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ReMIX 2007 ReDUX, Melbourne Australia

auremix07 013

Left to Right is Paul Jenkins, Blue Monster  and Will Hughes

XAML Expression Xbox Silverlight ImagineCup Elvis WillHughes WebJam MediaCenter BlueMonster Carousels Vista Glass Expression Photoshop Blend AJAX .NET Popfly Panels

Nigel Parker: http://blogs.msdn.com/nigel/archive/2007/06/25/remix-melbourne-is-in-full-force.aspx

Cameron Reilly interviews Brian Goldfarb on G’Day World: http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/06/27/gday-world-256-brian-goldfarb-silverlight/

Flickrs: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=auremix07&m=text

JD: http://blog.bluecog.co.nz/archives/2007/06/24/remix-part-i/ , http://blog.bluecog.co.nz/archives/2007/06/25/remix-part-ii/  and http://blog.bluecog.co.nz/archives/2007/06/26/remix-part-iii/(JD is my current second favourite NZ-er after Neil Finn. Smart and understated. )

Max Design: http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2007/06/26/remix-2007-melbourne/

Steven Price: http://littlevoices.blogspot.com/2007/06/web-development.html

Geek Glue: http://geekglue.blogspot.com/2007/06/remix-ux-suxs.html

PixelKitty: http://pixelkitty.net/weblog/2007/06/27/remiss/

Brad Howarth: http://lagrangepoint.typepad.com/lagrange/2007/06/live-from-remix.html

splaTT: http://www.splatt.com.au/blog/archives/2007/06/remix_07_rocked.html

Lee Brimelow: http://thewpfblog.com/?p=128 and http://thewpfblog.com/?p=129 and source code: http://thewpfblog.com/?p=131

Delic8genius: http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=464

MossyBlog: http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog/archive/2007/06/29/remix-australia-was-fun.aspx

Impressions Scholarcast: http://blog.mrees.biz/myblog/?p=224

Will Hughes, lately famous of the above image: http://will.hughesfamily.net.au/20070629/remix-2007-melbourne-roundup/

BigScreen Blog: http://mobilewares.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!78533A1A2E078194!499.entry?beid=cns!78533A1A2E078194!499&d=1&wa=wsignin1.0. Note: the Windows Media Center + Flickr.com app rocks. Just rocks!

Dr Neil: http://drneil.blogspot.com/2007/07/australia-remixed.html

Jonathan Parker: http://jonathanparker.com.au/JonathanParker/Web/blogs/jonathan/archive/2007/06/29/remix07-resources.aspx

Nas: http://www.naskhan.com/?p=6

Anymoose: http://www.aeoth.net/2007/07/02/remix07/

Mr WPF, Joseph Cooney: http://jcooney.net/archive/2007/07/02/54044.aspx

Frankarr: Agenda, or posterity

Videos from ReMIX 07, Postmix: http://blogs.msdn.com/postmixau/default.aspx

Things to remember for next year’s ReMIX:

  1. Party down in a better venue, where there is no refurbishments.
  2. Improve gender balance of presenters. Fat, Forty-year-old Fellas don’t own the web!
  3. Do more “industry” web things in the agenda (thanks Susan from JWT).
  4. Food and service excellent from Crown Promenade.  Even Lee Brimelow agrees
  5. Podcast/videocast?
  6. WebJam needs to be explained better beforehand, although it will be a brand by next ReMIX.
  7. More lounges, more power points and free wireless. For the love-of-god, free wireless. See lolcat below for the visually minded.
  8. Twitter-ers anonymous corner where we can meatspace each other
  9. Integrate ImagineCup a little tighter into ReMIX as an event.
  10. It’s not designer vs / and / or / with developer. It’s making great online things that does meaningful stuff for the users. All sorts of people are involved in this; from infrastructure architects to ux people. Need end result back to back-of-envelope plans explained.
  11. Innovate your Web Knowledge. WTF? And don’t get me started on people_ready.

netcat on no free wifi at ReMIX:

ImagineCup Australia specific posts: http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/andrewwhitten/archive/2007/06/26/251992.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/ausic

http://www.apcmag.com/6514/now_the_blind_can_program_in_net

http://ericlam.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!5D73BE0B4076E647!2707.entry

http://littlevoices.blogspot.com/2007/06/imagine-cup-2007.html

http://blogs.msdn.com/frankarr/archive/2007/06/27/imagine-cup-2007-winners-announced-lives-to-be-changed.aspx

http://geekswithblogs.net/shahed/archive/2007/06/27/113523.aspx

Beginning of Gonzo Video Journalism

A unique program on the ABC 10 years ago, John Safran ruled.

“Race Around the World” pitted amateur videographers against each other, as they traveled around the world getting stories.

Handicams, simple editing and excellent stories pre-dated the intraweb pseudo-stars doing long-form interviews or strapping a camera to their head.

Go have a look at John Safran’s work:

In 1997, the ABC gave John Safran, “Australia’s most exciting guerilla filmmaker”, his big break on Race Around The World. Although he came last in the competition, it’s not too hard to fathom why he won the popular vote, with these submissions: Don’t screw with the rules in Japan, The ambulance chaser (Mumbai), Anarchy in the Renault family hatchback (Bristol), The right to bare grudges (Cote d’Ivoire), Mum I’m not Jewish any more (Cote d’Ivoire), Father Pino vs the Devil (Sicily), Mohammad’s guide to busting a move (Lebanon), Football’s my religion (Jerusalem), The series of unfortunate events and The happiest place on earth, my butt (Disneyland).

via: Metafilter

Neil Finn Lyric Server goes Mashup

neilfinnblock

The Microsoft PopFly alpha can make you lose three days. In a good way. I haven’t had so much fun since, well, Photoshop maybe.

I’ve created a public PopFly “Block” called NeilFinnLyrics (now shared) this is bare, bare bones. It simply uses the new REST interface to the Random Neil Finn Lyric Server.  The Lyric Server supports SOAP/WSDL, and normal image insertion.

PopFly is social programming: drag and drop blocks onto the page, and create your own mashups of data. Adding Neil Finn’s Lyrics to the data that can be mashed up is just another step in getting the words out there. My love for Neil Finn knows almost no bounds.

neilfinnatic 004

Writing a Block with the current Alpha requires knowledge of JavaScript and XML. And a little bit of patience.

Come have a chat at ReMIX to discuss where you may also profit from PopFly. The first thing that should be created is a branded PopFly Superannuation Block. Thoughts?

Small Geek in the Wheel

More cluely people join the Australian DPE team. It’s way cool having smart friends on the team to balance my ignorance on all Microsoft matters important.

A Special shout out to the ever helpful Jeffa and Captain Coates.

confusing_hr

Frank seems to be relieving his end-of-year frustrations by changing my title in the HR system. It will be cool to see my first Microsoft Performance Evaluation with “Professional Geek”  A story to tell the grand kids.

Asserting Diplomatic Immunity in Subverting the Microsoft Hierarchy

After a series of presentations I gave to Principals of Victorian schools, I had described my role at Microsoft as a digital diplomat. This perfectly describes a part of my job as a bridge between the digital immigrants and digital natives. (Prensky, Marc: 2001)

Digital Diplomat

Now Frank Arrigo, my manager, has entered that into the internal Microsoft address/HR system as my title. What a laugh!

I wonder if I can claim diplomatic immunity when I go feral?

additional: … maybe not as feral as David Lemphers!

Questions from Brisbug, 17th June 2007

qf502

First flight to Brisbane, Sydney Airport 17th June 2007. Up at 4.30am, at the airport at 5.45am. Up so early, even the cats were surprised. Actually one of the cats didn’t even bother to come out and visit as it was so early. Motor into Windor to present to 25-30 members of the Brisbug User Group.

brisbugjun07 003

There were some unanswered questions, which I will tackle here:

Office Publisher 2007, breaking links. Break Forward Link: this is the process of removing the linkage from the current Text Box to the next, and retaining the text. From my quick research, Publisher 2007 does not change the functionality compared to previous versions.

Changing the selection/highlight colour in Word/Excel. This is relatively easy: Microsoft Word, as other well written Windows programs, respect the setting “Selected Item” colour in the Display Control Panel. This allows you to change the background colour that shows highlighted items, including text. Also note that Word 2007 has a zoom to make it easier to see text on screen.

OEM Windows XP Service Pack 2, Media Center. Install issue related to CDs with poor wording for insert CD (near bottom of chat transcript from May 2006). Seems like its an issue that is related to the wording of the install screen, not an error with the installer.

Links: Office 2007 file opening with previous versions of Office: If you have a mixture of Office 2007 and older versions on your home network, this http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&DisplayLang=en is the link to the plugin.

Update: 28th June 2007: Office 2003 vs. 2007 menus: http://blogs.technet.com/seanearp/archive/2007/06/27/office-2007-what-ever-happened-to-that-menu-option.aspx

Excel Finance function changes. The financial functions in Excel, apart from Nett Present Value and Compounding Interest, have sort of baffled me. From the help file:

Easy formula writing

The following improvements make formula writing much easier in Office Excel 2007.

Resizable formula bar   The formula bar automatically resizes to accommodate long, complex formulas, which prevents the formulas from covering other data in your worksheet. You can also write longer formulas with more levels of nesting than you could in earlier versions of Excel.

Function AutoComplete   With Function AutoComplete, you can quickly write the proper formula syntax. From easily detecting the functions that you want to use to getting help completing the formula arguments, you will be able to get formulas right the first time and every time.

Autocomplete assists with the writing of a formula. The most linked reference on the web for Financial function (now the how, more the why) is from here.