From the category archives:

Microsoft

Location, Search and Google’s Patent

March 9, 2010Google

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Google’s patent awarded last week for using location in advertising is interesting news (patent details here via VentureBeat). Not because of the dramatic effect (dun, dun, dah) it might have on the industry . No, the key point here is they submitted the patent for consideration back in September 2003.
This is significant because it [...]

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The price of a useful enhancement

February 9, 2010Microsoft

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What larks!
I wonder what metrics Microsoft uses to calculate the benefit of a new feature. Take the new battery notifications messages added in Windows 7 for example. On paper, and during testing, that must have seemed like a useful feature to have in the product – it certainly seems useful to me.
Instead, when the feature [...]

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Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit

February 9, 2010Microsoft

If you are interested in knowing a little more about the IIS SEO Toolkit (I give it the big thumbs up), I’ve written a little review over on my XEN SEO blog (note I originally wrote the review based on the beta version, but it has been updated based on the release in mid [...]

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Frankly Speaking on SEO

February 7, 2010Microsoft

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A big thank you to Andrew Coates and Michael Kordahi for having me on their Frankly Speaking podcast to chat about SEO. You can listen to it here.
Frankly Speaking (for those who aren’t yet familiar with it) is an Australian Tech podcast (or perhaps even an Australian Microsoft podcast) and listening to it should be [...]

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Putting the boot in to Microsoft

February 5, 2010Microsoft

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Apparently February is ‘put the boot into Microsoft’ month. I must have missed the memo. Or perhaps it only got sent to the ex-senior-management@microsoft.com mailing list. In any case it’s been good to see that some have taken the directive to heart. Oh hang on, cancel that – there actually hasn’t been much said [...]

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Links: TFS + Git, .NET Performance Testing

January 30, 2010Microsoft

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Some interesting resources noticed recently.
Richard Banks has a writeup about getting Git and TFS Working Together.
Meanwhile Paul Glavich has a nice 180 page free download about .net performance testing and optimisation. It’s part 1 of a new book he’s writing. Download available here.

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Bing Finance and Data

January 28, 2010Google

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Bing’s new Finance updates are nice. I guess. Here’s a search for ‘msft’ on Bing.

Click on the Investor Data button and you’ll see this:

Yep, that’s a charting error. But let’s assume that little issue will be resolved soon (and it may even be something on my machine – there’s a bit of beta [...]

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Azure in Australia

January 27, 2010Azure

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I’m looking forward to the upcoming Azure launch in Australia, if for no other reason than finally learning what the proper pronunciation is Is it a-zue-er or is it azsh-or ?
Tuesday Feb 23 in Sydney is the official launch. Mark your calendars!
But for added goodness, get along to a user group [...]

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Australian ALM Conference

January 18, 2010Microsoft

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Good to see that the new dates for the Australian ALM Conference have been confirmed (as per organizer Anthony Borton’s blog post on Monday).
It’s now set for 13-14 April 2010 at Luna Park (in Sydney).
The conference has a great line up of sessions and speakers, and will be the official Australian launch of Visual [...]

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adCenter versus AdWords

December 22, 2009Google

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The true test of any company, product or service is in their Christmas message right? (I’m joking).
So let’s consider how Microsoft adCenter and Google AdWords stack up against each other. I spend a fair bit of money with each, so it’s reasonable to expect something useful in the Inbox at Christmas time.
Microsoft AdCenter
First up, [...]

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Frankly Speaking – Microsoft Podcast

December 22, 2009Microsoft

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I can’t be any clearer: You must listen to this podcast.
Frankly Speaking is the new weekly (kinda) podcast from Andrew Coates and Michael Kordahi. The guys have hit their 6th podcast (in less than 6 weeks!) so they are definitely on a roll.
They cover technology news, Microsoft news and conduct interviews with all kinds [...]

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The Problem with Internet Explorer

November 26, 2009Microsoft

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After watching the second keynote from PDC last week, I’m now puzzled by Microsoft. In the first keynote, they seemed to get everything right. Embrace open source. Embrace cloud. Embrace what their customers want and need. Embrace strategic change.
In the second keynote they seemed to do the opposite. Steven Sinofsky, in a somewhat self-congratulatory [...]

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Why Microsoft needs to ‘own’ WordPress

November 19, 2009Azure

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WordPress running on Windows Azure.
You can see it announced, discussed and showcased from the 23:56 minute mark in Ray Ozzie’s opening keynote at Microsoft PDC this week:

The reason this is so significant is because it represents an important strategic shift in the ‘yes we do support open source’ talk that Microsoft has been [...]

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Nice knowing you Partner

November 2, 2009Microsoft

One of the core building blocks of Microsoft’s success over the past decades has been its close relationship with partners. The Microsoft Partner Network (previously Partner Program) has helped Microsoft reach (via their partners) every conceivable sector of the myriad markets they service. And in return, Microsoft was known to be very loyal, supportive [...]

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Windows 7 Launch

October 21, 2009Microsoft

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Or more correctly: The Jeff Putt Show

What you would do if you had to organise a product launch? How would you structure it? You’d probably get marketing to pump out a few of the pretty videos, crank the upbeat motivating soundtracks and speed through the nice photo slideshows.
But then, what would you focus on? [...]

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TFS Basic 2010 – Team Foundation Server

October 16, 2009Microsoft

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I missed this little announcement about ‘TFS Basic’ a few weeks back, but luckily Adam Cogan alerted me to it during one of our recent walks (can you tell where we stopped for lunch ). The news came from Brian Harry originally, but you could be forgiven for missing it since his blog [...]

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Microsoft, Cloud failure and T-Mobile

October 16, 2009Cloud

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Society puts a premium on getting access to ‘news’ as quickly as possible. The person who breaks the story first gets the rewards. Speed to market trumps quality delivered to market every time. It’s a shame really.
Take the T-Mobile debacle as an example. The story kicked off two weeks ago, but hit fever pitch [...]

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WordPress Pretty Permalinks on IIS 7.0

October 16, 2009Microsoft

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Just a quick tip if you run your WordPress site on IIS 7.0 and run into issues with pretty permalinks.
It’s pretty easy to configure: there’s a full tutorial here on the Learn IIS site and the WordPress Codex has a good overview too.
You just need to add a few lines into your web.config [...]

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SharePoint 2010 Extravaganza

October 14, 2009Microsoft

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Perhaps you’ve been hearing a lot about SharePoint 2010 lately… or perhaps not! Most likely the latter because most of the juicy bits have been locked under NDA. Until the SharePoint conference in Las Vegas next week that is!
Yes, and once the NDA wrappers are off there’s tons of goodness to talk about.
Which is [...]

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CodePlex.org versus CodePlex.com

September 21, 2009Community

At one time in the not-too-distant past, the mention of ‘open source’ carried a stigma with it. Perhaps an inkling that it was not high quality. Or managed by socially inept geeks. Or not well supported.
But those days are long gone, and the adoption of open-source in the enterprise is high. And while this in [...]

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