I’m proud to announce that two Microsoft employees, Sarika Calla and Kevin Halverson, who works on the Visual Studio Product Team will be visiting various User Groups and Companies in Arkansas and Texas! Bios: Sarika Calla – Speaking about a Woman’s perspective at Microsoft, this natively born Indian holds a Masters in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and has been with Microsoft for the past 8 years. Sarika is now a Team Lead on the IDE Team. (pic is Redmond sacalla mthumb.jpg) Kevin Halverson...

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Twitter finally hit the mainstream about 8 months ago, but I’ve been saying for a couple of years now, without a real way for the company to earn money, what’s the future fate of Twitter? On the personal side, where is the real value for the users? For the most part, Twitter has replaced most people’s IM (instant messaging), at least in the technology circles I run in. It still has value for users as a communication tool. But I see it more as a fad. My prediction is over the next 6 months we’ll start...

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The catch? Attend the Ozarks .Net User Group meeting on April 1st. Here’s a list of the other prizes for the event GRAND PRIZE 1 - iPad (Wi-Fi 16GB) THIRD PARTY COMPONENTS 6 - Telerik Premium Collection 5 - Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NET 1 - Nevron Chart for .NET Lite DevExpress Xceed PRODUCTIVITY 2 - CodeRush with Refactor! Pro 2 - ReSharper CodeSmith GAMES 3 - Halo3 ODST (XBox 360) 3 - Forza Motorsport (Xbox 360) OTHER SOFTWARE 3 - Windows 7 Ultimate 2 - Microsoft Office Standard 2007 HARDWARE...

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Scott Spradlin, one of most influential people I know in the world of Microsoft programming, has gone way too long without being recognized. I remember having talked with Scott on many occasions about user groups and Ineta. He’s been one of those long time influentials, mostly behind the scenes, serving in various roles with INETA and being the glue that helped connect St. Louis developers together. Scott served as the Regional Mentor for INETA for many years, helping several user groups get started....

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I love it when someone else writes up my blog postings for me! Microsoft BizSpark is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups. By joining BizSpark, Startups get: o Software: fast and easy access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. Startups...

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As promised, here is the link to download the Presentation from my Starting and Running your own Software Business session at devLink in Nashville / Murfreesboro Tennessee 10% off Xheo Licensing: AHCO1008 Licensing and Obfuscation RingCentral.com Virtual PBX Phone System RentACoder Where I outsource software development E-Lance Where I outsource graphic development Microsoft Partner Program You can follow me at Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn...

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If you're an avid twitterer (or twit for short), you'll be very familiar with it's downtime issues. Well as I see it, there are 3 major problems Twitter has. Downtime, Spammers, and a lack of viable income. So how do I think it can solve it's problems? Simple, charge anyone with a follow to follower ratio greater than 2 to 1. This would immediately eliminate 99% of spammers, drastically cut the system resource issues (thus reducing downtime), and create an income for company. While I doubt this will...

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Over the past year, Microsoft has broadly touted their partnership with NBC and the video feeds they will provide for the Olympics. So on July 4th, I sat back and while watching their TV broadcast and went over to their website http://www.nbcolympics.com. The first thing you may notice upon visiting the website, is that their homepage is lackluster and that they are using the same drab Adobe Flash photo view. So where's the cool new Microsoft Silverlight technology? Hopefully the following will be...

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A big heartfelt thank you and congratulations to two of the developer community builders in the Northwest Arkansas area, Jay Smith and Michael Paladino with special mention to Zach Young. As a Microsoft MVP, one of our benefits this year, is the ability to award people with a special prize. This prize is an MSDN Premium account with Visual Studio Team Suite, which includes nearly all of Microsoft's business software, free of charge. Jay Smith works for Tyson Foods, Inc. where he is a PMO Architect...

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Ok, so my announcement is 6 days late. I'm proud to announce that I received the coveted Microsoft MVP award for Visual Basic (currently the only MVP in Arkansas). I'd first like to thank the Academy ... oh wait wrong speech again. Actually I would like to thank the following people for their help and encouragement. My apologies in advance if I neglected to mention you. Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group - a great bunch that has been an exciting group to get to know and share with Travis Doyle -...

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Social computing, while not a new phenomenon, has had a huge push in the past couple years. Gone is the day of MySpace, and the new kid on the block is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (Honorable mention to Plaxo, who needs to find their niche a bit better other than contact synching). Here are three different stories that have impacted me in the last week concerning social computing. Today David O'Hara brought up the subject of why he had more Twitter followers than RSS followers. My theory is Twitter...

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