Robert Burke's MSDN Weblog

You may have heard last week about makeITsecure day , an initiative that united the Irish government with a number of organizations, including Microsoft. As part of the campaign, we were out – on the streets, in the schools, and at a number of high-profile...

I'm going to be offering two days of free hands-on training in Visual Studio Team System in Dublin on November 14th and 15th. A perfect way to complement the launch activities with an opportunity for you to work with Team System yourself in the roles...

It looks like I'm going to be presenting the Web Developer content at the Belfast launch next week, in addition to another riveting performance of the keynote demos! So I've turned some of my thoughts back to ASP.NET 2.0. I still think the Provider...

I'm a mad one for the text messages. You know -- the SMS, the BEEP! BEEP! -rumblerumblerumble-, the "Dude I'm at the pub where are you guys?!" furiously hammered into the mobile. "Texts" are indeed the most expensive 160-byte chunks I send on a regular...

Great news for students, hobbyists, casual developers and curious newcomers! The Express Editions of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 are now available to you in their RTM (Release-to-Manufacturer) format. And you can download them from the web...

Back at the PDC, I wrote about the Messenger Activity API contest . They're mid-way through the contest now, and I stopped by to check out some of the applications that have been submitted. Here are some cool ones: Let's Meet , Language translator...

1. Add encarta@conversagent.com to your list of MSN Messenger contacts. 2. Ask it questions like "What is the capital of Ireland?" and "Who is Wayne Gretzky?" and "What is a moose?" and "Where is the Guinness Brewery?" 3. It'll search Encarta and...

Events related to the Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 launch are going to be coming fast and furious over the next few weeks. Next Monday, on November 7th, Community launch events are happening in Cork, with Bill O'Brien on tap; Galway, with...

It's not every day that some of the greatest minds in the gaming Artificial Intelligence community are chatting about your thesis work over on a Game AI Blog set up by the dude who wrote the AI for Halo 2 :) I really enjoyed reading the discussion...