moved: http://techherding.wordpress.com/

If you're still coming here -- shame on you, I've moved on to:

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Quite a few of you have asked for a way to let users easily add feeds from your blog or site to their Live.com homepage. So we’re happy to release today an “Add to Live” button! With just one click, users can now add RSS feeds or Gadgets from participating sites to their Live.com homepage.

To implement the “Add to Live” button on your site, simply add this code and image to the appropriate page(s) on your site:

<a href="http://www.live.com/?add=http://sampleurl.com/"><img src="addtolive.gif" border="0"/></a>

When you insert this code:

 1) Replace sampleurl.com with the Web address of your RSS feed, including any subdirectories.
 2) Copy the addtolive.gif image (just right click the one below and save it to your local machine) to the same directory as the page containing the link or put the full path to its location in the <img src> string.

The Muppet Threat Level indicator has helped me relax and face my fears.

 

 

Here's something I'd like to try in the Technical Learning Center at TechEd next year in New Orleans -- it's called the Copy Cam.

 

At first, it looks like you're paying $2,500 for a webcam and a printer -- but watch the demo, and you'll see that they've made it super-easy to print, save, or share the contents of a plain whiteboard.

 

Gonna have to ask them to send me one for a demo.

 

 

If you're signed up to go to the show, now's the time to start deciding which Hands-On Labs you'd like to do.  We've got about 120 planned right now, so you'll have to make some choices.

 

Here's a quick little how-to video to show you how it works.

 

 

It's been a little damp here on the right coast (even for a Seattle guy) but it's always 72 degrees and sunny in the Boston Convention and Exhhibition Center.  We're getting all set up for TechEd, and I've been shooting more amateur video of what makes this whole thing happen.

 

As of Thursday morning, much of the physical infrastructure is in place -- carpet, couches, wires, walls -- and we spend the next few days getting all the details just right.  Saturday will be a big day for training and orienting the 3,000 or so staff people who will be working here.  Sunday is our Hands-On Lab preview day (12-6) and then the big Keynote happens Sunday night.

 

But enough words -- go look at the pictures.

 

D

Preparations for TechEd 06 in Boston are well underway.  I'm in the Microsoft Offices in Waltham, MA (about 30 minutes from the show site) working with a group of Microsoft Certified Trainers.  Here's the beginning of my amateur video about the experience.

 

They're spending an entire week here, making a "Quality Assurance" pass through all the Hands-On lab content (124 proposed labs) for the show.  It's the first time we've made this committment to find bugs, fix them, and make sure that what you see on the floor is top quality.

 

It isn't easy.  It took three days of work to set up the infrastructure (servers, network components, test stations, etc.) and we now have five very full days of work.  (We started here at 7AM -- or, as I like to think of it, 4AM in Redmond.)

 

At the end of the week we all move into Boston and do it all over again, in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. 

If you're intested in advertising, take a look at this Sony ad for their new Bravia LCD television.  There's also a lot of information on the making of the commercial that is really fascinating.

 

It's built on a very simple message:  "Color Like No Other".  The director comments that they didn't really need a script -- it was just "drop superballs at the top of a SanFrancisco street."  My favorite part is the frog -- watch closely.

 

BTW -- you'll need Quicktime to view it, but it's worth it.

 

 

I did a podcast interview with Polina Pilyugina at Learning 2005, and then we decided to do another version that she could share out with customers in Moscow.  So I asked questions in English, then she answered in Russian.  Definitely the strangest interview I've ever done.

 

 

I'm sitting in "LearningLand" at Learning 2005 in Orlando.  It's a pre-show day, so there are guys up on a lift hanging a sign, and Beth Thomas is talking on the PA ready to talk about Learning Carrer possibilities.

 

Corey Hynes is at the next machine over, adding his information into the "Learning Community" tool and there are lots of excited people here.

 

Here's what you can find:

 

Top Level Content Focus:
* Learning Methods - (e-Learning, Classroom, Collaboration, Blended, Coaching)
* Learning Systems - (Learning Management Systems, LCMS, Authoring, Talent)
* Learning Design - (Rapid Learning Development, Real-Time, SMEs, Instructional Design)
* Learning Strategies - (Enterprise, Line of Business, Outsourcing, Alignment)
* Learning Innovations - (PodCasting, Blog, Wiki, Content Management, SCORM)
* Learning Assumptions & Theories - (What we believe about how people will learn!)

 

Most of the content is available -- like my podcasts -- so take a look!

 

 

You can now access over 200 hours of learning from the Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference online.

 

Geek out.

 

 

 

Diane and I saw this great window display in Brussels last summer, and I just had to make a poster.

 

Huge version is here.

 

 

If you're wondering why you'd want a Virtual PC in your training center, I've just posted a podcast with Corey Hynes (of Hynesite, Inc.) talking about how you can use this technology to create user-proof settings to teach on computers. 

 

At TechEd, nearly all of our labs are produced in this format -- it means that every time a customer sits down, they have a clean, perfect image of the lab ready to go.  If the previous user changed settings, added users, or put his dog on the desktop -- it all vanished when we re-started the Virtual PC.

 

We can also create settings where there are multiple images on one physical machine.  This is great for teaching about Active Directory, Web Services, Server Management and other complex systems.

 

 

The BBC now has a test you can take to see if you're male or female.  (Warning:  You'll spend 30 minutes on this, but it's pretty interesting.)

 

This is a great example of a short learning segment, with some built-in assessment.  It keeps you going through the six steps by giving you feedback and information about what you’re doing.

Another Australia photo -- three pelicans waiting for something tasty.

 

(Huge original is here.)

I've finally gotten around to working on some of the photos I took in Australia.  Here's a picture of the little girl Koala that I got to hold.

 

Huge original is here.

 

 

I just saw that some local schools here in Redmond, WA have been using the Promethian ActivBoard in their classrooms.  This looks like a very cool tool for us to use at our shows, and I plan to try to pull some strings and make it happen at TechEd this year.

 

We've all seen electronic whiteboards -- but this combines a little hand-held "voting" device for each student -- you can do polls, have them answer questions, even take a quiz right from their seats.  I want to see a bunch of Devs doing this with some code samples as Don Box hangs on to his pants.

 

There are a couple of short news videos that let you see it in action.  And yes, I'm assuming that anything a 3rd grader can do our customers can do. <g>

 

 

We've already started planning for labs at TechEd 06 in Boston next year -- listen to this interview with Corey Hynes, the guy who's making it all happen.

 

http://www.dickcarlson.com/pdc/hol_setup.wmv 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm just about ready to head down to Lost Angeles for Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference (PDC05), a huge fun event for folks who write lines and lines of code.  The big deal at this show will be MS Visual Studio's long-awaited upgrade, as well as SQL Server in some new stylish duds as well.

 

 

There should also be some good presentations, labs and demos on Windows Vista -- and I'll be trying to soak it all up because that will be the major focus for our TechEd show next spring. If you steal from more than two places, it's "research".