Home - Alex

24/09/2008

My new wife and I (Joanne, the new Mrs Preston) have had one hell of a 2008 so far. Back in February this year I was onsite at HSBC and not truly sure of where my future was heading. Since then we got engaged, I was lucky enough to be intensely involved in one of the first Surface projects outside Microsoft, I had a major bachelor party, we relocated from New York to London, I had a week long stag party, we spent a week with my family in Montenegro, we got married, we spent 3 weeks in Hawaii and California. But don't be fooled, I worked hard as well ;-)

By October we will have moved to Dubai. This is a big step and we are really excited.

When we moved to New York 3 years ago my cousin had the cheek to say that 'it wouldn't be that different from England'. I was taken a back by that as I thought that was a huge step, combined with moving in with my then girlfriend for the first time. Anyway I think that Dubai will be quite a bit different from both London and New York and I can't wait to find out. Flights are booked for Monday 29th Sept so watch this space.

On a train to London from Haddenham, Bucks, UK.

Posted at 12:26 by Alex Preston | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

14/07/2008

My World Corporate Games Experience in Pictures

Last weekend I traveled up to Leeds for the squash tournament at the World Corporate Games 2008.

The Athlete.

Proof of Athlete.

The Representation.

At Registration.

Lots of teams, lots of sports.

Played some squash.

My no1 supporter :-)

Played a lot more squash.

"and representing Infusion Development, first place goes to Alex Preston", yeah!

Final Placings in Men's Open squash.

And also the final overall medals table is worth a look.

Good weekend had by all ;-)

Taking into account all the sports this was quite a large event with many sports represented. Next year Infusion should definitely look into taking some teams for perhaps squash, football and/or any other sport or to any other venue!

Haddenham, UK.

Posted at 12:50 by Alex Preston | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

13/07/2008

Vodafone Dongle Software Upgrade

Since I arrived in London I have been using a Vodafone 3G Data Dongle on my Infusion laptop. It seems to work fairly well (except when I am traveling on a train). One really annoying thing when using the dongle is that when I suspend the computer by closing the lid (as I often do with my laptop) it crashed, every single time. A hard reboot was required. This simply wouldn't do with a device that is design to enhance productivity.

Thankfully I found an update to the Vodafone Mobile Connect software on their website. I have been using it for a couple of days and it seems way more reliable than the software that shipped on the dongle itself, especially during a windows suspend.

If you are using a dongle, get the software!

Alex Preston.

Leeds, UK - 13th July 2008

Posted at 05:39 by Alex Preston | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

14/02/2008

Inbox Zero, Finally

I took some time this week to clean out my inbox. This was prompted because I watched a video of a Tech talk that Merlin Mann gave at Google on the Inbox Zero Paradigm. The theory is that rather than absent mindedly checking your email every few minutes, you actively process your email a number of times per day. The key is that every time you process your email you should reduce your inbox to zero. You must translate each email you get into an action or archive/delete it. So rather than letting a ton of emails live in your inbox constantly nagging at your mind (know the feeling?) you can live with the clarity of the screenshot below.

Why keep old emails that have no purpose? Mine the gold from them and delete them. If you think you might want to refer to them later in a search, archive them.

Key Actions on each email:

Archive/Delete
Delegate
Reply
Defer
Do

Key points to my system:

@Reply folder for emails that I need to reply to
@Review folder for emails to read later
@WaitingFor folder for emails that I am waiting for a response to
I have set outlook to show the total number of emails in the Inbox, @Reply, @Review and @WaitingFor folders instead of the total unread. So I can quickly tell what I have left to do.
I can process email from the outlook client, outlook web access and windows mobile phone.

Posted at 23:36 by Alex Preston | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

06/02/2008

Is computing becoming more secure?

From securityfocus.com:

Internet Security Systems released a part of its X-Force 2007 Trend Statistics Report on Tuesday, showing an overall decrease in the number of vulnerabilities reported in 2007.
The report, which the security services division of IBM plans to release piecemeal, found that researchers reported 5.4 percent fewer vulnerabilities in 2007 compared to 2006. The drop marks the first decrease in reported flaws since 2000, ...

Could it really be true? Has the turning point in computer security been reached? Maybe. I think that certainly the good guys have the edge right now. Consider that every new PC shipped has a firewall turned on by default; that wasn't the case up until XP SP2 became mature in late 2004. Malware writers and other would be assailants can no longer rely on inexhaustible supply of readily available vulnerable machines to assimilate. Using current techniques anyway. The Internet heralded a new age of convenience but that convenience also served as a killer virus delivery mechanism. But as OS and browser vendors furiously rush to patch vulnerabilities the net is being tightened on the net so to speak.

In an age where the risk of identity theft and phishing is high at least we can be sure that our systems are secured by default from automated attack. I hope.

Posted at 21:56 by Alex Preston | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

04/10/2007

Microsoft to Release .NET Framework Source Code

Yes you read that right! It's not just the source for regular download either (although it will be possible to just download the source as flat files as well).

The best thing is that Microsoft will be supporting a "Public Source Server" and you will be able to connect VS2008 (Orcas) to a source server and actually use it to step into and debug the .NET Framework itself. Full support for the Locals and Watch windows will be available while debugging framework code.

From ScottGu's blog:

"We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL)."

Is it just me or is this massive news that will change the face of .NET development? I know that we have had .NET Reflector for the longest time but that isn't a true reflection of reality.

There was an interesting show on this topic on Hanselminutes by Scott Hanselman.

Also many more details on ScottGu's blog and a detailed post from the man that made it happen at Microsoft, Shawn Burke.

Posted at 09:34 by Alex Preston | Category: ASP.NET | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

20/09/2007

Microsoft Time Zone

I have been using a neat little system tray application for a while now. At the click of a button it will show you the current time in any number of different time zones.

Useful if you are in New York, USA; some of your development team are in London, England and your deployment and support team are in Pune, India.

Download Microsoft Time Zone (Genuine windows only!)

Posted at 17:51 by Alex Preston | Category: Utilities | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

18/07/2007

Unify Your Communications: The Devil Wears Prada

I found this video demonstrating the power and coolness factor of the Microsofts Unified Communications platform. It's a spoof of the Devil Wears Prada.

I tried embedding the video directly in this sharepoint blog but unfortunately it stripped out the necessary html :-(. So here is the link to the video instead.
Video: The Devil wears prada .. and does Unified Comms!

Via Nick Mayhew (my old boss from the UK)

Posted at 23:16 by Alex Preston | Category: OCS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

16/05/2007

New Samsung Flat Panel to work seamlessly with OCS

One of the other devices announced at WinHEC was a new Samsung monitor boasting a built-in 2.0 megapixel webcam, microphone and stereo speakers. The hardware is designed to work with the Office Communicator Client software and perhaps ultimately replace the deskphone that you currently use.

The rest of the specs of the new Samsung 255U are fairly standard, 22 inch, 1680x1050 resolution with a 5ms response time. Availability is purportedly June with a price tag of $449.

Via Engadget

Posted at 06:50 by Alex Preston | Category: OCS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

15/05/2007

Microsoft unveils new phones and devices at WinHEC

At the Windows Hardware and Engineering Conference (WinHEC) that is currently taking place in Los Angeles, Microsoft annouced 15 new phones and devices from 9 of its partners. The devices include IP phones, USB phones, wired and wireless headsets, Bluetooth devices, conferencing phones, portable speakerphones, LCD monitors and laptops. The hardware partners have been provided with specifications to ensure that the equipment works well with OCS 2007 and the unified communications platform.

Microsoft's Chris Cullen, director of product management for the unified communications group was quoted in an interview as saying "We also expect that VoIP deployments will rise by 50 percent in the enterprise over the next three years, while the average VoIP solution for business will cost half what it does today, as VoIP systems move from hardware to software over the next three years".

Cullen goes on, "Microsoft is also predicting that, over the next three years, 100 million people will be making calls from within the Office suite of products, which would be some 20 percent of the total current Office user base and larger than the IP phone market that exists today".

Here are some choice picks from the line up. You can see from the images of the phones with displays that they offer presence information, so that you know if the other party is available or not before you place the call. This is similar to the available/away/busy status offered by chat clients like Windows Live Messenger.

The LG-Nortel IP Phone 8540 is an intelligent IP Phone that helps improve productivity and work performance for information workers.

View larger image

The LG-Nortel USB Phone is designed to deliver a high-quality user experience.

The NEC UC USB Phone is a USB device that can be plugged directly into a PC USB port, enabling high-quality wideband sound.

The Polycom CX400 Cordless Phone helps to enable high-quality cordless calls from a computer.

The Polycom CX700 IP Phone is a standalone IP phone with remarkable wideband voice quality and large touch-screen color display.

View Larger Image

The LG-Nortel Bluetooth Headset is a wireless solution helping users to make or receive calls on their PCs without speakerphones.

Via Engadget, eWeek and Microsoft.

Posted at 23:35 by Alex Preston | Category: OCS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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