…as I said, “more to come”.

You may have heard of the Double Rainbow Video. The guy who filmed this, Paul “Bear” Vasquez, lives in Yosemite and in the past month has gotten huge traffic for his ‘vivid’ reaction to that double rainbow. We hooked up with Bear to learn more about him & show him how to capture a full on double rainbow with Windows Live Photo Gallery using our panorama stitch feature. It’s so intense!

Some more background…

When I first showed the Windows Live team the famous “Double Rainbow” video back in July they thought it was hilarious. But when I said I wanted him to come and do a video with us, they looked at me as if I had been seeing rainbows all day…they thought I was kidding. I e-mailed Bear that night and sure enough, he responded, and with great enthusiasm.

I called him and gave him the lowdown on the project and asked if he would do a “Double Rainbow” redux. He was ecstatic! So we jumped right on it. He flew to Seattle and we had an absolute blast. After a 10 hour shoot we shared stories, ate delicious Vietnamese food (his favorite), and hung out with the crew.

Photo Caption: Bear and our crew. From left to right: Connor Lanman, Max Lanman, Adam Collins, Matt Garrett, Bear, Austin Chick, Michael Fishman, Andrew Sobey, & Shawn Anderson not pictured: Tommy Yacoe & Brendan Schlagel

We did a second video called “Meet Bear” where talks about his experience posting “Double Rainbow” and his love for sharing photos and videos with the world using Windows Live Essentials – video coming soon (will update post when its up). UPDATE: You can check out the second video called “Meet Bear” by clicking here!

Bear is something special. He’s entered the world of social media in hopes to share laughs, smiles, and insights. It’s not about the product, it’s about the people. It’s about the viewers, the users, it’s about you. And more importantly this project also shows how powerful sharing photos and videos can be. If tools like Photo Gallery and Movie Maker didn’t exist, Bear and I wouldn’t have met.

People can now share their lives with everyone and anyone, and can influence each other’s lives in a positive way. That’s what is so cool about Bear’s story.

Till next time,

-Connor

My name is Connor Lanman and I am not claiming I am the most interesting intern ever; and by no means am I working on routers for my 12 week summer internship at Microsoft. I am, however, working on a fairly unorthodox marketing project…sponsored by Microsoft. More on that in a minute. But you can imagine what I was thinking, “Why the heck would they trust some scrawny college kid to do marketing?” The cool thing is that I get to tell the tale to you in this blog until I finish later in September.

Let the saga begin…

First in order to understand where I’m starting from…

1) I just completed my Freshman year at Stanford University and no, I don’t know what I’m majoring in

2) I’m 19 years old, my birthday was this past June

3) I have no idea what I want to do in life

4) The only big online video experience I had was doing a promotional video for Haagen-Dazs back in ’09 when I finished high school. I wrote a book about bees, made a documentary, and then made a comedy music video with my brothers sponsored by Häagen-Dazs, inspiring dance moves from Silicon Valley to Holland. What? I like bees.

So here I am at Microsoft, now given the assignment to do an experimental video campaign for Windows Live Essentials (download the Windows Live Essentials beta refresh!). The cool thing is that Windows Live is launching Wave 4 soon and I get to be a part of it. Many of you may be familiar with Photo Gallery and Movie Maker and in these videos I get to talk about these tools in creative fun ways. Instead of watching a demo, why not be entertained? That’s basically what I aimed to do!

After doing the video for Häagen-Dazs I was amazed at the power of an online video to communicate a message to the masses, and I was even more intrigued by the power of education through multimedia. I used what I learned from that experience and applied it to this project. To start, you need short, high quality stories that are informative in terms of content and are entertaining to the average YouTuber. How do you do that?

Well, I began by involving my brother Max Lanman who is filmmaker. We sat down and started creating concepts. After narrowing down 15 concepts down to 8 or so, we were ready to script, audition, and pool together a crew. We posted an ad calling for actors a couple days before the scheduled audition and we fielded over 80 responses and auditioned over 60 people in 6 hours. We casted over 20 roles, about 40 extras, and worked with a 10 person crew! It was crazy, but it worked. We then shot the videos in four x 10 hour days. We’re in post-production and excited to show off some hilarious videos and some great easy to use products. I’m still not quite sure how to make the perfect online video. But, I abide by my motto to entertain first, and then inform. In the videos to come, you might be able to get a sense of what I’m talking about.

More to come…

After taking a little time off to enjoy my birthday, I am pleased to bring back the next installment of the Windows Recession Sweepstakes.

We’ve done seven sweeps so far and I realized this weekend that I’ve never talked about Hotmail. Windows Live Hotmail recently got a refresh and it’s more powerful than ever at helping you save time and sweep away inbox clutter.

Now, you can work with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files right from your email – even if you don’t have Microsoft Office installed on your PC. You’re also protected from junk mail by Microsoft SmartScreen, which governments and businesses use to protect their email, and you can now send up to 10GB in attachments.

So, go give the new Hotmail a try. In the meantime, drop us a comment and tell us what you love about Windows Live. In honor of my birthday, I’ll draw two names from entries this round to win. You have 24 hours to enter rounds 8 & 9. You can always read the full Terms & Conditions here.

Please Tweet this post, and don’t forget to follow me for all the inside track on all the latest news.

My 3 year old daughter Lil (her blog nickname) recently started to game on our family PC. As a Microsoft mom, I’m proud she’s learning how to use a computer and has quickly become comfortable with controlling the PC at a basic level. Granted, she isn’t doing much other than going to Nick Jr.’s website (saved into our favorites in IE) to play Dora the Explorer, Backyardigans and Yo Gabba Gabba! games. Even though her online time is short, I want to ensure she stays safe, avoiding advertisements and websites not meant for her little eyes. I’m in the early stages of having to think about online parameters, house rules and talking with my kids about proper online behavior, but this is a good time to start asking questions about tools available and how to establish some proper online safety etiquette for our household.

As this is a big topic, I plan to write a few times on keeping your kids safe online over the next couple months. To kick things off, I wanted to share what I was able to do in my house very quickly to ensure my kids are protected, with just a few easy steps using Windows Live Family Safety. Note that Family Safety is the replacement for MSN Parental Controls which is no longer being updated. I’ve never had to monitor other accounts in my household and even though I knew the capabilities of Family Safety, I had never actually applied the product. What I discovered is that setting up parameters for my house was really easy, so I wanted to share how to do this and encourage other parents to use this product to help protect your children, which will help you breathe a little easier. And remember, Windows Live Family Safety, part of the Windows Live Essentials suite of products, is FREE! You can download the latest beta here.

What does Windows Live Family Safety do?

• Gives parents control over when Windows will let your child use the computer, what games your child can play, and what programs your child can run. If your children use multiple computers, the choices will roam with them to each computer; they simply need to log in with their username and password to any PC in your house already configured with Family Safety.
• Filters images, which is helpful if your child visits websites that allow other users to upload images. This feature works best on Windows 7 machines with faster processing power.
• SafeSearch is locked for Bing, Google, Yahoo! and other popular search engines to prevent your child from seeing adult content in search results.
• Has contact management, which provides parents control to monitor or restrict the contact list for their child in Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger and Spaces.
• Provides requests management, which allows requests from a child to a parent to be aggregated in a single daily email allowing you to manage them more efficiently.
• Restricts ads, which means children’s Live IDs that are added through Family Safety and logged into the Windows Live network, will not see advertisements when using Windows Live services.

Examples of how I’m personally using Family Safety in my house:

• I set up a rule in my house for using the Internet, which includes blocking downloads, which I only had to do once. The choices I made for Lil on the Family Safety website apply to any computer she uses in our house, as they are all configured to run Family Safety.
• Since I work during the day and I have at-home childcare, I’m not always aware of how much time Lil spends online gaming. I can now (from any online location) log into the Family Safety website and view activity reports to see how much time she’s spending online gaming. The report also contains websites my child visited.
• I set time limits so she can only game during certain hours of the day and can restrict how much time she spends on the computer.
• I mentioned that I allow Lil to go onto Nick Jr.’s website to game, though Family Safety also offers a list of child-friendly websites to visit which I’ve started to explore with my preschooler.

How easy is this really? You’ll be amazed! Here are the simple to follow steps to get you started:

• Download the latest Windows Live Essentials beta.
• Once installed, go to the Windows start button and type in Family Safety in the search bar.
• The Family Safety screen will pop up. Note, you will need to sign in with a Windows Live ID to set up Family Safety. If you don’t have one, click here. The main screen will show which accounts are set up as Standard Users, and which have Admin rights. Make sure you add your kids as Standard Users, if they aren’t already there. Microsoft recommends that each child has their own Windows account so you can customize different settings for each child.
• Once you have completed this, click “save.”
• The main screen will then show you a link to the Windows Live Family Safety website, providing you with all the latest information on the accounts you monitor and allowing you to customize all your settings.
• Since this is all linked to your personal Windows Live account, the great thing is that you can monitor your kids’ online activities anywhere. This includes the ability for your children to make requests to visit websites and add contacts, even when you’re not at home.
• You can also view detailed step-by-step instructions on the Family Safety website located here.

In an upcoming post, I will interview a program manager for Family Safety to go into further depth on things you should know about keeping you kids safe online, including how to get the most out of free tools available to you. If you have questions about Windows Live Family Safety, please post comments. I will be picking from the top questions to include in my upcoming interview. Follow me on Twitter @WinMommyLisa.

Calling all Windows fans!  This Saturday, August 21st in Long Beach, CA a team of Microsoft Employees - many from Windows - are participating in Red Bull Flugtag, a competition where teams from all over the world build human-powered flying machines, push them off a 30’ high dock, and see who can fly the farthest.  We’re already getting some love from the press, but we need your support as we take on the competition!

Here’s the deal: each team’s human-powered flying machine can be built out of any material, as long as the wingspan is under 30’ and the weight is less than 450 lbs (including the weight of the pilot).  Only 1 person can fly the craft, and each team can enlist 4 pushers to get the craft up to speed.  And of course, everyone dresses silly and participates in a 30-second skit before you launch.  If that does NOT sound fun to you, please leave this blog immediately, turn off your computer and slowly back away.

Our Flugtag, the Phoenix.  More on how we built it below.

Obviously we’re excited, but we want you to be excited too!  You can join the Windows Project Phoenix team in a few ways:

• Like us on Facebook!  Tweet that you like us on Facebook!  Tell you friends to like us on Facebook!
• Come cheer us on in person in Long Beach
• Follow me on Twitter for up to the minute status of the craft, team and event.

And most importantly:

• Show your support from anywhere in the world by helping us with the Flugtag Popularity Contest! Just text Team15 to RBULL (72855) anytime after 11am on Saturday, August 21st Friday, August 20th. 

The team has been working their collective butts off building an amazing craft, putting in more than 1500 total hours in design, fabrication, construction, event planning, marketing and promotion.  More on the actual flaying machine in a second, but first I wanted to introduce you to the crew that made this whole thing happen:

THE ENGINEERING MASTERMINDS

Brian Lysak

• Real Job:  Senior Program Manager on the Windows Planning & Ecosystem Team
• Flugtag Role:  Engineering Lead, materials and fabrication expert.
• Solution to Everything:  Lay it up with carbon fiber!

Lucas Brodzinski

• Real Job: Program Manager on the Windows Graphics Team.
• Flugtag Role: Self-taught aerodynamics guru with $5.42 worth of library late fees to his name, CAD designer, and all around awesome guy.
• He’s an international man of mystery: Lucas was born in Poland, raised as Canadian, and is now working in the United States – an international triple threat.  He’s working towards his pilot’s license

Mike Arntzen

• Real Job:  Partner Engagement Manager on the Windows Ecosystem Team
• Flugtag Role:  Avionics  Aviation maestro
• High in the sky:  Mike has over 500 flying hours under his belt and served in the Royal Australian Airforce for 6 years.

Mike, Lucas & Brian, with the Phoenix’s wings just before packing them into the moving truck

THE DRAFT HORSES

Ryan Asdourian

• Real Job: PC Product Manager on the Windows Team
• Flugtag Role: Team Captain, Morale and Adrenaline Injection Specialist
• 20,000 screaming fans is a small crowd:  Ryan spends his weekends as Blitz, the Seattle Seahawk’s mascot

James DeBragga

• Real Job: GM, Windows Marketing
• Flugtag Role: Lead pusher (i.e., the biggest guy on the team)
• Fun Fact: James can leg press 850lbs.

Jay Paulus

• Real Job: Director of Product Management on the Windows Team
• Flugtag Role:  Cart pushing technician
• Go fly a kite:  Jay is an expert kitesurfer, so he’s used to high-flying insanity.

Ben Rudolph

• Real Job:  PC Guy on the Windows PR Team
• Flugtag Role:  Shameless promoter
• Cheer us on or die: I’m a certified Krav Maga instructor and holds a black-belt in jiu-jitsu. 

Remember that I’ll also be live-tweeting the event, so be sure to follow me to keep tabs on the action!

OUR FEARLESS PILOT

Ali Driesman

• Real Job: Student Audience Marketer, Education Strategy and Marketing
• Flugtag Role: Piloting the phoenix, resident crazy person
• Brave, or crazy?:  Ali has a severe disorder – FOMO (Fear ­Of Missing Out). The effects have been massive over-commitment issues, and a general dedication to participating in all things fun. Please pray for her.

Your brave & slightly crazy Flugtag flight crew:  Jay, Ryan, Ali & Ben.  James is up top.

(BTW, we built this photo from 5 different shots using Photo Fuse in the new Windows Live Photo Gallery)

THE PHOENIX

The real star of the show is our flying machine, the Phoenix.  I have to say that it’s a pretty impressive sight to behold when you see it completely assembled, and it’s lightness is truly amazing – the whole contraption weighs less than 75lbs, which is a whopping 375lbs under the legal weight limit! Here’s what Brian, Lucas and Mike have to say about its construction and how they made something so light, so strong, and so flyable:

With less than 2 months to design, plan and execute we had a serious challenge ahead of us, especially given that we were a team of opinionated engineers, each with our own ideas.  Our goal was to not only build an aircraft that we could build on time and toss off the dock…  We wanted this thing to fly and fly well.  Project Phoenix also needed to look the part with a simple, intuitive design that functions.

We wanted to have a safe aircraft which would glide far at best or act as a nice parachute at worst so we made it BIG… so we pushed the size limits of the Flugtag rules.  With a wingspan of about 28 feet, the Phoenix is just inches short of the limit.

We settled on a hang glider inspired aircraft due to its simplicity and light weight.  We also quickly opted for a simple straight wing design vs. a swept-back wing for ease of fabrication.  To provide better horizontal stability we decided to build in a 12 degree angle between the two wings.  This would enable one wing to even the other out if the craft started to roll.  Mike, our resident pilot, recommended this design addition so that a tail section would not be needed to laterally stabilize the craft.

Early sketches of the Phoenix.  Our goal was to build something aeronautically sound, safe, and super lightweight

Throughout the design process brainstorming parts, fabrication methods and steps to get “Phoenix” built and assembled was on the top of my mind to enable a clear vision and plan going forward for the team.  After some shopping around and discussion we hand-picked the most feasible ultra-lightweight, strong and reasonably priced materials to build our glider.    Most of the parts with the exception of the carbon fiber are off the shelf components used daily by many hobbyist and DIY’ers.  The keel and cradle, as well as the wing ribs, are made of Macrolux, and incredibly light weight & strong cellular polycarbonate. The wing spars (ie, the pieces that hold the ribs together are used windsurfing masts & kite posts, and we made heavy use of carbon fiber for the center section. We covered the wings with Monokote, a thin, heat-sensitive plastic that’s typically used for model airplanes.  Completed, the entire craft weighs about 65lbs – 385lbs under the weight limit!

The final piece of the puzzle was a launch, which we built out of ABS plastic pipe. The launcher is an impressive site to behold – it hoists the Phoenix about 20’ into the air!

 Ali strapped into the harness on the almost-completed launcher. 

We’ve poured our heart and soul into the Phoenix and hope that it performs well.  Given the time constraints we were not able to perform test flights and we’re excited to see it take flight and learn even more from the experience. For more information on how we built the Phoenix, hit the Facebook page…we’ll be posting more detailed design notes there!

The completed Phoenix!

Thanks again to everyone who chipped in and supported us – this has been a true cross-company effort and we’re really proud to be representing Microsoft and Windows.  Don’t forget to like us on Facebook, follow me on Twitter for the latest news, and text your hearts out on Friday!

Yes, I stole the headline from Conan the Barbarian.  But after using the Origin EON 18 gaming rig for the last few days, it’s the only way I could accurately depict just how mercilessly powerful this PC is.

Not familiar with Origin?  Don’t worry – up until a few months ago I hadn’t heard of them either.  So who are they?  In short, they’re a Miami based system-builder that’s entirely focused on super-high-end gaming PCs.  Their founders were instrumental in the launch of Alienware several years ago, and they’re continuing that “we-build-machines-that-will-melt-your-face-off” mentality with the monster EON laptop line.    What I’m loving about Origin as a company is that when they say custom, they mean it.  No matter what you want in a machine – a particular motherboard, graphics card, SSD, memory chips, paint job, etc. – you can get it.  Nothing is off limits. 

First off, this machine is BIG.  No, wait…big isn’t an adequate word.  Huge would be better.  Monstrous would be even better than that.  The Origin EON 18 is a crazy 17” wide, 11’ high and 3” deep and weighs over 10 lbs and stretches the boundaries of what you can legitimately call a “laptop” – let’s just say you won’t be using this on your tray table in coach!   Here’s a shot of the EON next to the smallest PC in my arsenal, the 8” Sony VAIO P:

The screen is a glossed 1080p with color depth that rivals my LCD HD TV, and inside is a full arsenal of top-of-the-line specs.  Here’s what my EON is packing:

• Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M (Windows Experience Index scores of 6.6 for both desktop and gaming graphics).  The card is huge and has both a DVI and HDMI port attached.  Since I ordered mine, Origin has started offering the latest NVIDIA GTX 480M cards, as well as a DUAL ATI Radeon HD 5870 cards running in Crossfire mode.
• Processor:  Intel Core i7-820 CPU (WEI score of 7.2).  I went for the 820, but you can spec an EON all the way up with a Core i7-940 Extreme.  That’s an extra $576, but its as big and heavy as you can go on proc. 
• Memory:  8GB of DDR3 RAM.  Self explanatory.  If you need more memory than this, you’re more of a power user than I am.
• Storage:  256GB Crucial RealSSD.  I *only* put one in here…but you can spec it with up to three for a over 750GB of SSD storage.  Origin will run them independent, or RAID 0 or 1 on your request.  If you go that route, be ready to drop an extra $2000+!  I should also note that you can go with regular HDDs as well – and use them to max your machine out with 2.75TB of space.  That’s just plain silly.
• Ports, etc.:  A full compliment of the usual ports and radios – Wireless B/G/N, Bluetooth 2.1, 4 USB ports, microphone & headphone ports, eSATA and a TV tuner round things out.  TV looks GREAT on that killer 1080p screen!

Performance on the Origin is exceptional.  In my stopwatch tests it crushed all comers (i.e., every other PC in my office) with a blazingly fast 1-second sleep/resume, and cold boot took only 24 seconds.  Full shut down was super fast as well and took just a hair over 7 seconds.    In every test I threw at it the Origin performed flawlessly.  Blu-Ray discs looked amazing, and day-to-day stuff ran smoothly with zero lag.  I tried to push the system, running Avatar in Blu-Ray at the same time as 10 tabs in IE (3 with Flash video), TweetDeck, Almost the entire Office 2010 suite (Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Excel 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010), Zune, Office Communicator, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Sync and Digsby Messenger, and I just couldn’t slow the system down. 

My gaming tests produced the same results – my usual test games of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Street Fighter 4 ran beautifully.  I ran both games in full screen mode at full frame rate and didn’t see a single lag or flicker.  Street Fighter was REALLY fun to play on this guy…it felt like I was 13 years old again, playing the stand-up game at the Challenge Arcade in my hometown of Wyomissing, PA.

Beyond the “speeds and feeds” I’m really impressed with Origin’s industrial design and build quality. What stands out for me most is the all-glass trackpad and palmrest that’s completely smooth and unbroken, and the electroluminescent volume control (Which is “swipable” – just drag your finger across to change the sound level), hotkeys, and trackpad outline.  It gives the machine a high-tech look that says “nerd” as much as it says “sophisticated”.  All in all, a very nice balance of form and function.  Speaking of function, the Origin features a full keyboard + number pad, and has 8 dedicated “Gamekey” hotkeys which you can program to perform specific functions in specific games.  It’s a very nice touch that will be very useful if you’re a power gamer. 

All of this power does not come cheap.  My custom Origin cost nearly $5500 to produce (they start at $2177), and go way up from there.  That being said, it is hands-down one of the finest gaming rigs I’ve ever used – and the free lifetime support they offer on all of their systems is pretty nice, too.  If you’re a serious gamer and you want the best, Origin needs to be on your short list.