Mike's Lounge

Microsoft Corp. has completed its acquisition of Danger, Inc., the company announced today...

 

Danger will become a part of the new Premium Mobile Experiences (PMX) team, a group within the Mobile Communications Business (MCB) of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. The PMX team focuses on consumer-facing mobile project...

I tried Amazon Fresh for the first time this week. It’s an awesome service. Their prices are very comparable to what you can get at a brick and mortar grocery store (often even lower), they delivered my order for free (I requested the pre-dawn delivery so they placed the order outside of my door by 6 a.m.) and they even threw in a free bag of fresh produce.  I can’t tell you how happy I am that I didn’t have to walk through tens of isles and look for the things I want to buy, didn’t have to wait in a checkout line, and didn’t have to carry everything home.

One small suggestion for Amazon Fresh would be to spice up their web site. It’s a super plain web site and browsing it is not exciting at all. I wish it had better product descriptions, suggested recipes, community feedback etc. Maybe it’s all coming soon….

Seattle is FULL of startups. Here are a couple of interesting lists:

• This list keeps track of Seattle's 206 startups and their rankings on Alexa and Compete
• Here's a map of startups in Pioneer Square.

Exactly one week ago was my last day at Microsoft. The next day I started at Shelfari. Here’s a quick summary of my first impressions:

• Things move fast. For instance, last Wednesday we started having discussions about our invitation UI, which was pretty confusing to some of our users, and led them to inviting some contacts accidentally. The UI got completely revised and deployed to the live site on Thursday.
• I feel much closer to customers. I am on the feedback alias to which our users send their complaints/praises/suggestions. I feel like I totally know how our customers feel about us, what they like, what they dislike and what they need. I also know how to address their feedback in a reasonable timeframe.
• The open space concept has its pros and cons. I like the fact that I can turn around and discuss ideas with the designer (Tim), but at the same time it sucks that I feel like each discussion may be disrupting the whole office. It’s funny that people IM eachother even though they are 10 feet away
• Free software is great, no matter how bad it is.
• People do whatever’s necessary to keep the business rolling. Some tasks are more expected than others ;) For instance, I never expected that I’ll be responsible for upgrading anything on a linux box.
• I love working downtown. *Walking* to work takes me about 15 minutes, and *walking* back takes me about 20 minutes. Taking the bus is about a 7 minute ride.
• All my PM skills still apply ;)
• I miss Exchange (this requires a completely separate post)
• Product Studio is the best bug tracking solution out there, and I wish it was available publically.

Today was officially my last day at Microsoft. Tomorrow I’m starting at a startup in Pioneer Square called Shelfari. Shelfari is a site for people who love books. I’m going there as their first PM.

I’m definitely sad and excited. I’m sad because I had a ton of fun in the last 6.5 years working at Microsoft, and I loved the things that we were doing in mobile. I also loved the people that I was working with. At the same time I’m excited because working for a startup will be a completely different experience, and I’m hoping to learn a bunch of new things.

I used this blog to talk mainly about mobile-related topics (or ocasionally to complain about bad service ;). I’ll probably still do both, but at the same time I’ll try to post more about life at a startup.  

I *FINALLY* got a new laptop. I ended up getting a Dell M1330 with the following specs:

• XPS M1330, Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500 (2.2GHz/800MhzFSB, 4M L2 Cache)
• 2GB, DDR2, 667MHz
• 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
• 160GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

Here’s a quick summary of how I feel about it after 1 day.

Pros:

• Dell is learning from Apple and they’ve tried to deliver the laptop in nicer packaging. The experience wasn’t as cool as unwrapping an iPod, but everything came packaged in 2 pretty nice boxes, all the manuals came in a sturdy binder, and the laptop itself came in a Dell-branded protective sleeve which I can actually see myself carying in public.
• The laptop looks pretty cool (mine is white)
• The OLED screen is the most beautiful screen I’ve ever seen
• It’s just the right size (13.3”). Not too small, not too big.
• It feels pretty nice. Its keyboard feels pretty nice as well
• It seems pretty fast
• I think Dell has learned from people complaining about all the random stuff they used to install, and my laptop came with pretty much just the basic apps necessary to support its hardware

Cons:

• The laptop ocassionally makes a high pitch noise. I did some research on the net, and it turns out that it’s an issue with Intel’s processors. I called Dell’s tech support and they’re working on resolving the problem with Intel. For now the workaround is to prevent the processor from entering a certain power saving mode. Of course it may have impact on battery, but it solves the problem for now. I wonder what Dell + Intel are gonna do about it, since there are hundreds of people reporting the same issue. It just kills me that somebody could ship a processor that makes a high pich noise under any circumstances (even though it’s apparently not noticablable by everyone)
• I don’t get why Dell made me buy an external Creative sound card (pc express). There was no way to uncheck it in the pruchasing process, and it costs about $75. The laptop itself ships with an internal sound card which is good enough for my needs, and I’ll never use the external one.
• I wish the laptop had a slightly higher resolution. 1280x800 is ok, but they could squeeze more out of a 13.3” screen
• The laptop is pretty expensive

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the laptop. Initially I panicked about the high pich noise issue, but I hope Dell is gonna fix it via a BIOS update.

The mobile Live Search team just released a new version of the live search client. I love the addition of voice input and gas prices. Check out this blog entry to learn more, or go to http://wls.live.com from your mobile phone to download the client and install it.