SQL guru David Lean has joined the blogosphere and, of course, he’s started with some hardcore SQL Spatial information. Check out these great posts: SQL 2008 Spatial Samples, Part 1 of 9 - How to Learn SQL Spatial SQL 2008 Spatial Samples, Part 2 of 9 - Background on Spatial Types & Well Known Text...

As I said in my MSDN Flash editorial , I had a great time presenting at Ignite Spatial last Wednesday – the atmosphere was great and the format was a lot of fun. I’ve popped the deck up on my skydrive and would love some feedback if you were there. Is this a format we should be adopting for at least...

Fin asked me to write this week’s MSDN Flash editorial, so I did. In case you missed it, here it is. By the way, if you don’t subscribe to the flash, you should :). Sign up today ! It's been a real time for me with events. First the PDC in Los Angeles with over 6,000 developers (in case you missed it...

Continuing the trend of making it easy to get your hands on a pre-configured environment to help evaluate and learn the new stuff, there are a number of great (and I mean this in several senses of the word) downloads available for you to grab and fire straight up. This is a VPC image that has been pre...

I'm in Perth as a result of GITA inviting me to speak at their Seminar and Workshops . I presented on MapPoint Web Services and showed a sneak peek of SQL Server 2008 's Spatial capabilities (here's another white paper ). My slides are available here . The demo app I showed is here . (Don't forget...

The word's getting out there (a little too slowly for my liking, but anyway ...): SQL Server 2008 will have spatial data support built-in. The first CTP to have this feature enabled should be CTP5 (due out any day now). In the mean time, Isaac Kunen and Michael Rys have recorded a webcast with some great...

Great workshops in the MS offices next week Topic: Virtual Earth - Real Revenue Where: Microsoft Offices When: Brisbane 12 th November, Melbourne 13 th November, Sydney 14 th November Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm Registration: Register for the Virtual Earth briefing by sending an e-mail to info@mapds.com.au...

The Virtual TechEd Fishbowl Editors have been at it again. Four more great videos. The Wide Ranging Applicability of Team Foundation Server Ron Jacobs, host of ARCast.TV , sits down to talk with customers Justin Butcher and Michael Daniel about using Team Foundation Server in a scenario with hundreds...

Tatham and Dr Neil alluded to it in their fishbowl interview , and now Anna 's been plugging it too. From the developers of ViaVirtualEarth , there's a new site for Windows Live developers . Check out the plethora of topics on the nav bar:

Update - Trouble seems to be publishing to FTP sites through my new ISA server at home. Presentation download links below. Yesterday, when I delivered back-to-back Premier Account briefings to around 120 folks, I promised that I'd post the presentation deck here today. The deck is here in PowerPoint...

There's a new off-line blogging tool in town. Frank's blogged about it, so have Jeff , Tristan and Rob . I've just switched from BlogJet. Not because I don't like BlogJet, but just because I was curious. I have to say that the coolest feature for me is the ability to insert Windows Live Local maps !...

Steve Lombardi’s VE Session has just finished and contained some cool announcements. Now available for commercial use. First and foremost, VE is now available for commercial use. The nitty-gritty details are available from the virtual earth developer site ( www.viavirtualearth.com ) but,...

I've been talking about this for a while, and I've finally uploaded a COM wrapper around the MapPoint Web Service and a sample VFP form that shows the Find and Render services. You can grab them both from Darren's most excellent ProjectDistributor site. To use them, you'll need a MapPoint WS eval...

Last week I was in Canberra presenting at the Lunchtime and Late Afternoon sessions of the User Group . Athena's just pinged me to say that she's posted the slides and code here . Enjoy! Update - I've also got a detailed walk-through document for the demo I used as part of the presentation. BTW...

I'm currently working on an article introducing C# Express edition for one of the local developer magazines and my plan was to take the ScreenSaver example that ships with the product and extend it a little. In particualr, I wanted to introduce the concept of calling web services. Instead of using a...

We're well into the planning phases for MDEC2005 in Melbourne (June 20) and Sydney (June 22). Here's almost the final agenda for the day. What I'd like is a sanity check. Have I missed anything obvious, is there too much of anything? Feedback apprectaied either via contact me or via the comments engine...

Chandu Thota (of BlogMap fame) has a link to an MSDN article on implementing a Geofence with MapPoint Location Server. "What's a Geofence?" I hear you cry. I'm glad someone asked. From the article: A geofence is a geographical region that you define and use to trigger an event when a user enters the...

If you're after some really cool Geographical Information System (GIS) software, check out Manifold.net . They're up to version 6 now (I started with v2 I think, back in the mid-90s). This product rocks. It has all of the functionality of it's far more expensive competitors, at a small fraction of the...