It’s been a long time since our company has had a blog site. We’ve decided to revive it including some posts we’ve made at other locations over the years that are still relevant today. We look forward to having guest bloggers and hope to share what with the community at whole.
It’s been a long time coming, but it looks as if we may have NFC payments on our phones. I’ve had to do quite a bit of research, but Windows 8 phones are enabled to do NFC payments (I recently purchased one of the new Nokia 1020 phones, but even the HTC 8x has NFC as well, too bad for Apple users). According the this page, http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/how-to/wp8/basics/wallet-faq you can use the Microsoft Wallet application for NFC payments. However, you must have a “special, secure SIM card”.
So the question becomes, how does one get a “special, secure SIM card”? Well for AT&T, they are only making them available in two markets, and specifically branded for Android phones only (frustrating, eh?). A phone call will not get you one of the SIM Cards either, as the word I received was that they have no availability for them. Why a special secure SIM card? Because NFC needs a way to securely facilitate authentication which is only available via a separate cryptographic processor on the SIM card which is contained in a secure microprocessor. This is called the Secure Element (SE). You can find out more information on AT&T’s page http://networkingexchangeblog.att.com/enterprise-business/isis-mobile-payment-and-nfc-secure-element/.
So how do you get one? Well as I mentioned it’s only available in two markets, Austin and Salt Lake City, not to mention it only became available just a few months ago. The various cellular companies have branded it ISIS and it’s only available on Android phones as well. So until I am able to get my hands on one of these cards, I have no way of knowing if it will in fact work with my new Nokia 1020. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a friend in Austin to pick one up and send it to me. I’ll update as soon as I have more information.
You can read more about AT&T’s ISIS involvement here: http://www.att.com/shop/apps/isis-mobile-wallet.html#fbid=k382tIOuOQs
For T-Mobile’s take on ISIS, you can read more here: http://support.t-mobile.com/thread/34443?start=0&tstart=0
Normally April 1st is filled full of practical jokes and funny stuff with Google being the most notorious about the scams they try to pull. This year Google tried to trick us into believing a new product called Google Nose. I love when they say “Our mobile aroma indexing program.” It makes it sound all official like.
Oddly though, my renewal as a Microsoft MVP Award winner coincides with April 1st. Fortunately I’m happy to announce I’ve received my 6th consecutive award. To read more about the program and please visit’s Microsoft’s new MVP website at http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/overview.aspx. As with all awards, I couldn’t have done it without the sincere help of numerous people in the software development community.
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Back in February, I had the honor to attend Microsoft’s annual Summit for MVP award winners. As an award winner we get invited to visit the Redmond campus (and satellite offices around Seattle) for packed week full of good information, the direction that Microsoft is taking and networking events.
There are really two great advantages attendees get by attending the Summit. One of which I can’t tell you about … seriously!! Ok, so I’m only partly serious. There’s quite a bit of content that is covered by the non-disclosure agreement we sign as Award winners. However there was quite a bit of content that wasn’t covered by NDA. At a pre-summit event, the languages MVP Award winners were invited to a group discussion on Async. I took quite a few notes and the discussion went very in-depth including all the way down to the assembly level (what the CPU uses to parse data).
Another great advantage of attending the Summit is the networking opportunities with both the Microsoft product group employees and fellow Awardees. And I must say, Lucian Wischik is one of the smartest guys I have ever met (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lucian/). There are so many Microsoft employees on various product teams. Ranging from the actual developers of Visual Studio to individual language teams like Visual Basic and my favorite couple Lisa (Feigenbaum) Cohen (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lisa/) and her husband Shy Cohen (http://shycohen.com/blog/default.htm).
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I have to admit though, my two favorite parts of the whole conference is meeting up with my fellow Korean born MVPs and the Attendee Party. The picture to the right is of Gilbok Lee, CTO at HugeFlow. As is customary, he brought me several gifts including the face masks of Psy. Several of my favorite Koreans were there and I always love hanging out afterwards with them.
The Attendee Party was simply amazing. This year they rented out Century Link field, home to the Seattle Seahawks again. Amazing food, fireworks, and even a zipline! Several friends were able to join me for the Attendee Party, but I was especially blessed to have my wife there as well. In one picture below, my friend Jinna and I wanted to see if running back star Marshawn Lynch remembered her from last year (picture with Marshawn in red in 2012). He still did and there was quite an impression made (picture of Marshawn in the blue cap is 2013). I even recall someone getting someone else’ number (fortunately we all know Jinna is quite the happily married woman and it was all in fun).
The Brazilians won this year’s award for the loudest clan, but as always it’s a competition between them and the Canadians (see video below). And then we missed the Japanese guy who dons a dress on for the party, evidently he wasn’t able to come.
It’s always my favorite time of the year!
Looking forward to bringing my wife to the largest events for Microsoft MVP Award winners. Each year is a plethora of knowledge and getting to know who the best and brightest are in the Microsoft community. In some small way I’m hoping my wife will be excited to see this world, but she admit’s she’s a tad nervous. See you all soon!