Alfred Biehler's Blog

I've installed and played with an Outlook plug-in called Xobni (Inbox backwards). It does stats on your email sending and receiving habits, and it can search for stuff in your inbox in a few new ways.

I've not really used it, not ever. When I installed it, it could not add much value, as it has not yet analysed my inbox. And then I minimised it until I looked at it today again (before cleaning out my Microsoft inbox for good).

And I got this funny graph:

Why is it funny? Because the number of emails received is... (wait for it...) off the scale :) (I've been on holiday during the quiet week, before anyone asks!)

If you used my Microsoft email address to talk to me in the past, now is a good time to update your filofax or rolodex or contacts: The best email address to reach me, is my name@surname.co.uk.

More later...

I've recently bought a VW Touran, and it's a great car. It's got the needed occasional 7 seats, it is nice and punchy and I got it for a great deal (thanks to autoebid)... but it's <yawn> sooo boring. It's not even a bit exotic or exciting or exhilarating. I've got the DSG gearbox, which does exactly what it says on the tin, but even that is not really worth writing home about IMHO.

So - the one creature comfort that I did decide to splash out on, was something that would allow me to plug in my MP3 player - a Zune in my case. VW does a £25 Aux-in plug, but only if you have a custom factory order, which I could not wait for. So, I've considered several options, but discounted buying a new radio just for this, I did not find a goof FM-transmitter that would deliver me good sound quality and in the end, I opted for XCarLink. The UK site is http://www.xcarlink.co.uk, but it seems like the majority of these gadgets are being sold through eBay.

The £75 XCarlink from China (version 6) that I bought, is working very nicely. It connects to the rear of the RCD600 radio in the Touran, and pretends to be a CD changer. The CDR600 is quiet happy having it's own built-in CD changer and this external one, allowing you to switch between the two by just pressing "CD" a second time.

From the back of the radio, a cable runs to a fag-pack size box, with three connectors on the other side. 1) mini jack for stereo - which I use most of the time

2) USB plug that you can use for a) charging and b) playing MP3/WMA files. (You can store up to 99 files in six directories (CD01 to CD06), and then navigate through these as if they are CDs) This is a *very* nice feature, but is not completely noiseless. It's better than tape or an FM transmitter solution, but still a bit music-down-a-pipe-like.

3) A din plug that connects to the last bit of the XCarLink... a Bluetooth dongle and microphone. This allows you to (at least theoretically) a) make phone calls through the radio with a bluetooth connected phone, b) stream stereo music to the XCarLink via Bluetooth. (I've had this working with an old phone, but not yet with my Samsung i780... (BTW - this bluetooth capability is unique to version 6 - older versions of the XCarLink does not have this.)

I really enjoy having full access to my Zune's content in the car, and this will be a great companion for the road on the coming holiday!

If you are planning of forking out more than £20 on connecting your iPod (XCarLink does an iPod version too) or MP3 player to your VW (and they offer other models too, supporting other manufacturers), then this is a good option IMHO.

Note on installation: The early non-UK version I bought off eBay, only had Chinese information with it - and I had no guidance to do it. It's entirely possible, but don't expect a good detailed manual with it. It took me some time to get behind the covers of the dash board on my VW, but the rest was quiet easy. The last glitch was in connecting the XCarLink to the VW radio. The plug seemed to fit perfectly, but the connector block housing the pins inside the plug, was loose, and meant that even after plugging it in, it was not plugged in. The solution was to push in the cable (as opposed to the plug), and that ensured that the connectors also made contact.

I'll buy/use this again if I had similar needs.

As someone working in the software industry, it's weird that I'm not willing to spend money on software... or at least I think 100 times before doing so.

So - many moons ago I bought TomTom 3, then later 5 and later upgraded to 5.21.

Today, I've managed to get my shiny new Samsung i780 phone working lovely with TomTom without the need to spend any money. (No - I don't have any Scottish blood - I think :))

I think I should attribute this to Gavin Fabiani-Laymond - thanks!

In essence - download GPSProxy from SourceForge.net, install and configure (as per this blog above), and that's it!

I'm really impressed with the TomTom experience on this i780. It's accurate, find a fix quickly, works well on the screen resolution and... well... works!

You would have thought that an anorak like me would not even think twice about using Windows Live Writer to blog with... but I did not. I have a few blogs inside Microsoft (for those Microserfs out there, have a look on my SharePoint MySite) and I've been using Word to blog. Yes, Word 2007 can do it too, and so can OneNote via Word, and I just assumed it would be better than anything we offer for free.

But Neville convinced me that I might be missing a trick if I don't use our own product for blog posting. Windows Live Writer is really good. It know how to post to several different engines, and adjust it's capability accordingly. One thing that Word definitely could not do as seamlessly as Writer, is storing old posts and allowing me to edit old posts. Fantastic! And adding pictures & videos and more are just as simple.

Really - if you are not yet using a tool to blog, go check it out. If you are using a tool that is not serving you well, it's worth your time too.

And the good news is - Neville - if you go to Windows Live Writer via the link above, we *won't* assume you've opted in for all the other bits too - we'll just give you Windows Live Writer unless you opt in for the other bits :)

Thanks for the tip to check out our own software!

I've been brewing on the topic of privacy. I recall in my days as consultant on our Commerce Server product (even when it was just Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition - now showing my age and technical background), we were contemplating the implications of personalisation, and how it might play out to the extreme when everybody knows everything about me.

There was the optimistic side in me that used to say: "Perhaps it would be good if systems and companies really knew me. Perhaps they'd stop sending me email I'm not interested in - spam - and start really handing me valuable information that will lead me to make smart business and buying decisions." A win-win. But at this lunch, Neville used a brilliant example that explains why this thinking is flawed: Advertisers are not trying to help you, they try to change your behaviour to benefit them.

Let's say you are going through a tough time in your relationship with your wife, and your email provider mine your emails and knows this about you, only to target you with display adverts offering you cheap sex. Although this might be an effective advert and good targeting from an advertiser's position, it is clearly not constructive to your life.

Back to the point: I think it is imperative that we al least enter into this brave new world of social networks with deliberate consent, rather than blissful ignorance. See Robin's blog for some more real life examples of this.

One of the replies to Robin's posting, was from Colin McKay, director of communications at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, Canada. He also posted a video that he made to demonstrate this point very eloquently. Thanks for sharing Colin!

I'm proud of what we're doing to help simplify privacy statements so that it's easier for people to know what they sign up for, and I know as marketer in Microsoft - internally we take privacy extremely serious. And, we're also doing a lot to help educate people about how to be safe online.

But I'm very interested in what you think we could be doing more or differently. How can we make the world a better place to live?

I received my new Lenovo X61T tablet PC on Monday, and I'd like to share with you my first impressions.

I was hoping to buy (with work money - thanks Bill!) the ultimate power machine in a small and lightweight portable package, looking very sexy, with all the features I wanted yet within the budget available. Needless to say, I had to lower my expectations... something had to give.

And I then opted for our corporate standard (one of a few) Lenovo X61T. I have seen better looking machines, but this is not bad. I've certainly seen heavier and less well-built machines! This one is sturdy - as in carbon fibre, not iron.

And I'm impressed with the variety of drivers available for both x86 and x64, and I had little problems getting it going. The screen (I have the higher-res non-touch screen) is good - I'm currently out doors in the cold England with a weak sun, and I can see the screen well. Battery life seems pretty good, especially with the extended battery, and the keyboard is just right. I've never been a trackpoint fan - I prefer the touch pad of previous Toshiba, but I'll make do. The Inking on this machine is gorgeous - it reminded me of an earlier research project at Microsoft to find the ideal friction point between a lovely pen and paper - and this screen gives me that same paper feeling when inking. And the anti-reflection coating on the screen does it's job - but it gets dirty very quickly.

I've also got a lot of RAM in it - and therefore not all of it is available to access... I might try x64 later to see if I can see any difference.

It's great to now have a DVD drive again. I've been without a DVD or CD drive for the last 4 years on other tablets (this one has a docking station with it in), and it suddenly mean that I can now again at least consider things that only appear on CD :)

Like with any new machine, I'm still searching for keys on the keyboard, still constantly finding applications or settings that I want to re-apply/install, but all in all - I can recommend it.

Alfred

I've received a Zune as a gift a few months ago, and it worked brilliantly as an PM 3 player, but that was about it - especially since there are not thousands of friends around me with Zunes to share music with. I nearly sold it, but then stopped short because of the fantastic musical quality that I got with it. It was heads and shoulders above my otherwise trusted and great Creative Zen. I really like the sound quality of the Zune.

Then Microsoft came around and provided a *free* firmware upgrade to everyone who bought a Zune in the past. http://www.zune.net

What a bonus! Other than increasing the size (which we have not yet figured out how to do with a mere firmware update - doh!), it feels like a new Zune to me!

1. I love the new UI. The Zune has always been friendly and fresh - not your typical Windows (or Linux) UI, it was much more interesting - comparable in experience but uniquely different to Apple.
2. The wi-fi capability which in the past could only share music files with other Zunes, can now suddenly sync over wifi too - and the set-up was really a pleasant experience. My next thought was that this is useful, yet I won't need to sync in any case, as I don't buy new music that frequently, and all 314 albums on my Media Center is already on the Zune. But then I discovered the really long overdue podcatching capability!
3. Podcast catcher: The Zune application on the PC has been much improved, and does not look like a cheap skinning of Windows Media Player any more. It now more look like a complement to the Zune, rather than an old-hat PC app. And it offers a "marketplace" similar to that of iTunes, including a marketplace for free content including PodCasts. And it works very intuitively, complete with cleaning algorithm to remove old podcasts.

The only catch is that this is still designed and tuned for a US-only market. And intentionally. We chose to first focus on providing an excellent experience in one country, rather than have a world-wide offering that is not yet world-class. (However, if you want to get this working for testing purposes, then you might get away with creating a Windows Live ID with country = US, and then creating a Zune account with that Live ID with a machine locale set to US and browser locale = US. Once you created the account, you can switch all back to UK, and it still seems to work, at least for podcasts.)

May the Zune be with you!

Coming to a Zune near you, very Zune.

GeZuneZeit!

Good evening all

I owe all my readers an apology: I've been absent for nearly a month now - and have been struggling to figure out the new shape of my blog and content. But, I'm back, now, with a new hat on!

I'm tempted to say that I was inspired by Brian Valentine & Scoble, but actually, but that would not be true. The similarity stops at the fact that we've all changed jobs recently. My previous job was product manager of Virtualization, Management & Storage Technologies for Microsoft UK - and it was a fantastic and buzzing business, with so much more potential. I'm proud of what our team achieved - growing the combined business by millions of pounds and 66% over the three areas, and I'm sure the team will continue to grow at amaizing speeds. I also know the new PM for this role (not yet annouced), and he is the best person for the role.

Yet, I also know that, despite the opportunity and the wonderful Server BG group, there was an even better opportunity (and greater threat) to Microsoft in the changed internet world - also called Web 2.0. I've taken on a role to help shape our strategy around Windows Live, Office Live, Search, advertising, and more... I'm essentially part entrepreneur, part strategist, part industry analyst... and I really love this job.

But this leaves me with a challenge when it comes to my blog: in my previous role, I probably would have blogged about MOM 2007 developments and the annoucement of DPM 2.0 and more... but now that all my thinking and strategy is essentially what I'm paid for to give us the competitive advantage, it's no longer in our shareholder interest for me to just share all my thoughts. So, please, bear with me while I get my head around the new opportunities and while I formulate how I can share some of the thinking with you.

In the mean time, I've started an internal blog (on SharePoint), and it's a fantatsic way for me to communicate with all the interested parties in Microsoft. But I'll try and find the nuggets that might be of value to you too.

One of the interesting events I attended on Tuesday, was 2nd Change Tuesday, and I loved it. Think speed dating between serious investors and smart entreprenieurs - it was really interesting. I'd love to share more of the very interesting ideas with you that some of these guys have, but that would be telling. If you've got a serious idea and want to take it further, you can't buy a better opportunity for it than this meeting. And concersely, if you want to take on some high risk, high potential investment, again, this might be a place for great ideas...

Until next post. Alfred.

If you ever fancied becoming a big stock trader with no risk (why does this sound so much like the typical promises in Nigerian emails?), this is your chance.

Virtual Stock trader

On this site, you can show the stuff you are made of!

I've got a friend in SA that is an absolute mathematical genius. She played building models to predict stock market changes like many others, and then built a system to trade on her behalf. (Yes, she's very clever!) And then, one day, (the story goes) someone tipped a penny share which she then bought online. But she made a typo when she entered the quantity, and bought several million shared, instead of thousands, and did not notice it. However, her automated stock trading system saw the huge increase in volume, and bought more :) And other traders saw the increase in trading, and the price started to go up. When she realised her mistake (still unaware of all this activity), she simply sold the surplus millions of shares back, and discovered the price has shot up and she made a small fortune! How about that?

 There has been a flurry of activity over the last few days that are very, very interesting. I'm still getting my head around some of these, but it seems like movies are getting renewed attention. YouTube, Google demoting Froogle for movies, and now two bits from Microsoft's stall:

1) For UK movie goers: http://movies.uk.msn.com (beta) has everything need to plan the night out (even if that means staying at home with a DVD player). Everything, except the girl, that is. You can find out what time "Snakes on a plane" will show at Aylesbury, or see the trailer of Cars, or look up movies by genre or actors... and the database seems pretty complete to me.

2) Or, have a look at http://beta.search.live.com/video/ - our new video search. Looking for the crazy cow video? Find it here!

If you ever had *any* doubt about just how seriously we take our customer feedback, the this 3 minute 50 second video is an absolute must see.

Ever wondered what happens if you click "send report"?

I promise you, if this video don't make you think again (or laugh or cry), then I would be very surprised.

It's worth watching - go here now:

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/technet/itsshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=9999

PS This Video was shot at Microsoft TVP, in Reading. If you ever wanted to know what our offices look like, this is it...

another PS: Sorry for the earlier broken link - it's due to a bug in "Writer".

We wanted to buy back $20bn worth of MSFT shares, and we "failed" to buy more than 155 million shares at the top price of $24.75. What does that say? Well, our shareholders thought we are worth more than $24.75, despite the fact that the share price was a fair bit lower than $24.75 when we made the offer. And today? Well, the share price has already surpassed $26 briefly!

If only the dollar was stronger, it might have been tempting to cash in some stock... but with the weak dollar and great upside in Vista and Office and Live (not to mention our System Center products!), I'm convinced that selling now might be something I regret later...

OK - I'm very annoyed: I've been working on a Word document (in Word 2007 on my Vista box), and when I just closed Word, it rightly prompted me if I wanted to save it, but then the saving failed due to a vista permissions bug. I've lost valuable working time!

I wanted to find where Word might have saved an auto recovery file, and did what most Microsofties would do: I asked around the office. First to the product manager of Office, sitting close to me, and then eventually over IM and email... but, being a typical wanted-it-yesterday "knowledge worker", I decided to do the very unlikely thing of asking the help file. (Fortunately, clippie was nowhere to see!) And what a great experience that was! Unlike earlier pre-release software, it actually had a useful help file, that had *exactly* the info there.

So - three cheers go to the help system for 2007 Office System. But I still have not recovered my file, and I'm back to re-do the work :(

Actually - this made me realize: I've had very little problems with my Vista & Office system, despite running on fairly old builds now.

Ahhh - I've been very tempted to tell you about this, but had to hold my horses until now: We've got a great little tool to help craft blogs, called (for the moment) "Writer". Download the beta here, now.

This, BTW is what many of us has been using to blog with. Top features for me? I can compile my postings offline, save them, spell check and publish them with one click. And it does a great job of pictures and more...

Here's a screen shot (of a screen shot of a screen shot of a screen shot) of the tool in action. It can also publish to many other blogging engines... so if you are still writing on slate with rock, so consider this!

There is an electric buzz in the air. Annemarie just called me over to her desk. "Do you have a moment?" And then she offered me the unique opportunity to be the very first person to read her very first blog posting, seconds before hitting the "publish" button. Very, very welcome Annemarie! I'm delighted to see the birth of your blog, and I'm sure it will be just as valuable as Bruce's and Allister's... but with even more flair, passion and energy.

Annemarie is the product manager for Windows Server in the UK, and leads the team responsible for all infrastructure servers (think MOM, SMS, ISA Server, Antigen, Virtual Server and more...). She's a fantastic team lead, full of energy and bounce, and I can't wait for more of her musings on passion for success!

As I type this, I can hear her keyboard clickering, while her post #2 is being compiled!

I've seen some press cuttings suggested Zune will be in stores in "fall" (not saying which year or even northern or southern hemisphere)... but at a price of $299. In real money that is about... £1.29?

I've got so many gadgets that can play music while on the go (no least my phone and Creative Zen Micro), but I'm struggling to find an easy and clean way to connect these (with standard mini-jack stereo audio out) to my car radio. It's annoying, since there are 1001 options for IPodders...

(I was tempted to call this posting "403: Access denied" - but I thought search engines and human parsers might quickly ignore this then!)

I should have added this to my previous posting, but I forgot - sorry.

When I started my blog, my family was very concerned about our privacy, and I think this is an important and sensitive issue.

Only blog things that you are willing to see in the newspaper tomorrow.

Only blog things that you won't mind if your neighbor put on a poster on the nearby lamp post.

Initially I was less concerned about the privacy stuff, but then an old friend tracked me down based on info on my blog. That was good news, because it was a friend, but if it was a foe or con artist, it would have been less than delightful.

Hence the reason why I've removed my photo, why I'm vague about my exact home location, why I don't talk much about my family etc. It's a shame we have to consider these things, but it is an artifact of the world we live in today.

Many employers are also nervous about blogging. The rumor is that even Apple and Google don't like blogging employees. And with good reason: a disgruntled employee (or even a overly passionate good employee) could easily do the company serious harm by publishing sensitive info. (I've once made the mistake by accident on my blog unintentionally.) But the fact of the matter is, employees can do this even without blogging. By emailing the embargoed news to the newspaper, any employee can do the same. Thinking about Enron, you could even just phone a friend and get on the news! (http://www.enronmovie.com/) How many times does your sales force accidentally leave the battle card or slides on the table at customer meetings?  (Technology can help: Our Rights management services makes it for example *extremely* difficult for me to "accidentally" copy & paste Ray Ozzie's email to my blog, and could reduce the risk of most of the scenarios above.)

Microsoft's policy around this is very, very healthy. I'm encouraged to blog, but many of my colleagues don't and that's just as OK. But, when I do decide to blog, I am just asked to use my common sense, and I'm given great tools* to help me. We've even got an internal site that will help publicize our blogs externally :)

* tools: I can't wait to tell you more about the tools, but that will have to wait ;)