Bnpositive's Blog

Another Digg article has informed me that the rumors of Halo 3 being available in March 2007. This is good news!

That anticipation will overlap with the first few months of Sony’s and Nintendo’s launches, cutting into their building stages, and shifting eyes toward and opening wallets for Xbox 360.

By theoretically shifting Halo to next spring, Microsoft thus allows third-party companies a better chance to shine independently of Bungie’s uber shooter during the fall 2006 season. One must wonder, however, why the game wouldn’t come out simultaneously with the movie, due in summer 2007. But if Halo 3′s alleged March release date is officially confirmed, perhaps the game will leave questions for the movie to answer.

By that time I should be well on my way with experience on the 360. I wonder if they will make it availabe for the original Xbox at all? I was just thinking though, March 2007 is still 11 months away!

Just saw an article on Digg that shows some screen shots for the new user interface for the Windows Messenger and Live Messenger client. Information is also included about the VoIP and Voice-mail features that will be coming to the application as well.

The MSN Messenger interface is just too clunky for me. Great features, just too much like the initial MSN Explorer browser. Icons and buttons are too large, I like more minimal display information. I’m still using Trillian, which should be getting an update soon themselves.

Source: MSN Messenger / Windows Live Messenger Final UI via Digg

Kim & Jason (oddly enough that’s not meant to imply my wife and I but that’s why it’s interesting) recently had a contest for people to review their podcast on iTunes and I won! How cool is that! I was actually mentioned on the 2nd edition of their podcast, they’re up to #8 I believe.

Hey there Jason!Congrats you are a winner of a way cool special prize for reviewing Escape Adulthood on iTunes. Now all I need is your address so I can send you the goodies :)

Jenna Regis
Chief Sales Servant

Kim & Jason is all about helping grown-ups escape adulthood and children have better childhoods.

www.KimandJason.com

I’ll let you know the cool stuff I get when I receive it, until then be sure and check out all the cool goodness that is Kim & Jason and their Escape Adulthood quest.

Michael Affronti provides some more details about the RSS functionality that will be available in Outlook 2007. Some of the items he mentions are nice, like importing and exporting of OPML files.

However, my question still hasn’t been answered about being able to somehow access your RSS feed susbcriptions from a website and keep them in sync with your Outlook client. I would think this would be a great cooperative effort between Outlook 2007 and Live Mail.

Come to think of it, having full access to your Outlook e-mail accounts through a web-based version when needed would be great as well. I frequently find myself needing to manage e-mails from clients when I’m away from my home computer. Right now I just setup my work laptop to grab the e-mails from the different POP3 accounts, but leave them on the server. I’d like something a little more functional and efficient than that.

Source: RSS in Outlook 2007 Q & A 

I originally speculated that there would more than likely be upgrade promotions for the new Office for consumers this holiday season. Darren Strange, the Office Rocker (I just said that fast and wonder if it’s supposed to be meant as “Off his rocker”, Darren can you please confirm?)

Source: 2007 Office for Christmas 

What do you think about the simple and rarely thought about “File” menu? Not just in Office, but pretty much every computer application that’s used nowadays.

Changes that will be introduced in Office 2007 will introduce a major revision to what users have come to expect from that little bit of functionality that rests in the top-left corner of their monitor.

The changes to the Office function will mirror the changes to the Vista start button, I’ll call it a sphere. This article, written by Brad Weed discusses those major changes. Brad is the Product Design Manager of the Office Design Group. I’m getting more and more excited about this new release every day I read more about it!

To find out for yourself what changes are in store, read the article.

Jensen Harris continues to inform and entertain me with information on the new Office 12 2007. In some of his latest entries he looks to the future by showing us where we’ve been with the previous Office UI’s.

In Part 1, Jensen provides a quick overview of the general interface conventions that were developed by PARC in the 1970′s, and how those changes found their way out of Xerox and into Apple and Microsoft applications. An interesting thing that he mentioned in Part 1 that I didn’t expect was that Microsoft is still the largest supplier of software for Apple. I expected this to be a company like Adobe or something with all their graphics, video, and audio applications.

In Part 2, Jensen provides some great chronological screen shots of how the Word interface has changed, yet remained the same from version 1.0 to 2003.

Word 97 was the first version in which we started to see signs that people were feeling less in control of the program. Office 97 was a huge hit with both individuals and companies, but It was also marked the beginning of a long series of press stories accusing Office of being “bloated.”

(How interesting that today some people hearken back to Office 97 as being some sort of ultra-simple software panacea and how different that is from how people viewed it at the time.)

Source: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

Source: The Why of the New UI (Part 1) 

I just read that a bank will cease a home loan program for illegal immigrants. Did I read that right? There’s actually a program to help people who are in this country illegally to buy a home?Wouldn’t that be like paying for the plastic surgery of someone that was convicted of identity theft?

The Northwest Indiana Times is reporting that Bank Calumet will likely end a home loan program for illegal immigrants when Illinois-based First Midwest Bancorp Inc. takes control Saturday. Bank Calumet started an ITIN mortgage program last year as part of an initiative to target the growing Hispanic population, but First Midwest has a policy against ITIN mortgages. The program allows borrowers to use their individual taxpayer identification number in place of a Social Security number for identification.

Read more here

This was forwarded to me by my mom. I think it’s a great little story and one that I really need to conciously make an effort to remember and act upon.

———–

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time.

Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about “a thousand marbles.” I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s “dance recital” he continued. “Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a “thousand marbles.”

“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years. Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail”,
he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays.” “I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.”

“Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.” “Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.” “It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75-Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!”

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. “C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast.” “What brought this on?” she asked with a smile. “Oh, nothing special, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some marbles…

There’s a tiny bit of a conspiracy theorist in my that wonders if Akismet is bloating its numbers or if it is actually catching almost 1,000 spamments a day now.

I never saw that amount of comment spam before I installed Akismet. Anyone else want to speculate?

Regardless, I’m very thrilled with the job it’s doing for me in moderating the onslaught (real or imagined)!

Microsoft has provided a tool for making sure everyone living in Indiana will be prepared for the change over to observing Daylight Savings Time as of April 2nd.

Starting April 2, 2006, the entire state of Indiana will begin observing Daylight Saving Time. Most of Indiana will remain in the Eastern Time Zone, except 18 counties in northwest and southwest Indiana that will remain in, or be moving to, the Central Time Zone. Indiana residents should use local sources of information to determine the correct time zone.

Link: Updating Your Time Zone Settings

Since this affects me, I wanted to make sure everyone else was aware of it as well. The challenge though is that I don’t think it will actually fix any currently scheduled meetings/appointments you may have set in Outlook. However, that part isn’t a problem if you’re currently in Indiana and are on the same time as other EST cities.

The hour will not change but you will officially belong in the Central Time Zone. Change your time zone to (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) and then reset your clock to the correct hour. After this change, you may have to update or resend recurring meeting requests and verify other appointments in your calendar. When Daylight Saving Time ends on October 29, 2006, your computer clock will automatically adjust the hour appropriately. Any appointments created between April 2, 2006, and October 29, 2006, for a date after Daylight Saving Time ends should be correct in your calendar. You should not wait until October to adjust your clock.

It amazes me that someone at Microsoft could quickly write a program that would allow the user to input a start date for appointments and ask to verify each scheduled appointment and ask if you wanted it to automatically update or leave at the current scheduled time.

That’s what’s being stated now, just read this post about Microsoft coming down hard on the people who originally started the story.

Microsoft said that Vista is “feature complete,” which means that the code writing process is basically over. “The next phase of development focuses on security, testing and fit/finish – not writing new code,” the spokesperson added.

Source: Windows Code Rewrite Fictional