Thursday night, our team hosted a small get together with iRiver as a thanks for the hard work between the teams on the Clix.  The highlight of the party was recalling one iRiver employee's first trip to Dixies BBQ in February where he ate an entire fork full of "The Man" after being egged on by our group and owner Gene Porter.  We told him it was insanely hot BBQ sauce. We tried to warn him (imagine three guys in slow motion saying "nooooooooooo" as he gulps the forkful). 

Classic quotes include:

• "No, seriously, when is the burning going to stop?"
• "I can't phfleel my libps"
• "@&#(%&@#%"
• "Come on, seriously, when does it stop?"
• "Can I get some milk?" (upon returning to MSFT, shotgunning two open pints of milk walking down the hall)

We were crying we were laughing so hard.  Two iRiver engineers from Korea were with us and fighting hard not to laugh, then they just gave up. Turns out the poor guy barely puts ketchup on his food. 

In the end, it was a great party and a good time had by all end-capping over six months of hard work. Ironically, this is the same day that PC World named the Clix one of their Top 100 Products of the Year (Why in June?  Their year is a 12 month span; they used to announce these awards at PC Expo which no longer exists).  The criteria is highly subjective but hey, it ranked #90, with the Xbox 360 being #89 - not bad company.  Reportedly sales of the Clix have been brisk - a best-seller on their site at www.iriveramerica.com  and at least one online retailer sold out of their initial allotment very quickly.  All good to hear.  At least two more major retailers are in the process of receiving inventory so that you'll be able to go out and try one in person soon. ;)

Last Thursday, the installers arrived and we're now customers of Comcast Digital Voice service.  Basically the service runs over your existing cable system for phone service. At first I was skeptical, hearing the many stories about features that were missing from VOIP services (e.g. E-911 service).  Despite the fact that three of our neighbors are RNs, and the Eastside Fire Chief lives two doors down, there's a certain peace of mind that comes with this.  The good news is that this doesn't appear to be an issue anymore and with nationwide long-distance, the cost is nearly the same as our local POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) provider for just local calls.  Here's a quick rundown of the good and bad in my opinion. 

The Good

• Good (not great) voice quality.  The average person probably wouldn't notice any difference. 
• E911 service including address reporting
• Battery Backup (in case the power goes out)
• Voice mail support for phone and Web (secured). You can even download as excel spreadsheets all incoming, missed, and outgoing calls.
• Security system integration
• No service contract
• No apparent drop in download speeds (for upload see below)
• One bill for cable and phone

What could be better/Suggestions

• E911 doesn't work during extended outages over several hours; resiliency is a concern often noted regarding network congestion etc.
• My upload speed appears to have gone from close to 384 to 284, unsure if it's related.
• Takes up to 10 days before new customers will start seeing incoming/outgoing calls on the Web system.
• Visual notification when voicemail is waiting & Caller ID. Some sort of auxiliary display would be nice (Sideshow anyone?)
• Windows Live Messenger bot.  I want an agent that notifies me when a call comes in.
• Online personal phone book
• Phone integration (something like this new Philips Windows Live Messenger-enabled phone)

I'll report back after a few weeks of living with the service.

Matt Goyer has a post re: MCE library performance improvements seen when running WMP11.  I may have contributed to this confusion.  Yes, the WMP11 library is wicked-fast compared to WMP10.  Yes, it can search 2 million URGE tracks in an instant.  Unfortunately MCE won't see these benefits in Media Center unless you're running Windows Vista.  Apologies for any confusion.

Tom, I definitely hear your concerns and appreciate that you state up front you're not the normal user.  Most users will see significant performance improvements when using a keyboard and mouse (vs MCE). Not that many customers measure their media library in "terabytes", as you do ;) but you bring up a good point overall on the importance of making sure MCE and WMP11 work well together at final.

Chris Pirillo recently wrote an interesting writeup of feedback on Vista Beta 2. In what could be described as a mashup of bug report and user-experience feedback, he captures the essence of what a super-users and influentials see when they use Beta 2 (note: most users of any beta 2 fall into one of these categories by definition).  While I'm sure certain folks would have preferred a different, more private approach (PR <cough>), this type of feedback is fantastic whether I agree with it all or not. It's structured.  It's digestable.  It comes from a credible source. Bugs can be filed against it. We need more of it.

Microsoft has MANY ways of collecting feedback and usability reports.  During the course of Vista, entire teams dedicated to this practice have been doing an excellent job of rolling the feedback up to management as well as the rest of the Vista org for shared learnings.  It's refreshing to see.  Vista is not perfect, but the team is actively taking notice of feedback and more importantly taking action.

Yes Chris, I see you as a passionate user.  Thank you for taking the time and sharing.

Apparently visitors to the new Apple store in NYC were treated to a special kind of lock-in.  The kind that involves glass elevators, the NYPD, and drained hydraulic fluid.  Perhaps they need to replace it every year but just ran into a defective one?  Maybe the batteries wouldn't keep their charge?  There are just so many puns and innuendos here I'm going to have to bite my knuckle.  Come on now, sometimes you have to laugh.

I've been playing with a few of the gadgets showing up on the Windows Sidebar gallery at http://gallery.microsoft.com.  It's a beta gallery and the SDK just went live but already I'm more productive with the Traffic Map showing flow on the main highways around Seattle.  I just wish there was more detail and an RSS feed available for new gadgets.  Great, now I really need to upgrade to a widescreen monitor at home.  Father's day is coming up...

You know what would make a killer gadget?   Flickr Uploadr.  I've been using the Uploadr to add pictures from my Windows Photo Gallery to Flickr this AM (sorry, they're pics for family).  But, Uploadr still works great with Vista.

Email from my Dad - he's loving Urge's collection of Rolling Stones and Benny Goodman hard to find tracks.  Mom, who I would consider a non-enthused computer user (they mostly frustrate her), just had jaw surgery and I suggested Urge as a diversion.  She says she, "can't stop!".  Now she wants an iriver clix.

For those here in Seattle area, the weather has been complete s*%# for the past week.  My son, (recovered from his cold) was inconsolable yesterday due to being cooped up. So I suggested going outside and splashing in some puddles which was exactly what the Dr. ordered.  The kid is just tired of being cooped up.  I don't blame him.

As for me, here's my Urge playlist for a rainy Sunday:

Chill and Serve: Pop

• Here with Me - Dido
• Hide and Seek - Imogen Heap
• Sail Away - David Gray
• Lazy Lover - Brazilian Girls
• Protection - Massive Attack
• Finally Woken - Jem
• Trouble Sleeping - The Perishers
• Breathe (2AM) - Anna Nalick
• Concrete Sky - Beth Orton
• Home - Zero 7
• Breathe Me - Sia
• Angels - Wax Poetic
• The Sea - Morcheeba

Mental note: Talk to Player team about copy/paste support from library to links in Urge ;).  Send email to a friend does one link per email.  Add playlist to MSN Spaces isn't working.  Grr.

By popular request, I created a video walkthrough of the out of box experience with the iriver clix and syncing Urge playlists using WMP11/Windows Vista.  Sorry for the fumbling, I was straddling a full-sized tripod to do this :).

• Streaming version (350kbps)
• Downloadable version (Uploading; Coming Soon)

The iriver clix should be arriving shortly in major retailers including Best Buy- until then, it can be ordered online at www.iriveramerica.com.

Created the video using Windows Movie Maker in Windows Vista and a Sony HDV Camcorder. Dogfooding Vista Beta 2 E2E.
Apologies in advance for the "one take" lack of polish- but it's the product that matters. 

Update: Another good video demo here: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/05/iriver-clix-review.php

I've been running an HD-DVD player through its paces the past few weeks and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised at the picture overall even at a measly 720p, but perhaps not so much so the hardware itself.  If you don't mind the largest remote I've ever seen and a long boot time, it's a great solution and certain to get better with time.

Today comes news of the first interactive HD titles: Constantine, Firewall, and The Perfect Storm. 

Apparently Windows Vista will also ship drivers, the file system, and other components required to support HD-DVD playback as well. More here: http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/05/25/first_interactive_hddvd_released/

The interactive features portend the future of interactive programming.  When it's eating at your wife that she knows that actor but she can't remember what movie, forget having to pull out your lappy to look up an actor in IMDB, look it up on-screen.  I can imagine a world in the not too distant future where you can browse other titles starring the actor, and even start downloading an High Def movie to be stored on the home network for later playback.  Flights of fancy?  Windows Media Center does most of this today.

This weekend, I upgraded all of my PCs to Windows Vista (more on that later).  As a part of the experience, I've gone completely Urge - set aside my ~20,000 track library and am only listening to Urge music for a week. So far, so good.

Saturday AM - Gym time!
Friday I discovered Urge has added new pump-up Playlists for the Gym for each genre under the category "Work It Out: [Genre]". They have Rock, Alt, Pop, Electronica, Inspirational, even Classical.  These are great cheat lists for building your own ultimate Gym mix.  I downloaded them all to my Clix (now equipped with the optional armband) and was ready to hit the gym.  Then I realized I forgot my headphones and boy, was I pissed!  Still, it made for great compilations.
Suggestion to Urge:  Let the community rate your playlists and submit our own. 

Saturday PM - BBQing
This was guys weekend - Nickie was out at a cabin with her mom's club friends and that meant Ryan and I were open to do a "Red Meat, Red Wine" kind of night with a few of the local guys in the neighborhood.  Any time you open a bottle wine hand-carried from Australia called, "The Factor" from Torbreck, you know it's going to be a good night.  We eased into it listening to Urge's "Reunion" Radio.  All classic rock like K-ROCK used to play in NYC growing up.  Here's the hack not quite worthy of Philip Torrone.  I patched the Vista PC into the Aux In on a Sonos receiver and set up a party zone- instant sync'd music in the living room, family room, and patio (courtesy my 2-zone receiver) and we were jammin.  Later I broke out the guitar and Stephen played some U2 and Jimmy Buffett.  A nice way to cap off the weekend.

I thought going all Urge would be hard, but the more I download, the easier it gets.

C|Net's Top 10 Must Haves List: "You may be shocked not to find an iPod on the list below. Well, here comes some more shocking news. The iRiver Clix, thanks to its excellent compatibility with the revamped Windows Media Player 11 and MTV Urge music service, joins the party this week. Yup: no iPod, no iTunes...and no doubt about it."

As a part of our end to end evaluations, my team selected the only two music devices listed - the iRiver Clix and Creative Zen Vision:M, as the best "showcase" devices for each category- Flash and HDD.  This was a nice validation.

I am a little annoyed at how bad the screenshots are of the Clix device.  I may have to put together a short video of the device. Static screenshots don't do it justice.  

In the words of a good friend, "It's on like Donkey Kong". Go download WMP11 Beta and if you dare to enjoy hours of musical enjoyment, sign up for your free two week trial of Urge.  And this isn't just for those kids young enough to still watch MTV.  I've found some killer classic rock playlists - Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, and Pink Floyd to name a few.  Let me know your questions here and I'll try and do my best to get them answered.  Tell me what you like/don't like and I'll share it with the team.  Oh, and iRiver has the Clix available for immediate shipping at www.iriveramerica.com for a cool $199.  Father's Day is coming up!

Urge Tip: A little known feature of Urge is 700kbps streaming music videos for a huge swath of the library - look for the little film icon to the left of songs to see if a video is available.

• Learn more about WMP 11
• Download WMP11 Beta

Wow.  I thought the combo was good, but sometimes you zoom in and stare at the blemishes for so long you lose sight that you're looking at a Ferrrari. Even I didn't expect this kind of welcome. 

Read: CNet's, "Awesome: The WMP/Urge/Clix Combo"

And no, no one was paid off/schmoozed/invited to a poker game to get this review. ;)

Many more positive reviews today - Michael Gartenberg has his thoughts here.
In fact, they were all glowing of WMP/Urge/Clix in one way or another.
Today was a very good day.