If you are a designer or developer that works with Microsoft technology (ASP.NET, Silverlight, etc) then this is a cracking offer from the guys over in the Microsoft Store – 40% off which means you can bag Expression Web (upgrade) for just under £60 for instance. Check it out – 40% off select Expression...

I love working on Expression stuff, it gives me the opportunity to work with inspirational designers and developers who care about user experience and design in software. The launch of the Expression UK newsletter is to let you know about all the great stuff that can be done with Silverlight and WPF...

Sponsored by Codeplex (aka Microsoft and all things developer + cool + open sourcey) I love last.fm and it will be interesting to see what the ‘hackers’ come up with on Sunday 14 December at the Truman Brewery. I know there are going to be some of my team mates attending and there are a few prizes and...

On 1 October 2008, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer and a host of industry professionals discussed the next generation of computer science innovations with more than 300 students and lecturers from across the UK - the event was the Student Technology Day . The videos are now all online in glorious Silverlight...

http://www.microsoft.com/express   Features include: Animated landing pages Interactive menus to explore by product or interest area Interactive product tours for each version

I spent some time talking to Bob and the guys at innerworkings about their product and service - it is a developer training interface which integrates directly with Visual Studio and gives developers (ones that write code for a living rather than students) practice based learning opportunities to hone...

The second shorter video ( first one is here ) with James Senior and I talking about Silverlight and what you can achieve with a few of the stock demos and me messing about with my old Mac and showing cross-platform debugging of Silverlight. Partner-TV: Silverlight Demo

I haven't been part of the development but it's good to see this finally go live. We've been hankering for a 1-stop-shop for students wanting to see what Microsoft has to offer for ages and finally have it at: www.microsoft.com/uk/students It highlights: Windows Vista Windows Media Xbox and PC gaming...

I was talking to my new teammate, the honorable Dr. Andrew Sithers (not sure if he honorable or not, but thought it sounded good), about Silverlight and it's ability to harness the power of dynamic languages inside Silverlight 1.1 (the one with .NET in it!). His question was "does the 1.1 release just...

Ian Moulster has the scoop on WindowsClient.net launching - it is a new site focused at developers working on rich client applications (run on desktop). It's a really nice site that combines the two worlds of WinForms and Windows Presentation Foundation. What is Windows Forms ? "Windows® Forms is a set...

Vertigo Software have just shipped Family.Show (family history explorer - stuff that my Dad would dig really!), a complete end to end reference example of building an application using Windows Presentation Foundation The Source Code is available for download Tim Sneath on Family.Show end to end reference...

SPI Dynamics are running a web application hacking workshop at Microsoft UK campus on the 26th April and it is FREE for anyone to attend. Thankfully, it's not free for wannabe hackers but is all about helping web developers secure their applications and code from known security vulnerabilities through...

I've had a couple of email exchanges with customers who are playing with Visual Studio Orcas and Expression Blend and facing challenges with incomaptibilities. The problems arise when trying to open Blend created projects in Orcas and Blend not being able to build Orcas related projects. Thankfully,...

Martin Grayson , a UX guru in the Microsoft Services part of our business has worked with a colleague in my group, Richard Godfrey to put together these excellent video tutorials of working with WPF (from a real world project perspective) and Expression Blend . Real World WPF Videos: Introduction to...

As a nice follow on to my post yesterday about the Universal Music uMusic gadget I spotted on Rich Griffin's blog an excellent entry with a comprehensive set of resources on coding a gadget and deploying in a production environment: Vista Sidebar Gadget Resources Technorati tags: sidebar , conchango...

With Vista general availability under 3 weeks away, there are more and more companies jumping on the WPF and great user experience bus. Yahoo has just announced its new Messenger applicatin which takes advantage of the .NET Fx 3 and more importantly WPF . The video demo and screenshot show what you can...

...all you have to do is attend the Vista/Office launch event for developers were such leading visionaries in the world of technology like Mike Taulty , Martin Parry , Daniel Moth , Mike Ormond and lesser known ones like me will be presenting. Ian Moulster has the details : We will be giving 1000 copies...

This is just plain cool and I had to link to it before I pack. Lester Lobo has posted a great little snippet of code and explanation on how to handle mouse events on a 3D model to a 2D texture coordinate. Mapping mouseclick on 3DModel to a 2D texture coordinate Talk about 'power of the platform'...

The Panel is a new site/community/buzz thing all about stuff that you look at on Windows Vista and the web. It is going to be a 'place' for Microsoft to showcase interesting applications, websites, gadgets that take advantage of all the great new stuff we have in our OS and developer platform: ...

Developer Division in Redmond are piloting a new program which enables developers and ISVs,etc to get access to the most frequently asked for Visual Studio 2005 hotfixes without having to do anything more than fire up your browser of choice (beats speaking to a real person on the phone) DevDiv Hotfix...

Well, all I seem to talk about these days is that I am going away on holiday for a granduoso 3 weeks to Australia (maybe I should meet up with other DPE folks like Frank or Dave). The countdown is on now with under 2 weeks til we fly off - can't wait. But, that ain't what is interesting to blog readers...

Michael Swanson has released a free converter to take SWF to XAML converter. "Finally! After months of tinkering around in my spare time, I've managed to assemble a relatively useful tool called SWF2XAML . The first version of this tool allows you to open a Flash/SWF file and advance through the frames...

Yesterday, I travelled north to visit Birmingham Computer Science department to give a guest presentation on WPF to a large lecture theatre's worth of students. I think that will be my 4th presentation there in 3 odd years so it's kind of a regular gig, even though I was filling in for Team Academia...

Coding4Fun has just relaunched with a great new look and feel. If you want to write code and do it outside of work (or inside of work, if your boss is so accomodating!) then this is a great site for inspiration, projects and sample code! And my good friend, Mr Andy Sterland esquire, has done some stuff...

Mike Taulty in my team posted a great diagram describing the reach/richness of Microsoft presentation technologies. This really sums up the world of presentaiton technologies and web technologies which I hope to present on for the next year or two! I've got a LOT to learn - the first two (incl...