A buddy sent me this link and it's good enough to share. Volkswagen has new commercials parodying MTV's Pimp My Ride. Check 'em out here.

You can also see some more cool VW commercials here.

~tod

tags: vw pimp+my+ride

I've been running IE7 on my desktop at work for several months now. Updating it with each new iteration. In a nutshell, it rocks! I've really enjoyed using it and have even uninstalled AvantBrowser [a great wrapper for IE6] without turning back.

Once the IE7 public beta was announced, I decided to upgrade my other machines to this new found goodness. Well, I was having some issues on my laptop that I hadn't experienced on my desktop. Namely, new instances of IE7 were being opened whenever a link was forcibly opening a new window (a href="http://somelink" target="new") instead of simply opening that link in a new tab in my existing instance of IE7. It was irritating to say the least. Then I noticed Omar Shahine's post on this very subject.

If you want new windows to open in a new tab then you must set two particular options:

• Tools --> Internet Options --> Advanced tab --> Browsing section --> Select checkbox for "Reuse windows for launching shortcuts"
• Tools --> Internet Options --> General tab --> Tabs section --> Settings --> Under "When a pop-up is encountered:" select "Let Internet Explorer decide how pop-ups should open"

Now things are working as they should and I'm a happy little web surfer once again...

~tod

tags: IE7

Seems as though Bill is flaunting his sense of humor again. [from News.com]

Bill Gates kicked off his RSA Conference 2006 keynote by noting that it was the better than another Valentine's Day opportunity that had come his way."My other invitation was to go quail hunting with Dick Cheney," the Microsoft chairman quipped, before launching into his speech on Microsoft's security efforts.

~tod

I've been using the Hotmail Beta umm Kahuna oh yeah Live Mail for several months now and overall it rocks (sign up here). A much, much better experience than the antiquated production version of Hotmail.

When I first started using Kahuna, d'oh, Live Mail the spam that got through to my inbox was insane. 10-20 messages per day. A few releases later it improved drastically and I was receiving only 1-2 spam messages per week. That's very acceptable to me. Unfortunately in the last week I've started seeing the 5-10 spam mails per day in my inbox again. I hope this isn't a case of one step forward two steps back!

~tod

tags: kahuna live+mail hotmail

Here's a funny little video put together by the IE7 team (courtesy of Sean Alexander)...

IE7_Big.wmv (7.8MB)
IE7_Medium.wmv (2.9MB)
IE7_Small.wmv (1MB)

~tod

tags: IE7 Microsoft

Xsd.exe

This is a cool little utility that comes with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and makes it very simple to create XML schemas. All you have to do is create what you want your XML file to look like and then run "xsd filename.xml". It will then generate a schema file (.xsd) for you.

For example, it will take this XML:

And turn it into this Schema Defintion:

You can then customize the schema with your namespace, element types, maxOccurs, etc. Easy as pie. And this definitely beats doing it manually!

~tod

In my opinion, translating from VB.NET to C# or vice versa really isn't that difficult once you have a decent understanding of each language. I've been doing it since I started working with .NET almost a year ago learning both languages side by side. Obviously there are several differences, but the generalaties apply fairly consistently across the board. But...and you knew there was one coming...why should I have to manually translate from one language to the other when it can be done programatically? A damn good question for which the answer is "you shouldn't."

I just recently found an awesome little web application for translating C# to VB.NET (and VB.NET to C#) written by Carlos Aguilar (from Microsoft's IIS7 development team). My initial tests have proven very good results. Link to the app here.

He has a few other tools that might prove pretty useful:

• CodeColorizer
• WebChart Control - for creating charts in your .NET web pages
• UML Diagrams - generated straight from C# and VB.NET code

~tod

Disclaimer: I actually 'found' this app through one of my RSS feeds, but for the life of me cannot remember who...sorry.

tags: c# vb.net translate

From King5's Seahawks blog, Even Roethlisberger doubts his TD. I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist, but it's pretty damn sad when Roethlisberger publicly states that even he doesn't think he made a touchdown yet the officials upheld the ruling.

Not too mention the sports reporting world's outcry of poor refereeing (source here & here):

• Fox Sports: "I've been shrieking hysterically about the terrible officiating in the NFL and warning that some day the brutal calls were going to affect the outcome of the Super Bowl. That some day was Sunday."
• Houston Chronicle: "The NFL ought to be embarrassed about some of the mistakes in Super Bowl XL. They weren't just mistakes made in the flow of the game. They were huge, game-changing mistakes."
• Superbowl.com: (an official NFL site): "Jackson was whistled for offensive pass interference, and based on the contact, it's not a call you see that often."
• ESPN.com: "Here's what referee Bill Leavy's crew did, point blank: It robbed Seattle."
• Washington Post: "It would be irresponsible to say the officials were intentionally cheating Seattle. But the bad calls killed the Seahawks."
• Kansas City Star: "Pittsburgh’s one-for-the-thumb Super Bowl will be remembered as the game when physically overmatched referees and heads-buried NFL executives flipped non-Steelers fans an XL middle finger."
• Toronto Star: "The fact that calls were blown on the NFL's biggest stage was bad enough, the fact that almost every call went against the underdog Seahawks no doubt had Seattle conspiracy theorists throwing lattes at their TV sets."

I'll reiterate though...I still think the Seahawks didn't play as well as they could/should have, but it's obvious that the officiating is in serious question.

~tod

tags: seahawks superbowl

Well, the Seahawks lost the superbowl. It sucks, but life goes on. Here's my Monday morning quarterback take... The Hawks did not play as well as they had in previous weeks and that's evident by the pure number of minutes they were in possession and number of yards they gained in the first half without any touchdowns. They couldn't close it when they got into the red zone. Along with that, there were some insanely bad calls by the referees. Roethlisberger's so-called touchdown? Darrell Jackson pass interference? Those two alone could have changed the tide of the game.

Along the lines of my last sentiment, I present to you the referee's uniform as it should have been worn on Sunday...

Let me state in BIG, bold letters... I'm not completely blaming the referees for the loss, but their erroneous calls definitely contributed.

Even after the loss, the Hawks still received a huge welcome home from Seattle fans at Qwest field yesterday. Go Hawks!

~tod

Self-Critical [v 1.1]

Back on 12.14.05 I posted part 3 of my open-ended "Things I like about working @ MSFT" series. The topic was self-critical. I'm calling this part 3.1 because I just came across another perfect example of this character trait [if you want to think of MSFT as a charactor ].

Mike Torres is a PM with MSN Spaces here at Microsoft. He is one of the biggest advocates for the service and does a bang-up job reporting new features as they're released, explaining why features aren't present, which features we can look for in the future and just plain interacting with you, our customers [transparency is a beautiful thing]. He also has a huge investment into the product and it's success [i.e.: his review, bonus, promotions, etc.] so you might expect him to only shout out the good stuff while hiding the ugly. But no, he tells the whole world the things that he feels Spaces needs to do better in order to satisfy him, as a customer of the service. Read his post, 5 things I dislike about MSN Spaces (part 2), to see what I mean.

I'm thrilled to be working for a company open-minded enough to allow it's employees to do this publicly. In my opinion, this is the best way for products and services to evolve...open, honest, critical feedback.

Previous "Things I like about working @ MSFT" posts: 1, 2, 3

~tod

tags: msn+spaces microsoft

Good news for those in an uproar about MSN Spaces' censorship of a Chinese blogger. Check out this article at Infoworld (via Heather)

First off, a quick bit of background. On 12.31.2005 MSN Spaces removed the blog of a Chinese user based on Chinese laws forbidding certain content (story at News.com). This was done based on Microsoft's agreements and responsibility to adhere to local laws when operating in foreign countries. Several journalists and well known bloggers went off on the subject. Not necessarily that the content was removed, but how it was removed. The blog was just gone all of a sudden without any explanation to visitors and supposedly very little reason given to the user.

I would have to say that I agree on that last point. As a customer driven service MSN Spaces (and Microsoft by it's ownership thereof) is responsible for making their blogging experience as friendly as possible while also adhering to legal requirements. It looks like we're moving in that direction now...a very good thing.

From the Infoworld article...

Smith said that Microsoft will only remove blogs when given proper legal notice, and even then, will only block access to that material within the country where it is deemed unlawful. The site will still be viewable from outside the country, he said.

Microsoft will notify the owner of the blog that the site was removed as a result of a notice from government.

This is just one more reason why I really do enjoy working for Microsoft. When customers and employees speak out executive management listens.

~tod

tags: microsoft msn+spaces

You heard me...RUN, don't walk, to grab the IE7 beta! It was just announced publicly on the IE Blog yesterday. I've been using this for several months and it rocks!

~tod

tags: microsoft ie ie7 internet+explorer