January 2008 - Posts

Safe and Scalable Multicore Computing

Microsoft Research RFP funding proposal on Safe and Scalable Multicore Computing

Microsoft Research is pleased to announce a new worldwide research Request For Proposals (RFP) - Safe and Scalable Multicore Computing

For all the information you'll need, guidelines, eligibility and submission instructions see Microsoft Research.

posted Thursday, January 31, 2008 12:35 PM by paul with 0 Comments

Windows Embedded Developer UG

WE-DIG: Online Chat and Video - Porting BSPs to CE 6.0

I joined We-Dig back at the last Microsoft Embedded DevCon in San Diego in '04, but as they meet in Redmond Washington I've only managed to attend one meeting.

Good news, We-Dig has found the Web!  Travis Hobrla from the Windows CE development team has published a video on porting a CE 5.0 BSP to CE 6.0

On February 6, '08 at 6:30 PST Join We-Dig and Travis Hobrla in a live chat to discuss the porting of Windows CE 5.0 BSPs to Windows Embedded CE 6.0. - EnterChatRoom

posted Thursday, January 31, 2008 7:42 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Yahoo is Still Number One

Yahoo's Yodel Turns Into a Whimper

For weeks now all the talk in the echo chamber of silicon valley has been about Yahoo cutting back and laying off people. Anyone and everyone with a blog has advice for Jerry Yang, but Yahoo remains the number one destination on the web.
 
I wish Yahoo would do more for bloggers, because they haven't done much since the launch of their feed gadget and the acquisition of Delicious three years ago. I still can't access Delicious or Flickr on MyYahoo page.
 
Flickr quickly became popular because of tagging and community, surely more can be done for the blogging community with tagging and the sharing of ad revenue.
posted Wednesday, January 30, 2008 10:40 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Windows Server 2008 Developer Center

Windows Server 2008 Developer Center

Learn how to take advantage of new features and build applications compatible with Windows Server 2008.

Product Overview
Top Ways to Light Up Your App
Application Compatibility

posted Wednesday, January 30, 2008 7:27 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0

Announcing Microsoft Assessment and Planning Beta Refresh for Windows Vista & Windows Server 2008

I met Baldwin Ng back in July at the Windows Vista booth in the Denver convention center. He was extremely enthusiatic about The Windows Vista Hardware Assessment Solution Accelerator, it's a quick and easy Tool for determining if the computers on your network are ready for Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System. 

Now Baldwin is announcing Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0 In short, MAP is an automated agent-less network-wide inventory and assessment tool that can quickly determine if your organization's desktops and servers are ready for migration to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

MAP Team Blog

posted Tuesday, January 29, 2008 7:34 AM by paul with 1 Comments

MSDN Code Gallery

MSDN Code Gallery - snippets, samples and resources

The developer community has a new place to learn and share, the MSDN Code Gallery.

The MSDN Code Gallery is a portal for snippets, samples and other resources.  In it you can find pages that describe samples and supporting documents including screenshots and design documents.  In addition, you will find hosted conversations about these samples, sample projects or other resources that have been provided to the community.  This destination is open to the entire community to contribute content to. 

posted Monday, January 28, 2008 5:48 PM by paul with 2 Comments

Open XML

For too long people have invoked the word Standard to imply that Microsoft wasn't following the rules or was evolving their technology to quickly.

Open XML is now a Standard - Open XML Support By IBM and  Speaking of odd contradictions…

If you want to learn more about Open XML download the ebook of Open XML Explained by Wouter Van Vugt, or read the workshop content on Open XML development.

posted Monday, January 28, 2008 9:43 AM by paul with 0 Comments

A Robot in Every Home

Tandy Trower, the General Manager of Microsoft’s Robotic Group at CES speaking about Microsoft’s vision of a Robot in Every Home.
 
In a Scientific American article written a year ago Bill Gates compared the robotics industry of today with the PC industry of the '70's, so it's conceivable that we'll have personal robots in our homes.
posted Sunday, January 27, 2008 10:05 AM by paul with 1 Comments

SQL Server 2008 RTM in Q3

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Roadmap Clarification

The final Release to manufacturing RTM of SQL Server 2008 is now expected in Q3. Microsoft is going to deliver a feature complete CTP during the Heroes Happen Here launch party around the world.
posted Saturday, January 26, 2008 10:21 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment Projects

Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment Projects - RTW

Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment Projects is an add-in to Visual Studio 2008 which provides developers with advanced compilation and deployment options. A Web Deployment project is extensible, enabling web developers to create pre-build and post-build actions.

Web Deployment projects do not change the way Visual Studio 2008 Web Sites or Web Application Projects build. Instead, they take an existing Web project as input and generate a precompiled Web as an output. A Web Deployment project does not change the files in the source Web site project in any way either.

Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment Projects has all the functionalities that Visual Studio 2005 Web Deployment Projects had. Developers can read more about this core functionality at Using Web Deployment Projects with Visual Studio 2005..

It's supported on Windows Server 2003; Windows Vista; Windows XP and you'll need to have the Microsoft .NET Feamework 3.5 - DOWNLOAD NOW
posted Saturday, January 26, 2008 9:46 AM by paul with 0 Comments

CES Links

The aftereffects of CES are still landing in my feed reader, inbox and at my door. Yesterday I learned that I finished forth in AMD's Home Connections competition, all those years as a System Builder are still paying dividends. At the 11th Annual TigerDirect Build Your Own PC Race for Charity I won a terabyte drive from Seagate.

I was on several videos and ended up as a special guest on the last Scoble Show with PodTech recorded in the BlogHaus sponsored by Seagate.

On the first day of CES a friend showed me an amazing new camera tripod, it was extremely flexible and weighed nothing. In the finial minutes of the last day walking out of the exhibition hall I saw a booth for a company named Joby featuring their gorillapod, telling them how much I needed one they asked if I would blog about it, I sure will.....so they gave me one!

posted Friday, January 25, 2008 8:07 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Vista Shines

Microsoft's earnings shine

$16 billion in revenue and $4.33 billion from the adoptions of Windows Vista!

With all the dire financial news lately this surely is a breath of creative capitalism.

posted Thursday, January 24, 2008 5:10 PM by paul with 0 Comments

Dotnetjunkies

Just yesterday I learned that Doug Seven is no longer associated with Dotnetjunkies. CMP Media now runs this site along with DDJ and sells the big banner ads you see. In an email exchange with Jon Erickson, DDJ's Editor-in-chief he's asked me to write a few articles on Silverlight and I tried to explain the power of blogging to him, but he just want's articles....
 
Then I had a look at the stats, Dotnetjunkies which is essentially just Paul has more traffic then does DDJ which has an office in San Francisco and a large staff of paid contributors.
posted Thursday, January 24, 2008 12:13 PM by paul with 0 Comments

Creative Capitalism

The WSJ got an exclusive preview of the Bill Gates Davos creative capitalism talk, that's just an old school capitalist PR tool.
 
Bill should have blogged this himself,  we could have all linked to him and the site could have been sponsored with the proceeds going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That would have truly been creative capitalism.
posted Thursday, January 24, 2008 6:31 AM by paul with 0 Comments

WordPress Funded

Act Two

Congratulations to Matt Mullenweg and Automattic on securing twenty nine and a half million dollars at this point in time when stock prices are sinking.
 
I've met Matt at the SXSW conference several times and it's just goes to show, if you build it they will come... I never understood how he would ever make money, but now the NYTimes is investing in this open source effort;

As we’ve adopted blogging and started to treat it as a mainstream publishing platform, there are all sorts of things we might do going forward to improve our approach - Martin A. Nisenholtz VP for digital operations of the New York Times.
posted Wednesday, January 23, 2008 9:23 AM by paul with 1 Comments

Silverlight 1.0 plug-in Update

Making Silverlight Easier for Systems Administrators to Install...

A minor update to the Silverlight 1.0 plug-in was added this week. There's no changes to the core itself, apart from a fix to improve logging of Windows Media audio-only streams; as a result, machines won't auto-update unless the site they visit explicitly requests the new version.

In other news Silverlight is now available as optional download on Windows Update.....and remember this Saturday it's the Silverlight Firestarter NYC, hope to see you there!

posted Wednesday, January 23, 2008 8:43 AM by paul with 0 Comments

XNA Game Studio Feedback

Take The XNA Game Studio 2.0 Survey!

Since many of us have gotten a chance to play with XNA Game Studio 2.0, the XNA Team would now like to hear your feedback.

I'm looking foward to meeting the XNA Team at next months GDC in San Francisco.

posted Tuesday, January 22, 2008 6:48 PM by paul with 0 Comments

Microsoft Office System Developer Conference

Office Developer Conference in 3 Weeks!!

Microsoft Office and SharePoint developers, it's the 2008 Microsoft Office System Developer Conference in the heart of silicon valley!

Register Today for this unique opportunity to learn and network, as developers, architects, industry technical experts, Microsoft insiders and partners come together in a public forum to redefine what it means to be focused on Microsoft Office system development.

I'll be there blogging away and so will Bill Gates giving his last Keynote to our community.

posted Tuesday, January 22, 2008 9:24 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Silverlight Firestarter NYC

Silverlight 1.0 Firestarter Coming to NYC January 26th

Microsoft will be hosting a Silverlight 1.0 Firestarter event in New York City this Saturday, January 26th.   I attended the Firestarter event Microsoft hosted in the Philly area last month and had so much fun I've signed-up for this one to!  This day long event is free to anyone who wants to learn about designing and developing with Microsoft Silverlight 1.0.

Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 is a cross platform browser plug-in that enables for easy development of media rich web sites.  For more information, visit http://silverlight.net.

REGISTER NOW

posted Monday, January 21, 2008 1:32 PM by paul with 1 Comments

Battlefield Barbies

The Video Game May Be Free, but to Be a Winner Can Cost Money

In Korea massively multiplayer online game are like Facebook, MySpace, SecondLife and Reality TV combined. Over 40% of the Korean population are engaged in online games everyday. In Korea it's not a single person sitting isolated at their PC as in EverQuest and World of Warcraft, they play in social groups and they buy stuff in the games.

EA is launching a free download of their new Battlefield Heroes game and they are betting that Americans will want to dress their solders like Barbie Dolls and pay real money for it.

There will also be Ad placement throughout this theatre of war and I don't know if you can blow-up the virtual billboards or not, we'll have to download the game to find out!
posted Monday, January 21, 2008 9:08 AM by paul with 0 Comments