Check out this message when I created a Team Project (you may have to click to enlarge):

http://fee.org/library/books/i-pencil-2/

Catapult Wins Microsoft Worldwide Digital Marketing Partner of the Year Award – Read More

The Lync Receptionist allows companies to just put a touch screen in their lobby. Visitors can choose to speak with a real receptionist, deliver a package, get more info, or meet with somebody. If they want to meet with someone they can flip through a carousel of headshots to find the person they want and touch their picture. The app places an audio video call to them.

I’m surprised how well it is working although the big touch screen makes it nice! We should be moving ahead to productize this soon.

UPDATE: Here’s a link on Microsoft’s site:
http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/applications/lync-ocs-virtual-receptionist-12884907656

So rather than this…

string LastName = null;
var query = from ctx.People.Where(x => x.LName == LastName )

… you gotta say the following if you are unsure of the value of your variable…

string LastName = null;
var query = from ctx.People.Where(x => (x.LName == LastName) || (x.LName == null && LastName == null) )

This second one will result is a query being sent that uses Sql like “where LName IS NULL”  rather than “where LName = NULL” (which fails in SQL) …

“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.” - Will Durant

So true. So often we move forward entirely convinced that we need a particular  outcome to happen in our careers or lives but do not devote that same energy and passion towards the steps for making that happen.  You can see it most blatently in politics these days where the politicians are convinced they must be seen as the champions of a particular cause but have little or no understanding of the kind of plan that will make it happen.  They can’t even remember the history of last year let alone the economics of Stalin’s time for example.  My hope for the next election cycle is that we put people in office who are committed to a plan for success that is based on the historically proven principles of the past. 

“A goal without a plan is merely a wish.” – Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Folks, the power of the plan is all around us. Take These Guys for example, New York Task Force One. They have a plan. They practice the plan and they practice being successful.  Look at the results (click the picture):

When we are passionate about successful outcomes we need to #1) have a proven plan and #2) be passionate about it.  It works!  CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO

Here’s another blog which John Gossman (One of the MS’ WPF architects) calls an excellent introduction to M-V-VM:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd419663.aspx  This is a newer article and comes complete with an example project download…enjoy!

The downside however is that their ability to tell the story overshadows the story itself. I’m not saying the visuals should be toned down. I’m saying that, with visuals that good, they might want to find a story worthy of being told. Before I enumerate some of the problems I have with the ridiculous story I remind you – I liked the movie. Go see it. You’ll like it too. The flying around in 3D didn’t bother me at all. I loved it and, although I’m usually prone to motion sickness, I was unaffected.

My main beef is that the story involves silly earth worship. Nature actually makes a poor god. In the movie, the main character actually states humans killed their “mother earth” and are now doomed to live on their own “dead” world.  Just for the record, any god that is killable isn’t a god at all (as my wife says). In the movie’s world called Pandora a simple bulldozer is apparently enough to threaten the existence of the god of the natives.  In fact there are several lame political notions that the Avatar story is promoting. Here are a few:

• man is bad / natives good
• military people are good for nothing and are only happy if they are killing
• given the oppotunity, man would rather kill now to make $5 than negotiate to make $100 a week from now
• corporations and money are evil
• man needs to return to the pure (stoneage) days where we are all exacly equal in our loin cloths

If you buy into any of this idiocy, try to forget that only a multi-million dollar corporation could create a film like this and, of course, try to forget it was done for profit alone. http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/11/24/fox-chairman-has-no-doubt-that-avatar-will-make-a-profit/ 

One scene that really bothered me was that a human killing to save himself was deemed evil but natives that kill with compassion for food (natives that whisper into the dying animal’s ear “I’m returning you to mother nature”)- they are deemed good!  This story is a complete load of crap.  Its unfortunate that some people might start to believe this junk.

Having said all that, ignore the mother earth garbage and go see it! The integration of reality and animation is seamless and the environment is just visually stunning. To see beings interacting and flying around within that beauty I was wowed!

We were just showing some out-of-the-box things (like blogging) that WSS can do when it got out of hand.