Kurt Shintaku's Blog

So now that it’s out, I guess I can write something about it finally:  I’ve been using this tool we’ve been developing called the Windows Live Writer and, dare I say it, been providing a bit of feedback on the device of the past few months of it’s development. 

It’s essentially a client-side blogging tool that enables you to write & post blog entries on your desktop without having to open a browser window.  To those of you who lift your noses at the prospect of having a real Win32 tool to post content, I say that you can’t possibly be a real blogger.   Blog writers have been plagued with the problems of lousy server-side editors for years.  Not having spellcheck, having crummy formatting tools, having to login-logout to switch between blogs… it’s a downright headache to maintain anything more than 1 blog – heaven forbid you actually have multiple audiences. (BTW:   Download of "Writer" is available here:  http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/9/a/f9a19…)

Personally, I think it’s looking pretty good although I don’t pretend to understand all its synergies with the rest of our online & desktop application strategy.   One thing I do know is that the tool’s been immensely useful.  It’s light, its easy to use, relatively bug free, and it’s provided me with a weird cross between FrontPage & Word to publish to my many Windows Live Spaces blogs.  (Yes, I have more than two out there.)

The tool does all the typical things other blog writers do… spellcheck, wordwrap, stylesheet replication, blah blah blah. (You can read everyone else’s blog if you want to read about that stuff) 

What the tool does that makes it unique in terms of client-side publishing are a few interesting things: 

1. MULTIPLE BLOG SUPPORT
   The thing works with multiple blogs from multiple vendors using multiple user accounts and multiple saved passwords.  I can edit a Blogger blog, then immediately switch over and seamlessly sign in to my Windows Live Spaces blog, then do the same thing to my TypePad blog… all with a single dropdown menu on the toolbar.
2. PUBLISHING PREVIEW
   This might not seem like a big deal to some of you but this is very FrontPage like and for those of you who have used FrontPage religiously like I have over the past 10 years since it was a Vermeer property, this is a godsend.  Being able to see a preview of your posting the way it will eventually be published is a really confidence booster for folks that publish as regularly as I do.
3. TASKS PANE
   This is that window pane on the side of an application like Word 2003 that shows all the things that you can do in the current context of the application.  For example, when you first load Word 2003, you might look at the task pane and it would say, "Open New Document".  In the case of Windows Live Writer, it lists out all the DRAFT blog entries you still haven’t completed yet, it lists out all your most recent posts, and it shows you what sort of objects you can insert.  I think this paradigm was one of the true unheralded innovations in Office 2003 that’s been passed down to Writer:  Contextual help.
4. AUTOSAVE
   The thing autosaves your blog entry after a default of 3 minutes (adjustable) of usage. 
   NUFF SAID.
5. AUTOCORRECT & AUTOSPELLCHECK
   It both autocorrects and spellchecks automatically right before you post.  Again, nuff said.
6. OFFLINE SUPPORT
   Admittedly this one surprised me because I didn’t expect it although I suppose I should have.  Writer gives you the ability to blog offline on an airplane flight example and save drafts for later posting.  It also enables you to review all the most recently posted entries that you’ve made through Writer to your blog which is really conveninient in the event you decide to make updates to past entries while you’re offline.

One thing that it lacks is Tablet PC stylus & digitizer support – aka support for digital ink.  Yes, I understand why this might have been left out but aren’t we at that point where EVERY application that Microsoft churns out should instinctively have Tablet PC Support?

Windows Live Writer (BETA)… a really cool Blog writer for your Windows desktop.

IT’S THE DESKTOP & THE SERVICE PROVIDER, STUPID

This brings up an important topic:  I understand a few important facts… one of which is that this is a v1.0 product but it’s a perfect example of where a desktop application working with online software makes for a super-powerful offering.  Why?  Because online applications have a ceiling in terms of their power and nothing beats having rich APIs powered by a local CPU.

Certain folks would have you believe that the "world is going to go completely online for their applications" – the day of the end of desktop applications is nye.  I say horse hockey.  The day Bank of America – a company that had a profit of $18 billion dollars last year – decides that it’s okay to have their financial analysts plug numbers into an online spreadsheet just to save the company $1 million in Excel software costs, is the day hell freezes over.

Some argue that there’s an area at "the bottom of the pyramid" of consumers that would move to an online application model that was ad sponsored and free.  It’s been proven time and time again that this model only managed to attract the folks that wouldn’t have paid for desktop software anyway. 

Seriously ask yourself:  How many Norwegian Linux users do you think have ever paid for a copy of Microsoft Office?  Yet how many of them do you think have used Microsoft Office?

THE SALESFORCE.COM EXPERIENCE

Look at Salesforce.com:  An online customer relationship management application that has become somewhat popular because of it’s ease-of-use (proving again that the user is king) and it’s ease-of-administration.  Basically anyone that’s a subscriber can get to any browser and work with their customers & their sales opportunities.

Wellllllll almost everyone.  Salesforce.com had a ‘tiny’ outage that had their customers hanging in the wind without their CRM data for over 24 hours.  They blamed Oracle’s database as the problem but the damage was done:  The online ERP model was seriously called into question, bringing rapid acceleration to the offline/desktop applications side of the business for Salesforce.com.  It was amazing how high profile their desktop version of their CRM application became after the outage as if to say, "Don’t worry!  You can have a local copy of your CRM data too, so this will never happen to you.

"Microsoft is announcing XNA Game Studio Express at Gamefest on August 14 at 9am PST. We will be releasing a beta version of the XNA Game Studio Express on August 30th.

XNA Game Studio Express is a set of tools based on Visual C# Express 2005 th at allow students and hobbyists to build games that target both Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express contains the following:

• The XNA Framework. A set of managed code development libraries based on the .NET Framework 2.0 which will allow game developers to be more productive when creating games for Windows and the Xbox 360.
• The XNA Framework Content Pipeline. A set of tools that allow developers to more easily incorporate 3D content into their games.
• Game Studio Express also contains a full set of documentation, how-to’s and starter-kits that demonstrate how best to utilize the content pipeline and XNA Framework.

Microsoft will be offering a new Xbox Live subscription program called the XNA Creators Club.  The XNA Creators Club provides everything a game developer needs to build non-commercial games which target the XNA Framework running on an Xbox 360 retail kit. This subscription program is open to anyone, including non-professional game developers such as students and hobbyists. We believe this program will revolutionize the game development industry by virtually eliminating the barrier to entry for aspiring game developers who wish to develop games for the Xbox 360, thus fostering in a new wave of innovation and fresh talent to the industry.

I invite you to read the additional details here:

• MSDN XNA Developer Center: http://msdn.com/xna
• Official Press announcement:
  Microsoft Invites the World to Create Its Own Xbox 360 Console Games for the First Time
  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/aug06/08-13XNAGameStudioPR.mspx

Recently I was asked to summarize all the available training for Microsoft Project 2003.

MICROSOFT eLEARNING:
There’s a couple courses that we have that you can get from Microsoft eLearning web site on Project 2003.

• Course 4111: Core Training for Microsoft Office Project 2003 Plus Access to Online Book
  "The self-paced e-learning course will help you become familiar with the basic features and tools of Microsoft Office Project 2003 via interactive simulations that provide hands-on practice to master specific tasks. It also includes skills assessment to help pinpoint the areas where training can have the most impact. In addition, this course can be downloaded for offline use for the length of your subscription so you can learn even when you’re not connected to the Internet."
  The course is based on the book I gave you "Microsoft Office Project 2003 Inside Out" and costs $22.49. You have access to the course for 1-year.
  https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=73960
• Course 4009: Setting Up Projects for Success Using Microsoft® Office Project 2003
  Summary: This online course focuses on the critical planning stage of a project and how to set up a project for success. Hands-on exercises with Microsoft® Word and Project will demonstrate effective and easy-to-implement techniques to better plan, schedule, and allocate resources. The goal of this course is to enable project managers to increase their productivity, which means they have more time to stay on top of the critical project management tasks that increase the chances of project success.
  The course is based on the book I gave you "Microsoft Office Project 2003 Inside Out" and costs $22.49. You have access to the course for 1-year.
  https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=69818

***IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are an Enterprise Agreement customer (if you’re one of mine, you are) you can actually enroll in the Microsoft eLearning courses without paying the $22/enrollment through your Enterprise Agreement – you’ll need to talk to the administrator of this part of the agreement to make this happen.  There’s a TON of free training available to you if your interested.

ON-DEMAND OFFICE SYSTEM WEBCASTS:
If you’re interested in "beginner 100-level" on-demand training and webcasts, the Office System webcasts are the way to learn. There’s about a dozen of these and are easy to understand.
http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/officesystemwebcasts.mspx#MicrosoftOfficeProject

ON-DEMAND TECHNET WEBCASTS:
If you’d like to see a Technet Webcast on Project, we have a LOT of them. Several hundred. These are more advanced in nature in general and can talk about basic planning all the way up to modifying the Project interface and doing code-level work with the tool.
http://www.microsoft.com/events/AdvSearch.mspx?EventsAndWebcastsControlName=As1%3AAdvSrc&As1%3AAdvSrc%3AAudienceID=0&As1%3AAdvSrc%3AProductID=a1d023a3-f612-4da2-acb8-fda8f850d645&As1%3AAdvSrc%3AEventType=OnDemandWebcast&As1%3AAdvSrc%3ACountryRegionID=en%7CUS%7CUnited+States&StateProvinceID=0&As1%3AAdvSrc%3ATimeframeID=-1&As1%3AAdvSrc%3ASearchFilter=%C2%A0+Go+%C2%A0

ONLINE TRAINING COURSES FOR CONSUMERS:
You can also go to this:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/CR061832711033.aspx
They have 3 online training courses there for Project 2003 although they are pretty specific to some particular areas like scheduling.