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This week was one of wrap up and preparation. The end of Q3 for our financial year, preparing for a strong Q4, and all the next financial year planning that’s about to come crashing down, and that’s not to mention TechEd09 . Huge things planned there...

Well we had “The Big Shave” yesterday, and whilst I’m still collating all of the photos and editing the video(s) for everyone, I did throw this quick video together to introduce (most of) the team… As you can probably tell from the brief snippets, the...

Rick “Mad-eye Murdoch” Anderson and I, “Colonel Hannibal” from the Aussie “Mobile Smackdown” crew, are about to become bald. We’re participating in the Leukaemia Foundation’s annual “Shave for a Cure” at 12pm today in the office. You can join the team...

This week I was migrated back to a QWERTY keyboard driven WinMo phone. Thanks to our friends at Palm. It is an awesome device, but more on that in another post. For now I want to talk about the much vaunted new service, MyPhone. It’s in beta, so I did...

The thing about cycling to work, no matter the justifications, is that you actually have to get home again. There were times today that I seriously considered just taking the bike on the train, but I’m glad I didn’t So like any beginner at something,...

Recently I got my hands on a Samsung i900 , aka the “Omnia” (which is Latin for “all” or “everything”) and I’ll be honest, I had been coveting this device since I first set eyes on it last August. Looking Good What’s not to desire? 5MPx camera with flash...

Over the last year or so, I’ve been considering cycling to work, and this morning made the first run. Whew. There are 3 reasons which led to this momentous outcome: Drop the spare tire . Yep, I’ve been up and down with weight, and of course consistent...

Tonight, (Tue Jan 13) at the Sydney Windows Mobile Usergroup, we host our annual “Nostalgia Night.” As this is our first meeting of the year, at a time when vendors are showing off the future of technology at Macworld and Consumer Electronics Show, but...

I’ve now been using this great little laptop for just over a week. Where last week I was asked “Which one did you get?” this week I’ve constantly been asked variations on the same question: “How does it perform?” “Do you like it?” “What would I do with...

Back in January 2002, 8 intrepid geeks had coffee in a Lindfield Cafe at the inaugural meeting of what was then the Sydney PocketPC Usergroup. Tuesday night saw almost 50 people celebrating the continued success of the group from those humble beginnings...

I did it! I followed my new rule for gadget buying. i.e. Divide the price of the gadget you desire by $100. Then consider the purchase for the resultant number of days. As it turns out, with the Aspire One, I considered for somewhat longer than the 5...

By now you’ll have read/heard the news, that the team I work in, DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) has appointed a new Director for Australia. I.e. I have a new boss. My previous boss, Norbert Haehnel, has returned to his homeland of Germany to...

This week I’ve been given two great opportunities. The first was to deliver the closing keynote at the annual VITTA (Victorian IT Teachers Association) conference. Here I spoke about how to prepare our students for roles that don’t yet exist on technologies...

The Details: When: Tuesday 9 th of December @ 6:15 pm Where: We meet at the Ablaze Grill & Bar @ Entertainment Quarter at Moore Park (formerly Fox  Studios), and then around 7:45 pm we head to the Comedy Store . Tickets are just $40 for members...

This week has been a whirlwind of announcements here at PDC2008, Windows Azure, Windows 7, LiveID becoming an OpenID provider, the changes to Live Mesh, and all the others. It is an exciting time to be developer in the industry, and there are enough new...

I love working for Microsoft! I guess that’s self-evident considering my role, and this blog, but it’s on mornings like this that it becomes more than a trite response to people asking how I enjoy my job. I’m in LA, as in Los Angeles, at the Professional...

There are so many things to blog about, but I’m off on holidays to Coffs Harbour and Wiseman’s Ferry for two weeks. So check out Coatsy’s , Parso’s, Dave’s , and Catherine’s blogs. Watch out for news about PDC , and definitely DevSta . (which by the way...

My last post, essentially thanking Readify for their involvement in TechEd08 caused a little bit of a stir :-) to the point of being reported in the press , not once, but twice . I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight all of the influencers whom...

TechEd is a huge undertaking, and there is no way we could be successful without the support of our partners. Today I got to see the impact of that again first hand. I was invited to address the Readify Annual Kick-off as their guest speaker. During my...

Way back in March this year we kicked off the largest ever launch of a Microsoft product, with the Heroes Happen {Here} Launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Since then we've been running a competition throughout the community...

I'll do a fuller wrap-up of the Smackdown *SMACK!* "HooHa!" later, but I just had to get the little video of the finale competition out. We wrapped up the biggest, and loudest Smackdown "HooHa!" ever held at a public TechEd with a...

This is a quick demo of a great little app to demonstrate the power of mobile blogging. R42

Andrew Coates , the initimable Developer Evangelist, has reiterated his promise to join Facebook, this time on video, if there are 250 members of the “Convince Andrew Coates to join Facebook” Facebook Group by the end of Friday 5 Sep 2008. Let’s hold...

Here at TechEd08 we’ve been working through the National Finalists of the Demos Happen {Here} competition. So far we’ve had 4 demo hero’s strut their stuff on the stage in the Expo hall, with another 3 to go. The competition is so successful that we decided...