Scott Hanselman

Carl Franklin forwarded this along which contained a few fun things.

First, this DevDays attendee was really digging the DevDays DVD.  Word on the street is that it's worth the price of admission. :)  Kudos to Vertigo Software!

Secondly, he thought I was Scott Stanfield when he started reading my blog.  That's a compliment no matter which direction you look at it.  Scott's a friend and great speaker.  And it's always fun to see him and do the whole 'Scott!' 'Scott!' 'Scott?' 'Scott.' 'Scott...' back and forth. 

As it turns out, there are actually 3 distinct people named Scott that are really worth listening to if you get the chance.  As luck would have it, they've all been guests on .NET Rocks, so you DO have a chance. [Joshua Flanagan]

A nice bunch of Scott's to be associated with.  I'm sure there are others! :)  Who's your favorite Scott?  One day I vow to get off page 12!

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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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.

About   Newsletter

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