I love my Garmin Nuvi.  As I’ve mentioned before it’s one of the best pieces of technology I own for use, form factor, fun, and coolness factor.  I’ve got the 260 which suits me fine, but if I had to buy a new one, I’d get the 760 now.

One of the weird things is that I keep it on all the time when I’m driving, even if I know where I’m going.  The points of interest (POI) feature is awesome and has helped me discover new places to eat every once in a while.  There are other customizations you can achieve as well like custom voices (I have the UK and Australian female voices on mine to make me feel distinguished) and icons.  All of these are generally announced on the Garmin blog, which is regularly updated with information about Nuvi and all their other product lines.  You can get custom icons from the Garmin Garage location as well.  One thing that I highly recommend is using the POI Loader.

This software enables you to create your own POI waypoints.  You can create them as regular POI waypoints or you can also create “proximity” points that alert you when you are getting near a specific point.  This is generally why I keep it on all the time now.  I’ve created a few of my own POI waypoints for areas of construction that I might forget about, some speed limit changes that I may forget about, etc. 

Recently though, I also found a guy who has organized all photo radar points into a database (you could create your own of course) and sells them for $10 for a 12-month subscription.  Boom, done.  Saves me the time looking them all up and I just have to click and they are uploaded.  The database (which I found on eBay and he has Arizona database as well as other states for photo radar) contains not only fixed points, but also “known” speed trap regular areas.  Just this morning I was on my way to Costco and was alerted to slow down with a notification of a potential speed trap (they weren’t there this morning, but they are regularly there for sure as my wife’s driving record will attest to).  The image (which is the image captured here) displays an icon (notice the little radar dude) as well as a warning banner.  A sound is also audible as well to help you pay attention to the warning.  Very cool.  For $10 I get database updates monthly from this guy (which has 1197 points for Arizona).  Hopefully recent movements by our Arizona state legislature may make me worry less, but until then this helps remind me to drive safe and also keeps me out of trouble (hopefully).

UPDATE: The service I used to use isn't available anymore, but if you want to get red-light/radar points-of-interest (POI) for your GPS device, you can get them here.

The other “customization” I made this week was to purchase the lifetime map subscription.  I’ve been royally burned by lifetime subscriptions in the past, so I was leery on doing this, especially since the lifetime subscription applies only to the particular device.  I knew, however, that I was going to get at least one more map update, so for the extra $30, I get 4 updates per year for the lifetime of my device.  Seemed worth it to me at the time of purchase.  The update was surprisingly huge (1.5GB) but now I’ve got the latest map, updates for “life” and 1197 statewide radar alerts plus my own custom points.

If you have a Garmin device…have fun customizing!

Well the move was inevitable.  Which move?  Well if you are a FeedBurner user and haven’t been paying attention for the past year, you may not have known that Google bought them and are transitioning the service to their infrastructure.  What does this mean to you?  It depends.

If you use the core FeedBurner service and use the “feeds.feedburner.com” URI for your subscription links, then generally speaking you should be fine.  Google has planned to redirect that URI to their updated one once you move your feeds (or you could also use “feeds2.feedburner.com” afterwards as well.  Users that fall into this bucket I think will not see much issue.

Those of us who use the “MyBrand” feature of FeedBurner, where you can use your own top-level-domain as the feed link (i.e., feeds.timheuer.com) are more affected.  I moved all my feeds to the Google infrastructure yesterday (they will force move everyone by 27 Feb 2009 anyway so I figured “why not”).  Here’s what happened.

1. Initiated the move
2. Move seemed flawless for the 25 feeds I have “burned” with FeedBurner – it transitioned to my Google account fine
3. Went to check my "feeds.timheuer.com/timheuer” link and boom, 404 error.  Suck.

Even though I followed the new instructions on changing the CNAME it was still failing and my FeedBurner URI was getting a 404 Server Error page (as was anyone wanting to subscribe).  I’ve since gained some wisdom and wanted to share it with you.  Here’s my recommendations for those who use the MyBrand service.  I know others have had issues, and I just wanted to share my experience with the interwebs in hopes it might help some others.

NOTE: MyBrand is a feature of FeedBurner (now Google Feeds) that allows you to use <something>.yourdomain.com as the primary URI to your burned feed instead of the default feeds.feedburner.com URI.  This is highly valuable as then ultimately you are in control of your feed endpoint.  If for some reason you want to move away from FeedBurner in the future, you are still in control of your main feed URI and can redirect users accordingly.  If you aren’t using it, I highly recommend it.

First, prior to the move, change your DNS record TTL (time to live) value NOW.  Most DNS services have a long TTL value for CNAME records.  Most of the time the default values are around 24 hours (TTL=86400).  That means any change to that value *could* take at least 24 hours for the Internet to catch on.  Prior to your move, change this value to as low as you can.  My provider lets me change it to 1800 (30 minutes) is the lowest.  Change that value to as low as you can and wait at least 2 days.  What this does is improve your chances that when you do make the CNAME change, that it will replicate faster across the Internet. 

After you’ve set the TTL on your CNAME and waiting 2 days, initiate the transfer.  Have several tabs in your browser open in the event you need to do some testing/changing of your DNS records, site, etc.  Have access to anywhere you have your MyBrand link on your site ready (i.e., open that Remote Desktop if needed).

Once the transfer has been complete, Google will tell you all is well.  It isn’t, if you use MyBrand.  Follow these remaining steps.

Login to your new Google Feeds account.  After logging in click the My Account link:

Now click on the MyBrand link on the left.  This will show you the current MyBrand vanity domains you have set up. 

Your new CNAME record will be displayed on this screen and will be something like <loginname>.feedproxy.ghs.google.com.  As soon as you get to this screen, go to your DNS management and update your CNAME record (as well as add a backup record – i called my “feeds2” at the same time)!!!

After you’ve updated your DNS record, go back to the MyBrand panel and scroll all the way to the bottom and click the “Deactivate” button to deactivate the service:

Trust me, you need to do this.  All the instructions that tell you to simply remove/re-create the vanity URI at the top of this screen are wrong.  You must deactivate first.

Once deactivated, go back to the same screen and add your domains back in (as well as your backup one you created) and click Activate again. 

You should now be fine.  It’s weird but this Deactivate/Activate step seems required if you are already using the MyBrand service prior to moving your feeds.  If these steps don’t work and your original vanity URI is still showing a 404 error, then use your backup – it is likely working.

I hope this helps anyone prepare during the move!  Once you are satisfied things are back to normal, I recommend going back into your DNS settings and modifying your TTL for your CNAME record to a higher amount (86400 or higher) so you can reduce DNS lookups for your users.

A company called divelements has had Windows Forms products for a while that produced, among other things, the “docking” effect that you see with some applications, including Visual Studio.  This is the ability to drag a window to another area and have it automatically dock to that particular position of the parent window:

This product is also available for WPF and for Silverlight.  So if you need to add this type of dynamic window moving to your applications, you can check out the SandDock for Silverlight controls.

What is great is that in looking at what else they provide, I was sent a demonstration link to a Ribbon interface, similar to that of Office 2007 that is becoming popular among Windows application these days.  When I saw this demonstration I felt like I was looking at some weird hack or something…it was so strikingly similar to the Office interface and in Silverlight.  I think organizations looking to have a line-of-business application with a familiar interface to what their users probably are already seeing is a good thing…it keeps a sense of familiarity in front of their face.

I’ve come to learn that divelements was one of the first companies to license the Ribbon UI interface.  I think they may have actually helped shape enabling this use for other component vendors as well.  Take a look at their Silverlight Ribbon:

That’s Silverlight in a familiar and functional user interface.  Pretty cool.  Their sample really made me think I was operating a full client application!  The SandRibbon for Silverlight is currently undergoing beta use right now and they have a link on their site to request to try it out.

It is so great to see this ecosystem of Silverlight controls emerge so quickly for us developers to take advantage of and create compelling user interfaces and line-of-business applications in a consistent and productive manner.

Over the past year Sara Ford had created a Visual Studio tip-of-the-day feature of her blog that eventually was aggregated pretty much everywhere and also in the Visual Studio community page displayed within the product itself!  The tips were plenty and great…a ton of gems that you may not have known before and a subtle reminder that there is so much more to learn.

This year Scott Cate has decided to take this one step further.  He’s begun taking this tips concept and providing actual walk-through and visual demonstrations of these tricks.  One thing that I really like about this approach is that while I may skim through the text of a tip and thing “that’s interesting” I may never actually put it in practice because it’s only in text and not visual.  Seeing them in video helps me see the immediate value of taking the time to learn the tip and put it in practice and/or validates that the tip isn’t going to be helpful to how I use the tool.  If you’re a Visual Studio user, fire up a subscription to Scott’s VSTricks feed to get the videos and see what you’ve been missing (oh and a shameless plug that he’s chosen to use Silverlight to display the videos)!

I have to admit, when the first MIX was happening it confused me.  Yet another conference?  In my usual pessimistic self I tried to convince people that it was wrong, blah, blah.  But I was wrong.  MIX has become of of my favorite conferences to attend.  Not only for the announcements that likely happen, but for the networking with industry folks in an area I’m most passionate about.

Enough gushing though.  I’m going to MIX09.  Will you be there?  If you register before 13 Feb 2009, you’ll be able to get $400 off the registration fees!  Register on the MIX09 site with RSVP code MIX09offer and you’ll get the discount.  I realize that most organizations (and individuals) are feeling the crunch of the pressures of life and our world economy.  Forking out $1200 (or I suppose $800 with the discount code above) isn’t an easy sell during these types of times.  I’ll say this though: If you are doing web or rich internet application development, THIS is the conference you want to go to.  Here’s a few reasons why in my opinion:

• Silverlight 3 sessions.  What?!  Yep, that’s right, several Silverlight 3 sessions have been announced.
• Rick Barraza, Jose Fajardo.  These guys are design/innovation inspiration to me.  Aside from the fact that hanging out with Rick is just plain fun (haven’t had a chance to hang out with Jose yet, but I’m sure it is equally as great), the ideas that they come up with are really inspiration both from a design and innovation standpoint.  If you go, meet them.
• Celso Gomes.  Again, meet him.  Celso is a designer at Microsoft and one of the best I’ve seen.  He’s one of the more wicked designers I’ve seen navigate around Blend…you’ll be amazed and inspired.
• Mix 10K challenge – while not a part of the week conference, this contest is pretty cool.  What can you come up with only 10 kilobytes of space?  Check out the gallery.  It is this type of stuff that happens in the lounge areas.  One of my favorites is the Moustachr (hope to see Robby there as well).
• Unsessions – Open Spaces @ MIX.  I helped out with this last year and it was cool to see people present some other topics in this free-form area within the conference.
• MIX party – ok, I’ll be honest.  Cram a bunch of international geeks at one of the hottest clubs in Vegas (Tao) and what do you get?  A bunch of bouncers wondering where all the club people are :-).  If you’re the partying type, this is a great place.  If you aren’t, no sweat…there will be plenty of other geekier things for you to do (bloggers lounge anyone?).
• Vegas.  Never been?  Here’s your excuse.  Want to feel like that poker pro you see on TV?  Well you can get beat on the river card just like the pros.  Other than that there are some great people-watching and photography in this town that never sleeps.  Mirage buffet is my favorite, Bellagio’s is overrated.

That’s just a few simple reasons.  Obviously I’m partial to the Silverlight content.  I’ve personally submitted 5 sessions (yet to hear if they’ll be accepted), but am looking forward to being there regardless.  I hope you’re able to make it and convince anyone you need that this would be training funds well spent!