The CyKho Blog

While having a conversation with one of my googler pals - I noticed that gmail still bears the "beta" moniker.  WTF Google.  <rant> Gmail was released in March of 2004 - meaning it's been in Beta for FOUR YEARS NOW - little lengthy...

In our quest for hearts and minds, Microsoft has traditionally been VERY successful at minds (making the intellectual value proposition), but not so successful with the hearts part (emotion - making you feel for our products).  However, I just saw...

My buddy edwin is hitting the road on the Digital Dorm Room tour!  He's taking an RV - packing it full of the latest and greatest Microsoft technologies and driving around the North East.  Want to know where the Edvangelist on wheels will strike...

A recent comment on my Women + Tech Post from the Geek Girl Blogs site caught my eye.  Never having heard of it - I went to take a look.  VERY cool idea = aggregate the blogs of female developers from around the world.  Excellent :) I know...

Recognize this? This picture is better known in the anti-spam field as a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) - nice and succinct... The purpose of this picture is to prevent spammers from using programs...

Now businesses can ensure that streaming online media content is protected with DRM.  This ha the potential to open completely new models for online audiences to enjoy media that would otherwise stay off the web.  For more check out the official...

Not every idea can be a winner...   This video is from The Code Trip - a bunch of developers hit the road in a tour bus, geek out, and journey across the land. It's a good good time.  For more check our their Travel Log .

I commonly get the question - sooo...wtf is a web service?  A web service is anything which requires two or more computers to communicate.  Most web services these days are designed with a single "Server" providing data to any "Clients"...

Purdue just won this year's 2008 Rube Goldberg Machine competition.  This whole idea is surreally awesome - build an insane contraption to make a hamburger:  Thanks to Doug White of Udel and cpuguru fame for linking me up with the video!

I gave a talk on XNA to a Springbrook High School a couple months ago.  And lo and behold now they've created a game!  I'm really amazed at the speed that the students and teacher (Pat Yongpradit) have adapted to the XNA environment.  Their...

I was giving a talk at the University of Baltimore and was asked if Live Writer (a desktop blogging application) could post cotent copied in from Word. So, I took a sample from a popfly demoscript (in an table in word) and copied it over. Looks good!...

Ok - well here it is: žXNA Creators Club — http://www.microsoft4me.com/xna žXNA Team Blog Site — http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/ žTorqueX — http://www.microsoft4me.com/xna — And, of course – Danwaters.com 2+ hours on how to make...

I'm currently at Wheaton HIgh School recieving the age old "I want to make a game, but how?" question. 1. Get it installed: http://creators.xna.com/Education/newtoxna.aspx 2. Make Pong in 5 Minutes: http://blogs.msdn.com/devschool/archive/2008/02...

We're getting started with a great new way to talk with our audience - Facebook app!  I REALLY like this idea.  Facebook is a now the defacto way for people (students and young professionals mostly) to reach out to each other.  Why not...

An issue I've struggled with over my time with the Evangelism team at Microsoft is how do we reach women?  A couple weeks ago we held a great event to this end: DigiGirlz Day 2008 - 65 girls at Microsoft Reston all day to learn about the "cool"...

A buddy of mine - the edVangelist is working with a history department to help them use some of the new Microsoft technologies.  The question came up: Can we use popfly to teach/share/communicate history? YES! 10 minutes later I had a little mashup...

Knowing your audience is probably both the hardest and most important aspect of giving a great talk.  JohnMont (of Popfly fame) just wrote a post on The Art of the Demo TV commercials have it right - you have a VERY small window to get your point...

Popfly has been nominated as one of 300 finalists by the CNET editors for the CNET Webware 100 award.  Competition is pretty stiff, so we need your help to win! Click this to vote for Popfly!  

  Technology is exciting and entertaining.  Like movies.  So they should have Trailers.  Like movies:   http://home.live.com/ http://www.popfly.com/ http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

    The age old question of "how do we get more students interested in STEM (science tech engineering math) has come up one too many times.  It's time for me to write what I know (so here you go!):     A couple programs Microsoft...

Last week I was hanging out in Texas doing some training on Silverlight/Evangelism training. I was staying in Irving - a huge tech center - more or less just like any other suburban tech city (Redmond/San Jose/Reston). But at some point, I had a sudden...

As some of you know, Microsoft is hosting a HUGE student competition called the Imagine Cup - design software, travel the world, win some money: A team in New Jersey has started their blog about their experiance - very interesting - especially if...

The Zune team is marketing a art consumption device by using art? o rly? ya rly! no wai! <insert owl pictures here> Check it out: Zune - Intergalactic Swap Meet Uploaded by firat

I know this has been said a thousand times, here it is anyways: We (humans - American humans in particular) use the planets resources at an unsustainable rate This will begin to suck - really soon - really bad: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ ...

It's kinda scary how much thought and time is invested in wringing the wallets and buying the minds of 20somethings these days: http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=122041 One of the Implications raied by this article got me thinking...