I was on a plane yesterday reading my Kindle, and the guy next to me says something like “I used to have a Kindle, but I left it on a plane”, while he was pointing to the Seat-Back Pocket. And another time this week, I saw something on TV about the volunteer staff that work at airports, that have thousands and thousands of found items, that they simply can’t return. Not that they don’t want to, there is just no way to, because there is no Personally Identifiable Information ( also known as P.I.I. ) on them. Then I started thinking, what if I left my Kindle behind, how would someone return it, assuming...

As you see pictured here, the MacBook Air power button is just above the Delete (which really is backspace) button on the MacBook Air keyboard. If you’ve ever seen me type, you know I use the backspace key a lot! Once I accidentally pressed the power button, which wasn’t too painful as it put my machine into Sleep mode. I just closed the lid, opened it again, logged in, and it came back to life. But then I thought …. What if I was on stage? …. and I had a moment of silence. how bad would that be, and how awkward would it be to explain to the audience what just happened? So I jumped into power settings...

Eric Sink (@eric_sink on twitter) has written a great book on Version Control Software, titled Version Control By Example. It showed up on my desk again this morning. I say again, because I keep letting people borrow it, and they keep returning it :) I figured with it's popularity, I could record a quick video book review, and post it. So here it is. Great job Eric, it's a great book. Easy ready, very informative, and sometimes funny (if you can be funny in a DVCS book?).

2010 was a great building year for EventDay.com. One of our great moments came when we donated services to help the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference. Here is a quick video post, talking about 2010, and trying the help push registration for the 2011 event.

AZEC11.com

If you don't have a keyboard available on your Windows 8 machine (like my Samgsung Slate when it's not docked) you will benefit from this trick. If you have several (or lots of) applications open, a fast way to switch between them is to swipe in from the left, one-by-one until the application on your back stack surfaces. You can also press the START button and from the start screen, launch the application again. If it's already in the back stack, the application will start with the same state (or at least it should if it's programmed correctly). Or you can .... Control the swipe from left action, and control the specific application you want to bring forward. The video/screen cast was done holding my Samsung Focus running Windows Phone 7, so it's a little shaky, but you'll get the point. Enjoy!

At http://BuildWindows.com we received a really Nice Samsung Slate with Windows 8 developer preview loaded. Playing around with the hard button combinations, I found that holding the Windows Home key, along with pressing the Power Button brings up a quick menu, with access to the Task Manager.

There will be some confusion around this, and Video is worth 10,000 words so here it is. IE10 comes in two (or more) flavors. Desktop IE10, and Metro IE10. This quick screencast will show the differences ...

I caught up with Richard Campbell doing Telerik interviews and was able to sit down for a few minutes. It's always fun learning and sharing new technology at conferences. Thank you Telerik for the time you've put into these recordings, and Thank you Richard for setting it all up!

What is Windows 8 Metro? In this short 6 minute video, I talk to the differences between Windows 8 Desktop, and Windows 8 Metro Applications. Compatibility is a big issue. Will your current code run in Windows.next, Code named Windows 8? Yes, and I'll tell you how.

For the last few years, I’ve been using the free Google apps for my email and calendar solutions. I’ve been what I would call a power user on Google Mail – falling in love with the keyboard shortcuts, and the idea of archive over delete, and the conversation view of email. That really sums up my love for Google Mail. Let me dive a little deeper into each one. Keyboard Shortcuts. I’m sure other web applications have this, but for me, Google Mail was the first application that I could really fully utilize with the keyboard, making my email life fast and efficient. Archive over delete. 100 years ago...