I haven't had a chance to dig in yet but it looks like change is in the air at Live.com. Check out the video on TechCrunch.

Have a day. :-|

Attention southeastern U.S. software developers!

If you're in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, or anywhere else in the southeast U.S. don't forget to mark your calendar for next Saturday!  Not sure what a Code Camp is? Check out this link and find out!

Raleigh Code Camp

Saturday, November 15, 2008 , 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Location: ECPI

I'll be presenting a session on integrating Microsoft Virtual Earth into your web applications.

Hope to see you Saturday!

Have a day. :-|

Yes, you read that title correctly. All attendees at the DevTeach conference Dec 1 - 5 will receive VS 2008 Pro, Expression Web 2, and the Tech-Ed DVD set free. How sweet a deal is that??!! So in addition to kick ass session content, hanging out with world-renowned speakers like DevTeach keynote speaker Ted Neward, Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell of DotNetRocks fame, my fellow Microsoft RDs Tim Huckaby, Joel Semeniuk, Stephen Forte, Guy Barrette, & Barry Gervin, as well as CoDe magazine editor Rod Paddock just to mention a few, you'll walk away with over $1000 worth of software. 

Registration between November 1st and December 1st will set you back $1,249.00 Canadian and $1,061.65 US. Factor in the free software and I know a deal when I see one!

Here's the complete speaker list, including yours truly. :-)

The two sessions I'm presenting are:

Implementing Microsoft Virtual Earth in Your ASP.NET Applications

Writing Better Visual Basic Code With Refactor!

Here's the complete session list.

I hope to see you in Montreal!

Have a day. :-|

Greg Duncan has made it real EASY to check out all the PDC content. He has listed all the sessions (including the keynotes) with links to the videos & slides presented. Great stuff!

Thanks Greg!

Have a day. :-|

I have good news for the VBers interested in making the leap into the world of Rich Internet Applications (RIA). In additon to being available in C#, the Silverlight team has posted VB sample code for all of their How-Do-I videos. 

Thanks Silverlight team!

Have a day. :-|

"First I'd like to thank all the members of the Academy for their support and their continued confidence in me and my work. Let me add that it was truly an honor working on a film with such a fantastic crew, director, producer, and of course the other actors."

...and so goes how my acceptance speech for an Oscar would go. But today I'd like to thank Microsoft for their continued confidence in me as a technical community leader. This morning I received word that I have received my 6th MVP Award and I couldn't be more honored. Thank you again Microsoft.

Have a day. :-|

There are features in Vista that are NOT available in earlier version of Windows so there may be times when you need to know what OS your application is running under. Determining the OS version is as simple as checking the System.Environment.OSVersion object.

If System.Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major >= 6 Then

'Vista specific code here

Else

'Earlier versions of Windows code here

End If

There are a number of other useful pieces of information in the System.Environment namespace such as GetFolderPath which returns the path of the special system folder based on the enum specified. For example, this code returns the location of the My Documents folder.

x = System.Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments)

Have a day. :-|

I like these new ad spots from Microsoft...

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/windows/videoGallery.aspx

Whether you liked them or not the Gates/Seinfeld spots created some buzz about Microsoft. These follow up spots demonstrate the diversity of people and applications on the Windows platform. I like the direction Microsoft has taken with these new spots.

I like the Ultimate Fighter, "I'm a PC. You got a problem with that?"

UPDATE: It appears that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is a PC too!!  :-)

Have a day. :-|

From this Rolling Stone story:

"In a victory for both Canadian prog rock and awesomely clever puns, VH1 Classic will ring in Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) with Rush Hashanah. The channel will air 24 hours of Rush on September 29th."

SUH-WEEEEET!!! 

UPDATE #1: You can find the VH1 Classic schedule for the day here.

UPDATE #2: I'm watching it right now!!

Have a day. :-|

It's a good thing North Carolina has an awesome reputation as a fly fishing hot spot because it brought fellow Microsoft RD, Tim Huckaby, CEO of InterKnowlogy to town to present at our TRINUG meeting.

Tim's presentation wowed us with WPF demos, Silverlight demos, and since lugging a Microsoft Surface machine across the country would have cut into space for his fly fishing gear :-) , he played a couple of videos of in-production Surface applications his team has worked on. You can find those and other videos demonstrating some of the fantastic work Tim and his incredibly talented team at Interknowlogy have done here.

For those of you not familiar with Tim he is currently focused on RIA & Smart Client Technologies like WPF, VSTO, Surface, and Silverlight. He has been called a “Pioneer of the Smart Client Revolution” by the press.

Tim has been awarded multiple times for the highest rated Keynote and technical presentations for Microsoft and numerous other technology conferences around the world by Microsoft Corporation. Tim has done presentations on Microsoft Technologies at technology events like Microsoft Tech Ed, Product Launches events, Dev Days, MEC, World Wide Partner Conference, MGB, MGX, and the PDC, along with 3^rd party technology conferences all over the world is consistently rated in the top 10% of all speakers at the events. Tim was selected by Microsoft as a “Rock-Star” speaker for the International .NET Association and speaks world-wide on their behalf.

Tim founded InterKnowlogy, experts in Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Platforms, in 1999 and has 25+ years experience including serving on a Microsoft product team as a development lead on an architecture team. Tim is a Microsoft Regional Director, an MVP and serves on multiple Microsoft councils and boards.

Great job Tim and thanks for coming to North Carolina!

Have a day. :-|

"Good morning everybody, you're tuned to Computers 2K8 on sports radio 850 The Buzz" and so began today's show as we do every Sunday morning from 8am - 10am here in Raleigh, NC. You can download the show from the show's website or you can listen do us live as we stream the show across the web.

Here a few of the topics discussed on this week's show...

Need Money For College?

We had Ben Kaplan, a leading expert on college scholarships, admissions, financial aid, etc., on the show as a call-in interview this morning and have received some very positive feedback about his appearance. Ben covered a number of websites that at full of information about obtaining funds for your education. Check out Scholarship Blvd on the The City of College Dreams site for additional information.

SideTaker

On a lighter note, if you and the other half just can't resolve an argument then let the fine people on the Internet solve it for you. That's the idea behind the SideTaker site. Couples upload their arguments and let the crowd on the web settle the issue. Uh huh, this sounds real productive, reeeeal productive....  I can hear the argument escalating now...

"Look here pumpkin seed, klingon3910 thinks I'm right!"

"Well you and klingon3910 can shove it up your warp drive for all I care because both girlpower219 and prettyinpink91 think I'm right."

Call me cynical but I'm not seeing this helping anyone. :-)

Tip of the Day - Scan Your Personal Documents

Use you scanner to scan your important documents like your passport, birth certificate, marriage license, tax forms, social security card, etc. and store them in a secure place (bank safe deposit box?). Should the originals be lost in a fire, flood or other natural disaster at least you'll have a visual representation of what they looked like.

That's all....Have a day. :-|

Interesting quick read from the Scientific American website.  Here's the lead in:

"The author asked some of his acquaintances for permission to break into their online banking accounts. The goal was simple: get into their online accounts using the information about them, their families and acquaintances that is freely available online."

The results are very EYE OPENING!  You might want to check this out.

Have a day. :-|

I'm sure fellow Geeks With Blogs blogger Chris Williams will want to check this out. Thinking about getting a tattoo? If you are you might want to consider something like one of these in order to celebrate your inner-geek.

Have a day.  :-|