From the monthly archives:

November 2008

Microsoft BizSpark, Action Pack and Empower programs

November 30, 2008Main

I’m always intrigued when some development companies claim they can’t afford to pay the software licenses for the tools they use. That is, after agreeing to pay salaries, rent, office fit-outs, hardware and other expenses they somehow can’t stump up the cash for operating system licenses and proper developer tools. The usual recourse is to [...]

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Wired article on Ray Ozzie

November 29, 2008Main

Microsoft has definitely turned around. PDC was the proof that the company is back on track. Not that it was necessarily off track – since they’ve been working on it for the last 3 years – but the lack of communication certainly wasn’t inspiring anyone.
What exactly has caused this transformation?
Answer: Ray Ozzie.
Less than [...]

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Why I don’t read newspapers

November 29, 2008Main

I don’t usually read the papers. Or even keep up with current affairs. In general I’m pretty out of touch with what’s going on in the world.
But yesterday I bought the weekend papers. I’m on holidays, and thought it’d be nice to catch up on world events. What a mistake!
Nothing but page after page of [...]

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PERSONAL: Holidays

November 28, 2008Main

I finished up at Elcom yesterday. I’m on a week’s break, before I start my next role at nsquared on 8 Dec.
So, what will I do for the week? Well, no plans to go anywhere – I’ll be staying right here at home, relaxing and catching up on things. Here’s a few of the ‘chores’ [...]

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Microsoft advertising spend: $1.2B

November 23, 2008Link

It’s easy to be impressed (or horrified) by big numbers, and 1.2 billion is certainly a big number when it comes to dollars.
That’s what Microsoft spent on advertising last year. Apple by contrast spent $486M (as Lindsay Blakely reported).
But forget the actual dollars, instead focus on percentages. As Todd Bishop helpfully points out in his [...]

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Do more with this Ad

November 22, 2008Humour

I spotted this gem on MSDN tonight (yeah, slow night…).
Above the annoying flashing ad was a link titled ‘Do more with this Ad’. You got me. I clicked it.
Amazing, they’re after my feedback. They care about me. My opinion counts.

I submitted my response, refreshed the page and waited expectantly for the refreshing change it [...]

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VSTO in Visual Studio 2010

November 22, 2008Main

One of the biggest hurdles with VSTO is deployment.
As you probably know, the pre-requisites for running a VSTO app (even of the simplest Hello World variety) include:

.NET Framework 3.5
Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs)
VSTO Runtime
(Plus Office of course)

Now, packaging these isn’t the issue, since the Visual Studio team have worked hard to [...]

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Office 14 for the web

November 22, 2008Link

One of the announcements at PDC was about Microsoft’s foray into the web based Office space. This was met with initial excitement, and seems to be answer to the (small I suspect) group of people wondering how Microsoft can compete with Google Docs, Zoho and other online offerings.
The demo here, with Antoine Leblond and Chris [...]

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VSTO for VBA developers

November 21, 2008Main

Last weekend I presented at Office DevCon on the topic of VSTO for VBA developers.
This is an interesting use case because you essentially have a group of very experienced, highly productive developers, all extremely familiar with their technology. So my aim was to look at how Microsoft is supporting this community (as opposed to say [...]

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VSTO on stackoverflow

November 21, 2008Main

I don’t know if you’ve been spending much time on stackoverflow lately, but if you are you’ll know it’s a kind of addictive experience. There’s all types of developer questions on there. The tagging structure is neat and allows you to easily keep track of certain topics.
There’s a growing list of VSTO related questions there, [...]

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Office Development with VS Dev Center – the home of VSTO

November 21, 2008Community

Thanks to Beth Massi for alerting us to this – the Office Development with Visual Studio Developer Center has been launched. This is where the http://msdn.com/vsto URL will now take you to.
[This isn’t to be confused with the Office Developer Center (another excellent resource by the way), since that is open to all office development [...]

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Wish item: PDC viewer

November 21, 2008Link

One thing I’d like is a special PDC videos viewer.
Currently I’m watching most of the videos via Channel 9, and the experience is quite nice. I also have a number of sessions downloaded (and a big thanks to Justin King for saving me tons of bandwidth by burning me a DVD of all his [...]

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Live Services Jumpstart – Sydney – Dec 8 and 9

November 20, 2008Community

There’s only a few spots left for the Live Services Jumpstart in Sydney.
It’s an intensive technical training session on Microsoft’s consumer web platform technologies. It’s being run by James McCutcheon and Dr Neil Roodyn (two of my new work colleagues at nsquared) and covers more than 20 technical sessions, hands-on labs and the opportunity to [...]

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Melbourne Silverlight Designer and Developer Network

November 20, 2008Community

I’ve seen a few posts about this lately (eg Kordsi, Coatsy, Jordsy, sorry couldn’t resistsy), and with good reason – it looks like a really exciting new user group (or ‘network’ to be more correct).
Here’s the Silverlight Designer and Developer Network (SDDN) website, which tells you their first meeting is next Thursday 27 Nov (held [...]

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PERSONAL: Two weeks ago… and a new job

November 20, 2008Main

In a micro kind of way I feel my life has been ‘on hold’ for the last month.
Two weeks ago I had urgent surgery for something that turned up unexpectedly, and I’m pleased to say things seem OK now. I’m feeling pretty good, and even started back at the gym tonight. I was able [...]

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SBTUG: Next Wed 26 Nov 2008 – Steve Herzberg, Craig Bailey, EOY Party!

November 19, 2008Community

Quick details:
When: Wed 26 November 2008

Time: 6pm (until approx 8:30pm)
Where: Microsoft, North Ryde
Contact: Craig Bailey : 0413 489 388
Cost: Free (Pizza + Drinkies + Nibblies all provided)
More details: www.sbtug.com

 
Yes, that’s right it’s almost Christmas (only 34 days till the consumer frenzy dies down… and then resumes with New Year [...]

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Software Craftsmanship

November 13, 2008Developers

My good friend and colleague at Elcom, Angus McDonald (aka Falkayn), and I have been chatting about ways to improve the software processes at work. He’s taking over many of the responsibilities I’ve held – now that I’m moving on – and is a considered thinker.
Angus is much more Agile focussed than me, and [...]

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Elcom Intranet Manager launch

November 11, 2008Elcom

One of the mistakes I made when I started at Elcom was in thinking we were just a web company. You know, web sites and not much else.
But as I quickly learned, we’re also in the business of intranets – in fact we’ve been building significant Intranets for clients for a while now. [...]

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