I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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Here’s some of the new features in bite sized chunks.
http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/whidbey/
Starting to get excited!
If your like me and not at the PDC you can see Avalon and Indigo being
programmed on MSDNTV.
Shows using XAML to define a form and sounds like a lot of the demo’s from
the PDC. Worth a watch.
The new Pocket PC phone edition (XDA II) is apparantly under testing and will be available in NZ by end of year.
New Toshiba Tablet PC due to be announced on Nov 3.
Need to start saving for Christmas.
Went to a very interesting 2 hr session with Annette Dow who was one of the team that developed Ghost (selling to Symantec in the late 90’s).
Her session was on selling software in the US and focussed on
- The differences in business culture
- Product readiness
- Strategies to get noticed
- Distribution
- Business setup
Great to hear the war stories from one of the few kiwi companies that really cracked the shrink wrapped product space. Very good practical session. If you get the chance to see her I’d recommend it.
Just upgraded to the final version of Office 2003 from beta 1. Install only 15 minutes and was painless.
Killer feature in Office is the date grouping in Outlook.
When I get the time I’m keen to see where they have gone with XML support in Word since beta 1. What I want to be able to do is manage web site text in Word and then upload the XML content to the site to update all the text.
What do you suffer from http://totl.net/VirusScanner/?
Spotted on SlashDot. Maya, one of the leading 3D animation tools, is now free for personal use. I like when companies are clever.
I love cars, especially 911’s. I had a ’94 993 which I still regret selling. Anyway one of the things that I’ve always been fascinated with is Porsche’s Boxster versus 911 issue.
My understanding is that the Boxster was originally designed as a 911 replacement. Out with the old rear drive 911 and in with a new water-cooled mid engined machine. However Porsche under estimated the back lash from 911 purist’s and kept the two models.
The Boxster (986) became a Porsche for the masses at a much lower price point than the 911. The then new 911 (996) also being water-cooled created an issue because it was near double the price of a Boxster but physically looked like about the same amount of metal and engineering.
So the Boxster has always been crippled, and only male ego has kept the 911 premiumly priced.
But Porsche is just about to announce a Boxster Coupe that in NZ dollars is around the $100k mark. (Current base Boxster is $119,000 and 911 C2 $208,000). In the US Porsche have announced a rebate program to existing owners to clear Porsche inventory of between $US4 to 8k.
The water-cooled 996 was released in great numbers in 1999 – 2000 when the economy was booming, so there are lots of ex-lease 911 Carerra’s on the market at $NZ140-160.
So what’s going to happen? Well my prediction is that 996 Carrera’s are going to drop $40k. The choice will be a brand new Boxster or a 5 year old 996. And the lighter Boxster will probably be a more exciting car.
Therefore base 993’s should also drop from around $100k to $60.
So I’d be nervous if I was sitting on a 911 right now, but on the plus side what will a 993 bi-turbo cost in 2005?
I’ve been watching the 42 Below float I talked about earlier.
So since listing at 50 cents shares have dropped to 32 cents.
Can’t wait for the sql.
Extract from Greg Papadopoulos, Sun CTO on News.com. Creating a truly ‘open’ wireless network.
Imagine, for instance, that you’re on your mobile, and just as you’re leaving a voice message for someone, the connection drops. You shouldn’t have to redial and start over. Your phone should continue to take the message, hold it in memory and complete delivery as soon as a connection can be re-established.
That’s the kind of thing that will happen on Wi-Fi networks. It’s a trivial challenge because the underlying protocols assume that the network isn’t all that reliable, and applications are written to deal with that. As a result, a series of Wi-Fi-related innovations are on the horizon.
- Conference calls that, if you came in late or simply wanted to hear something again, you could rewind–like TiVo for teleconferencing.
- Voice mail you could actually sort, label, file or even forward to someone outside your carrier’s network.
- Voice mail attachments that enable the recipient to instantly see what you’re talking about, whether it’s an image or a document.
Malcom Fraser got some PR at the Wireless Data Forum this morning on ComputerWorld
Andy Lark’s (VP, Global Communications & Marketing @ Sun) marketing deck from the Morgo conference is online here in pdf form.
Korby Parnell covers the Microsoft
Milk Carton issue. Excellent!
Article on News.com.
Interesting in that Vodafone Live is one of the few closed browser environments and not mentioned in the release.
Exchange 2003 made a great step forward with RPC over HTTP. Great for accessing mail through hotspots and multi machines.
But why can’t they solve the simple problem of multiple email accounts.
I want to logon to one exchange account, and see a consolidated view of all my email accounts, and be able to choose what email account I’m sending from.
The way I do it now is have multiple pop accounts in Outlook set up on each computer I use. So I end up having sent email spread over each machine I use.
And Exchange 2003 still does not allow you to wildcard emails with an unknown alias to a preset account. You have to implement a sink for that.
Nuts!
Scott Dixon is the 2003 Indy Series Champ. Great to see a kiwi doing so well overseas.
Normally email comes through quickly, as expected. Over time I’ve come to rely on email being near real time.
The email problems of Xtra (NZ’s largest ISP) haven’t affected me greatly, but a number of people have mentioned that it caused them all sorts of issues.
For example, getting late meeting minutes out on the morning of a meeting. You’d assume that everyone had them. Or at 9:30 moving a late afternoon meeting from 3 until 4 “let me know if that’s not convenient”.
Proposals will be accepted until 4:00pm
So when email doesn’t work as expected it changes your perception. I wonder if they got that mail. I’d better check = time wasted.
How long until trust is restored?
Only those that underestimate the power of pop culture will be surprised that Arnie is the new Governor of California.
Sensible people would also think that valuing 42 Below at $60m is nuts as well but the wholesale affect will mean that the offer is over subscribed.
Two seemingly unrelated news items but together they’re forcing me to re-evaluate how the masses will act. There is money here.
Malcolm Fraser flicked me a link to http://www.voq.com/site/explore/try.voq
Interesting flip open thumbpad. I’m still waiting for a bluetooth enabled Pocket PC Phone.
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