It should be obvious by now, but I am in the process of decommissioning this blog. Please go to http://decheung.com instead. Thanks!

So the other day I posted this: I have been at Microsoft for 5 yearsHere's a picture of what you get: There's a colorful box, a sticker that says "Ask me how long I've worked here", a card, a clock, some confetti, (not shown) a banner that says 'Celebrate', and (not shown) 3 grey balloons. [Originally posted at http://www.decheung.com/archives/2005/06/stuff_that_you.html]

5 years sure goes by fast - now it's time for a change, and change is good. Alright, enough cliches. It is with sincere regret that I announce that I am no longer with the MacBU. My last day was Monday. In my 5 (well, 4.9) years at the MacBU at Microsoft, I helped ship a whole lot of products: Microsoft Entourage 2001 for Mac Microsoft Entourage X for Mac MSN for Mac Microsoft Entourage 2004 for Mac Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 for Mac PST Import Tool for Entourage 2004. Microsoft Entourage 2004 SP 2 for Mac (coming this year!) I joined the MacBU right out of college, as a die hard Mac fan. At first I was skeptical, figuring that the MacBU was part of some secret Microsoft ploy to keep Apple down by... uh... producing bad software. Of course, a lot of those feelings were after the infamous Word 6.0 days, so looking back that is understandable - and to this day there are still many Microsoft employees who are apologetic about the Word 6.0 fiasco. In fact, it is because of the Word 6.0 experience that the MacBU was created! But enough trivia for today. Going back to my point, after joining the MacBU and having been here for 5 years, it is quite obvious that there is no development team more passionate and more dedicated to the Mac OS X platform outside of Apple. These are people who truly want to produce great software for the Mac, and do it with a fraction of the resources of Office for Windows . I am exceptionally proud of the products we have shipped to date, and I have no doubts that the products will continue to rock. As an example of Microsoft's continued commitment to meeting the business needs of Mac customers, check out Entourage 2004 SP 2 ships later this year. That was the last thing I worked on before leaving, and I know it's going delight Mac customers in Exchange environments. Looking back at those 5 years, there sure were lots of ups and downs. One major up was the fact that I never had to buy any Macs after graduating because the MacBU made sure I had some great machines. One major down was getting Mac OS X 10.0.0 - wow remember those days? And all those posts on the various rumor sites speculating that it was because Apple had left in debugging code? I must say, Tiger is pretty darn impressive - and just imagine if that's what they had shipped all the way back then (heck, or even Panther!). Through the various WWDCs and MacWorld Expos that I attended (2 San Jose WWDCs, 2 San Francisco WWDCs, 6 MacWorld SF's, 2 MacWorld NY's) I made a lot of great friends in the Mac community - Apple and elsewhere. And the level of customer interaction that the MacBU afforded me enabled to meet many of you at demos across the nation. Without a doubt, it's been a great 5 years. So... why now? What's going on? Why am I leaving, and where am I going? Today is my first day at my new job as a Program Manager at MSN Search on the MSN Search Toolbar. At Microsoft, changing jobs is actually a fairly frequent event - so this isn't exactly the first time someone has done something like this before. That said, a lot of people do associate me with Entourage - especially if you knew the volume of Entourage support questions I get in my inbox! [BTW, a great resource for Entourage-related questions is the EntourageTalk mailing list: Entourage-Talk-On@lists.letterrip.com]. After 5 years, I thought I'd try something new, something different - and something that's still in Silicon Valley. The folks at MSN Search Toolbar have the same level of commitment and excitement  that I expect, and so I'm going to give this a try. Fear not for the fate of Entourage and the MacBU - I am sure that innovative, compelling, quality products will continue to ship. And if not, I'll be sure to let my roommate know -- he's a Program Manager on Entourage. :)Originally posted on decheung

Here's a feature idea that I want in a PC graphics program that GraphicConverter has - Smart Trim.   What does it do?   You open a graphics file, press a keyboard combo, and it automatically crops the picture to minimize the amount of white space.   This is probably a super easy feature to code - just find out where the furthest non-white pixels are in the X and Y coordinates, then just crop to it.   So... why can't I find a Windows application that does this?   Do you have a suggestion?

One of my favorite applications on the Mac is GraphicConverter. Oh wow I absolutely love this app and have an entire workflow for putting pictures I've just taken onto the web using it. Is there a Windows equivalent to this application? Here are the key features that I need: Be able to view a folder of images using thumbnails (gallery) ... and in that view rename all the files using the exif data on when the photo was taken using the format YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.jpg ... and in that view shift the exif data on when the photo was taken - forwards and backwards (in case multiple cameras are involved) Batch process a group of pictures so that they are autolevel/autocolor Batch process a group of pictures so that they are automatically rotated correctly Batch process a group of pictures so that they are resized to arbitrary maximum dimensions ... using an algorithm that doesn't look awful. Any suggestions for an app that can do this job? Thanks! (Note: This blog isn't updated often. But due to the importance of this request I'm casting a wider net. This post is also mirrored at: http://www.decheung.com/archives/2005/05/need_graphics_u.html)

Today at MacWorld Expo in SF, the MacBU announced a public beta of the .PST Import Tool. You can find more information about this program here: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/entourage2004/using.aspx?pid=pstbeta

Just as a reminder, I'm going to try and update http://www.decheung.com more often. So you might want to be checking that blog instead.

United States Patent Application: 0040061716 Centralized alert and notifications repository, manager, and viewer Abstract A central notifications manager user interface is employed for presenting and managing notifications and alerts received from a plurality of different sources in a consistent and uniform format. The different sources can include one or more business productivity programs, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, or email/personal information manager software application, as well a messaging service that produces alerts transmitted over the Internet. The user can selectively enable the display of pop-up reminders to notify the user when a task becomes due, and can selectively display an entire list of notifications and alerts that are active, enabling the user to manage (i.e., edit) the notifications and alerts within the source application. Pop-up display of notifications is automatically disabled during a presentation to avoid undesired display interruptions. Patent Pending! Neat! [Cross posted on http://www.decheung.com/]

Let the AutoUpdate update your software today!   Or, go here to get it: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/download/office2004/update_sp1.xml&secid=4&ssid=12&flgnosysreq=True   Lots of good improvements!

Gosh am I busy these days. So to make up for it, here's a URL to a free contest to win a free action figure of yourself!   http://sweepstakesonline.com/macoffice/ [click the rules link on that page to see the rules]   Yep. It's just like it says - if you win, you get a free custom action figure of yourself.   How neat!

My colleague Gil has posted this fantastic tip. Check it out: http://blogs.msdn.com/gilg/archive/2004/08/24/220000.aspx

Woot! My favorite e-mail service provider has just updated its pricing plans to be more generous.   Check it out on fastmail's blog entry. It's a pretty compelling offer!   Now's a good time to talk about my e-mail strategy.   All the personal e-mail I receive goes through pobox.com which is a forwarding service. It seems kind of lame sometimes to pay to have your email forwarded, but it has worked well and it has enabled me to pick and choose my e-mail service provider as I want.   But more importantly, every email that goes through my pobox.com accoung goes to 2 different email service providers: a web based one and fastmail.   I connect to fastmail via Entourage via IMAP. Entourage is my hub for all things communications.   Anyway, check out fastmail. They're great. [spam] And if you sign up for an account, be sure to put 'decheung' as the referrer! [/spam]

First, the good news: Congrats to my co-worker Jorg Brown for winning the first ADHOC Showcase for his clever Unsummarize hack! [ADHOC was formerly MacHack].   Next, the not so accurate news: People are always coming up with conspiracy theories that claim that MSNBC is a shill for Microsoft that only reports good news. Well, this article had a little gem that caught my attention:   In the end, [Russ Cooper, senior scientist at TruSecure Corp.] expects most corporations will run a very scaled-down version of SP2, both because they want to avoid compatibility problems and because it could be a nightmare to manage things like personal firewalls on thousands of desktops.   Apparently Cooper has never been in an enterprise with thousands of Windows desktops - there's a mechanism called Group Policy which lets you define exactly that kind of behavior on the desktop machines. Whoops.    

One of the best resources for Microsoft Entourage customers is MacScripter.net   Here are two excellent downloads that I'd like to highlight from MacScripter.net:   1. Sync Entourage-Address Book 2 Sync Entourage-Address Book synchronizes Entourage and Apple's Address Book in OS 10.3 (Panther)*. It has been upgraded to use the new features of Entourage 2004, but will continue to work as an update in Entourage X as well. It allows you to maintain Entourage as your centralized Personal Information Manager while at the same time taking advantage of the direct access provided to Fax programs, iSync, iChat, iPod, the new .Mac Address Book, and more by OS X's Address Book.   2. ScriptBuilders: Sync Entourage-iCal 1.0.8 Sync Entourage-iCal synchronizes Entourage 2004 and iCal. It allows you to maintain Entourage as your centralized Personal Information Manager while at the same time taking advantage of the direct access provided to iSync, iChat, iPod, .Mac online, and more by OS X's iCal. Almost all Entourage fields sync to iCal and back, with any unmapped fields recorded in event Notes.   You can also sync Entourage reminders to iCal alarms, including Email alarms. You can keep both applications in constant synchronization by running the script at any time, or automatically every night if you wish. Version 1.0.8 fixes a rare bug which could error "The variable iCalendar is not defined" and quit when Checking for Deletions.   These two scripts highlight one of the best aspects of Entourage that sets it far apart from its competition: its incredibly rich AppleScript support.   We spend a lot of time making sure that Entourage has a rich AppleScript dictionary so that you, our customers, can extend its functionality in ways that we would never imagine - and be able to automate activities to improve your personal productivity. We envision Microsoft Entourage to be your hub for communications, and making it a bit of a platform, there is simply more value.   So check out those two scripts -- they've been found to be quite useful by those who need that functionality.

Hot off the pdf press: Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac: Working with Exchange Server   This is a very useful white paper that is designed to help Mac admins in Exchange environments. I wrote a lot of the original content (including the table, and the flow chart diagrams.)    In Entourage 2004, we made incredible improvements to the Account AutoConfigure, but incase it doesn't work in your Exchange environment, this pdf has more information on how to set it up manually   Speaking of which, so for e-mail, Entourage 2004 supports POP3, IMAP, Exchange, and Hotmail. If you don't know what Exchange is, you likely don't need to worry about it. Entourage 2004 has a nifty feature that I designed that I call Account AutoConfigure. We redesigned Entourage so for a majority of the time, all you have to do is enter your e-mail address, and Entourage will automatically configure the right IMAP/POP/SMTP server information - so that you don't need to know what it is. For example, try someone@earthlink.net or someone@mac.com!    It just works automagically! This is really useful because most people don't know their IMAP/POP/SMTP server, or they get very confused between them.   And here's a Bonus Tip for the day - If you're a RDC user (Remote Desktop Connection), and you want to connect to multiple machines simultaneously - there is a way to do it. Just make a copy of the application! Yep. That's it! You can have multiple copies of the RDC app running at the same time. Pretty neat!