In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.

“I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft research scientist and co-author, with Shamsi Iqbal of the University of Illinois, of a paper on the study that will be presented next month.

“If it’s this bad at Microsoft,” Mr. Horvitz added, “it has to be bad at other companies, too.”

More fun with Vista.  I love the OS, and there's so much to recommend it, but I keep running into WEIRD problems!  Here's another one...  I like to listen to DotNetRocks, Hanselminutes, and other podcasts during my commute to and from client sites.  They offer downloads in both WMA and MP3 formats.  I've generally used MP3, but thought, "Hey, I should switch to WMA, since that's native to Windows Media.  Unfortunately, when I tried to drag any WMA files onto Windows Media 11 in Vista, it won't allow me to drop them onto the 'To Burn List', or add them any other way I was able to see.  However, MP3 files can be dragged onto the burn list easily.  Weird.  So, I guess it's back to MP3s. 

NOTE:  For those of you writing to tell me what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it so that it works, I appreciate it.  However, my main complaint isn't that I can't spend 30 minutes (or even 10) trying to figure it out and making it work, it's taht Vista/WM11 seems to choke on native files, but easily support MP3s.

Here's a great tool for agile development that was mentioned in a blog post below.  Go get a stack of these!  Shuffle them, pass them around, put your use stories on them, and slap them up on the board when you're ready!  Here's one more link.

Post-it® Sortable Cards only stick when you want them to! Now you have the flexibility to visualize and organize when and how you want on many different surfaces. Cards also easily sort, shuffle and stack together so you can use them again, or store them for later.

We do a lot of training around the US, and often we depend on computers at the company to be trainined.  However, in many cases, we need to provide computers.  For our training next week at a large government contractor, I decided to look outside our normal channels (which is a training center that has a mobile lab, but is often booked out for their own training) and look for someone new.  Although I got bids from several companies, one company really stood out:  Bit-by-Bit Compnuter Rentals.  The customer service rep who I spoke to was Josh Highland.  Not only was he very helpful, he was very capable and knowledgeable.  Since they are nationwide, and provide such good service, we'll definitely be working with them in the future.  If any of you have a need for computer rentals, I recommend contacting Josh at Bit-by-Bit. 

Microsoft will be releasing an Express version of their XNA development environment free!  :-)  That means that folks like you and I can create our applications for the XBox 360 (and, simultaneously for Windows) much more easily!  That is cool!  I expect a development community to spring up with free games, trial games, and all sorts of non-game applications as well.  Fun!  You can read more about it here.

Oh, my goodness!  How cool is this!  :-)  I just found out about the Microsoft Robotics Studio, and had to blog it...  Here's the background, from the site (which you can find here).

The goal of the Microsoft Robotics Studio is to supply a software platform for the robotics community that can be used across a wide variety of hardware, applicable to a wide audience of users, and development of a wide variety of applications.

The Microsoft Robotics Studio delivers three areas of software:

1. A scalable, extensible runtime architecture that can span a wide variety of hardware and devices. The programming interface can be used to address robots using 8-bit or 16-bit processors as well as 32-bit systems with multi-core processors and devices from simple touch sensors to laser distance finding devices.
2. A set of useful tools that make programming and debugging robot applications scenarios easier. These include a high quality visual simulation environment that uses the Ageia Technologies™ PhysX™ engine.
3. A set of useful technology libraries services samples to help developers get started with writing robot applications.

I haven't used it yet.  (Too busy with paying work.)  But I'll let you know how it goes when I can get my hands on it more completely!

"Bend to Evil" is an anagram of Google's "Don't be Evil" byline.  I generally hold Google in high regard for its strong vision of an interconnected world where information is free, open and shared.  But I also understand their need to make money.  Still, I'm disheartened by their decision to actively censor search results on their newly installed Chinese servers.  The Chinese government believes concepts like freedom and democracy are not in the best interests of their subjects, and like any good nanny state, is trying to protect their people from these dangerous thoughts.  Enter Google.  Google, who proudly proclaimed that it did not censor search results, has decided that to best serve the Chinese market, they'll take direction from the Chinese government as to what people should be able to see.  Now, i believe Google has good motives; you can read their defense here.  However, I'm still dismayed for a few reasons:

1. Google has officially removed their Official Censorship statement.  In their FAQ, they had a heading titled "Does Google censor search results?" The very first sentence was "Google does not censor results for any search term."  The entire FAQ heading has now been removed.  They didn't try to explain their position, or justify why they've decided to censor.  Instead, the FAQ term just disappeared.  My question, if this was a common Frequently Asked Question before, do they really think it ISN'T now?  (Read more: here)
2. When a company decides to forgo one of their key foundation principles in pursuit of some other goal (profit, or new markets, or to benefit the Chinese people...), they are stepping down a slippery slope.  Sure, maybe censoring for China isn't a big deal (and at least Google, unlike MSN or Yahoo! put a notice on the search results saying the results were censored), but once a concession has been made for China, how long before one is made for Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Canada, the United States?

Of course, there are lot's of folks poking fun, and I'd be remiss not to share a couple of those...  Michelle Malkin is running a competition for new Google logos. You can find the first two batches here and here.  I'll post just a couple...

A newspaper from New Zealand has this whopper about married couples:

“Most people say they still find their partners sexually attractive, and still have enjoyable sex lives. But faced with a choice of going without sex or losing weight, a whopping 93% would chose shedding some kilos.“

So, what's up with the other 7%?

I noted the concept of the “Long Tail” in a recent post.  Looks like the author of the piece in Wired has an extensive blog that covers many, many instances.  It can be found at http://longtail.typepad.com/.  Check it out!  It's a great read!

Total sales of unpopular items often exceed total sales of popular items.  Consider some stats from a recent article in Wired magazine. 

The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are... Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: "The biggest money is in the smallest sales."

Next think music sales.  A record store carries only the most popular items.  The ones they can sell.  But how much of a market is there for minor tracks?  Consider Rhapsody, an online music streaming service (which I subscribe to, and enjoy):

Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000.

For those of us thinking about how to make money online, there are some important consequences.  Try to think of all the really successful online businesses.  Which ones exploit the 'long tail'?  Ebay?  Clearly!  Nearly everything there is a 'one off'.  Amazon.com?  Yep, see above.  Google.  I'd guess yes; that most of their ad revenue comes from very targeted ads related to searches.  Netflix?  Again, there are thousands of movies in the 'long tail'.  I'm a Netflix subscriber.  Mostly because it's the only place in the US I can get reliable access to German language DVDs.  Any others?  Can you think of a very successful online business that doesn't rely on the long tail? 

<mathGeek> The Associated Press (AP) quotes (evidently without analysis) numbers from National Coalition of the Homeless.  They claim that there are 3.5 million homeless in the US.  Now, I don't know how many there are, and it has little to do with innumeracy.  But they then claim that their are 3,000 deaths of homeless people every year.  The focus of the article was on the tragedy of homeless deaths.  To me, even one homeless person having to die alone, and on the street is too many.  But here's where the math comes in...  3,000 deaths from 3.5 million homeless gives a death rate of 0.0857%.  That seemed suspiciously low.  A quick check of the CIA World Fact Book states that the death rate for the entire US is 8.34 deaths per thousand, or a rate of 0.834%.  So, if the numbers are correct, you are 10 times LESS likely to die if you are homeless. 

This seems highly unlikely to me, as homelessness seems, on first blush, to be less healthy than having a place to live.  However, it may be that homeless people tend to be young and healthy.  Or it could be that the at least one of the numbers given by the National Coalition of the Homeless is incorrect.  I'm guessing that the number of deaths is fairly well documented, while the number of homeless must be determined statistically.  If that's the case, a more likely number of homeless in the US would be around 350,000, assuming a mortality rate approximately equal to the rest of the population.  Once again, there may be many factors that influence the actual number, but a very quick 'reality-check' on the numbers reveals the possibility of very serious numerical errors.  (It looks like the NCH is overstating the number of homeless by 3.15 million.)  Homelessness is a very real problem, but drastically inflating the size of the problem for attention does nobody any favors.  Once people BS-meters are triggered, then it's hard to take anything else said seriously, thus damaging your cause. (Hat Tip: Wall Street Journal Online)</mathGeek>

Merry Christmas to everyone out there!  May you have peace and joy this holiday season!  I'm off to Portland to celebrate the Christmas story with family.  See you before New Year!

Scott Duffy sometimes writes a bit about VSTS.  Not often, but enough for me to keep checking back to his blog often.  His last post had something that just struck me.  He puts it like this:

* A word about recognition: to me, recognition is simply that someone accurately understands how difficult a problem was to solve.

This rings true to me.  Which is sometimes where management makes mistakes.  Yes, it's good to congratulate someone on a job well done.  But it means so much less coming from someone who doesn't understand the job.  A “Wow!” under the breath of a fellow programmer, is far more recognition that a plaque handed out at the company Christmas party by someone unaware of what you really, really do. 

By the way, a public thanks to my business partner, Rich Hundhausen.  He's one of the finest, most professional developers I know, and when he says “Looks good.” in his understated way, it's a compliment that's difficult to match.