Shortly after the start of the new year, I upgraded to the Samsung Omnia phone on Verizon Wireless. I'm a gadget freak who does a ton of mobile computing, so my phone is like an extra appendage, and I use it heavily for web-based browsing, text & e-mail, and the occasional voice call, too. 

 

Given all my use-case scenarios, I seriously considered switching to the iPhone, but decided that I need to stay on the Verizon Wireless + Windows Mobile platform for a number of reasons (I made that decision before the Kindle iPhone ap--if Kindle for iPhone holds up, it may turn out to be a tipping point towards iPhone, and towards online reading in general).

 

A colleague of mine recently got an Omnia, too, and asked if I had any tips to share for getting the most out of this Windows Mobile 6.1 device, which comes packed with other goodies too, like Microsoft Office Mobile, TouchWiz UI, an optical mouse, and a 5-megapixel camera.

 

Here are the tips I gave her, based on how I've been using the phone for just over 2 months:

 

 

 

1.       Browsers – know when to use what. The Omnia comes with both IE & Opera. Opera is remarkably good for browsing, resizing, pagination, and forms. It also has tabs!  I use Opera for most of my web browsing (particularly leaving open tabs for sites I hit on a daily basis, like BoingBoing, Wikipedia, and the Mobile Bible Gateway). But I also find that Facebook and most Microsoft properties behave better in IE. For best productivity, I keep both browsers running (since multi-threaded support is one of the biggest advantages over iPhone) and hop back and forth between the two to deal with slow load times on fat pages. Neither browser handles scripting well.

 

2.       Turn the phone face-down to temporarily mute. This is a nice touch for when I’m in meetings or at my desk. Of course, it can also back-fire—I’ve missed calls at home by not noticing that I’d accidentally tossed my phone face-down while waiting for a call or text to come in.  

 

3.       Add clock to the title bar & home screen. Double click the clock setting, then click Menu, then click Options, and select “On” for “Display the clock on the title bar in all programs." You can also choose to toggle the display between analog & digital, but with as few pixels as the clock face gets in that menu bar, the analog view is barely readable.

 

4.       The clock has lots of  alarm options, which can be customized by day of the week, time, and ringtone. Because my phone docks near my bed, it’s supplanted my alarm clock since it lets me easily set different times & sounds for different days of the week.

 

5.       The camera is screamin’ – better quality than my previous digital camera. A far cry from most camera phone "pictures" which really do no more than capturing a few blurry, fuzzy pixels, this camera packs a 5 megapixel whallop. Also unlike my previous picture phones, memory management for photos is really good on this device, where images write directly to the memory card automatically. With easy file transfer to the desktop via card reader or cable, I can take and send some pretty impressive pictures from this phone. I also like the "smile detection" feature, which helps me catch my friends looking their best.

 

6.       Radio! Taking the radio tuner cable has been nice for trips to the gym and walks when I don’t want to lug two separate devices for music and phone.

 

7.       Resistive NOT capacitive touch – unlike iPhone’s capacitive touch screen, which requires you to touch the screen with the skin of your finger, the Omnia uses resistive touch. That means that I can still use the phone and browse while wearing gloves in cold weather. I’ve also found that the MS mechanical pencils also make really good styluses in a pinch.

 

What I don’t like:

1.       Keyboard – I was pretty fast & accurate on the mini-qwerty physical keyboard on my Moto Q; the all-touch keyboard on the Omnia makes accuracy much harder. Worse, “Send” on text & e-mail is dangerously close to the bottom row of keys. I’ve accidentally hit send on so many partial texts, my sister now says I text like an old person.

• I have heard there are better touch keyboards out there, but I haven’t gotten around to testing & installing

2.       Outlook mobile alerts – are just annoying, especially on days when I’m quadruple booked. In my dream world, my phone will know the difference between meetings I'm already attending, and will quit popping up reminders that I have to dismiss even after I've arrived.

 

3.       Small surface area on links and menu items. Again, accuracy is limited by the UI, and dexterity of the user. Not an ideal interface.

 

4.       No scrolling – scrolling and pagination is elegant in Mobile Opera, but not in  IE, mail, or text. To help address, I re-mapped short clicks on the camera button to page down. It’s still not ideal, since IE treats page down as jumping to the next link, like tabbing.

 

5.       AVOID THE VZW AP STORE – never, never click on the Verizon Ap store. Not only is it lame, it takes forever to load and also seems to have a memory leak. Lack of aps is clearly the biggest competitive disadvantage when compared with iPhone.

 

I also haven't been able to figure out how to customize the shortcuts on the TouchWiz menu bar, which renders the menu mostly useless.

 

One other low-fi "customization" I've applied to my Omnia: I ordered a soft silicone case (pink, of course!) to protect the hardware and give it some extra personality. As with the silicone case I used on my MotoQ before this phone, the silicone cover is the perfect size for keeping a credit card, id, and a bill or two in cash stored directly behind the phone. With my important plastic stored in my phone's case, I can travel light and leave my wallet behind.

A co-worker delicately pointed out to me that it's been more than a year since I've updated my blog. With that in mind, here's what's up since that last post:

 

This week, I facilitated another data deep dive session for my team at work. This activity is one of my favorite parts of doing research. Leading the team through our high-level left-to-right look across large sets of data is almost always interesting, and it’s immediately satisfying because helps everyone get on the same page as we work towards the Big Picture.

 

Now that I’ve facilitated a handful of these sessions for my team, I’m picking up a few tricks that make it go more smoothly. Here’s what I’ve learned:

 

1.      The basic approach – data sets in the morning, themes in the afternoon: For my team, we like to take a full day to go through the reports and the themes we’re trying to figure out. Well in advance, I ask individual team members to represent a data set, and to guide us through the deck, pointing out the highlights, lowlights, unexpected findings, and emergent trends. As this discussion takes place, I take notes on a flip-chart. Then, in our second session, we take what we’ve learned across the data sets, and think about them from the standpoint of major themes that build towards our big story.

2.      Process can be helpful, but it can also get in the way. I’ve been exposed to a number of facilitation & brainstorming processes techniques, but I’ve found that regardless of the technique, a formal process works best when the group doesn’t know each other well or is approaching the area from different backgrounds. With an in-tact team like ours, however, formal process seems to hinder the flow of ideas; we do best when the process is casual and we’re free to concentrate on the discussion itself.

3.      Environment is important – go somewhere different. Help your team think about the data in new ways by placing them in a new environment. This can be as simple as a conference room on a different floor of your building, or an exotic new location. For my team’s off-site this time, we went to one of Microsoft’s newest buildings, with a great view of the Seattle skyline…which reminds me of another point: conference rooms with windows provide extra inspiration.

4.      Arm everyone with information in advance. If you’re asking participants to read decks, be sure that they’re distributed early enough so they can be consumed. You may also want to set expectations (“Please set aside 4-6 hours for the pre-reading in the week before the session…”) to make sure participants’ preparation gets the attention it needs. If you’re asking specific participants to present or guide part of the discussion, make sure they’re comfortable and know how to prepare themselves.

5.      Make sure people know what’s going on. Send an introductory mail with agenda 2+ weeks in advance. If you’re giving out advance reading, be sure to distribute it as early as possible. Ask for time on team meeting agendas to preview the day and answer questions. Send a final reminder mail the day before, with any specific call-to-action.

6.      Write the agenda on the whiteboard. [A shout-out to Art of PM author Scott Berkun, who recommends this for all meetings.] Putting the agenda up serves as a visible reminder of the schedule for the day. It empowers others to help you play time-cop, and you can refer the group to it when the conversation starts to get off track. Be sure to include breaks, and pad your schedule so that  you can wrap up a little early. Everyone goes home a little happier if they’ve gotten some extra time back in the day.

7.      Use flip charts to take notes as you go.   As facilitator, writing notes on a flipchart helps keep me focused, and it also helps keep the group focused on the flow of ideas. Use multiple charts if you can, so that it’s easier to move between ideas instead of manipulating paper back and forth. When you’re done, type up the notes, or have them typed for you, so that everyone has the same record of the event (Microsoft folks: Our receptionists are often available to support us with projects like this).

a.       More flip-chart guidelines:

                                                              i.      Print. Avoid cursive, short-hand, and abbreviations.

                                                            ii.      Write big enough so that people in the back of the room can read it.

                                                          iii.      Try to write ideas down in the participants’ own words.

                                                          iv.      Write down only 1 idea per line. Keep lines as short as possible.

                                                            v.      Don’t be afraid to ask someone to repeat themselves if you missed their comment.

                                                          vi.      If a participant makes a long-winded point, ask them to summarize it in a short sentence you can write on the flip-chart

                                                        vii.      As you go, post groups of notes on the wall. Every 20-30 minutes o so, when there’s a natural break in the flow of ideas, rip off the cluster of notes and tape them on the wall (even better, get Post It flip charts with sticky backed pages to make this a quick & simple task)

8.      Keep eye-contact to keep participants engaged.  As in any public-speaking, eye-contact is critical. Especially when you’re at the front of the room and holding a magic marker.

9.      Don’t forget the little details. Filling in the small details up-front will free up participants’ minds to focus on the big ideas. Be sure to cover details like “when can I take a break?” What are we doing for lunch” and “where’s the bathroom” so that your participants can let their curious minds wander over more important topics. Try to take care of basics, like having print-outs of reports in advance if possible, and making sure there are plenty of pens and notepads in easy reach for participants. For bonus points, bring some healthy snacks to share during the day. Snacks will help keep your participants’ energy up—and will keep them from wandering off to find a vending machine!

10.  Be flexible. If the group seems to be taking the conversation in a different direction, give them a choice between pursuing it, or sticking to the time-limits of the agenda. And always check in with the leader, to see if there’s anything else they want to cover, a couple of times throughout the day.  

It's been another busy month for me! Looking back over my blog, I realize that what was once an almost-daily blogging habit has dwindled down to one lone post per month. That's partly a reflection of the recent pace of my life, and partly due to other technology and hobbies taking over my time, energy, and creative outlets.

 

Since my last post, a lot has happened in my life: I saw my cousin Carrie get married, and enjoyed spending time with family in Texas. I also interviewed for, was offered, and accepted a new job at Microsoft, which I'll transition to in late December (I'll have to blog about that in another post). In my current job, we've entered the time we fondly refer to as our "tax season," the last couple of months of each half when projects hit the hardest (on my team, we're committed to delivering over 400 internal reports in a 5-week span of time. I'm happy to say we saw the first two releases go smoothly this week). Outside of work, we've been planning some fun Christmas activities at my church, and I'm finally getting serious about trying to get in shape again, which means getting to the gym 3-5x per week and eating healtier.

 

And, another wedding! This weekend, my friend Melissa exchanges vows with her long-time boyfriend/fiance. Melissa's friendship is such a blessing to me. She's one of my closest friends and confidants. It's been a joy to watch her relationship with her fiance deepen as they make the commitment to marriage and to spending their lives together. I'm honored to stand up behind them as they exchange vows tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

I'm all packed up (mostly) and waitingto take off for my trip to Texas, where I'll spend time with my family, and more importantly get to stand up at my cousin Carrie's wedding.

 

I love weddings--they're right up there with babies, birthdays, Christmas, Easter, and the first day of school on my list of days that I love.

 

But there's one thing that's always bothered me: that old saying about "three times a bridesmaid..." There's got to be a better end to that.

 

Maybe it works like birthdays, where after third time, you start counting backwards, to get an ending you like better? I like that idea, especially because this will be my fourth run as a bridesmaid, with another on the near horizon...

 

At any rate, if you've got a better answer to "Four times a bridesmaid..." do let me know!

 

 

 

PS Several folks have asked me why I haven't been blogging as much lately. There's a simple reason & a complex reason, that has to do with being really busy with work any time I'm behind a computer, and a certain social networking site that has a great mobile experience that lets me do little min-blog-like status updates from my phone.

One of my favorite things about living in Seattle is the access we have to arts & culture...especially this weekend! This weekend is Bumbershoot, Seattle's Music + Arts Festival, at the Seattle Center all weekend.  

 

Bumbershoot is basically like Disneyworld for music lovers. For the cost of admission ($35), you get access to a ton of great bands, plus stand-up comedy, performance art, film festival, writer's exchange, and poetry slam.

 

This year I'm looking forward to going today (Saturday) and Monday. Saturday's line-up is jam-packed with bands I've been wanting to check out and a few that are among my favorites to see.

 

Here's my line-up:

 

Monday looks compelling, too, but I'll probably take a more laid-back approach to Monday's agenda. Plus I'll be taking time out mid-day to join the Clemson Club Seattle chapter at a near-by sports bar as we watch our Tigers take on FSU in the season opener!

My sister starts college this week...and the story was covered by the Hampton Roads Daily Press. Front and center on Friday's front page, was a picture of our family's home, with my sister and her boyfriend packing the ol' minivan full of Tech stuff:  

I love to try new products, so my favorite aisle in the grocery store is the shelf where they keep the new products.

 

Yesterday, I found a winner.

 

Talking Rain has a new line of bottled water called Organic Twist. Too new for the Talking Rain website, it's similar in packaging and positioning to the rest of the Talking Rain Twist line:

 

 

Now I can't resist "ultra premium water," so I tried the Organic Twist flavor called Mango Acai. It tasted like artificial flavoring. But at least I know it's organic artificial flavoring!

 

Now, I'm not a big fan of artifically flavored water (and I'm re-thinking bottled water in general, thanks to the New York Times), so I probably wouldn't buy the product again. But I did keep the bottle, just because I was so entertained by the concept of water that markets itself as organic. And I was also entertained by some additional instructions printed on the side of the bottle, which read

 

As in life, chill for best results.

 

In these perfect summer Seattle months (this morning's showers notwithstanding), it's fun to be outside as much as possible. 

 

Lucky for me, there's a broad variety of things to do outside in Seattle during the summer...even watch movies! 

 

Here are some of the offerings:

 

 

 

 

I also recently came across this list of downtown bars & restaurants with patio dining

 

One last entertainment note, I couldn't help but notice that Becoming Jane finally opened in theaters. Any fellow Jane Austen fans excited...

Last summer,  we had an intern in my office who said that one of his goals for the summer was to visit all the Starbucks in the Seattle area. We quickly did the math, and figured that he'd need to hit at least 3 a day every day for a full 12 weeks.  And that's just downtown Seattle. Needless to day, he revised that goal, and still managed to have a positive--and highly-caffeinated--internship experience.

 

But here's someone who did the math, and was not so easily daunted.  This guy in the video below aspired to visit all 171 Starbucks in Manhattan in a day! Granted, he had less Starbucks to deal with (a mere 171) than we do here in Seattle, but it's still a note-worty feat!

 

 

Kids, don't try this at home!

 

...But it is tempting to give  the throw-down to this summer's interns, at least with all the Starbucks on Microsoft's main campus...

I'm about three-quarters of the way through Harry Potter, and a lot of people around me are starting to finish it. And that's making it hard to achieve my goal:  Unlike the last time new Harry Potter books came out, I'm trying really hard to avoid spoilers.

 

It was hard enough to avoid the hints, teasers, and leaked reviews that were splashed all over the internet last week, and it's been a sheer act of discipline not to flip to the last chapter now that I own the book. But I've made it so far, and I just need to evade the slowly-increasing numbers of people starting to talk about it in public now, too.

 

Until then, a friend of mine suggested that I might amuse myself with this spoiler: he showed me a picture of the Bible, with a caption beneath which reads "Jesus dies on page 761". [If you've got a link to this picture, let me know--I'm not having much success digging it up without stumbling on other spoilers...]

Ahh, summer vacation. Today I'm wrapping up two weeks away from Seattle and away from work, and away from my regular life.

 

THere's a lot to say about it...but for now, I'll just have to post pictures of Apalachia Service Project, my new haircut, and fun time with the family.

A shout-out to my Facebook friends: I just posted this on Facebook, too, so if you read my note there, you can skip this blog entry:

 

This weekend, some friends & I had planned on doing some hiking, but ended up NOT hiking at Mt Rainier. Relaxing and enjoying the beautiful mountain views, yes...but hiking, not so much.

 

I'm not the biggest hiker you'll ever meet, but living in the Pacific Northwest I try to get out to Mt Rainier or somewhere similar at least once each summer. Like any good Northwesterner, I know how to prepare: dress in layers, prepare to be protected from the sun during the hottest parts of the day, and pack a lightweight jacket to keep back at the car, in case it gets cool in the evening when you return. Sounds reasonable, right?

 

On Saturday (June 23--that's the last Saturday of June, and the first Saturday of summer), when my hiking buddies Heidi and Sheryl pulled in to the parking lot at Paradise, a popular tourist-friendly trail at Mt Rainier, we noticed something odd. The other people arriving weren't dressed like we were.

 

As we parked, we watched others pull all sorts of strange gear from their trunks: parkas, wool hats, scarves, gloves, and big study poles and some thin 5-foot long apparatus that looked suspicously like skis. We even watched a few parka-clad pull on some serious oversized plastic boots, followed by some sort of knee-high bulky leggings.

 

Sheryl, a Texan, speculated what those heavy-duty leggings could be for. "Are they rattlesnake leggings?" she wondered. We chuckled and reassured her that there are no rattlesnakes on Mt Rainier. Later it would dawn on me--and freak me out--that there are parts of the world where you need special equipment to protect you from rattlesnakes.

 

It didn't take us long to figure out that all that special equipment we saw people packing in was for the snow. "There might be a little snow along the trail," Heidi conjectured, "everyone okay with getting a little snow on their boots?

 

Now I'm not exactly what you'd call a winter sports fanatic (okay, I confess--I'm a big sissy about it. I hate snow and ice, and have a hard time having fun outside in cold weather), so I hoped that if there was going to be snow along the trail, that we could just step around it. And I really hoped that all those people around us loading up skis, snowboards, and snowshoes were going somewhere far away from where we were going. Like maybe a glacier in the opposite direction, miles and miles away from the main trail.

 

So we headed off, grabbing our extra light jackets because the air was pretty cold.

 

There's a lot of construction going on at Paradise lately, so it took us a while to find the trail heads. And when we finally did find them, I wanted to keep looking...because about two feet in to the actual trail, they were covered in snow. Several inches thick. For as far as the eye could see.

 

But I decided to be a good sport about it, and determined to give it a try. Step-step-SLIP! Step-step-WOAH! Step-step...eventually I figured out that if I concentrated on every step and planted my foot just right, I wasn't as likely to feel like I was about to slip and fall.

 

But I also realized that concentrating on every step, all the while shivering and squinting into the glare of sun on snow, is not exactly my favorite way of resting and relaxing after a very long and exhausting week.

 

"This may not be fun for me," I told Heidi & Sheryl. Heidi compassionately tried to  show me how to plant my feet for stability. Sheryl waited patiently about 30 feet ahead while I braved my way up to her. And then I realized that if it wasn't going to be fun for me, it probably wasn't going to be fun for them, either.

 

So I bailed.

 

While my friends went up to hike the snowy mountainside, I went back down to enjoy the tamer--and warmer--Jackson Visitors Center. I was also hoping to check out the lodge, but it turns out it's entirely closed for reconstruction until summer 2008.

 

I also had a nice chat with a friendly ranger, who told me that this part of the mountain is usually still pretty snowy this time of year, "but it's melting fast," she said. "It's much better now than it was even 2 or 3 days ago." 

 

Maybe with enough 2-3 more days behind me, the trail will be completely melted, and I'll be able to enjoy a Paradise hike, after all. Hiking in September, anyone?

Many good memories--and even more pictures--were taken this weekend during my trip home for my sister's graduation.

 

I've just uploaded a few (ok, a bunch) of my favorite pictures from the weekend.

 

I am so proud of my "baby" sister, now an alumni of Virginia Tech and soon to be a Hokie (VT Class of '11)

Washington Post: Microsoft Art Collection Grows Up

Hanging in the halls of Microsoft's sprawling corporate campus are 4,500 pieces of contemporary art, some by such artists as Chuck Close, Takashi Murakami and Cindy Sherman. The software company spends just a sliver of its billions on art, so full-time curator Laura Matzer is working with what she's got to gain respect for the collection in the art world, while balancing the quirks _ like those ubiquitous posters _ of working within a 76,500-person global corporation.

Daily exposure to our extensive art collection is another great benefit of working at Microsoft. Any time I have a meeting in a building that I haven't been to in several months, it's always a thrill to keep an eye out for new works or old favorites.

Over on ZDNet blogs, Russell Shaw has done some great analysis of online traffic patterns using some newly-available data and services from  Akamai. Russell found some interesting things:

 

West Coast people tend to stay up and online late, with surprisingly high traffic at 3 am

Peak time for retail purchases are 4pm and 10pm local times

Peak time for music listening & downloads is 3:45 pm local times

 

I also really like the way Russell used the graphics to tell his story. It's light on the analysis and lets the facts speak for themselves...

 

 

There's a ton of great conversation and technology announcements coming out of the Wall Street Journal's D: Conference. Hosted by Walt Mosberg & Kara Swisher, the event is brings a stream of technology greats to the stage, to display their latest-and-greatest technology.

 

One of the "job hazards" about working at a company like mine is that you get to see--and want--all the cool new technology that's in the works.

 

It's a great day when that future tech comes to fruition. Today is one of those days: http://www.microsoft.com/surface

 

Today at the D:Conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is announcing Microsoft's new Surface computing technology. I've been watching this technology develop in MS-only demos over the past few years, and it's exciting stuff, with huge potential to shape the future and the way we interact with technology.

 

Want to see what the future looks like? Check out the videos on Surface site on Microsoft.com. Or watch a demo from the Surface team on On10.net in a first-look video.