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Week In Review: 6/28/2007

It's been a rather interesting week for several peculiar reasons. Obviously the biggest thing happening this week for me has been my first experience with jury duty. On a similar note (obviously), I also experienced my first trial. Work has been remarkably busy after the trial was over, and then Monday morning I start my new internship. So yeah...

I guess it's not an odd idea to think that being a juror in a trial would be slightly intimidating. That is exactly what it is, and I wasn't even on a really "serious" case. Obviously without much detail, I was a juror on a DWI case this past Monday and Tuesday. I lucked out because the trial only lasted 1.5 days, but I feel like I got a good sense for what a trial "feels" like. The process is interesting to be a part of, and to observe. Although the judge actually made a joke or two during the jury selection which definitely helped to lighten the mood. I will not be anxious to get that wonderful jury duty summons in the mail next time, but at least I know what to expect now. I did my part, I "played my role in the justice system". heh...we'll see how fast 6 years go by now.

As I said, work has been very busy. I don't know why I feel like I have significantly more to do than I did when I was gone for an entire week on vacation. How does that work out? I am gone for 2 days, I have a ton of work. I am gone for a week, I don't have all that much. Very odd.

On a totally different note, Windows Live Folders started it's private beta on Wednesday of this week. I was one of the 5,000 people to get into the beta test for it, so I guess that means I am lucky. That being said, Windows Live Folders in its current form is very basic, and definitely lacking in terms of features. Here is a quick example, this is my Public Live Folder with files I am sharing. An example of basic features that are not implemented yet, if you upload an image you'd think the site would automatically create a thumbnail of an image. This, however, is not the case. The same goes for a music file. You'd think that if you upload an mp3 file you'd get some kind of embedded audio player to listen to the file. Again, this is not the case though. It's a start, but I really hope (for their own sake) that they plan on adding a plethora of features that are not in this current version. Not to mention, 500MB of storage is nothing these days. If they plan on impressing anyone they will need to offer a minimum of 5GB+ for free, and ideally they should just go with Yahoo's "unlimited" storage model. The final key thing that is missing is a desktop application for accessing this storage space. Ideally, they need to make Live Folder space seamless with the desktop. When you go to "My Computer" (Win XP) or "Computer" (Vista) the Live Folder should be displayed right there. It should look, act, and be nearly indistinguishable from a normal local hard drive. I really believe this is just about the only way to get "normal" people using this. They will definitely not make the effort to login to a web site, manually browse for the files, and then upload them to their Live Folder. It will not happen, that I guarantee you.

I am beyond intimidated by this internship. As far as I know, I will be working on redesigning the user interface for some kind of medical application. Now the obvious question, do I really know how to do that? I am sure I'll be ok once I sit down, look at things, and perhaps receive a bit of instruction. Right now it just feels really scary though. Scariness aside, I am excited to start on Monday.