00 GMT

In the world of RSS and newsreaders there is a war of preferences going around over how people prefer to read their feeds. Categorized by feed, type of feed, or as a “river of news.” In other words first in, first displayed, in a long list and you simply scan top-to-bottom. I have tried both and IMO both have merit. River of news lets you see everything in an instant, and I find it useful for quickly locating important event. Then I read the “normal” stuff later on. When I am ready to consume all my news, I prefer to read by feed as I find it more efficient not having my brain change cylinders from sports to tech to music item by item. I can keep it focused as I read a whole collection of news at once.

Now that I am piloting Vista and Office 2007 with integrated Desktop Search support, I wondered if this approach can work for mail as well. For as long as I can remember, I created a hierarchal folder system in Outlook and sorted my mail manually or with rules in to “buckets” of knowledge. If I needed an email from my boss, I knew exactly which folder to go look for it in. Perhaps the days of all those folders are past? Why not just keep all of my mail in one folder and allow the powerful properties of search to help me easily locate a message? On an enterprise level, I have a feeling there is some power here as well. Why the need to memorize or bookmark obscure URL’s or UNC paths? Index the enterprise and search for it. This isn’t a new idea, but it is one that the technology can finally support. Why do so few use it. Is it such a shift – to feel that all your data is just out there – unorganized – willy-nilly? I can see search driving the control freaks crazy. How do you really know everything is as or where it should be unless you look in your neat little file folder system and see it sitting there?

So this is what I am experimenting with now. As an Exchange administrator, I know having thousands of mail items in my Inbox will eventually catch up with me. However, email archiving should prevent me from feeling the ill effects of this. I have already cast off my PST shackles and imported them in to the archive. My precious PST’s! Right now it is taking some getting used to seeing all my alerts, MOM messages, personal and business emails floating in one folder. I want to see where this goes however. No zero mail inbox here! I haven’t been disciplined enough to do this with my files yet on my laptop. That is next though. Even though I remember to use Vista’s awesome search capabilities when I need a document, they are all still neatly organized in their safe little folder in Documents - One thing at a time.

Windows Live Writer Wishes

Chris Haaker — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:48:00 GMT

I have been using Windows Live Writer since it was released (sorry BlogJet!) and have been generally very happy with it. I have two wishes for anyone on the product team that may be listening out in the blogosphere:

Add a way to export the blog account settings. This will allow me to easily get my accounts back in when I reinstall my OS. If you can export the preferences (and all my pings) that would be great too!
Add a menu entry to check for updates to the program. I hate having to depend on blog entries to find out when a utility has released an update. This software isn't major enough to hit the mainstream blogs and I don't want to track a blog for each piece of software I use on a regular basis. Let it check for me in the background when I fire it up.

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, Live Writer