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• Company Meeting

  I love going to the Microsoft company meeting. We start the day with a big team breakfast and then move over to SafeCo Field for some Ballmer love. A lot has been said about Jobs’ reality distortion field, but let me tell you Steve Ballmer has one too. Every time I hear him speak at one of these [...] Read More... Posted Sunday, September 21, 2008 1:52 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• Protected: Books

  There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. Read More... Posted Tuesday, June 24, 2008 3:32 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• Sunday Morning Talk Shows

  I watch the Sunday Morning Talk Shows religiously (yes, that last word was intended). When David Brinkley was on the air, he was my clear favorite. Since then I have gained a clear affinity with Tim Russert, so I am very saddened to learn that he has just passed. His passion for politics was unrivaled in the major [...] Read More... Posted Friday, June 13, 2008 5:21 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• Objective-C 2.0 Garbage Collection

  Yesterday I was having a discussion about which Apple apps use the new garbage collection feature of Objective-C 2.0 (the fobjc-gc switch). One of the reasons this topic comes up in Microsoft circles is the fact that so few Microsoft desktop applications use the CLR. As you may be aware, there is a performance cost associated with running [...] Read More... Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 6:10 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• FFSync, Part IV

  I just finished coding up a very cool feature for FFSync. Prior to adding the current song to FriendFeed, the tool looks up the track on Rhapsody. If it is found, the tool will upload a link that will allow a subscriber to listen to the actual song. This will be in the next drop. You can see this [...] Read More... Posted Wednesday, June 04, 2008 1:35 AM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• FriendFeed Sync: Bits available

  Download Now System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 What is it: FFSync “synchronizes” events and information from your Mac to FriendFeed. For example, when you are listening to iTunes, FFSync will update your FriendFeed with an item that lets subscribers know what your current song is. History: Infobus, FriendFeed Sync, FriendFeed Sync, Part II Note: This version only supports [...] Read More... Posted Friday, May 30, 2008 4:34 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• FriendFeed Sync, Part II

  I have been getting ready for a BillG review over the past two weeks, so I have had zero time to work on my little sync project. The BillG is tomorrow, the slides and code are in the can and I need something to take my mind off the review. So I managed to get the little [...] Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 28, 2008 12:43 AM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• “The biggest threat is internal.”

  This is one of the great truths of the software industry from my perspective: At a corporate level, history says that leaders in their markets are almost always knocked off their leadership position by their own actions and not by actions of others. If you look at the press coverage it’s all focused on external threats [...] Read More... Posted Monday, May 19, 2008 3:07 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• FriendFeed Sync

  As I posted previously, I think FriendFeed is exactly the sort of “platform” that we need, but we need to find a way to marry this with data on the rich client (the Mac I am using) and the device (the iPhone 3G that I hope to get at the start of June). To that [...] Read More... Posted Monday, May 19, 2008 4:43 AM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• Bring the Noise

  Scoble has a great post about swimming in the noise. If I wanted to be pedantic, I may take some issue with his use of the term noise (see A Mathematical Theory of Communication), but I know what he means. That said, his story of the party reminded me of how CDMA works in practice using Walsh codes. They [...] Read More... Posted Sunday, May 18, 2008 5:31 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• What is a Workspace?

  In addition to the language and text editor job openings, we have something a little different that we are working on that some folks may be interested in: http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=B672493E-78D8-406B-AF70-DA86901C0844 http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=EED9B5B4-9608-4BEA-AC8C-6947E9B9F691 Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 14, 2008 12:49 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• Tim Bray is on to something…

  You should check out http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/05/05/Changing-Your-Address. Tim is explaining in a real-world scenario the exact idea around the “Infobus“. This is all about liberating your data. Imagine if Amazon could access a feed (that you provided and gave them access to) containing the names of all your purchased books rather than storing all this information “for you”. It is your data after [...] Read More... Posted Monday, May 05, 2008 6:06 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• On Beyond Zebra

  Someone has a good sense of humor and understanding of how our team likes to codename projects. I just got the below book in the mail (to my Microsoft address) from a book store in England. I have some ideas on who sent it. Read More... Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:48 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• Google

  Over dinner tonight, my oldest daughter (by 15 minutes) interrupted my wife and I to said: “Why are you and mommy always talking about Google. I don’t even know what it is, but you are always talking about it.” Read More... Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:42 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized

• Being a Leader

  For years, I struggled interacting with people that I believed just “didn’t get it”. The right answer was just so obvious and clear — how could they not see it? Why was I wasting my time trying to explain this to them? In the end, I would often just avoid these people and “lock them [...] Read More... Posted Sunday, April 13, 2008 9:26 PM from Douglas Purdy | 0 Comments Filed under: Uncategorized