Craig Bailey

ArchiveNovember 2008

November 30, 2008

Microsoft BizSpark, Action Pack and Empower programs

By Craig Bailey
5 Min read
1 comment
30November

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 either ‘bend the rules of licensing’ or pursue...

November 29, 2008

Wired article on Ray Ozzie

By Craig Bailey
3 Min read
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29November

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 a year ago (just after the MVP Summit) I was gravely...

November 29, 2008

Why I don’t read newspapers

By Craig Bailey
2 Min read
3 comments

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 depressing economic, political and social doom and gloom. As I read the articles I...

November 28, 2008

PERSONAL: Holidays

By Craig Bailey
2 Min read
2 comments
28November

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’ I’ve got planned: Get a massage – it’s been ages since I had a massage (DONE: 29/11/08) Tax returns...

November 23, 2008

Microsoft advertising spend: $1.2B

By Craig Bailey
1 Min read
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23November

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 excellent analysis, Microsoft spend between 2% and...

November 22, 2008

Do more with this Ad

By Craig Bailey
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22November

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 would bring to my browsing experience. Can you guess what...

November 22, 2008

VSTO in Visual Studio 2010

By Craig Bailey
3 Min read
11 comments

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 make the ClickOnce process a simple and seamless...

November 22, 2008

Office 14 for the web

By Craig Bailey
3 Min read
2 comments

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 Bryant is a nice indication of how it will operate. I’ve been a...

November 21, 2008

VSTO for VBA developers

By Craig Bailey
2 Min read
9 comments
21November

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 pushing them into a new technology). I chatted about this...

November 21, 2008

VSTO on stackoverflow

By Craig Bailey
1 Min read
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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, so along with the MSDN VSTO forums you are pretty likely to...

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