Scott Hanselman

Lots of talk about this supposed 'Calendar Quota' issue with the SPOT Watch.  I've figured out the root cause, and I believe it's a crazy edge case that was arguable MY FAULT. 

Here's what we know, you decide:

• There is a calendar update quota of some kind.  There has to be, as there is limited bandwidth.  It's obviously set to some ridiculously high number that noone should EVER hit.
• There is a separate quota of 100 IM messages that you can get in a month.  Again, separate.  One doesn't count against the other.

Now, I'm using Taskline, an Outlook AddIn that takes all your Outlook Tasks and their durations and creates a Calendar event to fill your free time with scheduled 'tasks.'  Apparently it does this a LOT, and deletes and RECREATES it's appointments when it's run. 

Obviously, if the MSNDirect Outlook Addin is syncing with the Web Services everytime a calendar appointment changes or is added, well, you can understand why the Taskline AddIn would cause me to hit the ceiling on the quota for calendar sync. 

It would be nice if I could exclude certain kinds of appts (like ones marked as free or tentative) from syncing with the watch.  Or, teach Taskline to RELAX.

Either way, that's the scoop.  I believe that the average user would NEVER hit the calendar limit with the SPOT watch unless they were recreating appts daily. 

I wonder if there are problems when sync'ing with certain PDAs that delete and recreate appts?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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It's 1am, and I'm finishing my DevDays Demos.  If you're in Portland, stop by the newly revamped Convention Center and check out DevDays.  We're putting on a good show.  I'll be showing a few naughty things as I try to break into Microsoft's implementation of OpenHack.

As I'm sitting here my Spot Watch announced that a new applet was available, this one showing Sports Scores!  Awesome.  I can't wait until the Movie Times one.  Also, it's currently downloading a new Watch Face.  It's Christmas in March.  Also, they fixed the Outlook Calendar Sync thing...I'm still trying to get details, but it appears the quota was either set to low, or the add-in was too chatty.  The limit is to prevent troublemakers, not regular users.

Also, rumor has it that these are some of the new channels coming VERY SOON:

• Current Traffic
• Dining Guide (nearby)
• Movie Finder
• Lottery, Horoscopes, This day in History

How about tiny black-and-white wallpaper? :)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Looks like Cory Smith has been busy and impatient with the XBox folks, so what did he do?  Well, like any good .NET programmer, he wrote an app to save us all. 

He wrote an MSN Messenger clone that lets you know what your buddies are doing on XBox!  He'll tell you what games they are playing, as well as what games they own!  Very nice, and all .NET and XCopy deploy.

Check it out at XBOXFriends.com

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Crapola.  Got this error message today, from the Outlook plug-in that syncs my Calendar with the MSNDirect Smart Watch services.

Sync started at 03/15/2004 10:09:49

Add of [Appt: Some Appt.] failed: You have exceeded your monthly quota of calendar updates.

Lovely that they TOLD me this.  Crappy that it's the 15th of the damn month and I'm now sans-wrist-calendar until 4/1.

Update: Joel Grossman, the VERY amicable Lead Program Manager for SPOT at Microsoft has fixed this "bug" and I'm back syncing a few hours later!  How's that for customer service.  This is why I say Microsoft isn't 30,000 people in 1 company, it's 30 people in 1000 little companies.  Thanks Joel!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Yukon and Whidbey, er, I mean, SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 will be available in 2005, and some folks flipped out.  Folks, it's not THAT big of a deal.  Is it a bummer, sure.  Will it affect the schedules of a few other products, maybe yours?  Possibly.  But remember, you do have a development platform that many of you have yet to fully exploit.  Perhaps the bloggers who are so vocally disappointed are so advanced in their development skills or 'early adopter-ness' that they've forgotten that useful software is shipping today?

.NET moved Windows development squarely into the managed world that Java programmers enjoyed.  .NET was a shock to the system, and as such, it's taken a while to sink in.  For some folks, it clicked, made sense.  For others, it's taken a few years to 'sleep on it.'  There are a lot of folks out there picking up .NET 1.1 and really creating some fantastic mature software.  Now, .NET 2.0 is going to change things and shock the system.  That's a good thing.  ASP.NET 2.0, generics, ClickOnce, it's going to be great and unquestionably a step foward. 

But, I have to ship software today to large banks and financial institutions.  We have a great application platform built on .NET that is mature and fabulous.  Believe me, we'll exploit the appropriate features of 2.0 when it comes out, but today I'm shipping great stuff.  And I will continue to innovate on .NET 1.1 all during 2004.  Nothing is stopping me, and I'm certainly not going to sit idlely and wait for 2.0, when I can make great software for my clients now. 

Sure I'd love to have Master Pages, but somehow I've made it this far without it.  Sure I'd like to have ObjectSpaces, but...well, you get the idea.  These things take time, and I'm happy that Microsoft has adopted a more practical 'Carmackian' attitude around software ship dates. 

The Press

Last week when the announcement happened, I had two press calls about the slip before noon!  Come on people, let's not create drama where there isn't.  Many developers inside slower moving banks are just now getting off NT 4.0 and are still trepidacious of XML(!), not to mention .NET and managed code.  I'm still out there fighting the good fight to introduce folks to .NET 1.x.

I'll end with Jason Maus's reminder: Don't forget the saying, "Good, Fast, Cheap. You may choose two."

Now, on to things that ARE significant or 'of note':

Notice that the new naming is Visual Studio 2005, not Visual Studio .NET 2005.  This is a good thing, obivously intentional, expressing that .NET is firmly here and now.  It's so much a part of the fabric of developing on the Windows Platform that it's served it's purpose as a pervasive suffix.  I dig it.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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