Content tagged with [10] on DuncanMackenzie.net

The new and improved Channel 9 has shipped!

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:27:00 GMT

When I joined my current team, it was called the Channel 9 dev team, because Channel 9 was the big site that they had built and was the center of all of their efforts. You certainly wouldn’t have known that from how we spent the last two years though :)

We built a whole new code base for a video blog site and launched a new site (Channel 10) on that code, bringing some of the video style of Channel 9 to a new audience. We often discussed, as we shipped out revision after revision of the Channel 10 home page, that our next goal would be to ship out a new version of Channel 9… all moved onto that new code. Things didn’t go according to plan though, and we shipped out VisitMix.com, Channel 8, and TechNet Edge (for IT Pros) before we were really given more than a moment’s peace to start planning out the work to deploy Channel 9 on a new code base.

When it did become time to plan the channel 9 deployment, it turned out that, while the new code base was a major improvement in many ways, the feature gap between what was already available on 9 and what the new code could offer was substantial. Now at least a year and a half had gone by since I joined the Channel 9 dev team, and we could see a long road ahead of us to get the next version of Channel 9 shipped; all the while, new features, bug fixes and UI changes for the other channels kept coming up and mixed priorities from above meant that we still had to devote most of our time to those properties. Finally, at the start of this year (2008), I was asked to start laying out a firm plan that would get Channel 9 v4 (as we took to calling it) shipped. As part of that, we gained a new focus on channel 9 and were able to finally prioritize it above some of the day to day needs of our other properties. We weren’t completely focused on the task, but we finally had the ability to say no to most things that would pull us away from C9… progress began to be made. At the start of May of this year we shipped out a beta version of Channel 9, and by the end of the month (June 2nd to be precise) we did the final switch over, made the DNS change that pointed channel9.msdn.com at a new set of web servers, and v4 was officially launched. Over the next week or so, we were bogged down dealing with a wide variety of bugs that didn’t turn up during our own testing or in the beta, but the site stabilized and is now running fairly well. We still have bugs, but the old site had bugs that had sat for months, so I think we are in pretty good shape. You can see a picture gallery of the various Channel 9 home pages that were envisioned or deployed throughout the past few years, including the new one… and a similar gallery representing the many home pages of Channel 10 that we shipped over the course of just a few months.

version 3, C9 when I joined the team (shipped August 2005)

new, v4 (June 2, 2008)

all in all, I’m very happy with the site we shipped last week and very impressed with the team behind it all… it has been a busy couple of years, but it is nice to have tangible (if you can consider the web tangible) results that you can point at when you are thinking about what you’ve accomplished.

Code Metrics in Visual Studio 2008 and the EvNet project

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:24:00 GMT

I don't know if this is good or bad, but I thought it was neat that I could right-click the main project (excluding all our client script and HTML) that runs behind on10.net, pick code metrics and see cool #s like "23,442 lines of code" :)

Lately though, I've seen us reducing that number while adding features, so this might the highest result I'll ever see for this project :)

Looking for good examples of Mobile Interfaces

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 10:39:00 GMT

I'm part of a dev team that builds blog/forum software and I've been thinking about mobile interfaces lately... so I'm trying to find a good example of site like ours that provides a good (enjoyable, useful and usable) mobile interface... one that will work across a variety of browses. It seems 37 Signals is thinking about the same thing these days and they've made a blog post looking for exactly the same thing I am, examples of good mobile interfaces. I'm looking for sites that are some combination of text and video blogging and are usable via a relatively modern phone. I found a lot of the comments to that post to be completely unhelpful... because they were focused on sites that are specific to the iPhone! Building an interface for the iPhone is not a bad idea, but I certainly wouldn't try to do that until after we had a good general purpose interface for a much wider variety of mobile devices. I did find a few interesting sites though, from the comments and from another site (Brian Cantoni's list of good mobile sites at http://cantoni.mobi/):

http://mobile.seriouseats.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm
http://bbcriver.com/ (seems like it would benefit from some paging, but I could be wrong... is one big page better on a phone than paging?)
http://m.joystiq.com/

Of course, all of these map well to the home page of our site(s) (like on10.net or Channel 9), I wonder if there are any good examples for a web forum? I'm pretty sure that a lot of our users would like to be able to view Channel 9's Coffeehouse on their mobile device, and off hand I don't know what the ideal experience for that would be.

On a related note, Brian Cantoni (the author of that list of good mobile sites) has a great series of blog articles about testing your web applications across all major smartphone platforms.

Anyone have contacts with TVTonic?

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 06:39:00 GMT

One of their users emailed us to comment on our video quality... essentially pointing out that it sucked when viewed through their TV using TV Tonic. Well I was puzzled because, while we don't ship out DVD quality video, our high quality download is quite good for a podcast. Turns out though, after installing TV Tonic and picking on10.net out of their catalog, that the feed they have in their system is our 512kbps WMV feed... which is certainly not the best quality around, around 430kbps for video and 320x240... fine for display on our site, but not the hottest around... instead they should be using our WMV (high quality) feed (2500 kbps, 640 x 480), but I have no idea how to tell them about it. I've emailed their support address, but didn't ever hear back from them....

The Channel 9/Channel 10 team is hiring

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 17:16:00 GMT

Hey folks, I work as the dev lead for Channel 9, Channel 10, Mix Online and other sites. We build community sites for Microsoft using video, audio and text blogging and we build them using the latest .NET technologies. If you are into web development, if you have a passion for design and user experience, and if you really rock at AJAX, Javascript, CSS, C# and ASP.NET .... then this is the job for you :)

The Developer and Platform Evangelism Team is hiring a software design engineer to join the team that builds and extends Channel 9, Channel 10 and more. Our sites build a two way interaction between our customers and Microsoft using video as the primary communication tool. In the past several years we have built several additional sites and our network has grown in both traffic and content, and as a result we are looking for an additional Software Design Engineer to join the team. We are looking for someone who lives and breathes HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX and ASP.NET. The ideal candidate will have skills in all those technologies combined with a passion for design and user experience.

Do you like to ship, takes chances and effect change? Do you want to build cool sites that use Silverlight and Atlas to deliver a great user experience? Then come join our group where you'll find a small dynamic team of folks and you'll swear you are part of startup.
Experience in HTML/CSS, ASP.NET and C# is required and experience with AJAX, SQL, Scrum and Test-Driven Development is highly desired. Experience with Silverlight and/or WPF is not required but it would be great to have.

If you are interested and you meet the requirements, go to the official job listing on the Microsoft careers site and submit your resume!

Hey, I'm on Channel 10 ... just in time for Father's Day

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 09:13:00 GMT

I sat down to chat with Tina from Channel 10 to chat about my Xbox Dad articles, gaming with your kids, etc...

Halo 2 on Vista interview up on 10

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 09 May 2007 19:48:00 GMT

Halo 2 on Vista: We've got the new maps, features and achievements
Posted by Tina Wood today at 8:40 AM

Halo 2 is officially coming to Vista. It is shipping to retailers on May 22nd. I sit down with Jo Clowes from Hired Gun to talk about new features, new maps and what we can expect from Halo 2 on Vista. We bring you all the cool visuals. Jo talks to us about some of the achievements you can earn for both single player and multi-player. There's a flaming Ninja achievement you earn through multi-player where you kill three....oh, well you'll just have to watch the video to find out about that one.

Including footage of me playing through a few moments of the first level... and even a shot of my gamercard :)

Trackbacks and URL matching

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:35:00 GMT

I recently noticed a bug in the trackback code on Channel 10, some sites were failing to send us trackbacks, even though we were receiving trackbacks from other sources and those sites were happily trackbacking (I'm just annoying the spell checker today) other blogs.

Turns out the problem appears to be in our RDF block on our blog pages. On a page like this, the RDF block contains the following element:

dc:identifier="http://on10.net/Blogs/tina/exclusive-video-first-look-at-the-xbox-elite/"

This uses the permalink URL that we provide for this page, but of course there are several other urls that work to get to the same resource including

http://on10.net/Blogs/tina/exclusive-video-first-look-at-the-xbox-elite/default.aspx,
http://www.on10.net/Blogs/tina/exclusive-video-first-look-at-the-xbox-elite/ and
http://www.on10.net/Blogs/tina/exclusive-video-first-look-at-the-xbox-elite/default.aspx

When a client, some other blog or blog posting software, goes to auto-discover our trackback URL they try to match the dc:identifier to whatever url they used in their post. So, if they didn't use the one we've chosen for our dc:identifier, then they don't find our trackback info, they don't send the trackback, and we don't get the trackback.

This sucks, but what is the right way to handle it? Add four distinct RDF blocks? Or is there some way to include all four URLs in the one RDF block?

Something I'm working on for Channel 9 and on10.net...

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 23:28:00 GMT

Search based RSS...

http://www.mscommunities.com/MixItUp/Search/Default.aspx?s=c9&q=TechFest

set s=c10 (or s=on10) for searching http://on10.net instead, or remove it altogether to search both sites (using s or q twice won't work)

q=<search term> .... multi word terms need to within quotes, like this;

http://www.mscommunities.com/MixItUp/Search/Default.aspx?s=c9&q="Visual%20Studio"

Thoughts?

Channel 9 and 10 Corvettes

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:59:00 GMT

I'm not sure if there is a tool to make these or why someone did them... but I'm still glad they did :)

Hidden Feature on Channel 10, tag based dynamic playlists

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 23:09:00 GMT

While working on a certificate issue for the 'next' iteration of on10.net, I decided to code up a new feature that has been sitting on our feature list for quite some time. ASX files are very simple files that let you list out a series of media files and Windows Media Player will happily play them in sequence, so I wrote some code so that a URL like this:

http://www.on10.net/tags/E3/asx/

Will output an ASX file containing recent videos tagged with 'E3'.

Woo hoo, exciting... well, maybe not that exciting, but it does mean that you can pick a topic you are interested in (like Xbox 360), go to one link and have a bunch of videos play through without any more clicking/navigating...

A couple of notes:

When they are playing if you want to jump to the next one, just use the Next track button in WMP.
If your shuffle option is on, the videos will play in random order, which might surprise you (it suprised me)

Laura Foy does a 360-inspired cover of Justin Timberlake's hit...

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:31:00 GMT

Video: I'm bringing XBOX back (from on10.net)

Follow the link to get a high-quality WMV for your PC, a WMV for your Zune or a MP4 for your iPod/PSP... or a WMA/MP3 if all you want is the music :)

Heck, I even have an Ogg Vorbis version up there.

And yes, we know that Laura was known to bash MSFT a bit (ok, a lot...) when she was at G4... the irony is not lost on us :)

Email interview with the Superman Returns team up on 10

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:23:00 GMT

Normally I do video for 10, but in this case I had a bunch of questions and I decided to see if the team behind Superman Returns would be up for answering them via email. They were, and the whole conversation is up as a post on http://on10.net

Quick Q & A with the Superman Returns team

Check out the new Community Bar on on10.net

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 08:15:00 GMT

One of my jobs over the past couple of weeks has been to build a javascript based 'toolbar' that could run across the top of on10.net and show folks headlines aggregated from a variety of Microsoft Community sites. So, along with a bunch of help from Adam and Erik, I managed to get it finished and deployed today. You can see it on top of the page on 10

If it overlaps with the logo for you, try forcing a refresh using ctrl+f5 in IE... or just picking reload/refresh in whatever browser you use... the css had to change to accomodate this new content and the old css often sticks in the cache longer than it should.

Microsoft is working at home today!

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:45:00 GMT

Wow, back in Winnipeg this amount of snow wouldn't likely cause much of a slow down... but here... I'm at home and so are lots of my team mates. Pretty snow though :)

I have remote access and a laptop with VS 2005 though... fully productive and a coffee pot that is even closer than at work!

Laura Foy with Pizza and a line up of PS3 fans... hmm...

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 06:44:00 GMT

Probably not the best plan in the world, but we sent Laura out with Pizza and a Premium Xbox 360 to try and win the hearts and minds of a line up of PS3 buyers at Target... watch the video on 10 (download only right now)... and maybe we'll do the same for the Wii?

First part of my Star Trek Legacy interview is up...

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:01:00 GMT

I flew to Boston a couple of weeks ago and interviewed some folks at Mad Doc Software, and the first part of that interview is now up on 10.

Mad Doc Software and Star Trek Legacy

I flew to Boston last week and sat down with Dr. Ian Davis, the Mad Doctor himself, CEO and Founder of Mad Doc Software to talk about their upcoming game "Star Trek Legacy" for the PC and the 360. We chatted about Star Trek games, Artificial Intelligence and Bulldogs... not in any particular order. This is just part 1 of my trip to Mad Doc, more gameplay footage of both the single and multi-player game is coming soon!

Zune Crazy on 10

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 18:52:00 GMT

So you may have already seen the videos, but now we've been going a bit crazy and you find an on10.net background for your Zune along with a link to 12 great 360-themed backgrounds... and I went and made my own which you can grab from here

24 Hours to Boston and Back

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:49:00 GMT

Last night I jumped on a flight at around 11pm in Seattle and flew to Boston, getting in around 7am, then I drove up to the offices of Mad Doc software... makers of quite a few cool games, including Empire Earth II, Star Trek Armada II and now Star Trek: Legacy for the Xbox 360 (and for the PC). Interview is all done now and I'm on my way back, with a ton of great footage for the on10.net crowd :)

First impressions? Of all the previous Star Trek games, Armada II was the one I liked the most, and while this is certainly not Armada III, it does share some of the same features... ship to ship combat on a fleet wide scale! Legacy takes it much farther though, better graphics, better AI, better story... co-op play across Xbox Live...

Xbox 360 Wireless Headset video up

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:54:00 GMT

As I mentioned before, I had a chance to chat with the PM for the Xbox 360 Wireless Headset and now that interview is up on on10.net.

Remember, the headset is releasing just in time for Gears of War (November 7th). Coincidence? I think not!

How to Shoot Video

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 05:37:00 GMT

For all you wanna-be ENG folks, video interviewers, YouTube/Soapbox producers, etc... you need this video. I need this video... we all need this video.

Tina Wood, formerly of G4 and a host of our show on http://on10.net, worked with Scott Finley (our cameraman extraordinaire) to produce a how-to video about shooting a standard interview/product demo... and it rocks. It also happens to be entertaining. For bonus points, to prove you watched it all the way through, feel free to discuss Tina's favorite food in the comment section!

Rory joins the team...

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:07:00 GMT

If you don't already know Rory, well... keep watching Channel 9... I'm sure you'll be hearing more from him through that venue soon.

For now, he has joined us over in the 'dev' hallway, which I'm sure he finds quite exciting... maybe not as exciting as his Microsoft provided 'temp housing', but maybe it is close.

"My apartment is very nice, but the complex in which it is situated is a tad on the trashy side. I expected to find a just-add-water meth lab in the kitchen of my corporate apartment. It would have provided me a way to fit in and make friends with the neighbors, but alas and alack, such luck was not to be mine. I wasn't even provided a gun." -- From Rory's moving day post

Soapbox Invites available from on10.net

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:34:00 GMT

As you may have noticed, I've been playing with Soapbox lately and it is rocking. Yep, there are other sites out there, but I've been finding the quality (it is all flash video folks, but there is still a range of quality) of the videos I've uploaded to Soapbox to be a few steps above the other sites (or is it just site now that Google bought YouTube?). Laura Foy from on 10 went and interviewed the Soapbox team and managed to get a special link so that on10.net viewers can sign up for their very own beta account on Soapbox! Watch the video and then click on the link to get your own account!

Gears of War Propaganda arrived today

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:16:00 GMT

I loved this email from Xbox Live today:

Gears of War - Trust in the Coalition of Ordered Governments

Trust in the Coalition of Ordered Governments. Sera will triumph because of the Coalition. The Locust are weak compared to the Coalition. Trust in the Coalition of Ordered Governments. Sera will Marcus triumph because Fenix of the Coalition. The Locust are weak compared to the Coalition. Trust in the Coalition of Ordered Governments. Sera has will triumph because of the Coalition. The Locust are weak compared to the Coalition. Trust in the Coalition been of Ordered Governments. Sera will triumph because of the Coalition. The Locust are weak compared to located the Coalition. Trust in the Coalition You of Ordered Governments. Sera will triumph because of the Coalition. The Locust are weak compared have to the Coalition. Trust in the Coalition of Ordered Governments. Sera will 48 triumph because hours of the Coalition. The Locust are weak compared to the Coalition. Trust in the Coalition of Ordered Governments. Sera will triumph because of the to Coalition. The Locust are weak compared to the Coalition. Trust in the Coalition of Ordered mobilize Governments. Sera will triumph because of the Coalition. The Locust are weak compared to the Coalition. Trust in ....

Wow, that's marketing.

Remember, Emergence Day Is Coming (11/7) (order through Amazon.com) and check out these two Gears videos from on10.net:

Downloading TotemBall for my Xbox 360 now!

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 08:17:00 GMT

TotemBall, the gesture-based game that works with the Xbox Live Vision camera, just shipped to the Xbox Live Marketplace. It is a free download, but you need to have the camera to play. While you are waiting for it to download, check out my video demo of TotemBall up on 10.

Adventures in Zune Land

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 04:47:00 GMT

Visited the Zune buildings today to film an interview for on10.net... I'd show you a few screen captures from the tape, but I had nothing to do with the camera work so I don't have anything to grab from yet. Since I'm a bit of an Zune enthusiast, Laura and Jesse ran camera and I handled asking the questions of Matt Jubelirer, the Zune team member who was there to show me the device (three devices, he had one of each color with him!) and walkthrough some of the features. I'd expect to see the video up on 10 in the next day or so!

Zune Video Demo up on 10

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 21:22:00 GMT

Brian and I just posted a demo of the wireless sharing features in the Zune, so if you are into that sort of thing you should check it out.

Some of the 10 crew is going to see MC Chris tomorrow night

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 06:10:00 GMT

He's performing in Seattle, so we're going to head down with our cameras and see what we can get on tape (or disk in the case of our newest camera).

The EvNet team is on Channel 9 again

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:01:00 GMT

This time we are shipping the latest update to Microsoft 10, fun stuff... and an example of exactly how far from normal our team can be.

Categories vs. Tags in Blogs and Blog Editors

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:48:00 GMT

I've been pondering categories vs. tags in blogs, in my sites (such as http://on10.net) we've completely done away with the concept of categories as distinct entities from tags, which works fine on the site but is causing me a bit of a headache when I look at blog editing and blog editing APIs.

I've enabled the metaweblogapi on my sites so that standard blog editing tools like performancing, windows live writer, etc... can be used by our staff to post entries, and I've used the 'categories' area of that API to represent tags.

This has caused me two issues:

First, there are many more tags on most sites than there would be categories, so editing tools don't always provide the most useful UI for selecting tags.

Second, categories are fairly static, but tags are continually being added... and most blogging software doesn't provide a mechanism for adding to your list of categories.

I'm looking for thoughts, ideas, arguments... anything to help me figure out what the best way is to handle this move from categories to tags while still supporting the standard API mechanisms.

Alfred Thompson discusses "Laptops in the classroom"

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:01:00 GMT

In a recent post on Microsoft 10, Alfred talks about the idea and controversy around having students equipped with laptops. Check out his post for the full details, but to summarize... it can work well, but it has to be done right, with the right software and teachers... I agree with Alfred on this, but I also think it isn't that big of a surprise. This same concept applies in just about everything whether it is software engineering, fitness or even lawn care. The same technology or plan can succeed or fail because of some aspect of the implementation. The right tools are important, but it is more important that people plan carefully and are ready to make the most of whatever technology they are using or deploying.

So the real question is, what knowledge needs to be shared so that schools can make the most out of their computer resources?

OPML for the on10.net team

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:13:00 GMT

I've created a quick and simple list of the 10 team's various blog feeds... so if you'd like to follow along with their personal musings (including mine) then you can grab the OPML file here.

YouTube-ish site from MSN up in beta

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:22:00 GMT

As someone who works on a video based Microsoft site, you'd think I would have already found this... but I had no idea it was out... description from the site itself:

What it is
A user uploaded video service where you can upload, watch and share videos with people around the world.
Here are some of the cool things you can do with Soapbox on MSN Video:
1. Easily upload videos in almost any format—like from your video or digital camera
2. Tag and categorize your videos to make it easy for other people to find them
3. Watch original videos and browse for new ones at the same time
4. Set up your own personal RSS feeds for videos you’re interested in

Go to soapbox.msn.com to sign up to use the beta...

Documentary coming about MC Frontalot

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:32:00 GMT

And the general geek-focused music world in general I suspect... but I only see Frontalot's name on there now.

Check out the description and trailer here

Day 1 of PAX video up on on10.net

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:53:00 GMT

Check out the first day of PAX 2006, including some footage of the first Penny Arcade Q&A session (learn about the new Wii60 console, coming to a store near you this year), some talk about women, and Tina's dirty dirty camera lens.

Looking forward to PAX 2007!

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 03:10:00 GMT

PAX was a blast, I went back for day 2 and spent almost all the day at the exhibition hall... tons of cool demos and people! I was able to stop at the Xbox booth and chat with Trixie (as Brian mentions here), which was great because she is one of those people that I've emailed quite a bit but never met in person.

I also managed to run into Frank O'Connor from Bungie and interview him about the Halo 2 team that Bungie was entering into the console tournament, which seemed really unfair but he assured me that they weren't that good of players :)

Brian and I also interviewed some folks about Warhammer Online, Wizards of the Coast's new "Goblin Game" ... lots of fun

Finished Day 1 at PAX

Duncan Mackenzie — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 06:54:00 GMT

So I've been wanting to go to PAX since it started a couple of years ago, and every time it has come around I've been out of town... until now... and, by some interesting twist of fate, I know have a job that actually required me to attend :)

So Tina, Sampy, Adam and I headed over there today, snuck in ahead of the massive line with our snazzy media badges and started filming... some highlights

Serving "BAWLS" everywhere leads to many great quotes, especially funny if you are 9 years old, but we laughed anyway
Console Tourney... competive Smash Bros, how much cooler can it get?

Case Mods in the Bring Your Own Computer room, I'm already voting for the FF 2000 case to win hands down. It was so cool that both Sampy and myself interviewed them (that is what happens when we split up and give two devs each a camera... silly us).

Note that this is an "in progress" pic, not the final case mod... I'll post that soon... check out this photo set for the whole mod in pictures.

Alex St. John... wow... cigars... stories... and brave enough to bring his daughters to an event with many thousand gamers (the # of black shirts on the streets of Bellevue was unbelievable).

PAX doesn't open for about 4 more hours, but people are already waiting

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:39:00 GMT

Sampy and I stopped by the main doors of PAX last night around 1am and there was already two groups of folks waiting. Some guys from Detroit were first in line, having come in by train earlier that day, and they covered the full range of video gaming interests (although no one in their group was into tabletop gaming, the other major side to PAX) with one big Nintendo fan, an Xbox lover, and a PC gamer :)

Luckily for the folks waiting, some of the PAX people stopped by with a free case of BAWLS, giving them vital caffeine to make it through the night!

Going to PAX?

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:28:00 GMT

I'll be hanging around outside a bit tonight, to check on any folks who are that excited to be there already, and I'll be around after 2pm tomorrow... a lot of Saturday... some of Sunday... in general, I'll be there :)

(PAX is the Penny Arcade Expo, for the curious)

You?

PAX in Bellevue, WA

5 minutes of fun with Mike and Jerry from Penny Arcade

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 06:38:00 GMT

With PAX only days away, we've posted an interview with the Penny Arcade guys on 10. I love this video, but the 5 minutes of footage doesn't really do justice to the 45 minutes it took to get even that level of serious commentary out of Jerry :)

Ok, cool plug-ins for Windows Live Writer cropping up all over

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 04:07:00 GMT

If you are a dev, then this code formatting plug-in is probably the coolest thing out there... I'm still ranking Tim's Flickr plug-in as #1 at the moment, at least my slightly customized version that is, but if you'd like a list of several available plug-ins then this spaces entry is a good place to check out. Of course, if you have no idea what Windows Live Writer is... check out this video from on10.net :)

eBay plug-in for Media Center Edition 2005

Duncan Mackenzie — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 20:05:00 GMT

I interviewed Christoph, the guy behind mceWeather, mcePhone and now mceAuction... while I was down in Las Vegas for the eBay Developer Conference (ages ago) and I have finally managed to post the video up to on10.net. Enjoy :)

The on10/Channel 9 Dev team have another dev focused video up

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:38:00 GMT

I even got to be the 'preview' image! Check this out to hear a bit more about our design and implementation of on10.net, and for some more info on our plans around on10.net going forward and for moving Channel 9 on to this new code base.

Windows Live Writer

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:30:00 GMT

on10.net has a good interview up about the new blogging tool from the Windows Live team. What's cool about this app? For a developer, there is tons to be excited about, including a very easy to use SDK (wrote some plug-in code last night, super easy) and it ships with a bunch of .NET assemblies that I'm about to go spelunking through...

Microsoft Gamefest

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:34:00 GMT

Met with Dave Mitchell from the Xbox team today to talk about Microsoft Gamefest. If you are going, drop me a line... I'll be there with a camera along with one or two other folks from on10.net.

The iCup Arrives at on10 (The Show On 10)

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 21:16:00 GMT

A bit of an odd video on 10, sorry... but I couldn't help myself, I was (and continue to be) so excited about the arrival of the iCup :)

Link to The iCup Arrives at on10 (The Show On 10)

Microsoft Humanitarian Systems (The Show On 10)

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:17:00 GMT

This is so very cool... I wonder if they need any programmers? Of course, my wife wouldn't like it if it meant lots of travel!

When you think of natural disaster, software programs rarely come to mind. But Ted Okada and Robert Kirkpatrick of Microsoft’s Humanitarian Systems know from experience that where there’s a crisis, software can be a life-saver. On the front lines of war, earthquakes and floods Ted and Robert develop software applications that aid rescue efforts, assist medical workers, expedites counting and locating displaced people and helps disperse badly needed resources.
We’ll meet Ted Okada and discuss the work of the Humanitarian Systems Initiative and he’ll demonstrate how he’s builds an application and how it helps in the recovery of a disaster struck area.

Link to Microsoft Humanitarian Systems at Microsoft! (The Show On 10)

on10 visits Penny Arcade

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:43:00 GMT

Yesterday, Laura and I headed over to the offices of Penny Arcade to interview them about... well, about a variety of things, it was a very interesting interview.

It may be hard to believe, but this was the best picture I could get. Someone's face is covered up in each and every shot I took, for some reason everyone was feeling very 'gesturey' that day. At least Jerry wasn't covered up :)

We've release yet another update to on10.net

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 08:47:00 GMT

This one appears to be a bit special, as we are labeling it 1.0, which I guess means the site up until now was in Beta... I had no idea :)

Where 2.0 Am I? (The Show On 10)

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 18:55:00 GMT

Very cool entry on 10, from Jesse Lewin, about the O'Reilly location-aware conference...

Just a small frame capture from my interview with Ed from GeekTragedy

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 18:55:00 GMT

Check out GeekTragedy.com for the finished strip, and watch http://on10.net for the video about how Ed draws his three strips a week.

"Meet the 10 team" interview/video thing up on on10.net

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 18:48:00 GMT

Another video that I... "produced" ... is up on on10.net

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:46:00 GMT

Sometimes I don't like being just the guy behind the scenes :)

It isn't anyone's fault, everyone on our team is aware of the work I do, but sometimes I wish it was more visible to the public. I guess it is because I'm used to writing articles, that have my name so prominently attached, or blog posts that are so clearly mine... but when I work on videos for 10, I can be the guy who set up the interview, contacted all the right folks to make it happen and even (in this case) went over and held the camera... but yet, my name doesn't end up anywhere in the video or the post. I'm not suggesting it should have (or that anyone is choosing to omit my name), by the way, I have the ability to edit the post at anytime so if I wanted it there... I'd just put it there... but it still seems like I'm missing out on some sort of credit. It would be cool to be able to point at a page that listed all the videos that I was the driving force behind... even if I then someone else was actually onscreen ... collaborative effort and all that...

I guess that is just life in video land :)

Oh yeah, the video... we just put a video interview with a series of Xbox community folks. This all took place on the same day as the interview with Louis Castle from EA... I heard (through Mike at Xbox365.com) that EA was going to have these guys and gals in town to look at the new Battle for Middle Earth II and I bugged the Xbox guys (well, Tony Hynes to be specific... the Xbox guy behind the event) to get us permission to crash the party with a camera. Of course, Major Nelson had already arranged to be there along with his camera guy, so it was quite a crowd. Snagging each of the community folks one at a time (or two at a time in one case) and interviewing them on their own was nice though, good to get in touch with some of the people behind these great podcasts and sites.

GeekTragedy.com, my first interview in Winnipeg

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:02:00 GMT

I'm in Winnipeg for a couple of weeks, and while I'm there I thought I'd track down a few interesting folks to film for on10.net. First up on my list, Ed from www.geektragedy.com. I can't figure out a way to permalink it, but if you can find the entry for June 28 (scroll down, or go to his archives if it has left the page) you'll see his comments on my visit... I left thinking I should have asked him for a signed copy of a sketch or something like that and he makes it sound like I was doing him a favour by filming him... humble guy!!

... being the budding media whore that I am, I agreed to the interview.
Now I was a little worried about it at first, as this time it was a video interview and I'm not big on being on camera, but now that it's over the only way I can even think to describe it...way fuckin' cool!

Some videos from the eBay conference coming soon...

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:53:00 GMT

I was down in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, and I had a chance to film a bunch of cool eBay based applications... videos should end up online soon. Some for Channel 9, some for 10 ... it all depends on the topic.

This is a shot of me interviewing one of the guys behind mceAuction, Christoph Buenger (CEO of Scendix).

Father's Day on 10

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:19:00 GMT

We ran a father's day themed bit on 10 on Friday, but if you are into gadgets you'll probably like it regardless of the day. I like the Superman laptop from Alienware, the rather simplistic graphic appeals to me. For the desktops, I believe I liked the Star Wars ones better, but they no longer seem to be available. (actually, I couldn't find any info about them on the site... but I tried out the old links and they seemed to still work...) Of course, the most appealing thing is probably the wi-fi finder... it is a bit more in my price range than the other gadgets... actually it isn't, but the cheaper wi-fi spotters probably are.

Chris is on 10... Learn about Gnomedex with just enough time to get a ticket... maybe

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:01:00 GMT

Chris Pirillo is on 10 today, chatting about Gnomedex, his tendency to write things on his chest, and more. I don't know Chris myself, but I joined his "FatBlasters" mailing list awhile ago as part of my ongoing quest to lose weight... and also as a way to get emails from Chris in my Inbox every few days :)

Oooh, just noticed he has a Torrent setup for Vista as well, cool stuff

Just got into Las Vegas, eBay and PayPal conference here I come...

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 00:14:00 GMT

I just got to my hotel (the Aladdin) here in Vegas; ready to roam around the conferences looking for folks to film for Channel 9 (or 10, if the topic fits). Hmm... Vegas and a video camera... could be trouble. :)

If you are in town, email me or call me at the hotel, especially if you have an idea about something to film!

Seattle Teenager talks about his popular Military History Podcast on on10.net

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 19:17:00 GMT

My wife had read about this cool guy when working on a new article for Parent Map ("Help kids handle use of handhelds") and I was intrigued, so Jesse and I took a trip over to Seattle and interviewed him for on10.net. It is a slightly different style of video than what you are used to from on10.net, but you can expect to see a wide variety of topics and styles on the site over time. This is also Jesse's first video on 10, so let us know what you thought!

What's this? Microsoft covers the Sony releases from E3?

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 17 May 2006 18:04:00 GMT

Yep, it may be surprising to some, but on10 has a bunch of great info on Sony up today....

E3 2006 Coverage on10

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 16 May 2006 06:10:00 GMT

Check out yesterday's video on10, a tour of the Microsoft booth area at E3 2006!

CalCars covered on on10.net

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 11 May 2006 06:14:00 GMT

This is one of the cooler bits we've run on 10 so far;

CalCars... Taking a Prius Hybrid to 100+ MPG!
...talks to the founder of CalCars and learns how they can convert a Toyota Prius so that it can be charged using your household electricity ... power that is a whole lot cheaper than the gas a normal Prius uses to generate all of its electric power. Learn how they make this work, and how much easier it would be for Toyota to make their hybrids work this way in the first place...

Check it out and join the discussion around hybrid vehicles vs. hydrogen, etc...

Just finished a long long day of shooting with "Bridges To Understanding"

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 10 May 2006 00:08:00 GMT

This group, http://www.bridgesweb.org, is an amazing example of what I think http://on10.net is all about. Phil Borges and the other folks involved with this non-profit devote an enormous amount of time to travelling the world and helping kids tell their stories using the new technologies available today. Here is a shot I took today of one of the workshop participants (Mel) helping one of the kids (Stefano?) take some great shots of a steam engine... and yes, I suck at remembering names!

Laura Foy and a Flamethrower .... hot enough for you?

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 08:04:00 GMT

So I'm back from the San Francisco area, and I'm while I'm too tired to give you all the details right now, here's a sneak peak of some of the things you'll be seeing on 10 in the near future:

Update: the first Maker Faire video is up on 10 right now!

Update 2: For some reason, this post is #1 on several search engines for the query "How hot is a flamethrower"... and I suspect that people who find this entry aren't really getting that question answered :) In the interest of helping those folks out, I've dug up a bit of an answer.

Turns out it is a hard question to find the answer to, although searching on "temperature" and "flamethrower" works better than "hot". I've seen varying reports, but as far as I can tell most flamethrowers used by the miltary used thickened gasoline (napalm) as their fuel ... which can reach a temperature of approx. 1200 °C (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm with more info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamethrower). It is worth noting that the use of Flamethrowers by the US Military was ended in 1978.

Just showed up in San Mateo, heading over to Makers Faire tomorrow morning...

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 02:33:00 GMT

I'll be there tomorrow with Laura Foy (host) and Scott Finley (expert camera dude).... and I'll be doing... well, it is hard to describe what I'll be doing, but hopefully most of it will be fun!

Check out the program at http://makezine.com/faire/ and let me know what you would want to go see...

RE: I stumped Major Nelson

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 16:48:00 GMT

The source behind several of our questions for the recent Major Nelson bit on 10 is revealed, thanks Xbox Elle!

A fun little game show, How well do you know your box(or is it Xbox? I can't tell), was posted to on10.net on Friday. Laura and Tina try to stump Major Nelson with a bunch of trivia questions, and guess what, three of them were mine! Tee hee!

Which ones? Gamerscore, gamertag length, and languages. He got only one of those right. In your face, MN

[Via Circlets]

Another 'episode' by me is up on 10

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 23:40:00 GMT

Yesterday my segment on Heart Rate Monitors went up onto on10.net, featuring a new monitor from Polar and the cool EnterTrainer product... check out the video to learn more!

Oh, and unlike some of the comments suggested, lifting up my shirt on camera is embarassing... and yet, I did it twice on camera!!

on10.net's tagging gets a little bit more 'connected'

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 23:48:00 GMT

Erik extended our tag pages on on10.net a bit, check out the full details here as part of our on10.net news blog.

Learn a bit about how on10.net was made

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:11:00 GMT

Interview with the dev team (including me) is up on Channel 9

We are live...

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 18:05:00 GMT

the site is live that is... well, so are we... anyway... the real code for http://on10.net is up and running! We know about a few issues, but in general it is ready to rock, so feel free to shoot on over and grab your userid before all the good ones are gone :)

People who "View Source" are my kind of people...

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 21:11:00 GMT

It didn't take too long, people found Adam's little puzzle (Channel 9)

A couple more team members post details about our new project...

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 06:03:00 GMT

Adam Kinney, another member of our three-person dev team, posts our favorite comments about the preview site so far. Scoble, who really is on the same team as me... despite the fact that I've hardly ever seen him :)... also discusses what we have been up to.

My boss blogs a few hints about our upcoming release...

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 19:36:00 GMT

We've put up some fun short videos, but the real site is coming next week... which will be nice, I'll get to start talking about work on my blog again :)