Breaking News! The "Wow" Starts Now!

Windows Vista has been launched today to customers... The new Microsoft Operating system comes in 4 editions (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate). From the first logon page, moving the mouse, touching the keyboard and entering your user name and password you'll know it's a whole new experience. Since of course I had the opportunity to install and test Vista as a WinSE dev, allow me to take print screens from my experience and talk about new features of the OS.

The first thing you'll notice is a fresh new user interface; All applications and windows are surrounded by glass, which gives you a sense of depth, while you can use a window/application you still can see behind it. Also switching between applications has been improved, in fact if you just hover with your mouse on any of the taskbar minimized windows, you'll get live previews of the applications including motion video.

Flip 3D. It's a new and very cool feature which allows you to switch between applications in a 3D space, allowing you to scroll throw them with the arrow keys, or quickly with the mouse.

A new feature is the Sidebar. The side bar is a new feature which allows you to show or run small applications (Gadgets) to do a specific task for you. For example I have the prayer times, a slide show of my pictures, my processor and memory stats, weather and calendar. Other gadgets may allow you to view RSS feeds from your favorite websites and others play your local FM channel. If you want more information from a gadget, you can drag it to your desktop and that way it will expand showing you more information.
A new innovation is the new windows slide show, it’s some kind of a LCD or a device attached to your laptop, allowing you to show gadgets as the calendar, your upcoming appointments and/or your contacts without even turning on your PC. That's what you should expect from the new Windows OS.

Information when you need it; search is now on your finger tips, open start menu and start typing the name of the document or the application or part of the content of the document and automatically files and application matching your search criteria will be displayed.

IE Tabs allows you to view all tabs and the ability to choose and close which ever you don't like.

Windows photo gallery is now easier with features like fix (color, brightness, red-eye... etc.). The more amazing about the photo gallery is that you always have a saved original backup of the image no matter how many times you edited it, so from now on feel confident to edit and try to change whatever you want; you always can go back and remove everything even after years! Another feature in the photo gallery is the ability to play both image and video files, so whenever you preview your album, you don't need to close the photo viewer and run the Media player to run the videos, It's all in one now!

Windows Vista is full of new and cool features. It's simpler, more secure and more user friendly.
To know more about features in Vista go to:

- 100 Reasons You'll Be Speechless

- Windows Vista – Show us your Wow

- Why Develop on Windows Vista?

Scrum Development

I’m working on a tool going to be launched with next Windows Server OS... We are using a project management process for development called Scrum process... I really liked it, so here is what is all about, try to understand it; it’s really interesting.

Scrum believes that a development team should perform as a sport team, every team member working independently but towards the same goal. Scrum suggests that a team has a maximum of 6 - 7 members. The team facilitator is called the Scrum master (project manager in most companies). His/her job is to implement and manage the Scrum process in the project. Scrum masters focus most of their time in managing outside interference for the Scrum team and solving outside impediments or ‘Blockers’ that cannot be solved by the Scrum team (Not managing the project budget like in most companies).

A project can start with any activity; analysis, design, implementation and testing and can change between activities at any time. This increases the project's flexibility and productivity. Scrum assumes that the software development process is complicated and unpredictable and treats it as a controlled black box. Scrum takes into consideration that:
- Requirements are not fully understood at the beginning of the process.
- Requirements change during the process.
- The process becomes unpredictable when new tools and technologies are used.
They say that scrum is also a way of playing the rugby (the game). Characteristics that Scrum shares with rugby are:
- The environment determines the process (the game)
- The environment (functionality, timetable, business need and competition) dictates the ending of the process (the game).
- “Rugby evolved from breaking soccer rules – adapting to the environment.” (Schwaber, K.)
- “The primary cycle is moving the ball forward” (Schwaber, K.)

The whole project gets divided into periods of time with a maximum duration of 4 weeks. One period is called a Sprint and every team member gets tasks to execute within the given Sprint. For example in our project the sprint is 3 weeks time period, during which we should come up with a complete phase of the project. During the sprint, the team conducts regular scrum meetings (2 days per week in my team, other teams do scrum meetings every day). The meetings are held in the same place at the same time every specific period of time. The meetings don’t last for more than 30 minutes. The scrum master is responsible for asking every team member the following three questions:
1. What have you done since the last scrum meeting?
2. Is there any road blocks?
3. What do you plan on doing between now and the next scrum meeting?

Conversation is restricted to the team members answering the above questions. Meetings can be established for immediately after the scrum meeting based on answers to the above questions. The scrum master is responsible for making decisions immediately, if required to remove impediments to progress. The scrum master is responsible for noting impediments that must be resolved external to the meeting and causing them to be removed.

In my opinion, I feel the scrum development management is very effective, makes the developer free to decide what he needs, which reflects on his creativity. It also identifies for the management the role of solving any blockers facing the team, not controlling the team like what really happens in many companies! It’s an amazing experience and a new thing that I’m learning in Microsoft. It also made me feel that my project manager now, is actually part of my team, we are all working to get the product done, he’s not ordering anyone to finish, he’s one of us, we are a team! But he’s the one who points out that we are late in schedule, or that we need to ramp up a little... etc.
I Hope I have transferred some of my knowledge to u in a good and effective way, I really do hope that some managers really read this way of management and try to implement it in their own companies. Just give it a try, really it’s all about the team, managers should be part of the team!

References

- Scrum Development. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum)
- (PDF) Rising, L., Janoff, N.S. (2000). The Scrum Software Development Process for Small Teams Retrieved August 15, 2006
- (PDF) Schwaber, K. Advanced Development Methods. SCRUM Development Process Retrieved August 15, 2006
- (PDF) Dr. Sutherland, J. (October 2004) Agile Development: Lessons learned from the first scrum Retrieved August 15, 2006

Breaking News! A freind's interview on JobsBlog!

One of my friends had an interview with Priya ( An international recruiter in MS) published in MS JobsBlog... Mona was accepted in Microsoft interviews in Egypt last December... she posted a couple of comments here responding to my posts about MS interviews results...

What's really nice is, we have now more than 10 from the Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences Ain Shams university have been offered positions in Microsoft! This faculty only graduated 7 generations! Each have an average of 150 student... it's almost a 1% from the graduates, but these 1% are just normal students in the faculty! I admit there are many better than me that didn't have luck with MS interviews (at least I know 3 of them)! My point I want to prove is, this is considered as a very healthy sign to all FCIS graduates, we are here, in the largest software company in the world! We can do it, any Computer science Ain Shams graduate can do it... btw I hardly passed my exams during college! I didn't like to study and I believe I only studied the last 3 days before the exams, sometimes in these 3 days I open books I've never seen before, I didn't attend lectures, I hardly go to labs! This doesn't mean u should do so; the reason I'm saying this is to encourage everyone to study programming and algorithms harder and harder, be practical, if your grades are not that good in school, u should know that this doesn't mean anything in terms of practical life! GO FCISers! Coz many of u really have talent!

Mona's Interview:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2007/01/25/meet-mona-from-egypt-to-seattle.aspx

Funny from Microsoft

From day one in Microsoft, everyone is talking about security... when u sit with your team lead, or any of your team members, they keep on warning u to always lock your pc before leaving it, even if u r just going to the bathroom or going to the room next to you, Because u have the Windows code on your machine, and there is a lot of people going around the building that are not allowed to c the code; so u always need to lock your machine... One of my team mates told me once that whenever some1 leaves the pc unlocked, some1 else send an e-mail from his outlook to the whole team to embarrass him... I didn’t pay a lot of attention, till one day I received these 3 mails in my inbox, starting with this e-mail:

To: All Developers
Subject: Hello, I am a teddy bear!

And I forgot my pants today!

Signed by: A.R
--------------------------------------------

I didn’t really understand what that is?!... Why would A.R (A British dev who just joined the team) send something like that?! Until I received this e-mail from a team lead (Who’s also British):

----------------------------------------------
To: All Developers
Subject: RE: Hello, I am a teddy bear!

Really? That must be embarrassing!
Almost as embarrassing as leaving your computer unlocked, perhaps?

Signed by: I
----------------------------------------------
Now that was funny, now I got it, so A.R really left his pc unlocked, and some1 sent this e-mail for him... But, it’s not over; A.R sent this e-mail later the same day:

----------------------------------------------
To: All Developers
Subject: RE: Hello, I am a teddy bear!

I,
As a fellow British; I would have thought you of all people would have realised this message was from an impersonator – I would of course use ‘trousers’ rather than ‘pants’ in any group-wide communication, to avoid any confusion as to what I meant.
I would have thought the prankster responsible ought to be the one most embarrassed... ;-)
Yours,
A.R

Did u get it? :-) Smart from I. to figure out that this was an un-locked pc case, even smarter and funnier e-mail sent by A.R. to reply and avoid a little embarrassment!

Breaking News - Snow! and an Accident!

Last Wednesday, everyone got stuck in the office because of all the snow on the streets... Cars just get stuck climbing a very small hill, or just trying to turn around a corner or something!, wheels just keep on spinning without the car moving... a lot of people actually just leave their cars in the streets and walk; because cars just don’t move with all the snow that turns into ice on the roads!!. Here are some pics I have taken in Redmond.


I stayed at work for more than 2 hours, just waiting for the traffic to clear up a little bit... anyway we decided to go home me and Ali (we live in the same complex)... so he took his car, I took mine, he was driving in front of me... My car is kind of a small compact car, It’s not bad (thank god) actually it’s considered a very good car, but it’s just a small car... anyway It all started by having problems with climbing out of the building garage! I couldn't get any traction, I reached almost the rpm red line, and the wheels just keep on spinning without the car moving!... after a long struggle I managed to get out of the garage, Ali was driving in front of me coz he knew a shortcut to home... He says he was slowing down for a speed pump or something just before getting out of the MS campus, that's when he actually suddenly fully stopped! anyway, I was just behind him.. I pushed the brakes but the car kept on sliding towards him, I hardly turned to the other lane of the road which luckily was free of other cars! (Thank God)... But still, I didn't manage to completely avoid hitting Ali; I just slightly scratched both of our paintings... Oops, Ali went down to go to look for how much damage we made, in the meanwhile I was still under the shock that I couldn’t even open my car door! I asked him “Did we hit hard?”, “No, no everything is OK, it doesn’t look like there is anything” he replied (Thank God again).

In the middle of the shortcut, we kind of figured out that it's moving so slow... really so slow!, so we decided to go on the normal regular way, so just turning to the other lane to head back, since the other lane was almost free (no cars actually was going on the other way), so snow was heavier on the road, so again, my car got stuck in this snow, and Again I tried to get the full car's horsepower to get out of this thing!... Anyway we went back to the MS campus, I parked my car in the garage, we took Ali's car to go back home, he and his wife spent some time with me and my Mom, we went down for a while to play in the snow... headed back, watched a little TV... and then they just went home...
Wow, What a day... How many times did this happen to u?!... It was kind of a cool day after all.

The Truth The Way It Is!

Read this post and Fahmy Howeidy's article that was banned from publishing
The sarcastic post:
http://engafm.blogspot.com/2006/12/blog-post_24.html
The banned article:
http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=41645&r=t

Let me take this part from the article, and put it here, as I feel it really describes what's going on in Egypt now... What do u think?

في «أحلام فترة النقاهة» - الحلم رقم ٢٠٣ - التي تطبعها الآن «دار الشروق» مكتملة، كتب الأستاذ نجيب محفوظ يقول: رأيتني أقرأ كتاباً وإذا بسكاري رأس السنة يرمون قواريرهم الفارغة، فتطايرت شظايا، وينذرونني بالويل، فجريت إلي أقرب قسم شرطة، ولكني وجدت الشرطة منهمكة في حفظ الأمن العام، فجريت إلي فتوة الحي القديم، وقبل أن أنتهي من شكواي هب هو ورجاله وانقضوا علي الخمارة التي يشرب فيها المجرمون، وانهالوا عليهم بالعصي حتي استغاثوا بي!

المعني الذي أراد نجيب محفوظ توصيله أن «الأمن العام» في مفهوم رجال الشرطة ليس هو أمن الناس أو المجتمع، ولكنه أمن النظام، وعلي الناس أن يدركوا هذه «الحقيقة» وأن يتصرفوا علي هذا الأساس. وملاحظته هذه تفسر لنا المفارقة التي نحن بصددها، حيث لم تنتبه الشرطة إلي عمليات القتل التي مارستها عصابة التوربيني طوال السنوات السبع التي خلت، لأنها كانت منشغلة «بالأمن العام» المتمثل في متابعة النشطاء السياسيين، الأمر الذي يجسد الاهتمام بالأمن السياسي دون الأمن الاجتماعي، وهو موقف يعبر بصدق عن الخلل الشديد في علاقة السلطة بالمجتمع في مصر، والذي ترجح فيه كفة السلطة باستمرار، الأمر الذي رتب نتيجة مهمة خلاصتها أن تأمين النظام بات أهم واجبات الشرطة، وكل ما عدا ذلك تتراجع أهميته أو تنعدم.
هذا التفسير رددته بعض التحليلات التي نشرتها صحف المعارضة، حتي أصبح أمراً متعارفاً عليه ومسلماً به، ناهيك عن أن شواهد الواقع تؤيده. والانطباع السائد في المجتمع المصري الآن أن أغلب مخافر الشرطة أصبحت تستقبل بفتور وعدم اكتراث أي بلاغ تتلقاه حول قضية جنائية أو مدنية، لكنها تستنفر وتعلن الطوارئ وتهرول، إذا كانت القضية سياسية أو كان البلاغ يشكك في وجود رائحة للإرهاب في أي مكان.
ليس ذلك فحسب، وإنما بات مستقراً في أوساط الشرطة أن كفاءة الضابط أو القيادي، ومن ثم ارتقاءه واستمراره، ذلك كله يقاس بمدي الإنجاز الذي يحققه في ملاحقة وإجهاض العمليات الإرهابية، فضلاً عن كفاءته في «التعامل مع الإرهابيين بالأسلوب المناسب»، وهو ما يدفع رجال الأمن إلي التفاني في اتجاه والتراخي في الاتجاه الآخر، وفي ظل ذلك الوضع فلا يستغرب ألا ترصد ممارسات عصابة «التوربيني»، بينما تسلط الأضواء القوية علي ممارسات طلاب الجامعة، إذ بحكم ذلك المنطق، فإنه من حسن حظ الرجل وعصابته أنهم ليسوا في عداد «الإرهابيين»، حيث لم يفعلوا أكثر من أنهم اغتصبوا وقتلوا ٣٠ طفلاً فقط!

Human

It’s weird when some1 feels he is on the top of the world.. when some1 forgets about God.. When some1 thinks he rules.. He Rocks!.. he have everything!.. every1 wishes to be in his place!.. and yet, at this very moment, no matter who he is, what he does, where he is!.. Something happens make him think about that all over again.. Something reminds him that he’s just so fragile.. very easily breakable!.. It doesn’t even have to happen 2 u.. but something might happen to some1 u love, or some1 u care about.. at this very moment, u remember again ur god, go pray, do what u have to.. u don’t think u rock anymore, u just found out that u r just a human being.. who have feelings, one of the feelings is to be afraid, afraid of the unknown!.. the unknown that might happen 2 u, and u just pray and wish it doesn’t.. God be with us all, helping and supporting us.

Seattle 2007

Happy Eid, Happy New Year and Merry Christmas everyone.. Yesterday we went (Me, Ali and his wife, Meshref and Ramy) to watch the fireworks beside the Space Needle down town Seattle..

It was pretty cool.. I had my camera with me, I took pics of us and for the fire works.. all these pics were taken by me in the event, I also took a couple of videos for the event.. before u watch the video, please turn ur volume down a little bit, there is a lot of people screaming and yelling all around me (They are really really excited!) :-) I was excited too, :-) but apparently not as much as they were!.


Video: Seattle 2007

There was a symphony playing, and the fire works were just like the equalizer for the music playing.. It was really interesting.. I'm kind of shy to post my personal pics, but this is the first time I'm gonna post any pics in my blog.. here is a pic of us.. Ali - Me - Meshref - Ramy.

As u all can c.. :-) it was really cold, we were all wearing all the clothes we have!..

In brief, It was fun and a cool event.. In the middle of all that, all what I miss, Is my Fiancee (Radwa).. I really do Miss u, hope u'll be with me soon.. Hope u all r having fun these days too. If not, don't worry about it, just do what u have to do now, finish it right, and then u'll have ur fun time soon.. untill then, just take care..