Total Raised So Far: $1,323

Update: Through the generous gift from one of the MVPs and a fellow Microsoft employee I can sweeten this offer.  We now have a copy of Windows XP Professional, Office Professional Edition 2003 and Visual Studio 2003 to raffle in addition to Visual Studio 2005.  Instead of one lucky winner we will have four.

Ed Bott, Newsgator, Thomas Hawk, Microsoft and a great discussion during our team lunch today made me want to do *something* to help in the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

The result: I'm going to raffle off a single copy of Visual Studio 2005.

Here is how you enter...

1) Visit https://give.redcross.org/.

2) Donate a minimum of US $100 (One Hundred US Dollars) towards 'Hurricane 2005 Relief'.

3) Forward to me the email confirmation you receive from the American Red Cross.

FAQ

• The email confirmation from the American Red Cross does not contain any credit card information -- it's only your name, address, donation amount, time stamp and two tracking numbers.
• Unless you state otherwise when you forward the email confirmation I will post your first and last name in updates to this post to recognize your contribution.
• The email confirmation from the American Red Cross includes a link which can help you identify whether or not your company has a matching gifts program, and give you some details on how to leverage.
• Raffle entries will be accepted through September 30, 2005 11:59 PM.
• I don't know the ship schedule for Visual Studio 2005.  The software will be delivered to you sometime the first week of October or when it becomes available in the retail / reseller channel, whichever comes last.

Contributors

• Greg Duncan http://coolthingoftheday.blogspot.com
• Brian Lakstins http://www.balconsulting.net/DasBlog/default.aspx
• Steven Ackerman http://spaces.msn.com/members/sjackerman
• Paolo Hutchison
• Stephen Carroll

• Robert Jordan

Our design team is probably the most humble group of folks I've ever met.  They just won a Communication Arts Interactive Annual award for their work on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and have yet to tell a soul as far as I can tell.  Shame on them -- this is really cool news.

http://www.commarts.com/ca/interactive/cai05/35_ia05.html

Communication Arts is the leading trade journal for visual communications. It's the largest design magazine in the world and showcases the top work in graphic design, advertising, illustration, photography and interactive design.

Charlie: Shut up, the camera adds 10 pounds
John: Oh, so how many cameras are actually on you?

Lights, camera, action...

Join myself, John Canning and Michael Creasy in the Microsoft Studios with Robert Hess for The .NET Show featuring Windows XP Media Center Edition.  We have some great demos of the Media Center user interface, third party extensibility applications and code walkthroughs by Michael. This show is a great primer if you've been wondering about your developer opporuntities on the Media Center platform

Be sure to check out the hilarious 'Diversionary Tactics' clip in between the show segments. You'll never look at the Channel9 Guy the same way again.

It turns out I'm the top ranked 'Charlie Owen' at Google, Yahoo, MSN and many other search engines...

• http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Charlie+Owen
• http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=Charlie+Owen&FORM=QBHP
• http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Charlie+Owen&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8
• http://a9.com/Charlie%20Owen
• http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=Charlie+Owen&kgs=1&kls=0
• http://search.aol.com/aolcom/search?invocationType=topsearchbox.webhome&query=Charlie+Owen
• http://search.lycos.com/default.asp?loc=searchbox&tab=web&query=Charlie+Owen
• http://www.search.com/search?tag=se.fd.box.main.search&q=Charlie+Owen
• http://www.business.com/search/rslt_default.asp?type=web&query=Charlie+Owen&vt=all
• http://web.ask.com/web?q=Charlie+Owen&qsrc=0&o=0

I haven't yet decided if this is a good or bad thing for my career.  I'm leaning towards good -- what's your take?

I'm embarking on a fun project this week.  I'm going to start coding a Media Center Add In with the following features...

1. Background Add In.
2. Polls RSS feeds according to an OPML file.
3. Retrieves new posts from those RSS feeds.
4. Schedules TV recordings based on Click To Record document enclosures in the post.

I've got a couple of reasons...

• I want to get back to C# and managed code.  HTML + JScript has been fun, but it's SO last decade.
• This could be an interesting scenario.  We've got podcasts and videoblogs, what about a TVLog...?
• This could lead to even more interesting scenarios -- breaking news alerts...?
• Perhaps this could lead to a super-simple podcasting downloader?
• Exercise our SDK documentation for Media Center Add Ins in order to give feedback to our product team.
• Have an ongoing project to discuss here in the blogosphere (to date, most of my posts have been single topics).

I'm off to a great start -- just finished coding an Add In which takes this XML (learn more about the Click To Record Feature)...

<clickToRecord xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:ehome:clicktorecord">
 <body>
  <programRecord isRecurring="false">
   <program>
    <key field="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:ehome:epg:program#title">Star Trek: The Next Generation</key>
   </program>
  </programRecord>
 </body>
</clickToRecord>

...and schedules a recording of a single show via this C# code in an On Demand Add In (learn more starting at About Media Center Add Ins)...

void IAddInEntryPoint.Launch(AddInHost host)
{
 try
 {
  string strClickToRecordXML = string.Empty;
  Television objTV = host.Television;
  XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
  xmlDoc.Load("ClickToRecord.c2r");
  strClickToRecordXML = xmlDoc.InnerXml;
  objTV.ScheduleRecording(strClickToRecordXML);
  host.HostControl.Dialog("Completed ScheduleRecording Method Call", "Success", 1, 0, false);
 }
 catch(Exception ex)
 {
  host.HostControl.Dialog(ex.Message,"Exception",1,5,false);
 }
}

So, I have a couple of questions for the readers of this blog...

1. Are there any additional features you might like to see in this Add In?
2. Do you have pointers to great documentation on consuming RSS in managed code which might be helpful?

This seemed pretty cool...

"Microsoft Location Finder is a client-side application that turns a regular WiFi enabled laptop, Tablet or PC into a location determining device without the addition of any separate hardware. When launched by a user, Microsoft Location Finder uses WiFi access points - or reverse IP lookup when WiFi is not available - to center and display the person's location on an MSN Virtual Earth map, enabling the user to quickly and easily search in their present location."

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B5E8C83A-EA8E-4464-9980-7B6A8DD1013C&displaylang=en

I wonder if the MSN Virtual Earth guys have thought about a Media Center app yet?

Make your voice heard to our product team -- leave a comment on this post with your feature requests.

[Don't know what our platform is today...? Check out the Windows XP Media Center Edition Software Development Kit (SDK) for more information.]

P.S. Make sure you read the question carefully, noticing the use of the word 'platform.'  I am more than happy to pass along consumer oriented feature requests, but my biggest influence is in the development of third party applications which extend Media Center.

P.S.S. Another way to ask the question: If you were to sit down and write an application for use with remote control and viewed on your TV, what developer features would you want or need?

We are concluding that time of year at Microsoft where we write our reviews of the past year and ponder our goals and objectives for the next.  Several weeks ago my boss (Andrew) and I discussed my focus for this coming year.  I put the following on his radar to consider...

1. I prefer to give up managing people so I can spend more time focusing on my family (to quote: 'I want to be a great feature PM for Ashleigh v1 and Lacie v1 -- they are the only software I will ever personally ship').
2. I want to focus solely and squarely on our platform for the next version of Media Center on Windows Vista.
3. I crave designing experiences and writing code to bring them to life. I love showing others 'how to' and getting them excited about the possibilities.

This week Andrew and I pretty much closed on all three -- I won't be managing people starting this coming Monday, get to do nothing but work on Windows Vista starting August 1 and get to write lots of sample code for our next generation platform for Media Center.

Thanks, Andrew, for listening to my heart and helping me achieve my dreams.  I'm still pinching myself to see if I wake up from this dream after nearly 6 years -- and it keeps getting better and better.

I keep hearing folks in the blogosphere talk about how Apple is better and how Microsoft can't ship software.

Then I read Robert Scoble get on a roll here and here talking about the great software Microsoft is shipping today. So far, most of the comments and feedback are negative.  Robert must feel lonely.

I remember working at a company with a mixture of Macs, PCs and Sun Sparcs back in 1997.  The word around the geek water cooler then was Apple was dead, irrelevant and Microsoft was much better.  I remember thinking I should buy Apple stock, since it was trading for less than $5 for most of the year and never peaked above $7.  My thoughts were perhaps those few, lonesome souls saying 'Apple still matters' know something I don't.

Alas, I didn't buy.

A $1,000 investment in Apple stock at its maximum price in 1997 ($6.703) would be worth over $6,500 today.  The same $1,000 investment at the lowest price in 1997 ($3.422) would be worth over $12,500 today.

According to USA Today, Microsoft stock is trading at 16 times earnings while the average for the software industry is at 24 times earnings.  Do I work for a below-average company?  I don't think so.

I'm choosing to be lonesome with Scoble this time around.