Robert Burke's MSDN Weblog

Christian Weyer led a very interesting discussion last night at the IrishDev meeting about the importance of Contract-First Web Service design. What Visual Studio needs, in his estimation, is a good WSDL designer that would allow architects to focus on...

If you're looking for a place to start a blog, check out MSN Spaces . It was just announced yesterday and is now in beta form. Spaces is a free service that allows you to upload photo ablums and blog postings, either by using a web interface, or by sending...

I recently got curious about how easy it is to extend Outlook using .Net. I currently use one Outlook Add-in, NewsGator , as my blog (RSS feed) aggregator. Briefly, I've found two ways you can use .Net to leverage Outlook data: either (1) by talking to...

I was a last-minute addition to a panel discussion last night in Dublin’s Digital Hub about the future of Game Development in Ireland. Ireland is a country where we have a publisher (Microsoft), some very strong middleware , but almost no international...

When someone brings up Avalon , I inevitably gush about how it will transform advanced desktop visualization from a dark art into something very accessible. I’m surely most like an evangelist when I get carried away about the creativity it will unleash...

[Update: This article was meant to be titled GreatNews<GenericsClsCompliance> but something in the XML pipeline is objecting to my using <> signs in the title!!] Brian (good find, mate!) pointed out the breaking news story that generics will...

There are some great blogs out there. Hugh's gapingvoid is one of them. I discovered Hugh through his article on how to be creative . He "gets it," writes with attitude and style, and etches his insights onto the back of business cards . (But mind yourself...

At last night’s MSDN Evening Briefing, I presented an Introduction to .Net for a full house of developers in Dublin . For those who weren’t there, I covered four topics: (1) a description of what .Net entails, (2) some examples of how .Net is being used...

Paschal Leloup and his wife Sinead, who many of you may know through their involvement in developers.ie, were near Phuket in Thailand during the quake. They are in good health and helping out with the rescue and recovery efforts. Paschal has been kind...

I'm looking forward to Thursday night's IrishDev Special Event , which will feature two presentations: One about the past, present and future of Web Services with Christian Weyer , and one about the future of early replicant retirement with Rick Deckard...

My first impression is that the MSN Toolbar Suite is very cool. Find out more here at Channel 9 . [UPDATE 15 Dec: Yes, it's cool. I use it as a single point-of-search for Outlook and my local documents. However, I still use, um, another web search engine...

Microsoft Research in Cambridge (MSRC), UK, is organizing a forum in April, 2005 to discuss what will happen as computers continue to become "smaller, cheaper, more powerful, ubiquitous and more diverse." This three-day event, organized and sponsored...