The Fun Stuff

• Washington is beautiful. Mountains, lakes, the Sound and the incredible amount of Evergreen trees make the area beautiful to live in.
• Seattle is an amazing city with all kinds of activities to do. The community is extremely open and there is no limit to the kind of festivals they celebrate.
• Microsoft loves its interns. It plans all kind of activities for us to make us feel part of the company. We get to meet amazing people like Steven Sinofsky, go on great activities like bowling and hiking, and make awesome new friends.
• The Mexican community at Microsoft makes me feel at home. They’ve taken me into their group as one of their own. They plan great activities and assign full-time buddies to every intern from Mexico.
• Office for me has never been such a complete business experience before. Exchange Server + SharePoint + Outlook + Communicator are incredible products and invaluable from a business standpoint. It makes communicating with colleagues, co-workers, and friends a breeze. Plus, my phone is amazing.
• My product is awesome. I can’t wait for more schools to use it. Developing an OS that will be used my millions of people around the world, and for some of them be their first time using a PC, makes me feel that my work is so much greater than just the code I build.
• Free drinks!! All the soda, tea, milk, coffee and juice we can drink, freely available to everyone at Microsoft.

The Not-So-Fun Stuff

• Developing software is not only about writing code. I’ve barely written any code since I started here. Most of my time in the office is spent researching and planning what I’m going to do in the next weeks. Coding is fun, but it’s not useful if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be coding. Research and planning should go first and foremost.
• Meetings can be boring, particularly when everyone is discussing things that have little to do with your work. Going through a huge list of bugs related to a product is by no means the most exciting thing in the world.
• Permissions and security can be a pain. Source code and planning document access is very restricted and can lead to great delays when you need it to do your work.
• Internal distribution lists are the greatest source of time wasting. Microsoft has an amazing collection of mailing lists you can join, but beware of them clogging up Outlook and distracting from work.
• Depending on your team, code documentation may be sparse, awful, or just plain missing. The hardest part about getting started in a product is understanding how it works. Bad documentation only makes this more painful.

The Weird Stuff

• The iPod Touch is the absolute perfect PDA for a Microsoft employee. It syncs you mail and calendar through Exchange, it can connect to corporate WiFi and access the Intranet, and it is perfect for the occasional emergency when you don’t have a laptop at hand and need to send a quick email. If you want a smartphone-like corporate experience without the contract and plan cost, get an iPod.

• Campus is so big that there are shuttles that can take you from one building to another. There are times of the day when there are more shuttles driving around campus than there are actual cars.

• Nintendo of America is completely surrounded by Microsoft buildings. Nintendo’s offices are so small compared to Microsoft’s, it almost feels like part of campus.

The Bottom Line

• Work at Microsoft has been fun, and I’ve never learned so much in such a short time before. But for me the best part of it all has been life outside the office, in great part thanks to all the events, talks and trips Microsoft and the Intern Program plan for us. I love Microsoft’s work environment and would love to return.

Puedes descargar los assets del taller, incluyendo la versión PPTX de la presentación y todo el código separado en versiones. El producto final del taller, una extensión de lista de tareas, lo puedes encontrar en la Galería de Extensiones. El código del taller está bajo el GPLv2.

Foto de BrittneyBush 

Prácticos de química, ensayos de inglés, talleres de matemáticas, exámenes de sociales, novelas enteras para español… parece que hoy en día la cantidad de tareas es insoportable. Y eso sin contar actividades extracurriculares: partidos de fútbol, ensayos de musical, reuniones del Consejo Estudiantil, Modelos ONU, exposiciones de arte…. Con tanta carga, es completamente normal sentir que estamos perdiendo el control de nuestra vida. Lo que no pensamos es que es posible volverlo a tener. Comparto aquí 7 consejos para tomar control de tu vida y nunca volverlo a perder.

1. Escoge un sistema organizacional… ¡y úsalo!

No me refiero a una agenda con portada de cuero ni nada por el estilo. Me refiero a simplemente un lugar donde puedas anotar todo, y otro donde puedas poner lo procesado. Yo personalmente uso un paquete de fichas bibliográficas para anotar y un calendario para procesar, pero tú puedes usar simplemente un cuaderno por un lado para anotar y por otro para procesar. En la parte de anotar, por todo lo que tienes pendiente: tareas, lecturas, ensayos, etc. En la parte de procesar, pon las fechas límites de cada cosa, y programa cuándo las vas a hacer. Y lo más importante: hazlas cuando lo programes. Es muy importante que el sistema sea simple y algo que lleves a toda parte, sino no lo utilizarás.

2. Aprende a decir ‘no’

Algunas veces, es importante aclarar tus prioridades. Si tienes tantos trabajos de Química HL encima, ¿por qué te ofreces para dirigir un proyecto para el Consejo Estudiantil para el cual no vas a tener tiempo? Pero sin embargo, si tienes la próxima semana un partido de fútbol muy importante que si lo ganas estarás en la final nacional, y también tienes que terminar de leer un artículo para Sociales, tal vez valga más la pena ir a práctica que hacer la tarea, sólo por esta vez. El truco es simplemente mirar todo lo que quieres y tienes que hacer, y decidir qué es más importante, qué vale la pena sacrificar. (Sin embargo, no uses esto como excusa para no hacer tareas.)

3. En trabajos de grupo, delega

No intentes hacer todos los componentes de un trabajo de grupo sólo. Aprende a confiar en tus compañeros y delega los distintos oficios. En un play de inglés, alguien puede escribir el libreto, otra persona se puede encargar del vestuario, y otra del lugar de ensayo. Conoce a tus compañeros, y decide quién sería mejor en qué trabajo para así no sobrecargar a una sola persona.

4. Organiza tu casa

Si tu cuarto es un desastre, ¿cómo esperas que tu vida no lo sea? Entre más organizado esté el ambiente donde vives y trabajas, más organizado será todo aspecto de tu vida.

5. Organiza tu vida digital

Si pasas mucho tiempo en el computador, verás que organizar tus archivos y tus íconos un poco ayudará enormemente a tu productividad. Algunos consejos:

· Despeja tu escritorio. En lo posible, quita todos los íconos, pero si no, sólo deja los íconos que más usas. No uses el escritorio para poner todo archivo que tengas. Para esto existe la carpeta de Mis Documentos.

· Cierra Messenger, Facebook, y todas las otras distracciones cuando vayas a trabajar. Una interrupción puede costarte horas.

· Organiza tu colección de archivos, música, videos y fotos. Ahora será mucho más fácil encontrar esa canción de Nickelback que tenías enterrada en tu disco duro. Aprovecha las funciones de librería musical que tienen Windows Media Player, iTunes y Winamp.

· Si vas a escuchar música cuando trabajas, trata que sea música tranquila que no te distraiga mucho. Instrumental y clásica es la mejor.

· Desinstala todo software que no uses. Entre más programas haya, más lento será tu computador.

6. Aprende técnicas de lectura rápida

Créelo o no, sí es posible leerse toda una novela para Español en menos de dos días. El truco es aprender a leer muy rápido. Usa tu dedo para seguir la lectura y no te detengas. No te preocupes si te saltas unas cuantas palabras: el cerebro es bueno llenando vacíos. Vas a ver que pronto estarás leyendo mucho más en mucho menos tiempo.

Postponer 0.4 add a one-click add mode to Adder and customizable popup size to Manager, as well as a few bug fixes.

ChromeMilk 0.9.6 features a brand new icon as well as numerous bug fixes.

As always, you can get them from the Chrome extensions gallery:

Postponer Adder

Postponer Manager

ChromeMilk

Thanks to everyone that reported bugs, and a special thanks to Camila González for the new icon in ChromeMilk.

Please let me know of any bugs, issues, feature requests or just general comments you may have. Enjoy the extensions!

Now that the browser ballot has come into effect in the EU, will this lead people to be more educated about what a browser is? The browser ballot page has no information as to what a browser is and what it is for. As the video shows, many people are ignorant on the subject. Choosing a good browser is not something easy for those that have no idea what this is.

What would you do to increase awareness on web browsers and other important Internet technologies most users ignore?

Mira películas enteras legalmente en YouTube

Esta semana también renovamos el sitio, con nuevo logo y nuevas secciones para reviews de hardware y eventos. No olvides visitarlo, seguirlo en Twitter, y agregarlo a tu RSS reader.

Oh, Opera… You are the browser that standardized tabbed browsing, new tab pages, browser synching, and so many more innovative features. You are one of the fastest and most standards-compliant browsers. You are the browser that pushes development of other browsers forward. Yet you can barely break 2% market adoption. Why is that? Why, for a browser first launched 8 years before Firefox and only one year after Internet Explorer?

Opera, you don’t need to sue Microsoft to gain market share. Firefox, a browser just 6 years old, has reached 20+%. Chrome, which is less than two years old, is pushing on 6%. You might say, “But Google has funds for marketing!” But what about Mozilla? Firefox is the second largest browser, and it is made and managed by a company a third of the size of Opera Software.

Opera, your desktop business model doesn’t work. If you need the EU to force users into changing browsers so you can gain market share, you’re doing it wrong. You need to expand your user base not only by creating great new features, which you do all the time, but also by advertising them. Your main weakness, Opera, is that nobody knows about you.

On its launch day, Firefox posted a full-page ad in the New York Times. Both Chrome and Firefox have launched TV and viral ad campaigns like Spread Firefox and Firefox Flicks. Google has advertised Chrome in its most prominent products like YouTube.

Firefox arrived at a time when everybody was starting to get sick of IE. You never took advantage of that. Chrome arrived at a time when everybody was starting to get sick of Firefox. You didn’t take advantage of that either. Yet, when the EU says that Microsoft has to do advertising for you, you quickly whip up a shiny new version and thank the EU for tripling your downloads.

I’m disappointed, Opera, that such a good browser has such a little market share because you refuse to do real advertising. Let’s hope this new surge is market share the browser ballot might bring will change the way you look at the market and your users.

Twitter is growing faster every day as a new player in the social media field, an area already heavily occupied with big players like Facebook. Twitter has one big thing to its advantage: its simplicity. Twitter is public by default and is extremely simple to use: just say what’s happening in 140 characters or less. However, Twitter is lacking some key features other social networking sites, notably Facebook, have had for a long time now. Here are the three I think are most important for Twitter to implement.

Easier importing items from external feeds

Facebook has a feature that lets you import external feeds from YouTube, Google Reader, Digg, and more directly into your wall, without using any third party apps. This is also the main feature of another service, FriendFeed, which is now owned by Facebook, and Google’s new Buzz. This way, your online activity from other sites is easily imported.

With Twitter, the only way to achieve this is by using third party services like Twitterfeed, which, although powerful, are by no means easy for a new user. Twitter needs a way to show your activity in other sites as easily as entering your user name of the external site, just like Facebook.

Inline comments and responses

Following a Twitter conversation is almost impossible. @replies work, but keeping track of a conversation with multiple people quickly becomes a chore. Facebook, however, allows inline comments to host a centralized conversation on a topic. This way, people can comment on the post, answer questions, and share their thoughts on the topic very easily. Buzz and FriendFeed also have this feature.

Posted links preview

This is not only more convenient, but also safer than just putting a shortenned link at the end of the post. Before clicking on the link, the user has information on the name of the page and a small snippet of its content. If the posted story is a photo, Facebook will show a thumbnail. If it is a video, Facebook will allow you to play it inline. This can also lead to better safety online as knowing where the link goes may reduce phishing scams.

So that’s my take on the features Twitter should implement to mature more as a social network. Do you agree or disagree? What new features would you like in Twitter? Leave a comment!

Nunca olvides nada con Remember the Milk

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Cómo hacer una extensión de Chrome, Parte 2: Opciones y localStorage