They do contribute to the reason this speck of the internet is called “Spackle”. By combining the things I get paid to do and like to do, I get disruptive and refreshing ideas.

Innovation and development as a process to “attaining the remarkable result” is slow in the technology space compared to a confined time frame of a theatre production. And, after nearly 10 years of being off stage and taking pictures of people doing theatre (and basically being jelly of them), I decided I’d try acting again.

You can see pictures I take of productions over here at my photography web site.

The process of creating a remarkable theatre production is very similar to creating a remarkable product of any sort. Except your tools are humans, words, and your physical assets don’t need the same rigorous testing as a product you’d allow the general public to use. I mean, they’re actors, so who cares about safety, right? (Note: Actor’s Equity Association exists so that catastrophes like Spiderman don’t kill people… they need to do a better job on that production, but I digress…)

So in essence, with theatre, you get to bring to market an amazing prototype and sell it.

The process and delivery is therefore very very agile.

To be remarkable in theatre requires the same components as any other endeavor:

• A good team
• Shared Vision
• Trust
• Stepwise achievements
• Positive outcomes from failure (see Trust)

These ideas are detailed in a series of posts over at a blog I tend to follow called metacool. Check it out.

The show we’ve opened is called “Rabbit Hole” by David Lindsay-Abaire. It’s a Pulitzer Prize winning play (2007) and is really a wonderful place to start creating a remarkable piece of theatre.

However, just because you have a foolproof recipe doesn’t mean you can bake a good cake.

Creating remarkable theatre (or anything else) demands a tremendous, trusting environment and is a task incumbent upon the director. In our case, Mary Ann had to cast appropriately and envision the final result and coordinate all the details in order to manifest her vision.

Her leadership and open process nudged performances past roadblocks and kept every element of the production focused on the outcome. She was honest when our choices worked and when they didn’t. Her style was focused on suggesting new choices rather than demonstrating her interpretation of new choices.

This is a key difference in style from other leadership styles in business and theatre. Some “leaders” decide that they have to “do” in order to lead, rather than trust the people they hire / cast to do their job.

Another key point is that she acknowledged when something was correct, and moved on. However, she was unafraid to revisit an established choice when it was working if some other major discovery had occurred in order to further optimize the show as a whole.

The subject matter itself is tough. I mean, it’s hard to describe the psychological impact it has on the actors during the process to speak the words and tell the story as honestly as the play is written. The brilliance of Lindsay-Abaire’s writing is that he leaves no room to hide. Both the actors and the audience can’t escape the truth and the feelings he conveys.

Another thing I (re)discovered is that the cliche “drama is easy, comedy is hard” just isn’t always true. Comedy is hard. But, go ahead and try this show and let me know how easy it is for you on any front (acting, directing, producing, etc.). A good director will beat the “pregnant pauses” out of a show (which many actors confuse with gravitas). We could refer to that as “de-Pinterizing” a play (though we’re doing Pinter a disservice here).

External validation

So, how do you know you succeeded in being remarkable?

One way is audience response. “Emotional terrorism” is a phrase my wife an I use to describe tactics that can be used to evoke reactions from the audience. Things like using swelling music during emotional scenes or tearing lovers apart irrevocably (I’m lookin’ at you Shakespeare!) could be done as stupid actor / director tricks to manipulate the audience.

But, you can differentiate tactics like that from effective theatre from audience comments like “this was a journey” and “I didn’t know I what I was getting into, but I’m glad I came to see it.”

Audience reaction is been extremely positive. Both from those who see lots of theatre and those who do not. To me, theatre for people who see theatre is sometimes interesting. But theatre that inspires new audiences is far more interesting and compelling to me as an actor.

Another metric is of course, critical success. And we have that too. The theatre company (Ross Valley Players) doesn’t get the big papers to see its shows, but the overwhelmingly positive (and sometimes surprisingly so) reviews indicate we have done something remarkable.

“Rabbit Hole” is definitely worth the journey (both the physical and emotional) and I’d like to share it with you if you are in Northern California.

You may be scared of the subject matter, but I guarantee the comedy, humanity, and emotion of it will make you feel complete at the end.

Come see the results of a short-term innovation process with limited resources and tremendous leadership.

Reviews:

Pacific Sun - RVP pulls a ‘Rabbit’ out of its hat with Lindsay-Abaire tragedy

Marin IJ - RVP presents a powerful ‘Rabbit Hole’

Tickets:

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/169613

Facebook Event:

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207452849289164&ref=ts

Basically, in WHS v1, you could add a drive to your machine, and WHS would add it automatically to its “storage pool”. From there, my files would get distributed and duplicated across the new drive. That means in case of failure, my files are fairly safe, and Drive Extender removed most of the concerns about sizing drives properly when you do a “hardware RAID” type solution on regular hardware storage options.

In Windows Home Server 2011, they removed Drive Extender. But I wrote about why I don’t like that already.

So, I bought an HP MediaSmart Home Server just after they decided to pull the plug on them. (Why? Because they’re nice boxes and 64 bit – so if I decide to jump on WHS 2011, I can do it manually.) But, I wanted to add a big big drive, and WHS v1 doesn’t like anything above 2TB.

Here’s how you can fix it…

Gathering materials

First off, there are a few tutorials and threads about doing and not doing this. I elected to do it, but your mileage may vary (YMMV). Because there are other places to get this information, the only reason I am writing this is to clarify the most prevalent tutorial.

Also, I bought a Hitachi 3TB CoolSpin drive at ~$150 (model: HDS5C3030ALA630). And since it behaved slightly differently than the tutorial, I believe that more people may start running into this particular roadblock due to the price being so attractive.

Here’s the basic tutorial I used at its original location (from what I can tell):

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1559559

It’s formatted bizarrely at the very end – there are 2 sets of steps 11 and 12. And the final 2 steps (11 and 12) are critically important and possibly the hardest to follow. A better, more visual version is reference in his tutorial and would help. Find that here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1035306055

Here are the additional things I needed / used:

• The Hitachi GPT Disk Manager http://www.paragon-software.com/hitachi/
• Notepad.exe (not extra, just to keep track of things)
• I installed Chrome or ChromePlus.org on WHS to make downloading stuff easier a while ago

(I did not explicitly “align” the drive to a 4kB sector drive because the Hitachi alignment tool does not see it as an “Advanced Format” disk – you will find mention of this on certain drives.)

Learn how to “Copy and Paste” from the “cmd.exe” or Command Prompt. This will be your friend. You basically select “Mark” from the Command Prompt window menu, highlight your text (which is a bizarre rectangle, not like in Word), and hit the Enter key.

We’ll do this a few times.

How the Hitachi drive differs

It is important to know what’s different about this drive.

First, absolutely DO NOT install the Hitachi GPT Disk Manager software yet. This software installs drivers to address the drive as a GPT Disk and will screw up how WHS sees the drive in general. It will fail the initial provisioning process in the drive pool.

OK, so the drive will show up in WHS in the drive pool as 768GB. It will not appear as anything larger (as the tutorial indicates).

This is fine.

Now you can start

Alright, so here’s how I would proceed knowing what I know now. Basically use this as “additive” information to the original tutorial. I will only try to clarify the unique parts (noted in bold type).

• Put the drive in place in your WHS machine
• Turn on WHS
• Open Notepad
• Open Command Prompt
• Open Windows Explorer, browse to C:\fs
• Write down the existing folder names in C:\fs in Notepad (note them as pre-new drive)
• Or… type “mountvol” in your Command Prompt and copy the text about “possible mount points” into Notepad
• Now open Windows Home Server console and add your 3TB disk to the pool as you normally would
• The disk will appear as a 768GB drive – that’s OK
• Close the Windows Home Server Console
• Look back in Explorer to find the new mount point in C:\fs and write it in Notepad (save that file periodically)
• Go to your Command Prompt and follow the “diskpart” instructions from the tutorial (step 6)
• Write the DISK ID down in Notepad
• Type “exit” to close diskpart
• Type “services.msc” in Command Prompt to open the Services Panel
• Stop the services noted in the tutorial (step 7)
• Save your Notepad file. Close everything you have open.
• Install the Hitachi GPT disk tools – you will need to reboot, so we’ll need to re-open everything at the top of this tutorial after reboot and start at Step 7 again
• After reboot, open Explorer, the Notepad file you have, Command Prompt, and services.msc and stop the services in Step 7 again
• Navigate to the new C:\fs mountpoint of your new drive and make sure Explorer’s View settings show you System and Hidden files.
• Perform Step 8 of the tutorial (copy files to a safe, temporary location)
• The next part may vary. Perform Step 9.
• Open the Hitachi GPT Disk Manager and select the first option (Convert disk to GPT).
• Then select the second option (Create Partition) at maximum size and format it NTFS. It will mount it as a drive letter.
• The tool may ask you to reboot. If so, close everything, reboot and you’ll need to go back to Step 7, stop the services, and come back here.
• At this point, WHS is angry, but you have a big partition mounted as a drive letter. We need to fix that.
• Perform the second part of Step 10 (rename the partition to “DATA”, Change Drive Letter – remove the existing drive letter, and Add… a mount point to the C:\fs\ mount point you recorded in Notepad)
• Perform Step 11 (the first step 11 – the tutorial gets weird here)
• Now I’m going to help you collect ALL the information you need in one place to streamline the tutorial
• Be sure your Command Prompt, Notepad, and later, regedit are open
• Perform Step 12 (the first Step 12), Mark / Copy and Paste the results into Notepad
• Go back to Command Prompt, type “WMIC”
• Now type “partition get name, size, startingoffset” (without quotes of course)
• Mark / Copy and Paste all of the results into Notepad
• Go back to Command Prompt
• Type “exit” to get out of WMIC
• Type “mountvol”
• Mark / Copy and Paste all the text under “possible mount points” into Notepad
• That’s ALL the information you’ll need to finish the tutorial steps. Save the Notepad file.
• Basically, you need to carefully read the second “Step 11 and Step 12” to learn how to find the keys, but you have all the information you need in Notepad!
• The tutorial references keys in this other posting to finish http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1035306055 (#25, 26, and the first half of 27) so you can see some visual representations of what they’re doing.
• To help you out, my 3TB “Size” was 3000591450112, and “startingoffset” was 1048576. But if you have a different drive, you would have different numbers.

So, my experience took a bit longer than you might imagine due to installing the Hitachi GPT tool too early. The GPT drivers totally screwed up WHS’ ability to provision the drive. Once I uninstalled it an started over, everything went fine.

Alternatives…

It’s important to note that there are “Drive Extender like add-ins” coming to WHS 2011. The two I know of are from StableBit (DrivePool) and Drive Bender. And since WHS 2011 understands big drives, none of this would be necessary. So, this may be a temporary situation for me.

We’ll see.

The list isn’t really long, but these are things I have bought and am using or have just started using (so I can’t say I have a billion hours clocked on them yet).  But, I don’t get any of this stuff for free, so I can’t just go buy anything else if this stuff doesn’t make me 100% happy… all I can do is update this post later with further thoughts.

A plug for the arts

First, as a request – if you order anything from Amazon.com (which I link to here), I would humbly request that you click-through a non-profit theatre company’s Amazon Associates link to help give them a 4% boost from your purchase.  It costs you nothing, and helps them produce amazing theatre.

Read about UponTheseBoards.org

So, CTRL-click their Amazon link and start shopping (or shop, come back here, and click, then finish I guess).

Items to consider

Cradling your phone:

Previously I said that the USB port location is NOT standard in any of the WP7 hardware.  So it is very unlikely that a standard phone cradle will exist.  And it is probably unlikely that a GPS enhancing cradle will come out anytime soon (like the ones for the iPhone).

So I bought this one, and it works very well.  It’s cheap, works great, and fits all sorts of phones securely while giving you charging access (although that part’s clumsy).

Satechi SCR-31

Listening to your phone:

I have owned a lot of headsets.  I was going to buy one of the new Motorola’s (HX1) back when they introduced the “new” bone conduction, noise cancellation, wind reduction models.  But, it was too expensive, and only Verizon or Sprint carried it for a while.  So, a few friends got it and liked it.  I waited.  And now a different version of it came out.

I have sideburns (though am not a hipster), so I always wonder how much that gets in the way of conversations on some headsets.  This headset seems to work over my glasses, pairs to 2 phones, has the same technology (v2.0), and has a more secure over-the-ear fit.  And, it has the same charging micro-USB charging tip as the Kindle, our phone, etc.

I haven’t clocked much talk time with it, but it feels way better than previous headsets.  So, the fit is better, and the pairing etc. was as you’d expect.  The lady in the headset is informative (and seems to get along with the lady in the phone) and I like the physical on/off switch.  Voice command works great, and it has a physical mute switch.  Nice.

Motorola Oasis Headset

Retractable cable:

These things are expensive, fragile, and of course, your mileage may vary (YMMV). But, ZipLinq make the stoutest of these types of cables.  And, they know it. So, put some of that college fund aside if you want one.

Retractable cable

Windows Live Domains:

Ha… you wonder why this is in here?

Do you host your email somewhere else?  Would you like 25GB of your own SkyDrive?  How about some good SPAM filtering?  Or decent Web Mail?  How about a personal domain name and a place to sync and store your Windows Phone 7 stuff?  Or personal Live Mesh and remote desktop support?

Well, it’s pretty easy, but way beyond the scope of this article and would involve changing your LiveID on your phone… however, it all might be worth it.

Head over to http://domains.live.com and see about taking your email away from your current domain host (just your email mind you), and you can set up your email, get a SkyDrive, a photo site, your own Messenger domain, etc.  All for free.

If your domain name has some questionable word in it, you may have to appeal to the gods for a dispensation.  My domain name “CumulusLight.com”, a photography site, seemed to be “dirty” to them.  Warning: there are no dirty pictures there. Sorry.

But, once you get in there, you can offer your family membership to your domain and have a shared (and private) Calendar, photos etc.

Plus, now that Windows Live Mail is all ActiveSync, and there’s an Outlook Connector, the iPhone (in iOS 4.x) supports multiple ActiveSync accounts, and of course Windows Live Mail and Windows Phone 7 support Live Mail… well, it makes things very nice.

Apple Mail (on the Mac itself) is way stupid.  So, if you have Mac users, please consider buying mBox for them.  It’s $20 and you’ll save many many headaches.  Plus, there’s Live Mesh for the Mac, and you’ll be able to sync big files around to each other.

One warning: you CAN upload all your email from another account there into your new Live Mail domain.  4 things to know:

1. You will be making a DNS change, so update your old account settings with the IP address of your old mail server, test that, and then move your mail domain to Live Domains.
2. Live Mail has a DAILY UPLOAD LIMIT on it.  I’m not sure if it is quantity or size of the uploaded messages.  However, if you drag 1,500 messages into your new Live Mail account, expect the process to finish in 3 days.  Not because it takes that long, but because of the limit.  Live Mail and the Outlook Connect with give you ZERO FEEDBACK about what’s going on.  To me, that’s a huge mistake.  Don’t panic though.  Just wait.
3. During a time of a big upload like that, you will NOT receive email in Live Mail or in Oulook on that account.  But you will get email.  You’ll have to use Web mail.  So leave Live Mail open and the computer on.  Or just do it in batches of 100 or 200 a day.
4. Changes you make on Live Domains happen pretty quick, but do need to propagate like DNS changes – so expect to wait a couple hours for full functionality.  A few things you can do let you “Refresh” to see changes.  Sometimes you’ll see something changed, and refresh the page, and see that it hasn’t changed… this is because it is propagating through the server farm.  Be patient.

OK.  I promised this would be short.  My wrists haven’t recovered from the last post yet.

Enjoy some holiday cheer and travel safely!  And, if you’d like to support this blog somehow, consider buying a print from CumulusLight (I have Coupon Authority – so contact about special offers)!

However, as a v1.0 product, I also knew that there would be some warts.  After all, it’s v1.0.  But, did Microsoft learn from Windows Mobile 6.x?  Could it match Steve’s app phone thing and Google’s mobile thing?

A short bit of background

The only phones I haven’t used for over a few months WebOs and Symbian phones.  They both looked alright, but I wasn’t in the position to ditch what I had to try them out.

However, I have used Windows Mobile since the very first incarnation in 2003.  Wow, that was not great.  Though, I did like the Motorola clamshell form factor at the time.  It also did so much vs. the other phones, it was OK to overlook the warts.  But, WM2003 basically remained the same until WM6.5.

The phone I stuck with, and modded the heck out of, for 2 years was the HTC Kaiser / TyTn II / AT&T Tilt.  It got flashed with every new Windows Mobile 6.x that saw the light of day.

And then, some wonderful people at XDA Developers put together a few builds of Android for testing.  And while that phone’s CPU wasn’t the strongest, I did use Android 1.x and 2.x for several months as my primary phone OS.

As my Tilt’s battery just couldn’t hack it anymore, and new batteries were basically dead on arrival, a good friend of mine loaned me his iPhone 3G for use.  So, I used that in iOS 3.x and 4.0, 4.1, and finally 4.2.1 for several months.

So, have I used enough of the available market to be informed?  I hope so.

What I like about Windows Phone 7

It’s different.  And not just arbitrarily or just because it’s shiny and new.  It’s different in that someone thought about how to use a phone to do their job, and took a good stab at it.

Android was geeky and sort of cool in a different way than the iPhone.  It let me get to the “bare metal” if I wanted to, but by and large, it was very similar to the iPhone’s metaphor.  It was very much more “connected” to the Internetz than Windows Mobile ever could be (like the iPhone).  It “just knew” when to do things.  It used data intelligently to get where I needed to go.

The iPhone did this at times as well, but it may have been TOO reliant on a data connection (more on that later).

But the Windows Phone 7 OS takes that to a new level, but not debilitatingly so.  I thought that the linking of contacts across different sources might be weird or lame.  But the Facebook integration is actually handy at times.  I wish I could update contact information (merge) between sources now! 

The way the UI updates its live tiles (where available) is very useful… and consistent – if a tile has a number in it, it is live.  Unlike some iPhone icons which might have a live number in it, and others which do not (I’m talking to you Weather icon!).

The Metro interface, for me, is far superior for the user experience.  The flowing metaphor with the hints at either side that indicate more stuff awaits me to the left or right helps me get around.

This is a huge departure from any other phone form factor, but if you’ve used Windows Media Center, the Zune, or the Xbox, then you’ve been trained already.

The UI is responsive, which of course is aided by the hardware specs.  And while that seems like a cop-out, Microsoft’s specification of the hardware really fixed some of the Windows Mobile 6.x issues.  Hardware manufacturers make bizarre, stupid, inconsistent, user-hostile decisions at times.  I only wish Microsoft had specified the location of the stupid USB charging port!  That is really aggravating and shows exactly WHY you do NOT let manufacturers make decisions like that.

But, the biggest feature I like about the WP7 gets its own section…

The WP7 “Back" Button is the MVP of the OS

Wait, hardware gets the MVP award for the software?  Sort of… it’s all about me.

An iPhone (and perhaps the Android an Android user should be familiar with this depending on their device – see comment below!) user will have no idea what I’m talking about until they use this.  They have been trained not to expect this type of behavior through years of conditioning.  However… this is, I think, the MOST valuable feature of the phone.

The Windows Phone 7 preserves my “context” to the best of its ability.

This isn’t a question of “multi-tasking”.  WP7 doesn’t technically do that right now.  But you can go out of an app, and then go back to what you were doing before and “remain in context”.

Let me give you the simplest example of performing the same tasks on an iPhone vs. WP7.

On the iPhone:

1. Open your email app
2. Read a new message
3. Click on a link in the new message
4. Safari opens and displays the page you requested
5. Read the page
6. You finish reading, click the Home button
7. Open your email app
8. Find the message again
9. Delete, reply, or whatever you intend to do with the message

On Wp7:

1. Open your email app
2. Read the new message
3. Click on a link in the new message
4. Internet Explorer opens and displays the page you requested
5. Read the page
6. You finish reading, click the BACK button
7. You are back in the message, so reply, delete, or do whatever you intend to do with the message

You save 2 steps.  So what?  Multiply this by how many times you bounce from app to app.  The worst example is doing a search in an app that takes you to Safari.  Once you’re done, you need to re-start the app and re-do the search, and pick the next set of results.

Every iPhone user I show this to basically loses their faith in Steve.  They want to touch the back button and see how it works.  It’s a case where Steve Jobs’ jihad against buttons is a disservice to users.  A soft-key could work, but phone real estate is tough to consume.  Though, I must admit that the “vibrate” switch is great.

Note that the Back button can also be evil – if you hit it many many times, you can cycle through many apps which may need to start back up.  Also, the Back button’s metaphor can get mixed in some apps.  In Internet Explorer, it does move backward in pages until you reach the first page.  Then it goes back to where you were before.

What else?

iTunes.  I guess I don’t hate the iPhone as much as I really hate iTunes.  iTunes is the bane of my existence on the PC.  It interferes (well, used to I guess) with EVERYTHING, tries to install QuickTime, Safari, Bonjour, and basically acts like a pig.  People that switch from PC to Mac often cite how much better iTunes performs… well, that’s software… I wonder if it’s intentional.

And you CAN’T use an iPhone without it (try activating it).  On the contrary, I was able to do everything on my WP7 without plugging it into the Zune app.  I finally did it out of curiosity.

Modal dialogs.  How many times do you need to be asked about joining wireless networks?  In WP7, an minimally obtrusive notification appears up at the top of the phone that indicates WiFi Networks are Available… 

If you tap that, it takes you to the WiFi control panel.  If you join a network, and then tap the BACK button, you’re back to what you were doing.  If you swipe that notification to the right, it goes away.  If you ignore it, it goes away.  It doesn’t stop you from doing what you’re doing.

If you are doing something that has a shortcut available, WP7 tells you.  This doesn’t happen super-often, but when I tapped the “bulk delete” icon for some emails, and started checking boxes next to several emails, WP7 asked “Do you do this a lot? Just tap the are on the left of the message to do this action quickly”.  So, now I just take that shortcut. 

For some reason it took me a couple weeks to find the “swipe right to delete 1 message” in the iPhone.  And that just deletes 1 message.

More?  Tiny details – like, in the iPhone, if I read a text message, and then want to call someone, I need to scroll to the TOP of the entire conversation to get to the “call” button.  In WP7, I just tap their name and the choices come up.  When the call is over, I go back to the text message. 

Or, if I get a text message notification in another app, I can open it (or dismiss it, or it will go away), reply, call, or whatever, then hit the back button, and be back where I was in the app.  Or, start the call, and get back into the app by hitting the back button.  And, when I’m in the app?  I get a little notification at the top of the screen that lets me jump back to the phone application (the iPhone does that too if you accept a call while in another app, but once you go to the phone, it dumps the other application ENTIRELY – not cool when you’re in a GPS app looking for directions).

Oh, and “Reply All” isn’t the default setting for Group MMS messages. 

Unacceptable, Steve.

How about pinning contacts, apps, web page shortcuts, etc. to my home screen?  Admittedly, the home screen can start to get way too cluttered… so I do that sparingly.  But I also find that it’s easy enough to put an Internet Explorer shortcut on the home screen for a little while, and then remove it when it’s no longer relevant.

The keyboard is really really good.  I have the hardware keyboard too, but I don’t use it as much as I thought I would.  The iPhone keyboard infuriated me.  It’s word suggestions were limiting, but WP7’s word suggestions are actually helpful and scrollable.

The Pictures app is really cool.  I forget how cool it is.  It aggregates my Facebook albums, plus SkyDrive, plus Zune pictures, plus on-phone pictures.  As a photographer, this is very helpful.  I wish it integrated my Facebook photography page pictures and my Smugmug account pictures (but there is an app for that actually).

Connectedness… I took a trip with the iPhone to a place with NO connectivity.  No WiFi, no cell service, etc.  But, I wanted to queue up some emails and send them when I got online.  Guess what?  No way.  Not possible.

What else?  The iPhone does NOT actually download your mail when it syncs.  It downloads a 2 to 4 line “preview”.  When you tap the email, it goes and gets the message (again).  So, if you ever use the iPhone on a satellite network, you are in for a real treat of a user experience.

WP7 behaves a bit more like a real email app.  It gets the message when it gets the message.  It will queue up a message in the outbox and send it later.  Done.

WP7’s online Office integration with SkyDrive / Live has made me re-think my entire Windows Home Server and Office / OneNote architecture.  It just syncs to the cloud.

Where Microsoft needs to pick up the slack

A major update for WP7 is coming sometime soon.  If AT&T doesn’t block it, like they did with EVERY Windows Mobile update, then maybe some of this would get addressed.

Clarify the Back button a little more.  Maybe I need to get warned that “one more tap and I’ll leave the app”.  But DON’T make it modal (like the Facebook app – which at least allows me to turn that off).

Internet Explorer is great.  I mean, you wouldn’t recognize it.  But, it really needs to seamlessly use all the iPhone / Safari-specific web sites out there.  Web developers built special pages for the iPhone, just like they did for IE6 back in the day… so get over it and get “compatible.”

Microsoft needs to reject more apps in the marketplace.  We only need so many dice rollers, random number generators, car locators, flashlights (that don’t use the built-in flash of the camera? WTF?), unit converters, etc.  The dice roller is the fart app of WP7.  Reject reject reject.  The marketplace looks a lot like the Amiga shareware scene in the late 90’s.

Microsoft needs to sponsor apps.  Quality apps.  Yesterday.

Like go over to TomTom or Navigon (note – their site uses the Windows Phone logo, but their app says Windows Mobile… so perhaps they are of their asses) and hand them a WP7 dev team and get a real GPS app on the phone.  The same goes for Pandora, Mint.com, New York Times, Google Maps / Earth (yeah, I said it), HopStop, and get friggin’ transit directions in Bing (I like Bing, but people like choice too).  Get these companies off their asses and get an app going.  People like these apps.  The iPhone sucks as a phone (my experience) and as an email / texting device.  It’s a great app thing.  The iPad sells well because it’s a bigger app thing that doesn’t make calls.  So people are used to it!  OK, I kid… I kid…

WP7 needs a “Task Manager”.  The Marketplace app itself crashes.  The only recourse is a reboot.  Microsoft’s marketplace search also needs lots of help – Don’t return results for songs when I’m in the Apps store. 

WP7 also needs a “remembered word deleter”.  I bet there are a lot of typos that it remembers as real words in its adaptive keyboard dictionary.

There are lots of “enterprise” shortcomings.  WP7 can’t join hidden WiFi networks.  It can’t do certificate-based WiFi authentication.  It can’t search Exchange 2003 central contact databases.  It uses a Live ID as a primary contact and calendar store (vs. an Exchange ID).  And I bet there are more.  I just don’t happen to encounter them.

And there are many more.  Paul Thurrott’s got a few listed on his blog, and I agree with a lot of them (like copy and paste… yeah, need that a lot actually).

These aren’t the apps you’re looking for

So there’s no Pandora, Mint.com, VNC or Remote Desktop (a few paid remote desktops exist, but get poor reviews), or Angry Birds (ok, but there are lots of games).  And the Weather Channel app sucks, kinda like I thought it sucked on the iPhone.  But there are other things out there.

There are some things to try (SL page) that might slake your desire for a few of these things (many links are Silverlight Bing pages which I marked with “SL”, so beware):

• There’s no Pandora, but there is Slacker, Soundtrckr, Last.fm, and a couple others.  Nope, not the same.
• Podcasts! (SL) is a great app, as is TED (SL).  NPR Listener (SL) is good, but doesn’t play under the lock screen.  Plus, most TED and NPR stuff can be gotten from Podcasts.  Podcasts doesn’t download them to Zune though.  It streams them.
• There is no Mint.com, but if you can live without the “accounting” and expense classification feature, then try PageOnce.com’s app.  It gives you much wider visibility to a whole host of financial things (FYI – beware of special characters in your password… the WP7 app doesn’t like them, but they work on the site.  I filed a bug.)
• Working Time (SL) is a great time tracker.
• Weather.com sucks.  I thought it did on the iPhone too.  Use Weatherbug (SL) instead.
• Flickr Manager (SL) is very nice.  Tap the icons at the bottom to get started.  It integrates well with the Metro UI.
• There are 2 Smugmug apps, Smug Seven (SL) and Smugmug Viewer (SL) that are both good.
• AP Mobile and News360 have a nice Metro UI experience for news
• If you’re in New York, 2 Subway apps can really help because, usually you don’t need routing… you need a map, and late at night or on weekends, you need to know what’s broken!  These apps do that: MTA Information (SL), and My Subway NYC (which appears to be hard to search for – maybe got yanked due to NYC’s stupid mapping rules).
• Wooter (SL) gets you your Woot.com fixin’s
• Seymour (SL) is a Pandora-like experience for restaurants.  I’ve been trying the trial… it’s interesting, but I can’t say for certain how it works yet.  It seems really cool.
• WordPress, Twitter, and more are also ready for use!  Now, if WP7 just had a Bluetooh keyboard profile, I could use my Stowaway keyboard.  I bet iGo wishes they didn’t discontinue that once the iPad came out…

So, that’s a list of “productivity” apps.  No, the selection of apps like the iPhone just isn’t there.  However, many of the usual suspects are there already.  Facebook, Yelp, Netflix, Flixster, and a few more.  They left off the Chuck Norris Facts (SL) app in that list.  And that’s really a shame.

I’m still happy.  It’s not an iPhone or an Android.  And it’s certainly NOT Windows Mobile anything  And I’m not happy because of those facts.  I’m happy because it does what I need it to do – which is email, texting, and generally acting like a phone.  Plus it does apps, shows off my photos really well, checks my Facebook stuff, and gets on the web, Bing etc. quickly.  It needs better apps. But it’s v1.0.

WP7 had to be this good.  It’s the minimum it could be.  WebOS was probably similarly revolutionary for Palm users.  So, Microsoft needs a super strong v2.0 and to incentivize their ISV community to astroturf WP7 into self-sustaining relevance. 

Follow-through is the most important part of the game… so don’t Kin it up!

Let me explain why…

Through a series of weird coincidences, I happened upon the necessity to consider purchasing a “real” Windows Home Server box from an OEM.  My current “Frankenstein’s Monster” box I assembled many years ago (after all, Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster) is probably a liability.  I keep feeding it drives, and it keeps running.

For all of you out there who have businesses of some sort, the end of 2010 means the last opportunity to spend some money on capital assets (i.e. shiny toys) and write them off.  Because everyone is soooo scared that taxes might change in 2011, CPA’s are telling people to spend money this year as though a great plague is upon us and the only way to slake its blood lust is to feed it cash.

It’s like written permission

So when you get this letter from your CPA and you look for toys to buy, you start thinking about all the non-sexy stuff that you worry about at 2AM when you can’t sleep.  My Windows Home Server is one of those items.

The problem with buying in 2010 is that “Vail” (aka the next Windows Home Server version based on Windows Server 2008) is just about ready.  It runs only on 64 bit hardware (which, oddly enough, my current box can do).  However, very few of the current WHS offerings on the market are 64 bit machines, and zero of them mention anything about upgradability to “Vail” when it comes out.

There are, in fact, people bravely running the current Vail builds on the HP Mediasmart boxes.  So that gave me some hope.

What’s that Drive Extender tweet all about?

As I am researching the 64 bit WHS offerings over the weekend and their ability to get going on Vail, I notice a flurry of tweets out in the twit-space about “how could Microsoft kill Drive Extender in Vail?!”

And I thought to myself… “certainly they don’t mean that thing where I can add a new hard drive to the box and WHS says ‘I see a new hard drive… should I make it part of the storage pool?’… I mean, that would be insane!  That’s what WHS is all about!”

Yup.  That’s what they meant.  Microsoft has decided to KILL Drive Extender because they believe that the available storage options are cheap enough, big enough, and available enough to render the utility of Drive Extender moot.

And, Microsoft believes that vendors will offer a HARDWARE RAID solution to the problem of replication.

Then I see that HP Mediasmart boxes are listed as “Discontinued” on B&H Photo’s web site.  Then NewEgg’s stock goes on fire sale over the weekend (and I miss it).

Something bad is happening.  Many fear Vail will never see the light of day (you have to head over to connect.microsoft.com to see that), many fear that OEMs will never make new hardware to support Vail, and others fear tax increases.

Why Drive Extender is critical to WHS

There are 3 reasons why Drive Extender is a critical component of WHS / Vail and its removal is terrible product management:

1. Drive Extender lowered the barrier of entry to both consumers and OEMs.  Who knows how an OEM will implement a RAID solution.  Or if they will.  Will you have to buy drives of all the same size and manufacturer?  Will you have to buy the machine pre-populated with drives?  My dad could buy the HP box with one drive, and add new, bigger drives as they became available and benefit incrementally because Drive Extender was a core component of the product.
2. Drive Extender let me decide WHICH files were important to replicate.  Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but I could choose which folders were important to make redundant, and which weren’t.  I just don’t care if my Recorded TV is duplicated.  So, I don’t want it taking up 2x the space on my drives!
3. Microsoft will have introduced an opportunity for inconsistency across different hardware manufacturers.  Today, storage is storage in WHS boxes.  All consumers need to worry about is how many drive bays they’d like.  With Drive Extender gone, consumers may also have to choose what kind of replication to buy.  This is a choice that my parents, or even I would probably screw up.

Apple fans are very smug about how their “Time Capsule” and “Time Machine” product (which, incidentally, does not allow one to travel back in time) look and function.  Until I point out to them that they get 1 and only 1 hard drive.  That drive goes out, and where are they?  Admittedly, WHS does a LOT more than a Time Capsule and, it’s a different product.  However, automatic drive replication was a huge differentiator that even Apple people could admit was a good idea – even if it came from Microsoft.

Why was I waiting for Vail?

Honestly, there were basically 2 reasons I was waiting for Vail.  One was that Windows Server 2008 is so much better with Power Management, I had hoped that I could have my hardware take advantage of the CPU throttling etc.

The other was (perhaps another questionable product management decision… but I know why they did it, but it just hurts my brain) that I can no longer use Windows Live Mesh on my Windows Home Server.  That one really really hurts me.  Sure, I like backing up to “The Cloud”, but I’m a photographer.  I do work from multiple locations.  I would like to be able to Mesh files back to my WHS box and then move them out into one of my duplicated shares for safe keeping.  5GB in the cloud isn’t good enough for me.  It’s nice, but I need to get back to real storage.

So yeah, that’s what I was waiting for.  Live Mesh to me was a very very important part of my infrastructure.  Its elimination in Windows Live Essentials 2011 hurt pretty badly.  I had hoped to find a workaround for it, but have yet to uncover one.  So I resigned myself to waiting for Vail.

Now I don’t know if I should wait for Vail – or even if Vail is worth the hassle.  If I have to configure real RAID or re-buy all my drives to do hardware RAID, then I should just admin a real server.

I don’t need a new laptop yet.  Yet… however, the screen size trend in industry really bothers me.  Wider is not better if we’re sacrificing vertical pixels!  Yet, every manufacturer is basically training us to accept low vertical pixel density by hiding behind the “HD” moniker.

Today, you will be hard pressed to find anything functional with a vertical pixel count of 800 or more.  I’m not talking about netbooks (although I have one).  I mean most new laptops in general.

We’re just taking a step backward to the 90’s… 1024×768 (VGA) is really close to 800 pixels tall!

Now, I’ve been a user of Tablet PC’s for the past 5 or 6 years now and I find them incredibly useful.  I do mainly 3 things with my tablet:

1. Draw User Experience Prototype Sketches
2. Take down whiteboard sketches of architectures and the usual “ideation” work therein
3. Retouch, enhance, and correct photos I take (portraits especially)

I find the tablet’s interface to be as natural as we can get for work in photography.  For example, there’s a big difference (in my mind) in the look of a brush stroke made with a pen vs. made with a mouse.  This guys seems to agree with me about screen size and art.

I can draw something in OneNote quickly, and then go into SketchFlow and redraw the same thing and make it function.

I can retouch a photo using an airbrush that actually almost works like an airbrush.

Yes, I could use an external tablet like a Wacom Bamboo, but it’s so much nicer to see exactly what you’re doing on the screen.  Moreover, you don’t have to carry one more thing around.  I’m sure that anyone who’s seen Microsoft Research’s Project Gustav will agree that more pixels will be better!

As a backup plan, I have one of these Hantech Stylo pens that will work with any PC.  But, it’s probably not quite the same (I have yet to really try it out in earnest).

Size is everything, actually

My criteria for picking a Tablet PC has been pretty simple:

Get the one with the highest screen resolution possible!

The last time I bought a tablet, there were basically 2 vendors – Lenovo and Fujitsu.  Because Lenovo had an issue with its screen bezel staying put, production was delayed indefinitely (during my purchase window) for its SXGA+ X61t.  So, I went with Fujitsu’s T4220.  It’s been a good workhorse and I’ve really gotten a lot of miles out of it.

Both of these models had an SXGA+ screen option.  Today, neither manufacturer makes this combination.  Though, it’s hard to decipher these screen sizes by just looking at the specs (I think manufacturers hide behind these acronyms).  SXGA+ = 1400 x 1050.  WXGA is something like 1280×768 (or slight variations of that ratio).

Reading documents, editing photos, etc. is a frustrating experience on this size of display.  Vertical space is more important than you realize if you are downgrading from something larger than 1024×768.  Rotating the display on its side for detail work is an option if you have an external keyboard and mouse, but it’s not quite a solution.  Tool pallets that dock sideways will eat up that screen real estate just as fast as horizontal toolbars or Office 2007 and beyond’s Fluent UI.

Sure, movies are fine on a WXGA screen, but it’s not really even HD.  We’d have to get up to WUXGA or UXGA in order to do true 1080p HD!

Using tablets that have smaller resolutions feel more like using a Fisher Price “My First Tablet PC” than actually doing something meaningful.

So now what?

I’ve heard that it’s easier to manufacture wide LCD panels vs. the higher density 4:3 panels, but I believe that’s probably because you get 1.5 or 2x the panels out of a single production run due to the reduced vertical pixel count.

I don’t know what to do once my trusty tablet decides to go the way of all things… my screen sometimes makes a high-pitched whine while it warms up (they say due to capacitors in the screen).

Here’s hoping that someone out there is going to start using a Tablet PC for real work instead of finger painting or iPadding!

I’ve been told that I’m too impatient when it comes to proposing and executing strategic organizational and product movement.  Perhaps that’s true.  Sometimes the wait is internal inertia, sometimes it is for technology to catch up with the science fiction, and sometimes it’s waiting for the market to emerge.

Seeing the market before it emerges is what differentiates revolutionary plans from incremental plans.  While revolutionary plans come together on the backs of incremental gains, those gains are shaped and directed by a vision.

Your digital lifestyle

OK, this is going to sound like an advertisement, but I’m looking at it from a strategic roadmap and product management perspective.  Also, I already have a lot of this stuff lying around, so I’d like to see it work!  Now, onward…

Whether you knew it or not, the first thing to make progress toward the “paperless” (or perhaps “virtual”) anything was your house.  The office has too much inertia and weighty processes holding it back to really embrace the digital vision wholeheartedly.  It will move that direction, but nowhere near as quickly as your own household. 

That’s largely because you choose your own digital destiny.  New sexy products become available rapidly and the adoption curve for certain new technology items is based both on peer pressure and the desire for shiny objects.  Because of this, your house is very likely more advanced than your office.

Your house may also suffer from reliability issues as well since almost everyone becomes their own IT department.  Not that your office’s IT department is running smoothly, but they usually can’t be accused of racing to keep up with the latest and greatest technology.

Who controls the horizontal and the vertical?

So your living room now has enough horsepower to become a branch of a super computer.  Your expectations have been on the rise about integrating all your electronics so you can do more with your digital assets (because, honestly it’s a pain to copy stuff all over the place).  We now ponder whether that new TV we like hooks up to your computer AND the cable box (and potentially the Internet now).  Your TV, BluRay player, and audio receiver have redundant functionality and sniff the Internetz for firmware updates while you sleep.

But, 5-7 years ago, the idea of putting a computer in your living room was only for geeks.  It didn’t seem to make much sense.  But, as more digital content became available on demand, we now want to share blocky, low quality YouTube clips on our HD screens (OK, YouTube offers HQ video now too).  Let’s face it, today, the average person is becoming geekier by the year.

So what?

When Microsoft first introduced Media Center 2004 for Windows XP, it was basically to allow geeks to create a 10’ Viewing Experience for their living room.  Your PC became the place to record TV, store pictures, and rip your music.  You could even surf the web in a window next to the TV program you were watching.

With it’s large universal remote, wireless keyboards and mice, Media Center prompted geeks to go to the eye doctor and spouses to suggest trial separation because “it’s too hard to figure out how to watch American Idol.”

Media Center used to be for specialty PC’s.  You couldn’t get it as an upgrade, and obtaining updates for it was not trivial.  It could record video, and the user experience was largely OK.  But, as usual, the likelihood of getting a Blue Screen of Death was directly proportional to your need to show off how cool your living room PC was.

Convergence

Bill Gates outlined a vision of a totally connected digital lifestyle when Media Center came online.  And if you look around today, it becomes more apparent that we’re inching closer to the day when your digital lifestyle will be integrated.  There are still pieces to have fall into place, but let’s look at the components we have today:

1. Windows Media Center – now it’s available for everyone – even for PC’s that will never record TV or connect to a big screen.  Media Center reaches out to “Internet TV” content, Netflix and other services.  It’s lacking in many ways… like Hulu integration seems like a no-brainer, but there may be a vestige of protectionism there when it comes to IPTV or MSN vs. Hulu (see below).
2. Xbox 360 – it’s in your living room and it’s connected to your Media Center as an Extender (plus it has access to content in its own right).  So, you can move that noisy, weird looking PC out of your living room and watch your content directly on your Xbox (with a cheap remote control).
3. Zune – while not many people have one of these, the Zune Pass service compliments Media Center and the video marketplace is baked into the Xbox 360 today.  The new Zune HD is a very nice device and lets you sync pretty easily with all your assets.  That UI is the future of the mobility experience at Microsoft.
4. Windows Home Server – I’ve talked about this many many times, but this is the “vault” for your digital assets.  It now integrates with your Media Center (and shifts the burden of storage away from a less secure, less stable PC), your Xbox, and your Zune.  It gives you remote access for your family to look at your content, and it saves your bacon when your other PC’s die a horrible death.
5. Games for Windows – This is fairly now, but the idea is that you can play some games on your Xbox, PC, and Zune, and they all will integrate with your overall Gamer Score (important for Xbox devotees).  It looks like the Zune software and integrates tightly with your PC.
6. Microsoft’s Media Room (previously IPTV) – many people don’t know about this (it’s the basis of AT&T U-verse), but in some areas, people have access to TV and internet-based content via a set top box available from Microsoft.  Many people seem to like it, though this isn’t hard to do when compared with Comcast’s set top box UI.  And now it integrates with the Xbox 360
7. Microsoft Auto (Sync in Ford vehicles) – OK, “infotainment” is a stupid word – like “edutainment”, however Microsoft appears to have gotten Sync right for Ford.  The upshot is now the Zune syncs with Sync.  Yeah, I don’t know about the all those iPod models, but they do support a few devices…
8. And now… Windows Phone – no, not Windows Mobile 6.x.  Version 7 – Windows Phone 7 – that was recently demonstrated.  It resembles the Zune HD’s UI and features integration with Zune (and therefore other things in your digital lifestyle), and goes beyond the typical Exchange and lame Pocket Internet Explorer “integration” to deliver a more connected experience.  I’ve used every single released Windows Mobile 5 and 6.x phone ROM (both released and incremental builds), and I’ve got to say that Windows Phone 7 is a refreshing departure.  Like the Palm Pre – Microsoft allowed themselves to dump the legacy burden and get on with building what people actually want to buy.

The convergence isn’t complete

There are still a lot of shortcomings and potholes to patch.  Each one of these items has serious issues and the integration between them is far from complete.  Microsoft is also expecting the market to move eventually (and perhaps accidentally) into compatibility with this vision.  Windows 7 has been a big boost in making some of this plan come together.  It’s a nice OS to use, and under the covers you get better media sharing and (usually) integration into Media Center.  All this integration still takes effort on the part of the user – and that’s time you may not have available to sit and tinker with all these moving parts.

But then again, when you step back and see the progress that has been made on so many fronts, the bigger picture unfolds.  Your life is more than your MP3 player and laptop – it’s about matching your lifestyle.

To software companies, license enforcement protects the bottom line.  It prevents rampant, “entrepreneurial” software distribution throughout their customer base.  Keep in mind that this discussion isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario.  A major enterprise software provider may choose to enforce a license differently than a single-user shrink-wrapped software provider.

To customers, software licensing is a way of steering clear of the legal issues surrounding "viral license expansion” that can happen as co-workers share their productivity practices. 

It’s simply risk avoidance – policy triumphing over value to the organization.  IT departments go through elaborate means to “control the desktop environment” of their employees both for ease of management and for license enforcement.

Viral license expansion for fun and profit

If we take away the legal and negative revenue implications of letting a software package roam free-range style throughout an organization, the result of getting more eyeballs on your product can be compelling to both parties.  This is especially true if your software has an entrenched user base in one specialized area of a company, but could bring significant value to other areas of your customer base.

Creativity is the order of the day.  One way to do this is to establish an agreement with that customer that lets you work with them on an regular basis to review the actual use of your products within their organization.  Establish trust and a partnership and the value will materialize.

Customers will fear the cost of the unknown (like a pay-per-text cell phone plan) – each year that review could result in huge license and maintenance cost variability.  It’s up to the software provider to be intelligent about handling this up front and sticking to it.  For instance, if there are cyclical use patterns (month-end, year-end, every Friday, etc.) then negotiations should reflect that.

Software companies will fear that their review with a customer will result in reduced licensing revenue due to attrition in the user-base.  If actual use declines at a customer site, that means a customer might ask for a refund. 

The problem here is not one of licensing, but user awareness.  If customers have a high degree of turnover, your product could quickly become shelf-ware.  So, instead of issuing a refund, offer them something more – like free training or seminars to stimulate their user community.

If you have the information, you can deliver the value.  Licensing metrics are like a dashboard in a vehicle.  The more you can replace idiot lights with actual gauges, the more informed both parties will be.

Making organic license expansion valuable for both parties takes creativity and trust.  It also will require deviating from established IT policies.

Making that first impression

If you are one of these niche players, your value and long term viability (stickiness in an organization) is dependent upon reaching (and delivering value to) that wider audience.  It’s a long-term strategy as the objective is shifting your revenue stream away from instantaneous license revenue and to a more annuity-style maintenance revenue style.

The best way to damage the expansion of your product beyond its niche (and establish its position in customer infrastructure) is to put strict license enforcement on the client products.  You get one chance to make that first impression.  The tantalizing potential of your software evaporates once you lock the user out before, during, or (even worse) post-installation.

Because today’s IT environment doesn’t facilitate viral license expansion, if a user is able to secure special dispensation from the lords of IT to install a new piece of software on their desktop, making it difficult for the IT department or user to activate their license will immediately sour any user’s perception of your software and company.

The hidden costs of license restrictions

All licensing metrics are arbitrary.  Enforcement of these metrics is also an arbitrary activity.  Just because you have a license metric doesn’t mean it has to be enforced.  Licensing metrics can also be valuable to a software company to help them understand just how a product is being used at an organization (if the customer is willing to share that information).

If you have highly customizable license metrics, you have to consider your organizational capability to adjust these metrics to fit your customers.  If you take a one-size-fits-all approach, then making license enforcement strict is not in your best interest.  Your customer scenarios and use cases for your software vary widely, so tight license enforcement will result in a large number of “exception requests” to your support, sales, and product management staff.

Licensing is not a “fire and forget” practice.  If you have innovative customers or highly variable use patterns, beware of generalizations.

The work of license metric customization is going to happen – it’s up to you to decide whether it’s up-front, or through support channels.  You can guess which one is more frustrating to a customer and the resulting impression of your product’s value.

Policy is the enemy of innovation

If you take one thing away from this, I suppose it should be that respecting the creativity of your users is valuable to the long-term viability of your product.  Enforcing license metrics isn’t an evil practice, but if it’s done ham-handedly, you will inflict damage on your revenue stream.

Also, most customers want to remain square with your company when it comes to licensing.  The Microsoft Office and Windows license audit and enforcement campaign in early 2000 made lawyers happy, corporations nervous, and IT department gun-shy. 

Your customers want to be good citizens.  Make it easy for them to do so.

If you can use license metric information to negotiate with your customers, both of your organizations can gain significant insight into the value of your product. 

Trust is the most important component of your licensing.

As with every fresh operating system installation, the pain of starting from scratch makes you swear to never let your machine get to its inevitable ugly state again.

Keeping that promise might be a little easier this time around though.  By using some cool virtualization technology, you can have the best of both worlds.

Easy transfer wizard

There are many discussions about how to make life a little bit easier when moving to Windows 7 by using the Microsoft Windows Easy Transfer wizard.  I discovered a few things that I didn’t know while using it and thought I should pass it along.

The first thing to know is that this wizard is really just a very specific backup application.  It will create an image of everything in your “Users” or “Documents and Settings” folder and your personal application and registry settings.  That means you may drag a lot of legacy information with you when you install a fresh copy of Windows 7, install your applications, and then re-run the transfer wizard.

1. Make a good, complete backup using Windows Home Server (WHS).  I’ve talked about that before.  It’s just a good insurance policy.

2. Move (or Copy and Delete) all your big files.  Pictures, videos, music should get copied over to an external drive, and / or your WHS.  In fact, going in that order will speed up the process (USB is usually faster than a network copy operation).

Your big files can hide.  For instance, if you use Windows Live Photo Gallery, you may have a really LARGE cache of “original images” that WLPG surreptitiously hides down in your \users\<user name>\AppData folders.  So copy those somewhere, or just delete them if you don’t care about them.  Note that the Settings and Transfer Wizard will back all of that up for you if you want to pick up exactly where you left off!

Also, the media transcoding folder of Windows Media Player or Zune might have many GBs of files in it.  Clean that out too.

Poking around your AppData folder may result in some discoveries – like your Temporary Files folder is huge, or your Outlook mail files are huge.  Using a folder size utility can help.

3. Compact your Outlook and Live Mail (I think you can just compress its folders) or Outlook Express mail files.  You might also consider creating a new personal folder (PST) for backing up items in your OST file and then deleting them out of the OST – there are times when your OST may have to be rebuilt anyway due to mail profile changes.  Emptying deleted items, sent items, and stuff like that prior to compacting will give you the best results.  Outlook can tell you what folders have the biggest footprint. My OST and PST files shrank dramatically (some up to 50%) after doing this.  This is a nice time saver for backup and restore operations too! 

4. Empty your Recycle Bin, make sure your Live Mesh is up to date – then remove this computer from your Mesh.  You may consider removing some or all of your documents from your Documents folder if you want to archive them.  Remember, once you add your “new” machine and install Live Mesh, your Meshed folder documents will come back.  I can’t guarantee that restoring your Mesh folders will result in anything but file collisions in Mesh when you try to sync your new Windows installation.

There’s more, but by now you’ve reduced the time and size of your Easy Transfer Wizard by many gigabytes and hours.  Some things surprised me, such as you couldn’t do a “partial restore” of some information.  You select what you want to include in your backup, but the restore just happens – no choices were available to me.  Also many non-Microsoft application settings are not backed up.

5. Re-install your applications – concentrate on the Microsoft ones.  Because many other applications don’t quite benefit the same way, you may decide to get most of your Office and Windows Live applications going, and start again with other applications.

6. Back up your new machine’s image PRIOR to running the Settings and Transfer Wizard.  If you decide that you hate what it did to your machine, or you need to install more applications you forgot, reverting to a fresh machine image from Windows Home Server sure beats reinstalling the OS again.

Making a lasting image

I didn’t want to re-pollute my new installation with lots of the things I only used occasionally.  I periodically use some pieces of software that are fairly invasive when it comes to space and registry settings.  Install enough of these and even the removal process will leave lots of junk lying around.

So why not keep that old OS install around “just in case”?  This is where VMWare comes into play. I’ve used this before, and it really came in handy – if you remember some key points.

1. Get a fast USB 2.0 hard drive (bigger than your current drive on your computer).

2. Download VMWare’s vCenter Converter Standalone software.  This is free and you’ll use it once.

3. Install it on your old machine after you’ve done all your backing up, transfer wizard, etc.

4. This is important – if you have a Dual Boot installation on your current machine, the conversion process will fail at 95% because VMWare is looking around your boot sector to determine how to boot your operating system.  You MUST edit your boot manager in Windows (or other OS).  In Windows Vista, this is NOT trivial (in NT to XP, it was just a text file).  Get DualBootPRO (pay – used to be free), EasyBCD (free so far), or brave it by hand (don’t do that). 

The irritating part is that you’ll probably just do this once or maybe twice, so paying for a utility feels a little dumb.  There are people who do this all the time, so it makes sense to have a full-featured version for that.

How ever you decide to do this, the important part is to BACK UP your current boot configuration, then REMOVE everything except the operating system entry you are backing up, making an image of, and then flattening with Windows 7.  You can always restore it after you use the VMWare Converter.  Windows 7 will disable your multi-boot configuration anyway – so you may need to use this tool once more.

5.  Once you finish step 4, you need to go through the VMWare Converter wizard.  It is fairly intuitive.  Make sure you set an appropriate amount of RAM for the image, and make sure the hard disk file you create has some spare space.  You can also turn services on and off in the image file – do NOT attempt to stop running services on the current machine itself.  I accidentally did that, and it just slows, or at worst, stops the conversion process.

6.  Go away for a while.  The process can take some time.

7. Once it’s complete, you will have a set of files and folders on your USB drive that will have an exact image of your running machine down to the desktop wallpaper.  It’s a BIG file and a few others (you can edit the machine configuration in Notepad if needed).  However, you can back it up elsewhere for safe keeping by just copying the files somewhere. 

But, don’t do that just yet.

Playback

The next step you can perform on a different computer or your existing one, prior to flattening it.  It’s a good thing to try booting it up once pre-wipe if you’re paranoid.

Download VMWare Player 3.x (2.x does not play well with Windows 7 – beware of frustration there).  Install it somewhere and point it to your USB drive.

When VMWare installs, it assigns a few “virtual Ethernet adapters” and sets one of them to 192.168.0.1.  If your current router is handing out IP addresses on a 192.168.0.x subnet, you will NOT be able to access the Internet from your VMWare host installation.  Beware of this frustration as well.

The next part you ABSOLUTELY must know is that any Windows operating system will think that your VMWare image is a “hardware change”.  That means Windows will ask you to re-activate your operating system.  You only get a few activations, so be wise about this.

Two points to make here:

1. This could be a license violation because you have upgraded to Windows 7 (unless you bought a new copy).  However, this is just for insurance and is likely a temporary situation.  I’m not implying anyone should violate a license – knowingly or unknowingly.  My Vista license is on a development machine, so I should be OK.

2. You have 3 days to activate your machine.  The easiest way to activate is to get your virtual machine connected to the Internet.  You may have to switch your guest image’s network settings to “NAT” to quickly get an IP address.  Then, find the little “keys” icon near the clock in the bottom right of your screen and activate it!  If you don’t, Windows will start in a crippled mode, and if you didn’t get your Internet connectivity going – tough luck… you need to call the activation hotline and get a code over the phone.

Now that you’re done there, you can back up that image to a safe place (another disk) if you want, and you won’t have to re-activate it again.  If you back it up before activation, you will eventually become very suspicious to Microsoft.

You may want to disable some things like Automatic Updates, virus checkers etc. on your VMWare image (and try to keep it off the net).  Things like Windows Sidebar and utilities that start on bootup or login will only make your virtual machine painful to use.

If you have “Hardware Virtualization” in your machine that hosts the VMWare image, turn it on… it makes a difference.

So what?

For starters, if you want to keep your promise about not gumming up your new operating system installation, having an image of your previous computer around can help you resurrect the exact build environment or set of settings that may be dogging you on your new install.  Also, occasionally used applications can be easily accessed if needed.  To keep that image running well, “suspend” its image when you’re done with it rather than shutting it down.  Remember though: if you decide to use your VMWare image on another computer, completely shut the image down first.  You can’t recover a suspended image gracefully when you transfer a guest image to a new host.

In some versions of Windows 7, you are eligible to use the Virtual XP Mode that’s powered by Virtual PC.  You can install apps inside that image and use them natively in Windows 7.  This is probably the best (and most legal) way to fire up occasionally used applications.  If it works the way I think it does, this virtual image of XP will keep all the nasty DLLs and registry settings out of your lean and clean new installation!  I’ll be experimenting with that next.

Consumer packaged goods don’t usually have to keep pace with technical changes.  Cars are licensed per unit, not per cylinder, seat, or window.  In many ways software is licensed “per cylinder” which makes it susceptible to fundamental changes.  Think of the impact hybrid technology or turbo chargers would have on a per-cylinder vehicle licensing model during the current green movement.

What to disrupt when you’re disrupted

We’ve pointed out that people and organizations are change averse.  Potentially the only group more averse to the risk associated with change are the lawyers and contracts personnel that have to refine sales agreements into actual recognizable revenue.  Any change to a license metric raises the risk of damaging revenue streams, renegotiating existing contracts with customers, liability exposure, and unintended consequences.

If you’re a public company, your investors and board may vote to prevent metric changes – meaningful or not.  If you’re a private company, you might have the main stakeholders in your office more frequently than is comfortable for you and anyone else within earshot.

So when a fundamental market or technology shift occurs, whether you anticipated it or not, a progression of events occurs.  Each event may have a different sense of urgency associated with it.  I’ve loosely structured these events as follows (they are not a linear progression):

1. Detection
2. Assessment and internal product impact
3. First response (i.e. “we’re investigating it”)
4. Longevity determination
5. Business impacts (new business, existing customers, internal training, CRM, development)
6. Choosing what to disrupt
7. Use case development and forecasting
8. Testing with real customers and sales people
9. Rollout planning
10. Announcement and implementation

It’s not really a 10 step program.  It could be more or less.  It’s also an iterative and parallel process (unless you’re a Cylon and can forecast everything appropriately on your first assessment).

At the heart of this process is picking what you need to disrupt in your product and licensing program in order to respond appropriately.  Product managers will very likely have a mental list of possible disruptive changes that could be applied in any given situation.  This comes from intimate familiarity with existing licensing metrics and their involvement in the sales cycle.  Customers usually enthusiastically share licensing shortcomings with sales people and product managers.  I’ve never heard a customer say “Gosh, that licensing program you have exactly fits our situation!”

If you have a few product managers, it is important to develop an internal understanding of any disruptive change across all your products.  That means each product manager shares their disruptive ideas and they assess the impact of the relevant scenarios on their products.

There isn’t a need for consensus in this exercise – there is a need for communication, sharing the details, and estimating the impacts. 

Remember: there is no magic licensing metric that will serve all products and all customers equally.  It’s not a democracy – someone must decide what to disrupt and how to do it.

Finer points of metric disruptions

If the product managers, business development, and sales force are engaged, early detection of disruptive forces in technology, the market, or in customer buying patterns should be possible.  The real trick is understanding whether the disruptive change actually applies to your business and whether or not a response is needed.

Examples:

• Multi-core CPU’s and virtualization – if you license per-CPU or per-machine, you had better have a response before customers start rolling out new hardware.
• New competitors – if some other company has dipped into your market (accidentally or otherwise), understanding how they are engaging your customers may lead to a disruptive change.
• Buzzword compliance – long ago it was “open systems”, “year 2000” (Y2k); recently it was “application service providers” (ASPs), “web services”, and “service oriented architecture” (SOA); today it’s “software as a service” (SaaS), “the cloud”, and the “real-time enterprise.”
• Deployment of something new that removes barriers – wireless sensors, broadband availability, or digital content distribution infrastructure.

Is this potential disruption relevant to your business?  Is this disruption transient, or is it the real thing?  Is this disruption relevant to your customer base?  Can you use this disruption to corner the market?

While change is hard, sometimes your company and products are well situated to take advantage of the opportunity.

Don’t get caught flatfooted.  Develop a response to a disruptive force and share it appropriately.  Your response doesn’t have to be an actual change to products or licensing metrics.

No matter what, if that disruption is big enough to catch the attention of the IT or industry rags, your customers will eventually ask you about it.  Whether they’ll do anything about it is always unclear.  Sometimes these are “buyer persona” items and will never play a real role in your software or their business.  However, if you can’t check that box, you may not make that deal.

If it’s real, introduce it

The phases of this plan must be treated like a New Product Introduction – even if it requires no new features or software releases.  Major items include:

• Impact on your product – does it need to change?  What are the long-term implications to your current product’s trajectory?
• Development – what needs to change, and when can it happen?  This is a disruption, so it’s not part of your roadmap.  Even if it’s a terminology change, there may have to be an out-of-cycle release (urgency-dependent of course).
• Price list – how do you adapt your pricing?  Is it a new pricing column, or does it impact current licensing too?
• Revenue – if you’ve changed or augmented your price list, you need to forecast the business impact.  Validate in steps: internally in spreadsheets amongst your team against test cases you’ve developed, then involve a few sales people for pipeline impacts and real use cases, then business stakeholders, and finally, if you have a customer advisory council, attempt to validate the changes with them (accuracy may vary).
• Contracts – will this change create new contracts?  Will customers decide to migrate to this new scheme?  Will it be compulsory?  Are there revenue recognition changes?  What risks are forecasted?
• Marketing – do you need to announce this change?  What collateral, web site, or other updates are needed?
• CRM and manufacturing – implement the new changes, create part numbers, and create the required bill of materials (BOM) for both order processing and delivery.
• Training – whether it’s messaging, talking points, product manuals, or simply familiarizing the sales and business development teams with the new arrow in their quiver, you will get asked a lot of questions.  Hopefully you have prepared for that through your test scenarios and early involvement of some sales people in your revenue impact assessments.
• Preparation for changes – the law of unintended consequences rules the day.  You may have to retrench quickly after initial roll-out, so have a Plan B ready.

In case of emergency

There are many disaster scenarios that may be unavoidable. 

What if you have no data about revenue impacts?  This can be because of ad-hoc product bundling and order entry that doesn’t itemize revenue on a per-product basis.  Or perhaps it’s an entirely new product where no comparables exist and actual demand is unknown.  This exercise may also uncover significant issues such as weird sales discount practices, problems in your CRM and BOM implementation, and of course outlier pre-existing contracts.

What if you give away the farm accidentally?  Sometimes a licensing or pricing change may be good for new customer acquisition, but may unintentionally damage your ongoing software maintenance program (e.g. price list changes suddenly “give away” another existing product, or clever customers exploit a loophole you couldn’t close). 

It’s important to frame your roll out correctly.  Give yourself and escape hatch in case your pricing must self-destruct.  Some equivocation is acceptable – maybe it’s a limited time discount program, or a pilot program for a single industry or set of customers, or perhaps it’s a “product adoption” promotion.

Sometimes a disruptive change is beneficial beyond your expectations.  An example I walk past every day in New York’s East Village is referred to as “Dollar Pizza”.  You stand in line, hand over a dollar, you get a slice of basic cheese pizza.  A little more than a year ago, this pricing scheme was introduced as a “Grand Opening Special”.  Thanks to the proximity of NYU, the line for Two Brothers’ pizza is out the door from 10AM ‘til the wee hours of the morning.  A constant flow of pizza ingredients go into the shop, and no pizza stays out of the oven longer than 10 minutes (I’ve done repeated non-scientific observation).

The question for hungry, perhaps inebriated students is now: are other pizza slices 200 to 450% better than Two Brothers’? 

Is there a “dollar pizza” strategy you’ve overlooked?