January, 2007

Last Saturday, Carleton University hosted a Game Camp for students and faculty. The theme of the Game Camp was XNA and Game Studio Express. Christian Beauclair gave an in-depth presentation on how to create a pong game from scratch. We also took a look at the Creator's Club, games being developed by the community and Torque X. During the event, I got the opportunity to chat with Daniel Deschamps...

To celebrate the consumer launch of Windows Vista on January 30 2007, Microsoft Canada built a Digital Ice House at the corner of Dundas and Yonge Street in Toronto, in the middle of Dundas Square. Here are some photos with highlights from the event which will run until February 3rd: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jldavid/sets/72157594510026961/ The Digital Ice House is roughly 1800 square feet made...

If you are interested in XNA or game development, you won't want to miss this! It's a global gaming competition - check out the website at: http://www.dreambuildplay.com . As with XNA Game Studio Express, we're going to break from convention and look to do a few different things with Dream.Build.Play. This contest is about you - you the members of our XNA community and an opportunity to put gaming...

This is in regard to the "Live for You" webcast series we held in November. (You can find the videos here ). The Live team as just release version 1 of the Windows Live SDK which is an aggregation of all documents pertaining to the Live services for developers. This is a great milestone as it will make things a lot easier for you to locate information. You'll find things like: Lots more sample code...

Good news for web developers. If you want to implement AJAX in your apps quickly you should check out the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 extensions.Head over to http://ajax.asp.net/ to get it. For those of you who've attended our Developer Night in Canada Tour back in September, I encourage you to read this document that compares the CTP's and the RTW version. Cheers.

Here is a video direct from the Game Camp at the University of Waterloo that took place on January 19th, 2007. Neville Samuell demonstrates his XNA game "Super Paddle Ball 2" - he wrote the game in 6 hours (after attending the original Game Camp in Toronto). Video: Game Camp Waterloo 2007 - Neville Samuell

The other night I had the opportunity to speak to the Toronto Delphi User Group about Windows Vista and Office 2007. Now you may be wondering what an IT Pro Advisor for Microsoft is doing talking at a user group meeting for another companies product. Well I am excited and passionate about the capabilities of Windows Vista and Office 2007 and when they asked, I jumped at the chance. I enjoy talking...

Our second Canadian GameCamp will be held in Ottawa on January 27th at Carleton University. We've done this event in Toronto last November with great feedback and we will rock the capital this time around. A full day exploring XNA Game Studio Express awaits you. We'll show you how to build a 2D game for XNA and then show you how to turn it 3D. We'll even deploy our game to the Xbox 360 on stage. Pass...

News & Highlights List of Bugs That Are Fixed in Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Microsoft Developers Academy - First Promo is on the Air! MSDN Code Awards Orcas January CTP Now Available [Justin Van Patten] SQL Server Compact Edition Finally Released WCF-based Syndication Endpoints for OhmBlog Upcoming Events in Canada Monday, January 15, 2007: Edmonton .NET User...

Last year, we launched the the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. During the Launch Tour, we gave you a little taste of our new APIs. Now it's time to go deep - the .NET Framework 3.0 Webcast Series will provide you with some great information to help you build rich, visually compelling user experiences and virtually seamless communication across multiple technologies. Here are the topics, dates and...