gorbett

i just saw this in an email. for a limited time, there is a 50% off discount on microsoft expression studio, expression blend and expression web through the new microsoft online store. who said santa does not come early?!?

i have been reading a great book, No Excuse Leadership: Lessons from the U.S. Army's Elite Rangers. make no mistake though, this book is written by soldiers and the f-bomb is riddled within the text. if you can get past that, it is a great source of successes from real life challenges.

during my time in the army, i had faced many challenges that both led to success and some that were not so successful. the picture above (me on the right) was taken on top of one of the buildings during an exercise after a successful taking of a mout site after an all-night patrol. i literally had not slept for two days, had not eaten for almost the same, and knew this specific site was going to be occupied by a highly trained opfor. we expended much of our ammo the night before after shutting down a forward observation camp, so i knew this mission was going to take everything we had in us. after a full day of fighting, the picture was taken after our patrol successfully seized the city with no casualties.

those are the times i reflect back on when i think the challenges of business or personal life are too overwhelming. the work i do at microsoft is both challenging and fulfilling. there are days that i feel i have expended most of my ammo and try to pull together everything i got to execute on my mission.

the challenge both in the army and in real life is that we are often thrown fragos. changes in mission are not the norm, but a well trained individual knows how to execute in times of change and difficulty. it is important not to make excuses for how things change, but to embrace the challenge as an opportunity and make it better. we have many of those at microsoft.

i loved what i did and proud of my time in the army and i am just as proud with the work i do for microsoft. we are a company of great leaders and great contributors and i look forward to all the challenges and successes that lie before me. look for more posts on some of the comparisons i see with the challenges and successes of army life and “real” life.

i recently had an internal email come through on one of our distribution lists that asked who the owner of mysearchoff.com was. it wasn’t until that email came through that i realized that i completely forgot i built this thing over a year ago as an attempt to see for myself what search engine was truly providing the best results… live search vs google vs yahoo!.

because i built it in a couple days (the sql took the longest… i am just plain no good at database schemas and stored procedures), i really did not put much thought into it. that is until i saw that mail come through and the accompanying blog post.

so that made me go dig up the source code (i first had to find it… there is something to be said for source control even with just one developer) and update a few bugs and update the framework to .net framework 3.5. first i fixed the crashing in firefox 3. at the time i deployed it over a year ago, it was working in ff2 but times change and i guess so does “standards”. second, there was a z-order problem in showing the scroll bar for the yahoo! results. fixed that too.

since i spent the time to fix some of the bugs with my little engine that could, i thought i would set it as my default search provider (in ie, notice the search toolbar turn orange and allow you to add mysearchoff to your providers) to see how useful it really was. it turns out that i am using it more and more and really finding interesting results. it is extremely helpful in finding information since it basically gives me the best of three engines at once (although, nothing against you yahoo!, but i collapse your pane down most of the time). mysearchoff is now my default search provider in internet explorer and firefox.

i have had some really good feedback on what to add and would love to hear more so let me have it. also, don’t forget to click the green checkbox icon in the upper right to vote on the engine that gave you the best results (full disclaimer: i am not capturing any personal information when you vote. i am only capturing your search criteria and your vote).

Example search for “gorbett”:
my blog 1 on yahoo! (maybe i should stop collapsing your pane!)
my blog 2 on google (google likes me more than msft :( )
my blog 3 on live (wtf?!? show me some love msft. i work for you for pete’s sake!)

first congratulations to manifest digital for winning both the overall and people’s choice chicago phizzpop design challenge. they really showed the power of microsoft technologies in the short period of time they had to pull it off.

also, the other teams clearly brought their a-game. it was a great night of great demos that wowed and amazed the crowd. and since the challenge was geared towards helping chicago win the bid for the 2016 olympics, people were genuinely interested to see the results.

i had the honor to work with all the teams for two weeks and i am very impressed with all the talent these agencies have. it was also nice to work closely with ogilvy who helped framed the challenge in the context of the chicago 2016 bid.

it is a good time to be working in technology and design with so many talented people surrounding me.

i have been heads down working with the phizzpop design challenge teams this past week and this week until we announce the winners on thursday at the phizzpop event here in chicago at the chicago cultural center. take a look at how things went in the last phizzpop challenge that took place in new york and join us this thursday as we announce the winners.

i had the privilege to participate in and help sponsor the latest (and last for the year) tech cocktail event here in chicago last thursday at john barleycorn in wrigleyville. being that this was my first one, i was a little skeptical about sponsoring an event that i believed to be essentially a social mixer at a bar. when i first arrived (after sweating like a pig carrying my two bags from the red line) i was greeted by one of the founder’s, frank gruber, mother who immediately took care of getting me settled. wow! i know now why tech cocktail runs so smoothly… frank’s mom!

after about 20 minutes of being there, i realized what I have been missing for so long. not only is the social energy addicting, the networking and connections made in the crowded room are worth any business’ time in both participating and sponsoring. i met so many energetic people from small, medium, and large businesses who were both excited and confused about the presence of microsoft there. i quickly mentioned we recently launched a program called bizspark that is really going to jump start the startups looking to build software and services. the founders of tech cocktail, eric olson and frank gruber, allowed me to steal the microphone for a couple minutes to announce bizspark (if you are a startup or looking to promote startups, then run over to the bizspark site to learn more).

but it wasn’t until towards the end of the night that i realized that my message of bizspark did not even need mic time. because the venue is so open and social without any “eyes forward” type presentations, people that were genuinely interested sought me out and asked great questions on how to both join bizspark and become a network partner. i found i was able to really address people’s questions without having to bore people to death with a “eyes forward” type of presentation. luckily, my partner in crime, chris bernard, arrived just in time from making the same announcement at flashpoint academy to help answer questions on the program and announce our phizzpop event. the conversation continues next week as we announce the winners of the phizzpop design challenge at the chicago cultural center. make sure you register today to participate in a kick ass event.

all and all, tech cocktail should be the model on how to invigorate technology discussion in a community. cram about 500 wildly enthusiastic technologists, startups, marketers, socialites, etc. in a room and there is bound to be connections made. tech cocktail is truly living up to their mission: “To amplify the technology signal in under served markets and have fun doing it.”. i just recently joined the online community and I am looking forward to next year and another season of tech cocktail.

today we announced a program to help technology startups around the world incubate ideas and drive innovation forward. instead of rehashing everything the bizspark site says, go there now and see if you qualify then get all signed up. you can also check out microsoftstartupzone.com for more information.

nuff said.

in case you have been caught-up with all the pdc announcements and missed this one, we have announced plans with akamai to enable high-definition (HD) quality experiences over the web using smooth streaming.

so what the heck is smooth streaming? smooth streaming, a new extension for internet information services (iis) 7.0, enables adaptive streaming of media to silverlight clients via http. the sweet thing is smooth streaming dynamically detects and seamlessly switches, in real time, the video quality of a media file that a silverlight player receives based on local bandwidth and cpu conditions. consumers with high bandwidth connections can experience hd quality streaming while others with lower bandwidth speeds receive the appropriate stream for their connectivity, allowing consumers across the board to enjoy a consistent high quality streaming experience.

akamai also announced a proof of concept portal demonstrating the technology available at www.smoothhd.com. additionally, microsoft is announcing the upcoming availability of expression encoder 2 sp1 which encodes smooth streaming files.

pay attention to how this will change the game in media streaming!

the “overnight success” video at the software + services site just makes me feel all good inside. i remember the days of launching “big deal” sites and worrying if they would hold up. how i would love to just simply be able to spin a dial and provision some more cloud love in the middle of a game of gears.

this video is my new best friend.