Last week at the gaming industry's E3 Expo, Microsoft announced a bunch of cool stuff coming up for the Xbox including one of the projects I've been working on -- Bing on Xbox!

You'll be able to simply say a movie or TV show you want to watch, a song you want to hear, or a game you want to play, and Bing for Xbox will find it for you across different content providers like Hulu, Netflix, and Zune, bringing you all the results in one place; today you'd have to search each of the apps separately. (Of course, if you don't have a Kinect, you can type it out.) So, you just say "Xbox, Bing Batman" to find games, movies, TV shows, and music related to Batman.

Here's a sample of what the search results page might look like if you said, "Xbox, Bing X-Men".

Here's the video of Xbox Live VP Marc Whitten describing the functionality. I love all of the Bing logos everywhere!

If you have an Xbox at home today and log into Xbox Live, you may see an ad describing this upcoming service too. I was pleasantly surprised to see this.

If you select the panel, you get a little more info:

You can then click to see a video of the the feature in action. (I'll see if I can find and post a copy of that video).

I'm proud of the work we've done to get this far and looking forward to getting it out. It was exciting to do the announcement and finally be able to talk about our work a little more publicly!

Like I mentioned recently, I've always been a big fan of World War II aircraft. Over the next few weekends in the Seattle area, warbird fans will have an amazing opportunity to fly in a B-17 Flying Fortress or B-24 Liberator bomber. The Collings Foundation is conducting their Wings of Freedom Tour and is selling seats on these iconic bombers.

Even cooler, you can go up in a P-51 Mustang fighter!! The latter is amazing since most fighters from that era were single seat, so rides are impossible; however, the Collings Foundation has a trainer version of a P-51C that has two seats.

Perhaps even cooler still is the WWII Crew Fantasy Camp that the Foundation runs. This is a two day training program where you train for and fly a simulated bomber mission on a real B-24. You get to suit up, help load ordinance, shoot live and blank .50 cal rounds from the aircraft's guns, and drop 250lb dummy bombs! They also planned to have a P-51 Mustang and German Me-262 jet fighter in the air too! (You can sign up to fly in the P-51 or Me-262 instead). Crazy awesome. They ran the camp in May. Hopefully they do it again sometime because I'd love to try it.

Anyway, despite the fact another classic B-17 burned this week after an emergency landing, I hope to be able to go up this weekend, maybe with Andrew (13).

Michelle and I took the boys to Tankfest at the Flying Heritage Collection museum in Everett today. The FHC is a collection of World War II aircraft collected by Paul Allen (who has way more fun with his money than BillG does, IMHO). I love these old warbirds, and the fact that many of them are flyable is even more exciting.

Anyway, to celebrate Memorial Day, they were hosting Tankfest where local collectors brought their armor and other weapons in. They had three tanks - A Russian T-34/85, a German Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer, and a more modern British FV101 Scorpion - plus big artillery (including a few German 88s) and jeeps, half-tracks, and other cool WWII era stuff. They were driving the vehicles around and did a little shooting (blanks, of course) as well.

The Jagdpanzer and T-34

.30 cal machine gun on a half-track

Taking aim on a 20mm anti-aircraft gun

Andrew (13) manhandling a bazooka

WWII era radio set in the back of a Jeep

 

As I mentioned I love old warbirds, so it was exciting to see the planes too.

P-40 Tomahawk in Flying Tigers livery

Warning by the cockpit of a Hawker Hurricane

 

I'm looking forward to going back on their flight days to see some of the planes in the air. They have "Mustang Day" coming on up June 4 and especially exciting is the debut of their FW-190 on June 18. This is the only flying FW-190 with the original engine left in the world. You can find their Free Fly Days schedule here.

I think my friends know I like bacon. After my previous post about The Bacon Enthusiast Gift Guide, my hometown friend Steve sent me this link to The Ultimate Bacon Lovers Gift Guide. It's another winner full of great gift ideas for the bacon lover in your life (so, pretty much everyone, because who doesn't love bacon?!)

I'm hoping there's a My First Bacon under the tree this year. Just sayin'.

The Ultimate Bacon Lovers Gift Guide from The Bachelor Guy

I thought this shot from our Whidbey trip was a great one photo summary of my ideal afternoon.

This year, I celebrated the Fourth of July alone in Beijing. Many people who know me will know that I'm a huge fan of the founding charters of freedom of the United States: The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America, and The Bill of Rights (click for the full text of the documents). While this has always been true, I value the true foresight and values encoded in these amazing documents by The Founding Fathers even more living outside the US, particularly in a country that is founded on a different set of values.

If you haven't read these documents recently, I urge you to do so. They are as meaningful and powerful 234 years later and perhaps even more applicable as peoples and governments around the world struggle with the definitions of nationhood and the balance the rights of individuals with broader needs. I also hope our elected officials remind themselves of a few things, that the role of government is to secure our unalienable Rights and that the government derives "their just powers from the consent of the governed." Finally, I hope we all really take a moment to appreciate and deeply value what we as Americans have in the form of these documents. Even today, billions of people have nothing like them in principle or in practice.

In addition to the links to the full texts of the documents above, I've included a special link to the annual reading of the Declaration of Independence performed by the hosts, reporters, newscasters, and commentators of NPR. I found it even more moving than just reading the text.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone, and Happy Birthday, America!

The Declaration of Independence, Read Aloud by NPR Staff

I may need to start writing letters again just to send stuff with the upcoming Calvin & Hobbes stamps on them. Awesome.

For more on this and the other comic book stamps coming, check out the article from Comics Alliance.

I've reviewed a lot of EULAs, TOUs, T&Cs*, etc. in my time at Microsoft and can almost understand them even though I'm not an attorney (nor do I play one on TV.) While I mentally summarize each section, I wish I had thought of just spelling it out in the document. I love the simplicity and clarity (and cheek) of the MOG.com TOU.

Here's a little example:

A few other summary lines I liked:

MOG is about personal use, not your making a buck

...

MOG needs money to survive

...

MOG is not your parent

...

MOG is you

...

MOG is all-powerful

...

MOG is powerless

...

Incidentally, MOG looks pretty cool.

 

* EULA == End User License Agreement, TOU == Terms of Use, T&C == Terms and Conditions

I'm very pleased to welcome my new nephew, Simon Chengjie Chor, to the world and our family! He was born November 30 in Minnesota to my sister-in-law, Aimee, and brother, Ives. He's healthy and home now, ready to deny sleep to Aimee and Ives and charm everyone who comes by.

Andrew (12) and Michael (9) are ready to teach him all manner of bad things as soon as he's ready. I think my mom is crazy now because there are no daughters on our side of the family, but I'm sure she'll be fine (especially if Aimee and Ives have a girl next...).

For me, I can't wait to meet him. I love little, little babies! Anyway, congrats to Aimee and Ives!

A little over ten years ago, I worked on Microsoft Bookshelf, an CD-ROM reference product that had a dictionary, thesaurus, book of quotations, concise encyclopedia, chronology, atlas, and almanac. (Later on we added other stuff like an internet directory and ZIP code directory.)

One of the fun projects each year was to select the new words to add to the dictionary; at the time, it was stuff like assault rifle and ebola. Unfortunately, we stopped making that product after Internet pretty much made in unnecessary. (It was still a cool product -- the first CD-ROM title from Microsoft.)

However, dictionaries still need add new words each year to reflect changes in the language. This year, the people at the New Oxford American Dictionary announced that unfriend was the word of 2009.

unfriend: To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Other terms they're adding to the dictionary next year include netbook, hashtag, death panel, funemployed, tramp stamp, and teabagger. There were also a slew of new Obama related terms such as Obamanomics.

I think the new words are a very interesting view of our times.

For more, check out the Oxford University Press blog post.