Continuing my series of posts about my visit to Microsoft (Day 1, Day 2 part 1, Day 2 part 2, Day 2 part 3, Day 3 Part 1, Day 3 Part 2), its time to talk about part 2 of day 2 of my visit where I got to visit the 1 vs 100 studios, make an appearance on 1 vs 100 Live, shop at the company store and much more!  I was saving the best for last, so here we go!

After more travel to another building, I had the pleasure of meeting with Colin Riley, a Technical Artist on the 1 vs 100 team.  I really wish I could share the contents of the meeting, but unfortunately it was pretty much all NDA because most of what I got to see was how the game worked and how everything comes together to make the awesome game that tens of thousands of people get to play.  I will say that I always find it interesting to see what the developers see when they are making a game.  By that I mean, I love getting to see how they put together various lighting, animations and all kinds of other stuff that come together to make a great game.  Anybody who has seen any video game's making of videos, knows what I am talking about.

After that awesome experience, it was time to shop till we dropped at the company store.  As tempted as I was to walk away with some deeply discounted software, I didn't really need it so instead I came out with a kit of the HD cables and stuff for my Zune HD, a couple of hats (I am a big hat person) and a wall USB charger.  After the power brick failure incident, I want to make sure I have a good way of charging all of my USB devices in the future in the event that my computers are out of operation.  There is also a really cool computing museum across the hall from the store that I got to browse through.  The museum had everything from the old brick phones (still my favorite kind of phones) to the latest laptops and surface tables.  If you ever get a chance to check it out, I highly recommend it as you are greeted by this huge globe projection that is really cool.  It also makes for a great trip down memory lane.

After our shopping spree, our night continued to get better as we headed over to the 1 vs 100 Live studio for the live airing of the show.  Prior to the show, we got to meet all of the crew and take a look around all of the fancy studio equipment.  What I wouldn't give to have that kind of a recording setup for Global Geek News.  We were the largest live audience they have ever had for a show so they had to take out the couch that they normally have in the studio and replace it with a bunch of chairs.  It got rather cramped in there with all of us.  A little before the game started, we got to have some awesome pizza delivered from some place I can't recall.  It was really good though and the slices were HUGE!  After the great pizza, it was about time for us to all head back into the studio from the lounge where we were eating to get ready for the show.  Having played the game many times before, it was like seeing it for the first time after knowing how it all worked in the background and it was also interesting to see what the guys in the studio see as far as knowing how many people got a question right or wrong ect.

After watching the show for a little bit and getting to see how things are run in the studio, we were asked to come up with a question for the game.  Several of us in the studio gathered together to come up with a question and some possible answers.  We mistakenly assumed that our question would be apart of the normal game as far as the players selecting the answer out of a series of possible answers.  As soon as we realized that wasn't the case and we wanted something that we thought would be kind of easy for some but challenging for a lot of people, the group chose my question of who was the top selling solo artist of all time (A:  Garth Brooks).  A couple of minutes later, I was invited into the recording booth with the game's host, Chris Cashman where I got to see what things were like on his end and then I got to ask the question to all of the people playing across the US and Canada (Around 30,000 or so I believe).  That was by far the largest audience I have ever spoken in front of but I was not nervous at all as it really felt no different than when I record the Global Geek News Podcast.  It also helps that I have come to enjoy public speaking.  After asking the question, I got to stay in the booth with Chris and watch the answers come pouring into the show's email.  I was shocked that it took like 10 minutes for somebody to get the right answer when the answer was fairly big news in music circles just a year ago.  Most people thought that it was either Michael Jackson or Mariah Carrey (I'm still not sure why she was such a popular answer).  Eventually there was a winner and shortly after I left the booth so others could go in and check out the booth experience.

After that awesome experience, I just hung out in the studio watching the rest of the game and wishing I was a home playing along so I could up my score.  After the game and before we headed back to the hotel, I got to spend a bit of time chatting with Chris Cashman.  It is amazing how cool and funny he is.  Ever since that night, we have been corresponding regularly via email and he even did the new intro for the podcast!  I plan on him being on the show very soon!  It is really cool to know the guy on the other end of my favorite casual game.

After that, we headed back to the hotel as our amazing time at Microsoft was over.  I really look forward to working there in the future and I will definitely be increasing my efforts to get some kind of job there, even if it is just as a contract worker or as an intern.  The following day I flew back home on a rather uneventful trip which is nice.  I enjoy any trip where I don't have to wait in a huge line at the TSA only to be hassled about the various electronics or whatever in my bag.

I want to thank everybody from Microsoft that had a part in the trip as it was one of the highlights of my life (assuming we aren't talking about the dinner from hell) and I am eternally grateful for the experiences I got to have and the amazing people I got to meet.

Now back to your normal Global Geek News Blog posts.

Continuing my series of posts about my visit to Microsoft (Day 1, Day 2 part 1, Day 2 part 2, Day 2 part 3, Day 3 Part 1), its time to talk about part 2 of day 2 of my visit where I got to get the low down on what is going on with XNA, make an appearance on 1 vs 100 Live, shop at the company store and much more!  Here we go!

When we arrived at Studio A, which was the building we were to meet Stephanie Reimann, we were greated by one of the coolest pieces of art I have ever seen.  Just inside the door, there is what looks like a giant ocean wave created from hundreds if not thousands of old music records.  I wish I had taken a picture of it because it was really cool.  If I ever get back in that building, I will make sure to take a picture of it.  After a short wait, we were told that Stephanie was busy so we would be meeting primarily with Michael Klucher, the Program Manager for XNA.

Michael talked with us for close to an hour about XNA.  From XNA's history to what it has become, it was a great conversation.  Although I haven't played with XNA in probably a year and a half, when I have used it, I really enjoyed it and from the conversation we had, it sounds like there has been a lot of improvements since I last used it so I will likely be playing with it again in the very near future.  For those that don't know what XNA is, it is a great framework for creating games for the PC, Xbox 360 and even the Zune.  When I created Pong with it, it seemed to me that it was far easier to make games with than just working with managed DirectX even though very closely tied.  If you are interested I highly recommend checking it out at http://www.creators.xna.com.  After learning more about XNA than I ever thought I would, as we were getting ready to head to lunch, Stephanie Reimann made an appearance and she came bearing special XNA branded 8GB Zune 2nd gen portable media players for each of us!  With this Zune (That I still have in its box), I now have a 30GB 1st gen Zune, an 8GB 2nd Gen Zune and a Zune HD.  The XNA branding on this Zune is really cool and I definitely love it!  After our surprise Zune gifts, we walked over to the Commons area for lunch.

Like the previous day, the lunch at the Commons was quite good and we had more great discussions with multiple Microsoft employees about what they do and what it is like to work at Microsoft.  I have wanted to work for Microsoft all of my life, but until getting to talk to some of the employees, I never realized just how cool it would be to work for.  Google isn't the only one with a really cool work environment!

After lunch, we met back up in Building 99 where we spent some time talking about the Student Insiders program and how we could do some cross promotion and collaborate on things in the future.  It was a nice little work session, but the best part of the day was yet to come.  After our little work session, it was time to find out about the inner workings of 1 vs 100 Live!

That is all for Part 2 of Day 2.  Check back tomorrow where I talk about the final part of my trip to Microsoft including my appearance on 1 vs 100 Live!

Continuing my series of posts about my visit to Microsoft (Day 1, Day 2 part 1, Day 2 part 2, and Day 2 part 3), its time to talk about day 2 of my visit where I got to get the low down on what is going on with XNA, make an appearance on 1 vs 100 Live, shop at the company store and much more!  Here we go!

Unlike the first day, day 2 didn't start off at Microsoft's main campus.  Day 2 started at Microsoft's offices in Lincoln Square.  Before heading up to breakfast on the top floor, we had to check in on a different floor (14 I think?).  The view from the building, especially once we got all signed in and were able to get up to the top floor to have breakfast, was amazing.  It was a cloudy, dreary day, but the view was still spectacular.  The food was again great and we got to talk to Mark Hindsbo and Scott Davidson, Directors for Evangelism in the US and the conversation was awesome.  We spent at least a good half an hour or so talking about technology and online culture and similar topics and how they have changed over the years.  I was enjoying myself so much that I wished I didn't have to go to my next meeting which I also enjoyed.

After breakfast, I had the privilege of setting down with Sean Foley.  Sean runs the marketing for Windows.  The conversation I got to have with Sean was great.  It felt like more of a feeback session than anything where I got to express what I thought Microsoft was doing right and what they were doing wrong when it came to marketing and their business  strategy for many of their products and it was great to be able to give somebody feedback who can do something about the issues that I see rather than just blogging about them and praying that somebody in charge happens to see what I am talking about and can do something about it.  It gave me some great insights as to how Microsoft is positioning itself and the message that they are trying to convey to their consumers.  After this great conversation came to an end, another conversation which I wish wouldn't have come to an end so soon, I met up with the Student Insider crew again to meet with Jodi Ellias.

I walked into the meeting a couple of minutes late since I kind of last track of my time when I was talking to Sean so I am not sure exactly what all was said, but when I got there, after some quick introductions like we did with everybody we got to talk to, we became a soundboard for a possible marketing campaign.  Jodi Ellias runs the marketing to students and faculty in the US so she was pitching some ideas to us about marketing Microsoft and their educational programs to students and she was curious was we thought as technology loving students and how we thought the initiative would be accepted by other technology loving students.  This was probably my first "focus group" type experience and I can't say how much I enjoyed it.  The feedback and conversation was amazing and its great to know that Microsoft is interested in what somebody like me thinks to the point that it can help shape their future marketing efforts for a huge audience.  When we finished giving our feedback, it was time to head over to the main campus to meet with Stephanie Reimann, the Marketing Manager for the XNA team.

That is it for Part 1 of Day 2 at Microsoft.  Come back tomorrow to find out what happened next!

I have a big announcement to make.  After months of talking about getting it done, I finally have the Global Geek News Online Store ready to go!

You can find all kinds of Global Geek News merchandise in our online store, from shirts to stickers and even chef's aprons, there is something for pretty much anybody in the store.

Help support Global Geek News and spread the word by wearing some Global Geek News apparel.  Purchases you make help to pay for the cost of keeping Global Geek News running, so go buy lots of stuff!

By the time I finished up with my meeting with Josh, it was about dark and time to head back to building 99 to regroup with the rest of the Student Insider crew to head to Joey's in Seattle for dinner.  As much as I would love to say that I enjoyed  dinner, that would be a complete lie.  Rant time!  After a nice little drive to the restaurant, we are quickly seated in the extremely poorly lit bar area where it was so dark I could barely read the menu.  As soon as we got our drinks and were about to have our order taken, somebody mentioned that they weren't 21 which is apparently a problem in Washington.  For whatever insane reason, apparently there is a law in Washington that states that if you are under 21, you can't even sit in the bar area, even if you aren't drinking or anything.  This makes no sense to me considering its not like you can't order alcohol in the rest of the restaurant anyway.  Whatever.  So once everybody realized the fact that we were breaking the law, we were moved to the main dining section of the restaurant that seemed to be a lot louder and only slightly better lit.  The longer we were there, the louder it got as the place started to fill up.  I am guessing it is an acoustics thing because it quickly got so loud that I couldn't hear the people on the other side of the table from me.  Since I couldn't hear anybody, I pointed myself towards the bar where they had the X Games on.  Originally, I had plans to go to the Winter X Games this year until the awesome opportunity to go to Microsoft came up  so I was happy that I at least got to watch the X Games, even if I had to watch it from halfway across the restaurant with no audio.  The service at the restaurant was by far, the slowest restaurant experience I have ever had.  With dinner and desert and everything, we were there for close to 3 hours.  We would have been there longer so that people could finish their deserts had we not been trying to rush to the Space Needle before it closed, only to have had it just close before we got there.  I also would like to state how horrible the waiter was.  In the near 3 hours that we were there, I was never offered to have my drink refilled, I was never asked how my food was and he never asked if there was anything else that I needed.  I was even more irritated when apparently he managed to ask everybody but me if they wanted desert.  If I was his boss, I would have fired him on the spot.  When we eventually got our very overpriced food ($30 for a tiny steak with mashed potatoes stuffed in an something that looked like an eggroll), my steak was undercooked for my liking, something I definitely regretted the following morning if you know what I mean.  When we realized what time it was and when the Space Needle closes, we made a mad dash for the van and I can honestly say I have never been happier to get out of a restaurant in all of my life.

After a quick drive over to the Space Needle, we ran up to the doors only to find them locked.  After repeated attempts to convince the employees inside to let us in and take us up, we gave up, took a few pictures and headed back to the hotel for the night.  Having been to the Needle the last time I was up at Microsoft for a job interview, I wasn't terribly disappointed by not getting to go up although I would have like to have seen what it was like at night as last time I was there in the day and it was partly cloudy.  Once we returned returned to the hotel, myself and a couple of the other Student Insiders decided to hang out in one of the rooms and talk until around 2 A.M.  At that point. We went back to our rooms and I spent about an hour before bed trying to catch up on all of the news that I had missed that day.  You never realize just how many items you get on your Google Reader until you don't check it for a day.  Around 3 A.M. I went to bed to wake up a couple of hours later since we headed off to Microsoft again at 8 A.M. the next morning.

Stay tuned to find out about my awesome 2nd day at Microsoft including my appearance on Xbox Live's 1 vs 100 Live!

After the legal discussion, we broke for lunch back at the Commons.  This time, I got to explore the commons and all the various different food stations it has to offer, from seafood to pizza, if you want it, they probably have it.  The variety of food you can get there really is amazing.  What really amazed me is that it is not just food, but there are cell phone stores from a couple of carriers, a bank and even a bike shop in the Commons area so Microsoft employees can get their bike worked on or make changes to their wireless carrier while they are at lunch.  During each of our visits to the commons, we had various Microsoft employees come and eat with us and talk to us about everything from the products that they work on to the health benefits that Microsoft offers their employees.  Unfortunately I don't recall the names of everybody we met with over lunch but it was great talking with them and learning about what they do and what Microsoft does for its employees and how much they love the company for it.

After lunch, we split up and got to meet with people from various teams throughout Microsoft for most of the afternoon.  First, I got to meet with Mark Hopkins and Luis Cabrera-Cordon who work on the Microsoft Surface team.  We got to spend close to a half an hour playing with Surface (something I have done on a couple of other occasions but only to a small extent) and learning about how it works, Microsoft's vision for the product, what powers it, how they test it and how crazy expensive it is($12,500 for just the unit, $15000 for a developer unit according to wikipedia which is a little higher than I believe we were told but in the same ballpark).   It is amazing what the Surface tables can do.  It uses 5 IR cameras to detect whatever is touching the table and uses special tags, kind of like a bar code to bring up information about something.  This was demonstrated to us with business cards where the card was placed on the Surface and the persons information was read from the tag and brought up on the table.  We were shown all kinds of really cool things and I have a video of most of it which I will try to get posted soon so you guys can see just how cool the device is.  After we finished learning about and playing with the Surface, I headed to yet another building (pretty much everything was in a different building.  It is amazing just how many buildings that Microsoft has) to meet Dan Fernandez (blog) and Brian Keller (blog) from Channel 9.  They had planned for me to be on This Week in Channel 9 but unfortunately that wasn't communicated to whoever planned our schedule and because I had to be at the Scott Hanselman (blog) presentation, I never got to take advantage of that opportunity.  I did get to check out the Channel 9 studios however and the equipment in there is amazing.  From some awesome lighting to all of the recording equipment, it was everything I could do to keep from drooling and trying to sneak out with some equipment to spice up the Global Geek News Podcast.  Someday I hope to make it back so that I can be on one of the Channel 9 shows but who knows when that day will come.

Like I mentioned, my next stop was a meeting with Scott Hanselman in yet another building where I met back up with the other insiders.  At the time, I didn't realize how big of a deal it was to meet Scott.  Apparently in the developers/Microsoft employee circles, he is a bit of an all star in the company and even has a great podcast.  Apparently he works in another state and rarely makes it to the Microsoft main campus so the fact that we could steal an hour of his time is a big deal or so I am told.  The meeting with Scott was a lot of fun as he is a barrel of laughs.  He spent the hour talking to us about parallel computing and showing us just how efficient it is.  He showed us some code that blew my mind (I haven't done any parallel programming in all of my years as a programmer).  He showed us code for doing parallel queries to a SQL database and demonstrated just how much faster it is when you take advantage of the multiple cores on today's processors.  I was quite impressed to say the least.   Speaking of numbers, after our meeting with Scott, I got to go visit with Josh Carroll.

Josh Carroll works on the Telemetry team.  Never heard of the Telemetry team?  Neither had I, but I quickly found out just how important the team was at for various products at Microsoft.  The telemetry team is responsible for the automatically collected data such as crash information and details sent through the feedback tool and such and relays the data back to the teams in charge of the various products so that they can fix bugs and see how users are trying to use the software for future improvements.  The information that they interpret and pass on to the product teams played a large part in how great Windows 7 is.  For a little more on the team and how the information they gathered was used to shape the final release of Windows 7, I highly recommend checking out this article at Ars Technica.  Anyway, the meeting with Josh went great and it gave me some great insight into what happens when users send those crash reports to Microsoft when something goes wrong.  I have always been one to submit my crash reports whenever I have them but never realized that they were really being used much until now.  Thanks to this meeting, whenever somebody asks if they should submit crash reports, I always make sure to tell them to do it because it can make a big difference in future patches and releases.

I will cut off part 2 of day 2 right here.  Stay tuned for the final part of Day 2, our night activities, which should be up within the next 24 hours and then we will be on to the most exciting day, Day 3 which includes my appearance on 1 vs 100 Live!

First, I apologize to the folks at Microsoft as well as my readers about not getting these posts up sooner.  I had planned on this going up a day or two after the first post about the travel day that I posted like 3 weeks ago.   Anyway, now that MIX 2010 is over, I can get back to my series of posts about my trip to Microsoft.  Due to posts turning out to be much longer than I expected, I am breaking them up by more than just days.  In the case of Day 2, the first day at Microsoft, it will be broken up into 3 posts so that it is not some huge mass of text that will take you a while to read.  Day 3 will be the same way.  Anyway, lets talk about my first day at Microsoft!

Although this wasn't my first trip to Microsoft as I have flown up to the campus in the past for job interviews and got a very quick run through of a couple of buildings in the past when I was visiting some family that works at Microsoft, this was the first time that I got a real feel for life and the atmosphere at Microsoft.

The morning of our first day at Microsoft, we were shuttled from our amazing hotel, the Mariot Hotel in the Redmond Town Center to the Microsoft campus where I gathered with the other Student Insiders and the wonderful ladies that are in charge of the Student Insider program shortly before heading to an area called the Commons for breakfast.  For cafeteria food, the food was really good.  There were all of the normal breakfast foods available from fruits to eggs to sausage and of course bacon.  Although I found the commons area to be impressive, it wasn't until later that I realized just how huge it was and how much it had to offer.  Anyway, after eating a great breakfast, we headed back to Building 99 where we first gathered where things really got going.  We started out with an introduction to our training which was interesting although I can't say I paid as close of attention as I should have because the power inverter on my netbook, the only computer I brought with me died as soon as I plugged it into one of the outlets at the table.  The introduction was interesting, I just wish I wasn't so preoccupied that I could have gotten more out of it.  Normally I wouldn't have been in such a panic except that the netbook was the only computer I brought on the trip and everything I had with me, from my phone to my iPod Touch and Zune was USB powered and without a computer to power at least my phone, I would be kind of screwed.  Luckily, I was brought a spare power brick around lunch time which really saved my butt.

After our introduction, we got to meet with Microsoft's great blogger from Australia, Frank Arrigo.  The discussion we got to have we him was extremely valuable.  From how we might improve our blogs and podcasts to how best to foster a community around our sites, it was an great discussion and I wish it didn't have to end as quickly as it did.  After that fascinating discussion, we were informed about our responsibilities as bloggers, specifically what we need to do and keep in mind when it things like FTC guidelines for blogging and disclosing things that we receive and  stuff like that.  Having kept a very close eye on this topic ever since the FTC said that bloggers will have to disclose products that they are given and such, there was nothing here that I didn't already know.

Speaking of which, as soon as I get a chance, I am going to create a disclosure page so that I am completely transparent and you guys can know exactly what I have received or whatever in exchange for blog posts or mentions on the podcast or whatever.  I will make sure to have this page up shortly after MIX (I hope).  Since this seems like a decent cut-off point for this part of day one, that is it for part 1 of Day 2.  Stay tuned and part 2 will be up sometime within the next 24 hours.

I meant to get this post up last week but because I was scrambling to get caught back up on homework after last week's trip to MIX 2010, it didn't happen.  Anyway, I have some very interesting tidbits from MIX that I thought I would pass along.  If you listened to this week's podcast, you likely already have heard most of them.  Anyway, here we go!

With Zune's functionality being a part of the Windows Phone 7 Series devices all the way down to using the same software to sync, I sought out to find out if the Zune still has a future.  The best answer I got came from Todd Brix, Senior Director for Mobile Platform Services Product Management at Microsoft.  Although I don't have the direct quote at this time, I was told that the Zune still has a future and that a new Zune device would be coming out in the relatively near future.  Zune HD 2 perhaps?  Who knows.

During my conversation with Brix, I also asked about what kind of developer restrictions there would be for the Windows Phone 7 Series devices.  Full details should be out in the spring, but I did get the answer that there would be no porn allowed and apps often used for illegal activity would most likely not make it into the app store as well.  So much for having a bittorrent client on the phone.  The approval process is being set up to be very transparent so developers know what is going on at all times and if an app is rejected, why it was rejected.  To me, this sounds like they want to be like Apple, just a little more transparent about why apps are rejected.

Speaking of the phone, the browser on the phone will be based on IE 7.   Also, I was told over a breakfast conversation by a Microsoft employee attending the event that pretty much all of the storage on the device other than your multimedia will be in the cloud as there will be no database on the phone like SQL-Lite or anything.  There were whispers that a 3rd party might bring something like that to the phone but the phone itself will only support storing information on the cloud out of the box.  Personally, I see this as a rather large drawback because you won't be able to access a lot of your data if you can't get on the network compared to something like the Android OS where SQL-Lite is part of the OS developers can store your information locally on your phone instead of only up to the cloud.

Speaking of the cloud, I got a chance to sit down with one of the PMs from the Internet Explorer team and got to have a fascinating discussion with them regarding everything from IE's market share numbers to how they handle reported vulnerabilities.  I found it somewhat interesting that market share, especially the amount of the market that other browsers have didn't seem to worry them at all.  As far as they are concerned, IE 8 has around 30% of the market share which is more than any other browser and they are proud of that.  As far as IE 9 goes, my conversation took place the day before the announcement so I am a little short on juicy details other than that I was told that it would be out when they are satisfied it is done and not before then since you can't rush something like a browser, especially when security is among the most important aspects.

I think that is pretty much all of the news that I found interesting that is getting little or no press, but if I think of more, I will definitely post it.

Before I dedicate posts to some very interesting tidbits that I grabbed from conversations at MIX 2010 ranging from the future of the Zune to what is going on with IE, I decided to give a slightly less exciting recap of day 3.

Although there were a number of sessions I had planned on going to today, for some reason I ended up at none of them.  This morning it was everything I could do to drag myself out of bed thanks to last night's party at LAX (It sucked so its not worth talking about).  When I got down to breakfast, I found it to be a major disappointment compared to the previous days.  Unless you are a cereal fan (and I am not) or a fan of muffins with lots of grains and stuff in them (again, no), you pretty much had no breakfast.  The previous days had all kinds of fruit and stuff so it was a disappointment compared to days past.  After having no breakfast, I started to head to the first session I wanted to attend and found myself sitting in the Xbox Lounge instead working on a series of blog posts that will go up next week.

From there I stumbled to the Commons area where I continued to work on posts before working on homework that is was due tonight.  As much as I wanted to go to sessions, today needed to be about productivity, even if I was just half awake.  Luckily, the video from the sessions will be up on the MIX 2010 site shortly so I can go back and watch them.  Anyway, after being productive, I had what was a disappointing lunch compared to the previous days.  This time it was a turkey sandwich stuffed in a box with an apple, some kind of rice and some kind of desert.  It wasn't horrible but I prefer to eat food that is hot, not cold.

After lunch, I sat in front of the Channel 9 stage watching a couple of interviews before heading to the pool area for some great calamari.  For those wondering, the view at the pool was enjoyable .  After a great discussion about the Student Insider program, I came back up to my room to work on homework.

Homework may not be glorious but it has to get done.  It is an unfortunate way to end a great trip but unfortunately life must have its priorities.

Like I mentioned, there are still some bombshell posts coming in the next few days so make sure to stay tuned.   I will have more to report on next week's Global Geek News Podcast as I want to save some great stuff for that too so make sure to listen to the new show on Tuesday morning!