... the US Department of Justice decides to reach beyond its own borders to crack down on internet gaming. After sneaking anti-gaming law into "port security" legislation last year, they're now getting serious about enforcing it. Companies (most of them offshore) are losing a ton of their value in the market and many big names have pulled out of the US. 

So poker (where a player can control the outcome to some degree) is out, while horse racing and lotteries are still in. Makes perfect sense.

Technorati tags: poker, gambling, legislation, rants

Four successful Colorado entrepreneurs launched the TechStars program this week in Boulder. This initiative will take ten new startup teams (of up to 3 people) and provide a "summer camp" environment to help get their ideas and businesses off the ground -- that is, if summer camp includes some initial funding, access to a variety of experienced mentors, hosting and legal services, and a summer full of educational sessions.

While TechStars doesn't require that the teams be from the Denver/Boulder area, they do expect the teams to spend the bulk of the summer here (based on the FAQ). With its "college town" status and mountain scenery making it hard to leave, Boulder has long been a thriving place for entrepreneurs and small businesses... and this program looks like a great way to jump-start some new additions to the startup community. I also like that the application process is informal and accessible. No need for a formal business plan or pitch session -- just a strong idea and willingness to make a run at it this summer.

Anyway, it sounds a great opportunity for some enterprising folks with creative product ideas. I look forward to watching the TechStars blog for updates as the program gets started.

Technorati tags: boulder, colorado, techstars, entrepreneurs

I couldn't agree more with Scott Hanselman's recommendation for teaching your baby sign language early on. I'm often preaching to friends and colleagues who are expecting their first child that they should look into it as soon as possible. Anyway, his post solicits feedback and thoughts from other parents, so here's our story...

When our older daughter (now nearly seven) was still a bun in the oven, we received the book Baby Signs as a gift. It's a fairly quick read and makes a convincing case that a baby's motor skills are capable of making basic signs much sooner than they're capable of speaking those words. The book suggests starting off with simple words, such as "eat" and "more," and introducing them when your baby's about 8-10 months old. They warn that you'll typically not see any response from your baby until their first birthday (or later).

Convinced, we gave it a go around the 9 month mark... and seeing her use her first sign (for "eat") just before her first birthday remains one of my proudest and happiest "Daddy Moments". Success begets success -- so once that first one was working out and she saw some results (i.e., we provided food when she signed "eat"), additional words were added to the repertoire fairly quickly. We quickly added "more", "please", "drink", "sleep", and "book". I find it interesting that Scott reports that his son, Zenzo, picked up the signs for physical things (light, fan) more quickly than abstract things like needs (eat, drink). His experience sounds like others I've read, where introducing the signs earlier than the book we read suggests can lead to earlier results.

In any case, there's not an ounce of doubt in my mind that a baby that learns to sign early on is a much happier and more content baby. A non-trivial amount of a baby's crying and fussiness is due to frustration over her needs not being met -- "you're just not getting it, people... I have needs!". Without any ability to communicate, you're left to guess at what has the baby upset. So if your baby has the ability to express her needs to you, a lot of that frustration is resolved.

Currently, we're using signs with our second daughter (now 17 months) and she uses all the signs mentioned above, plus a few others. She's also shown us recently that she really "gets" the notion of requesting things with her hands: she came up with her own invention for "music." It calls for both hands in the air with the hands making a finger-snapping motion... sometimes, there's bouncing involved or one hand pointing at the stereo. It's nothing like the ASL sign for music, but we get the point.

It's also very cool to have a baby that tells us when she's ready for bed (usually before the time we'd have otherwise put her to bed). If she starts to get a little fussy around 7-7:30pm, we'll ask her if she's ready to "go night-night". Usually, we'll get the sleep sign in return. She lays down and rolls over to sleep without a whimper.

As Scott mentions, there are some who worry that teaching a baby sign language may slow their progress in learning to speak. That hasn't been our experience... while it's anecdotal and the sample size is two, both girls began to speak simple words and sounds at around the same time has other kids their age. I was asked a couple of times by strangers whether our daughter was deaf or had hearing problems. When I'd explain that we were simply teaching her sign language so she could communicate with us, I'd usually get a look like I was nuts. Can't argue with results, though.

My only real regret around implementing baby signs is that we didn't stick with it with Allie (the older). Had we continued to add signs after she began speaking, she (and we) would probably be fairly fluent. We certainly planned to (and this was the reason we opted for ASL in lieu of coming up with basic signs on our own), but it just fell to the wayside. Thankfully, doing the signs again now with our second daughter gives us an opportunity to stick with it as a family. Allie and I have even talked about taking a weekend signing class together at some point.

So... give it a shot. It really is as simple as getting a sign language dictionary to keep handy, picking some basic words to start with, and then using the signs each time you say the word.

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!