The Microsoft Surface device will display a Microsoft Virtual Earth map of the entire region tracking events, incidents, resources and tasks in real-time using its unique large display, multi-user, multi-touch and interactive capabilities, also allowing...

  and last but not least, the reduced Window s logo :-) In the first version of this blog-post, I promised I would publish a “Microsoft crisis logo” if some of you would find one and…here it is! It was brought in by Ömer Çelik, the winner of the...

Windows 7-compatible Virtual Earth 3D-based Navigation Application. Uses Windows 7 Location Platform to retrieve user's location and enables her to see her move on the Virtual Earth Map. More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/semantics/archive/2009/01/22/windows...

Earlier this week we officially launched the Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) project together with Walloon Minister of economy Jean-Claude Marcourt and announced March 4 th 2009 as the opening date and start of operations. The MIC in Mons will be part...

BLAMESTORMING. Sitting round in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a Project failed, and who was responsible. SEAGULL MANAGER. A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves. TESTICULATING. Waving your...

In the footsteps of the Live Search Maps Finland site launch, Live Search Maps Netherlands is now live on the web.  Belgium has been flown (by plane and all data capture) – waiting for the processing… Explore The Netherlands like never before with...

Today, in less than three months since its announcement , Microsoft’s Windows Azure team has announced a refresh to the Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure tools for Visual Studio. The Community Technology Preview (CTP), announced at Microsoft’s PDC ...

Interesting info for those among you who use Windows 7 Beta and…while talking about Window 7 Beta…I have it on my production machine since couple of weeks and…no problems, great value!!! (see http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2009/01/12/the-bumper-list...

Great article from my colleague Denny Boynton adding to the interesting debate around the article Anne Thomas  (well respected analyst at the Burton Group), wrote a post on her blog pronouncing SOA to be dead. Read all about it here.

TechDays 2009 registration is open: this year’s event will take place on March 10th, 11th and 12th in Metropolis in Antwerp. The concept is somewhat different from last year as we will have a full day pre-conference on the 10th and then two normal conference...

Microsoft has been positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems 2008 Magic Quadrant (Gartner, Inc., December 23, 2008). This Magic Quadrant depicts Gartner's analysis of how data warehouse DBMS...

Interesting Burton article about SOA fatigue and SOA disillusions: SOA  met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession. SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM, SaaS, Cloud Computing...

First of all let me wish you a wonderful 2009, may all your architectural – and not so architectural - dreams come true !! 2008 was the year of the rat, will 2009 be the year of the architect? Probably! These times of deep economical crisis are without...

Since about 4 years now, Belux Solution Architects have their community platform, known as the “Microsoft Belux Architect Forum”. This has proven to be a very valuable and successful formula and hence we have decided to also bring to live an “Infrastructure...

Being an architect in 2009 is a privilege because we are witnessing the birth of a fundamental new computing platform and an event like that is fairly rare since it is only the fifth time or so since the mainframe period back in the 1950’s (other platform...

Solution Architect Forum Date : March 10 Location : Pre-conference for Solution Architects at the next Belux TechDays, Antwerp Theme : “Software + Services: the convergence of SOA, SaaS, Cloud Computing and Web 2.0” Speakers : we will again have an exceptional...

On December 19, Gartner revised its categorization of application infrastructure products – specifically its collection of Magic Quadrants – to reflect new market dynamics. Gartner defines application infrastructure as software platforms for the delivery...

The main purpose in this great MSDN article is to take a LOB scenario and build an enterprise application from the ground up, illustrating various aspects of Silverlight development along the way for building enterprise-quality, data-centric, line-of...

Visual Studio User Group (VISUG) hosts a free event on 15 January with Juval Löwy on WCF with regards to Cloud Computing and Azure ( http://www.visug.be ): The .NET services bus is part of the new Microsoft Cloud Computing Windows Azure initiative, and...