With the approach of the holiday season I feel that I must warn you about the infamous FFTC (Friends and family totting cameras). The FFTC seem to appear at all family gatherings like moths drawn to a flame, and their work can be as destructive to ones sense of well being and reputation.

What am I talking about? Pictures of course—but not any picture … consider some of the following examples.

1. Pictures taken in low light without the flash- many cameras now have various scenes or modes that allow for low light pictures. When the exposure becomes too long, and the camera is not completely held rock steady, the image “smears.” These smears then distort facial features making ones nose appear as long as a broom stick, or transforming your hair into something that would make Marge Simpson green with envy.
2. Pictures taken at the “worst possible moment.” It goes without saying that people often eat at family gatherings. Part of eating, is taking bits out of and chewing food. But when one is in the process of ruminating, their facial features are often distorted into some hideous caricature of ones former self. Political photographers use this technique to their advantage to destroy ones opponent—clearly no one wants to vote for such a sinister individual. But WHY do we do it to our friends and loved ones?
3. Pictures taken from the “worst possible angle..” General MacArthur required all photographers to take pictures from a low angle. Why? Because it made him seem taller and more commanding. Like the person viewing the picture is “looking up to him.” I am not saying we want all of the FFTC to shoot from a lower angle, but certainly pictures taken from a side view angle that would make twiggy seem fat should be avoided. Indeed one should always be respectful with the camera angle. If you have a friend or loved one who is loosing a bit of hair on the top side, try not to feature it by using a top down shot, unless, of course, that friend or loved one is actually proud that they have achieved the sort of maturity that typically goes along with vanishing hair.
4. Watch out for physical body distortions such as arms that seem to stretch into infinity due to their proximity to the camera lens, or heads that could ride upon Macys Thanksgiving Day floats. One should always check the angle of the camera back plane when taking pictures.
5. Speaking of checking the angle of the back plane … most digital cameras have a preview window you should always check before you shoot. Look especially for things like lamps growing out of peoples heads, and plants that replace body parts. Remember you are taking a three dimensional object and turning it into a two dimensional object. The lost dimension is that of perspective. 

Why is it important to watch out for the FFTC? Because with all the online services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Myspace, and Windows Live spaces, a picture can go from phone to being viewed by a million people in less than 60 seconds. Your reputation can vanish with similar speed…

In the old west, it was common to require the cowboys (at least according to the John Wayne movies – and we all know those are historically accurate) to check their guns at the door. In modern times, professional performers have a similar edict. The reason the music groups ban cameras from their performances is not because they want to sell pictures of the group, nor is it because they are concerned with the bright lights, I am convinced it is because they do not want a bunch of bad pictures showing up on the Internet that portray them in an unflattering light.

Of course most families in the United States get together so seldom, that banning cameras from family gatherings would be cruel, short sighted, and in the end unenforceable. So rather than ban cameras, maybe you can at least attempt to improve their use. Use my top five guide as a starting point, or better yet, check out Microsoft's guide to better holiday pictures, it is not that we do not like getting our picture taken, it really is that we do not like bad pictures getting taken.

Take care, and have a wonderful holiday.

My Friend Rajan is attending the Professional Developers Conference this week in LA. He sent some notes about the exciting things happening out there. Here they are…

Steven Sinofsky (President, Windows Division), Scott Guthrie (VP, Microsoft Developer Division) and Kurt DelBene (Sr. VP, Office Business Productivity Group) were the top speakers and headliners for today’s (day# 2) keynote at PDC2009 in Los Angeles, CA today. The PDC is historically quite important for announcements, this year was no different.

· Biggest applause of the day# 2  comes from Sinofsky when he mentioned about a partnership project with Acer where it puts its own team through the process of actually building a laptop computer, just to see how one is built - what laptop engineers actually go through. In learning the system that Acer goes through, Microsoft built its own limited editions for PDC'09 laptops. They (i.e. Acer machine with Microsoft’s preferred software image, resistive multi-touch, accelerometer) will be giveaways to all PDC attendees!!

· In terms of pure wow factor from the announcements, Silverlight 4.0 steals the show!  The big news today is Silverlight, specifically the beta of version 4.0. Silverlight continues its march towards providing more and more of the functionality of .net, almost full WPF and Windows. Silverlight 4.0 is incredible, that’s what you’ll hear from anyone that watched the day 2 keynote and demos.

(Background, Silverlight 3 released just over a year ago and here we are with yet another release full of features that our developer community has been asking for. This beta release is a developer release.)

Rajan has more information on his blog.

As someone who has written or contributed to 16 book projects, people often seek me out to solicit advice on writing a book. More often than not, the conversation begins “I think I would like to write a book about … (fill in your own obscure technology) because I really know a lot about it…” They then begin to describe how much they know about their obscure technology.

The problem is that people have never written a book have no idea of the timeline that is involved. Here is an example from my most recent book, Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices …

• First draft of proposal was dated Jan. 31, 2008
• First chapter on Aug. 25, 2008
• Last chapter on Aug. 28, 2009
• Cover approval Nov. 13, 2009

This does not account for the fact that while in the writing phase, I generally have a deadline of some kind every week. This means I have to work every night, every weekend … for a year. Once I begin to explain this to people they generally change their mind. Over the last decade I have counseled more than two dozen prospective writers … to date … they are still prospective writers.

Whenever a group of IT Pros get together the discussion invariably turns to user stories. While some are amusing, and others tell more about the IT Pro than the user in the story, there is one class of stories that knows no cultural boundaries … the story where the user walks up to the IT Pro and begins his tale with the infamous six words … “I have this computer at home.”

If you have been following me on Facebook, you know that I recently attended a family reunion. While at the family reunion I was … wait before the family reunion, the first thing I had to do was fix my mothers computer. Then at the family reunion, I spent most of the day giving tech support and computing advice, instead of learning the latest scholastic achievements of little Johnnie … (maybe it is not such a bad thing after all.)

A few years ago, my wife had to take me to the emergency room. While I was being admitted, the person at the receiving desk was looking at my health insurance card, and this exchange took place:

“You work for Microsoft?”

“Yes,” I moaned in pain.

“I have this computer at home …”

A recent survey states that Windows 7 just broke the 4% market place adoption rate (something that took Windows Vista 5 months to do). Everyone is interested in upgrading to Windows 7. This past weekend we took a friend with us to the Columbia Zoo, and one of the major conversations that took place was not the eating habits of Brown Bears, rather it the hardware requirements for running Windows 7 (in her case, it was easy because she is already running Windows Vista. In most cases if your computer is running Windows Vista, it will run Windows 7 – only better). When we got home, Teresa logged onto Facebook, and was immediately accosted by a friend who is running Windows XP and was seeking upgrade advice.

To upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 one needs to be a bit more careful. In most cases if you have a relatively new computer there should be no problems … but if you have a four or five year old computer, you may need to be a bit more careful. I searched Microsoft.Com looking for the system requirements page for Windows 7 we could send, but because I have been an IT Pro for nearly 20 years, I know how the conversation would go. Something like this:

“You need either a 32 bit or 64 bit CPU that runs at a speed of at least 1 gigahertz,” I would say.

“What is a CPU?” the friend would say.

While I was conducting my Bing search for system requirements  to run Windows 7, I ran across the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. I tested it on an old computer I had laying around, and it works great. With the approach of the holiday season in the United States, it is all but inevitable you will be accosted by well meaning friends and loved ones seeking upgrade advice. Keep the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor handy (a Bing search for “upgrade advisor” returns the download page as the #1 search result) and maybe you will even get to taste some of the wonder holiday food that is sure to be waiting for you.