On April 18th, I hinted about a "special offer". On May 1st, John Bristowe posted resources and guidance on how to build a gadget. Now the cat's out of the bag - the Gadget VS Gadget competition has now launched and gives you both the opportunity to build...

Thanks to everyone who attended this webcast. During the session at the end, I mentioned an action plan that you should follow if you want to start extending the user interface of Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Here it is again with the links behind each...

Thank you to everyone who entered our MSDN Code Awards program! We went through the difficult process of picking five nominees for the individual and team categories - we received a lot of really great entries. What really struck me was how inspiring...

Many thanks to those of you who attended my webcast presentation on Open XML. If you missed it, don't worry; a recording will be available soon. In the meantime, I encourage you to start examining Open XML. Here is an action plan for your own research...

EnergizeIT 2007 is coming on June 16th and it's shaping up to be a very exciting free Summer event! It's going to happen on a Saturday in downtown Toronto and it's a perfect opportunity for Developers and IT Pros to let loose and "Get Your Geek On!"....

Tonight, we will be presenting the introduction to our Office 2007 Webcast Series. If you haven't signed up for it already, here is the link to the main event page . At many webcasts and live events, you usually get a slide at the end with a link dump...

Last week, Jean-Luc hinted at an "offer" in his blog post on Windows Live and Vista gadgets . A deeper explanation on what Jean-Luc was referring to is coming soon! (Stay tuned to this blog for more information.) As part of his post, he also provided...

Rob Windsor ( Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) , User Group Leader) Rob Windsor on Discoverability The .NET Framework is big - very, very big - and it grows with each new version. While many developers are still trying to incorporate the...

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to chat with Michael Amanfi on the roof of my building about his work with Windows Workflow Foundation and specifically, his community project called Team Workflow - a workflow authoring and process automation tool built...

If you visit our Ignite Your Coding webpage ( http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/ignite/ ), you'll notice that we are in the midst of running a webcast series on Office and SharePoint 2007 development - I highly encourage you to sign up, it will be a good...

In this final installment, here is an interview with Colin Bowern from Official Community. There were sixteen videos filmed in total and you can view them very shortly from the TorontoCodeCamp.net website. In this segment, Colin is interviewed by Kyle...

Sasha Krsmanovic is the Microsoft MVP lead for Canada. The acronym MVP stands for Most Valuable Professional - they are exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who are awarded for voluntarily sharing their high quality, real world...

Here is a video taken at the Toronto Code Camp on March 31. Chris Dufour, the camp organizer, explains the challenges around planning a large scale community event for developers: Video: Chris Dufour - Live From The Toronto Code Camp 2007

Are you interested in developing gadgets for Windows Live and Windows Vista ? If so - we have an offer coming up that will definitely interest you in a big way! Gadgets are mini-applications which allow users quick access to information from applications...

During the Unify and DNIC tours, we've been telling you about our certification offer. We would like to thank you all for your interest. Due to the overwhelming response the limited quantity of kits sold out extremely quickly. The offer is now closed...

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jean-René Roy during my last trip to Montréal to discuss DevTeach that Jean-René organizes every year. The Canadian Microsoft team will be there in large number so come say hello. Here's the link to the Podcast...

J'ai eu le privilège de m'assoir avec Jean-René Roy lors de mon récent passage à Montréal et parler de l'événement DevTeach que Jean-René organise annuellement. L'équipe de Microsoft Canada sera la en très grand nombre alors venez nous dire un petit...

Jump Start Your Career http://www.microsoft.com/canada/msdn/jumpstart/ I am happy to announce the start of Jump Start from Microsoft Canada . Its purpose is to help developers and IT professionals reach their certification goals. To do this, we are...

We listen really hard to our community and when this subject came up loud we responded. If you head over to Soma's blog you'll find the announcement that Microsoft Expression Web and Microsoft Exrpession Blend will now be included with MSDN Premium subscription...

This Saturday, over 600+ people will converge to attend the 2nd annual Toronto Code Camp . I'll be delivering the keynote and a session on codename " Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E) ". The event is unfortunately full (in terms of attendees...

Believe it or not, March 19th marks the 10th anniversary "decennial" of Visual Studio 97, the first release of the product. The news was announced onstage at VSLive! in San Francisco on March 26th. Rob Caron has posted additional details on his blog ...

Here is an interview with Matthew Cassell at the 2007 MVP Summit. In this interview, Matthew talks about some of his academic activities including the Academic .NET Student Conference held in Toronto . He also recounts his meeting with Steve Ballmer ...

A little while back, I blogged about composite applications (aka application "mashups") - how important it is to think about the components of your applications, and how to use existing frameworks as a shortcut to reach business goals. For example, does...

We ran the first Game Camp in November 2006 - it was great to see the number of people show up and the excitement you demonstrated towards XNA and the XNA Game Studio Express . In fact, the event was such a hit that our developer and student communities...

In case you missed it, we posted all the .NET Framework 3.0 webcasts (including the .NET Framework 3.0 overview presentation with Christian Beauclair) on our Ignite Your Code website . If you are interested in Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows...