Sling Alibi

<> - Dubai to NYC and back in 12 seconds

asli — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:48:58 -0500

In this article, we’ll cover how you can build your own customized 3D tour with no code using Bing Search. This is a great way to share your local points of interest (like the stunning Burj Al Arab – warm sun bathing photo taken two days ago my frigid friends) with friends and family. This is particularly helpful if you moved halfway across the globe and need to fly friends shortens a 12 hour flight into 12 seconds. Let’s explore how I created my own Bing collection to fly my NYC friends to Dubai and back.

Build a 3D Tour of your favorite POI (not the kind you eat in Lanai)

Go to Bing.com – sign in with your live ID (this way you can save all the customization into your account)
Click on the Maps tab
Type in : Dubai Marina (or whatever neighborhood you call home)
Change the view to be Aerial Satellite

Fred lives Underwater (no, not a new band)

Here you have two options to add a point of interest (POI).
1. Zoom and pan around until you get to a point of interest. For me, I choose the Burj Al-Arab. OR
2. If your POI is something fairly well known, it is easier to load the lists create by other users. In the left hand side, click on the link for “Explore user-contributed places” The results will include news, Wiki articles, and other URLs contributed by users. Like our friend Fred, who apparently lives under water. You will see pushpins next to these points and you can adopt them as your own by clicking on the pushpin link. Once you do that, a small window opens up with more information and metadata about the POI. From there you can click on the Save button to save it to your own personal collection (Again, you need to be signed in first, in order to see this option).
3. Keep adding POIs until you are satisfied with your list.

Create a custom Tour

Create a custom itinerary or tour, by adding several POIs to My Places Editor. Each time you save a location, it gets added to your list.
Click on the My Places button to create new lists and tours by clicking on the “New List” button.
You can also import and explore other people’s lists.

Fly first class with Photosynths

You also have the option to filter the user contributions by toggling the options at the top of the list. You can choose only to see items with photos, 3D buildings, MapCruncher, or Photosynthwhich enables you to combine multiple photos into one first person type view, as you can see by visiting Times Squareor by visiting the observation deck of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa

Create a 3D tour to fly your friends to Dubai

After you are satisfied with the order of the locations in your list, close the My Places editor and select the Actions drop down button. Now you are ready to fly your friends over by creating a 3D tour. Choose the “Tour & make videos in 3D” link .
When you play the tour, the globe will spin as your friends fly over to visit.
When the video plays, the user flies from spot to spot. You can even customize the flying behavior to include panoramic spin around and speed up or slow down the animations. Hit the “Go To” Play button when you and change the drop down from Asli’s favorite building to Home in New York to fly from Dubai to New York in 12 seconds.
You can right click on a pushpin in the map and choose Edit, and then modify the behavior of the 3D animation in the 3D Tour tab. You can change the viewpoint – to be from ground level or above or circle a building clockwise. You can do this for each POI and really create a unique experience for your friends and family.
When you are ready, you can share your map via link or email.

Color code your Outlook 2010 Inbox Messages

asli — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:54:14 -0500

Most of us at Microsoft spend most of our time in Outlook and the flow of email sometimes can get overwhelming. Categories, Rules and Alerts are one way to prioritize the flow. You can take this one step further and color code your inbox as such:

Outlook 2010 moved the location for Automatic Formatting. Although I had set this up on my previous machine, today when my teammate, MM asked me where it was, it took me a bit of time to remember. Instead of Tools, Options, it is now located under the View menu. Click on the View Settings menu to begin.

Click the Conditional Formatting button

You can change any of the existing ones for Unread messages (bold), Expired messages (strike through). Or you can add your own. Let’s do that! Click the Add button.

Now you need to add “rules” or in this case they are called – conditions. Click the condition button. In my case, I want to change the “Where I am” option. I choose the “on the To line with other people” option. You can create as many of these as you would like.

Select a formatting font for these messages – Click on the Font button and then adjust the settings for the Font. In my example, I opted to see any emails that have me in the To with other people as red:

Now I can see any email sent directly to me in red:

A fun one to add is “Not to me” – I code those in light grey. This takes a bit more advanced work to set up. Follow the same steps as above, and after you click on the Condition button, instead of selecting “Where I am” choose Advanced. Then in the Fields box, select All Mail Fields and pick To. And another criteria that uses the CC field and doesn’t contain your name. Then select “doesn’t contain” and type in your name. For Font, choose Silver.

Meet Littles The Chihuahua (powered by Silverlight 4)

asli — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:49:02 -0500

It’s not often you run into a Chihuahua powered by a beta version of the richest design framework available in the world. Littles the Chihuahua’s object model takes full advantage of Expression Blend’s frame, trigger and time based animations. Methods include Wave{}; PlayDead{}; FetchSlippers{}; and many more.

Littles was first programmed using Silverlight 2.0, and is best known for serving for 7 years as the United States Development & Evangelism Platform Team Mascot. Some may infamously know her from her ill-fated demo during Mix07. Secretly sprearheaded by Australian Evangelists such as Michael KordahiLittles was due to burst onto the stage with an accelerometerstrapped on to her back, sending signals via Bluetooth to hijack the opening keynote demo as such:

Her movements would trigger the screen on the computer to tilt and shift, moving a virtual ball around a small maze. Unfortunately, the non-dog friendly and ADD ridden gambling nature of Vegas hotels on the strip caused the effort to be prematurely abandoned.

Emirates Hill Chihuahua Right to Left Language Support

Now in Silverlight 4, Littles can take her routines (play dead) and subroutines (drape paw dramatically over eye) even further. In previous versions of Silverlight, Littles did have the capability to render her barks in many lanaguges. For example, in Turkish, Miniko (a.k.a. Littles) does not bark or go “woof”, but simply says “hov hov”. In France Mininoa (a.k.a. Litttles) issues a dainty “vaf vaf” with a certain “je ne sais quoi - je suis Chiwa” disdain.

With the Right to Left language support, Littles can now render her barks in RTL languages such as Arabic – a perfect enhancement for the newly transplanted & newly translated Emirates Hill Chihuahua. We can only look to Silverlight 5 to make Chihuahua transplants as easy as translations. In the next post, we’ll compare the relocation of a human versus Chihuahua from New York City to Dubai. Which is easier? The results will surprise even you.

Technorati Tags: Silverlight 4

Soar high into the Cloud with Michael Jordan

asli — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:03:52 -0500

Although most of you may know my former teammate Sam Chenaur for his role as the acclaimed Policeman #2, he is actually now better known for his role on Nike’s Cloud Computing effort - the Mosaic 23/25 project- a poster child for social networked media – and a shining example of how a company can take branding to the next level – by building a tribe of fansumers around a powerful brand such as Nike. Windows Azure and Silverlight provides a level of dynamic interactivity between a company and its fans, creating site stickiness - (e.g. how long a user stays on a page, and how often the user comes back to visit).

The Moasic 23/25 project leverages Silverlight’s DeepZoom technology to build a giga-mosaic using photos submitted by fans. Once the photo is uploaded, Azure runs a computation in the cloud to calculate where to best place the photo as a micro-image to form the mosaic pattern of Michael Jordan catching air. Fans can then click on the Michael Jordan image and keep zooming, zooming, zooming until they drill deep into their very own uploaded photo.

Is your photo wrapped around Michael Jordan’s waist?

At 713% you can still see the pick out the image of Michael Jordan’s waistband while beginning to make out the individual photos that comprise the colors.

Send a Secret Valentine Using Windows Azure

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Windows Azure is ready to play Cupid! At 6000% we can see a lovely couple in love (naturally they are from France), along with a rating of the photo and their favorite shoe.

With Azure Cloud computations running constantly in the background, the mosaic is ever changing, so the steps to zooming into this picture will change. You can search for this photo using the metadata – for example: type in Aeight to the search box and see that it constantly keeps moving throughout the main image. I like the idea of embedding a secret message into Michael Jordan using your personal photos as Easter Eggs- you can create a scavenger hunt for a loved one! Now imagine if this photo had a little sign that said “Marry me?” Maybe we will see that demo’ed at Mix10? Gives a whole ‘nother meaning to being on Cloud 9.

Another usage of Silverlight’s Deep Zoom technology was showcased 2 years ago on the Hard Rock site, which highlights a memorabilia collection of over 70,000 items – including guitars played by U2 and Jimi Hendrix to the Beatle's tour bus. At Mix08, the Silverlight demo zoomed into a photograph of a guitar and kept zooming until it showed the fingerprint of Bo Diddley on the guitar casing. Walk through the steps to see the fingerprint yourself

And that was 2 versions ago – stayed tuned to see what Silverlight 4 has to offer – expect amazing demos during Mix10 in Las Vegas March 15-17 2010 - register by Feb 7 to save money on your pass.

WomenBuild Sweden – March 22, 2010

asli — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:30:59 -0500

TechDays Sweden 2010 (March 23-24 2010) is proud to host a pre-conference WomenBuild workshop on March 22, 2010 at 6.30pm.

Join us for our first 2010 WomenBuild session in Sweden! The WomenBuild program is specifically designed to address the decline of female talent and leadership in the computer science industry. Microsoft partnered with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) through Robert Rasmussen & Associates to create a unique interactive workshop, using LEGO® Bricks to model solutions for growing strong female leaders in the software industry.

WomenBuild is not only a program but a growing community that provides accessibility to female role models, access to resources, and an open communication path to the Microsoft Women in Technology community.

The WomenBuild program incorporates a hands-on process that draws on the power of creative thinking to shift group conversation from talking heads to focused minds. Each team will be run as a facilitated conversation with physical Lego brick constructions that will powerfully shift a group to more productive outcomes by accomplishing a deeper mining of the diverse wisdom within the group and a clearer shared conclusion on inspirational career paths for women in the technical field. Through this workshop, attendees will share real life experiences, discuss challenges, network & build on-going relationships with other women who are attending the PDC conference. Ultimately, attendees of this workshop will find ways to unleash their creative thinking and transform ideas into concrete concepts.

In this workshop, attendees participate in an environment of rich, interactive experiences by modeling real-life business challenges and solutions with LEGO® Bricks as part of the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY Program (LSP). WomenBuild opens minds to exciting and inspirational ideas on how to be a thought leader in the technical field. We work together in small groups to brainstorm and problem solve in a collaborative and productive way. The workshop includes people in various responsibility areas in teams. This way each role can impart their own unique perspective to the group, while collectively creating shared understandings that direct future activity effectively. WomenBuild workshops are not exclusive to women, as these topics apply both to men and women.

For those of you interested in attending the workshop in Sweden:

Datum och plats:
22 mars på Conventum i Örebro
Tid: 18:30 – 20:30
Ansvariga på plats: Danwei Tran, utvecklarevangelist på Microsoft och Robert Rasmussen från LEGO® Serious Play.
Vi bjuder på smörgås och dryck. Platserna är begränsade och deltagandet är kostnadsfritt.
Du anmäler ditt intresse genom att maila: danwei.tran@microsoft.com

Birthdays are the best days for government paperwork in Dubai

asli — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:21:50 -0500

If you ever have to go through a paperwork process in Dubai that takes millions of forms, multiple counters, and many languages, the best bet is to do it on your birthday. Since you need a copy of your passport to process anything, you can clearly prove valid the formula: {myBirthDay.MonthDate() = Today.MonthDate()};

If this formula equals true, strap yourself in, as you will hurtle into Mach5 speed for all paperwork processing. What once took 4 weeks, will now take 4 minutes. And seriously, there’s no better present than seeing fancy approvals stamps on Very Official documents dated with your birthday. What better memory could you have of your birthday than a customized souvenir from the government?

When you walk into a government or financial institution, take the token that says you are number 99 in the queue (Typically this will happen when the screen shows: Now Serving: Number 2). Then approach the nearest person and say with a pitiful “Hmm. Is there anyway we can expedite? You see, it is my birthday.”

Suddenly you will feel like a fondue pot, with handshakes poked at you urgently, “Good tidings, good wishes! Come come! Come with us”, and you will suddenly enter the world usually reserved only for Certain Special People Who Shall Not Be Named. At your side, will be your own personal escort, skipping you across queues, with pen in hand, filling all your paperwork and forms, leaving you with only the simple request, “Just sign here ma’am”. Even when you find that a particular office has is closed early for the weekend (Ref: Don’t they know it’s Friday?), no worries! You will have full afterhours clearance through all security doors and access to internal offices, because They Know It’s Your Birthday.

Women in Technology Rally together for Aid to Haiti

asli — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:42:02 -0500

The Women in technology has been immensely active in Seattle and New York providing guidance on how you can assist in aid for Haiti. Both Girls in Technology, Microsoft, and the Mona Foundations have partnered together to provide much needed relief to Haiti. In this post, you will find resources on how you can provide direct aid to Haiti through proper and credible channels.

For overview on the depth of the disaster (beyond what the news is reporting), please refer to my colleague and dear friend, Esther Schorr’s blog post .

Esther introduced me last month to Mahnaz who runs the Mona Foundation. Prior to the disaster they provided strategic goodwill to the Haitian community for education and resources for learning. In response to the disaster, the foundation has put together Mona Foundation Relief Fund – “Because the Mona Foundation already has projects in country and relationships with the larger disaster relief agencies mentioned in the list above, we are serving as an additional funnel to get dollars where they need to go through these agencies. Any funds sent to the Mona Foundation Relief Fund will go – 100% - directly to one of these groups expeditiously.” You can subscribe to their eUpdates HERE. "

Be careful to avoid false aid collection sites and refer to the CNN list of valid organizations. As Esther eloquently put “ Whatever funds you raise should absolutely be sent through one of the reputable disaster relief organizations - see this article on CNN.com for a great list of the ones that have been vetted for legitimacy and have in Haiti ties already: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/01/13/haiti.earthquake.how.to.help/index.html?hpt=T2 . I direct you here because giving is a very personal thing and you all need to give where and how it feels right to you. I just want to be sure you don’t funnel dollars to any of the scam sites that have popped up already.”

Dubai Microsoft Technology Events & User Groups

asli — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:37:04 -0500

DubaiDev.NET User Group

DubaiDev.NET User Group is the first official Microsoft™ .NET group in United Arab Emirates and Dubai City that will help developers acquire and develop skills associated with Microsoft™ technologies. http://dubaidev.net/

Membership: hundreds , Facebook link
Organizer: Rami M. Nassar Blog. http://raminassar.dubaidev.net eMail. rami.nassar@dubaidev.net

TechiesOnly (aka TECHIES, TechiesLeaders)

Description: Techies in the UAE expresses the social aspect of a User Group. We have a technical excuse to meet as ICT Professionals. Sessions have a technical topic and a social purpose. Members can expect to meet like minded people and grow their network that way, while enjoying a beverage and a bite to eat. The User Group will aim to facilitate the union of members as wel as informing the members on new and upcoming technology.http://techiesleaders.spaces.live.com/www.techiesonly.com
Membership: 150+
Organizer: Rolf Eleveld rolf@bajomero.com, http://twitter.com/rolfeleveld, http://twitter.com/techiesuae

Techiesonly

Dubai PHP

Dubai PHP is a community for PHP and web businesses in the area. The mission is to be a resource for developers, businesses and recruiters to learn from one another, network, and find jobs. http://www.meetup.com/dubai-php/
Membership: 30+
Organizer: Hans Zaunere email me

Dubai MySQL

Dubai MySQL is a community for DBAs and internet businesses in the area. The mission is to be a resource for developers, businesses and recruiters to learn from one another, network, and find jobs. http://www.meetup.com/dubai-mysql/
Membership: 75+
Organizer: Hans Zaunere email me

TedxEast – New York City. Part 2

asli — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:42:48 -0500

November 6, 2009. New York City. City Winery, Tribeca. Ted^XEast, (x=independently organized TED event). Forward thinking New Yorkers gathered this afternoon at the City Winery, another center for innovation that leverages state of the art technology to pour premium hand-crafted wines. Technology, great minds and wines. What could go wrong? This post is two of a two part series on the event.

“Obsessions Make My Life Worse and My Work Better”

(Stefan Sagmeister, TED conference)

Scott Heiferman

Scott Heiferman is CEO and a co-founder of Meetup. He opens up with speaking about the story behind the “I have a dream speech” from Martin Luther King. Apparently, the speech was completely unscripted where Dr. King was being asked by a colleague what he is passionate about and Dr. King starts getting worked up and passionate and the guy tells him “ Tell him about your dream!” And this is when Dr. King goes on stage to speak the speech that you know now.

But how do we do this when we are surrounded with a “I have a nightmare speech” – he shows the poster ad for 2012. Then he shows the ad for “Trauma” which launches on TV soon. And then the Cloverfield ad where the Statue of Liberty is chopped in two. Then he shows a recent NYTimes article that shows a gripping horrible headline about the war in Iraq and at the top banner ads read “There Will Be Blood”.

How do you form a vision of a future with this kind of prophesy?

Then he shows a photo from his apartment of the twin towers on fire during 9/11.

What happens when apocalypse becomes reality? Local communities sprung up immediately afterwards. “There’s a lot more small going on. A lot more local communities going on. It wasn’t happening so much a few years ago and now it’s happening more and more. Meetup has turned in thousands of local community groups that are brand new that are being held every week or so. Cherokee Count Asberger’s Symptoms Parents Support Group, for example.“

Will 2012 be like the movie 2012? Or will be living your dream?

Paul Steely White

Paul is the Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives in Manhattan. He speaks about the Livable Streets Movement: Why we battle to reclaim the urban commons from the car. He highlights how much traffic congestion limits idea growth in the city. “The definition of a city is density. Lots of buildings. And the space between the buildings are limited. Then why do we choose the lowest density mode of transportation?’ How can we reduce the role of the car in the city?

If you have heavy traffic in the city, you reduce the quality of life and social opportunity between people that live in the neighborhoods with high traffic.

He shows a picture of Einstein riding a bike with the quote “E=mc². I thought of that while riding my bike”.

“Take ownership of your streets. Think of it as you do your living room. Live in it, embrace it”

Technorati Tags: new york city,tedX,tedx

TedxEast – New York City Part 1

asli — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:05:37 -0500

TED events have 50 million viewers all over the world, aligned with their mission – “ideas worth spreading”. The concept is to have key speakers surface important life changing ideas through presentations, and then networking ensues for the attendees to discuss how to implment . Ted^X provides the opportunity for local communities to take the mission of TED into their personal, professional and family networks.

Suzy Welch

Former editor of Harvard Business Review and author, Suzy Welch’s most recent book, 10-10-10 uncovers decision making for life changing. She opens the Ted^X conference by first she asking you for introspection with some questions she calls “scary”:

Fast forward to our 70th birthday party – what would make you cry with regret? (living deliberately)
What do you want people to say about you if they knew that you were living your truth? (refining character)
What do you love about your upbringing and what do you hate? (defining value system)

“Live is pretty empty unless you live it with your values and you develop those values by asking yourself these questions”. This is when you start making “value driven decisions” and you start living a more authentic life.

Rachel Stern

Rachel Stern speaks about the evolution of news and the risk defragmentation brings to democracy. The new “news” comes from social media organizations like Wikipedia and Huffington Post. Although this empowers regular citizens to contribute with opinion and events; “transparency trumps neutrality” in the sense that the channels respect individuals that are transparent, versus neutral. Consider the handful of citizens empowered as Wikipedia delegates and Huffington Post’s pre-approved comments– Rachel quotes Esther Dyson and indicates “we are all fact checkers now”. What are the implications of these new news systems in altering public opinion?

Dr. William Duggan

Dr. William Duggan, author of speaks of creative spark. “For creative thought you do not imagine something new. You take in things from the outside and you make a new combination. It’s a new combination of previous elements. The elements are not new. The combination of those elements is new.” He speaks of Google’s 2 founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brinand says that what they created was innovative. [ed: Meh]

He then flashes a picture of a Stanford Computer Science professor – Larry and Sergey were his students. “The topic he taught wasn’t search, it was a discussion of portals, like Yahoo, the goal of a portal being that you stay on that page as long as possible. Google took the .13 seconds you get your results and you are on to something else. It’s the opposite of a portal. Data mining for eCommerce was the original concept that the Google founders worked on.

“They took data mining and eCommerce and came up with a concept called Page Rank, with altavista which allowed you to see ranking. They renamed it Google and everyone on campus used it, and raised tons of capital and used it. But then decided to give it up.

“The problem was, how were they going to monetize this concept? If they can’t make money –how would last. The problem was that ads were too heavy and would slow down the site. What to do?

“Then they ran into a company called overture which display ads in a list based format using search. This is what they combined into Google and they made money.

“Nothing here was invented. It was a new combination of previous elements. The elements were not new the combination was new."

“Now you know how Microsoft started. Now you know how Apple started. But that’s not my topic. My topic about you. Now you know the process for creativity. ” Talk to one another about elements that are not new and combine them into creativity.

Technorati Tags: TedX