FrankArr pointed out it was Star Wars day, and Clone Wars are coming soon… but watching it projected from R2D2s head would be just perfect

I so want one! Shame it doesn’t work as a Media Center Extender ;)

Check out Nikko America for more info.

On May 3rd 2008 that is the challenge. Will you be able to join with people from around the world, turn off your computer and spend Saturday unwired?

The goal is both to reconnect with the physical world, and at the same time try and save some power - or at least raise awareness of the number of devices we have plugged in draining current every day.

I’ve got quite a list of devices to shut down (and we’ll try to include the TV and Xbox in the list as well). Just doing a quick count at home we have 2 PCs, a Media Center, a Server, 3 (yes, 3) laptops, one UMPC as well as assorted printers, scanners, monitors, external drives, WiF gateways, switches etc. It probably adds up to quite a few watts consumed every day.

I’m not sure I can totally disconnect – I’ll make sure my phone is charged up :)

Oh, and on Friday night before you go home from work… don’t forget to turn off everything you can in the office as well.

Spread the word before the countdown reaches zero… find out more a ShutdownDay.org

I wonder if enough people turn off their transformers will it cool the planet. At least it might remind us to flick the switch every now and then :)

We live in a push-button, instant-on age. We leave devices in standby mode because we believe it’s helping save the planet… but is it really?

How much does your flat screen TV or l33t gaming rig consume when it’s “sleeping” and all you see is the little winking light telling you that you’re doing good.

And then all those wall warts. The chargers for your phone, your music player, the DS Lite. What are they draining long after the device is fully charged and idle?

I don’t know either – I’m lazy! But I do wish there was an easy way to shut things right down when I’m not using them, that was easy and wouldn’t inconvenience the family.

It looks like Belkin may have an answer to at least one of these problems about to hit the market. A powerstrip that you can turn on and off with a remote control!

It has two sockets that are always on (ideal for, say, the cable box and modem) and then 6 sockets which can be toggled with a remote control that you can put somewhere convenient.

For our house it means that for the $50 expected retail price we can easily power down the TV, the amplifier and speakers, the XBox360 and SqueezeBox music player without having to struggle and reach to find the wall switch.

Also from Belkin is a neat 3 way power strip than includes two USB chargers – that can eliminate a couple of the wall warts… really handy both at home and when you’re traveling (I often end up unplugging the alarm clock or kettle in a hotel room just to feed all my devices over night!)

While neither of these are a perfect solution – the remote control power strip probably still consumes some power when it’s idle (hopefully in the 2-5W not 25-45W range some surge protectors apparently consume) and the USB charge capabilities of the wall adapter which great I wonder if the transformer (and I hope it’s only one) shuts down when there’s nothing plugged into the sockets to need power…

I guess you could go a long way with some of the home automation solutions to managing this (and all with a universal remote control) but it would be nice to see a more common, consistent approach across all the equipment you find in home and office to really make an effort to stop sucking juice when it’s not needed. Your power bill will thank you now, and your kids will thank you when they don’t have to worry about the consequences!

I'd not bought into the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray war. Not because I thought one standard was better than the other, but because over the last couple of years I've become more and more convinced that over the wire and over the air distribution are going to dominate.

In the US with Comcast and Verizon pushing speeds (12Mbps and 50Mbps are fairly common for Cable and Fiber respectively) and despite the grandstanding about net neutrality and p2p on-demand video is growing - you only have to look at Netflix, AppleTV and the Xbox Marketplace to see that.

Rather than jump on the Blu-Ray bandwagon with the demise of HD-DVD Microsoft are betting on downloads as the way forward. As long as the infrastructure continues to advance and the ISPs and record/music business don't spoil it for everyone I think it bodes for a great future...

... or why Scott Guthrie was playing with his balls on stage!

Things have been rather quiet here the last few weeks as I've been very focused on some of the incredibly cool stuff we couldn't talk about until MIX08 so I had to contain my enthusiasm.

Much like last year at MIX07 I worked with some amazing partners to help provide some of the demos that Scott was able to showcase in his keynote. I still find it pretty amazing to be involved in such a great event and have a chance to work behind the scenes to make at least some of the magic come to life. You can see all of the action of the day1 keynote on the VisitMIX site but here's the back story for some of the demos...

So... enough of that. What was I involved in....

IE8 with Dean Hackamovitch

Although the rumor mill knew we would be showing IE8 at MIX I don't think anyone had guessed that we'd actually be making bits available, along with developer documentation on how to take advantage of some of the new features. I've been playing with IE8 through some of it's very early stages now and have to say I wish in my previous job I'd had the ability to use features like WebSlices. Luckily in my new job I was able to work with the team to help implement them on Facebook.com (yes, they're live. Install IE8 and go try it out) - for some more information check out the video on VisitMIX.

Hard Rock - Deep Zoom gets a work out.

I've worked with the fine folks from Vertigo before on the Slide.Show project (one of the top downloads on Codeplex if you want a great Slideshow app for your site - there's even a plugin for this blog engine, and others, available.) so it was great to get the gang together again to work on a project that would really demonstrate the capabilities of Deep Zoom - the Silverlight implementation of the Seadragon technology.

Working with the folks at Hard Rock to expose just the tip of their memorabilia collection was an awesome experience - check out the results of all the hard work at the live Memorabilia site. Having a chance to visit the World Headquarters of Hard Rock, have a look around their warehouse and check out their flagship restaurant in Orlando was icing on the cake (thanks guys - you rock!)

Sean Dee (Hard Rock CMO) and Scott Stanfield (Vertigo CEO) delivered a great presentation and the bonus at the end was that the site went live at the end of their demo.

Mix Keynote: Hard Rock Demo

VisitMIX hosted a great interview with the team to give you a clue how they put it all together and you can check it out here and for a much more in-depth dive into how the technology can be put to use the team even ran a session afterwards.

Aston Martin - design delivers

Nestled in the heart of the English countryside is one of the most revered names in the automotive world. Recently branching out after several years as part of Ford they are pushing innovation along with their existing design and engineering focus, and we were lucky enough to be able to give folks a sneak preview into their thinking this year at MIX.

Marek Reishman (Design Director from Aston Martin) and Paul Bishop (Managing Director of Splendid) treated us to a three part insight into a possible future - a new way of configuring your dream car on the web (using 3D models in Silverlight to navigate around a car and Deep Zoom to step inside it); a dealer experience using XNA and WPF (and an ultra portable PC) to work through the millions of possible combinations, and allow a customer to see their chosen vehicle in amazing detail before placing an order. The final part of the demo was a video clip showing the in-car systems managed by a central embedded Windows device - telemetry monitoring, phone and GPS navigation.

Aston Martin MIX08 Keynote

Nishant did a great interview with Marek and Paul (as well as reminding me in the run up to MIX that we do care about designers!)

Having a chance to go to Gaydon in the UK and see the home of Aston Martin was an amazing experience... now I just have to work out how to save the money to get one of my own ;)

Cirque du Soleil - HR is a real juggling act

One of the challenges of MIX has been the way the web hogs all the design glory. No-one talks about the same problems faced by designers and developers working within a corporate environment on Line of Business (LOB) apps because it lacks a certain.... sparkle.

Well, Cirque du Soleil understand sparkle, and they really understand the challenges of LOB applications - they maintain a huge catalogue of performers, and making sure there is quality data available is a real task.

Krista Monson (Head of Casting, Resident Shows America) came on stage (with a suitably theatrical flair!) and showed what can happen when a LOB app meets design head on and sits on top of the latest Microsoft technologies (WPF, TabletPC, SQL Server and Sync Framework, and of course Silverlight)

For me the highlight of MIX had to be Krista asking Scott some cheeky questions... and trying to juggle on stage (and yes, we do have the video recorded live from the stage!)

Cirque MIX08 Keynote

Check the weather on your phone

Silverlight is establishing itself as a player on the web - Windows and OSX are the start of a cross platform story that Moonlight is helping round out on Linux. At MIX08 it was great to be able to announce that not only was Silverlight coming to Windows Mobile it was also going to be supported on the Nokia S60 devices.

We've already done some work with Weatherbug using Silverlight 1.0 so it was great to work with them on the next generation and the next platform for Silverlight. Using the same tools and techniques as for the desktop browser they were able to develop a really cool mobile app in just a few weeks.

WeatherBug MIX08 Keynote

Check out the interview with Tamir on VisitMIX to find out about their experiences and make sure you're ready when the bits become available.

Looking forward to MIX09

I had a great run up to MIX08 but we're not done yet. We've set the bar high for MIX09 back at the Venetian March 19th to 20th! Hope to see you there... keep an eye on VisitMIX for updates.

I really liked my Jabra BT800 headset and when it started to die more than be useful I was all set to get either a JX10 or a BT8040.

Instead I spend about 2/3 of the money and got a perfectly adequate Motorola H700 instead (in Fire Red if you must know).

Why?

It didn't fit any better. It didn't do anything that the other two products did (in fact it has less bells and whistles). It (like the others) has a really annoying blue flashing light to point out to strangers that I'm a wanna-be cyborg.

The winning factor... Mini USB charging connector.

Why you ask is that so important?

Simple convenience. I already carry a USB cable I can use to charge/sync my phone, my camera and my GPS unit. Why oh why do I want to carry another cable just for one device.

The headset is useless without the phone. Therefore making sure your device doesn't impose any new requirements on the phone user should be a fairly simple way to appeal to the road-warrior. I don't care what the plug looks like as long as I only have to carry one to charge and sync everything.

Of course one day ubiquitous SplashPower will ensure every device is constantly fed power and UWB will replace Bluetooth for local sync.

I first heard about XIOS (aka iCloud) about a year ago and I've been keen to have a play every since to see if finally someone would get it right.

I've wanted a portable "play and play" OS for a long time. Things like U3 and MojoPac looked like lightweight solutions but had their flaws (MojoPac still doesn't work with Vista) and going for a full VM solution like Moka5 didn't help (Internet Cafes where you can't install a USB device or incompatible host operating systems and problems getting network access from the guest OS)

Internet OSes seemed like a great idea but I've yet to find one that works well enough to deserve a return visit once I've set them up.

Well iCloud (or XIOS - I can't seem to work out what they want to call it) is the first that does a good enough job that I've been playing for a few days as I bounce around machines. In fact, I'm posting this with iCloud running and even using their Music Player to listen to BBC1xtra from the UK and test an IE app.

But nice as it is, it's still very early days. There are typos galore but on the whole it's pretty polished. And there are some pretty cool apps - Dayplan, Money Manager, Notepad and (rather bizarrely) a Balanced Scorecard app complement a collection of widgets, a desktop messenger and an internal browser instance (tabbed, supports Silverlight, Flash and anything else the host browser supports).

But there's a way to go which the development language (for you to write your own apps as a collection of XML files) doesn't quite compensate for.

No email client, the IM client won't talk to my Messenger buddies and there's no Word or Powerpoint app or a database (although these are all promised "real soon")

The other limiting factor for many is that it relies on IE. Now 90% of my time I have that available, but I also have a Mac Mini at home at the moment and would love to be able to move from one to the other seamlessly.

That leads me on to desktop sync.

In the ideal world I'd have a portable desktop I can take anywhere I happen to be working, and have the latest documents to my fingers or up to date email. In a secure, reliable manner (to allow me to work in a connected or disconnected manner) that doesn't impose limits based on if I'm on a PC or a Mac, at home in the office or at an Internet Cafe. Sadly there's no sync yet so I have to carry files on a USB key still!

Nice as it is... iCloud isn't quite my digital dream yet... it's the closest I've seen so I'll keep hoping (and Windows and OSX don't have to worry just yet!)

One of the things I wanted in my perfect phone was GPS, but sadly my new Shadow doesn't have it built in.

The reason was simple. I'm new to the US and even still get lost in Redmond. Also after living in Australia for a decade I find my internal sense of direction is out of whack (it took me about 2 years to trust it after I moved to Aus)

Luckily there is a solution. Navizon have a small app you can download to your phone that uses cell towers, wifi access points and, if you have it, GPS to triangulate your location. Once it has that information it lets you navigate and record your trail (including options to export to Google Earth or as a CSV). You can geotag where you've been and share the information with buddies (or see where they are right now).

As it happens I also have a Bluetooth GPS device so I can pair that with the phone when I really want accuracy but it's good enough to locate the hotel I was in based on the 13 WiFi access points and 7 Cell Phone towers it could locate just from my room!

The application is available as a native Windows Mobile application and they also support iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia S60 devices. They even have a desktop app if you don't have WiFi or GPS on your phone.

This software relies on a community of users who contribute data to the system (WiFi and Cellular towers) when they have a GPS device. Not only do non GPS phone users get the benefit of that data but users who have a GPS device get to take part in the Navizon rewards program - each cell tower or access point you provide GPS coordinates for earns you points and those points translate (once you've got enough) into dollars via PayPal. You can even refer folks and earn a percentage of their points (they don't lose out, your bonus is in addition to their credit!)

One thing it doesn't do it let me post my location to Twitter (nice to do when I get off a plane - helps me remember where I am when I wake up in a strange hotel!) but I've send them a feature request for that ;)

After far too many years hunched over a computer I started to feel the old aches in the arms, wrist and fingers. Some of it was due to cramped laptop keyboards but a lot was down to the mouse. I tried a number of alternatives over time and developed a huge affection for my Microsoft Trackball Explorer.

Sadly this wonder (described by some as "the world's most comfortable trackball") is no longer available (examples on Amazon and eBay often top US$200) so I treat mine with due reverence - no longer does it get slung in luggage and dragged around the world to meetings, conferences and friends houses. It stays safe and snug at home and no-one is allowed to touch it lest some accident befalls it. I hate to think what will happen when it finally does give up the ghost - it's been on of those unsung heros of my toolkit for many interesting projects.

Imagine my surprise when today I was given a Natural Mouse 6000 to try. Could this "normal" mouse compare to my beloved trackball? Would it join the ranks of other almost, but not quite, input devices I've tried over the years?

I'm pleased to report that this little creature may find a way into my heart very quickly. The shape is different enough from a normal mouse that you're aware of using it for about the first hour but then it feels (pardon the pun) quite natural - and going back to a conventional mouse it quite disconcerting.

It's a little larger than the mouse I currently lug around on my travels, and being wireless requires a dongle as well (would be nice if there was a very small USB dongle that could be housed inside it for transport, or it used Bluetooth) but when I've got space in the bag it's certainly coming along with me.

My other wish-list item (if the folks who design Microsoft Hardware are listening) would be for it to be rechargeable and ship as the mouse with a version of the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 package - that's a great keyboard but the mouse is "conventional" - though it's Bluetooth....

I don't mean we should all start trying to inspire revolution in some far away place (though who knows what the power of thought can do) ... I mean it's time for the humble remote control in our living room to actually catch up with some of the technology advances and become a productive member of society.

I use a Logitech Harmony 880 remote. I've had it for a while and I think it's a really neat idea, but it's so let down by the things it's trying to control and how they play well with the remote and each other (or more to the point... how they don't).

Remember back in the day how the remote involved your Dad telling you to get up and change the channel by turning the dial on the TV (okay, maybe I'm older than you!).

Then came push button channel changing, followed around the time of the VCR (anyone remember VHS vs Betamax?) by wired remotes (and the wire was always too short).

The freedom brought by IrDA finally cutting the cord was, sadly, the end of any major advances in the underlying technology of the remote control.

Sure, my TV, Cable Set Top Box, DVD/VCR, XBox360, Squeezebox and Z-5500 amp/speakers all respond to remote control signals (in fact my LG DVD/VHS is really dumb because it incorrectly responds to signals meant for the Squeezebox) and if it wasn't for the Harmony I'd have a lot more batteries to buy!

But the control isn't perfect. For instance my TV doesn't allow the Harmony to send a specific source (eg HDMI1), you have to cycle through them. Which would be fine if it was always a fixed progression but it's "smart"... a source is inactive it disappears from the cycle. Even the Media Center with all it's processing power doesn't do any sort of two-way communication (though both it and the Squeezebox have IrBlaster capabilities they could make use of as a return path...)

The other pain is if things are out of sync with how the harmony thinks they're set up then it gets confused and turns things off that sound be on, or selects the wrong audio source or something. Now 99% of the time I don't blame Logitech (though for some reason they don't quite have the options figured out in the setup process for the Z-5500 audio sources)... I blame the future for not being here when it was promised.

Back in 2005 I remember reading wonderful proclamations from the ZigBee folks that their wonderful new low power radio mesh technology would be in consumer electronics within a couple of years...

... well, I'm still waiting.

Where are the smart remotes that can query device status before asking them to do something? Where are the programming interfaces so when I power up my Squeezebox via the web interface from another room it can query the Z-5500 amp and ask it to change to the right input and effect? Where are the really smart devices that can shut down everything apart from the ZigBee receiver (really saving some power) until they are needed.

Put that technology into consumer electronics, wire it up to a smart remote like a Harmony 1000 and I'll be very happy (the Harmony does support "Z-Wave", which appears to be Logitechs implementation of ZigBee but they're almost too embarrassed to talk about it!).