Brace for impact…

The most overused word in all of Microsoft is impact. It’s not only overused, it’s usually used improperly. It’s always bugged me, but this week I heard it so many times that I wanted to scream. I decided to look it up in Encarta and I found a nearly perfect explanation for my distress, so I’m just going to paste it in here:

Many careful writers strongly dislike the verb impact in any figurative sense whatsoever, as in The revised budget impacts the university unfavorably and The revised budget impacts on the athletic program. Though the verb in senses extending beyond the infliction of physical force is undeniably common in business, legal, journalistic, and political discourse, anyone who hopes to achieve an effect even faintly literary should avoid it in favor of affect, change. Use of the verb is uncontroversial only in physical senses: The car impacted the railing. By the same token, the noun impact should not be used as a catchall alternative for words like effect or impression; rather, it should be used to convey the idea of powerful, dramatic consequence: The sudden rise in prices had a calamitous impact on many economies.

Before anybody gets the wrong idea, I’m not some sort of grammar nut. (As anyone who reads my blog will know.) This is purely a Microsoft culture thing.

Ah, that feels better. Now we can all move forward.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft

400+ Differences Site

I hadn’t seen this Visual Studio 2005 promotional site yet. Some of the movies here are pretty funny.

400+ Differences

I like the one where the girl blows the horn at the guy. Funny thing, I discovered this from an ad on Slashdot.

On10 Update

Check out the new look and logo at http://on10.net. Jeff Sandquist has a post about the update here:

Welcome to 10 – version 1.0

Just four months ago we unveiled 10 with a simple dream: create a place for people with both a passion for technology and also a desire to change the world.

Along the way we have covered a wide range of topics. Some of the content you loved and some didn’t quite meet the mark. One consistent piece of feedback you gave us was that 10 lacked a purpose and the major side effect was that our content often was all over the map. As a team we took that to heart and wrote what the 10 Manifesto. This manifesto is a set of principles we’ll use as a compass to help guide us forward…

The update looks great. I subscribe to the video feed on my iPod, so I don’t get to the site as often as I might. I think the new design lends itself to the way I browse the Web, so this will be a lot easier for me in the future.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, Microsoft, On10

Ford Blog

As a Ford guy, this is very cool. Robert Scoble links to the new Ford blog/videocast. Check it out:

BOLD MOVES

I’ve got a 5 door focus that’s nearly identical to Robert’s on the inside. I took took our planner Lawson over to have lunch with Robert just before he left, and we basically got out of my car and into Robert’s. Lawson said, “I feel like I’m in the same car.” Of course, Robert has this cool satellite radio that I don’t have. I gotta say though that these Fords have been great cars. My wife has a nice Escape and we swap cars pretty often.

Technorati Tags: Cars, Ford, Video

Beyond Bullet Points

I got a chance to meet Cliff Atkinson today. Cliff is the author of Beyond Bullet Points. I love the subtitle on this book, Using Microsoft PowerPoint to create presentations that inform, motivate, and inspire. One of my jobs at MacBU is Product Manager for Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac, so when I heard about this talk, I figured I better go over and check it out. On the way over, I was thinking, “God, I hope this isn’t boring.” Then I started thinking that the presenter wrote a book about how to do presentations, so you gotta think it’s going to be pretty good, right?

Well, it was awesome. First, it should be noted that there were very few empty seats in the room. This is a topic that many of us in the corporate world really want to crack. How do you reach an audience with a message? I think Cliff just nails some of the problems that people encounter when they’re trying to communicate effectively. Cliff’s technique is based on some pretty interesting research around how people communicate and absorb information and his techniques for getting through that are very straightforward and practical. The ultimate goal is telling a good story, and this book will show you how to do that.

One of the features that I was happy to hear Cliff mention was Presenter Tools on PowerPoint for Mac. One of his clients, attorney Mark Lanier, used PowerPoint 2004 on his Mac with great effectiveness in a very high profile trial. (Notice the passage that says, “Speaking in state court in Angleton, Texas, without notes and in gloriously plain English”.) It’s great to hear about people using innovative features that the PowerPoint team works so hard on delivering.

I’m planning on digging more deeply into the book over the next couple of weeks. I can tell this one is a keeper. Be sure to check out Cliff’s site here. There’s a ton of great information available.

Technorati Tags: Mac, Microsoft, Office, PowerPoint

NCAA Football 07 for the PSP

Wow, what a great surprise today. I get home, the kids hand me cards that they made for me and they present me with a gift: NCAA Football 07 for the PSP and the game guide. Kat went ahead and bought me this because she’s an awesome wife. So I was pretty excited.

I haven’t had a lot of time to play, but the game looks great on the PSP. I still need to get used to the controls. Punting and kicking is done with the analog stick and I’m just not getting it. I played Wisconsin against Ohio State and I got killed. The game is fun. It’s really complex and it has a nice feel to it on the PSP.

PSP Fanboy has a write-up with some issues they’re talking about on the net. Apparently there’s a little bug that puts you down at the point you’re touched on a rush:

NCAA Football 07 is busted up? [Update 1]
Various reports from the IGN Boards [Insider membership required] suggest that NCAA Football 07 isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be on the PSP. Although the game is released today, there’s only one review out there from IGN: a very respectable 8.3. IGN didn’t mention any glitches, so are the claims on the internet valid?

I noticed this also, mostly because I kept losing yards on rushes that I was sure I got at least a couple on. Check out the video from the PSP Fanboy post to see the bug.

I haven’t got the Xbox 360 version of the game yet because my machine is very sick and I need to send it off for treatment. The pictures in the game guide for the 360 look really good, so I may pick this up when I get a working box.

Technorati Tags: Football, Madden, NCAA

Microsoft Beta Testing

I would guess that in the 7 years I’ve worked at Microsoft, I’ve been running mostly beta for about 5 of them. Sometimes that’s pretty trying, but when you get right down to it, I think that this is extremely important to the state of the final product. Alex has some stats:

Microsoft’s Ultimate Beta Tester?
Microsoft’s Ultimate Beta Tester? Itself:
* 60,000 machines were running Windows XP Service Pack 2 during its beta phase
* By mid-June
o Microsoft had 16,000 Windows Vista Beta 2 users (I’m one of them)
o 25,000 on Office 2007 Beta 2 (I’m one of them)

I’m currently running Office 2007 on my Windows PC, some server beta bits, and I’m on Exchange 2007 dogfood, along with some other stuff. I’m also using the SharePoint V3 beta, which I love.

This little utility does a pretty good job of keeping me sane:

2007 Microsoft Office System Beta: Send a Smile to Office Feedback Tool
Send a Smile (SaS) is a feedback tool that enables 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta participants to easily send Microsoft positive and negative comments about the Beta on an ad hoc basis.

I don’t use it for bugs, but I do fire off a note when something bugs me. Check it out if you’re running the Office 2007 beta.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Office, Beta, Windows

PSP Flash Arcade

This is awesome. PSP Fanboy links to the PSP Flash Arcade Collection on IGN. I set this up on my PSP in about 10 minutes or so and it works great. I can’t wait to see what kind of stuff people come up with based on this. Check out the PSP Fanboy post here:

PSP Flash Arcade collection
Tired of all the talk of homebrew games? Have a fully upgraded 2.71 firmware PSP and want to play some games legally? Well, chubigans from IGN has been running an excellent series called PSP Flash Arcade. He has searched the vastness of the Internet to hand-pick games that work in a Flash-enabled PSP browser. As if that weren’t awesome enough, his latest update packages all twelve of the games he’s discovered into one convenient zip file. It’s less than 2 megs, so even those of you with 32MB sticks can enjoy. So, how does it work?

I’ve got to say, that I’m sorry that Duncan won’t be able to enjoy this.

Technorati Tags: Flash, Games, PSP

Hunter and Will at Apple Camp

Hunter and Will at Apple Camp

Originally uploaded by brianjo.

We signed the kids up for Apple Camp a few months ago and today was the first session. They learned to work in Garage Band and they all made some pretty cool music. They told me that they had a great time and that the staff at the Apple Store at Bel Square was awesome.

In this picure, Will and Hunter are mixing a song in Garage Band. They got some cool t-shirts, stickers, certificates, and a CD with their work on it.

Thanks so much to the Apple folks for putting this on. What a great way to introduce kids to your software.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Garage Band, Apple Camp

Pirates of the Caribbean (spoiler)

Not a terrible movie, but man there were a few places they could have made better edits that would have made the movie great. Total spoiler, don’t read further if you haven’t seen the movie.

• OK, cut the stupid wheel fight. That was really lame and boring. We already had a pretty funny hamster ball scene, no need to get ridiculous.
  When they’re about to open the box, don’t let on that Norrington is going to betray them. Keep that a secret until the end of the movie, it would have been a delicious surprise.
  Don’t chain Jack to the ship, give him a chance to send everybody off the ship and to be heroic. They’re supposed to be pirates, we get it, but you can’t keep saying “He’s a good man” if it doesn’t really mean anything.
  Note: If nobody can actually die in the movie (but the extras), it makes peril seem a lot less perilous.

Technorati Tags: Movies, Pirates