It's time for me to sign off from this blog. I'll be over on www.robburke.net and wish you all the best.

The whole Developer and Platform group have joined forces to start an MSDN Ireland Group Blog , including new developers Martha Rotter and Ronan Geraghty (who I must say are off to an amazing start with the group). Inimitable community guru Clare Dillon...

Here was my XBox Live Gamertag this morning: According to Dave , that makes me a sad git, and he's probably right, but according to Guitar Hero, it also makes me: Rock on.

When the XNA-fuelled fireworks were over at yesterday's Last Stand in Dublin (literally and figuratively) I was totally lost for words. When does that ever happen?! What I really want to say most is thank you - especially to Clare Dillon, Philip...

Out of Steve Bathiche and Andy Wilson's work on Surface Computing comes an elegant 30-inch diagonal display table that reacts to touch -- and will hit the market in Winter 2007. It'll be on show at Siggraph in August. Check out the demo (done in...

Nikon has released an updated version of their RAW (NEF) Codec for Vista that resolves an issue that caused it to suddenly stop working last week. Apparently the problem had something to do with an expired certificate. The new Codec is still labeled...

Talk Abstract: By day, he's helped mild-mannered developers build n -tiered architectures using .NET technologies. But by night, the real Rob comes out. The one that works endlessly - nay, furiously - with XNA and the Microsoft Robotics Studio. And now...

It has now been almost three years since I joined Microsoft to work with developers in Ireland. During that time, Microsoft has unleashed one-and-a-half new Visual Studios, presented the world a new Vista, and most recently they've shed some SilverLight...

There are some exciting things coming for developers in Windows Server 2008 , which recently reached Beta 3 under its codename Longhorn Server. If you're able to reach Dublin next Monday, you may be interested in the upcoming Longhorn Server Jumpstart...

I was looking up some information about one of the Windows Live services (Custom Domains, specifically) and noticed they've completely re-vamped the Windows Live for Developers site. If you haven't visited, that's the "one link to rule them all" I have...

Quite an interesting article in the Microsoft PhotoBlog: Program Manager Jordan Schwartz describes 3 Technologies that will change Photography . The three he cites are Mini Projectors, Liquid Lenses and GPS. And it's worth the link just for the mad-cool...

I've been absorbing Silverlight from the perspective of a developer who wants to use .NET code to build Silverlight applications. Here are the most useful resources I've found this week: 0. The Documentation Silverlight alpha documentation and...

I've just touched down in Dublin after the long haul back from the MIX conference. I had an amazing week - days of MIX, nights of Vegas - but it's with some relief that I'm back here now. On Wednesday morning I snapped this shot of a woman painting...

Last night, Delay announced the publishing of the Silverlight Airlines Demo from Monday's keynote. He and a colleague, Ted Glaza, built the demo in three weeks, beginning with nothing and building on top of the Silverlight .NET platform as it was...

From left to right on the Social Networking: Enabling the Two-Way Street panel at MIX07 : Dave Morin, Facebook ; Evan Williams, Twitter ; Aaron Emigh, Six Apart ; Joseph Kleinschmidt, Leverage Software ; Marc Canter, Broadband Mechanics...

Kip Voytek's great design presentation today was, in my mind, underattended. I am sometimes concerned that there isn't the right developer/designer mix here at MIX. Kip is from the R/Greenberg Associates design agency. Here are some of my notes from...

Click to download. With props to Expression Product Manager Arturo Toledo for putting this together, and thanks for the cool poster version they're giving out here at MIX!

Myspace presentation: Serving up the long tail's mp3 and other rich content at scale is an awesome task. And by "awesome" I mean the original, "awe-inspiring" sense of the word. Myspace is using the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime from Microsoft...

After this morning's MIX07 keynote, I am reinvigorated about the power and potential of Silverlight . Here are my favourite moments: Scott Guthrie debugging a Silverlight application's .NET code that was running on a Mac in the Safari browser, changing...

Swag found in my MIX07 Welcome Pack: 1 Silverlight / Mix07 T-Shirt (obligatory) 1 copy Vista Ultimate (cool) 1 copy Expression Studio (double cool!!) 3 coloured "discipline" armbands to identify the like-minded at MIX (Blue=Developer, Green=Business...

I've just returned from the first Microsoft Ireland finals of the Imagine Cup , an annual international student competition hosted by Microsoft. The theme of the Imagine Cup competition this year is "Imagine a world where technology enables a better...

Here's a flock of butterflies, brought to you in XNA, which can soar around their environment with the help of the Wii controller. By tilting and rolling the Wiimote, you can control the flight of the lead butterfly. The rest of the flock sticks...

I'm working on two projects in the evenings: One is an XNA app (no surprises there), and the other is a Live Messenger bot that is going to integrate the DotMSN bot library , WCF, WF, SQL2005 and more. I've been building that second project with the March...

I discovered through a New Scientist magazine article (thanks to Clare ) that Marvin Minsky, a.k.a. "The Father of Artificial Intelligence," has published The Emotion Machine , the sequel to his 1988 masterpiece, The Society of Mind . In Society...

I was excited to see a good friend, Mona, start blogging about her experience running a science center located north of the arctic circle. It's fascinating reading. They're designing interactive exhibits and experiments: everything from visualizing...