Kent

Well, that's done. The last few weeks have definitely been "interesting".

I've been involved in the launch of two new sites for MSDN: Oslo and Azure (and the WCF REST Starter Kit, but that's just a few pages). It's meant a lot of meetings (remotely), converting numerous documents using various internal tools (each with their own quirks), re-encoding videos, and loads of email. Hopefully the sites will be helpful and informative. Let me know if not.

Chris has the welcome message, but I figured I'd take some time to point out a few of the highlights (at least in my view) of the site.

Getting started with Oslo:

• First things first, I imagine you'll want the bits. Usual warnings apply (don't put this on a machine you don't feel like flattening -- I don't *think* it will affect anything, but I've gotten old and cranky about Betas lately).
• Second things second, read David Chappell's overview article. It provides a nice grounding in the concepts
• For those who learn visually, start chewing on the videos that the team have been generating.
• Last things last (for now). If we're missing something on the site, let me know. If you're an author and want to write some kicking Oslo content, let me know. If you've got a blog that covers Oslo and want me to watch it, well... you know.

Coming soon:

• More videos
• at least one of the hands-on labs to help you learn
• more articles

<rant>
I was visiting a customer this week, and during one meeting someone expressed, "You are using a Mac, and you use Google Mail? Is this what we should expect from an ex-Microsoft employee?" (Actually, I think the overall intent was different from that, and there was a bit more subtext, but hopefully you get the picture.) I ignored the comment, but it got me thinking, and an event later that day led to this post. I went to look for the distance between two points.

Live Maps via Firefox on OS X:


Google Maps via Firefox on OS X:


Yahoo Maps via Firefox on OS X:


MapQuest via Firefox on OS X:

One of these things is not like the other.

I can understand a difference in functionality. I can understand having some features designed for "friends". But I cannot understand this level of F-U to a large percentage of the potential users. It's not just FF/OS X, I get the feeling that would be the same for Linux users, maybe even Opera users. At this point, it just gives me the (potentially wrong) message that said company only cares for some users, but doesn't care for those who've "bought in".

Now, I know a lot of people at said company, and I know that is not the overall feeling, not even a majority view. However, I don't often see pages on Apple, Mozilla or elsewhere that simply don't work at all on IE (with the obvious exception of  Web sites stabbing out at the Great Evil from their parents' basement). I just wish that that company didn't consider their work done when a Web site works in their own product.

</rant>

So true... sadly, so true:

Do you admire the interface/functionality of Channel10/Channel8/channel whatnot? Did you know that the source of those sites was available? I didn't (but should have, I think), but I noticed it today on Codeplex.

Nothing dramatically different at your end (the new admin stuff looks gorgeous though), but I've just upgraded this blog to Subtext 2.0.

Congrats to Phil, Tim, Simone and everyone else who worked so hard to get this out, and thank you from this lazy one