I am extremely particular about my credit. During my youth I ran up a bunch of debt and poorly managed my money, ruining my credit score for years. With a lot of hard work, years in the making, my credit score is near perfect. All that is to say, when I apply for credit somewhere, I do it with a purpose. I'm not a big fan of American Express, particularly because of the high rates they charge their merchants for processing (my company being one of them). However, I applied for a small business American...

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Microsoft is on their 2nd Small Business Show which features "Solutions for Entrepreneurs". You can view the show here. I thought it was interesting that up in the top left Microsoft tells you to Install Silverlight (competitor to Adobe Flash). Yet if you notice at the bottom of the popup menu, the show is displayed in Flash. Hopefully they'll rectify that soon...

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Here are some more FREE Partner Partner Training Labs: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Virtual Training (6 parts) What's New in SQL Server 2008 for Database Administrators Implementing Change Data Capture (CDC) in SQL Server 2008 Working with the New DATE Data Type in SQL Server 2008 Administering Servers by Using Declarative Management Framework (DMF) Policies Learn How to Build Occasionally Connected Applications Authoring Reports Using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Microsoft Visual Studio...

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Microsoft is offering the following free webinars for Microsoft Partners: Web Seminar 1: Web Development on the Microsoft Platform – Feb 11th at 10am PT Web Seminar 2: Architecting Web Applications – Feb 12th at 10am PT Web Seminar 3: Windows Live Services and Silverlight 2.0 – Feb 13th at 10am PT Web Seminar 4: Designer/Developer Collaboration – Feb 14th at 10am PT Web Seminar 1: Expression Suite (Overview) – Feb 18th at 9am PT Web Seminar 2: Expression Design – Feb 19th at 9am PT Web Seminar 3:...

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I've often complained at the number of initiatives and incentives Microsoft's Partner Program gives. However it looks like they are cleaning it up just a tiny bit. Microsoft is putting $10 behind their Big Easy Offer program. Essentially if you upsell or cross-sell licensing you can benefit from it. Basically Microsoft will send your customer a check, with your company's name on it. The article I read didn't explain it in great detail, but it appears that it might make things more simple by aggregating...

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After reading the January 24th edition of the Redmond Channel Partner newsletter, I was rather dismayed at the magazine's top article titled "Reader Feedback: You Are Preparing for a Recession". You can read the originating blog post here. President Bush isn't the smartest man out there, but he knew when he took office the first time, in order to get out of a recession you have to encourage spending. I keep hearing all this talk about a recession and "preparing" for it. But frankly I'm quite shocked...

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I was able to meet last week and help the new group who is trying to form a .Net User Group in Fort Smith. I will post more information as I find it. If you are interested in attending, learning about, or helping form the new FSDNUG, please contact one of the following people: Michael Paladino - mpaladino (remove) @ (remove) goeagleone.com Kerry Jenkins - kerry_jenkins (remove) @ (remove) data-tronics.com Jeremy Sloan - sloan (remove) @ (remove) data-tronics.com They tentatively have the following...

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We've scheduled the next MSDN Express event to take place on February 27th, from 1pm-5pm. Zain Naboulsi (our MSDN Evangelist) will be presenting topics TBA. Location will be at the New Horizons office in Rogers. Sponsored by NWA DNUG, New Horizons, Microsoft Technorati Tags: Northwest Arkansas,Microsoft,MSDN,MSDN Express...

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It's hard to believe that the Sysinternals group at Microsoft are on their 9.02 version. For those that didn't know, Sysinternals used to be it's own company, until Microsoft recognized how important they were and bought them out. I hadn't ever heard of the AutoRuns application until today. The jest of the application is to list every Automatically ran application during bootup. You can then disable and remove them all. It is extremely detailed and even includes the list of applications when you...

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This past weekend seems like a dream. That's probably because it was a sleep deprived coding marathon of epic proportions. Some getting more sleep than others. Of course it didn't help that I didn't get much sleep the night before we left. The We Are Microsoft event was to help non profits with their development and website needs. To hear some of the podcasts given by the GeeksWithBlogs.net crew, visit http://geekswithblogs.net/j... You can view pictures of the event at http://www.flickr.com/photo...

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Thanks to Josh Ambrose Little for pointing out that Scott Guthrie has blogged about how to debug into the .Net Framework Library in Visual Studio 2008. I think the coolest thing is the ability to step into the Forms library (since I'm a forms guy). I'm wondering how this will impact the MONO project. Now they have specific code they can reference, although I'm sure it violates several user agreements. Technorati Tags: .Net,Visual Studio 2008,MONO...

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I'm impressed by the fact that they used Silverlight to highlight Bill Gates keynote and Microsoft at CES. Note that the intro is a bit long before they actually let him speak. If you'll notice at the bottom, they included all of the tags for their products they are highlighting. The only logo I questioned was Microsoft Office. How in the world is Office linked to entertainment? I think my favorite bit was about Microsoft Bob http://www.microsoft.com/ces/ Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Bill Gates,CES...

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The date & location is set! May 3rd at the Addison Conference Center in Addison (Dallas suburb) Texas. This event used to be known as the Dallas Code Camp. I'm actually really excited by this event, since befitting the DFW area's size, it will finally have a free technology event just as big. If you're familiar with the Tulsa TechFest event, it should be of similar format, but much bigger attendance. More information to follow as I hear about it. I should be seeing some of the organizers this...

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Please come join us at the Charity event "We Are Microsoft". Throughout the weekend, starting this Friday, we will be working on charity software development. Right now Mark Leon Watson and I will be working on Irving.Net web project, and I'm looking forward to working with someone whom I've only ever met online. If you live in the Northwest Arkansas area, there will be four of us going, and I'm betting we could find more room to carpool if you are interested. We will be leaving sometime Friday morning...

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Wanted to say what an awesome idea this was by fellow geek Javier Lozano. Javier started translating a C# compiler that you can write and program in Spanish. Perhaps with some community urging he could start an open source project with a full translation engine so you can select your language of choice. However I am completely bummed that it's not in VB! http://blog.lozanotek.com/a... Technorati Tags: .Net...

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As I've mentioned countless number of times, one of the best benefits of the Partner Program is training. In this case it's free training. Two days full of instructor led training for free, however right now it's only in 3 cities. Topics covered: IIS 7 PowerShell and MMC 3.0 Software Licensing and Protection Services (SLP Services) - one of the more interesting topics rarely heard about WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) or WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation) Dates are as follows: (whomever in...

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Just received information that details the changes of the Microsoft Satisfaction Index. This was one of the easiest ways to buildup Partner points and also receive information from your customers via survey. It's been a while since I've used it, but I recall the points being much higher. You can view information about the program at the following website: https://microsoft.prognosti... Note that you must be a Microsoft Partner in order to view the information....

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http://www.codeplex.com/TFS... I came across the information from the latest MSDN Flash. The information contained is awesome. Finally you have a guide to show you how to implement TFS into an organization. I believe the MSDN Flash states it perfectly "It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, Team System team members, and industry experts that shows you how to incrementally adopt TFS for your organization. " There is also a related Visual Studio Team System Guidance Project...

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I wanted to thank David Silverlight for doing a wonderful service to the programming community. For my involvement in the world wide programmer community, I was awarded the 6th place prize of a "Chuck" TV show T-shirt that says "My Entire Life" on a 3.5" floppy disk. David created Community-Credit.com with the sole purpose of awarding "Stupid Prizes to Smart People". You are awarded points for helping the programmer community out, and at the end of the month whomever hast the most points are awarded...

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I came across an interesting video on the Today show. I would share the link, but their I couldn't get their app to work correctly. You can go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id... and look for the Dec 12th video on "Why women love Geeks". Evidently we are the new preferred dating type over the muscle bound meatheads. I think we can thank Bill Gates for helping us all out. You can view the article by Tango magazine about how Geeks are the new Chic here http://www.tangomag.com/200...

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I just saw this commercial while watching the Sugar Bowl. While very true about the kicker position in school sports, our tech life is much the same way. Corporate America hates to spend money in their IT department, thinking of us as an expensive "expense". But when there is a problem, we're the first ones to hear it and the last ones to get praises. Such is our life, underappreciated, underpaid and underutilized...

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