As I mentioned over the weekend, I've transitioned over to Office 2007 and am mostly pretty happy with it. I like the Outlook To-Do Bar more and more each day.

However, I ran into a problem yesterday that I couldn't find any resolution for online and I figured it'd be worth archiving here so the Google tubes can find it later.

Basically, I opened up VS.NET 2003 yesterday and got errors from two of my add-ins. These were CodeRush (the DXCore, to be specific) and the VSWindowManager PowerToy. Both of the error messages indicated that there was a FileNotFoundException being thrown while they tried to add items to the Visual Studio menus. Only the CodeRush exception told me which file was missing and it simply said 'Office'.

Now, I had used VS.NET 2003 last Friday (our desktop product is in 1.1 for now, but our newer web product is in 2.0) and it worked fine. The file name in the exception reminded me of pretty much the only thing that had changed on the machine since then -- the Office 2007 install.

I thought it was odd that VS.NET, which doesn't require Office to be installed, would be freaked out by an Office upgrade. In any case, I fired up the VS.NET 2003 installer and chose the Repair option. It's worth noting here that the Visual Studio 2003 installer is quite possibly the slowest-running install in the history of computing. Go get lunch while it runs... when you're back, grab a book, take a walk, or paint your house. Choosing the Repair option in the installer doesn't appear to be any faster than a first-time install.

Once that was done, I reinstalled CodeRush/Refactor and the VS Window Manager just to be safe... and all is well. Since then, I heard back from the DevExpress support folks (who rock) that they've seen this issue before. The problem occurs when the Office.dll and Extensibility.dll files are removed from the machine's Global Assembly Cache (GAC). Those files are needed by Visual Studio add-ins that want to hook into the IDE.

My best guess is that the uninstall of Office 2003 removes those files from the GAC (though they may still be around somewhere else on the machine) and they're not re-registered by the Office 2007 installer. The Office 2007 install does give you the option to uninstall 2003, or you can leave it there... and I did opt to have it uninstall.

Hopefully, anyone who suddenly finds that their VS.NET 2003 install isn't loading add-ins will Google for "Visual Studio 2003 add-ins loading exceptions Office" and come across this post at some point.

In my previous post, about the process of upgrading to Office 2007, I mentioned that Outlook had asked at startup if I wanted my RSS feeds sync'd with the Windows Common Feed List. Given that I rely primarily on FeedDemon and NewsGator's products for RSS, I chose 'no' and moved on.

Later, I went looking around to experiment with the Common Feed List in Outlook 2007 and IE7... but couldn't find the option anywhere in Outlook to change my mind about that initial selection.

This evening, I finally came across the option and figured a follow-up would be a good idea here.

In Outlook, go to Tools->Options and select the Other tab. On the Other tab, click the "Advanced Options" button and you'll find a checkbox on the resulting window -- Sync RSS feeds to the Common Feed List.

I went through the upgrade to Office 2007 yesterday... while I'd followed its development through Microsoft blogs and preview articles, I hadn't ever installed any of the pre-RTM versions. The upgrade itself was pretty painless, though, I did have a bit of a scare at the last minute when I fetched it off MSDN.

On the MSDN Office Pro 2007 (English) page, Outlook isn't listed as one of the included applications. However, this page says that Office Pro includes Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager (not sure what BCM is, but I doubt I need it). There have been a few blog/newsgroup posts from folks who have downloaded it and didn't get the BCM option. Thankfully, I burned the ISO image to a disc and Outlook 2007 is included -- it just doesn't have BCM.

There are also a number of posts about a mix-up with product keys on MSDN. Apparently, the product keys for Visio and Project are the same, as are the keys for InfoPath and OneNote. While the key will work for multiple activations, once it's used for a certain application it can only be used for THAT application going forward. So if you use it to install Visio, you can't use it when you install Project. According to a Microsoft blog post, that should be fixed this week. I didn't need Project or InfoPath right away, but I did want OneNote and Visio... so I went for it.

From there, the upgrade was smooth. I removed Visio and OneNote in advance, but let the installer for Office 2007 upgrade my 2003 installation. This picked up all my Outlook account settings and data files and worked like a champ. The Office install asked me to reboot, though, the OneNote and Visio installers didn't need it.

Since then, I've found/discovered just a few things and made some mental notes:

• While it takes some getting used to, I really like the ribbon bar UI. I keep looking up there for a menu to traverse, but once I think about the task I want to accomplish it works great -- Insert something into a document, Format a portion of the document, etc.
  
• I use the heck out of Outlook, both at home and in the office, and I'm kinda bummed that Outlook only got half of the new UI. The main Outlook client window doesn't have the ribbon bar, but the various child item windows do have it -- new message, new task, new appointment, etc. I'd prefer it to be all or nothing, I think... that said, I do like a few of the new things in Outlook: The To-Do bar is handy (ALT+F2 to toggle), the ability to subscribe to internet calendars (via .ICS) is great for viewing Google Calendars, and the color-coded categories on tasks is useful.
  
• Some things about the new Outlook aren't real exciting for me -- During the initial running of it, I was asked if I wanted Outlook to use the Windows common feed location for RSS subscriptions. I said 'no' at the time, but now I'd like it to use that... I just can't find a place to tell it so. I can see where I add new RSS feeds, but not where I tell it to use the Windows location. It's not a big deal as I much prefer FeedDemon and the whole NewsGator experience, but it does seem odd that I can't find it. Another little nit is that the keyboard shortcuts I got used to don't always work. For example, I use Categories in new Task items as a way of assigning context to my GTD 'next action' tasks. In the past, I could ALT+G to bring up the Category list when creating a new task and then start typing the first few letters of the category I wanted to assign. Now, I have to use ALT+H to get the Task ribbon, then 'G' for the Category list, and then I have to arrow-down to the one I want. Typing the first few characters doesn't work.
  
• I could be wrong, but it seems that Outlook 2007 uses Word as its email editor -- and that's that. In past versions, there was an option to use the regular message editor. I don't see that option now and the message editor has a Word-like feel to it. As long as performance doesn't suffer (the main problem with Word as the email editor in the past), I don't mind either way.
  
• Looks like I need to install the Windows Desktop Search if I want a better/faster search experience from within Office. In the past, I used Lookout (which Microsoft bought) to search across all Outlook items. It was small, fast, and stable. I'll give WDS a try, but it seems like overkill when 90% of my searching is in Outlook and not across the file system.
  
• I had to disable a part of the MindManager add-in for Outlook, as it would crash Outlook every time I closed it. Exporting from Outlook to MindManager isn't something I do a lot, so it's not great loss... but I was surprised that the MindManager site doesn't have any news on how they're addressing this. Their support forums have a few older mentions of it from pre-release and others have blogged about it, but now that Office has gone RTM I'd have thought that MindJet would jump on a fix for this.
  
• I dig the Data Bars feature in Excel, along with some of the other conditional formatting additions.
  
• The Office apps now have their own color schemes, with three to choose from -- black, silver, and blue. The blue seems much too light to blend with the standard XP Luna blue theme. The silver blends well with the XP Luna silver theme, though. That said, I've been using the Royale Noir (now Zune) theme, which is XP Luna in black. I like it a lot... the Office 2007 black theme 'mostly' blends well with the Zune theme, but Outlook in particular looks kinda bad. The black toolbar area with silver/gray toolbars seems a bit too high-contrast (below). The apps that use the ribbon UI, however, look very good when Office uses black and XP is on the Zune theme (Word, Excel, Powerpoint).
  
• Haven't spent much time yet with Visio, OneNote, Powerpoint, or Word...

In any case, the whole experience has been reasonably solid and very stable (aside from the one issue with the MindManager addin... which was easily fixed and isn't the fault of Office at all).

I'm cutting it close with this tip's timing, but it worked out so well tonight that I figured I'd post it anyway. We carved our Halloween pumpkins this evening and I wanted to take some pictures of them for posterity.

In the past, this meant turning off the lights in the kitchen, putting a light inside the pumpkin, metering off the light in the pumpkin, and shooting. Without a tripod, I'd usually get a largely black photo with just the white/orange design of the carving visible. This year, I figured I'd use the tripod and do it right with a longer exposure.

On a whim, though, I decided to put the wireless flash INSIDE the pumpkin. I put some folded paper towel at the bottom of the pumpkin and left the OmniBounce attached. The flash head was aimed up toward the top of the pumpkin. I then placed a paper towel sheet inside the pumpkin, just behind the carving -- essentially like a curtain to diffuse the light further and ensure that the flash unit itself wasn't visible in the photo.

I then put the camera in Aperture priority mode, set it to a fairly wide aperture, pointed and clicked. The kitchen lights were still on so the outside of the pumpkin had good exposure and the flash inside the pumpkin made sure the design looked great as well. I was a little surprised that the D70 and the flash were able to communicate so well with the pumpkin and paper towel hanging between them. But the pre-flash/metering was solid and I didn't have to go through any trial and error.

Give it a shot!

Gear:

• Nikon D70
• Nikkor 18-70mm AF-S ED Kit Lens
• Nikon SB-600 Speedlight Flash
• Stofen OmniBounce Diffuser

I just finished upgrading to the latest release of DasBlog and all seems well. The upgrade process itself could hardly be smoother. There were just a few steps involved...

1. Downloaded the Content, SiteConfig, and Logs folders and placed them into the local web directories.
2. Ran the DasBlog Updater utility to cleanup the Content folder.
3. Ran a diff on the new and old config files... moved the stuff I cared about.
4. Pushed the new web directories up to the server.

Done in under a half hour. It went very smooth and my hats off to Scott, Omar, and the rest of the DasBlog team.

So then I went cruising around to check out some of the new stuff Scott mentioned in his release announcement. One of the things I really like is the ability to disable comments on a post older than a specified number of days. I don't get many comments and most of what does come in is comment-spam on older posts. Hopefully that setting improves things.

There are also a few more themes available than in previous versions. One of these, called Project84Grass, was designed by Jacob Hodges. I liked the general style, but opted to darken it up a bit and add my own header image. It was the first time I've gone into the DasBlog template mechanism and it was much easier than I expected. Swapped out a few images, changed up the stylesheet, and modified a manifest -- and DasBlog picked it up on refresh.

Thanks!

Robert Scoble mentions that he’s nearing email bankruptcy with more than 1500 messages to go through. According to Lawrence Lessig in Wired and mentioned by Merlin at 43 Folders, that’s the point at which you throw your hands up in the air and reply back to everyone who sent you anything saying “Sorry, but I deleted your message. If it’s important, please get back to me.” Voila, your debt is wiped.

If he’s not already looked at it, he REALLY needs to give ClearContext a go. In fact, he can use promo code CC15-15190 if he’d like to get $15 off.

Shameless pimping aside, ClearContext will do so much more than just the “triage” he mentions (organizing or grouping into folders). If you let it analyze your email history and contacts, it will prioritize those messages based on who sent it, whether it’s part of a thread you’re involved in, and a variety of other factors.

Chances are pretty good that a guy like Robert gets a lot of unsolicited, “cold call” messages from people hoping for a mention in his blog. Let those get pushed down the stack and watch the messages from his boss, his family, and important colleagues rise to the top. My guess is that a small fraction of that 1500+ messages really NEEDS some action. So once the important stuff is highlighted, use the ‘action’ buttons on each message to create Outlook tasks, appointments, new contacts, or defer it to some later date (my favorite procrastinator-friendly feature).

And aside from the promo code above and being a happy customer, I’ve got no affiliation with ClearContext.

A while back, I read (actually listened to) the Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. It was a great book with a lot of intriguing ideas. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that a large group of people, most of whom are NOT experts in a field, are more accurate or correct than individual experts when the crowd’s predictions are taken in aggregate. If you enjoyed Tipping Point or Freakonomics, you’ll probably enjoy the book.

Recently, there have been a few articles about companies that are using “prediction markets” to help predict successful products, financial results, and so on. The idea is that if a large cross-section of a company is asked to predict quarterly sales, that group is often more accurate than asking the small handful of people at the top of the sales organization. Similarly, a large group of people responsible for designing, building, marketing and shipping a product will often better predict the market adoption of the product than the product’s management team.

One example of a prediction market is the Iowa Electronic Markets (profiled in the book), which over the last several years has been very successful at predicting election outcomes. It’s used as a teaching tool at the University of Iowa, but is open to anyone who wishes to participate. A “trading account” can be opened for as little as $5 (and up to $500) and my understanding is that the presence of “real money” forces participants to evaluate their decisions more carefully than if their accounts just contained “points.”

And just within the last few days, I’ve learned of a couple of new sites that are taking this effect out to the consumer. One of them is Inkling, whose business is to “host” private prediction markets for companies, as well as public culture/sports/politics markets that appeal to the geeks and wonks crowd. Some example public markets include “Who will win the NL Wild Card race?” (the high stock here is currently for the Dodgers), “Will Apple’s stock price be above $85 on 1/15/2007?” (61% likely), and “When will Microsoft ship Windows Vista?” (Jan 2007 remains the favorite). You can get a free account and buy/sell these “stocks” on your own.

Another example is PicksPal, which does roughly the same thing but focuses exclusively on sports. They watch the various Vegas/online sportsbooks to see where the odds are and then you (with a free account) can buy/sell shares in the results (in points). The cool thing here is that it goes beyond the typical win/loss and over/under predictions. You can buy stock in “prop” bets such as “When Virginia plays Georgia Tech, will any defensive player have 2 or more interceptions in the game?” If you think it’ll happen, you buy stock and get paid back stock as a result. With that prop bet, you’d get paid 8 points for every 1 point bet.

Neither PicksPal or Inkling costs anything to join and neither provides gambling of any real money. You’re simply predicting an outcome and comparing your individual result to that of the overall community’s “group prediction”.

As I started this post, I found several other examples that may be worth checking out, including CrowdIQ, Owise, and Smarkets.

Oh, and Go Newcastle (25/4 over Liverpool on PicksPal)!

Just a test to verify the configuration for Windows Live Writer. So far, the auto-formatting and styles appears to work fine. Just need to test uploading and formatting of an image.

And a map:

One of things we spent a good deal of time on Friday in the Tufte seminar was his concept of “Sparklines”. Tufte describes them as “Intense, Simple, Word-Sized Graphics”. The idea is that a small (very small) chart of information can be provided in-line with text and serve to illustrate the data behind the text. In the space consumed by just a few words, hundreds (even thousands, with sufficient resolution) of data points can be used to form a chart.

In explaining Sparklines in Beautiful Evidence, Tufte uses several examples. One of these is medical reports that typically provide a test name and then the result value as a number. What this loses, however, is the context for the measurement — is this result high or low relative to the patient’s history? Relative to the normal range?

The image at right shows several examples. First is the typical display for a glucose test’s result (128). The second is a sparkline example that shows the patient’s results over time. In this context, it’s clear that the result of 128 is low relative to many of the patient’s previous results. The third example places a red dot at the point of 128 (the most recent result) and then displays the result value text in red, instantly drawing a correlation between the point on the chart and the value at that point. The bottom example combines a light gray band representing the normal range. The result is a graphic that quickly provides context and history for a test result, using much less space than the text “relatively low for this patient and within normal range” would require.

So can we use Sparklines in applications? First, we certainly are allowed to use this concept. Tufte himself referred to it as an “open-source idea to be freely used”. Next, the question is, how do we use this in our applications?

In searching around for software implementations of Sparklines, I found several. There are implementations for PHP, Java, Ruby, Python, MS Office, and others. Note that the Python implementation, written by Joe Gregorio, is provided online as a “Sparkline Generator Web Application”. It’s a slick interface that lets you fill out a form to set some properties and values, and then provides the URL that would return the resulting Sparkline.

I also found a .NET implementation from Eric Bachtal. He implemented it last year as an HTTPHandler for ASP.NET applications. The results look great on a web page and the code is provided with a license to freely use, copy, modify, and so on. 

For me, I’d like the ability to use this in a couple other ways. First, I’d like a general object API that lets me set some properties (style, colors, size, etc), provide the data, and then get an Image type in return. From there, I’d like to see a control that can be used in a Winforms application — either directly on a form or within a data grid, with the ability to resize and adjust like any other UI control. While the license indicates that it’s fine, I plan to contact Eric to see if he minds me using his work to get a leg up on that effort. I’ll report back here when/if I make progress.

Definitely check out the various examples and libraries above. Each appears to be free for personal use and all but one makes the source available in some form. The MS Office product from Nicolas Bissantz requires purchasing a license for commercial use and no source is provided, but it’s also the most friendly to non-developers and several Sparklines-inspired products are available (including a cool ticker).