1. Memory Stick Backups - A service that will run on my desktop or laptop and automatically back up my USB memory stick whenever I plug it in.  Each memory stick should be backed up to the same location on the server no matter which computer I plug it in to.
2. Download Manager - Automatically hand off regular downloads from Internet Explorer to be downloaded and stored on my home server.
3. User Account Sync - Automatically create user accounts on client PCs for each Windows Home Server user account.  Automatically update passwords.
4. Favorites Sync - Sync my favorites to a folder on WHS. (I know I can do this with foldershare.  Add-in would be much better.)  Also include Desktop Sync, My Documents Sync, etc.

Sunday, July 15, 2007 7:53:31 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development | Microsoft | Quattro

Charlie Kindel posted on the WHS blog announcing the availability of the SDK for Windows Home Server.  I did a quick read through and it looks like they're allowing you to extend the platform in many different ways.  Pretty much every UI element is extendable: the WHS console, notifications & alerts, etc.  It also looks like you can peek and poke at almost everything WHS does with backups, hard disks & client computers.

We'll probably see some trivial demos pop up relatively soon, and more complex stuff coming out in the coming months.  I'm real curious to see what scenarios developers will choose to tackle first.

A question for Charlie and the rest of the WHS team:  Are you setting up a gallery or some sort of marketplace for folks to post/share their WHS projects?  I'm thinking something similar to the way the Live.com folks have their Gadget Gallery.

Friday, April 06, 2007 8:28:24 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development | Microsoft | Quattro

I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft's General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. This is the last post of a 4 part series. (Links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Technology

RH: It is interesting that you opted for a Rich Client vs. Web Interface for the admin panel.  How was this decision made?  Was the connector built using the .Net Framework?  What version?  What language (C#, C++, VB.Net?)  Are there any particular technologies that really shined?

CEK: When building a configuration/admin user experience (Ux) for a network node, one has to consider the following:

- How important is “reach”; that is, how important is it that you have broad multi-platform support?  Windows Home Server is designed to improve the experience in households with multiple PCs. And, especially in v1, our solution is very focused on PCs that are running a modern version of Windows. Therefore the requirement for “reach” does not bubble high up on our list of priorities.

- How important is a “great UI”?  Certainly one can easily build “good” UIs in DHTML, but building “great” UIs is hard. It is even harder to build great UIs in Ajax.  We felt it was super important to create a great UI.

- Designing protocols is hard. Assuming one was to build an admin UI with a rich UI framework (e.g. WinForms/Win32) and run it on the client, what would the protocol back to the server look like? For the Ux to be great it has to be bi-directional and performant. The RDP protocol already exists and is very robust.

- Is 3^rd party extensibility important? If so, how do you build your extensibility model?

These, factors, and many others led us to implement the Windows Home Server Console as a rich Win32 application (using .NET and WinForms) that runs on the server, but is remoted to the client using the RDP protocol. This allows us to provide a very rich Ux without inventing new Ux remoting protocols, while being able to provide a great 3^rd party extensibility story.

RH: Is there any email story other than file-level backup?

CEK: Nope.

Further Discussion:

Charlie and I talked a bit about how Windows Home Server can be extended by developers. They are planning on releasing an API that will let developers plug into “Peter’s” experience (Check out the Channel9 Video for a description of the Peter persona). Basically they want to let people build into the user-friendly interface to solve different problems like home automation, media, etc.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007 9:46:42 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [1]  Consumer | Development | Microsoft | Quattro

Jeff Sandquist is talking again about his 7 day software test.  Basically,  he’ll try something for 7 days, and If he finds it to be useful, he’ll buy it.   He’s even incorporated the idea into one of his videoblogging projects, On10.net.

I generally have a much shorter fuse, and I judge software within the first few minutes after installation.  Actually, even the installation experience can significantly color my perceptions.  When it comes to software, I’m guilty of judging the book by its cover.  The install experience and the UI are about all that factors into my “is this good enough” test.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I haven’t given certain applications as much of a chance as I should have.  I’m not sure if I’m patient enough to give new software 7 days, but I’m going to try to get past  my initial gut-reactions and see if maybe there’s some tools out there that can make my life better or more productive.

Still, I wonder how many people really have the time and patience to commit to a 7-day trial with new software.  Software developers should take note.  If your UI can’t grab the user's attention, if they can’t intuitively figure out  how to get started without reading the help file, or if your install experience is painful, most people are not going to give your program a chance, no matter how wonderful it might be.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 8:58:44 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development

Ok, finally got through a couple minutes after my last post.  Right now the list only includes:

• SQL Server 2005 CTP - September 2005 (Many Editions)
• Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite - Release Candidate
• Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Load Agent - Release Candidate

Hopefully we'll see more later today!

Rick H.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 5:18:45 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development | Microsoft | PDC05

SQL Server 2005 CTP, September 2005 (Many editions)...

What else?  Not sure..  As I tried to move forward in the new downloads list, the server became unresponsive, and now is just spitting out this error when you try to get to Subscriber Downloads:

An Error Has Occurred

We're sorry. An error has occurred, and we cannot process your request. This may be a temporary problem, and you can try again in a few minutes.
You can try to:

• Contact support

Good luck downloading today, the servers are already showing the strain at 5:55AM Eastern, but that may also be because they are still uploading stuff as well.

Advice for Microsoft:  Get whomever keeps http://Microsoft.com up and running to give the http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/ folks some pointers on load management & availability, and throw some more money at bandwidth and server capacity, especially when you know there's going to be heavy demand.  You have no idea how many geeks you're giving a bad impression to when you can't handle the strain at the subscriptions site.  These are folks that are invested in your technology.  You want to keep them happy!  (I know it's a hard problem, especially with multi-gigabyte iso downloads. Talk to your MSR folks and get their Avalanche technology integrated into the download manager {as a voluntary option}.  You guys & gals should be able to solve this...)

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 4:58:10 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development | Microsoft | PDC05

Dare Obasanjo lays some pretty heavy hints about MSN's upcoming developer story.  He includes several session descriptions for MSN related content at the PDC, and provides a link to a teaser page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msn

Read the post for more details, this could get interesting...

Thursday, September 08, 2005 6:42:16 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development | Microsoft | MSN | PDC05 | Search

Ok, I'll throw the disclaimer up front.  If you sign up using the link below, I get a referral commission.  With that said, I'm going to try to give a fair review of my current hosting service, Webhost4Life.

A while back I decided that I needed to find a new hosting provider.  My old host had limited support for ASP.Net, and although they allowed multiple domains to be hosted on one account, they required that they all be pointed to the root directory of the hosting account.  This made it necessary to have a gimmicky default.aspx that redirected by the host header, and didn't support having full web applications in subdirectories.

I ran through trials on several hosts, and ended up signing on with Webhost4life.  I'm on the $20 per month plan, and am very happy with the interfaces that they provide.  The big bonuses in my mind are:

• I can point any domain name to a subdirectory in my hosting account.
• I can set any directory in my hosting account as an independent web application, through the web control panel.
• I have access to SQL server, My SQL, etc.
• They have a decent online interface for setting file & directory security permissions.
• They will put you on a server that has the beta .Net framework 2.0 if you ask through tech support.

On the down-side, I have found that they have a tendency to nickel-and-dime for many features.  It's free to point a new domain to your hosting root, but if you want it pointed to a subdirectory, it's an extra $10 a year.  Want to use their e-commerce wizard (it's not that great) then there's a one-time setup fee.  When they switched me over to the server with the 2.0 framework, there was a one-time fee (and some downtime) since they manually copied my websites over.

Overall I've been very happy.  My family picture website runs great, and much faster than on my old host.  Dasblog was very easy to setup, and I've got a couple of side projects using ASP.Net with the 2.0 framework, and they're working great as well.

If you want to found out more, click here, and feel free to comment or email with questions.

Update 7/13/2005: I'm not sure what the problem is yet, but my hosting server has been having some random failings lately.  It usually comes back within a couple of minutes, but the reliability isn't quite up to par for business purposes.  Just a fair warning for anyone taking the ASP.NET 2.0 route. I never had any reliability problems before I moved to the server with the ASP.NET 2.0 Beta.  To be fair, it is a beta.

Update2 7/13/2005: I had tech support switch the virtual directory for my blog site back to ASP.NET 1.1 and everything appears to be working fine now, and I haven't had any site drops since.

Thursday, June 23, 2005 5:23:06 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [1]  Blogging | Business | Development

Everyone and their blogger is linking to Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List, so I figured I would as well. Scott has some awesome tools listed here. A lot of my favorites made the list (Windows Desktop Search, Notepad2,SysInternals,SyncBack, Del.icio.us, Paint.NET). 

One of the listed xml tools, XmlSpy, solved a data conversion problem that I had been fighting for over an hour in just under 5 minutes. If you are doing anything with Xml: authoring, data conversion, whatever, you need to check out this tool.

It's going to take a while to digest the full list.  Thanks to Scott for bringing this together on one place!

Thursday, June 23, 2005 5:19:11 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development | Random

The PDC team has put together a couple of contests for those who would love to attend the PDC, but who don't have the budget to do so.  Microsoft is going to send one blogger, and one coder to the PDC, all expenses paid.  This is an awesome opportunity for two lucky individuals.

For information on the contests, visit http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc/

For information on the PDC, visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/

So, here's my entry...

First,  I would love to attend so that I can get a first-hand look at the latest platform and development technologies.  That's the core of my argument.  I'm a geek, and I want to see the demos, attend sessions, and soak up as much information as my brain can absorb in the 4 days of the conference.

So, that's the reason I want a free lunch, what does Microsoft get in return?

• 2-way blogging.  I'll blog short session highlights for each session that I attend.  I won't try to recreate the content of the session, but I will provide highlights & interesting information for those who can't attend.  I'll also blog (hopefully constructive) critiques of presentations, content, and the venue.  This will be realtime feedback that the PDC team and other attendees can use to make the PDC experience better each day.  I'll set up categories on my blog so that folks can subscribe to the content that is most relevant to them.
• Citizen podcaster - I'll have to work to get my gear setup properly for this one.  The idea here is that I'll do some low-tech podcasts (I'm thinking my Axim X50v with it's built-in microphone) with attendees, presenters, and any Microsoft employees I can nab for 1 to 5 minutes.  Short little tidbits for the community and for the PDC team.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005 4:34:15 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Development | Microsoft | PDC05

I finally got DasBLog up and running on Blobservations and decided that I wanted to import all of my old content from Blogger.com.  I figured that this challenge had to have been overcome in the past, so I hit MSN Search and Google with keywords like: Import Export DasBlog Blogger.  I located a few half-baked tools (as-in, not quite ready for prime-time). Some didn't support titles, other wouldn't grab the links.  Most of them could easily blame their failings on the fact that they were attempting to use the underpowered Blogger API.

I hacked around a little, trying to implement a simple ATOM API client in C#, and to do a fully automated conversion tool, but eventually I decided to drop back and punt.  I only needed to do this one time, so a little manual intervention would be acceptable.

I ended up following these steps:

1.  Change Blogger.com settings, under "Formatting" tell it to show 999 days on the front page.  DO NOT PUBLISH

2.  Modify your blogger template to:

<?xml encoding="utf-8" ?>
<entries>
<Blogger>
<bi_url><![CDATA[<$BlogItemURL$>]]></bi_url>
<bi_title><![CDATA[<$BlogItemTitle$>]]></bi_title>
<bi_body><![CDATA[<$BlogItemBody$>]]></bi_body>
<bi_author><![CDATA[<$BlogItemAuthorNickname$>]]></bi_author>
<bi_date><![CDATA[<$BlogItemDateTime$>]]></bi_date>
</Blogger>
</entries>

3.  DO NOT PUBLISH, instead hit the "Preview" button

4.  In the resulting screen, you'll see a bunch of unformatted text.  Select "View Source" and then copy everything from the opening <? xml ?> tag down to the closing <entries> tag.  Paste that text into notepad and save as archive.xml.  On the edit screen, hit the "Discard Edits" button.  Go back and restore the settings from step 1.

5.  Warning, very rough C# code ahead.  The following is snipped from the C# program I threw together to convert from the raw xml to Dasblog.  It uses some classes from the DasBlog engine, so you'll have to add a reference to the newtelligence.DasBlog.Runtime.dll file if you want to try this yourself.  Before running, make sure that the directory c:\content exists.

{
DataSet ds = new DataSet("archive");
ds.ReadXml(@"{insert directory to archive.xml file}archive.xml");

string title="";
string body="";
string link="";
string date="";
string auth="";

DateTime dt_post;

newtelligence.DasBlog.Runtime.IBlogDataService das_ds = newtelligence.DasBlog.Runtime.BlogDataServiceFactory.GetService(@"c:\content", null);

foreach(DataRow r in ds.Tables[0].Rows)
{
title=(string)r["bi_title"];
body=(string)r["bi_body"];
link=(string)r["bi_url"];
date=(string)r["bi_date"];
auth=(string)r["bi_author"];
dt_post=DateTime.Parse(date);
Entry post = new Entry();
post.Author = auth;

post.Content = body;
post.Description = "";
post.Title = title;
post.CreatedLocalTime = dt_post;
post.CreatedUtc = dt_post.ToUniversalTime();
post.ModifiedLocalTime = dt_post;
post.ModifiedUtc = dt_post.ToUniversalTime();
post.EntryId = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
das_ds.SaveEntry(post);

}
}

6.  After running, you should have a bunch of xml file in the directory c:\content.  Just upload or copy these to DasBlog's "content" directory and the posts should show up under DasBlog.  I think I may have had to create and delete a new post to make them show up.

If you have any questions, feel free to email. 

Update 6/16/2005: Ryan Jones has implemented a dotText to DasBlog and Livejournal to DasBlog content conversion using similar code. 

Update 7/13/2005: Ben Scheirman emailed me about some difficulties he was having, and we figured out that you have to have the Timestamp Format configured a certain way for the blogger template to work.  This image shows the relevent setting:

Ben is also putting together a GUI to assist with the conversion. I'll post a link when he finishes it up.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 4:29:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [7]  Blogging | Development