The Olympics have always been a huge deal for me, it is a really exciting time when the greatest athletes in the world compete against each other and even history itself. I have noticed that since moving to the states that the Olympics seem to play second fiddle to the annual domination of North American Major League sports.

The quality and diversity of the Olympic coverage is critically important, and of course, the web continues to provide us with ever improving alternative. I heard some months back that Silverlight would be the flagship technology for video display (move over Flash).

You can check out some live videos now and probably observe some of the athletes training. I was a little concerned with the performance, I was watching a video with little or no updates and my CPU was starting to strain (50-70% for the IE window alone). They appear to be using version 2.0.30523.8 which is some kind of beta for Silverlight.

Now they are boasting that you can watch 4 video streams simultaneously. This will be pretty slick if it works. I can chose to watch the Basketball, Sprints and Soccer without having to sacrifice all my time.

With regards to the Olympics, the opening ceremony was the grandest and most impressive artistic display that I have ever witnessed. It was truly spectacular!!!

I have recently had issues with my AC Unit that forced me to work from home (WFH) for the duration the repairs. We have a fairly flexible policy for working from home, however, I try to limit the amount of time that I actually work from home because I am addicted to life with two monitors.

I use a T43 that automatically becomes my secondary monitor, and I use the Samsung 204b for my primary viewing pleasure (I actually like this monitor so much I purchased one for my wife). I usually position Visual Studio on my primary monitor and reserve the various communications (Live Messenger, Sametime, Outlook etc) for the secondary monitor. Throw in UltraMon to handle monitor management and you are in for a highly productive time.

Unfortunately the experience of working from home requires me to alter my work flow which is frustrating for at least the first hour. So I am advocating that everyone who wants serious productivity should petition their manager to support the 2 monitor life style at home and in the office ... good luck with that ;)

Excessive ... maybe. Productive ... absolutely!!

My Alltel contract finally allowed me to start looking at alternative phones and I settled on the HTC Touch. So far it is a very good phone, I now potentially have access to Email, IM and Web browsing whenever I chose. The touch screen interface is really easy to configure and use, and I have had no real issue writing brief texts to people. In fact I am already faster using the 'XT9' (Touch Keypad) than I was using my previous phone of 2 years. While I cannot imagine wanting to write a full email, for IM and text this phone is more than adequate.

My wife and I have successfully ported our contacts to our new phones, I am aware there are several services that can do this, but I opted to simply import everything into the Live service cloud (using Windows Live Mail) and then logging into Live Messenger brings the contacts to the phone. I am not sure I will need to complete any Active Sync at all as I have a data plan that makes pulling down updates to contacts and calendars a breeze.

My main complaint is an echo of the oft repeated issue with Windows Mobile, once you get into core Windows Mobile setup it is not really geared to a Touch screen with the fingers, and you are subsequently forced to get out the stylus. Thankfully that is not something I have to worry all the time.

Overall I feel I have been introduced to a new world of freedom from the desktop\laptop. I have always opted to bring my laptop with me for overnight trips now I feel much more comfortable just taking my phone! My next step is to find and maybe even write a cool application for the WM6. I am really interested in knowing what is going on in the Apple universe.

We are all familiar with the nondescript and Spartan Google home page. There are no bells or whistles that come with it just a logo, an input box and two buttons (one of which I never use). This is all well and good, really quite a simple and elegant way to enter the the world wide web. What I do not understand is why every other country in the world appears to have additional options on their page.

I noticed this when I saw Google searches form far far away places land on this site, when I followed each foreign search link they all had options to search pages for the entire web (by default) or just their particular country. I guess I am wondering why there is no "pages from the US" button at Google.com. It seems to be a reasonable request, or it may be that so much of the content comes from the US that having such a search option is pointless.

The same appears to be true for Live Search UK.

Are you sick of the 3 letter acronyms that are used to define every aspect of the software industry? Then you should check out this well written satirical list by the Secret Geek ;)

My personal favorite:

HDD - Heisenberg driven development - cannot be defined without altering the meaning

I remember posting what was a rather critical attack of the Microsoft Points system. Just days later I was posting a retraction on that critique. It has been many moons since I realized the value of being able to acquire points or even used those points across the MSN\Zune\Xbox eco system.

I recently entered the MSN autos Design Challenge. I was immediately eligible for 100 microsoft point (about 1 song) for submitting a design for the Dodge Challenger. I can also gain as much as 2100 points (about 2 1/2 albums worth) by providing feedback on other car designs.

I am always concerned with closed economic systems that do not allow you to take the full value of items you have acquired into the real world. I have, however, committed to using the points I acquire to purchase MP3's in the Zune Market Place. That is the only valuable item that I can find that is truly independent of the Microsoft eco system.