John Alexander's Blog

If you are going to Mix (If not, then why not? -- It's still not to late to register) and are interested at all in honing your User eXperience mad skills then you need to be at this session by "Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again" author Lou Carbone. 

Come chew with Lou on Wednesday, March 5th at 1:30 PM.

 

October 27–30, 2008
Pre-conference October 26, 2008
Los Angeles, California

The next Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has been announced!!! It's October 27–30, 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  Mark your calendars and save the date.

We'll see ya there!!!!!!

 

More information to follow....

http://msdn.microsoft.com/pdc2008

I've just been informed that I am now an MVP for Team System! I'm very honored with this award and pumped because the TFS VSTS team has great stuff coming out continuously (blog posts, power tools, etc) and are VERY hard chargers. They are a pleasure to work with and I'm excited to continue to spread the goodness of all that is Team System!!!

If you're like me you love to try out different technologies but you may not want to disrupt your box in the process. That's when a virtual PC can come in very handy.

The Microsoft VHD Test Drive Program provides customers with an enhanced server-based software evaluation experience that’s faster, better supported and more flexible. You can now access the entire catalog of pre-configured Microsoft and partner products and solutions in the VHD format and start evaluating and testing today from www.microsoft.com/vhd.

Microsoft has released a vpc as part of this for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Its good for thirty days.  Click here to go...

   Our book, Professional SharePoint 2007 Development just released this week and was one of the top 3 sellers at the TechEd bookstore, selling out completely!  Wow!

From the Team System Product Team... Two different times to accomodate more Time Zones!!!!

It's 1:20 am. We are finally back up!!!  Jeff, Dru and I have moved GeeksWithBlogs to SubText!!! Hurray!!!!! Good Night all....

If you find any issues, please email support@geekswithblogs.com.

 

Steve Loethen has updated the code for you to get 4 classes of Microsoft eTraining for free.  The original code ran out of capacity but the new one should be sufficent... Get it here.. Its good!!! Real good!

I was tagged earlier last week by Jeff Julian. So here goes...

1. I'm co-owner and co-admin of Geekswithblogs.net. I'm also a horrible blogger. AND I PROMISE TO BLOG MORE...

2. My distant cousin, Charlie Duke, landed on the moon!! That fueled my love of science fiction and science fact!

3. I was in a radio class in college with Mancow.  I wanted to be in talk radio (in fact started out in college) but it just didn't work out (long story)... So I'm able to satisify that craving with podcasting... 

4. I have cerebral palsy. I worked hard on physical therapy to the point that most people don't realize that I have no fine control on my right side. Because of this, I can do cool things like pivot on my right foot until its completely backwards.

5. I was fired, like Jeff, for this community! (And I'd do it again...)

 

Tagging Rich Hundhausen, Carl Franklin, Dan Fox, Michele Leroux Bustamante, and Phil Vischer!

From the This just in department...

 

Receive your FREE copy of Microsoft Office Professional 2007 and Microsoft Office Groove 2007* when you attend a Windows Vista, 2007 Microsoft Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 launch event near you!

At a launch event you’ll be able to:

• Attend breakout sessions for IT professionals and developers
• Test drive the products and evaluate their functionality
• Network with peers and local technology partners
• Ask the experts
• Receive valuable resources to help you take full advantage of this new software

Learn how the new Microsoft software can help you streamline deployment and management, increase security, control, and reliability, improve user experience and support, and enable and support mobile users.

Register for a launch event today at www.microsoft.com/business/uslaunchevent2007

*Offer good only to event attendees in the United States through March 1, 2007 while supplies last. This offer is non-transferable. Limit one item per person.  Taxes, if any, are the sole responsibility of the recipient. Must be present to receive the product.

Your results:
You are Batman

Batman 70% Robin 70% Spider-Man 65% Superman 60% Hulk 60% Iron Man 50% Green Lantern 45% Supergirl 40% Wonder Woman 35% The Flash 35% Catwoman 15%

You are dark, love gadgets and have vowed to help the innocent not suffer the pain you have endured.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test
Your results:
You are Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor 57% Dr. Doom 54% Mr. Freeze 50% Venom 48% Magneto 48% Green Goblin 48% Apocalypse 47% Riddler 40% Mystique 36% The Joker 35% Kingpin 35% Catwoman 30% Two-Face 24% Juggernaut 12% Dark Phoenix 11% Poison Ivy 8%

A brilliant businessman on a quest for world domination and the self-proclaimed greatest criminal mind of our time!

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Wow. I get buried for a week and get transported into a parallel universe. Microsoft and Novell make an historic agreement. And while some folks in the open source community aren't happy, it seems most (including me) think this is a pretty good deal for building software in general... I mean, being able to just these three things:

• "...Microsoft and Novell will jointly develop a compelling virtualization offering for Linux and Windows..."

- Right on!

• "...make it easier for customers to federate Microsoft Active Directory with Novell eDirectory"

- This has been a pain...

• "...will take steps to make translators available to improve interoperability between Open XML and OpenDocument formats"

Nice! Guys, in the words of the great philosopher and sage, Rodney King "Can't we all just get along?"... I think that this agreement moves all of us who build software one step closer to doing just that.

Midnight Tonight CST is the deadline for the GeeksWithBlogs Game Design Challenge. Who will win?? Time is ticking... CONTESTANTS: Make sure if you haven't already done so, send an email to gamecontest@geekswithblogs.net so we can get you a ftp site to upload your entries! Good luck to all!!!!!!!

Visual Studio Team System User Education has put out some new tech articles on Process Template Customization... If you've played with Team System you know that the Process Template is your key to making this tool really work for your shop... Check em out here

Interested in TechEd? Wondering what the scoop is? Check out TechEdBloggers!! Jeff and I are the aggregating editors and are charged with the mission of keeping the feed as “noise free” as possible. Check it out here. It changes quite often and I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised!