In my totally unsanctioned but nice to poke have a little fun style, you might recall a month ago I announced a contest to win an iRiver Clix.  The winner is in: Long Zheng's "Feel the Beat" was selected based on its simplicity and spirit in line wiht the player+device+service combo.  Long's second design, "Press the Magic Number" was another top contender.

And for the heck of it, Austin wins the runner up "Nice try and yes, there's some truth there too Award" for his entry I call, "Usable".  Austin gets a cool WMP11|iRiver Clix launch team jacket (with tiny logos) for his entry because it made me laugh.

Congrats to both our winners!

After nearly seven years of being in "launch mode" every summer, I'm going on a long vacation - a whopping two weeks! I'll be down at the Jersey Shore with family and friends.  I may try to do a geek dinner at the Jersey Shore- if anyone is interested, send me email at sean@youknowthissite.com

Check out an interview with the On10 Team and learn more about what it's like to work on this sister-site to Channel9. 

You can also get a Sneak Peek at their upcoming site redesign.  What do you want to see more of on On10?  Let Jeff and the team know.

One thing to note on the upcoming site redesign is more discoverable support for downloadable versions of their videos formatted for iPod and PSP.  I think this is great- support what the people do en-masse.  Does this surprise you?  It shouldn't. I just hope my Toshiba PMC will also be supported. :)

Addressing a question I get often internally and externally at Gnomedex this week.

1.  Yes I blog and have done so for a long time (5+ years)

2.  Yes I work at Microsoft.

3.  No, I'm not Mini-MSFT.  I read his site once a month and find it to be more of a virtual support group for disgruntled MSFT employees unable or willing to effect change internally than a voice for change.

4.  Can we move along now? :)

Great tips here from the New York Institute of Photography on how to take pictures of fireworks.  It worked for me even for a small show put on by some friends this weekend.

Admittedly I skipped out on Day 2 of Gnomedex knowing I would be able to catch up on what I missed later and opted for some family time.  Inspired by the beautiful weather, we spent some time bumming around Seattle, resulting in what was definitely a "Best Day Ever".  It's nice to get away from the tech side of life sometimes.

More pictures here.

9:30am - Walking down at Alki Beach.

11:00am - Shopping at Pike Place Market

12:30pm - Lunch at XXX Root Beer Stand (Last in America)

1:00pm - Chainsawing Limbs from the Sycamore in our Neighbors Yard from a Tall Ladder (Too Scary for Pictures)

4:30pm - Finished Cleaning Up after Chainsawing Limbs from the Sycamore.  Firewood is ready for winter.

5:30pm - 4th of July Big Bash at Jaron & Lauren's House

9:30pm - Fireworks!

More pictures up on my Flickr site

We're here at Gnomedex at Chris Pirillo just pointed out on his blog that it looks like TechMeme has been hacked?  If you have no idea what I'm talking about. Move along. :)

Brier Dudley seems to agree about the Clix in his latest column in the Seattle Times:

"I'd argue that Microsoft has already developed an iPod challenger, and it's been on sale for a couple of weeks at Best Buy and Amazon.com for about $200... The device is called the Clix."

I was interviewed for this article and got a nice quote.  Brier has more details about the development experience over on his blog.  Just one correction- we didn't specify the silicon for use, but we did provide direct feedback as decisions were being made . 

I also want to call out the amazing work done by the iRiver America team.  The packaging is largely to their credit- we provided critical feedback and encouraged a new, more refined design based on existing packaging in Korea.  The iRiver team did all the heavy lifting and it shows.

At the end of the day, my job was two-fold: As UX (User Experience) PM, to play the part of the consumer end to end- to apply what I've learned working in this space for 7+ years and document our recommendations.  From there, we (the v-team as we called ourselves) agreed on relative priorities w/ iRiver up-front.  We acknowledged where we disagreed without ego or hubris, and worked together on a solution in the interest of the customer.  We were invited to provide input in every meeting on the UX, system flow and regular milestones on naming, branding, messaging, out of box experience and more.  

Shifting gears for a second.  Looking to the development process we used as a case study, Chris Pirillo is still largely right in my opinion about the "User". Except it's users vs. the traditional development process that's the issue- not the developers themselves.  PMs, Devs, Testers, and Marketing are still WAY too silo'ed from their customers and residing in the echo chamber.  I get irate when a PM or Dev tells me they're too busy to go on a customer visit or staff a booth and talk to customers about their product.  I look for these opportunities. But a better requires a multi-disciplined approach working together on a daily basis as well as talking to customers.  That's why we instituted a Scrum Model with "butts in seats at 9:30am accountability" on this project. Our mission statement, "Help our partner build a device we're proud to recommend to family and friends everywhere with WMP11 Beta".  In my opinion, that's what made it work so well this time around.  And the fact that with the U10, iRiver was already on their way to building a great product.  I speak for many within Microsoft when I say thank you to Reigncom/iRiver for the opportunity to work together.

P.S. I'm getting out of my echo chamber later this week at Gnomedex.  See you there.  And a question for the future- where else should I go to further get out of the echo chamber?

I've recently upgraded to a Nikon D200 w/ an 18-200mm lens that took four weeks to arrive off backorder! So I'm running around taking "Happy Snaps" as my Aussie friends like to call them and just loving the quality of the camera.  Any tips/techniques I should be aware of with this particular camera beyond the traditional "learn what ISO is"? 

See some recent shots on my Flickr account.

What I really need to do is take another more advanced class.  Or maybe just follow Thomas Hawk around for a few days in San Francisco. ;)

TiVo Desktop 2.3 now supports scheduled transfers and conversion to PSP, iPod and Treo but expect to pay for the privilege- $24.95 to be exact vs. free for Windows Media-based devices like the Toshiba Gigabeat-S.  Looks like they're passing the licensing cost onto you for MPEG-2 and H.264 support.  Still, not a bad price.

Scoble has bit the HD bug hard and he's coming out swinging against HD-DVD detractors.  While I disagree that there's more HD on Xbox Live than HD-DVD (in terms of minutes or available content), he makes a few pretty good points.

At the end of the day, it's about price.  Mainstream users aren't going to buy a PS3 for Blu-Ray, but for the cost they could buy an Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii!  Blu-Ray players are going for $1000+, HD-DVD sub-$400.  Yes, they're first generation units but attactive to americans who have upgraded to HDTVs sets (happening at a rapidly accelerating rate).

Then there's the question of quality.  I have it on good authority that many of the initial Blu-Ray titles don't look very good, use MPEG-2, and suffer from issues in the mastering process.  I believe "asleep at the wheel during encode" was one comment heard from an industry insider. Yes, they'll improve, but HD-DVD went to the mat on quality up-front.

I have a Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player. It's ok as far as first-generation devices go.  I don't speak as a video compression expert.  But I've shown it to a slice of mainstream america in my home.  Is it a revolution? Not the way VHS to DVD was. But I have a 50in 720p Samsung HDTV and everyone can definitely tell the difference between it and DVD.  Perhaps if I had a 1080p system the difference would be even more striking.

What about HD cable?  Perhaps good enough for most who don't mind watching when it's on and the quality tests the lower limits of HD in order to cram as many channels in as possible. But even my premium HBO-HD craps out (macro blocking) on high action sequences because of a lower bit rate. And yes, I've checked my signal quality :).

But... I'm not an expert, I just have access to a few and you do too.  Spend some time in AVSForum (www.avsforum.com) and you'll come to see that key players, big and small, trusted engineers and even the developers of the formats are still at odds. 

I still say the cost vs. benefit for Blu-Ray is out of whack.  "Good enough" and "cheap enough" will win in the end.  And the funny thing is, HD-DVD just might also be the best in terms of quality of the final product too. Add to that the often-ignored fact that women in the household have a major say in these kinds of family purchase decisions. I don't know many wives who would buy or green light a $1000+ player for their husbands this coming fall having just spent $2000+ on an HDTV over the past few years. 

Another way of looking at this is, for the price of a "low cost" Blu-Ray Player coming next month you could get an HD-DVD Player and seven years of HD-DVD rentals at NetFlix. 

Who will win? Only the customer will decide and right now the decision factors are too complex and nuanced, the technology too new for anyone to say definitively. 

Whatever you might think, Aaron Spelling was an amazing producer of quality and some questionable television.  Thanks for getting me through the teenage years Aaron.

Geoff Harris leads the team responsible for Windows Media Player 11.  In this interview, he talks about the new player and the Urge Music Service.

Watch at On10.net