Brandon Wirtz's Digital Mix

You have to wonder who scooped who. Steve-o's executive letter says MSFT is commited to a platform with low administration, where IT dollars can be spent on advancing the office technolodies, to that end David Worthington of Beta News is reporting on IBM's 'Virtualization Engine' is stepping up beyond what MSFT's Virtual Server is offering.

MSFT is doing a fantastic job allowing you to minimize downtime, and creating a platform that is hardware independent, but IBM is upping the ante with its ability to virualize machines accross a grid. If you have lots of little server this means you can have 20 servers running on 5 cpu's, or conversely if your servers are monoliths you can have 3 servers running accross 10 processors. Where the win really happens is if you have servers that have varried usage.

Often I have CPU intensive work that takes days to run, but by virtualizing the tasks I can have a process that would normally take 24 hours once a week happen in less time using the spare cycles of the grid, and have the horsepower that I had been using only 15% of the time be available to the rest of my farm.

Combine this the improved uptime that can be gained by automatic fall over when hardware fails and you will soon be looking at a world where one guy manages a grid that sits in a rack in a basement, and he does this from his home, only making trips to the basement when hardware fails at which point he slide the server out of the rack, plugs a replacement in to the grid and life keeps going.

MSFT is playing catch up as Linux is already set up to work this way, where as Windows Server is not designed in a way that lends itself to parallell processing. And as Linux you can recompile applications to quickly enable existing products to be more compatible with the virtualization, Windows Applications from third parties can't be easily modified. This ties MSFT to maintaining 100% compatibility with the way theads and memory handling is presented to applications.

Where MSFT is leading is that they have the better addministration tools, allowing you to manage those server more easily. Just putting them on a hardware independent platform isn't enough. You still have to manage the security patches, administrate users, and do ongoing maintenance to the Exchange, SQL, and data stores.

Building easy-to-use, scalable solutions that cover every aspect of the management experience, with real-time feedback on system performance and a high level of automation

And this is where MSFT really is winning MOM rocks, and when you combine it with Virtual Server and Virtual PC, you can drastically lower your Personell requirements.

IBM's solution lets you run 10 machines as one server which can drastically lower your software requirements but at the expense of hardware.

This makes sense since MSFT is in the Software Business and IBM is in the hardware busines, that each tries to lower the cost of the bits they don't sell.

I'm batantly stealing Images that Jake took with his two cameras, so that no one can say I picked the shots or the cameras to anaylize.
First the 1 CCD image and its histograms.

You can see how the bell curve is clipped? That is because the 1CCD camera is Not well balanced and so it doesn't see the brights or the Darks as well as it sees the mids. With a good 1 CCD camera you could correct for this a bit by manually balancing each channel, but you won't find that feature on a consumer camera.

The 3 CCD image and its Histograms


These histograms are near perfect. The Blue is clipped just a bit but the red is practically Ideal, the Turn up at the high end of the histogram implies the white balance was set a little too red, but that is so minor that it is unlikely you'd notice or the camera is doing that intentionally to create a slightly warmer image.

If you want to see how your Camera performs it is pretty easy. Take a still of a frame of video, preferably in an out door environment and bring it in to photoshop, go to Image -> adjustment -> Levels, and you can see the histogram for each of the channels. If you use a professional Video editing suite you may be able to correct your histogram to a degree, making the images have a more appropriate Temperature (Balance between Red and Blue), this is usefull if you shoot under Floresent (heavy in blue light) or Halogen (heavy in red).

Making these changes will help extend the life of your camera as your content won't look like it was shot on antiquated equipment, but will also allow you to use a camera that has heavy use longer as the the CCD's fade over time, especially if used with out a UV, and Infrared Filter.

I'm looking for feed back on my résumé The Primary issues are do you think that Hyperlinks and Comments are a good thing or a bad thing? Do you think I look qualified to do IT, or mearly flip burgers. Lastly do you want to offer me a job.

Google is filed it's S1in case you missed it. A few days ago I stated that I thought Google going public was a shame since it would mean they would lose some of the freedom to take risk. I have to retract that statement as Google's founders say...

"In our opinion, outside pressures too often tempt companies to sacrifice long-term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations. Sometimes this pressure has caused companies to manipulate financial results in order to 'make their quarter.' In Warren Buffett's words, 'We won't smooth quarterly or annual results: If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you."

Now to pick a stock price and decide if I want to bet on how long the Hype will keep Google's share's High, before they correct themselves.

You all know I'm a bit coarse some times, and that I'm not as delicate as I should be. That being the case I apologize in advance if you take offense to my following stance.

ABC will be airing an episode of Nightline where Ted Koppel will read the names of 500+ men and women who were killed in combat in Iraq. However 8 Stations won't be airing this episode as they feel it doesn't serve the public interest.

We understand that our decision in this matter may be questioned by some. Before you judge our decision, however, we would ask that you first question Mr. Koppel as to why he chose to read the names of the 523 troops killed in combat in Iraq, rather than the names of the thousands of private citizens killed in terrorists attacks since and including the events of September 11, 2001. In his answer, you will find the real motivation behind his action scheduled for this Friday.

I can answer the question. With no disrespect to the victims of September 11th or their families, and recognizing that many of them were heroes sacrificing their lives to save other victims, the majority of those people were victims. The 523 troops are all Heroes. I don't believe that any kind of political statement is trying to be made. The only statement being made is that America should mourn its victims, but that it should honor its heroes.

There is no politically correct way to say this, so I'm just going to say it. When we lose 1000 Americans in a single day it is news for weeks, and we remember it, but when we lose one or two soldiers each day in Iraq it slips our mind. We forget about the few people last week, and the guys last month. By honoring them all at once you get a sense of what is happening, and how big this is.

Dig this. These are some great ads. Way better than the MSFT Great Moments at Work.

The Columbus Shut up and Row ad Rocks. Because you can just imagine it happening. The Interrogation room is funny because It is like Queer Eye for the Private Eye. And the Lassie Matrix ad rocks.

University of Minesota is letting students have a Movable type blog, for free and easy. They can get setup in less than 5 minutes and be on their way to internet fame.

“The libraries recognized the potential for this as a medium for scholarly communication,” Eric Celeste, an associate University librarian said. “Your friend might say, ‘God, that’s a rotten idea.’ Or your professor might say, ‘Hmm, that’s an interesting idea. Here are some more resources.’ ”

Yes! More people get it. Creating Peers out of groups that aren't normally peers. How often do you get to call your Prof out on an idea? Or tell the administration they are wrong. And the best part about blog communities is that when one person's idea is good others in the community point to it and in effect "Mod it Up" to the point that even a less trafficed to lower ranking person can get an idea to any tier. You don't have to be an "A List" to get your idea to the top of the heap.

Scoble talks about the edge case. This is the argument I needed a few days ago, when I was talking about the ideal Mp3 player storage size, or the difference between BMW and Ford with regard to brand and functionality of software.

If you don't design for the edge case you don't allow people to grow in to you product. Imagine if Intel only sold processors that 75% of users needed. You wouldn't have Xeons, or Hyper threading.

Looking at Longhorn I see lots of foundation, things that MSFT is creating that they don't even know how people will use. Too bad I can't tell you about any of those new features since you don't have an NDA ;-p

I can tell you about a favorite edge case... Virtual Server, you need it. No more hardware issues, automatic fall-over, remote administration. If you read Balmers Executive newsletter, you know you need Virtual Server, MOM, and SUSE, you can do your job from your home in your underwear. That is progress. Live on the edge, butt naked.

I'm playing UT 2004, and I get all excited because my Outlook Tray Icon pops up that I have a message from Steve Balmer. I'm thinking "Yeah, MSFT finally recognizes my talent and the big guy is sending me e-mail to let me know..." So I exit the game, abandoning my team mates, Then I open it and realize it is just the MSFT Executive Newsletter. Oh well they were NooBs and I was carrying them anyway.

This letter was about IT, and Operations Management. How 2003 server and Mom can save you big on your IT budget. It is chalked full of neat statistics like 70% of IT is maintaining existing systems, (I'd have guessed higher since). And Talks about how "Motorola are realizing significant benefits from these technologies. By using Windows Server 2003 and these powerful management solutions, Motorola estimates it saved 247,000 hours and $11 million in annual software deployments in 2003." Though I'd like to know accross how many seats.

As a guy who provides the ony IT Support for about 800 machines accross 37 organization and only spent about 4 hours last month doing that, and I didn't have to go on site, I could see that you could reasonably Save a lot of money in a big org if you had a few guys like me, and a MOM, and SUSE Server. Throw in Roaming Profiles and Virtualized servers and all of a sudden you are looking at an organization that the only thing your IT department has to do is answer stupid user issues. And you can get Tech Support Cheap in India. (no offense to anyone in India)

You too can get e-mail from the MSFT Execs, just sign up here

Optware Unveils Small Holographic Device Capable of Recording 200GB-300GB on One Disc

Sure there is no working prototype, that image is just a mock up, but still 200 gigs is a lot of data to put on a CD Sized optical disc. Though I think they should use Caddies, You get a scratch on a regular cd you are out 500k, you get a scratch on something with 300 times the data density now you are out 150 megs.

Every where you turn people are pointing to biometrics. For Passports, for security, for Payment. Let me clear something up. Your finger print isn't unique. Before you start to argue. The Most expensive finger print scanner you can by is 2400x2400, That is only 5.8 million pixels. In black and white that is 33 million combinations. Account for the fact that you never scan exactly the same and that there are combinations that will never happen in nature like Checkered patterns and Alternating lines, you are looking at 8 people in the US having the same thumb print as you and 192 people in the world. How'd you like to be going through security in a developing nation when your thumb print identifies you as a terrorist because one of those 192 people Fixed the Fax machine of a terrorist group?

Wilcox is calling the Great Moments at Work silly. And I have to agree. Add Patronizing, lame, and uninspired.

MSFT doesn't act like it knows how to advertise on TV. They have great Xbox commercials, hire those guys to do your Office ads. But these are worse than the Flying people from the XP ads. You want to sell office, get on CNN, and MSNBC, and Tech TV and do ads like IBM does that talk about a real world business case that an IT or CxO can relate to. Talk about XML, talk about reaching your data anywhere in the world, talk about OWA and internet e-mail, talk about creating templates and forms that work on the local machine or as a web app, talk about managing your time with Outlook, and give me numbers on how much a customer saved using MSFT technologies. Computers aren't sold on Vapor, and that is what these ads give is vapor. We are presented cases that are intangible. In only one ad are you given a defined business case. The third quarter numbers changed and your Power point changed to. That is a great business case. You found data that no one had been able to tap, that's great what was the data, where was it stored?

And shit you are looking at a great time to be winning in the TV ad Space, IBM is running ads for it Human Resource department right now. I have customers calling me to ask if I think IBM is going to fold, and if IBM still makes hardware, because all they see is ads for IBM linux and outsource HR.

So I blogged the other day that this hot chick had linked to me. There aren't too many female bloggers and her feed looked interesting so I subscribed. Low and behold the next day she has a Gem of a blog on why companies need to be blogging.

I agree with Dina about some ot the thoughts she thinks should be in more pitches to companies about blogging. But especially "Call to action" This is what companies don't get. When you start blogging, you start getting more feed back, and less noise. You get rational feed back rather than just "your product sucks." You create a dialog with your customers and employees.

I'm to late for this Blogging Pitch contest, but if I had to pitch blogging:

Who is the face of your company? There was a time when we could identify the CEO and founder of many of the products we use, or could personally identify with a spokesperson for the company. Be that Steve Jobs, or Morris the Cat, we had a tangible if irrational image of that spokesperson being the embodiement of that company.

Part of why Microsoft is viewed as cold and unfeeling, is because we view Bill Gates that way. Right or wrong we have this vision of entire companies being one person. Blogging lets you have employees be spokes people. They become approachable, visible, and hopefully likable. You can stand back and watch Robert Scoble figuring things out, you see the wheels turning and then the lights go on in his head as he realizes why Xbox Live is more than just a kids toy, you can feel his excitement as he tries to convey to his audience a concept that he gets but doesn't know how to put in to words. But what you really get is this face for Microsoft that is not Gates or Balmer, but rather someone more like you, that you can approach, that you can relate to.

Blogging to the outside is about building relationships. You don't have to turn every reader in to a dyed in the wool customer, but you turn them in to some one who is willing to consider your company when they go to spend their hard earned money. You build loyalty, and you show that you do care about the feedback you get. Blogging is like sitting on your front porch and waving to your neighbors as they walk by. You don't have to have a great dialog with each of them, but they will remember who you are and think of you when they need something, or be there to help out when they can.

Blogging to the inside is about building relationships, but it is also about perpetuating dialog. A blog lets you put your idea out for everyone to see. It is like the ultimate suggestion box. And because blogging happens on neutral ground no one has to take offense to contradictary ideas. You can say this is what I feel we need to be doing, and if some one else says, this is what we should be doing instead, the discussion can be about the ideas not the people. You don't get that level playing field in a conference room where you worry about rank, or department, or even if you like the other person. Blogs are like coming home after work, sitting down on the front porch and having a beer with your co-workers.

Blogs are just a front porch.

http://www.amigaforever.com/tour/highmat.html

That's all.

Amiga is back What more is there to say. An OS from when I was in Kindergarten is reborn. Yes you to can experience Amiga for the first time. Running on Emulated hardware get the original experience. Play the original games. And use Amiga DOS because you just love the penalty box of a virtual machine.

Carter responds to my Brandwidth article.
# re: Know Good Matches for a “Dream” Job?
Brandon - thanks for the "brandwidth" URL; it's a good read.
I like the cluetrain manifesto feel, the focus on what individuals can do, and the "make it your own" via social networking points. I'll have to re-read sometime when it's not so late, but there's one point I'd argue now.

There's a subtle implication that "good" brands are "designer label" brands. You contrast Apple and Microsoft on this point. Even if PCs remain a "tool" to Apple's "status symbol", that doesn't mean that Microsoft should be Apple. For example, BMW has style and status, but that doesn't mean fleet purchasers would value Ford's behaving like BMW! :)

Microsoft makes a platform; Apple makes iLife. So, for example, rather than creating sexy/secret/surprise launches that drive community excitement, I argue internally that Microsoft's brand is about making the platform available to devs as early as possible - wharts and all - so that's it's a boring matter-of-course at launch.

Carter, I have to agree, I wrote this a while back and haven't revised it. I think the point I was trying to make may, or may not be valid... With software a good "feel" is a matter of good design, rather than of Per unit cost. I went test driving Mini's with Ang and realized that for under $20k you can get a car that Feels like a Bimmer. That was a good fealing. With MSFT Leather seats are free as it were. So giving the OS a great feel comes at no incidental per unit cost. Longhorn does an excelent job of doing this. The Newer builds (post PDC) do a great job of improving on the Feel of Windows. I especially like the level of "Clarity" that the new Skins have, and the "Angles" that have been taken to Window Management. (If you have seen LH you know what I'm talking about but NDA keeps me from saying too much)

The launch arguement you make is valid on some products and not on others. The Windows Media 9 Launch was a great example of how a launch can be both a Red carpet event and a chance to get devs excited. While some people had the WMP9 Bits before the launch the majority got the beta at the event, and while the first night was for CEO's, Content Providers, and the In crowd, the days following were for developers. This is how I think it should be. Build a buzz by doing the launch when the product goes in to Public Beta.

Lastly... I think Brandwidth matters more in certain segments of MSFT than it does in others. The Consumer Space the Brandwidth matters, the corporate it doesn't as much. Or not in the same way. Office XP doesn't make a great T-shirt. Longhorn might. LoneStar would make a really good t-shirt. I'd where a t-shirt that said "LoneStar: Think in Ink." or "Symphony: Get Extended" I'm sure I could think up more clever one liners, but what I'm really saying is that there is brand potential. And every T-shirt is an advertisement. You'd be suprised the number of people who walk up to me when I'm wearing my Windows Media Jacket and ask questions about Moviemaker, and WMP, and just windows in general. You'd be suprised how many people would ask me BMW questions when I wore my BMW hat around. I don't think wearing a Great Plains Shirt would get me accounting questions :-).

The only thing better than getting links to me in other languages are getting links to me from hot chicks.

Who says you can't win points with the ladies and never leave the house? Dina Mehta linked to my article on Amish.

MSDN has a neat article on using XP Embeded in a VPC session. I'm looking forward to a day when I can put a DVD in a machine and just boot in to windows. run my core apps and get out, Use a USB Key for Storage and be off to the races leaving no residue on the host machine.

Jonathan Tasini writes about a community trying to keep Walmart out. Walmart isn't on my list of friends. Though it has never done anything to me, I look at Ang's home town of Coldwater, MI. That town works almost entirely for Walmart. You either work at the Walmart, or the Walmart distribution center. It has hurt the town a great deal. The Downtown shops aren't booming any more, and the town isn't really big enough for Super Walmart, Kroger, Felspauch and the likes. Quality Farm and Fleet can't compete in the pet supply or "farm Apparell" market. When your ag-community has a strugling Quality Farm and Fleet, you know something is wrong.

There are communities that benefit from Walmart, but they tend to be communities where the families are so happy to get $40k for their 2 bedroom home that when Walmart offers them $100k for it they are over joyed. Walmart on the list only slightly lower than ClearChannel on my list of companies that are hurting America.

Even if you don't want to hear about Walmart Bashing Tasini's article si a good read. He talks about how Costco pays its worers more and has a lower turn over.

The republicans are looking for Young Adults Ages 18-24 who are registered voters, have demonstrated the President's call to community service and are willing to write 300 words on the subject. It doesn't actually list republican, but I think that is implied.

I'm reminded of the Grand Theft Auto Vice City Talk Radio segment, where the Trust Fund Kid Says that he gives to the community through his dad's trust fund. "I can save the world with Peace, Love, and my dad's money..."

Oh and come on 300 words is not an essay. I'm cranking out 4000 words a day for these books I'm writing, 300 is barely 3 sentences.

Everyone else has thoughts on this so I thought I should too.

Plain and simple it is a bad move for Google to go public. Google thrives because it can take risks and not worry about stock prices. The geniuses who work there are rich, and can spend money on pet projects. Once you have investors you can't do that anymore.

Dilbert's new coworker is an international popstar who made no money becaue no one bought his CD they just downloaded it. Apparently through p2p since he didn't get paid.

To be true to cube life the whole office should have bought one copy and put it on the corporate Intranet. ;-)

I'm seeing more and more poorly done research. So I'm going to take a moment to relate some of the failings of research I have seen lately.

Research has to look at the target demographic. When you ask a thousand random people a question you get random answers. If you ask a thousand people with in a demographic you get targeted answers.

Research is best done on those who don't know they are being studied. Tivo Tracks what you watch, but 85% of Tivo owners are suprised to learn this. The results it generates are accurate, as Neilsons is finding out people don't fill out their diaries accurately.

Ask a dumb question get a dumb answer. Only 49% of people want their Portable music player to connect to a PC. There are only two possibilities here, They did the survey in front of the Apple store, or they did the survey in Amish country.

Jupiter is saying you only need 1000 songs in your library. Raise your hand if your house hold has 100 CD's. I have over 100 DVD's. And I dont' think I'm a statistical anomoly. 4 gigs is not enough space for your Mp3/WMA/AAC collection. Maybe before you buy a player...

I disagree with about 95% of what Jupiter says, so I'm maybe not qualified to answer.... The question Jupiter forgot to ask is how much content to people want to take with them. Or what percentage of a portable is currently used by its owners. We don't buy a player because we have 30k songs. We get the player and then fill it up. How many CD's did you have when you bought your first CD player? Dvd Player? VCR? Reel to Reel? Phonograph? How many of each of those did you have after you had the device for a year.

I carry ISO's, E-mail, and Complete Virtual PC's on my Portable Media Player.

And while what I carry may put me in the minority there are a good number of people toting Jpgs, DivX files and more.

I have a client who uses his iPod for the sole purpose of moving 12 gigs Cad Drawings from place to place.

I've been using a clients iPod to ship movies back and forth a good deal. We put the DVD master on an iPod, drop the iPod in the mail and presto two Double sided DVD's worth of info delivered from here to London in 24 hours.

Wilcox at Jupiter will always give you data that backs what he tells you it will in advance. He also said that consumers don't want Personal Video players, and that PMCE will flop.

Film does absolutely no compression. Each Frame is presented raw with no regard to what was in the previous frame. Digital Video is a bit different from that.

Digital Video is broken in to 3 types of Frames. I frames, P Frames and B Frames. I frames are also called Key Frames. They are like Jpegs, they give a single frame with no regard for what came before or what came after. Motion Jpeg, and Targa Streams are video made entirely of I frames.

P frames are frames that tell the differences between the current frame and the previous frame. Because very little tends to change between any two frames this can drastically increase the compression that can be achieved, especially in slow moving video.

Using FFDshow you can see the motion vectors of your video, that shows the relation ship between what you see, and what you just saw...

B frames are used to represent the diference between the current frame and what is coming. This is a bit more abstract, so I may touch on it later, I only mentioned them because I didn't want you to think I couldn't count to 3.

Visually lossless. That is an interesting term. We talk about capturing video and that we then use a Visually Lossless codec like Mpeg, or DV, or Windows Media, or DivX. And we have all seen artifacts that crop up, but have you ever wondered how much difference there was between your images?

How about the difference between these two?

This Image is 107k

and This one is one is about half that at 55k

How much difference is there? This image shows the differences between the above two images.

I hope I haven't given up too much of a secret. If you have the original source, and the compressed source you can gather a lot of information by differencing them.

Coming up, Motion Vectors. Ooh Fun.

I got to see demo's of the new Apple Suite with Shake, Motion, and Final Cut HD. They are impressive, but I still like Flame, Smoke, and the like. I realize Shake has a good number of Oscar's under their belt but I think it is because it is better at previewing what it can do than Flame is. Flame does more and is more powerful, but Shake lets you see more of what you are doing upfront.

FBI raided a school in Arizona citing copyright violations. While I'm all in favor of enforcing copyrights, but I'm confident that there are much worse violators than a school district.

High Def (HD), and Standard Def (SD) are the most common accronymns you will run in to, but you may also see ED for Extended Def.
Generally HD is 720p or higher, SD is 480i and lower, and ED is 480p +/- 10% (We'll get to this).

For the purpose of this article we are going to show the differences between 720p in the 4:4:4 Color Space, and ED, and SD.

This Image is in 720p 4:4:4 at 4:3 I'm doing this in 4:3 because I want to show the differences between the qualities, not the aspect ratios.

Next is an Image at 480p 4:4:4

Next is 480i 4:4:4

Now we drop to 480i 4:1:1 which is what Consumer DV Camera's use.

Now that you have seen the visual differences between the qualities let's talk about why there are visual differences. Color space is an odd bugger to say the least. Video is broadcast in a format that makes Color Broadcasts backwards compatible with Black and White Television. This Color Space is called YUV.

Y is the Luminance portion of the color space. Luninance is for the purpose of this lesson the same as brightness. This is Y color and BW broadcasts are compatible. Y is the only part of the broadcast that BW TV's interpret.

NTSC's implementation of YUV uses only 11% of the orignal blue information and only 30% of the Red.
Resulting in an image that looks like the following, it does demonstrates that you can't particularly tell that we went from 256 shades of red to 32, or that we went from 256 shades of blue to 16.

What about the 4:1:1 part? Well 4:1:1 means that there is 4 times as much data on the Y channel as the U and V channel. The Blue channel for the 480i 4:1:1 looks like this. And Is at 1/4 the resolution of the Green/Luminance channel. The Red Channel would look similar.

This is just Part 1 more is coming.

So you all wait with baited breath for my explanation of why I'm an HD nazi.

Jake, John, and I have varying opinions on whether Shooting in High Def should require a license.

Here are my issues.

A. Shooting in HD is not the same as shooting in Standard Def, and the masses don't get that.

B. HD doesn't just make things better. And it often makes things worse. If you take crap and look at it from 20 feet away it isn't that impressive, Take crap and hold it up to your face for close inspection and it is really nausiating.

Shooting in Standard Def does train you for Shooting in HD to a point. The thing that you have to keep in mind is that creating movies is this: Creating compelling stories doesn’t require HD, and conversely certain stories and shots could only be done in HD.

HD is about more than just resolution. I can give an Imax camera to any dumb ass and he can shoot pictures of his kids school play, but that doesn’t mean that the end result is an Imax film. Capturing your kids school play on your camcorder, doesn’t require HD to tell the story. Capturing the Indy 500 doesn’t actually require HD to tell the story, however, to capture the experience of being a driver, does require HD.

I think my rants in a private forum may be hurting my HD evangelist standing... But I think part of being an evangelist is recognizing that you want quality examples of technologies more than you want quantity. To that end, CSI in HD makes sense, but Reno 911 does not.

A big article on HD is coming I promise.

I'll explain later, but I thought I should put it out there, that when it comes to HD, there are people who should be banned from using the term, any software or Hardware that claims it supports it, and should be banned from creating content in an HD format. I think these people might even require having their power turned off so as to prevent them from even attempting to be associated with HD.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Scoble, and Wright both linked to this, so I thought I'd comment on it too. Lenn writes about Evangelism

To sum up what Lenn says: You have to believe and be believable.

Falling back to my camp counselor analogy, and playing off Lenn's Dogma references, Building the "Church of your Product" is just like expanding a religion.

The rules of expanding a religion are simple.

1. Lead by example: People will follow leaders, and people will abandon hypocrites.

2. Understand that there are depths of belief: I have had people tell me you can't be Christian if you don't believe the Universe was created in 7 literal days, That you can't be Jewish if you don't keep Kosher, and that you can't be in the Church of Microsoft if you use a Non MS product for anything MSFT offers a competing product.

3. Tolerance is prefrable to jihad: Getting people to acknowledge that others are atleast not the enemy is an important first step in conversion. Holy wars don't add to your numbers, they just lower thoughs of your competitors. If you want to convert people invite them in to your house. Build tools to help them talk to you like the Netware Gateway services.

I'll expand on these rules some other time, but those are the big three.

Church of Microsoft: Where do you want to go today? ;-)

Mary Jo points to an article in the Oakland Tribune "What if Google expanded on its search-engine (and now e-mail) wares into a full-fledged operating system? "

My thoughts are as follows:

MSFT must feel Google has a potential as atleast a storage format. Afterall isn't that what WinFS is all about?

Google already is entering the Corporate Space with it's Google Appliance that helps you find files on your Intranet.

Google has the Brandwidth to make a go at anything they want. I would bet money that more people know of Google than any distro of linux.

To that end this article talks about Google really being in the Terminal Server Business. I think if we get to that point, MSFT can win. Playing with Virtual Server, I could easily see a day in the near future where I would put my VHD on a machine and do the majority of my work remotely. Giving up almost nothing as I could still surf the web and such locally, and as yet I can't out type Remote Desktop when working on my broad band connection. Surfing via RDC has a ways to go, and I don't think I could PhotoShop, but everything else is there. When Connections hit 10 megs it will all be possible.

More People are stupid. Imagine giving up your password for candy. Or thinking secure password is your wifes name and the month. My passwords include numbers, symbols and case sensitive letters. While it is nemonic it isn't something that you would likely be able to remember it if I told it to you just once... (Don't try and hack me, I don't want to contend that you can't brute force my password)

Did I say that People are stupid.

People are stupid. Ryan asks George to go over to the "Top" group. He steps over to the group everyone of the contestants "knows" to be the best. Ryan then says, "George you are in the wrong group"

The Looks on the faces of the contestants says it all. Jenifer Hudson had been the highest voted American Idol more than one week, and got voted out. It shows that People are stupid. If you let us vote we will do dumb things. We should just make me evil tyranical leader of the emacnipated state of rhode island. (MSU Inside Joke) Free will is overrated.

di Antonio Sofi Comments on my Blog on Audio Quality. And while google will translate it it is still rough to read

"Insomma. Other that strategies of the terror and the diffused criminalizzazione, exorbitant prices of the cd, sale on linens of insufficient music: we make that more concerts and contents are made all?"

Even through poor translation you can tell this guy is Anti RIAA.

One of the side effects of Media being so easy to create is that we now have a lot more of it than ever before. If someone told you they had 2000 photo's it wouldn't shock you. Someone says they have 400 hours of Home movies, no big deal. Now move this to the corporate space. I my self have 750 white papers, reports and other factual or process documents. Put me in a corporate environment where you have 500 people who crank out that much content, and you all of a sudden have a half million text documents.

Tack on Corporate images, Legal Docs, training videos, and it is easy to imagine an Intranet that makes Yahoo's Content look miniscule by comparison. So how do we manage our content?

Google and Idexes? WinFS? Folders and well formed directory sturcture. It will be interesting to see what comes in the next 5 years as the dominate management system, since so few companies have any content management system, beyond, "Phil down in accounting has that document,"

Wil Wheaton is Going to be on Call for Help. You will notice that he is Blue just like I said Chris should be. It's not to late to reconsider that GarageOgre Make over Chris.

Betanews is really fond of quoting Joe Wilcox, but it seems he ony says things that are wrong or blatantly obvious."The success of Microsoft's WMV HD strategy hinges on consumer interest and whether the increase in quality passes the "better enough" test."

I thought the success of any consumer prodcuct hinged on consumer interest. And I disagree with Joe, the success of WM is going to be detiremined by Hollywood not the consumer. Consumers didn't pick Mpeg2 on DVD, Hollywood did. People will come to the content. MSFT's big win was getting Disney onboard with WM. If Disney HD DVD is only available in WM then that will clench it. Every household with a toddler will have to have a WM enabled player. You can't have a 4 year old and not have disney.

Joe, you really need to get a grasp on how content markets work. You buy anXbox, PS2, or GameCube based on what games you like. You buy a PC or a Mac based on what programs you like to run. VHS or Betamax. In the format wars to come Content partners will decide the winner. Consumers will simply follow the content.

Ang test drove Mini's today. I got to ride. The Experience was very good. John the sales manager said if Ang buys one it will be the first Mini he has sold, as he is the manager, not a sales man. John was british and quite knowlegable about cars. Though his ability to shift was not as impressive as I'd expect from someone who makes a show of it.

Ang was a bit nervous driving stick in front of me and John. She stalled the car twice. Once from a standstill because she was in 3rd rather than 1st, and once when John wanted her to see how short the stopping distance is, and she forgot to clutch.

One of the things we both liked is that John believes Mini's sell them selves. You come in interested in the car, you test drive and you either love it or you don't. If you love it you tell 5 of your friends and so you are your own salesman.

The Mini was very roomy, I'm not a small guy and I fit reasonably in the back seat. And in the front I was very comfortable. The S we test drove was very sporty. The car is very refined. It feels like a BMW as well it should being made by them. The Wheels being located so far to the corners makes the car handle very well, and the larger tires on the S make the ride very smooth. Ang is in love with it. She was particularly fond of a Pepper white with Black racing stripes Tan interior, and Panoramic sun roof.

I have to admit I liked them. I was fond of a Dark Silver with Black Racing stripes.

In any event it was interesting to get a lesson in evangelism from a Brit selling German Cars in America.

Wired has an article about how coaches are using DVR and Tablet to give feed back to players. This looks like the stuff Phil Webster of cSwing.com is doing. Stylus is such a great input device, way better than the touch pad I'm using right now.

I was trying to explain to a client why I thought the Phone company monopolies need to be broken up even more, but that an MSFT monopoly was ok. The argument didn't start on this topic, I don't even rembember how it got to that topic, but here is my version of the difference between "Hard" and "Soft" Monopolies.

Back in the day you could own such a large portion of a market of tangible goods, or finite resource that no one could compete. I can't start a Telephone company tomorrow, nor can I own a diamond mine. You just can't say when I get done with college I'm going to compete with At&T, or DeBeer's. The reason being that unless you discover a diamond mine that DeBeers doesn't own, or unless the Feds let you on the carrier network you can't enter those spaces.

Those companies no that they can charge what they want and only have to match price to demand. As they control the market they can price fix to their hearts content because you are stuck paying what they ask or you can go with out.

Microsoft on the other hand even if it had 100% install base would always be in competition with its self. Because it's product doesn't actually have a consumption rate unless it offers improvements over previous versions. If you buy a copy of Windows For work Groups it will run for a 100 years, and if you are ok with the level of functionality it has you would never have to buy another OS again. To that end MSFT in order to continue to make money has to offer improved products on an ongoing basis or cease developement fire all of its employees and hope that the number of new PC's in the market yeilds an ongoing profit stream. Of course MSFT is not going to do that. They want to continue to make money, so they have to continually add features that compell users to upgrade.

Because MSFT only supports its products for 7 years there is a some what finite life to its products, but for the most part if you are running a 7 year old OS it is no more vulnerable to security issues than it was when you bought it. So in that sense you are at the same level of functionality as when you purchased the OS.

The general point of all this, is that Software is neither a Consumable, nor a services, and is therefore not able to be a monopoly. Better software can always be written and as the ongoing price per unit is in essence free you are always able to have a competitive market place.

This site tells you how much of the earths resources you use. But with questions like does your home have electricity, or runnng water. Does your food come from your locale. In order to pass you should be an amish vegan.

I grew up with Amish neighbors. It never struck me as that odd since I saw them on a daily basis. It never strikes most people to ask why it is that Amish shun technology. I know it took me until high school to ask, and I saw them every day. So for those who have never even seen an Amish buggy going down the road it probably never occurred to them to ask.
The Amish are devoted, religious, hard working, separatists. Amish don't marry non-Amish, and on the rare occasions they do, their families have a funeral to morn their loss. The Amish way of life is actually a means to prevent interaction with outsiders. Oddly this is precisely why they are such supporters of community. In fact Amish are so community oriented that they are almost communists. Not of course in the sense the Soviet Union was, or China is, but rather in the ways Carl Marx believed all society would evolve to. Amish communities run their farms the way a communal would, sharing the land the expenses and the profits. This is of course likely the only way they would be able to afford to run a farm in today's agricultural market, as even with hundred's of acres, and lots of equipment it is difficult for a farmer to scrape together a living.
Amish have abandoned technology because they feel that if dilutes the ties of community. If you can sit around and watch endless hours of TV you won't need the fellowship of your neighbors. If you own a combine you won't need the community to help husk corn. If you own a car it becomes too easy to run to the store to pick things up. Amish in some communities however have adopted Walkie-talkies, and Cell phones. This seems strange at first, but the logic is that they are for safety and communication with others in the community. Imagine losing a buggy wheel 10 miles from home and having to catch a lift back home, leaving your horse on the side of the road, while your neighbor comes to bring you a new one.
Technologists are often separatists too. Watching a group of MVP's at the Global summit two weeks ago I saw a group of FoxPro MVP's snub a group of VB MVP's. I'm sure both groups think they have nothing to talk about with the other. Trying to convert a programmer from one language to another is like trying to convert a Ford lover to Chevy (another country bumpkin reference).
For the most part corporate America is trying to do community in a separatist way. They want to push that they are the only religion you need, that you only need to know the Gospel according to them. You see this with Apple's iTunes. Easily one of the most recognizable music communities but it is also the most elitist. You have to use their Player, and only have access to their content. This is funny because MSFT is viewed as the elitist group and they rolled out WM DRM which supports a huge number of players, and anyone can create content for.
The problem with the Amish method of community or the beauty of it depending on how you see it, is that there is not really any growth. The only way you get more Amish to have kids. That limits the growth to a pretty slow number. The same is true of Separatist or Elitist communities. If you aren't trying to actively convert users, or working on ways to have communities interact you aren't likely to grow your communities.
Geeks in general aren't very good at networking. We like living in our parent's basement, and we seek out a group of friends just big enough to make our D&D games playable, and we might not like every one in our gaming group but we tolerate them because they are a warm body and that is all we need to round out our party. But when it comes to talking to CEO's about the advantages of one product or another it is hard, because let's face it CEO's can barely check their e-mail let alone understand the intricacies of switching the entire web space to a SQL driven site with W3C compliant CSS, not that wimpy FrontPage CSS knock off. So geeks come off as unapproachable. But let a geek argue in a forum about why White Wolf should change a rule and you will get an elegant multi-page argument complete with practical applications.
This is why Blogging is so important. We take our time to think things through when we write. And we can go back and revise, so our arguments come out in better form. I'm glad to see MSFT embrace Blogging because I'm already seeing groups with in MSFT discussing things said on each others blogs. New guys can influence VP's in ways that most companies would never dream of. Blogs let even the lowliest of Mail Room workers put a good idea out there and have the possibility of it making it up to the Senior VP.
As Geeks it also means you don't have to be in a room full of people to build a network of people. My Linked In list contains a lot of people I have no idea what they look like. We have had friend ships for years and I couldn't pick them out of a line up. While I have mixed feelings about this, it is a distinct advantage for those basement dwelling geeks who can write a very powerful piece on any topic, but stutter in public and look at the floor in the presence of a female.
I think Amish would like Blogs.

Jeremy is pushing that evangelist is something you can make your self in to. I think you can to some extent. For example I was a Camp director, when I first started in to summer camp as a counselor I wasn't sure it was a job I was even going to like, but I have since decided Camp was the best experience of my life.

To that end I think you can stumble in to being an evangelist, I didn't take the counselor job knowing I'd be a camp evangelist but where I disagree with Jeremy is that evangelism has anything to do with being a salesperson.

Sales, and selling is a side effect of evangelism. When you go to a car dealer you talk to a salesman, and he sells you on the car, the experience is all about you, your ego, and your id.

When you go a bible revival, the experience is all about everyone. When you leave you feel good about people, and things, and life. The fact that you are sold on the Bible at the same time is just a side effect of all of that.

Evangelism in a corporate world is much the same. If you go down to the local Ferrari dealer the sales man sells you on a new Ferarri. But if you go to your local Ferrarri club they talk about how great all Ferrari's are, and how the new builds on the old and what is better, worse, and different, about Ferarri's now than 10 years ago.

If we step that back a bit further we look at the motivation for why each of these groups are pushing their wares, and you start to see that the difference between an evangelist, and a sales person is that the evangelists aren't pushing their wares at all, you are just getting caught up in the excitement they have for what ever they are evangelising, that you start to want it your self. Every person an evangelist touches should become an evangelist as a result of that contact, even if what they are pushing is not right for them.

A great example of this is how Ang is with people. Ang evangelizes so many things, and one of her recent evangelisms was for the connected home, a life we live with Media Center, a central server for all of our files, and the ability to access our Pc's from anywhere on the internet, so we are never disconnected. Ang was evangelizing the benefits of all this to her mom, who has know need for it, but her mom was excited at the possibility that it could be done. So now when her mom is talking to people about how technology is changing things her mom tells people how her daughter is using this connected home technology.

To be honest I'm not of the belief I truly have a God given quest to evangelize Microsoft, I do however feel that MSFT has always had great technologies and that a great many of them would benefit my friends, clients, and community. And I do feel Evangelism is my calling, who ever I work with or for I am an evangelist. As a Camp Director I was an evangelist for the camp, at Griffin I'm a MSFT evangelist, at Radio Shack in High School I was a technology evangelist. I have never sold anything to anybody. I have sung the praises of products I believed in and people came to the table to buy, but a great many of the ones who came to buy came via a friend of a friend because the people I talked to be came evangelists too.

I would never call you an idiot Jeremy. But I would never tell anyone to take a job that only might interest them. When I am hiring for positions I can see it in the eyes of a person if they want the job. And that counts for a lot. A person who only watns a job 90% will only put 90% effort into it, and lots of people's interest in a job drops 20% after the first year, that means my 90% effort ends up being 70%. Lots of time I weigh desire more than I wiegh experience. If I have a person with 200% of the job requirements, and only 50% desire to work on a project I have to weigh if that is as good as some one with 90% of the requirements and 150% desire. And Evangelist is a postion I'd certainly only take if I were 110% sure I wanted it. I could be a Windows Media Evangelist, I could be an Office Evangelist, I couldn't be a Spot evangelist, or a RealPlayer evangelist, I don't think I could even be a MovieMaker evangelist.

Because the hours are long to be good at it you have to let it consume you a bit. You have to have that enthusiasm that makes people who don't get it wonder what they are missing, and you have to be willing to admit when what you are evangelizing isn't a fit for your audience. For example you can get people excited about what a Spot can do, but if they live in Bora-Bora the best you can hope for is that they will be impressed. Because there is no service in their area.

You can be a go to church and not believe a word of it; you can sing in the choir and inspire with out ever being inspired; You can stand in the pulpit and deliver the word and never hear it; but to take the message into the community and get them excited you have really believe.

This blog started at Carter's Site

I ventured out of the house to by some dew and was gone for over an hour as I got a demo of a Retail RFID product at the local Gas Station. The Demo was supposed to be for the Gas Station owner, And it was pretty cool, at first....

The demo was of a UHF RFID setup designed for loss prevention. The RFID tags were $1.25 a piece and you attached them to your more valuable items to prevent loss. If the Item was in inventory but left the store the alarm would sound, and the video cameras would go from the low speed, low quality that they typically run at and run at full quality for 5 minutes so that the License plates of the cars at the station could easily be read.

This seemed like over kill for anything this gas station would have, but probably it was limited to a market of places that were low enough traffic that you could reasonably record all the plates at the location.

The problem with the demo and the reason I got to speak with the sale man, as that my Nextel which makes my monitor twinge and my speakers chirp even when they are off... Set off the alarm. It appears it works on 866 mhz and these RFID's work at 868mhz. So I was effectively jamming the signal when my phone rang.

Be glad that I wasn't at a Jewelry store that might have an alarm attached to local authorities, or security that would come shoot me down in the parking lot because my phone rang.

A Fortune 1000 company I have been working on a proposal for bailed on the project citing lower than expected earning meaning they don't have the budget for the project.

With out going into the specifics, the project was 1 and a quarter million to roll out over 6 months, but the the first year they would save almost 2 million dollars and increase productivity by saving the company 240k man hours the first year. Not to mention that the infrastructure could be used for other departments to save additional money.

The problem is that the people in one department have no ability to share infrastructure costs with another department, and money has to be appropriated to a project and if that project saves money they have no way to access those savings unless they fall in the same fiscal year.

So the company is looking at short term rather than long term.

About 6 months back I was sitting in the home of someone who was filling out a Neilson's survey, for what they had watched. And they were checking their favorite shows, and I said "Did you actually watch Survivor last week? I thought you were asking what happended cause you missed it..." and their response was that I was right, but that they represent 10k people and that if they don't mark the shows they like, then they will disappear.

I was a bit perturbed that this was how the Neilson's ratings worked, especially since I know someone who does Neilson's box installs. Which apparently have thier onw flaws. But with so many of my favorite shows going off the air, I wonder if Neilson's is more innaccurate than anyone really believes.

Neilson's works on the premise that the homes they monitor are typical for the demographic of that home, however... Those of you reading my blog ask your self if you would want some one monitoring your TV, Xbox, and Computer. If you said no you are instantly thrown out of the demographic. I'll also be you are amongst the viewers of Earth 2, Firefly, Farscape, and Angel.

What I found interesting about this Wired article is that the Nielson installer I know said that he gets a disproportianately high number of low income homes. Because if you don't have a TV, or Antenna, you are given one to meet the Neilson's requirements. That isn't to say all of the shows listed in the Wired article are watched by low income homes, but I'm confident that the Low income homes aren't watching Angel, and SciFi.

Probably not watching Tech TV either.

Can you believe a Geek like me has been missing out on ShoutCast for so many years. I never found a station I liked with enough songs to have it on in the background. Since I got my TurtleBeach Audiotron I was listening to a few of the stations, and really liked them. But because TurtleRadio Hides the URL for the stream, I had to use a packet sniffer, to find the links... It was worth it, I love the Euro Top 100 Charts, and some of the Celtic music, and some of the Classical. So I went from working in silence to having music in my life again. No more CheapChannel radio in the background.

Ed Russel has started a pettition to get ChrisPirillo back on the air....

I'm so torn do I put my efforts into the Lockergnome campaign or the Angel one? JK Chris...

Now that Fred looks like Zhaan you have to weigh if the skin tight out fit is hot enough to counter the nasty face she is always making.

This made me wonder if the Blue Treatment could help Chris they way it did Amy Acker, Whil Weaton, and so many others.
I pitched this idea to Chris, and he agreed it would likely help his career, so we visited a local salon, and with the help of some Rit Dye, Leather Outfit, and some latex we reinvented Chris the LockerGnome, As Chris the GarageOgre, A bigger, Meaner, Bluer version of his previous self.

MSFT is looking for input on Longhorn Server. You can only give feed back on one topic at a time, so come back often :-). I want Smart Port forwarding by application so that I can put multiple port 80 applications on one IP and have it parsed by the URL Request. No more of this two IP's for IIS and WMS stuff.

So I’m just starting to get caught up after MVP week at MSFT.

I have to say I was really impressed with the bits I saw of the new products relating to WM. NDA prevents me from saying too much, so I’ll be vague.

Bobsleds/Media Extenders are cool.

Portable Media Centers are the new iPod killer.

DRM will be more flexible, a win for content providers and consumers.

Longhorn is looking good.

WMP in all its variations (And I saw a lot of them on a lot of platforms) is all looking good.

The New Longhorn Media API’s are going to be sweet.

I haven’t mentioned any Tech that isn’t public. Though we saw some that isn’t.

I do have to say I was disappointed that everything WM is still geared for consumer. I think there should be more corporate consideration, but I’m still happy with what I saw.

Steve Chmura Asked:

Can you say if they showed any set-top boxes that could playback WM9 content? For example, pop in the T2-HD disk or one of the WMV 720p disks I have made and play them back through DVI or DHCP?

The ‘ipod killer’ – when MS gets it to be 5 ounces, sync better then the pocket PC then I will believe it J

Thanks for the update

Portable Media Centers Sync better, weigh a bit more, and play video... so they are way better.

The understanding I have about T2. Is that it will most likely never be supported by a true STB… Let me clarify this a bit… T2 was really a technology demo designed to show off what WMV could do with feature length HD content. Unlike Coral Reef that Uses HighMat, and Self Authenticating disc’s T2 doesn’t work with any of the standards That are on their way.

Because STB Computers are growing in possibility it is possible a STB MCE running XP embedded could play t2, but for the most part discs will either be in HighMat, or HDDVD, which currently are NOT a unified technology.

There are STB’s on the way that do offer HighMat Support, Several things based on the Equater Chip, and there are several boxes on the way that will support HD WMV… The question will be how long before these technologies all end up on a Disc and Player combination that works for all content.

The analogy I use is that we are still sitting in the early mpeg2 days, when DVD Player first launch many only supported single layer discs and no CSS, 6 months later you had Single layer with CSS, and 6 months Later you had CSS with Dual Layers, and Menus.

Until the DVD Forum releases a standard the best you can hope for is Highmat with HD support. I don’t know if there is a player that does DRM on Disc. I know there are no STB’s in the near future that aren’t running XP/CE that support DRM from a clearing house.

Maybe I'm wrong but doesn't Bill Gates own Corbis? Then why is he giving away Apples?

I had a neat conversation with Matt Calder when I was in Redmond this last week, about Social Engineering vs. Social Networking. Social Networking is of course just connecting people to your product, Social Engineering is convincing people they want your product.

Their are many ways to do Social Engineering. You can Talk about how your product will change the audiences life, or you can convert them to believing your product is something they always wanted. Tivo is an example of the latter, Blue Ducks are an example of the former. For those of you who don't live in Dilbert, Blue Ducks are Dilbert's attempt at art based on the feed back from a focus group. The Focus Group told Dilbert they wanted pictures that were big, Blue, of an Animal, that you should be able to shoot the thing in the picture, and you should be able to eat the thing in the picture, so he creates a Blue Duck.

I see this in American Idol. We vote for a star, but when their album ships they sound and look nothing like the star we chose, they are instead "Popified". This is Ironic because the judges are always telling the contestants to not be "Safe" and yet when the lable delivers the lable picks very "Safe" music.

This is what is so interesting about Longhorn. It is a gamble. But it is also interesting to see how many "Safe" features they are touting. Worried about making it work so much like the versions of windows that came before that it is still very "Safe"