Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) Now Available

Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) is now available for download. Have a nice trial

Finally the schedule of Microsoft International Recruiting Trips

Priya Priyadarshini of Microsoft JobsBlog has published a post with the schedule of Microsoft International Recruiting Trips for the rest 0f 2006. I am so happy that this finally happened because I was one of the people who asked for that and this reminds me of the time I was desperately waiting for any news about Microsoft recruiting trips to Egypt before I get the Offer. I hope that this post be a periodical post say every quarter in order to keep the link alive with the international candidates.

Pluto’s no longer a planet

They finally took that decision, Pluto is no longer a planet and the solar system consists of only 8 planets.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14489259/
The main reason for that is the size of Pluto and its moon Charon because they are part of a sea of other objects that occupy the same region of space.

When will the text books get updated to reflect that?

JobsBlog: Are you really looking for a new job?

Jim Stroud of the Microsoft JobsBlog Team published a post that shows the state of many job seekers. http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2006/08/23/715386.aspx

Many people stop at complaining about their jobs without trying to do any change in their skills or seriously search for a better opportunity. I say to them all please stop being miserables and try to make a difference. No one will care to make your life better more than you.

Jobsblog contains a lot of information about jobs specially at Microsoft. I also recomment Jobsyntax which is operated by two ex Microsoft recruiters who established jobsblog at the first place.

Windows Live Writer and New Blogger Beta

I have upgraded my blogger account to use the new beta service announced by google http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/08/new-blogger.html.
The new service has many new features and use Google Account for login. When I tried publishing to my blog using Windows Live Writer I do not see my posts on the blog or even on the list of posts under blogger settings. I tried re creating the account in Windows Live Writer but it failed to log using Gmail Account username and password and when I used my old blogger login it could not download the blog style and any new posts are not published although when I use the open feature I find the un plublished posts existing.

XNA Game Studio Express

Today many tech-news sites are talking about the new XNA Game Studio Express which is a new tool based on Visual C# Express 2005. You can get more details from:

http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gamestudio/

I have worked on 4 game related development projects and I really understand how difficult is it to produce a game specially with the variety of tools and technologies available. The real difficulty in Games Development is not in the software development but in the integrated services such as graphics, modeling, music and testing.

I am looking forward to using that tool and who knows may be I would blog some day about my new XNA Game

How can spam harm us? one answer is Session fixation

It seems that installing Windows Live Writer will encourage me to blog more often :-).

I always hear the question how can spam harm us in addition to increasing our email review headache? I came across a security issue that involves phishing spam using what is called Session fixation Security Watch: Session fixation - CNET reviews.

You can read more about phishing through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing and always remember to use spam and phishing filters and not to open any URL sent to you from someone you do not trust.

Windows Live Writer

Today I have installed a new tool from Microsoft which is Windows Live Writer I am using it now to compose this post. I am a big fan of using desktop applications and this blog writer seems really nice.

Wasted Work Time

Today I came across the following article that talks about the wasted work Time in U.S.
http://www.salary.com/careers/layoutscripts/crel_display.asp?tab=cre&cat=nocat&ser=Ser414&part=Par632
How much time do we waste here in Egypt?

Sherif Video

This Video has the photos of my lovely son sherif along the amazing Amr Diab song of Kenzy.

Microsoft Acquires Winternals and Sysinternals

Microsoft has aquired Winternals and Sysinternals http://www.winternals.com/Faq.aspx

Outsourcing and Intellectual Property

The outsourcing move in software industry is one of the topics that are always addressed in the media but the covering is always done from the point of view of the client that outsources a part of work to 3rd party in other country. I have spent most of my career in software development so far working on outsourcing projects and I feel like that I need to address the pros and cons of it from the point of view of the entity that do the outsourced work. Generally the pros of outsourced versus local projects are:

• The quality and scale of these project is usually considered better that the available type of projects in the local market.
• The profit margin is better given that the hour rate is usually higher than that in the local market.

On the other side the cons of the working on outsourced project are

• The company doing outsourced projects does not have an intellectual property but in many cases the non disclosure agreements between the clients and the company prevents the disclosure of the clients names or projects. I really wonder what could an outsourcing services company list on the product page of its web site (if it has a web site).
• The Communication problem that results from the different time zones and the fact that in most cases especially in small companies the company owner is the one in charge of dealing with clients and doing deals that could put more pressure on the technical people specially in analysis and requirement part.

Outsourced projects could be good alternative from some point of view but in the new world of Web 2.0 where service oriented applications rises I think that any person responsible for a software company in a country like India, China and Egypt should consider shifting some focus on building it own Intellectual Property of Web 2.0 applications.
Please read the following study from eweek about that the outsourcing boom is over
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1987497,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

I am Joining Microsoft

YES, that is true I have finally succeeded in realizing my dream of joining Microsoft. I can declare now that beginning next October ISA I will be officially a Microsoft employee. I am some how late in declaring this but I thought I should wait till everything is setup and because I do not like to talk about my plans till they are finalized
I will be joining the Visual Studio Team System Product Group as a Software Design Engineer in Test. I am so happy that I will be working for Microsoft, the software company I always dreamt of working in with an exceptional group of people. The people I met in person during the interview all made me feel like a perfect match. I will be working on Visual Studio the development environment I used in 99% of my development so I finally could help make it even better

I would like to thank all the people whom I worked with during the previous period because they all contributed to my experience.

Google on Business Week

I have came on an article on business week discussing Google. It is good to read:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_28/b3992051.htm

Career

The following post focuses on career in software development because I can not claim experience in any other field to judge.


What is your plans for your career? Do you think that there is a possibility to have a career here in Egypt? I am not talking about having a job but career. Do you have clear plan for what you want to do in the next 10 years? Do you think that you are really growing in your current job? What are you looking for in your job? Do you look for security, salary, benefits, experience?

Questions that should always have some real-time answers for

I was interviewing candidates for the past few days and I think that we are not used to plan for ourlives. While we are studying we have no decision to make except the possibility of

Selecting which faculty to join after Secondary School but I think that in most cases the parents' do that

For Engineering Students Select the department to study in but it again depends on the score ;-)

I always think of it as that you are taking a train so you have nothing to do while traveling it but after arriving in your destination you have to select where do you want to go

In the career case I beleive that there are 4 options:

Begining Your own Business

Working on a startup and grow with it

Doing either of the two above options but with the goal of acquiring experience to join a Big Company as in the next point

Joining a big company and grow in it

What do you think?

My Nerd Score

Today I found an interesting link on Channel9 that links to Test How Nerd are you :-)
It turned out that:

PC World's 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

Today I came across an article on PC World that lists the worst 25 tech products of all time. http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125772,pg,8,00.asp . After I read this list I have some quick notes

 

1.       I totally agree on listing real player I remember that I stopped listening to RM media because of this player.

2.       I really believe that this list misses Netscape 6.0 which I believe that it was the start of the end of Netscape.

3.       Regarding IE 6.0 I believe that its main problem was that its development stopped for 5 years which made it look obsolete and old with respect to other new comers such as Fire Fox. I am strong believer that if other products had the same stress as Microsoft’s products we will see more security holes in them. At least Microsoft confessed that there is a problem and worked on it mean while I see many 3^rd party developers asks on forums about how to disable the new Security Warnings in Visual C++ 2005 and many more do not like the new security options. May be I need to post about security in the future.

4.       I do not remember that I suffered at all with Windows ME although I did not use it too much because I switched to Windows 2000.

 

A9 powered by Windows Live

Today I read the following news and it make me really think

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/01/AR2006050101447.html

Is change coming?

The Culture of meetings: What to Leave Behind when you are going to a meeting

Yes you are right, I will tell you what to leave when your are going to a meeting. There are many things that should not be brought to a meeting or else it will not be a meeting it will be a waste of time.

1. Leave the Job hierarchy outside the meeting room. Everyone should have an equal voice and opinion. If you are a CEO and would like to make a decision simply send an email to everyone and do not hold a meeting to reject every body's opinion to make them conclude that your decision is the optimum right.
2. Leave Your Ego outside the meeting room. Your meeting target should not be to adopt as high percentage of your ideas as possible. The whole set of people who attended a meeting will share the credit (and of course the debt ;-) ) of what decisions were reached.
3. Unless the meeting is with your boss who belongs to category 1 please leave your need to sleep outside the meeting room. I know how hard is it to do that in today's world of business ;-).

Happy Birthday Sherif

It is the Thirty First of March, Sherif's Birthday. It was a fantastic day and sherif was so happy and accordingly I am.

The main problem was that a Mosquito did a bad job eating his face the night before. I wonder what Mosquito is active in this cold. You can notice this in the photos but he was not too annoyed.

He got a lot of toys and he woke up this morning searching for them even before his food. I am so happy that he is happy

Search Wizard

Based on some of the feedback that I have received I have developed a new tool I called Search Wizard. Search Wizard is a tool to perform advanced web search using Google Search Engine. It uses some of the advanced features of Google Web Search such as:

• Search Term Scope: Links, URL, Text, Title.


• File Type Filters


• Site Search


• Date Range Search


• Restrict the search using Languages or Countries

This tool upon install:

• Integrates with Microsoft Internet Explorer


• Integrates with Google Desktop Search Sidebar as a Plug-in

For more details on the tool please visit http://www.zilliondigits.com/SearchWizard.htm you can also download it from download.com http://www.download.com/Search-Wizard/3000-2379_4-10492589.html?tag=tab_pub