This is the type of really, really important stuff I spend time thinking about... 

As I was hanging our new shower curtain I wondered... who decided there should be 12 holes in the curtain?  Someone, at some point, decided to make a shower curtain with 12 holes... who were they?  Why did they pick the number 12?  Why did everyone else say "12? That's genius! I'll put 12 in mine too."  Our shower curtain from Pottery Barn has 12 holes, the liner we bought from Target has 12 holes and the set of curtain rings we bought in Ireland came in a pack of 12.

After seeing the same hardware failure bite me, several friends an cause heaps of discontent on the net I'm super-pleased to see us (Microsoft) step up and fix the problem by extending the hardware warranty "for certain general hardware failures which are indicated by three flashing red lights on the console."  Did you already shell out the 130 clams to fix your box?  No worries, Uncle Bill is also going to be issuing refunds for the covered cases (the estimated cost to MS is one billion dollars.  URK!).

I'd agree this should have not taken this long to correct... but I'm glad it's getting sorted in the end.  It makes me happy not just for my own sake (my box broke and I can be a bit of a skin-flint at times) but also for the sake of our company image. 

For more details, check out the Expanded Xbox 360 Warranty Coverage FAQ.

The web, the ultimate tool for the generation and dissemination of irony, hasn't lost it's touch.  A recent post by a Google employee intended to illustrate how advertising can be used for issue management created a bit of... you guessed it... an issue.  While I'm sure the movie was not a target but provided Lauren Turner with a great segue into a pertinent topic,  the blogstorm which resulted highlights an important point: when blogging on a corporate site... just how much can you say?

When we were ramping up to do the Windows Live Hotmail beta we knew that in addition to the private beta tester forum we wanted to have a public mechanism for putting out the good word about our new baby.  The Hotmail team blog was a "grassroots" effort, driven by the line-level employees and not by our PR department and, as a result, we needed to make it clear to the powers-that-be that we had our act together and weren't going to post something which would prove embarrassing.  To smooth the way I wrote up a guide to communicating with the outside world which covered newsgroups, dealing with press calls and, of course, blogging. 

Personal blogs are just that, personal blogs.  Everyone puts the requisite disclaimer on their blog ("the opinions expressed here... blah blah blah") but it's pretty much accepted that unless you have a company logo emblazoned at the top of your page there is no other source for the drivel contained within.  There's no need to set up regulations for your own blog.

If, however, you're planning on starting a blog for your team, product or whatever you must set up some guidelines, there's no way around it.  If your company already has a policy on blogging, start there, it will provide a great framework for your new rules.  There are also a ton of great blogging guidelines blog posts on the web.  In the fallout of the Google's Sicko-gate Matt Cutts wrote a good Company Blogging 101 post with great tips for corporate bloggers.  The article well written and broken into easily digestible sections. If you blog on a site for your employer (or a site which is identified with a work project) I highly recommend you read Matt's post and figure out how you can work the salient points into your own policy or mental framework.

So, back to my original question: how much can you say on a company-sponsored blog?  The answer: as much as you like... but you have to establish the bounds well in advance.  Corporate America is starting to realize the value of blogging as a tool for customer relations, PR, advertising and more but many companies are still quite shy when it comes to taking the plunge.  Creating a solid set of posting guidelines will keep your boss and PR firm happy (and keeping your team blog on the net will make your customers happy).

Link: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/company-blogging-101/

Is this cool?

I showed this video of a "singing Tesla coil" to Paula and she just kind of shrugged.  It's a solid-state Tesla coil owned by an EE student at U of I which is able to create tones by sending out sparks in precise bursts.  Day-um.

I think this thing is wicked cool.  Then again... perhaps this just tests if you are a guy.

My computer career started in IT support... I didn't realize how long the role had been around.

Video: The first help desk ever

(Thanks for the video mom!)

A couple years ago I got hooked on music mash-ups when a coworker pointed me to the work of Party Ben, a DJ who, until recently, had a mash-up show on San Francisco's alternative station Live 105.  Since then I've been hooked.

What's a mash-up?  
Music mash-ups are the result of a DJ taking two different songs and mixing them together into a hybrid of the two, sometimes with fantastic results.  It's a little like sampling (taking a riff from one song and making a new song around it).  Some of the results are total crap... but sometimes one can find some real gems.

Why do I enjoy mash-ups so much? 
Well... I listen to music a lot and find I get sick of what's on the radio and what I have in my own collection.  Mash-ups are a fun way to listen to music I already like and make it fresh again.

Where can you find mash-ups? 
A quick search will net you all sorts of stuff but you can save yourself a lot of legwork by simply going to Mashuptown, a mash-up review blog which picks out great tracks almost daily. Mashuptown will point you to the sites of some great DJs where you can find more great tracks on your own.  Another good place to start is on the mixes page of Party Ben's site.  Party Ben has a collection of tracks all crammed into a single file, as if you were listening to a long set at a club.

When our 360 went south Paula and I decided that the best course of action was to buy a replacement box instead of waiting for a really long, expensive repair (since it's an American box it has to be shipped to the US for resurrection).  Since we use our Xbox to watch TV we also didn't want to wait the couple months it would likely take.

The idea of a new box was all good and well... but I also have a library of games I like to play (including a copy of Lego Star Wars II we just bought but never got a chance to play).  Gears of War I can buy in the company store for €20... but Lego Star Wars and Ghost Recon were going to run me €60 each.  Crap.

After setting up the replace box I wondered: what happens if I stick the US (NTSC) game disc into my European (PAL) Xbox?

As luck would have it, I was pleasantly surprised.  Like DVDs, video games often have region encoding which prevents a game disc purchased in, for example,  Paris from working on a console purchased in Poughkeepsie.  In the case of the Xbox 360, however, the region lock-out isn't a certainty.  Fortunately for me (and many other gamers) Microsoft adopted the policy of letting publishers decide if their game discs would be region-free.

Not all Xbox 360 titles will work in all regions... but luckily for me my two current faves, GOW and GRAW2, do.  No need to run out and buy replacement copies.  In my quest for an answer as to why my discs worked in my new console I came across a fairly detailed list of region compatibility on Play-Asia.com.  It takes the guesswork out of any future purchases (especially cool since buying games in the US is much cheaper with the strength of the Euro).