Are there times when you just want to find an answer to a simple fact? You could go look it up (apparently some people do still use books!) or even phone a friend, but Live Search offers some really cool Instant Answers to many common (and not so common) questions.

• Lost and confused? Just ask “where am I?”
• Watching your weight and need to know how many “Calories in a moose” or less obscure “Calories in a Turkey” (it’s almost Thanksgiving!)
• Want to solve an equation …. this will give you an answer for X where “X^2+2*X+0.5=0”
• “height K2”, “height Mt. St. Helens”
• Have you ever wondered the “weight of an elephant”… well the answer is there at your fingertips.
• Ever wondered “what size is the pentagon?” Now you know.
• You can track any UPS, FedEx etc. package just by entering the tracking number
• Want to get away from the weather – check out a “flight from Seattle to Miami” .
• Curious about some world facts? Just ask for the “Population Arizona”, “life expectancy China”, “literacy rate South Korea”, or even “population per physician USA”
• “define loquacious”
• “traffic”
• “weather”
• Did you ever wonder who the “Prime Minister of Canada” or the “Queen of England” was?
• It even has “the answer to Life the Universe and Everything”

As you can see, there are many sorts of questions that Instant Answers can help you with. They use the power of the Live search engine to make sense of the information available (and you even get to say if it’s useful or not to help improve the quality of the results).

Take a tour of Live Search to see what other cool things it can do that you never knew about :)

Meantime don’t forget the other great Live Search services like Cashback and SearchAndGive as well as Live Search for Mobile…

I’ve been using Skyfire for a while now and I’ve been pretty impressed so far (especially as they added Silverlight support for the Olympics) – although I’d used it initially on a 3G Touch device I’ve been using it a lot recently on my trusty 2.5G non-touch Shadow smartphone and for most things it’s become my browser of choice.

The good news is that there’s now a new release (with no waiting list for folks in the US if you’re not already on the beta program).

As well as the Silverlight support (I can now show people the Silverlight powered slideshow of my car on my phone!) it has improved performance and stability (as any new release should) and has added a really handy combined search/address bar (similar to what appears on Chrome or in Internet Explorer if you type a “?” followed by the words you want to search) to get you where you want to go quickly.

It still has some small hiccups with sites requiring text entry (though again that has improved significantly in this release) and performance with really interactive / Ajax heavy sites suffers because of the network and translation lag – but it does a better job than any other browser I’ve tried on a Windows Mobile phone up to this point.

They set out to bring the PC web experience to the constrained mobile platform and while the iPhone may get a lot of credit for their WebKit implementation Skyfire opens up options for plugins such as Flash and Silverlight that may be slow in coming to other platforms.

One area that my Mustang is rather lacking is in-car audio. It comes with a pretty basic radio and a single slot(mp3 capable) CD player. That causes some issues when we use the car for the family as we have fairly varied music tastes.

In the Jeep the answer is fairly simple – we have a 6 CD in-dash changer so swapping CDs and having some variety is easy. Back in Australia we had an old iPod and an FM transmitter, but here there is so much contention on the FM waveband that it wasn’t really a usable solution.

The Mustang does have a 3.5mm audio input jack (mini-jack) but to use that from either an iPod or the Zune requires you to push the volume up to maximum to get a decent signal and by that point the quality is pretty compromised.

Luckily it turns out that there is a solution. SoundGate have a product called ZuneCore which provides a simple solution for my Mustang but also pretty much any other vehicle on the market. They provide solutions which allow full integration with your existing head unit and steering wheel mounted audio controls through to a generic solution (which can even integrate with a fairly common Sony wired remote control).

As my solution is one step in a longer plan (and I don’t have steering wheel mounted controls!) I went for the Universal Zune solution which comprises of a Zune Sync cable which connects to their breakout box. That then has connectors for audio out (3.5mm and RCA audio and video), power in (either from a cigarette lighter/auxiliary socket via the supplied adapter or a supplied fused direct splice) and remote control input (for a Sony wired remote).

The ZuneCore breakout box is so small that mounting it in the floor console under the cup holders was all of about 10 minutes work. The Zune Sync cable then comes out in the passenger footwell while the power and audio cables go under the console to emerge in the storage compartment where there is a handy Line In and auxiliary power jack (given time I’d have spliced power and connected to the back of the radio directly but this was quick and easy!)

That just left the mounting solution itself. Luckily that turned out to be just as easy. ProClip USA supply a series of universal mounts (3 different choices of location for the Mustang, only one location for the Jeep Liberty but it’s perfect to mount the GPS). Once you’ve selected the mount position you then pair it with the accessory mount (which means it’s easy to change the device in the future without having to replace the bracket).

To mount the Zune in the Mustang was pretty simple… the mount sticks to the sidewall in the passenger footwell (one friction clip and two sticky pads) and the Zune swivel mount connects to the front with a single screw. The Jeep mount was a little harder as there were two parts to align and clip into creases in the dash but not much harder.

Now for about 20 minutes work all told I have my Zune mounted securely in the car. It charges, I control the volume through the built in head unit and quality is as good as a CD with no FM transmitter or line level audio interference. The best thing about the solution is when I park in my drive I can even sync my recent plays back to my PC and grab new music via WiFi and never remove it from the car.

I hate passwords. I love the security they bring but having to remember them, manage them and above all type them in on some of the devices I use drives me to distraction.

While it’s not a perfect solution I have found one tool that allows me to use my Windows Mobile phone as a secure physical token to control access to my PC.

The Rohos Logon Key is one of the best sorts of utilities. It’s almost invisible once you set it up!

It allows you to store a “key” that you can use to unlock your PC on a USB Flash key, a memory card, a YubiKey or best of all (if your PC has Bluetooth support) a bluetooth equipped Windows Mobile phone or other smartphone.

When you have installed the utility and defined a key simply making it available to the machine will log you in – so by plugging in a USB key and entering the PIN, or placing the Mobile Phone in proximity so the ID can be read.

No more typing, fumbling and cursing!

You still need to update your password on a regular basis (as it can still be used to log in without the device) but it means you can choose longer, more complex and hard to guess ones without having to learn to type them every time.

It doesn’t help with things like syncing the changed password to your phone (for instance if you need it to access your Exchange server for Outlook Mobile via ActiveSync) or if you need to type passwords into web or network logins… maybe one day.

Oh, and the USB support does also include provision of an encrypted partition for you to store files on so even if you lose the key your data is still protected.

Are you a developer with strong skills and experience in database and data warehouse development, distributed systems, mobile applications and services, and advanced data visualizations?

Are you interested in working in beautiful and vibrant Dublin, Ireland, on Microsoft’s 2,000-person campus, which includes an on-site gym, Starbucks coffee, Xbox, foosball, and all the other typical amenities? For the right candidates the job also offers a remote work option if you are interested in telecommuting from elsewhere in Europe.

The “Global Product Development – Europe” team are recruiting. This team do core development work for several Microsoft businesses, including Hotmail, Windows Mobile, adCenter, and Microsoft’s datacenters. They build core software that reach millions of people, and have openings for dev, test, PM, and leadership positions at all levels.

If are innovative, strategic thinkers and passionate about working for Microsoft you can find more details at the “Join Microsoft Europe” site, check out the currently available jobs or if you think you fit email your resume to eurojobs@microsoft.com.

To find out more about what the team do you can check out their blog for some insights into the sorts of projects they are involved in.

I’m a big fan of the 3.0 release of the Zune software, and the new 120 GB device. But the best thing about them is that today I can use them in public without having to make sure no-one is watching ;)

For the last couple of months I’ve been dogfooding both the new Zune 120 (great screen, great battery life and, in case you missed it, 120GB of storage!) and various iterations of the new new desktop app and device firmware.

Rather than list all the features head over to Zune.Net and check out the update – it’s free for any Zune device. The official feature list is here.

My personal favorites though are over-the-air access to the Marketplace at Macdonald's (it even works in the drive-through queue!), Purchase from FM (hear a song you like… don’t need to remember it, just add it to your cart) and the games :) The feature that’s been there since day #1 that I still love – WiFi sync… let’s me plug the Zune into my car and update music from the driveway.

I buy a lot of stuff over the web. Mostly from places I know and trust and have formed a relationship with over the years. The obvious suspects like Amazon as well as less well known properties like Brando. One thing that keeps me coming back to them is the reliable and secure purchasing process.

Recently I’ve had a couple of experiences as I’ve branched out into a different market segment (thanks to my recent Mustang purchase) that reminded me just how important that process is.

I’m not going to name and shame the losers – they have lost on both the transaction as well as future business. But it does make me wonder if they’re making so much money they don’t need the business – in what case good luck to them.

So, I wanted to buy an upgrade component for the Mustang. It could just have easily been a part for a PC or a power tool – the process should be the same! I shopped around and found what I wanted on a couple of sites with similar prices. As I’m new to the whole auto DIY world I emailed both for some information. One replied promptly with some information. The other didn’t respond. Foolishly as it turns out I tried to purchase from the one who hadn’t responded as they were cheaper. All went well until I hit the “checkout” button where it processed my credit card details and then threw a meaningless error back at me.

The order hadn’t been processed, there was no confirmation email but… they’re put an authorization for the amount on my account. So I emailed them and asked them to confirm the order hadn’t gone through and waited. Nothing from them, but the authorization came off my account a couple of days later so the money wasn’t tied up. I really should have learned my lesson at this point but I tried again. Different – but still meaningless – error, authorization flagged on my account and no chance of getting the part for the weekend (sure, I could have spent the money elsewhere but I wanted the authorization backed out to be sure before I did that). So I emailed them again.

Still no response, but the other vendor I’d contacted sent a follow-up email. Nicely worded, hoped I’d found what I was looking for. They assumed as I’d not ordered from them I’d found it cheaper, but wanted to point out they do offer to match any advertised price (incl shipping). If I had got it from elsewhere did I have any questions about installation or usage they could help with.

I got the hint this time. When I followed their process through to the checkout it turned out they were cheaper. And shipping was free. And they offered my a bunch of choices for payment. Process worked a treat and 20 minutes later I had both the confirmation email from them and a correctly processes transaction showing at the bank.

It’s good to have a little reminder every now and then that great customer service counts for a lot. By making sure that folks had a reliable experience on the site, when making contact, and when making a purchase they have gained loyalty, trust and recommendations. The other supplier…. I went through my wishlist and replaced every link to them with links to American Muscle or Performance Center.

Never thought I’d write a blog post talking about anything but the technology that powers their business but hats off to these guys – they’ve both done a great job reminding me that it doesn’t matter what you’re selling over the web… customer service is that same as if the buyer walked into your store, and it should be just as smooth.

Update: The original supplier. The one who’s checkout process failed and didn’t respond to emails… well, the first (of what may end up as four if all the orders process) package has just arrived. I’ve contacted them to see if they’d like me to return it, pay for it or pass it on to another Mustang owner :)

Peer to peer technologies have a pretty bad name. The immediate association is with BitTorrent and pirated movies and ISP throttling but step back from that and you’ll discover that there are some interesting products turning up that take the old idea of the network being the computer and putting it to good use.

Probably one of the first peer to peer applications to get traction was SETI@Home which parceled out data from the Arecibo radio telescope for users to analyze in the hope of finding repeated patterns. They may still be searching for intelligent life in the universe, but the idea spread and a number of similar @Home projects developed their own architectures but all on the underlying premise – by getting users to donate CPU cycles they could contribute to the project – be it searching for aliens, a cure for cancer or the largest prime number.

Over time a number of these projects realized that having different runtimes and communications infrastructures was inefficient and didn’t help optimize the network effects of a peer to peer community and eventually BOINC evolved as an open source grid computing platform that in turn supported SETI@Home, Folding@Home, ClimatePrediction.Net and many others.

But searching for aliens isn’t the end of the platforms taking advantage of the power of peer to peer processing. There are two other platforms that have recently launched that are challenging the established thinking.

Search

Search itself has traditionally been the remit of the companies with the big pockets. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and others dedicate millions of dollars to building and running the server farms that crawl the web, build the indexes and serve up the queries to their visitors and unless you’re pretty sure of your business model that’s going to be a scary market to break into. Unless your business model doesn’t need you to deploy all those servers or storage because your uses will.

Faroo, a German start-up, have exactly that model. Users run a small, lightweight application on their machine which serves three functions. The first is that it runs using idle CPU and network bandwidth to crawl the web building up an index and distributing it around other connected peers for optimal search performance. The second function is that responds to search queries – both yours and, if suitably configured, other users to give results from your local cache, the distributed index and various 3rd party search solutions. The third function is that it monitors where users are going on the web and uses that to prioritize the search indexing, which enables it to react very quickly to trending topics while still maintaining the ongoing drive to build a bigger network.

While Faroo are not yet making revenue off their search engine they have a plan that will allow them to share the revenue with both the users who are contributing most to the network and a number of charitable causes. It will be interesting to see if this will scale and be able to remain relevant – ReadWriteWeb asked this question and others, but they, and much of the commentary seem quite positive on the ability for Faroo to do well.

Storage

The other technology that requires a fairly high investment in infrastructure is remote storage. Services like Microsoft’s SkyDrive obviously provide robust and reliable storage but at a cost that most startups would find hard to compete against. Wuala (another strange name, and from Switzerland this time) have taken the same concepts of peer to peer networking that underlie the storage requirements of Faroo and similar projects and use it to launch a scalable file storage and sharing platform in a way that enables them to minimize their bandwidth and storage costs. They do provide a copy of the data on their servers but by default they serve it from the peer network first and only refer back to their infrastructure if there isn’t a viable instance available.

To leverage the network effect best Wuala reward active, online participants who contribute storage to the pool (with a reliable, high availability connection earning you a higher reward) with additional storage options. Their business model doesn’t rely on serving advertisements (which seems to be the de facto Web 2.0 pitch) but allows users to also buy additional guaranteed availability storage without having to provide capacity to the network in return. In the short time since they launched they’ve gained quite an active user base.

Broadcast

While BitTorrent may be the first thing to spring to mind when you talk about p2p and video today, that not may be true in the future if the new LiveStation platform takes off (and having used it for a while I can see why it should!)

Using technology licensed from Microsoft Research, and Silverlight to deliver the user experience LiveStation uses a peer to peer network to deliver a scalable live video broadcast platform. In a traditional experience the more users viewing the content the more infrastructure was required (either for the broadcaster or the content distribution network) but with LiveStation the opposite is true – the more users the better the platform is able to distribute the loan between peers giving a better end user experience without having to worry about scalability of the backend solution. As long as there’s enough infrastructure to seed the network they should be able to cope with any number of viewers – and use their dedicated infrastructure to insert adverts or manage other aspects of ensuring the service is commercially viable.

Is Peer to Peer the answer?

It’s hard to know at the moment how well any of these services will take off.

BOINC and it’s predecessors appealed heavily to the more technical end of the spectrum so installing and configuring a download wasn’t too much of a barrier to entry (though as it becomes more mainstream and they continue to not evolve the user experience to that audience I wonder if that will harm their growth). Both Faroo and Wuala are aiming firmly at the typical end user though so they’re going to have to overcome trust issues to get their engine running on as many machines as possible as quickly as possible, and they’ll have to make the experience so easy that after the initial installation the nodes work as effectively as possible.

At first glance Faroo has done a good job of making a fairly simple installation experience with sensible defaults to provide maximum benefit to the user and the network without too much downside (as it’s developed in .Net on a Windows machine there’s no need for additional overhead such as the Java runtime) but the Wuala experience has a little way to go – not only does it require Java the configuration process and usage isn’t as intuitive – but both of these are in beta so I’d expect them to improve and evolve over the coming releases.

LiveStation seems to have a great platform and user experience but needs more varied content to make it a viable long term winner – partnerships with more networks and perhaps providers such as Netflix or Blockbuster would make them a winner.

I think in the  foreseeable future the traditional model of centrally hosted and managed solutions are going to continue apace but the viability of peer to peer solutions is going to allow more new competitors to enter the landscape and scale quickly and reliably. Perhaps we’ll even see a generic platform like BOINC evolve to provide a common services layer that handles the communication and security (and the initial install issue) and subsequent solutions simply deploy as add-ins with their own user interface, secure storage and networking / CPU asks of the user…

What those solutions look like… online time – and imagination – will tell…

Although I have terrible handwriting I often prefer the free-format nature of taking notes with pen and paper. The problem in today’s electronic age is that they are hard to share, index, archive and search unless you go through an obsessive process of scanning everything – time consuming and pretty painful.

I have tried using tablet PCs and UMPCs with software such as OneNote, InkSeine and Evernote but never found anything that felt natural and didn’t require a compromised way of working.

My latest attempt to solve the problem is the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe.

The smartpen is deceptively simple. It is about the same size and weight as a good fountain pen (in fact it feels very similar in the hand to my Mont Blanc) but it contains an embedded computer, an OLED screen, memory (1GB and 2GB options), microphone, speaker and a camera.

All that technology allows it to monitor what you are hearing, track what you are writing or drawing and, by using the camera to recognize codes embedded in the paper, perform functions and execute small applications (eg calculator or currency conversion)

At the end of a “session” you simply connect the pen to it’s USB docking/charging station and everything you wrote and the audio you recorded along with it gets synchronized back to the desktop application where you can then chose to upload and share.

It’s not perfect yet, though this is the first release of the device so hopefully they’ll address some of these as time goes on.

The physical form factor is great, but it uses special ink cartridges and the method of swapping them (and to insert a stylus) is a bit clumsy. Ideally it would have an option to swap from ink to stylus and back again easily – as you need to “double tap” on your work to replay audio or perform certain functions you can end up with weird marks on the page.

The reliance on the paper embedded with the Dot Positioning System means you can’t just grab any notebook and write. Though they do supply both notepad and journal sizes (lined and unlined) so it’s not that big a restriction.

No OCR support. Although you can search documents within their desktop application it doesn’t support full OCR or export to OneNote or Word. They do say that 3rd party tools are coming to extend the platform (they have a developer program if you want to explore) but to my mind this is a pretty important piece of functionality I was surprised to find missing.

It’s not 100% reliable. Unless there’s a good light source and you write carefully enough it does sometimes miss letters or parts of them. It also doesn’t cope very well with shading – once you’ve drawn over the Dot on the paper it’s not very good in picking up when you shade over the area. There’s also no pressure sensitivity which also limits the usefulness for sketching (though block diagrams etc are easy)

It’ll be interesting to see if I can get by without my laptop – just using the Pulse Smartpen to take notes in meetings this week… could it be the beginning of the electronic office ;)