I’m working on switching this blog over to the Disqus commenting system. I have it in place for commenting now, but still need to find a way to export all the old comments and import them into Disqus so I can keep the legacy discussions alive.

The new Nine Inch Nails album, titled The Slip, was just released. The album is completely free to download. I've just started listening so I haven't formed an opinion yet, but the first two tracks are straight up NIN recipe and I'm liking it so far. Oh and, unlike Ghosts I-IV (which I also love), this album includes vocals.

Alright, finally! A step in the video direction for Zune. Starting today Zune now offers a plethora of TV shows for download from the Zune Marketplace. Microsoft really should have been out of the gate way before Apple's ITunes with this stuff because they already had all the content for the 360. These are pretty much the same shows you can get on XBox 360, though not all of them (yet?). My biggest question at this point is: If I bought an episode on 360, do I get it for my Zune? Vice versa? If not, why not (other...

I'm sitting in JFK waiting for my flight to Seattle to depart as I head to this year's MVP Summit. The MVP Summit is always an interesting event. Sometimes there's some new tech revealed, but it's not like a PDC. Mostly it's about networking and providing feedback to Microsoft on what they could be doing better based on our experience in the field. Either way, it's always worth the trip and, as always, I'm looking forward to it.

Not much to say about it other than I love it. So, I highly recommend you go get it too.

Adam Slutsky, our CEO, was interviewed on Forbes recently and gives the low down on what Mimeo is all about and what we're doing to continue growing at an awesome pace.

After having just being bit by the red-ring-of-death a few weeks back myself, I wrote about how annoyed I was that I had to pay $140 to get the thing fixed. Well, according to this press release I should be expecting a nice little refund from MS. Kudos to MS on this move, that's how to keep your customers happy.

Heheh, Mimeo always throws the best promotions at these trade shows. Kudos to our marketing team for getting these people to do shameless promotion on our behalf. ;)

TheStreet.com interviewed Mimeo.com's CEO, Adam Slutsky, this morning. Check it out over here .

So, I downloaded the Zune 1.3 upgrade, but it just refuses to instal the firmware. I've tried from my desktop, my laptop, rebooted those, restarted the Zune, etc. Just won't apply and get nothing but a useless error message: It is not possible to change sync settings at this time. Try again later. I'm running Vista Ultimate 32-bit with latest drivers and all that jazz. Wish I could at least get some error info that would be useful to debugging the problem. *sigh* UPDATE 3/31: I tried running Zune as admin and then updating the firmware. Sure enough, that worked. Guess even Microsoft needs to...

As a huge fan of all things on Adult Swim, I had to make sure to catch the premiere of Frisky Dingo. It was frickin' hilarious. I was a huge fan of Sealab 2021 and this is from the same group of people. Not that I like to encourage copyright enfringement, but if you didn't get a chance to see it, someone just threw the first episode up on YouTube. Here's part 1 and part 2. Be prepared to laugh out loud. :)

Just received word that we landed on the Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 list again. This year we came in at 194th on the list. The year's not over, but it's already been stellar for the company. Year over year we continue to double our growth and that's a sure sign of a sucessful company. It always feels good to be a part of it, but it's even better when you're recognized by someone else for it. Congrats to the whole team!

So, this is my first week running Vista (RC1) on my primary machine. It's a laptop that I use exclusively both at work and at home. The specs are:   Alienware M7700 3.8GHz Intel P4 w/HT 2GB RAM 100GB 7200RPM SATA HD (two NTFS partitions) nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra Go (beta WDDM drivers) Realtek High Definition Audio card (beta drivers) I get a "Windows Experience Index" of 4.4 and that's really only because apparently a 3.8GHz ain't much these days. My graphics card gets me a whopping 5.9 and everything else is...

I've been acting as the part time DBA around here since the company started. I know way more than I care to about things like backups, indexing, clustering, replication, etc. Now the company needs things like OLAP, Report Server and all sorts of other fun things that I just don't have the time for since my job as Chief Software Architect already keeps me busy enough. So, if you've got the skillz, are interested in working for one of the fastest growing technology companies out there and would love to be the lead DBA for the whole company, drop me a line and...

Sam Gentile has an absolutely awesome post on the importance of the role of the Software Architect even in Agile based development. As Chief Software Architect here at Mimeo, this obviously touches close to home. We've adopted Agile, but I still make sure that we budget time for architecture tasks for each iteration. As Sam points out, architecture isn't alwyas about Big Design Up Front. He also points out that some types of generic architecture tasks transcend projects and, thus, iterations (such as logging, exception handling, etc.). So what I do there is make sure we budget time for these...

What... you don't know what AWWDC is? Well, make sure you're sitting down because this may come as a shock. It's the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. *insert record scratching/squealing tires sound here* Seeing as how I'm like Mr. Microsoft when it comes to software the most common reaction to this is probably "Woahhhhhhhhhhh, what the...?!?" Well... it's for the good of the company. Basically MacOSX has become attractive to us over the past couple of years for two reasons: First, from the server perspective, the platform has a much richer set of APIs for working with PDF content than are available for the Windows...

Marketing at it's finest (assuming you have a sense of humor). The ads around NYC were the inspiration for checking out the site. Well worth the 10 minutes of laughing you'll do. Well done.

Just noticed via Dare's blog that Adobe has officially responded to Microsoft's announcement that PDF will be pulled due to fears of Adobe lawsuits. Then Microsoft comes back with a reassurance that all they're trying to do is offer the best possible experience for the users that want PDFs from their Office documents and not trying to "extend" PDF. I am embarassed for whomever at Adobe is causing this whole debacle. Microsoft is in no way trying to muck with the PDF spec. It doesn't take a lot to check the output and see that they're simply trying to offer PDF capabilities from...

Looks like Microsot is expecting Adobe to seek legal action against it based on a "break down in talks" about Office 2007's built in PDF generation. From the way the article makes it sound, Microsoft has basically already decided to pull the feature. PDF is an open standard, so I dunnuh how much of this is reality yet. This post that I read a couple of weeks ago made it sound like Adobe wasn't too concerned about it. The story is  being discussed over on /. too. Naturally you have to peel through the layers of anti-MS bs there, but there are still some valid points being made....

Please bear with me while I upgrade from .Text 0.95 to SubText 1.0. Everything should just be working, but it's not quite as pretty as it was right now because I haven't finished working on the skin. Then again, most people are probably reading all my content from an RSS reader anyway. My main motivation for upgrading is that .Text codebase is basically dead. SubText picked up from that codebase and made some improvements and is alive in terms of a community. One of the main features I'm taking advantage of is the comment spam blocking features that have been added...

I picked up The Build Master a couple weeks ago, but have just gotten around to reading it. I'm only up to chapter five, but it's already justified itself as a purchase. What I found most amazing so far is how the author paints an exact picture of what I just had to deal with here at Mimeo which is that most development houses think of builds and SCM as a secondary task that can be performed by developers when the time comes. Nuh-uh. Read the book and the author explains exactly why this isn't the case and why it's important...

We had to go from single server, on test hardware, in separated domain to dual servers, both new hardware in a new domain. We had to try twice as the first time our SharePoint and Report servers weren't connecting to their DBs correctly, but it's all working flawlessly now! The documentation was basically spot on, so I suggest reading every step twice before you perform it. Now we have ~180 days to try and purchase Team Foundation Server and VSTS client flavors. That seems like it's going to be a lot tougher thing to accomplish than actually getting the stuff installed. :\ Oh and...

This month's Print Solutions Magazine is all about Web-to-Print and as part of their cover story they have an article that talks about Mimeo called Mimeo on the Move. Here's the lead in with a great quote from our CEO: The industry’s fastest-growing company relies on speed, precision and web-to-print. Its aggressive CEO’s mission: Make “Mimeo” a verb.

Holy hell, has anyone else tried to purchase Team System or even get information about purchasing Team System from Microsoft? It's ridiculous. People don't even know about transitioning your MSDN Universal subscription. That's all I wanted to do to start is transition to MSDN + Team Suite (where ya pay a little more money, but save overall). Three diff. people I talked to didn't know what the hell I was talking about. We're in the Empower program, but even they couldn't help. You'd almost think they don't want us to be able to buy this stuff. :\

So I've subscribed to MSN at a yearly rate of $90 or so for the past three years because I love all the diff. services, the web browser and rich client for Hotmail access, etc. Now I'm watching all these richer Windows Live services roll out and I'm wondering when/if this stuff gets rolled into MSN. Am I going to get a new browser, rich email client, etc. anytime soon or is the software I'm paying for going stale so that MS can give away richer web (AJAX if you must) clients for free?

We're looking for someone experienced for this role... interested? If so, contact me with a link to your resume or I'll email you back to get your resume if it's not available online for whatever reason. Oh almost forgot, this person would be working out of our NYC office. Good luck! Update (3/15/06): This position has been filled! Software Build/Release Engineer Mimeo.com is looking for a highly motivated individual who is excited by new, cutting edge technologies and who wants to participate in Mimeo’s transformation of the on-line the print industry.  The ideal candidate will embrace Microsoft’s .Net platform and will be well acquainted...

I received MVP awards in the C# and WPF technologies this last time around. It's always an honor to be a part of the MVP programs and this time is no different. I feel especially honored to be one of only three WPF MVPs and have been working my butt off in the newsgroups and forums to keep up with the growing interest in the technology. If you ever have any questions, I highly recommend posting in either of the afforementioned locations first, but you can also feel free to contact me via this blog as well.

Well, hello there. Miss me? Well, I'll just pretend that you did. ;) The past few months have been quite eventful for myself as well as my company. Company wise here's a couple things that have happened: From a development perspective: We finally delivered our new platform based almost entirely in C#/.NET 1.1 except for some small portions that still rely on some legacy COM components, ISAPI extensions/filters and third party applications. This included: An in-house Enity Framework to abstract away the need to worry about anyone writing any risky SQL A System Framework on which we build all of our core business systems (thirteen or so...

First off, my condolences go out to all those who have lost anyone or anything due to Katrina's devistation. I was there only two weeks ago enjoying the sights, eating in the restaurants, drinkin' Hurricanes (ironic) and Hand Grenades in the bars and celebrating a friend's birthday. The way it's looking right now, that may have been my last chance to have ever seen New Orleans the way it was originally created. I consider myself lucky to have gotten down there and experienced it the way it once was and will definitely plan a return trip to help support their economy once...

So I went to check my statement for my Amex card today to see if I was credited for something and to my surprise my outstanding balance was a whopping $29,102.55. Hmm... well I knew I went a little crazy with my motorcycle racing hobby in the past month or so, but not that crazy. :) So I scroll down and look at the activity and for 6/30 I see the following 17 charges totalling ~$27k: 06/30/2005  AMERICAN LIST COUNSE609-580-2800 NJ U0940754 FEES/SERVICES  499.80 06/30/2005  AMERICAN LIST COUNSE609-580-2800 NJ U0940758 FEES/SERVICES  469.40 06/30/2005  AMERICAN LIST COUNSE609-580-2800 NJ U0940761 FEES/SERVICES  261.00 06/30/2005  AMERICAN LIST COUNSE609-580-2800 NJ U0940762...

Nicky Hayden, American MotoGP racer, has won the first MotoGP race on US soil in eleven years which, incidentally, is also his own personal first place podium finish ever in his three year career. Congratulations also have to go out to to Colin Edwards, also American, for second. Naturally it wouldn't be MotoGP if world champion Valentino Rossi wasn't on the podium, so congrats to him for third.

Well, I just finished registering for the PDC. I'm not gonna do any of the pre-cons, so I'll be flying out on the 12th and will be staying at the Sheraton Wilshire while I'm there.

Huge Coldplay fan. Just downloaded X&Y from MSN Music and am already in love. I got to see them play a couple of these songs live in concert already because I won tickets to see them film the AOL live music taping show. Gotta admit the sound at the Beacon theatre was pretty crappy, so this is still the first time I'm hearing the songs as far as I'm concerned. I've seen Coldplay in concert before and it wasn't their usual setup, so I don't blame them. Anyway, if you're a fan, def. pick the new album up today!

My company, Mimeo.com, has been named a Red Herring 100 company (press release). That puts us amongst ninety-nine other private companies who are changing the face of their respective markets. It's an honor to even be mentioned as a finalist let alone actually end up on the list. I remember when this company was just a few guys with only some desks, chairs and computers in an otherwise empty ~5000 sq. ft. floor. We've sure come a long way since then. :) Congratulations to everyone on the team!

I received notification this morning that I won tickets from a KROCK contest (local radio station here in NYC) to go see Coldplay at a private showing at the Beacon theatre. I had been trying for about a week to win and finally got lucky last Friday for the six o'clock drawing. I've been a Colplay fan for a while. Saw them in concert once before and it was great, so to be able to go to a private show where they'll be doing a live music taping for AOL is pretty freakin' awesome! :)

Any other NIN fans out there? I bought With Teeth from MSN Music when it was released Tuesday this week. Absolutely amazing... love it. The Hand That Feeds is the single for the album, but my favorite song on there (so far) has to be All The Love In The World.

Disclaimer: Don't blame me if your productivity takes a hit when you click the following link. This is a really, really great idea and excellent excercise for the brain: Guess The Google.

Mimeo.com has just announced we've closed on another $9mil in funding. We're also one of two hundred companies nominated for the Red Herring 100. Exciting times for the company as we're really hitting our stride and beginning to find that we've done a good job establishing ourselves as a dependable name in the industry. On the development front we went to beta a couple weeks ago with our newest application bits which we've spent the past eight months or so developing from the ground up based on what we learned about our business needs in the past four years. The new code-base is...

Ahh... only five hours remaining until the fruit of the past few months of my life goes into Beta. Feels pretty good now that we're nearing the end of things, but can you imagine having this thing hanging in your row reading only one month left with a high bug count and incomplete feature set on your hands? Not much fun then. ;)

So what do you do when someone blantantly wants to rip off your company's entire service? Here's a google cache just in case it disappears. My favorite part of the listing is that the lister expects the whole thing to be done in 30days. Good luck I say. :)

Mimeo.com went live five years ago as of yesterday and as a nice birthday present we just got a great review in PC Magazine. I'm glowing like a proud father. :) Even better, the issues they mention with regards to calling customer service for special instructions are being addressed in the new version of the site we're about to start beta testing.

2004 was a great year and 2005 is already looking like the year we're going to explode. My lack of posting can be directly attributed to the fact that we're pushing really hard to get our new architecture done and into a beta state. I'm extremely happy with where we are at this point, it just took longer than we expected to get here. Who said .coms were dead?? ;P Congrats to all the Mimeo.com team and keep up the great work!!! :)

Joe Marini just made a post titled “When Secrets Make Sense”. Personally I think he's dead on. How can you even argue that point? If I rolled out a product that solved a problem or set of problems that nobody else out there has solved, why in the hell would I tell everyone else how to solve it by giving out my source? Let's see, the financial success of my business and it's hardworking employees is based on the success of this product and the fact that I've solved said problems makes my product the number one, must have piece of software for a target audience. My options are: a) Give...

Man, am I a happy customer right about now lemme tell ya! I'm trying to install Half-Life 2 and am on the fourth installation CD (of five, since for some reason they only sell the DVD as a special edition for $20 dollars more) and it's trying to copy the HL2 icon for the game. The error message indicates that it's looking in a CAB file for it. The only problem, as this picture shows, is that the icon (1) isn't in the damn CAB file (2 & 3), it's just right there in the install directory. Once I click the OK...

I don't blog about my company very often, but I'm pretty pshyced about this. We made Inc. Magazine's Top 500 Fastest Growing Companies List and we're up there at #186! We've had some really amazing growth this year that seems to be snowballing more and more. I'm proud to see this company go from the nothing it was when we started in '98 to becoming a service that people can depend upon for their every day work. As Chief Architect, the best part is right around the corner for me though. We've been doing some serious crunch work for the past three months...

I don't know what kind of following there is for MotoGP amongst the developer community, but since motorcycle racing is one of my hobbies it's my favorite sport to watch. Valentino Rossi has just clinched the 2004 championship over rival Sete Gibernau in an AMAZING race at Phillip Island. Rossi only needed to place second and could have just sat back and settled, but he's such a warrior that he fought with Gibernau to wrestle the GP win away in the very last lap. Absolutely amazing! Rossi, only 25, has won the past three championships. At the end of last year he did something...

Was f'n hilarious. Another one where the whole audience was laughing out loud the entire time. If you're into raunchy, side splitting humor it's a must see.

I freakin' hate that when I click the music or radio tab in WMP10 that I'm not automatically logged in based on the Passport account linked to my Windows login. It looks like it logs me in automagically if I browse there with my MSN browser, so I'm guessing that this is WMP10's fault. What's the point in trying to push a single sign in service to tie everything together if you're not going to set a good example in your own software by leveraging the tie-in? Not only that, but if I check off the “Sign me in automatically” box during...

Ok, normally I don't like RPGs very much, but I picked up Fable when it came out and am probably like 1/4 of the way into the storyline and I'm really liking it so far. The story is great so far and the level of character customization is amazing. I'm playing the game as a saint so far, in fact I've already got a halo over my head (if I were evil I'd have horns). My only real complaints revolve around the control scheme. I consider myself pretty proficient at mastering game controls, but so far I'm still fumbling with...

Never in my life have I laughed so hard in a movie theater. Never in my life have I seen an entire audience laugh so hard in a movie theater. Instant classic. You gotta go see it.

I've been an MVP since the early J++ days (1997'ish?). Then when .NET came along I was transitioned to the generic .NET Group and most recently pigeon holed into the C# Group. Unfortunately with all the “real” work I've been doing these past six months or so I just haven't had as much time to commit to the community. Only recently have I picked back up with weblogging and answering questions over on the DevelopMentor .NET Mailing Lists. There's just a ton of people competing for MVP status these days, which is great for the community, but bad for me since I've had...

I'm selling my Toshiba Satellite P25-S607 over on eBay. It's a great machine and less than a year old. In fact, it's still under the original warranty! I loved that thing... actually I loved it so much that the reason I'm selling it is because I picked up the newer P25-S676 model.  It's basically the exactly same thing except for your standard upgrades in processor speed, storage devices and connectivity. These laptops make excellent all in one computers. I don't even have a desktop at home or at work anymore, I just carry this thing back and forth.

This has got to be the best article/interview News.com has ever posted. I'm a huge MotoGP fan since motorcycle road racing is my biggest hobby, but I also watch F1 from time to time. MotoGP uses the same kind of technology to track every twitch the bike/rider ever makes. What's amazing is, when there's a crash they can pin point exactly what went wrong at that point in time. Did the rider apply too much throttle? Too much brake? Shift into the wrong gear? Or did the bike's suspension compress just a little too much? It's absolutely amazing how far the...

Hello everyone! Welcome to the new home for my blog. I haven't posted up in quite some time, but I've been lurking in the comments of other people's posts and more recently I've been frequenting Channel9. My old weblog was hosted on weblogs.asp.net. I'd like to thank Scott for inviting me as one of the first lucky candidates to use .Text when he first started rolling it out. I am still working on the custom skin for my weblog so it looks a little more original. I started by leveraging an existing skin called LuxInteriorLight which I picked up over here....