In the spirit of last week's list of ways to get free developer support from Microsoft , I just wanted to let you know about one other way in which Microsoft employees can provide free support. It should come as no surprise that Microsofties often...

I've been meaning to write for some time about Charles Petzold 's book on the Windows Presentation Foundation, Applications = Code + Markup . Early reviews of the book offered glowing praise , so I ordered a copy of my own. I've read enough of it by...

The Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Beta has just been released. Here's the official announcement . You can register for and download the Service Pack updates at http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio . (The Connect site is a bit finnicky. If you...

Clare asked Dave and me to reveal some hidden gems that are available from Microsoft for technical support and learning. This was our list of the shiniest gems that we find devs and IT pros don't always know about. I also posted the Best of the Rest...

Tim Sneath is on a roll with his series of Windows Vista Secrets posts, and rumour has it he has something like 100 of these in the pipe. A hundred or not, he has me at four. :) 1. " Open Command Prompt Here ." No Power Toy intervention necessary...

One of the image processing technologies that Andrew Blake (of Microsoft Research) showed us during his Computer Science and Illusion presentation was image quilting , where bits of a texture are stitched together into a large, cohesive image. A cool...

Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7) contains a goldmine of features that will impress both developers and IT Professionals. I presented last night's Atlas talk using Vista RC1, which gave me an opportunity while preparing to explore IIS7 in a bit more...

" Atlas ," Microsoft's framework for building richer, more interactive, cross-browser web applications, has been given its real name(s): The Microsoft AJAX Library, the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions, and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. More details...

Here is a link to the slides from Andrew Blake's fascinating presentation last night on Computer Science and Illusion. ( 44MB, zipped PPT ) His presentation took us on a journey through four topics from computer vision: perspective drawing, texture...

The Expression Interactive Designer September CTP is now available for download from the Microsoft site. The September CTP is compatible with .NET 3.0 Release Candidate 1 and will let you bring designers into the workflow for building Windows Presentation...

If you're in the Dublin area, don't forget that Andrew Blake from Microsoft Research will be presenting on Wednesday night at Trinity College Dublin on the subject of Computer Science and Illusion . The talk will explore and demonstrate connections between...

Last week's MTUG Dublin presentation by the ever-enthusiastic Christian Weyer was a talk of two halves. His subject matter was Applied Software Factories -- the sort of abstraction that's particularly relevant to architects and "devarchitects." ...

I'm writing to you from Vista RC1 (build 5600) right now. I've installed it on 3 different machines. My first impressions: It's a lot more stable than previous major builds (although not 100% stable by any means), and the performance is improved...

Two big announcements: Windows Vista RC1 Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is complete , as per Jim Allchin's announcement , and available to download for TechBeta and TAP participants! Vista RC1 will also be available to MSDN and TechNet...

Recently updated to its 2006 edition, Scott Hanselman's Ultimate Developer and Power Tool List for Windows is definitely worth a visit for developers and IT professionals. A few utilities from his list of top ten for 2006 that I have recently found...