Did you ever wish you could get a quick, preview map of an address you’re looking at on a web page?

I do! It’s such an inconvenience sometimes to have to switch to another page just to search for an address. (And, I’m also a Map Geek.)

Here’s a practical example: one day I was looking for a DHL drop box near the hotel I was staying at, so that I could mail home some of the extra clothes that I couldn’t fit in my carry-on luggage (long story!). This is what the DHL drop off location page looked like:

I’ll be honest – there’s a map below the "fold". But I don’t have the patience to scroll down, and often times, those maps are of a few locations at once. I just wanted a map of the first address on this list, right then and there. I also wanted an aerial view so that I could get a sense of where the box was.

Fortunately with Smart Menus, a new feature of Windows Live Toolbar, I was able to do just that. To do this, I simply selected the address with my cursor, clicked the map button when it appeared, and used the map when it dropped down.

Huh? Whuh? Here’s a picture that I hope will help clear this up a little:

Nifty huh?

The official Marketing-speak is that Smart Menus allows you to "Get smart, relevant information about the Web page you’re on such as driving directions. stock quotes, weather reports, click to call a phone number and more.” I prefer to think that Smart Menus allows you to get cool previews of stuff you’re interested in!

Here are some more examples of Smart Menus at work. They’re in WMV format – I hope you can see them!

• In this example, I’m trying to find a DHL drop box near my office:

Click here to download this video for viewing in an external application

• In this example, I’m trying to find a Ralph Lauren Polo store (I collect Polo shirts) that’s near the beach – but before I go, I wanted to check the weather first. 

Click here to download this video for viewing in an external application

•  This is my favorite example – the Windows Live Local knows about things like "Empire State Building" and "Space Needle" even though they’re not real U.S. addresses. So, even if you select something that you know is a valid address, but Smart Menus doesn’t detect it – you can override it and have you show a Map anyway:

Click here to download this video for viewing in an external application

• You can get instant stock quotes…

Click here to download this video for viewing in an external application

• If you have Windows Live Messenger installed, and an account on Windows Live Call, you can actually call phone numbers too:

Click here to download this video for viewing in an external application

• Finally, does it just bug you when you have to copy and paste a url because the page author didn’t hyperlink the address? Well, now you can just click on it:

Click here to download this video for viewing in an external application

People all across the Windows Live organization, in both Redmond and Silicon Valley have put a lot of effort into this project. We hope you find it as useful as we do. This is very v1, very innovative, and very blends-web-services-with-desktop-software.

I think we’ve done a great job of creating something that enriches the browsing experience, but isn’t annoying. What do you think? Please try it out and leave feedback!

In the meantime, enjoy!

P.S. Right now most of these features are U.S. only. But rest assured that we are working on plans for support for additional countries in the near future.

Those of you who know me personally know that I’ve been exceptionally busy since… oh… Mid-March. And all I could ever say was “Work.”

Well, now I can finally talk about what I’ve been working on, because it is now live: Windows Live Toolbar 3.0.

This product was released as a public beta back in March, and since then we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback that we’ve incorporated. In the next few posts, I’ll talk about some of my favorite changes, and new features we’ve made to the product.

In fact, the next entry will be about a great new feature called “Smart Menus”. Stay tuned!

After years of using MovableType, I decided to switch to Wordpress. Some things are still being fixed (sidebar links in particular), but overall, this has gone pretty well!

Do let me know if you see any weirdness!

Why is it that unchecking this checkbox in Adobe Reader (you know… acrobat) requires something to be uninstalled and, thus, my computer to rebooted?

There must be a better way.

So Money magazine published the TOp 100 places to live…

MONEY Magazine: Best places to live 2006: Top 100 1-25

1 Fort Collins, CO 128,000
2 Naperville, IL 141,600
3 Sugar Land, TX 75,800
4 Columbia/Ellicott City, MD 159,200
5 Cary, NC 106,400
6 Overland Park, KS 164,800
7 Scottsdale, AZ 226,000
8 Boise, ID 193,200
9 Fairfield, CT 57,800
10 Eden Prairie, MN 60,600

I haven’t been to any of these places (well, I think I’ve driven through Fairfield.) The closest would be Bellevue, WA coming in at 21. Congrats to all my blue/orange badge friends!

But wait… SF/SJ didn’t make a showing at all?

MONEY Magazine: Best places to live 2006: 10 Best Big Cities

Rank City Population
1 Colorado Springs, CO 369,800
2 Austin, TX 690,300
3 Mesa, AZ 442,800
4 Raleigh, NC 341,500
5 San Diego, CA 1,255,500
6 Virginia Beach, VA 438,400
7 Omaha, NE 414,500
8 Columbus, OH 730,700
9 Wichita, KS 354,900
10 New York, NY 8,143,200

Ack! SF/SJ didn’t make a showing here either? Youch!

Wait… I know where I can find it:

MONEY Magazine: Best places to live 2006: Top 25 Pricey homes

1 Newport Beach, CA $1,362,500
2 Greenwich, CT $1,129,000
3 Santa Barbara, CA $979,500
4 Palo Alto, CA $929,000
5 Cupertino, CA $880,000
6 Goleta, CA $870,000
7 San Clemente, CA $848,500
8 Bethesda, MD $790,000
9 Pleasanton, CA $785,000
10 Santa Monica, CA $784,000
11 Redondo Beach, CA $777,500
12 Redwood City, CA $767,500
13 San Francisco, CA $755,000
14 Yorba Linda, CA $750,000
15 San Rafael, CA $745,000

Heh!

Having worked on a PIM product, I’ve learned to swear at time zones. They’re an enormously complicated business. More than once I’ve thought: Wow – we should be like China and have just one time zone. But then I come to my senses and realize that living in the West Coast, that would probably impact me more than if I lived in New York again.

In any case, for once in a long time, time zones came to my advantage. At 8:50pm tonight, I had a question about Apple’s return policy – if you buy something from their site, can you return it in the store? I looked for a quick bit and couldn’t find the answer on their website. So instead, I called the local store in Valley Fair – only to find that it closes at 7pm on Sunday. Undeterred, I thought about it for a minute and realized that it was only 6:50pm in Honolulu. So I called Hawaii and asked them the same question (btw, the answer is Yes). Hurray!

The last time I did this was in high school – I had a question about which store location near me had a certain product. So I called a location in California and asked them to check their inventory records in NY. Can’t really pull that trick anymore. (Especially since Herman’s is now out of business!)

So I was browsing Windows Live Local tonight… and I noticed that my High School and Middle School now show up in the Bird’s Eye View. Here’s a resized and marked up version:

Neato. BTW, notice that I called out where a parking lot is for the High School. There’s another parking lot that’s just off screen. The one pictured here represents about 40% of the parking spots. That’s for teachers, staff, and students. Needless to say, there weren’t that many spots.

It always boggles my mind when I drive by some of the high schools here in the Bay Area and see the enormous traffic backups due to drop-offs, or read the Mountain View Voice and find out that the top issue stressed over by the Board is how they can afford more parking.

This is just a shot in the dark, but maybe school buses do work!

Just thinking about all the money that could be saved by all parties:
-the district wouldn’t have to spend time and money buying more land to build more parking lots (buying land in the Bay Area? forget about it!)
-regular people could spend less time in traffic caused by cars dropping off kids at school
-parents could save time by not having to drop off their kids, parents could save money by not having to buy a car and pay for insurance for their kids
-neighbors wouldn’t have to deal with this massive commotion everyday
-everyone would save gas

I guess that might be too progressive thinking – even for the Bay Area

FWIW, here’s a picture of Lakeville Elementary school – where I went for one year:

(Not to beat a dead horse, but I think my local Arby’s has more parking than that.)

And while I’m at it, here’s where I went to elementary school for most of those years: PS 24 in Flushing, Queens.

Not quite “in the hood”, but not quite the nice suburbs either.

Finally, 2 weeks after my Audiovox 5600 was stolen, I received a new SIM card from Cingular. While I take my time to figure out why my next phone strategy will be, I reverted to using an old SE T616 that I had bought from Omar almost 2.5 years ago.

It’s kind of sad ironically – I actually miss using this phone!

Why?

1. It’s smaller than the 5600 that I was using.
2. It has far better battery life than the 5600.
3. It’s far more reliable for certain tasks than my 5600 – like placing and receiving phone calls. (All the Smartphones I’ve ever used seem to have problems doing that with 99.999% reliability.)
4. Being able to take pictures reliably – my 5600 often reports that it is out of memory. I don’t understand why.
5. Being able to turn off the phone in under 2 minutes.

But there are definitely things I miss about my 5600 – Smartphone:

1. Being able to automatically sync with near perfection to my Outlook calendar – and thus, being able to turn on/off the audible ringer based on whether I’m in a meeting or not.
2. Far nicer screen.
3. USB based charging.
4. Web browing – PocketIE isn’t great… but it’s better than nothing!

Personally, I’d like to switch to Sprint. The free phone they’ve given me has had an awesome data transfer rate on their EV-DO network. I hope they start offering more Smartphones in the near future!