From the monthly archives:

September 2008

Steve Ballmer and Sydney Developers

September 30, 2008Developers

Fin has posted the news that Steve Ballmer wants to chat with developers when he comes to Sydney in November. Get ready for all those ‘Developers, Developers, Developers’ jokes. Seriously though, I think this will be a good thing – at the MVP Summit earlier this year, listening to Steve talk about his passion for [...]

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Windows Live Writer Beta

September 29, 2008Main

I only just downloaded the new beta of Windows Live Writer today. I’ve been using this gem of a program for the last few years, and it just gets better and better. The UI is ever so slightly improved (especially the toolbars) but other than that it is essentially the same awesome program its always [...]

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Sydney ALT.NET User Group review #altnetsyd

September 29, 2008Community

I went along to the Sydney ALT.NET User group tonight, and was well rewarded.
This was the kickoff meeting for the group and was an excellent start to what is sure to be an extremely useful gathering each month.
Richard Banks was MC for the night, and started with news. I was pleased to hear good discussion [...]

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LINK: Image Composite Editor (ICE)

September 22, 2008Main

Microsoft Research have released the Image Composite Editor (referred to as ICE by some, including the installer). It is ‘an advanced panoramic image stitcher’. It’s only 3MB and does a very nice job. It’s also very fast.
Here’s two photos from our trip to New York that I stitched together. Plus I used the perspective [...]

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Microsoft IT Showcase

September 22, 2008Link

Microsoft gets more than 25 million spam submissions a day. Makes sense I guess, they’re a big company. I discovered this staggering stat going through their Microsoft IT* Showcase write-up on moving to Exchange Hosted Services.
I’m not an IT Pro so the article probably isn’t aimed at me – but I still found it an [...]

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SQL: SQL Server 2008 is a value leader (but in what?)

September 22, 2008Main

Benchmarks are like statistics – they are only relevant in context.
Take this new TPC-E benchmark from the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) as an example.
If you were to read the gushing Microsoft Press Release you’d be forgiven for thinking that SQL Server 2008 topped out the list of all major database vendors in terms of [...]

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Office Outlook Connector Beta 2

September 21, 2008Link

There’s a new Outlook Connector released, and this one improves the sync features with Windows Live Calendar. Supposedly.

I had a play with Windows Live Calendar and I quite liked it. Having the connector would make it seamless to share calendar items. So I downloaded and installed it. Ran up Outlook and it crashed. Try again. [...]

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REVIEW: ClearContext

September 21, 2008Main

If I were a software company producing productivity enhancing tools I’d love to have a tag line of:
Use ‘X’ – it’ll save you at least a minute a day!

I think this would be interesting for a number of reasons:

It’s believable
People would be able to easily verify the claim (much better than that ‘improves performance by [...]

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ELCOM: Web Content Management

September 16, 2008Elcom

Product good. Marketing… not so good
It’s been an interesting exercise thinking about marketing at Elcom over the last few months.
In my opinion (biased as I am) I think we have an excellent product. However, something we haven’t been very good at is the marketing side of things. Often people have heard of us, but [...]

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TIP: Outlook keyboard shortcut to switch between email, calendar, etc

September 15, 2008Main

I can’t believe I didn’t know this – you can easily switch between the different functions in Outlook (Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, etc) using Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, etc.
Yet another reason why you should be reading the Outlook Team Blog. See their other keyboard shortcuts here.
Here’s the full list:

Mail
Ctrl + 1

Calendar
Ctrl + 2

Contacts
Ctrl + 3

Tasks
Ctrl + [...]

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COMMUNITY: Upcoming User Groups in Sydney

September 14, 2008Community

I love the weather in September. Warm, breezy and the days are getting longer. The cold and dark of winter is gone and it’s time to come out and party a bit. Which is why its a perfect time to start attending all the great User Groups around Sydney again.
Here’s a quick rundown of the [...]

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SBTUG: Next Wed 24 Sep 2008 – August de los Reyes, Mitch Denny

September 14, 2008Main

Next Wed 24 Sep (ie in 9 days time) we have a special night at the Sydney Business & Technology User Group (SBTUG).
The amazing August de los Reyes is flying in to present on Creating Emotion in Software. August is an acclaimed presenter, coming to Sydney to keynote at the world famous Web Directions South. [...]

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VSTO: Visual Studio Tools for Office resources

September 13, 2008Main

This is a follow on from my overview of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). If you are interested in learning more then here’s a list of resources.
General VSTO resources

MSDN VSTO Developer Portal
Start here. [...]

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VSTO: Access Add-ins?

September 12, 2008Link

I get a few emails each week from people asking about various VSTO related scenarios. I can usually point them to a related MSDN forum entry or blog post, or even (on a good day!) solve it for them myself.
Interestingly the question of Access add-ins has come up a few times lately, so I thought [...]

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IE8: Compatibility View Settings – set for all sites

September 9, 2008Link

Less than a day on IE8 I’m really getting frustrated. It’s not IE8’s fault of course, but the majority of sites I visit have problems rendering (my own included). Yes, it is up to the site owners to fix their sites, and yes they should have been more standards compliant in the first place, etc, [...]

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RECAP: Ray Ozzie on Internet Services and Mesh

September 9, 2008Cloud

Just a quick post to note these links to Ray Ozzie’s previous memos:
From November 2005: The Internet Services Disruption
From April 2008: Services Strategy Update
As I re-read them this morning, I was struck by how much easier it is to understand ‘vision’ in hindsight
Well worth reviewing yourself if you glossed over their impact [...]

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PDC: Understanding Microsoft priorities

September 9, 2008Link

Oh how I wish I was going to PDC, but no, sadly I won’t be there
However that hasn’t stopped me going ‘window shopping’ on the PDC agenda page. The first thing that strikes you when you land there is the breakdown of sessions – I’ve highlighted the tags I see as unusual:

Six [...]

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TECHED: Lock note – Predicting the next 10 years in IT

September 7, 2008Main

Easily the best TechEd lock note I’ve seen (but then again I’ve only been to TechEd 4 times).
Miha Kralj talked us through the technology changes we’ll be seeing over the next few years.
If you get a chance to see his presentation (I’m sure it will be repeated at other events, or put up on a [...]

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TECHED: Web futures, SQL tips, LINQ to Entities, The future of IT

September 4, 2008Main

Back for the final day at TechEd and I’m in good spirits – it has been a good event.
Web futures (Mixed panel)
Sorry folks, this was just too disorganised and ill-informed opinion for me. Seemed as though the panel hadn’t been prepped on any of the questions, and there wasn’t any overview or structure for [...]

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Michael Kordahi’s Delicate Genius blog stolen

September 4, 2008Main

I’m really feeling for Michael Kordahi at the moment. His Delicate Genius domain has been stolen and his blog is now getting choked up with spam. This is really sad. (I’ve deliberately not linked to it here)
I caught up with him for a few minutes tonight and he was pretty cut up about it. At [...]

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