Windows Live configuration sync

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I had this idea that popped up when I was listening to the current .NET Rocks - The Future of Web Development Panel.  I was listening to the panel lamenting about having to manually configure their development environment per machine that they use and thought, geez surely this can be solved perfectly with Windows Live.

Sure enough, within minutes of this idea popping in my head, one of the guys on the panel stated this, and got overwhelming applause.

That is one great idea.

So, you have Windows Live Mesh right now.  You can sync files, links and photos online.  How hard would it be to synchronize Visual Studio settings, office settings / templates, browser settings, etc etc

Taking the idea further, there is a set of tools you always use for your machine - wouldn't it be nice if you can re-use a license key (if it allows) across all your machines and share them via a Live Mesh account.

Or even when you build a new machine, a Life Mesh application automatically asks you if you want to re-install all your favourite tools that you had on your previous machine - tells you if it has a newer version (say for windows 7), and / or any driver requirements.

When you say "yes please", it will install these for you at a convenient time - AND copy your configuration settings so it'll behave JUST THE WAY you had it set up before!

Throw in some integration with Microsoft Online Store...

I can't stop drooling.  If someone don't build this app soon I will!

It is so great to live in a Software + Service world!  These are great times!

I twit now (oh and I still blog)

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I'm sorry I'm probably very very late to the bandwagon, but there's a few reasons for this:

  1. Just ain't very keen to login to Facebook all the time to just update a status
  2. I know twitter had been the thing...  I'm trying to redeem myself
  3. Was at powertodevelopers event, when everyone was whipping out their iPhone / windows mobile to twit, I didn't have an account so it was a bit embarrassing
  4. Unless you twit you won't know what it's all about...

Anyway, follow johnnliu (double-n)

Late blog (as in, not a live blog) Australia Power To Developers event

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So there I was, sitting in the front row of the Power to Developers event in Sydney Convention Center.  A really great place by the way - it's like 5 minutes away from my home.

Steve Ballmer's presentation of Windows Azure is certainly very energetic.  He did the "Developers, Developers, Developers" chant - I cheered!

Gianpaolo Carraro's presentation on Windows Azure services was interesting, it certainly got my hands all itchy.  *Waiting for that SQL Data Services invite*

Tim Sneath's very excited about Windows 7, WPF and SilverLight.  I bumped into him outside the convention center and asked him about his visit to Sydney, in hindsight what I really should have asked him was which of these cool technologies should I spend all my time on?  How do I choose!

All the technical presentations were flaky, with the audience bursting out in laughter whenever Gianpaolo says "Oh Come On!"

I also got to meet heaps of people that I worked with over the last 3 years as well as some that were in SSW before that.

Shout outs:

the SSW crew,
David Klein, Adrian, Marlon
Ciprien, Ben Scott, Christian Maslen, Gordon Salier
Adelle, Peter

Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) has a nice new look

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Most people probably have a Hotmail account, but like me, probably haven't visited it for quite a while.

Anyway, they unleashed a new version recently that looks a lot slicker.

(This is in Chrome)

image image

Very cool. 

I still think it misses the conversation threading view which is really fantastic in gmail, also I think tagging emails is still better than folders for organization.  But it's fast and snappy and doesn't require you to use IE for the full experience.

Seriously thinking to split this blog

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I like blogging about what I'm doing, but in some aspect, there are different areas that I would like to blog about:

Software Development

  • Some really interesting problems and how we solve them
  • Some really annoying bugs and how we got around them
  • Some totally unexplained and undocumented feature and how we figured out how it all worked

Software Project Management

  • This is not my forte, but as you get experienced in this industry it's probably inevitable that you end up doing project management work
  • Project management deals a lot with the risks, processes and communication with clients.

Gaming

  • What I thought about WOW
  • What I'm thinking about WAR
  • XBox, XBox Live
  • PC gaming, in general

Rants

  • Stuff that happens, usually something about my laptop - honestly if my laptop was working fine you guys would never even know I was using a Dell Studio 17 (BTW, after the technician fixed it, it's working really well now)