Alex Barnett's blog

WinFX Developer Center is Live .

Groovy Mother points to a cool Google Maps / Census data (200) remix created by AnalyGIS and SRC using a 'Demographic API' . I'm not sure if MSN's Vistual Earth has something planned along these lines , but it would be nice... :-) This is the data...

Flickr PDC Pic Pool Via Steve Butler .

Christian Heilmann has written up a good piece at Digital Web Magazine on the reasons companies struggle to deal with and invest in online Accessibility . His 10 reasons companies don't care about Accessibility: It’s the Law But There’s None...

First I hear eBay has confrimed it is to buy Skype for 2.6bn . That's enough news for one day. Then I read that Oracle will buy Siebel for 5.85bn . Quick comparison of the 2 acquisitions today: Skype: 2 years old. Revenues for 2005: 64m...

It was only a couple of weeks I wrote of Skype 's need to 'get on with it': "ZDNet and WSJ are reporting that the VoIP firm Vonage is planing an IPO to raise $600m, after having raised $400m with VC cash. If this is true and works out, Skype will...

Denise Howell interviews (mp3) Bob Wyman (CEO of PubSub ) about the thorny subject of the legalities of RSS feeds syndication.

Johnnie Moore videos one of his co-creation sessions , this time in a pub somewhere in London: " James Cherkoff and I went out last weekend with Jesper Bindslev and Jon Froda, whose shared blog is e-mediators . We'd first met them at Reboot7 earlier...

The Windows Vista UX Guidelines (preliminary) is available for download . "...a preliminary draft of the Microsoft Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines (or “UX Guide” for short). These guidelines contain information on What’s New in Windows...

Just picked my copy of the The Search by John Battelle . Here's my review: it has a red and white cover, the title's word 'Search' uses the Google font & pallete and it weighs about a pound, with 27 references in the index to Microsoft and 16 to...

omg. Rainbow 6 Lockdown shipped to the stores this week and I completely forgot. It is now Sept 11. My birthday as it happens...so, I wonder,...what I'm getting today ...? :-) My gamertag is: 'alex101' Kill me. -- Btw, Major...

IT Conversations has uploaded an mp3 recording of the presentation Steve Lawler (GM for Virtual Earth and MSN MapPoint) gave at the Where 2.0 conference (took place in June 05). "In this lively and quick-moving presentation from Where 2.0, Stephen...

MSN's Dare Obasanjo has collated more info on the MSN APIs (to be officially announced next week). "That's right, during the PDC we'll be announcing developer programs for four MSN properties; MSN Virtual Earth , MSN Messenger , Start.com and MSN...

I've come across a couple of links this week of lists and directories of Web 2.0-type web services / APIs. First is the 'Web 2.0 APIs' list from John Musser at ProgrammableWeb, currently with around 60 services in alphabetical order (found via Richard...

Virtual Earth team is running a competition for the best Virtual Earth hack . Rules? Simple: coolest map hack app wins. Last entry submissions before 14 Oct 2005. Here is info on the API . What more do you want? (oh yeah, there are prizes too )...

Sctuctured blogging is taking many forms , but structured blogging needs structured data. To get structured data into your structured blog (so people/systems can subscribe to your structured RSS output or surf your structured blog and do stuff with your...

CNET has reported of Microsoft plans to open up the up the APIs for developers to build new, cool stuff upon MSN and other Microsoft online properties. Although the article describes the move as taking an aim at Google, I think it is really much more...

OK, so I'll be the 204th Microsoft blogger in the last hour to point to the Scoble Scoop of the year (or the decade even): an interview with Mr William Gates II (aka Billg, or Bill Gates) on Channel 9 in his office! (er, Gates' office that is, not Scoble...

I'll refrain from cluttering this blog with my inane cricket posts. I'll use this one instead , (RSS here ).

SpeedVlogging, 7 minutes to Vlog. "Challenge a friend to SpeedVlog with you. You may agree upon a rule or a theme to limit the possibilities of the game, but apart from that, there are no bars held. Only rule is: Make your vlog in 7 minutes. Yes...

Andy Stallard just got a nice surprise in his inbox from the BBC: "Dear Andy, We are delighted to inform you that you have been selected to participate in the Integrated Media Player (iMP) trial. The Integrated Media player offers you the chance...

Infoworld reports of Microsoft's demonstration of a link between its CRM package ( new brand is Microsoft Dynamics ) and RSS at the Microsoft Business Summit in Redmond . ""Think about a CRM application with this role-based approach. A sales person...

NerdTV is live now , a new weekly online TV show by Robert X. Cringely . No RSS feed to subscribe to though :-(

James Cherkoff pinged me and let me know of a BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast, Shop Talk , where he was invited to take part in a discussion on corporate blogs earlier this week. Listened to it this morning and enjoyed the show (is available for streaming...

Nivi : "RSS is like an API for content. RSS gives you access to a web site’s data just like an API gives you access to a web site’s computing power. Most important, RSS gives you access to your data that you have locked up on a web site." Via Rajesh...