March 2009 - Posts
LinkedIn has a handy profile widget that enables pop-up LinkedIn profiles to be inserted in blogs and other web content.
Example:
I got this working in my Community Server blog without directly modifying and HTML content, as follows.
- First, go to your blog’s control panel, select the Configure tab, Blog Setup and Search Engine Optimization.
- At the bottom of the page, in the Raw Header box, paste in the link to the LinkedIn javascript source:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.linkedin.com/js/public-profile/widget-os.js"></script> - Click Save.
- Still in the blog’s control panel, go to the Manage tab, then Manage Snippets.
- Create a new snippet for the profile link you want to use, give it a name like “TimLinkedIn”. Leave the Link URL section blank and enter the link to the LinkedIn public profile in the Text section. Example:
<a class="linkedin-profileinsider-popup" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/timlong">Tim Long</a>
The class="linkedin-profileinsider-popup" is the magic ingredient. - Click save.
When writing your blog post, either directly in Community Server or in a tool like Windows Live Writer, invoke your snippet by enclosing in square brackets:
[ TimLinkedIn ] –> produces –> (click the In button to see the pop-up profile).
In a recent article I described how Windows can prevent certain types of files from being launched, particularly Help (.chm) files which are essentially HTML and therefore can contain script and so are potentially harmful. Several people have commented to me that they either don’t see or can’t find the Unblock button, so I thought I’d look at other ways of unblocking a file.
Windows tags downloaded files with a security zone at the point it is saved to disk. The tag survives even if the file was compressed in a ZIP archive and was unzipped. It is instructive to look at how Windows tracks a file’s security zone and then look at some ways to remove the tag.
Security Zone tracking is implemented using NTFS Alternate Data Streams (ADS). NTFS files can have multiple parts, called data streams. Normally only the default unnamed stream is used. Alternate streams can be accessed using the following syntax:
<path>\<filename.ext>:<stream name>
For example: “c:\test.txt:MyStream”. To see this in action, open a command prompt and try a command like this:
C:\Users\Tim>echo "some data" > test.txt:MyStream
That simple. You just created a file called “test.txt” with an empty default (unnamed) stream, and an alternate data stream named “MyStream” into which you copied the text “some data”. Now look at the directory listing to verify what happened:
C:\Users\Tim>dir *.txt
Volume in drive C is Windows Vista Ultimate
Volume Serial Number is 40CA-37D7
Directory of C:\Users\Tim
30/03/2009 22:30 0 test.txt
1 File(s) 0 bytes
0 Dir(s) 37,261,668,352 bytes free
C:\Users\Tim>
Notice that the file size is shown as zero – this is because the DIR command only shows the default (unnamed) data stream, which is empty. If a file does have alternate data streams, they are all but invisible and are quite difficult to detect. The file definitely contains some data, though. We can prove it thus:
C:\Users\Tim>more < test.txt:MyStream
"some data"
Why did I use “more” rather than “type”? Not all commands support the ADS syntax. “Type” is one of those commands that does not support it, “more”, on the other hand, does. Dir does not support ADS syntax and so there is essentially no built-in way to discover files with Alternate Data Streams. There are, however, some third party utilities for doing so. One such tool is the SysInternals Streams.exe utility (\\live.sysinternals.com\Tools).
C:\Users\Tim>streams *.txt
Streams v1.56 - Enumerate alternate NTFS data streams
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
C:\Users\Tim\test.txt:
:MyStream:$DATA 14
C:\Users\Tim>
At last, we can now see our stream with its 14 bytes of data.
To track a file’s security zone, Windows creates a stream called "Zone.Identifier" that stores the IE security zone where the file originated. This invisible tag will stay with the file no matter how it is renamed or copied. You can view it using a command like the following (DocProject1.chm is just a file I happened to download from the Internet):
C:\Users\Tim>more < DocProject1.chm:Zone.Identifier
[ZoneTransfer]
ZoneId=3
We can also use the streams utility to remove a stream.
C:\Users\Tim>streams -d test.txt
Streams v1.56 - Enumerate alternate NTFS data streams
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
C:\Users\Tim\test.txt:
Deleted :MyStream:$DATA
C:\Users\Tim>dir *.txt
Volume in drive C is Windows Vista Ultimate
Volume Serial Number is 40CA-37D7
Directory of C:\Users\Tim
30/03/2009 22:30 0 test.txt
1 File(s) 0 bytes
0 Dir(s) 37,266,251,776 bytes free
C:\Users\Tim>
Note that the file survives even though it is empty. If you can’t see the Unblock button, then my suggestion is to visit www.sysinternals.com and download the Streams utility (or launch it directly from \\live.sysinternals.com\Tools). You can then delete the alternate data stream, which will remove the zone identifier and should unblock the file.
Another way to remove this tag is to copy the file to a CD or DVD. ISO 9660 and UDF file systems do not support alternate data streams, so the file’s zone information will be lost when it is written to the optical media. When you copy the file, you’ll see a dialog like this:
Proceeding with the copy operation deletes the Alternate Data Streams.
I’ve been watching the progress of Solid-state Drives (SSDs) carefully, because I’ve predicted that they are going to quickly kill magnetic media while dramatically boosting system performance.
Joel Spolsky writes about his experience upgrading some of Fog Creek’s computers with SSDs. His comments are some of the first real-world feedback I’ve seen on the performance gains to be anticipated:
“Suddenly everything was faster. Booting, launching apps... even Outlook is ready to use in about 1 second. This was a really great upgrade.”
“Boot time dropped from 2:11 to 0:34. […] Launching 6 major applications went from about 20 seconds to about 10 seconds. In general, the fact that app launching is so much faster makes a huge difference and it was totally worth it. This little laptop is now the fastest computer I’ve ever used.”
The gains are a little less than I was anticipating, Spolsky’s article suggests an approximate halving of load times while theoretically an order of magnitude increase should be achievable. Nevertheless, the speed-up seems to make a big difference. SanDisks claims that its G3 product family, based on Multi-Level Cell (MLC) Flash Technology is equivalent to a 40,000 rpm hard drive, which would indicate a speed increase of 4 to 8 times compared with typical magnetic hard drives in use today. SSDs are still a little on the expensive side and lagging behind magnetic drives in terms of storage capacity, but they are catching up fast and starting to appear as options in laptops from the likes of Apple and Dell. Currently costing around £120 for a 64Gb module, compared to £25 for an 80Gb magnetic drive, or the same £120 will get you 1.5 Terrabytes of magnetic moving parts – SSDs still need to undergo an order of magnitude increase in capacity or decrease in cost before they become mainstream. It will happen. SanDisk currently offers product in 60, 120 and 240GB, the unit MSRPs are $149, $249 and $499, respectively. Compared to the situation a year ago, that represents meteoric progress. We must surely be close to a tipping point where the transition to Solid State becomes inexorable.
I got a mention on BBC Click this week when Spencer Kelly read out my feedback on their investigation into cybercrime and bot-nets. The original article should be compulsory viewing for all computer users, especially those using computers in business.
Original cybercrime article | episode with my feedback (00:10:26)
Microsoft DreamSpark enables students to download professional-level Microsoft developer and designer tools at no charge, to advance their learning and skills through technical design, technology, math, science and engineering activities. This program used to be open to College / University students only. Now it is open to high school students too.
For those of you with children at school who haven’t seen this yet, I hope that this will be useful for you. I particularly recommend Expression Studio 2 which has some excellent graphics design tools on a par with Adobe Illustrator, with the added advantage that you can directly produce XAML output to work in your WPF and Silverlight projects.
https://www.dreamspark.com/About/Overview.aspx
Catalyzed by my ailing car finally dying, something has awoken in me that I have not known for a decade or so. I’ve been a long time dead, as one of my friends puts it. I’ve started cycling to work, about 8 miles each way. First time out was hard. Really hard. But spurred on by the clement weather and the pressure of necessity, my condition is returning much faster than I thought it would and the exercise is almost addictive. I’m surprised by how much of cycling is mental, rather than brute force and that, with a bit of talking to myself, I can cycle uphill faster than on the flat. I’m rediscovering muscle, sinew and willpower and burning about 1500 calories a day into the bargain. My trusty steed is a 1995 Marin Bear Valley SE all-terrain bicycle (similar to the one in the picture), fitted with semi-slick road tyres pumped up to 60psi. It’s a “hard tail” – front suspension was a pretty new thing when I bought my SE and rear suspension still cost mortgage money. It is amazing how this quality bike has stood up to time and the elements. I had forgotten how much I used to enjoy cycling and rediscovering it is pure joy, even if it is very hard work. I think this could be the beginning of a new era in my life. Perhaps I’m back from the dead.
Accounting News Flash: Microsoft has announced a new version of its small business accounting software, Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 and Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2009 for UK customers.
Office Accounting 2009 is a free upgrade to those who are already using the 2008 version. For new users, there is a free Express edition which is suitable for the majority of start-ups and micro-businesses to get up and running. More established businesses will want to upgrade to the £149 Professional Edition to gain access to additional features such as PAYE and job accounting.
According to Microsoft, the new features in the 2009 version are:
- 10 new reports(75 reports total) Includes Today's Sales by Customer, Most Profitable Customers, Open Invoices by Due Date, YTD Sales Compared to Last Year, YTD Profit Compared to Last Year and more.
- Amounts to Pay Today gadget View accounting information conveniently on your desktop with the Amounts to Pay Today gadget. The Amounts to Pay Today gadget only works with Windows Vista® [TPL: also works in Windows 7]
- Enhanced Find an Accountant online directory Helps prospective clients easily find local accounting professionals who are familiar with Office Accounting using improved postal search code.
Visit www.msofficeaccounting.co.uk for more information on Office Accounting. MPAN memebers can find their new product key at the MPAN web site. Tip – if you are a UK customer, make sure you pull down the country selector and change it to UK before attempting to sign in to MPAN.
Are there any DSL experts out there? I need an opinion. I’ve been experiencing connection problems between my VoIP servers and on running some diagnostics I obtained the following results:
Hop 1 is my Small Business Server, the ADSL modem is configured in Bridge Mode so it doesn’t show up in the listing, hop 2 is the ISP’s equipment. The problems appear to be occurring mainly between hops 2 and 3, i.e. inside the ISP’s network. I raised a ticket with my ISP, who until now have an impeccable customer service record with me, and their response was:
“Dear Mr. Long, Theсе losses are caused by physical disconnections on the line. To resolve these disconnections please try: 1. Please connect directly to the test socket, it can be found inside the master phone socket when you remove the lower part of the front plate. 2. Please replace the micro filter you're currently using. 3. Please replace the DSL cable you're currently using. 4. Please make sure you have ADSL filters on all of your phone sockets, no matter if you use them or not. 5. We can increase your signal to noise ratio profile which will improve the stability, but unfortunately the speed will decrease. Please contact us if you keep experiencing problems.”
I know how to troubleshoot network issues, but I’m not an expert on ADSL technology. Is it really possible that this could be a problem in the local loop?
This is a common problem that occurs with Windows Help (.chm) files that have been downloaded from the Internet. Ever seen this?
Most people assume there is a problem with the help file, since the Help application opens, the Table of Contents is visible and can be navigated, but none of the content displays.
It is not very obvious what is going on here, but the “problem” is actually a security feature of Windows. Help files are essentially HTML and as such, can contain scripts, which are executable content. Windows knows the file came from the Internet, so it prevents the content from being displayed.
To view the help content, you first need to tell Windows that you trust the file. This is done by right-clicking the file icon and selecting Properties…
In the properties dialog box, you should see an Unblock button. Click it and your sorrows are over. Unless the file contains malicious code of course. You _do_ have antivirus installed, don’t you?
There are a couple of new components being developed for ASCOM (currently in beta testing) that will strengthen support for .NET development and eliminate some of the problems we’ve been having with Platform 5a. The two new components are called ASCOM.HelperNET and ASCOM.SettingsProvider. Peter Simpson (author of Conform) is working on the new Helper component while I’m building on top of that to create an integration with Visual Studio’s graphical user interface.
ASCOM.HelperNET
Farewell to the Registry
ASCOM drivers have typically used the Helper.Profile interface to store their settings in the Windows Registry. With the introduction of Windows Vista this has become problematic. Peter’s new Helper classes introduce a more compatible storage system that doesn’t use the registry. The new mechanism is 100% transparent to applications and drivers and they can simply continue to use Helper.Profile in blissful ignorance. When the new components run for the first time, all the settings are migrated from the ASCOM registry area into XML files stored in the file system. The new version of Helper.Profile will then use the XML files. The registry is left undisturbed, so programs and drivers that bypassed the recommended Helper.Profile interface will continue to work, however it should be clearly understood that directly accessing the ASCOM settings in the registry has always been discouraged and leaves you wide open to compatibility problems. You should always use Helper.Profile if you need to access a driver’s settings.
Hello to 64-bit ASCOM
Another issue has been 64-bit compatibility problems. ASCOM contains a number of 32-bit COM objects which has started to cause problems on 64-bit systems, which are rapidly growing in number. Windows does not allow calling into a 32-bit process from a 64-bit process. Drivers and applications developed in .NET can run as either 32-bit or 64-bit, by default they assume the architecture of the system they are running on. It was therefore necessary to force all ASCOM applications and drivers to run as 32-bit even on a 64-bit system. The new components are created as native .NET assemblies, so they are capable of running as 32-bit or 64-bit. This eliminates most (if not all) of the 32/64 bit compatibility issues.
Peter has put a lot of work into this stuff and he deserves a lot of credit for solving these important issues. He’s done a great job!
ASCOM.SettingsProvider
This is my part of the package and it builds upon Peter’s work to provide “glue” between Visual Studio’s settings designers and the ASCOM Helper.Profile class.
Handling Your Settings in Visual Studio
For users of Visual Studio, there is a much easier way of handling your settings. Visual Studio has graphical designers that allow you to create named settings, give them a default value, load and save them, bind them to controls on a form, and allow the user to edit them. You can do all this while writing almost no code. This relieves you of the responsibility of a number of tasks: reading each setting individually; converting it to the right type; putting the value into a control on the SetupDialog; getting the user’s edits; validation of data entry; scraping the edited values back from the controls; converting them back to text; and writing them back to the ASCOM Profile store.
The ASCOM.SettingsProvider component builds on top of the new ASCOM.HelperNET.Profile class and acts as the “glue” between the Visual Studio designers and the ASCOM Profile Store. The ASCOM driver templates will eventually be updated so they are pre-wired for this new feature but you can also retrofit existing code, if you like. Here’s how it works.
- Add a reference to ASCOM.SettingsProvider (this will show up under the .NET tab). You’ll probably also need to reference System.Configuration and ASCOM.HelperNET.
- Add a new Class to your project, call it SettingsProvider.cs and add the following code (replace the underlined items with the correct values for your driver):
using System.Configuration;
namespace ASCOM.SettingsProviderTest.Properties
{
[SettingsProvider(typeof(ASCOM.SettingsProvider))]
[ASCOM.DeviceId("ASCOM.SettingsProviderTest.Switch")]
internal sealed partial class Settings
{
}
}
Look Mum, No Code!
At least, once I’ve had a chance to update the templates, you will not need to write a single line of code to handle your driver’s settings. You’ll be able to just start editing them in the visual studio designers. Here’s how.
| Consider a trivial example of a SetupDialog that contains a single text box, into which the name of a Comm port can be entered. It’ll look like this: |
 |
| Click on the text box (I called it txtCommPort) and look at the properties panel. Expand the (Application Settings) node by clicking the little + symbol, then click the Browse button next to (PropertyBinding). |
 |
| We’ll be binding our setting to the Text property of the TextBox control. Visual Studio selects this as the default, so click the drop-down arrow next to Text, then select (New…) to create a new setting. The Settings Designer will open. |
 |
In the New Setting dialog, enter the default value for the setting, give it a name. Leave the scope set to User (we want the setting to be user editable). I’ve called my setting CommPort and given it the default value COM1.
Click OK when you’re happy. |
 |
Notice that our setting name – CommPort – now appears bound to the Text property. Also notice that our TextBox control now has a default value – COM1.
Click OK to close the property binding dialog. |
 |
Look again at the properties pane. Note that our newly-created property binding is now listed there. txtCommPort.Text is now bound to the CommPort setting.
One last thing to do. We need to hook up the OK button so that it saves the edited settings values. |
 |
Double-click the OK button to create an event handler. Visual Studio opens the code editor at the correct place. Add the single line of code shown:
(the driver templates will eventually be updated to automatically add this code for you). |
private void btnOK_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Properties.Settings.Default.Save();
}
|
We’re done. If you run your program you’ll be able to edit the text box value, click OK and the setting will be saved. You can verify that by closing the program and opening it again, your new value will be there, automatically loaded for you.
When you need to access the value of a setting in code, you can so so like this:
Note that your new setting has IntelliSense, and that it is strongly typed. This is a very convenient way to create and manage your settings. Settings don't have to be text, either. For example, on a CheckBox it makes sense to use a boolean setting. All the type conversion, validation, serialization and deserialization is handled by Visual Studio. For a complex driver with lots of settings, this can save hours of programming! Behind the scenes, your settings will be loaded and saved to disk using the underlying Helper.Profile interface, so you’ll still be keeping to the ASCOM standard way of handling settings.
Kudos to the BBC this week for (in my opinion) the best episode ever of Click, the BBC’s technology magazine programme. In this special edition of the programme, Spencer Kelly presents the results of a six month investigation into hacking and cyber crime. The programme demonstrates, for the first time on TV, how easy it is to purchase a 20,000 strong BotNet then use it to send spam and take down web sites using a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service Attack).
The ease with which it is possible to do this is simply jaw-dropping. This has really brought home what a serious business cybercrime is becoming. I use the work ‘business’ deliberately. These are no longer hackers and vandals. Cyber crime means big money. The software is professionally produced by expert programmers, with high quality graphical user interfaces that anyone can use, and the botnets are cheap at just a few tens of dollars per 1,000 zombies.
At the end of the programme, Spencer announced that the BBC will be self-destructing their botnet, but not before changing each infected computer’s desktop wallpaper to a message from the BBC, informing them that “You’ve Been Clicked”.
The BBC must surely be risking prosecution as a result of this experiment, but I applaud them loudly for this information is clearly in the public interest. Anyone who doubts that cybercrime is a real problem should watch this special edition of Click. Get it now through BBC iPlayer, or from the BBC web site here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7932816.stm
As a parting shot, the programme gives some solid advice on preventing an infection. If you’re a business, you’ve simply got to understand that we are living in a new age. The Internet is becoming criminalised just like every other walk of life. To ignore this is to court disaster. Talk to your IT company about a security review! My company offers this as a free service, so if you are in South Wales look us up at www.tigranetworks.co.uk.
Highly recommended viewing, for computer users and IT professionals alike.
I’m experimenting with social networking at the moment and in particular, LinkedIn. Light bulbs are starting to turn on.
One of the pieces in the jigsaw is a service that picks up my blog RSS feeds and automatically creates a tweet for me on Twitter (follow me on Twitter). This in turn feeds back into LinkedIn via the Company Buzz application. Plus, I post links to my blog articles using the News feature of various LinkedIn groups that I belong to.
Most people on LinkedIn either create or join groups of peers. I’ve come to the conclusion that is the wrong approach. Others have the right idea, but they create a group then don’t promote it. You’d be amazed at how many groups have a membership of one. So, what I’m doing is creating groups that my customers (or potential customers) might be interested in joining. A good example of such 
a group is “South Wales Businesses” which pretty accurately describes my target market. I exported a list of potential members from my CRM database, then uploaded them to LinkedIn as pre-approved members. I then sent them all an invitation to join the group. I made some business cards with the group’s URL and handed them out at an event I attended on social networking. That particular group is 2 weeks old and I already have 30 members, making it the 5th largest networking group (on LinkedIn) in Wales. I hope to grow that to 100 by the end of March and capture third place.
Having created the group, how to use it? It’s no good if it just sits there doing nothing. I actively post news articles and discussion topics, about one a week, just enough to keep my name in people’s minds but not too much to be annoying. I also try to answer questions occasionally and ask a few of my own.
The jury is out on whether any of this works.
If you know me and you’re not in my LinkedIn network, please visit my profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/timlong and at the top right you’ll find a link to add me to your network. Please do add me – but only if you know me. I never accept connections from people I’ve never heard of, that would just dilute the value of my network. See you online.
Follow me on Twitter | Join me on LinkedIn | Electric Dreams Blog | TiGra Networks Blog
Microsoft has realised that the world extends beyond Seattle and New York.
Currently, the time zone within Windows Azure is Pacific Standard Time (PST). Soon, we will be migrating to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This is potentially a breaking change for applications which rely on local time.
Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, runs on 5 massive data centres spread geographically around the globe. There’s one in Ireland. I wonder how they ever thought that Pacific Time was going to be the correct choice? What is the meaning of “local time” in a global economy?
Globalization issues have always been a problem for software developers. In the field of Astronomy, the thing that I regularly see breaking applications (which are predominantly developed in the USA) is when some upstart European runs them, with their comma-for-decimal-point and funny date format. Cloud services presents some interesting software design challenges, now that two successive users might be in different hemispheres. Another area that regularly trips up developers, believe it or not, is handling text. Many (including myself until recently) are stuck in the mindset that all text is stored as ASCII. That simply isn’t the case any more, there is no such thing as ‘plain text’. What there is, is text stored in a particular encoding. That encoding may be ASCII, but it is more likely to be UTF-8 which just happens to mostly coincide with ASCII (by design), or it may be a completely different encoding. Joel Spolsky wrote a great introduction to Unicode on his blog.
Software developers have to get better at this stuff.
Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook.msp): February 24, 2009
The above downloadable hotfix provides many performance improvements and fixes for Outlook 2007. There are fixes for many long-standing issues, like Outlook’s extreme reluctance to exit properly, for example (but see later).
Be aware that after installation, Outlook needs to scan the entire message store and this process can take a fair time to complete.
When I installed this hotfix, my Outlook would not launch correctly. I do use a couple of add-ins, including Dynamics CRM for Outlook, LinkedIn, and Xobni. Perhaps there was a compatibility problem with one of these add-ins, but after a couple of attempts Outlook started in safe mode and managed to complete it’s one-time scan of the mailbox. Once that was complete, Outlook was able to start successfuly in normal mode, with add-ins enabled.
My office PC is very resource constrained and there didn’t seem to be any immediately obvious performance increase. The changes seemed to send the content indexer into a spin and Outlook seemed to take forever to load. When you’re waiting that long, it’s hard to tell if anything happened faster. However, once the dust has settled, Outlook does seem a lot “quieter” with hardly any disk activity even when switching between folders, and it does seem to start up much faster. This aspect of the hotfix is most satisfactory.
Disappointingly, despite Microsoft’s claims that the problem is fixed, Outlook still does not exit when commanded to do so. Once in this condition, no new instances of Outlook can be launched until the rogue process has been terminated. Very disappointing. On the other hand, Outlook does seem to start up a lot faster and that annoying “Outlook is scanning the information store” process has been eliminated.
Microsoft claims it is good at listening. No doubt, they do listen to some customers some of the time, but I am constantly infuriated by the way Microsoft treats feedback from beta testers. Take this example.
Despite the interest in this piece of feedback, with 140 users giving it a very high average rating of somewhere between “Important” and “Very important” and the existence of 7 other items of feedback duplicating this item, the product teams have closed this issue and dismissed it as “By Design”. The issue in question is the little network icon in the system tray. In XP, there was one icon per network connection; in Vista a single icon aggregating all network connections. The icons could be animated to show when there was network activity. The animation may seem trivial, but it was a very useful at-a-glance confidence indication for the user and a troubleshooting resource for the IT professional. In Windows 7 the animation is gone. The icon sits there, lifeless, taking up space.
Microsoft’s justification for this is twofold. First, they say that the whole task bar is “cleaner and quieter in Windows 7”. That is certainly true, but in XP and Vista the animations were off by default, so that would meet the cleaner/quieter requirement. Second, and this is laughable, “[the animation was] removed for power concerns as the animation could drain batteries faster”. I’ll wait while you split your sides laughing. The power saving agenda is also met by the off-by-default condition.
The fact is, Microsoft asks for feedback, which includes suggestions as well as bug reports, but then they treat everything as a bug report. They then dismiss the feedback they don’t like on the basis that it isn’t a bug (“by design”). Microsoft, we know it is by design. What we are telling you is that we don’t like the design. We are giving you the feedback you asked for and you are ignoring it. You are NOT listening. This is a beta test – surely there is still time to make changes in response to feedback? Ah, the sound of a nail being struck squarely on the head. When you only listen to the feedback that you agree with, that is not a dialogue, it is spin; an illusion of feedback.
This is a consequence of the politicization of the beta test (see also: beta is the new product release, since when have betas been mandatory?). Microsoft betas are no longer about engineering, they are all about marketing and politics. By the time a beta is issued, all the important design decisions have already been made and the so-called beta testers are, in the main, just having their time wasted. Microsoft has MVPs, software engineering and technical communities, people with above average interest, skills and the ability to do sensible beta testing, yet the first beta release goes out to the general public - millions of users - and is rolled out as part of a product announcement at a marketing event. Just look at the Internet Explorer 8 beta, featured on the microsoft.com home page, no less. That’s not a beta, it is a marketing exercise. Microsoft needs to regain its engineering focus for beta tests, and get its technical communities involved at a much earlier stage in the engineering cycle, before they open “testing” to the general public. Call it a beta or call it something else, but get back the engineering focus.
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