mario

Leading theSpoke into the Future

mario — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:38:00 GMT

After two years of managing theSpoke community here at Microsoft, I’ve decided to move on to the next chapter in my career. This means I will be stepping down as the product manager for theSpoke.

However, I am extremely pleased to announce that we’ve already got someone awesome on board to take over managing theSpoke community here at Microsoft. Say hello to Justin Barsotti. He’s a member of the academic team here and will be taking over my responsibilities on theSpoke moving forward. Justin is a smart and talented guy and he is ready to take theSpoke into the future. Over the past few weeks, he and I have been meeting to ensure a successful and smooth transition. (He also just got married, so wish him congratulations!)

The last two years have been a blast, building v1 and v2 of the site, seeing the community grow into many different countries and languages, interacting with theSpoke community members and the Student Advisory Board, working late nights and early mornings with the dev teams, and getting to meet some of theSpoke members offline and in person! I think that theSpoke has come a long way from its beginning, especially when you remember that it’s not even two years old yet. I also think that there are many new directions it can head in the future, and I’m excited to see what’s next.

As for me, you can still expect to see me on the site every now and then, so I hope you’ll keep in touch. A big thank you to all of you – our founding community members – and best wishes to Justin as he takes over this exciting role.

Mario

Test Cut/Paste

mario — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 17:10:00 GMT

This is a test of me cutting and pasting a picture from my gallery into a blog entry.

a test...

mario — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 17:59:00 GMT

A test blog entry on the new db server...

Two Weeks Later...

mario — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 02:57:00 GMT

Well, we’ve been on the new version of theSpoke for almost two weeks now and I wanted to post an update here in my blog so everyone knows what’s going on. This is going to be a little long but it should answer many of the questions that are out there.

First of all, thanks to everyone in theSpoke community for your patience with us during this process. We wanted this to be as easy of a migration as possible, and for many of you it was, but we recognize that there have also been problems. Please realize that we are committed to the success of theSpoke and are 100% committed to making this an awesome community that works for you. If you continue to have questions or problems, please let us know about them by posting in the Bugs & Feedback forum or by sending me email.

Secondly, I wanted to let everyone know exactly what has happened with theSpoke v2 (in comparison to theSpoke v1) because I think it’s pretty cool, and because it might shed some light on the complexity of our data migration to this site. When we relaunched two weeks ago, we took user, profile, blog, and comment data from 15 separate localized language sites and databases and moved it all into one database and one site. The new site is running on top of the .NET Framework 2.0, and you can see some of the cool stuff from ASP.NET 2.0 on the site (such as the web parts on hubs).

While there was some complexity, the good news is that we’re more global than we were before. “How are we more global?” you ask? Well let me tell you :)

How we’re more global than before
Since everyone from across the world is now participating on the same site, you can make your experience as far-reaching as you like. If you go to your profile, there are two options regarding language: Main Language and Other Languages. Main Language is the language you want to see theSpoke’s interface in and the language you want to see posts in. This should most likely be your native language. If that’s all you want to see, then that’s all you need to fill out in your profile. However, we have many users who want so see content in their native language AND one or more other languages. This is what the Other Languages option is for. If you check any of the Other Languages boxes in your profile you will see blog posts, forum posts, gallery updates, etc. in both your Main Language and all of the Other Languages you have checked. Your UI will still render in your Main Language, but posts will appear in all languages you have checked. So if you want to learn another language, check one of the boxes and start talking to others in that language – I’m sure they’ll help you out.

One other related point is the anonymous (not logged in) experience on theSpoke. The site renders in the language specified in your browser’s culture settings. So if your culture settings are Brazilian Portuguese, that’s the language you’ll see the UI and posts in prior to login. In Internet Explorer, you can see your culture settings by going to the “Tools” menu, clicking “Internet Options” and then clicking the “Languages…” button at the bottom of the “General Tab”.

Testing and Current Status
I’ve seen a few posts about this, so I just want to make it clear that we did serious testing on the site before we migrated data over, but it’s just not possible to predict everything that’s going to happen when you move tens of thousands of accounts from 15 different languages over to a brand new site. Things didn’t go perfectly (and I have sleepless nights to prove it!) but the good news is that we’re all here and communicating with one another, and I think that’s great. Your help in finding remaining bugs and posting about them will help us continue to make improvements.

A special thanks to the guys on our dev team who have been posting updates to the forums, and more importantly, fixing bugs and issues: Terry Denham, Scott Dockendorf, and Rob Howard. And another special thanks to all of the Student Advisory Board members who have been posting updates as well.

Ok, so with that, here’s an update on the fixes we’ve made, the fixes that are coming, and what’s next.

What’s been fixed since launch
- Blog and RSS feed redirection – your old blog and RSS URL (like http://www.thespoke.net/myblog/mario/myblog.aspx) now redirect to your new blog URL. This works across all of the old localized sites (so if your blog URL was http://fr.thespoke.net/... that redirects too.)
- Performance – we’ve been working with users to find out where the site is speedy and where it’s really slow. What we’ve heard is that it’s pretty slow over dialup, but over broadband it’s faster than theSpoke v1 in most places. In some places it continues to be slow regardless of connection speed. We have some enhancements coming that we hope will make it faster for everyone regardless of connection speed (see below).
- Image and file migration – images and files from my space are now working in blog posts across the site.
- Critical errors with the Gallery and Forums – error pages in loading galleries and inability to see forums in certain languages have been resolved
- Forgot your Password and Password reset problems – some users were not receiving the “Forgot your Password” emails. This is now working, but you have to enter the email address that's actually in your profile. Otherwise we have no way of knowing the email address is associated with your account.
- Culture specific calendar control – the calendars on theSpoke now render in the specific localized languages.

What we’re still working on
- Performance – at the beginning of next week we’ll be making some configuration changes on theSpoke servers to improve DB performance.
- Getting everybody here – there's still a small number of users out there who are having trouble accessing their old account on the new site. If you are still having trouble, email comment@thespoke.net and we will resolve the issue for you.
- Timezone error – Posts are showing up 4 hours ahead of the timezone specified in the user profile.

What’s next?
- Article publishing – the Articles page is lacking articles (and this is my fault!). The Student Advisory Board has authored some awesome articles to post here. I just need to set up their accounts as authors so that they can publish them. We’ll get to this next week. If you would like to write a an article series on theSpoke, send me mail and we can set up your account too.
- Blog Roll / Blogs I Read – We’ve heard from everyone that we need a blog roll or a list of “Blogs I Read” on theSpoke as it’s an easy way to check on all of your subscribed blogs. I’m talking with the dev team on this next week.
- Lightweight skin – The team that designed the UI for theSpoke v2 also designed a very lightweight skin for theSpoke that contains few graphics. We’re looking to get that put on the site in the coming weeks for those of you who are accessing the site over dialup.
- Your suggestions and ideas! Please keep them coming and we’ll consider everything we hear.

Again, thanks for your support and patience during these past few weeks. You guys are the foundation of this community and your feedback, comments, and constructive criticism :) have been really helpful. As many of our members from the Philippines say, more power!

Mario

Welcome to theSpoke v2

mario — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 07:21:00 GMT

Welcome to theSpoke v2. Over the past few months, we’ve worked with students from all around the world to build a new version of theSpoke that is more global, more connected, and will take theSpoke community into the future.

theSpoke is a online community for students who are into technology. It’s a place to discuss and share ideas, to post and answer technology questions, to get access to software, and to meet others from all around the world.

If you’re here as a member of theSpoke v1, we’re glad that you made it over to the new site and hope that your account is working just fine. If you’re just visiting or heard about the site from a friend or colleague – welcome – and please sign up for an account and join the community (it’s free).

I expect there are a few questions out there about the new site and everything else – I’ve tried to answer the most common ones about account migration below. We also have an updated FAQ page. If you have a question that is not listed here or in the FAQs, please post it into the Bugs & Feedback forum and we’ll see that it gets answered.

Also, even though we’ve tested, debugged, and tried our best to make sure everything is working great, a new web site will always have a few bugs and issues to work out, so we ask that you be patient with us as we continue to improve it. If you find a bug or have a question about how something works, please post to the Bugs and Feedback forum.

If you are having problems accessing your old account, please email me at mario@thespoke.net and we’ll get everything resolved for you.

Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who has been involved in the relaunch of the site:
- theSpoke’s first student advisory board. These are 45 dedicated guys and girls from 26 different countries. They have been extremely helpful in the entire process. Hats off to all of you guys!
- the academic team at Microsoft, both in Redmond and all over the world.
- our technical and creative vendors – Telligent Systems, AvenueA-Razorfish, and MaximumASP

Again, welcome to theSpoke’s new home.

Mario

theSpoke is moving this weekend!

mario — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 01:26:00 GMT

After a few more weeks of development and tweaking, theSpoke will officially move from this site to the new site (currently at www.thespoke2.net) this weekend. Specifically, the site will go offline around midnight GMT on Friday August 26. The site will come back online by Monday morning GMT, and we will all be moved over to the new site. At this time, www.thespoke.net will take you to the new version of theSpoke.

Please remember that your blog posts and profile information will be moved over to the new site if you have logged on to theSpoke during the last 4 months (120 days). After the migration has occurred, you will receive an email with a temporary password to access your account on the new site. You can then access your blog and change your password as you wish. (theSpoke v2 does not use Passport for authentication, so you will need to create a new password.). Your username will remain the same.

Please make sure the email specified in your current profile on theSpoke is active and correct so that you receive the email to migrate.

If you have questions or problems during the migration, please email me at mario@thespoke.net and we’ll help you out right away.

A big thanks to everyone who has made this possible: the Student Advisory Board, the MS Academic team in Redmond and around the world, and the dev team at Telligent Systems. See you on the new site J

theSpoke v2

mario — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:26:00 GMT

Yes, it’s the news you’ve all been waiting for. In just a few weeks we will be re-launching theSpoke with a new UI, some enhanced features, and a technical platform that will take us into the future.

Think of the new version of theSpoke as a bigger, better house for our community that will enable theSpoke to continue to grow, to become more global, and to connect members with one another in cool new ways.

You can see a beta version of the new site at http://www.thespoke2.net. We’re still finishing up development so there are still some bug fixes, UI cleanups, and enhancements that will be done over the next 1-2 weeks, but you can get an idea for what the new site will be like. If you find bugs or have comments overall, post them in the forums on the new site.

What does this mean for all of the existing members of theSpoke? Well, we’ll be sending you an email in a few weeks with instructions on activating your account on the new version. Don’t worry -- you will get to keep your existing username, and your blog posts, comments, and avatar will all come over as well. The one thing we are not migrating is the existing forum posts. The forums on theSpoke v2 will be organized differently on theSpoke v2 so trying to guess which existing forums belong in which new forums will be a challenge. Therefore the new forums will begin with no posts. Think of the new forums as a blank slate on which to start some vibrant discussions!

What’s cool about the new site?

A new UI – we’ve heard many suggestions for improvements about theSpoke’s current UI. We’ve taken an approach that we hope everyone will like.

One site for everyone – today theSpoke is localized into 15 languages, but the localized sites are separate web sites with separate databases (i.e. English is www.thespoke.net, German is http://de.thespoke.net, etc.). With theSpoke v2, all members will reside on the same site. You can choose the language you see the theSpoke’s interface in and the language or languages you see site posts in. You can choose to view content in one language or up to 15 if you want!

Articles and Web Casts – students with technical expertise on theSpoke v2 can write articles for everyone to see. We will also be web casting different events around the world (starting with the Imagine Cup Finals in Japan) and posting student-relevant Microsoft web casts to theSpoke. If you are interested in writing an article series or submitting existing articles and web casts for theSpoke v2, please comment below or email me at mario@thespoke.net.

Personal Hub – All members of theSpoke v2 will have a personal hub, which will function like your personal homepage on theSpoke v2. The hub shows you (and others) all of your recent blog posts, recent forum posts, and lets you post announcements, polls, and links for others who visit your hub. The hub is customizable with ASP.NET 2.0 web parts and we’ll be adding more web parts after the site launch.

who-bar – this is a feature replacing the existing Member Mosaic. It enables you to track your interactions with other members on theSpoke during a session/visit. If you click on any avatar (or visit a blog, profile, or personal hub), the member’s avatar appears on your who-bar. You can then get immediate information about them (where they are from, link to their profile and blog, etc.). The who-bar keeps a history of the last 22 people you interacted with during a particular session. It appears at the bottom of the window at all times (collapsed by default, but can be opened by clicking it or clicking an avatar).

Badges – members receive recognition badges for participating in the Imagine Cup, writing articles, being a frequent poster, and more.

Are we losing any existing features on theSpoke today?

In developing theSpoke v2, we decided to make two changes to the existing feature set:

Remove Private Hubs (My Network) - In looking at member surveys and the number of members who use the private hub feature today, we decided that the new personal hubs as well as existing topic hubs would be a good approach for the next version of theSpoke. The private hubs will not exist on the new site.

Image Galleries instead of My Space (temporarily) – After looking all of the types of files that have been uploaded into My Space, we’ve noticed that over 90% of them are images. Therefore, we will re-launch theSpoke with a gallery feature that has better support for these images. Each member will be able to upload images but not other types of files (for just a few months). However, all files that are currently uploaded to My Space on theSpoke v1 will continue to exist on theSpoke v2. This means you will not lose any files that you have already uploaded – they will continue to exist at their current URL. By the end of the year, we expect to add back in support for all types of file uploads.

Once we have migrated all accounts to the new site, www.thespoke.net will point to the new version of theSpoke. We will keep the old sites up at an alternate URL for a few months in case you need to want to see the old version, check out an old forum post, and of course, to remember what the first version of theSpoke was like.

As always, we want to hear your thoughts and feedback, so comment below or email me.

theSpoke v2 Update

mario — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 02:28:00 GMT

Yes, it's been a long time since I've blogged, but don't worry becuase we've been making some serious progress on theSpoke v2. Here's what's happening...

First, after a competitive selection process, theSpoke's first Student Advisory Board has been selected. There are 45 students from 26 different countries and they have been providing us with lots of feedback on the next version of theSpoke. I want to thank them for their help so far on theSpoke v2. Here's who they are, in case you're wondering:

Ioan - Romania,
Josh - US,
Robert - Hungary,
Julio - Peru,
Emanuel - Romania,
Carrie - China,
LJ - Taiwan,
Dimitri - Belgium,
Marcos - Spain,
Federico - Italy,
Fabrício - Brazil,
Zhongkai - China,
Sergey - Russia,
Bharath - India,
Benjamin - France,
Adrian - Indonesia,
Eric - France,
Masato - Japan,
Johny - Argentina,
Fabian - Switzerland,
Artúr - Hungary,
Falko - Germany,
Wolfgang - Austria,
Andrew - Canada,
Maciek - Poland,
Himaro - Taiwan,
Jasper - Philippines,
Konstantinos - Greece,
Konstantinos - Greece,
Daniel - Germany,
Shunsuke - Japan,
Maxim - France,
Dan - China,
Daniel - Brazil,
Takumi - Japan,
Attila - Hungary,
Andrew - UK,
Radu-Mihail - Romania,
Giorgio - Italy,
Sergei - Russia,
Nuno - Portugal,
Luke - UK,
James - Taiwan,
Dimitris - Greece,
Stanislav - Russia,
Daniel - New Zealand

Secondly, we've started development on theSpoke v2. We plan to launch the site sometime in the summer of 2005, but we are planning to post "preview" launches beginning in May so that you can see what theSpoke v2 will be like. You can help even help test it if you like.

I'll let you know when the preview launches happen next month, but right now I'll show some of the ideas for theSpoke's new UI. Yu can see a few concepts in different bandwidth versions here: http://data.thespoke.net/v2_comps/index.html.

Note that these are just images -- they don't work yet, but you should try to click on the who-bar at the bottom of the screen and see what happens.

If you have feedback, comment below, or email me at mario@thespoke.net.

Have a great weekend!

theSpoke Tsunami Relief

mario — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:31:00 GMT

We calculated the number of changed avatars and the final number was…381.

Not bad. That amounts to a $1905 donation. It’s the first time we’ve done a community donation like this, and the support theSpoke community has shown has been awesome.

To make it even better, I’m glad to say that our friends over at the Imagine Cup (read: Shreyas) also collected a donation for Tsunami Relief. This came from an internal project he did getting Microsoft developers to write questions for the competition. The Imagine Cup is adding another $1700 to our donation. Pretty cool.

So altogether our donation to the Red Cross will be $3605. We’ll be making the donation next week. How much do you think we can get the next time theSpoke does a public service campaign like this?

Anyway, I’ve changed my avatar back to a picture of myself. It’s actually the same picture, but I found the original color version instead of the blurry black and white one (if anyone remembers the old one). I invite you to change your avatars back as well.

Thanks again for your support of this campaign. I hope that all of us will continue to keep the Tsunami victims in our thoughts.

theSpoke Maintenance Today

mario — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 01:30:00 GMT

We will be upgrading theSpoke servers this afternoon. The site will be taken offline for approximately 15-30 minutes between 2 PM and 3 PM Pacific Standard Time today.

We've been receiving a lot of traffic recently with the Imagine Cup submission deadline and we need to upgrade the servers to help the site run better.

Feel free to comment with any questions, and thanks for your understanding.

Last Minute Reminders

mario — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 02:00:00 GMT

I just wanted to remind everyone that today is the last day to apply to theSpoke Student Advisory Board. Please see below for details. If you would like to apply, please email responses to the questions below to comment@thespoke.net.

Also, theSpoke's tsunami assistance program will come to a close on March 1 next week. It's been great to see the support across the community and across the world. We will have the final number of avatar changes and donation amount by the end of next week.

Finally, if you haven't already, check out the Imagine Cup Experience at http://imagine.thespoke.net/experience.

I hope everybody has a great weekend!

theSpoke Student Advisory Board

mario — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 23:25:00 GMT

Do you want to make theSpoke a better place? Do you want to work with professional developers to help improve theSpoke community?

If so, you should apply to be on theSpoke's first Student Advisory Board.

We are planning a full refresh of theSpoke community over the next six months and we are looking for smart, technical students to:
- Attend MSN Messenger meetings every other week to discuss and shape plans for theSpoke v2
- Help the development and marketing teams make important decisions
- Assist with testing and localization
- Be the first to know about what's happening next on theSpoke
- Take on special projects to help make theSpoke better

The board will be selected by March 4, 2005, and will be made up of 45 students worldwide. 3 students will be selected from each localized site around the world. The student advisory board will serve a six month term from March 7, 2005 until September 7, 2005.

Students on the board will need to communicate in English during virtual meetings and emails.

If you are interested, please email comment@thespoke.net with answers to the following three questions:
1. Why do you want to be on theSpoke Student Advisory Board?
2. If you could improve theSpoke in three ways, how would you do it?
3. Please describe your knowledge of technology and any relevant experience.

Please include your username on theSpoke in the email. We ask that you keep your response to each question to a brief paragraph (~5 sentences). Please send all email applications to comment@thespoke.net by February 25, 2005 (by 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time).

The board will be announced on Friday, March 4, 2005.

If you have questions, please comment below or email me at mario@thespoke.net.

Tsunami Assistance

mario — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 07:41:00 GMT

I’m happy to say that theSpoke is sponsoring a tsunami relief program. If you take a look at my avatar, you’ll notice it’s changed. Here’s why…

From now until the end of February, theSpoke will donate $5 to the Red Cross for every avatar that is changed to one of the three below:

You can download the pictures here:
Blue Avatar (tsunami_help_blue.gif)
Green Avatar (tsunami_help_green.gif)
Red Avatar (tsunami_help_red.gif)

When you change your avatar, please name the picture file one of the three names in parenthesis above.

All donations will go to help those affected by the tsunami tragedy in late December. At the end of February we will count the number of changed avatars across theSpoke community and we will donate up to $5,000 to the Red Cross in early March. (This means that if 1000 people change their avatar, we'll donate $5,000).

The program starts now and goes until February 28, so I invite you to update your avatar and help those in need. When the program is over, you're encouraged to change it back to your current picture.

Thanks!

what's going on?

mario — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 05:56:00 GMT

The last week has been hectic but great. Here's what's up:

Last week was the Microsoft worldwide academic airlift. It's a meeting in Seattle, WA, USA for all of the Microsoft academic representatives from around the world to come together and discuss plans for the future. I had to present and discuss plans on theSpoke all day Tuesday and all day Wednesday, but the sessions were very useful, as I got to hear everyone's positive and negative feedback on theSpoke. Alfred even posted about it. We're now ready to finalize our plans for the site refresh and begin. More info to come soon...

I also caught up with Martin at the Airlift. He's an academic evangelist based in Chicago (my home town) and has been blogging here recently. Check out his posts and file uploads -- there's some great resources up there for Imagine Cup students. They may help you in your project!

Today we launched a web-based version of an Imagine Cup Information DVD we created a few months ago. The DVD is now posted at http://imagine.thespoke.net/experience/. Check it out -- there are pictures and videos from last year's finals in Brazil, including the short films that were made by the finalist teams on site in Brazil. It's a cool way to experience what the Imagine Cup finals are like. There's a section on theSpoke with theSpoke trailer there as well. [Note: we tried to make this as low-bandwidth as possible for people viewing over dial-up, but there are some large videos there so it may take a while to load].

Finally, does anyone want to re-write the FAQ page for theSpoke? It's a bit out of date, and it'd be awesome to have someone in the community do it. Comment or send me mail if you're interested...

theSpoke Blogging Apps

mario — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 14:28:00 GMT

If you haven't already, make sure you check out George's blogging apps for theSpoke. There's a Windows Mobile version (for Pocket PCs and Smartphones) as well as a client version. They work with theSpoke and allow you to update your blog directly from a client app. He's also posted the code for both apps, so if you want to play with them, extend them, or see how they work with theSpoke, I encourage you to do so.

Also, stay tuned for cool apps from Luke (who's writing an Outlook plugin for theSpoke) as well as Adam and Robert, who have written Spokester, another client blogging app that's super cool.