Why? Because as a MSDN subscriber you are amongst the first to get your hands on Windows 7 as part of your Subscription Benefits.

On August 6^th, the first public release of Windows 7 will be available to MSDN Subscribers, which is over two months ahead of the general availability date of October 22^nd for retail and OEM customers. To support the variety of languages and builds, 893 different images are being released to MSDN Subscriber Downloads in three waves through August 21^st.

FYI, some work had been done to make sure this will be a pleasant

experience for you:

“We expect that this release will break all MSDN download traffic records, which is why groups from across the company have gone through tremendous effort to ensure its success. This has included but is not limited to: load and performance testing on the MSDN Web site, adding significant capacity to the product key servers, performance testing on the product key servers, capacity planning for the download servers and network, and more.”

Find out all about Windows 7 here.

Reminder for the #3 in the series of Jumpstart Live Meeting Sessions for Windows Mobile 6.5, and education on the advantage of the new channel to distribute and sell applications to the millions of Windows Mobile users globally –Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Register now for Live Meeting session 3

July 31 1pm - Widgets, the new Internet Applications.

Get insight into the Widgets platform for Windows Mobile 6.5 and discover how to develop powerful Widgets that leverage today’s web experience in a new way.

… and turns the man in the moon into the moon in the man. Have a look at historic images from back then.

Silverenlightened by Shoothill with deep zoom technology.

ThanX 4 the tribute guys!

A Small step for you but a big step towards enlightening all internet users with great user experience ;-)

He has been a former member of the Manhattan Project. Richard Feynman in the early sixties got recorded during some of his lectures by BBC TV. It was around 20 years later when my former boss Bill Gates, during a vacation, browsed through a university catalogue (typical Bill Gates vacation ;-) and found the recorded lectures. Bill loved the humour and the passion Feynman demonstrated here when explaining complex mathematical and physical interrelationships. Gates was fascinated by the idea of making these lectures available to a wide audience – you, me but also to those who otherwise would not have access to higher education. It took Bill Gates another twenty years before he actually found the time to pick up his favourite project again. The fact that by then the internet had been invented and reached the masses came in handy. Bill finally acquired the rights to broadcast the content and together with the smart guys from Microsoft Research built some supporting applications around the content that help understand the physics as well as some of the “hidden” humour within these recordings. (All done in state of the art Silverlight technology of course…)

To be able to fully enjoy the humours way Feynman presents I must admit that it helps if you either are a mathematician, a physicist or an engineer (which the later I am). During my studies back in Germany, there were not that many teachers or professors that came close to his style, causing those jaw dropping moments amongst the students. The first I met was Herr Weiss back at FOS Weiden as my best ever physics teacher (still remember his famous line when dictating one of his real live examples starting “James Bond was once sitting in a centrifuge…”). The second was Professor Dr. Visser at the FH in Regensburg during my studies in mechanical engineering. Unfortunately both have departed but live on in the hearts and minds of those who had the pleasure of learning from them.

So I would like to invite and encourage everyone to visit Bill Gates’ Project TUVA – and that is whether you are a natural scientist or just the Joe Public who enjoys learning about facts of physics in a funny way.

Please visit Jeff Blankenburg’s site for 31 days of Silverlight.

Jeff is a passionate DPE evangelist and happy to share his knowledge with the community in 31 dedicated postings (level 100-200).

If you have some spare time, you may also want to try his Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever. You guys out there might do this with ease. I tried a little last night and now need to look into the prime number challenge… Good luck!

Starting July 3 we will be running a series of Live Meetings to help Australian Developers get ready for Windows Mobile 6.5, and take advantage of the new channel to distribute and sell applications – Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

July 3rd 1pm - Introduction to Windows Mobile 6.5 and Marketplace: the opportunity and the platform
This webcast introduces the new and upcoming features of Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Marketplace. It also outlines the incredible business opportunity for developers to reach millions of users globally via Windows Marketplace – and the processes required to do so.
Register now for Live Meeting session 1

July 17 1pm - Getting started developing for Windows Mobile 6.5: developer tools, technologies, debugging and testing
Learn how to get started developing for Windows Mobile 6.5, what can be done with the new technologies and how to use your existing skills to start coding apps for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones via Windows Marketplace.

July 30 1pm - Widgets: the new internet application
Get insight into the Widgets platform for Windows Mobile 6.5 and discover how to develop powerful Widgets that leverage today’s web experience in a new way.

Writing about promotions sure isn’t the only purpose of this blog. But when it comes to expiring promotions, at least I want to make sure, everyone had a chance to strike a bargain.

So if you are interested in staying up-to-date with Visual Studio (VS2010 is already in the making) - as an MSDN subscriber you will automatically find it in your mail as soon as it ships. More details can be found at Microsoft’s Australian Visual Studio site.

Here it is - the bridge from Design to Application Lifecycle Management with instant value during project definition as well as for test case planning – A true accelerator for rapid application development projects.

Sketchflow is not a standalone case tool, but as part of Expression Blend fully integrated into Microsoft’s Dev/UX portfolio.

There are two recordings I would highly recommend watching  to anybody who is serious about UI design or who is struggling with the huge amount of time it takes to agree upon project requirements with internal or external stakeholders.

Video #1

The recording that was done during Australian ReMIX 2009 and is a crisp summary of features and instant value of Sketchflow along with a sound education on history and importance of sketching as part of the development and design process. Speaker: Matt Morphett. Great thing about Matt: As a designer and former consultant for a global system integrator he is well aware of the challenges you are facing

when trying to gather requirements and agree upon a list, aka requirements document. Matt’s audience was as excited as I am and some of the initial feedback was  ‘Need to have – where / when can I get it…?’

Video #2

More of a deep dive, almost a Sketchflow Prototyping training session delivered during this year’s MIX in Las Vegas. Speaker Christian Schormann. Christian is the Group Program Manager for Expression Blend.

Microsoft Expression Blend 3 Preview available for download.

Excited to invite everyone to visit our new Australian Visual Studio Site – We have just gone live today!

I love the concept of this site. Details about the members of Microsoft’s Visual Studio family, where to buy and other basic information is centrally located here.
At the same time this is a great resource to learn about the value of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) in a very humours way, using our coach as the overall theme!

Hope you like this concept as much as I do and looking forward to hear from you in order to improve and add what you believe is still missing.

Thank you for visiting :-)

If this is what you were thinking about for a while, REMIX09 is the place to be!

Microsoft Partner and Remix Australia sponsor Wacom will offer a limited number of their professional graphics tablets exclusively for Remix attendees.

The Intuos3 professional graphics tablet (as used during Lord Of The Rings production) perfectly integrates with Microsoft’s Expression products delivering 1024 levels of pressure sensitive control to the vector art creation components of Expression Design. As a ReMIX attendee don’t miss out on this opportunity! Don't forget to ask Wacom about the free Expression Studio 2 availability.

REMIX09 is scheduled for 11th of June in Sydney.

The good news if you have not already registered and thought you are already late for savings: We’ve extended the Early Bird offer of $199 to 5th of June.

Remix in Social Media:

Don’t miss the chance to meet Codeman and Mavrix from “Top Web” and follow them at twitter or see their facebook appearance

Also check out the official REMIX09 Facebook page

See all you DEViners @ StarCity

Everyone keeps asking me about roadmap and first availability of Beta candidates of VS2010 and .Net Framework 4.0.

No need to wait any longer! Beta 1 is officially out today!

MSDN subscribers will be able to get Beta 1, today. Public availability (Microsoft Downloads) starts on Wednesday.

First Look available.

See what Channel 9 has to broadcast about 2010.

Haven’t upgraded to Visual Studio 2008, yet? It’s not too late! Microsoft Australia has some awesome offers available to upgrade to our latest version and ensure you automatically get 2010 as part of your MSDN subscription, once released. For more information, visit www.microsoft.com.au/offers/developers.

WOW, now that took a while and I guess I should not make a big fuss around it.

Anyway, welcome aboard OzDevUX! Take a seat and enjoy this flight

Want to know what this wild looking branding stands for? Not too complicated actually. Will still try to make it look more complex and add some Wiki next entry..

Ah, yes and I owe you an answer to the question that I can already see arising somewhere in the rear part of your brain’s cortex - “Why in the world does this dude believe there was space for yet another blog?”