It’s hard not to have seen this coming, but I have to wonder whether or not the world needs another Flickr or YouTube.

In a Microsoft job advertisement posted yesterday for a program manager position, the description clearly outlines Microsoft’s strategy to build a photo and video sharing website.

Come make Windows Live the best place to share your digital memories! Heard of Flickr? YouTube? How about. Mac? This role will work across the new Windows Live division with teams like Spaces, SkyDrive, Messenger and Hotmail to construct a winning strategy for Microsoft in photo and video sharing. This role involves leading the team to design the strategy then build and implement a winning solution that will be loved by millions of customers. This feature team is building a next-generation photo and video sharing service that will compete with flickr, smugmug and other photo web solutions today. This is a “v1” opportunity.

This role requires a strong PM with several product cycles of consumer experience. Successful candidates will have strong strategic thinking, outstanding cross team leadership and a proven track record of shipping. The right candidate for this position has an entrepreneurial streak – and functions well as part of a team. The ideal candidate has experience shipping consumer web solutions.

The Digital Memories Experience team (DMX) is helping people make deeper connections with those they care about. We want to give you the ability to effortlessly share your memories, be that a simple slideshow of photos and videos (e.g. evolution of the Vista Slideshow or of Photo Story), a carefully authored experienced (evolution of Movie Maker), or a fully interactive cinematic multimedia experience (a narrated 3D path through a Photosynth that you can control). And we want to make it easy and fun to enjoy your photos and videos, whether that is on the PC in your office, the Media Center in your living room, the XBox in your entertainment center, or on your mobile device when you are out and about. DMX is a part of the Windows Live Experience division (WLX/LEX), which also includes Mail, Hotmail, Messenger, SkyDrive, Spaces, Writer, Calendar, and Family Safety. To achieve our vision for digital memories we work with many other teams including: Core User Experience, Find & Organize, Graphics (Windows Imaging Codecs – WIC – and DirectX) in WEX, MCE, Expression, SmartFlow, and Xbox.

I hope this isn’t some sort of knee-jerk reaction like it was with MSN Soapbox, rather than a serious attempt to set a foothold in the photo sharing market. Whilst I love using Flickr and admire their service, there are still times I wish I didn’t have to pay $25 a year.

But in the mean time, it’s great the DMX team can put aside their differences and build Flickr integration into Live Photo Gallery.

Together with the new TV advertisements for the 2nd-generation Zune launched weeks ago, they also launched a promotional flash website at zunejourney.net which can be simply described as psychedelic and trippy.

You might notice whilst you pointlessly scroll through space, music begins to play in the background, some of which are quite good. Of course, this was a Flash website so the music must have come from somewhere accessible by the browser so it wouldn’t be hard to trace.

After unearthing the configuration XML file, the URLs to each of the MP3s were easily found. Here they are. My favorite is track 11, Dark Territory by Junky XL. Track 13, Lake Michigan is used in the “bunny” TV ad.

	1. Don’t Let go All Good Things Pacha Massive		2. Your Rocky Spine Onigara Great Lake Swimmers
	3. El Microphono Pinata Mexican Institute of Sound		4. Will you return Emotionalism The Avett Brothers
	5. Cannot Get Started Plague Park Handsome Furs		6. Um Segundo Momento Bebel Gilberto
	7. I Remember Luckiest Girl Rosey		8. Paloma The Buena Vibra Sound System Sidestepper
	9. I Sugar Assault Me Now The Return to Form Black Magick Party Pop Levi		10. Ave Cruz Ceu Ceu
	11. Dark Territory Junky XL – Music from SSX Blur Junky XL		12. Plasticities Armchair Apocryha Andrew Bird
	13. Lake Michigan Asleep at Heaven’s Gate Rouge Wave

Theoretically, I don’t want to steal music. I just want to play these tracks more often, without visiting the website. Disclaimer: Long holds no responsibility if and when FBI agents busts through your door warranting for your arrest for downloading music from the Zune website, plus any other illegal activity which you may or may not be conducting at the time.

There was a lot of talk last week about the T-Mobile Shadow (a.k.a. HTC Juno) user interface, some couldn’t believe it was still Windows Mobile. The Shadow sports a new homescreen codenamed “Neo” designed by Microsoft in collaboration with HTC and T-Mobile to make the mobile user-experience friendlier. The group at Microsoft responsible for the design is the Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Beijing China. It’s a little known fact they also worked on the user interface for the Microsoft Surface.

Whilst most of the news coverage and reviews about the Shadow talk a lot about the new interface, there are some less-than-desirable pictures of the interface itself. Which is why I went straight to the source to get some high-resolution screenshots and concept images of the “Neo” interface. They look so much better than the photos.

Now only if they paid as much attention to every Windows Mobile phone instead of just this one. But one step forward is better than not moving at all. I have high hopes for Windows Mobile 7.

This is definitely one of the best presentations on the issue of copyright and user generated content I’ve seen to date. Larry Lessig is the founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and also chairs at the Creative Commons organization. The thing that struck me about me in his presentation over a handful of similar presentations I’ve seen in the past is the example of traditional land law vs. airplanes, and how stupid copyright laws are in comparison.

Over the course of 13 weeks, I’ve had lots of fun and frustration working on a group studio project as part of my degree. Last night, we (Keegan, Justin and I) were awarded one of two ‘best project’ prizes in our year level so I thought I’d show you what all the fuss is about.

It’s called TableTop – a simple project management tool for light personal users. It’s one of my most ambitious programming and design projects undertaken and I’m pretty proud of what we’ve been able to achieve in 13 weeks, only 7 of which were spent programming.

Project management software is aplenty to say the least, so our goal was to make it fun, rewarding and simple. We drew a lot of inspiration from 37Signals and their Basecamp project management product which are clear leaders in the field of Web 2.0 software and design. However, unlike their product, we were targeting much less-involved users such as students who aren’t familiar with the business approach to project management and neither need its extensiveness.

Because the live demo is not ready for public access, I’ll just walk you through some screenshots.

Continue reading →

Getting things stolen sucks. A laptop, wallet, some cash were taken.

Update: Forensics might get fingerprints. Fun I guess. *thinks CSI*
Update 2: Hastings is a pretty shady town with lots of drunks and not-so-socially-acceptable teens. Definitely not living here in the long-run. Only here now to make a living.
Update 3: Police came but decided not to take any prints because there are too many people here who would have used the doors, walked pass for it to be any use.
Update 4: In this day-and-age, I really wish devices and content were seperate. Losing both at the same time is harsh.