If you happen to be at Mix and want to chat about Windows Media Center head over to the Sandbox area and ask for Eric Voetberg, Jason Suess or Andrew Adamyk. While there you can pick up a DVD chock full of resources for those wanting to learn more about developing for Windows Media Center in managed code and / or Media Center Markup Language. It includes the latest rev of the SDK (it's already posted to MSDN online and will be going up to the download center in the next day or two) as well as some fairly extensive training materials.

This seems really dorky to blog about, but at least 5 folks are interested so this is for them. What tipped it over the scales was this from Romland, one of our regular participants over on http://discuss.mediacentersandbox.com: "Seriously, that picture is the main reason I wouldn't argue with you about anything at the Mediacenter Sandbox. It scares me."

[Chuckle]

Anywho, I hooked up the new Canon EF 50mm f1.4 lens (thanks for the tip Thomas) and went out on the porch and had my wife shoot about 30 shots, then sit down with me to pick a good one. Without further adieu, here it is (and already posted to our discussion alias and Channel9)...

And here were the runner ups (for funsies).

   

You should have seen the other rejects -- those were truly scary.

W3bbo and alwaysmc2 over in a Channel9 forum post both think the picture I use online could use some work...

W3bbo: "Your avatar is genuinely scary."

alwaysmc2: "It's your mix between crazed and really, really happy expression that makes it scary."

So, here is the picture -- I don't think it's *that* scary, and as I told those guys, it's the face I was born with.

What do you think? Time to get a fresh picture to use online? Got any recommendations about which direction I should go (artsy, playful, avant garde, folksy)?

I absolutely LOVE IT when my peers get involved in community efforts. I was floored the other day when I learned Jessica Zahn (Program Manager on the Windows Media Center TV team) has her own forum over on thegreenbutton.com called Ask Jessica and it has over 200 posts, all of which she has read and a majority of which she has replied to directly. Makes my Mailbag feature here on the blog seem like the American Idol tryouts...the epitome of amateur!

She is also getting other Windows Media Center team members involved, like Noah.

Accessibility is pretty important to us, and we want to make Windows Media Center easy to use for visually impaired folks. The default experience in Windows Media Center makes your digital media much more accessible to start with compared to Windows Media Player, iTunes or Zune -- because everything is bigger (your album art, the text, selectable items, etc.). There are some high contrast accessibility features you can turn on which make it even easier to read and navigate Windows Media Center if you are vision impaired. Get to them via Tasks > Settings > General > Visual and Sound Effects > Color Scheme. Here is what they look like.

High Contrast - White

High Contrast Black

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Shortly after Thomas Hawk got a Mac I began to think I was really missing something, thinking maybe they had been able to catch up in the 7 or so years it took us to get Windows Vista out the door. So, right before the Christmas holidays (December 13) while visiting the Apple store in Portland, OR I succumbed to the commercials and bought myself a white MacBook. I will admit to being a little ashamed -- and really couldn't bring myself to let folks know I even had the thing. But then had coffee with Steve Makofsky at Redmond Town Center and he made me feel better, helping me understand it's perfectly OK and natural to like the Mac. Needless to say, it's been wonderful ever since and I couldn't even think of going back to Windows.

I'm a regular follower of the Adobe blog over at http://blogs.adobe.com/ and generally speaking I learn a lot (note I'm a passionate Adobe products user, particularly PhotoShop and Illustrator). Every once in a while they throw rocks towards Microsoft, and it does leave me with a bad taste. Case in point: In 'Why Apollo?' Andrew Shebanow writes...

"I normally don't like to do those "me too" sorts of posts Microsoft folks seem to specialize in, where you just say "look at this great article my coworker wrote". To me, its always seemed like a rather distasteful way to do PageRank/TechMeme manipulation."

As for me, when I link to another Microsoft employee blog it's because I found the information helpful or new. For example, Aaron Stebner recently posted Mailbag: How can I create a loading page for an MCML application? and I linked to it from our team platform blog here.

Why...?

1. I didn't know Aaron was working on this, and thought it was quite neat, and that others would find it highly useful.
2. I try to make it a point to aggregate all great technical docs in one place on our Windows Media Center Platform Team blog (makes search easier).
3. There are bound to be folks who subscribe to our platform team blog but NOT Aarons blog -- they might not see this great resource unless I link.

Furthermore, I don't link to every one of Aarons posts (like this one, or that one or the one over here which is related to Windows Media Center development). For the most part, where and when I link is highly correlated to my opinion of the value of the material. It's not part of some uber conspiracy to manipulate the system. And I don't think most Microsoft bloggers link for the sake of linking.

Andrew, I don't think I would have discovered Why Apollo? or Mike Chambers had you not linked. That's exactly WHY you want to link -- to show your readers who you read, or listen to, or respect -- even if they happen to work for the same company you do.

I don't think it's distateful -- it's actually respectful in most cases.

Besides, you can always unsubscribe if you find the linking to be gratuitous.

I'll confess I didn't know much about European TV standards until I listened to Ian Dixon interview Rathe Hollingum from our Ireland developer team. According to that show, there are no DVB-S or DVB-S2 tuner cards which record directly from those sources available today. What you *can* do today (which Rathe points out) is to use a DVB-S(2) set top box and infrared control cable. For more information check out http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/mediacenter/tvandmovies.mspx and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/using/setup/settop.mspx. There is a lot of good information in the podcast above about support of European TV standards -- give a listen if you are interested in this space.

P.S. Congrats to Ian on 100 shows -- you ROCK!!!

I made a pretty bad mistake the other day with a mailbag post while trying to reach out to the Windows Media Center online community of grass root supporters -- those early adopters who constantly (and rightfully) push us to deliver more value. I took some information which was already public knowledge and connected dots which -- honestly -- weren't there to connect. It was a mistake on my part to infer any sort of timeframe schedule going forward. Doing so set the wrong expectations for my readers and opened up a can of speculation and question worms which were way off base. Above all, I pride myself on being a source you can trust -- and the other day I let you down -- I’ll try not to do that again. [Note to self: Read The Corporate Weblog Manifesto again.]

After reading about his poor experience working with the release candidate of Windows Vista at the last WinHEC I contacted Brier and offered to provide a Windows Media Center PC to take for a spin. Using computers prepped for events like WinHEC are always a dicey proposition -- most of the time they are multi-purpose and have therefore been touched by multiple folks with differing goals (which might not be compatible) before reaching the show floor. Throw in a beta OS and -- well -- you can almost guarantee the outcome isn't going to be very positive. Brier politely declined to take me up on the offer at that time. (Never was sure why, but my best guess was obviated with his article today.)

Brier contacted me last week via email with a note invoking that prior conversation and noting he 'ended up borrowing a TouchSmart from HP and swapped it for my living room TV for a few months' and was preparing an article on his experiences which he published today. I'll admit I literally chuckled out loud when I read his email -- the TouchSmart computer was designed for the kitchen, not the living room, so my initial reaction was 'no good can come from this'. What's a good analogy here...? Perhaps buying some great teak outdoor patio furniture and putting it in your family room is a good one. Needless to say I was interested in hearing about his experiences for better or worse so I responded and we had a great conversation.

Some thoughts after reading his article...

1) It sure would be nice if a journalist would review a Windows Media Center system as our team envisions. Let us hear about your environment, and then help you select a combination of hardware which addresses your needs and wishes. Some might say this would affect the integrity of the writer. I don't think so -- as long as the writer is up front about the assistance he got from Microsoft.

2) It would be great if the major OEMs were more selective of 'value add' software they choose to place on the machine (see Briers follow up posted this afternoon). Unfortunately Briers experience with preinstalled stuff is the norm -- sadly. But for a very few exceptions, whenever I help family and friends purchase a new computer I have it delivered to my house first where I perform a clean install of the operating system to avoid this stuff. Some folks, particularly on our OEM team, might go nuts when they read this, since OEMs are our bread and butter. Wake up -- this stuff degrades the user experience far too much. I know, sounds strange coming from a platform guy -- but this stuff *has* to get better folks -- plain and simple. Build GREAT software on the platform -- or choose NOT to ship the software.

3) My comment to Brier "I would really like for somebody to do a follow-up or a couple of follow-ups — they seem to put these great things out there, but there's not a version 2 or a version 3" was in the context of driving the costs down on great form factors for the living room. We've already got some great boxes designed as dedicated machines for your stereo stack -- but unfortunately the price points remain fairly high on them. It is interesting to note that for $400 less than the cost of the TouchSmart you can have an HP m7790e for the home office with almost exactly the same specs for the internals (processor, memory, etc.) plus an XBox 360 (with built in Media Center Extender) and a brand new high quality wired + wireless router (total for all of that is $1,400 as priced tonight, compared to $1,800 for the TouchSmart). More bang. Less buck.

Oh, and the offer still stands, Brier -- aren't you curious to see how well this stuff works as originally designed?