Nokia Lumia 710: my personal impressions
I’ve always been fascinated by the mobility computing from a consumer perspective. My passion goes back to the 90’s when I owned 2 PockePCs (a Compaq and a Casio Cassiopeia with Windows CE 2.11), a Palm Pre 2, A Psion Revo (best smartphone keyboard ever), several Windows Mobile Phones and an Android device.
I have to be frank, when I first looked @ the first Windows Phone model, I was not that impressed. The metro style was kind of strange, considering where the other devices (iOS, Android, WebOS) where heading to. But when I started to use it, I realized the full potential. And I became addicted…
I got this beautiful present for Christmas (probably my family is VERY aware of my addiction 
), which was a Nokia Lumia 800. Superb phone, stunning display, lots of memory. But it doesn’t fit well.
What I mean is that I’m not a big fan of big phones (the Samsung Galaxy Note is like a giant phone to me, it’s not even a phone!). Technology is trying to “micro-do” everything since the Motorola 8700 and we’re going back to where we were before. Even though I see the value of them, I just don’t like to idea to carry a huge phone in my pocket. So my choice went to the Nokia Lumia 710.
I got the device yesterday and the price is at least a half of the normal Smartphone prizes, no matter which OS you like. Which is a good start…
When you lift the device for the first time, it’s seems like you’re handling an empty case, it’s just super lightweight. The form factor, something some people underestimate, it’s great. It perfectly fits in your hand. The USB connector is not in an awkward position like the Lumia 800. And it has buttons, instead of touch ones, which is great for a guy like me who was used to like the old IBM keyboards doing a lot of noise when you were typing.
Of course it lacks something: memory is only 8GB, the display is not even comparable with the Lumia 800 (TFT VS AMOLED, but the Gorilla Glass is good to have), the battery is only that powerful (although it’s removable, which is a good thing) and the camera is 5MP compared to the 810’s 8MP (which is ok for me. I don’t pretend to take stunning pictures from a phone).
You can have a look at this comparison I found (but there are plenty more out there):
If you’re still undecided, take a look at Tom’s Hardware Nokia Lumia 710 review.
I finally found the device I was looking for and I have no plans in changing it for anything. It reminds me, in a way, the HTC Mozart, one of the first Windows Phone I had, which was a great phone.
So overall I’m very satisfied with this purchase (at least this one I won’t regret it) and, if you want to see some pictures or have more info about my experience, just let me know in the comments box and I’ll definitely share them here.
And lastly, YOU, what Windows Phone do you have or you’re planning to buy?
Microsoft MVP Award – January 2012 !
It has been an incredible year, full of events and activities embracing new technology directions which will impact us in the future. Well, it has an impact on a lot of us already, if you think about Windows Phone and the social media integration as a well as the XBOX gaming gaming experience. Some people like it, some people don’t but you have to admit it’s a step further compared to a “normal” Smartphone experience.
Ok, ok, next blog post I’m gonna talk about that, not on this one . Aren’t you a little curious to see who got the MVP Award this cycle? It’s always a pleasure for me to Welcome new people as exceptional community Leaders, online and/or offline. I’m not saying they were not Leaders and strong community-oriented guys before the Award, I’m just saying I’m truly honored when I award people like that and I’m more when I have the chance to meet them.
So here is the list, freshen up & ready for the 2012 Year (sorted by name):
| MVP | Technical Expertise | Country |
| Adis Jugo | SharePoint Server | Bosnia-Herzegovina |
| Boris Ulik | Enterprise Security | Slovakia |
| Drahoslav Dvorak | Project | Czech Republic |
| Gabriel Enea | ASP.NET/IIS | Romania |
| Hrvoje Hudoletnjak | ASP.NET/IIS | Croatia |
| Maciej Grabek | Windows Phone Development | Poland |
| Mihai Nadas | Windows Azure | Romania |
| Nenad Trajkovski | Project | Croatia |
| Sebastian Wilczewski | Project | Poland |
| Slaven Sola | SQL Server | Croatia |
(this is related to the Region I represent, which is CEE & Italy, excluding Russia and CIS Countries).
A BIG CONGRATS to you guys MVPs and of course to the ones that have been re-Awarded. And being re-Awarded is tough as well so don’t you think MVPs take it for granted. The MVP Award lasts 12 months and everybody are treated as normal candidates so I totally understand the excitement (and sometimes the pain ) to wait for an email saying that you’ve been Awarded again.
That said, I sincerely want to wish you a very Happy New Year and, if took some time off, Happy Holidays ! I’ll be on holiday for a while but I’ll still be around (you’ll definitely find me on Twitter ).
BTW, If you don’t know nothing about the MVP Award Program, please take some time to subscribe to our blog as you’ll find some interesting stories to read…
Also, did you notice my blog URL has changed? The RSS Feed has been automatically updated but I wanted to let you know anyway (some personal promotion doesn’t hurt )
Enjoy your Award and Congratulations Again !
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for my blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Sneak Peek: CarbonWP Twitter client for Windows Phone | wpcentral | Windows Phone News, Forums, and Reviews
The Cyber Thieves That Stole Christmas [INFOGRAPHIC]
Via Scoop.it – digitalmashup
The Cyber Thieves That Stole Christmas [INFOGRAPHIC]
Via infographiclist.com
Virtualstudy.pl: let’s go virtual !
When I was @ the Microsoft Technology Summit in Poland few weeks ago I had the pleasure to talk with a lot of MVPs @ the Community Booth that had been set up for the event. BTW, that was a HUGE event with, I presume, almost 2.500 attendees. As you can imagine, it’s the biggest annual Microsoft event in Warsaw and, from what I’ve seen, it was a real success.
BTW, I’d like to point out a great article on the event (in Polish) by MVP Piotr Pawlik.
Well, during these conversations a lot of interesting things normally come up. One of those was regarding the VirtualStudy.pl (not to mention all the other communities like WSS.pl, codeguru.pl and a lot more).
Thanks to the hard of the community members, VirtualStudy.pl now has a full support of English language, an English forum and even a few videos in English available as VOD.
At the same time the board is now looking for presenters who would like to prepare and present sessions in English (possibly with good presentation skills).
VirtualStudy.pl was created to allow users to attend online meetings and learn free of charge. Since the beginning they had quite a few interesting courses like Windows Server, SharePoint 2010 Training, SQLServer 2008, Windows Phone 7 programing, as well as 6 month C# training course which finished with an exam and certificates) where the average number of attendees was around 200-300 people.
Currently VirtualStudy.pl hosts all the previous sessions on a on-Demand basis (few hundred sessions are already available to watch).
These online sessions do not contain any marketing content, but it’s pure technical Microsoft knowledge.
And at the moment they are currently organize their first VirtualStudy.pl Conference 2011.
So this is a call to action for anyone with technical skills on Microsoft Technologies who wants to deliver English presentation.
And, just to close the topic that I started at the very beginning, these are some pictures from the MTS:
And this is me, powered by a customized Chrome-Joke T-shirt (), when I just got a nice & unexpected gift:
Thank you for the wonderful time guys: I’ll see you next time in Warsaw (or even before, @ the MVP Global Summit !!)
Working on my slides…
I took some time today to make some order on the stuff I have on my computer. As I mentioned in my recent post, I had a few (!!!) issues to solve and finally I got everything.
And this is right after last week’s meeting I had with my extraordinary Team (the EMEA MVP Lead Team): it was so great to meet my fellow teammates, talented people with a lot of great ideas.
So now I was working on some slides I’ll present during a CEE Internal Meeting here in Prague. These people gave me an exceptional chance to present some of the things we are going to do (with their help) and some of the Microsoft MVPs’ Achievements during the last Fiscal Year.
This is the right time to start challenging people, talk with them and mingle (yes, that’s the right word ).
This is the perfect time to start, with a strategy in mind, all the activities we want to create, support and embrace in order to make the communities stronger and better.
Of course, as said, for me nothing is achievable without the help of the local subsidiaries: whether it’s a small Country or a big one, it’s necessary to talk face-to-face, start planning the activities and the conference calls in order to measure the status of all the different things we do. Or, I should say the MVPs do. They’re the KEY, the pillar and the main actors of our discussions. And the reputation they gained on the field, being the trusted advisors for many people, well, this helps a lot.
Apologize for the digression…
Starting to work on my slides, I realized the synonym of a Microsoft MVP is not easy to find. So I came up with this:
There are so many terms that can identify an MVP but this really depends on a case-by-case scenario, whether you’re an Early Adopter, a Trusted Advisor a distinguished speaker, etc…
But there’s one thing that is in common, and sorry but I’ll never stop saying this: Passion.
This is what differentiate us for doing a nice job in doing an excellent job, this is what defines you when you happen to have a conversation with people that are delusional on what they do (it happened to me just yesterday). And, no matter if you are an MVP, an MCC, or just an avid twitterer and enthusiast, this is your (OUR) key driver…
But I’m not done with it: as soon as I think about it and brainstorm myself, rest assured I’ll come up with many more ideas for my slides .
A glimpse of the future !
I had some great holidays during this summer, up in the mountains.
And I deliberately chose not to bring my laptop with me so not to be tempted to work. Anyway I used my Windows Phone to check my emails: not on a regular basis but at least to check the most important stuff that was going on. I wanted to take out job stuff from my vacations but I couldn’t resist. Every year I bring my laptop with me mostly for the candidates’ reviews (to see if everything was working the way I was expecting to).
So that was my first lesson: never leave my laptop @ home.
Because after I came back, I switched it on only to realize that the hard disk was broken. Oh my, I was so disappointed, especially because I was not so sure that I backed everything up.
With all the cloud services we now have at our disposal, none of them had all the stuff (at least the recent one) I was supposed to reinstall on my laptop. Fortunately, I made a backup on May, 2011 on my external hard disk so not everything was lost. Also, SkyDrive and Windows Live Mesh did help me in recovering some of the most important files I had.
Having said that, it was not over…
I ordered a new hard disk from HP (thanks to the local IT for the big help!) but it took about a week to have it. In the meantime, my smartcard was not working. Bummer !
As you may know, in order to have Direct Access on Windows 7 working, you have to use BitLocker and then use your smartcard to enable the corpnet access.
So I was lost…
Not to mention I got flu that took me @ home for almost a week.
So I went to the local IT and ordered a new one but it takes some time.
Long story short: I have my laptop (which is great), I recovered most of the files (even better) but I still need my smartcard. Well, close enough, I’m @ 80% I’d say…
Back to us,
during the hiking time back to the mountains I had some time to think about all the activities and top stories and the great collaborations with all the Countries I have the pleasure to represent as the Community Program Manager for the MVP Award Program. I guess everyone does that: when you have time and you’re relaxed, it’s much easier to build your last year’s history. Even better, you have a lot of creativity and lots of ideas that you want to put into action.
So, apart from being stuck right after my holidays, I’m SO READY to start the new (fiscal) year!
And you know what? There are a lot of things happening and planned to happen in the next 90 days. Lots of events, lots of engagements and of course the Microsoft and the 3rd party forums are still running and they get healthier.
You know I’m addicted to the social media and, to me, it’s the best way to monitor what is going on in the communities. As I represent 20 Countries, it’s not that easy to track everything you want to but at least you got what I need.
Also, I found a new way to use my Windows Phone more effectively: basically I created groups in which there are people (aka Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn accounts) that I want to monitor. In that way, and when you don’t have much time to use a PC client, I was able to get the most important things, at least important for me and the Communities.
So from an offline perspective, here is what is going to happen in the next 90 days (again, this is not a comprehensive list):
Mobility Day – Zagreb, Croatia (September 21st)
SQL TUNEIN – Zagreb, Croatia (September 26, 27)
Bleeding Edge 2011 – Gozd Martuljek, Slovenia (September 29th, 30th)
DevReach – Sofia, Bulgaria (October17-18)
Microsoft TechDay 2011 Baltic Region (October 18th till 20th)
Estonian page contains links to TechDay Lithuania & TechDay Latvia as well
Microsoft Technology Summit – Warsaw, Poland (October 18-19)
Sinergija – Belgrade, Serbia (October 18-20th)
Microsoft Vizija – Skopje Macedonia F.Y.R.O. (October 20-21)
Virtualization Conference 2011 – Milan, Italy (November, 16-17)
Windows Professional Conference – Milan, Italy (November 22-24)
Microsoft Fest 2011 – Prague, Czech Republic (November 26-27)
ITPro-Dev Connections 2011 – Athens, Greece (November 26-27)
As you can see many events (or I should say at least some of the most important ones) are happening in the Region, with a strong Microsoft MVP participation, whether the MVPs will be speakers or Ask The Expert. These are events that are community-driven and/or Microsoft-driven with the help of the Communities and I guess it’s a great opportunity for all the community members to stop by to some of these events and have a chance to talk with them about Microsoft technology.
And bear with me if I missed some events: feel free to comment on this post and let me know (I’m still digging around to see what’s going to happen and also starting to have conference calls and Live Meetings with my colleagues in the Region but of course it takes time so any help would be much appreciated!)
Of course I didn’t forget about the MVP candidates’ review, which is, as a matter of fact, the first thing I want & need to make sure it’s okay. So expect a blog post, as always, the 1st of October, late in the day, to see new names/new faces and great community contributors being awarded as part of this exciting community which is the MVP Award Program.
So, putting aside all the issues I had after my holidays’ return, I’m VERY VERY excited to start a new year with a lot of activities being so confident that the communities and the Microsoft MVPs will have a big part on the new wave of Microsoft Products and a strong impact on the future of Microsoft Technologies moving forward.
And you know what? I want to be part of it too !!
Love my randomized tag Cloud !
This is a tag cloud based on my blog.
It is not based on my personal tags (in fact, most of them are not shown in it) but it relies on the word counting in all the blog posts I did.
(created with Wordle)
And this is my twitter cloud, created with Tagxedo…
How I managed my Windows Live IDs (error code 8015341B)
Recently I decided to change my primary Windows Live ID.
It worked but it was kind of tricky and let me explain this to you.
There reason behind this was that I had 2 Windows Live IDs: one for XBOX Live and Zune and one for the emails/calendar etc.
All worked perfectly but, as I wanted to have just one ID for all services (and this include my Windows Phone) I decided it was the time to do that.
There’s nothing wrong to have 2 Windows Live IDs, especially for Windows Phone but I like things to be simple and agile
The first thing I needed to change, which was quite important, were the services linked to that “old primary” Hotmail account. My primary email needed to change and so for the Internet service provider primary email, bank account, automatic payments for electricity, etc.
Then I decided: ok, let’s go to my XBOX live and change the Live ID. On the XBOX 360, you can actually “move” your Avatar (your account) from one Hotmail account to another. Only one time every 30 days.
But this didn’t work.
So I discovered what was wrong: my secondary Hotmail account that I wanted to use was linked to another XBOX Live account. After some phone calls with the XBOX Support, they suggested me to unlink that Hotmail account with “my secondary” XBOX Avatar.
But you can’t do it.
On the XBOX Live I tried to link my XBOX Live account to my other Hotmail account but I received the error “8015341B”. I searched through the Internet and found some articles: one in particular seemed to be describing my problem…(the article also shows, if you’re interested, how to change the Windows Live ID that is associated with your Xbox LIVE Gamertag).
Then I realized what was also wrong with that Live ID:
the one that I wanted to use was US Region.
In this case, there’s nothing you can do: Regions are not compatible with each other (at least at the moment).
So they suggested me to create a new email account (say, a Yahoo account) and, through the XBOX and associate my Avatar to that “temporary” email account.
As you may know, you can’t delete an XBOX Live Account so that was the perfect “workaround” to my problem. So I associated that Yahoo account to my XBOX Gamertag first.
Then I created a new Hotmail account (say name.lastname@hotmail.com). This Hotmail account was brand new, European Region, and not linked to any XBOX Live.
I used the XBOX to associate my Gamertag to this new email account and voilà, the merge was completed !
I know, it’s not easy to understand as there are 3 Hotmail accounts and 1 Yahoo account in this description so I apologize if this is not that clear but in the end I solved my issue.
I had to “spam” my Messenger friends and tell them (with an automatic email) that I changed my Messenger account so I have to apologize to them for that too
But in the end what I achieved was: I have one Hotmail account associated with one XBOX Live/Zune Pass/Inbox/Calendar/Messenger and got rid of all the other email accounts.
And, to summarize, the reasons why it was not that easy were basically 2:
- my Hotmail accounts were created in different Regions
- both of them were linked to 2 XBOX Live Gamertags
You can still merge 2 Windows Live IDs (by going to http://profile.live.com but this is for easy switching from one to another).
And that was it
Microsoft MVP Award – July 2011 !
It’s the first of July and I’m here to announce another important milestone in the MVP Award Program.
We evaluated, scrutinized, “monitored” and got recommendations of outstanding community contributors in the Region I represent (Italy & CEE, excluding Russia + CIS Countries).
And it’s always a challenge, making sure we got all the information, making sure we nominate people in the right expertise (and it’s not always a piece o’ cake). But we ended up, hopefully, to Award the people that really deserve it !
I’m of course helped in this journey, which happens every 3 months: by dear colleague Marjorie, who really works hard on that period of time (and not only during that time ), by the local stakeholders, including the Audience Marketing Managers up to the DPE Leads, Directors and BMO Lead who can (and actually is very appreciated) give their opinions on the candidates that are in review. I guess the actual process really works thanks to all the people that are involved in this (and they are a lot, believe me ).
Having said that I would like to announce the newly Awarded MVPs for the 1st of July (sorted by name):
| MVP | Technical Expertise | Country/Region |
| Darko Milevski | SharePoint Server | Macedonia F.Y.R.O |
| Grzegorz Rycaj | Visual Studio ALM | Poland |
| Hajan Selmani | ASP.NET/IIS | Macedonia F.Y.R.O |
| Joanna Subik | System Center Operations Manager | Poland |
| Kaido Järvemets | System Center Configuration Manager | Estonia |
| Karel Klatovský | Remote Desktop Services | Czech Republic |
| Margarita Naumova | SQL Server | Bulgaria |
| Martin Wilhelm Angler | SharePoint Server | Italy |
| Peter Gubarevich | Enterprise Security | Latvia |
| Peter Holpar | SharePoint Server | Hungary |
| Piotr Pawlik | Exchange Server | Poland |
| Radi Atanassov | SharePoint Server | Bulgaria |
| Rok Bermež | Windows Azure | Slovenia |
| Salvatore Di Fazio | SharePoint Server | Italy |
| Slavko Kukrika | Windows Expert-IT Pro | Slovenia |
As soon as they’ll publish the good news (hopefully it’s a good news for them ) by blogging, micro-blogging and/or on their MVP Profiles, I will add the links to their names so you can start familiarize with them.).
A BIG CONGRATS to the MVPs who have been renewed this Award cycle: the list is long but I want to congratulate them for their hard community involvement. Being renewed is as tough as being awarded for the first time. Being involved in the online and offline community environments is a challenge (time constraints, few or no help from other community members, several trips to make speeches, spending big amount of time reviewing and writing articles and books and so forth). It’s the PASSION that drives us all, and it should always be like that.
BTW, If you don’t know nothing about the MVP Award Program, why don’t you subscribe to our blog? You’ll definitely find some good interesting stories to read !
Enjoy your Award and join me in congratulating them !
Forthcoming MVP Chat… on Twitter !
If you are a Microsoft MVP, you probably already know about that.
if you follow me (or follow the Official MVP Twitter account), you know it too.
We are going to have the first MVP Official chat Twitter ! Yes, you heard it right !
It’s a kind of an experiment, as we usually do these chats privately. The reason why we did that (and we will probably keep on doing that) is that sometimes we collect feedback and share information we couldn’t do it publicly as of the Non Disclosure Agreement.
So, again, I think it’s a great idea because it’ll create a lot of buzz around the MVP Award Program and will enable a free flow of information and discussions.
When, you asked? April, the 28th 2011, @ 9 to 11 a.m. (Pacific Time) which will be around 18-19 if you live in Europe (depending if you are +1 or +2).
I very much like this new way of interactions. Of course you cannot do this for every single topic but most of the times, if something’s sharable, why not? I’m really supportive on sharing interesting stuff as everyone will benefit from that. So probably during the chat we are going to have people who will be “listening” because they are big fans of the MVPs, or just because they are curious; we could probably have people who complain, people who says they deserve to be awarded and plenty more. But, nevertheless I think it’s gonna work and, if it will, I’m sure there will be other “experiments” like that.
The World has changed and in every change there’s something’s good and bad (I would take the Usenet/Forum as an example). And you would be successful for your ability to change and adapt. That’s the only way, especially in this IT world where everything changes so fast (and I totally understand the “frustration” many people have to face. But it’s the nature of things…
Back to the topic: be sure to follow @mvpchat and the #mvpchat hashtag and enjoy !!
Twitter name change with capital letters
I joined Twitter on April-May 2007 (I don’t remember exactly), when people thought that Twitter was just a mere “what am I doing” tool. Then I kept my account but I decided to use Jaiku which had, on that time, geo-location already. Jaiku “lost” the micro-blogging battle (and Google was not that happy about that as it bought Jaiku..).
Then Twitter changed, and people realized how powerful this tool can be. But I don’t want to talk about that in details (maybe in another post) but I want to focus on an issue that is still present.
On that time I used the nick Alead (with A capital letter). After starting to re-use it, I decided to change the name (you can easily do so by going to “Settings –> Profile –> Username), in line with the trends, to alead.
I realized, year over year, that sometimes I couldn’t see my tweets’ re-tweets made by other users.
The reason? some client don’t support the new re-tweet feature. Or, I should say, they have that feature but for some reasons they see my username as 2 different ones. So basically, if you re-tweet in the old style using a phone client, everything is fine (and if you use TweetDeck or Metro Twit you can see them in the Mentions column). But If you re-tweet in the new way, chances are you won’t be able to see them (it doesn’t happen all the time, it seems to be random).
Hootsuite and Rowi, for example, do not allow you to see the re-tweets made in this way. And there are probably other twitter clients that don’t allow to do that.
So this is just to make you aware of this, and maybe push the developers to implement it better…
One last tip: if you are new to twitter, be sure to choose a very “simple and short” username: remember there are only 140 characters available and you need to let others add their own comments…
Display your name in search with your WordPress blog
I had some time this early morning and I wanted to do some (rookie) SEO on my blog.
Basically, when I search for my name, it always appears my old blog. Even if I search my name+blog it doesn’t work. Although the search gives me a lot of links regarding my “online life”, there was no way to appear in in searching for my full name. And this happens with Bing, Google and Yahoo search engines.
Then, I finally found think link that eventually will solve my issue.
All you need to do is to go to Users –> My Profile
And in the “Display name publicly as” you need to put your full name.
You can also use the “verify external services” feature: using your other accounts (LinkedIn, Facebook and others) to confirm that you’re really what you claim to be.
There’s another little open question to me. I saw that, depending on where you are, you got different search results. This is because some services use the location based feature so, no matter if you’re writing in English, chances are that you’ll not appear in your searches when you are in a foreign Country. Do you have any ideas on how this works ?
Home of Technical Communities
If you are in the IT Market and involved in a local community/User Group, you may have heard about INETA, GITCA and PASS.
These are technical “networks” where you can find relevant information regarding User Group events/articles/content and any other interesting stuff for the topics you may be interested in.
Then we had UGSS, a repository of all the information, including all the topics and all audiences (Developers, ITPros, Information Workers and Consumers).
Now UGSS entered a new phase with the launch on http://www.technicalcommunity.com
The web interface is way better than the old one. From a user perspective, it helps you find content and events very easily.
From a User Group President perspective, you can do more. You can search for sponsors, available speakers when it comes to organize an event (by doing a search by audience/product), content and funding. There are also some User Group training kits (they don’t cover all technologies yet) available for you to consume.
It’s very easy to register and, if you are a user like me, you can subscribe up to 10 User Groups everywhere in the world so to be informed on what is going on in the Countries and the topics you are interested in.
So, if you are a technical speaker, this is a good chance to improve your reputation and start collaborating with other User Groups. If you are a User Group President or part of the Board, this is a good way to promote your events and find relevant speakers if you can’t find one, say, on Windows Azure. Also, you can make a request on booking one of the many Microsoft Innovation Centers to hold your event.
The existing data from UGSS have already been migrated but it’s still an ongoing process so please feel free to send an email to ugss@microsoft.com to report an issue or make a request.
Enjoy !
Link to: UGSS – Home
