theSpoke.net

Newby
Wednesday, November 30, 2005 6:11 PM

There is an interesting discussion going on in a mailing list inside Microsoft. As an aside a number of people have stated how long they have been on the Internet (including USENET). The earliest so far in 1983. That happens to be about the time I first

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Add Encarta to your buddy list
Wednesday, November 30, 2005 12:10 PM

Want to ask someone (ok a robot) a question and get an answer? Open MSN Messenger and sign in. Add Encarta as a contact: encarta@conversagent.com Double click Encarta from your Contact List. Ask a question! Thanks to Ivan Joseph for

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Paint .NET
Wednesday, November 30, 2005 11:35 AM

Have you seen Paint .NET? It is a very powerful and free image editing package being developed by students at WSU. There is a new version out and people I know are raving about it. I'm going to download a copy today as I have bunch of pictures I want

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Almost home
Monday, November 28, 2005 8:58 PM

After four days in The Bahamas I am back in the USA. I am in Florida where I am staying overnight with my father who has a winter home here. Tomorrow I will be back in New Hampshire and much as I have enjoyed the warm weather in The Bahamas and Florida

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Food and Culture
Saturday, November 26, 2005 8:51 PM

My sister and her husband have been making sure that all the guests from the US get a good taste (literally) of Bahamian culture. The food at the dinner last night was a Bahamian fish fry. Several kinds of fish and conch were served as well as traditional

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posted by AlfredTwo with

The modern flat world
Thursday, November 24, 2005 7:32 PM

Just a quick note. My sister has wi-fi in her house. Sweet! I knew she had a broadband connection but the wi-fi is new. Gotta love it. I visited a supermarket here in The Bahamas. Most of the products are the same as in a US store of the same company.

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posted by AlfredTwo with

TheSpoke Chat
Tuesday, November 22, 2005 10:58 PM

Be sure to read Bernard's interview with Justin Barsotti who runs theSpoke. Now if we could just get Justin to blog more himself ... :-)

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posted by AlfredTwo with

On holiday
Tuesday, November 22, 2005 9:43 PM

Tomorrow I will be working and traveling. I don't expect to have much time for blogging though. One Thursday I will be visiting The Bahamas for the long weekend. There is a family wedding there on Saturday. It will be good to see my family and watch my

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Really Simple Sharing
Tuesday, November 22, 2005 8:15 AM

Have you read Ray Ozzie's latest idea? I'm pretty excited about the idea of shared calendars that go beyond my company. My life gets complicated between my schedule, my wife's schedule and those of other people I know. Just think about how being able

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Geek Gift - robotic vacuum
Monday, November 21, 2005 12:28 PM

I bought my wife a robot today. (Hey she liked the idea) I bought a Roomba from iRobot. We both have allergies so we really need to vacuum more than we do now. But who has time? Plus the process puts some dust into the air so we'd both

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Windows Live Custom Domains
Sunday, November 20, 2005 10:50 AM

Now this looks interesting. I may move my own domain email here. Already own your own Internet domain name?Have us host e-mail and IM for you in a domain you already own. Create up to 20 e-mail accounts within your domain Get a 250 MB inbox for

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posted by AlfredTwo with

The Goblet of Fire
Friday, November 18, 2005 3:19 PM

Here is a short review. I don't think I have any spoilers here. If you haven't read the book you should still be ok after reading this. If you have read the book you probably already know what scenes you are going to be looking for. :-) This was

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Harry Potter and Microsoft
Friday, November 18, 2005 6:37 AM

I saw a midnight showing of the new Harry Potter movie. It was a special showing organized by the town library in the town my wife is the school librarian. Get that? Who would have thought that this was a perk from being married to a librarian? As it

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Imagine Cup
Thursday, November 17, 2005 3:20 PM

Has everyone signed up for the Imagine Cup? I wish there had been events like that when I was a student. If you haven't signed up get going. It's going to be great this year!

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Ray Ozzie is blogging
Wednesday, November 16, 2005 1:28 PM

Ray Ozzie is the Chief Technical Officer at Microsoft. He's just opened a new blog at MSN Spaces. It looks like it is going to be an interesting read when Ray has the time to actually write. It is interesting that he started his first blog as an experiment

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Innovation or Invention
Wednesday, November 16, 2005 9:59 AM

Don Dodge writes about the difference between innovation and invention and talks about Microsoft and both. I think that a lot of people confuse the two terms. I also think that Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for either.

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Speaker Disaster
Tuesday, November 15, 2005 12:40 PM

Poor Dave Weinberger. He dropped his laptop about an hour before he was to give a keynote address. The laptop is not working and so he had to give his talk without the slides. That has got to be a major nightmare. I really do feel for the guy. I hope

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posted by AlfredTwo with

IronPython
Monday, November 14, 2005 2:49 PM

So there is a lot of interest in dynamic languages these days. Python is one of those languages and is often listed as the "P" in LAMP along with PHP and Perl. But did you know that there was an implementation of Python that runs on the .NET Framework?

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Interview with the VP in charge of Visual Studio
Sunday, November 13, 2005 1:27 PM

Channel 9 has an interesting interview with Soma Somasegar, the VP in charge of Visual Studio. Soma talks about how much Microsoft values Visual Basic (among other things). One of the things he does is list a number of line of business applications (applications

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Gadgets
Friday, November 11, 2005 11:26 AM

So by now most of you have heard of Windows Live the new interactive home page from Microsoft. One of the great things about Windows Live is that you can add all sorts of Gadgets to do interesting things. There is a web site where you can find gadgets

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Passwords
Thursday, November 10, 2005 5:49 PM

I had to change two passwords today. One doesn't time out until Monday but the other one would have timed out over night. It's always a pain to change passwords but it is worse when they expire and you have to call some support person to reset it for

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posted by AlfredTwo with

xbox 360 Launch
Wednesday, November 09, 2005 10:19 PM

Where is it going to be? Wish I was going. read something about it here.

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Is it fun being you?
Tuesday, November 08, 2005 11:08 PM

I was watching Boston Legal on TV tonight. It is rapidly becoming one of my favorite shows. At the end of the show Denny Crane, played by William Shatner, says to Alan Shore, played by James Spader, "It's fun being me. Is it fun being you?"Now that strikes

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Time to backup the data
Tuesday, November 08, 2005 2:22 PM

I bought a couple of 200mb hard drives today. One I bought for myself to backup my and my wife's personal data. This is the disk I will back up the computers we own. The second drive is for work (and I let Microsoft pay for it) and it will be used to

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Computers and choppers
Monday, November 07, 2005 7:12 AM

I don't know how much exposure Orange County Choppers has outside the US but they are pretty big in the US. They make custom motorcycles. There is a TV show that stars the company's, ah, volatile , yeah volatile would be a good word, owner and his family.

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Ship it! or maybe not
Saturday, November 05, 2005 6:56 PM

Joshua Blake had an interesting blog today. Some of you probably know Joshua from some computer contests and from his blog at theSpoke while he was a student. Now he is a manager at a company he started with tsome friends. He's learning a lot in his new

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Random Thoughts
Friday, November 04, 2005 11:59 AM

My last post seems to have generated more discussion than most any other post I have ever made at theSpoke. I think that is really great. Discussion is what makes blogs in general and communities like theSpoke more than just a static web site. And this

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Good Enough?
Thursday, November 03, 2005 5:50 PM

My wife got a new computer at the school where she works. It did not come with Microsoft Office. Rather they installed some "free" software that is "good enough for 90% of the people." Well my wife is not one of those 90% of people. She actually knows

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Does IT matter
Wednesday, November 02, 2005 3:01 PM

Robert Scoble had a post today that reminded me of an old story in my own experience. Some years ago I was working for a company that wrote accounting software. Soon after installing an accounts receivable package at one customer they found, while running

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Windows Live and Office Live
Tuesday, November 01, 2005 3:32 PM

Visit the site with information about the new ideas at Windows Live at ideas.live.com. The official press release is at the press pass site. Mike Torres has a lot of information on his blog. By the way, that web site has links to group blogs for most

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posted by AlfredTwo with

Google V Microsoft
Tuesday, November 01, 2005 9:45 AM

Don Dodge has an interesting post today on the competition between Microsoft (AKA the good guys in my book) and the evil Google (ok not really evil but it's fun to say). One of the things he says is that he believes that MSN Search is now as good as Google

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posted by AlfredTwo with

November 2005 - Posts

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