Newsletters seem like an almost archaic means of communication in the age of social networking – even online newsletters. But the truth is a newsletter is still the best way to connect to a whole lot of people and that’s why we’ve done a revamp of our...

Great to see the new User Group kicking off last night. It’s funny – developers seem to have a natural flocking tendency whereas IT Pro’s, perhaps being more multi-disciplined, tend to work more within their own organisation or network. That’s all changed...

Love this – especially that the worst offence is to use tabs and spaces for indenting: http://www.hanovsolutions.com/resume_comic.png

There’s a great story on Nigel’s blog covering the MIX09 keynote – and in particular the inclusion of Wellington’s SilverStripe in the Web App Gallery (the ten most popular OSS web applications) as part of the MS Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta. Sound...

It’s been amazing to see the social phenomenon that is Twitter explode from relative obscurity to global recognition over the last few months. Jon Stewart has covered it on the Daily Show , US senators have been accused of inattention because they were...

Imagine Cup is hotting up with the teams hard at work refining their ideas before the preliminary judging round in April. You can have your say on their efforts by visiting the site , viewing their vids and voting. You could win an Xbox or a copy of MS...

Every year we collect your feedback as it provides valuable information to help us better deliver our services and products in New Zealand. Starting this month and until April 15 , you may be randomly chosen to share your experiences with Microsoft products...

Tech.Days – a 24 hour virtual event for developers On April 1 2009, be part of history and join developers from all around the world for the first ever 24 hour day of technology learning.  Tech.Days will feature 95 live sessions across 5 tracks on...

The guys at Start-Up magazine have been making a TV series following the fortunes of 20 or so start-up companies over the last six months. In their words: “They've been put through the wringer for the last 6 months, had their business and personal lives...

You may know that the Developer & Platform group at Microsoft NZ is all about working with the NZ developer community but did you know we also cover the IT Professional audience too? Nathan Mercer in my team does a sterling job of travelling the country...

I’ve just been through the process of moving a personal website and domain to a new hoster. I wanted to separate the email for the domain and use Windows Live Admin Center http://domains.live.com to consolidate external email to Live Mail (Hotmail). It...

Did you know there is somewhere around 35,000 people who class themselves as software developers in New Zealand? Of course this includes developers, architects, designers, web devs etc. but still a large number of people making their livelihood as a software...

Great to see two participants in last year’s 7x7 pitching session at TechEd 2008 in the top two positions on the Herald’s top start-ups of 2008 list. Read the full story here The aim of the 7x7 session was to invite seven start-ups to pitch their company...

The TVNZ Close Up programme ran a piece last week on computer viruses which probably succeeded in scaring most viewers while not offering any solutions or even places to look for help. Computer virus How safe is your computer? We all know about fire walls...

Last month we launched Bizspark in New Zealand. Bizspark is a Microsoft worldwide programme that makes software and support available to software start-ups to help them launch their business and be successful earlier. All the details are available here...

To me Live Mesh is one of those solutions that fulfills my personal killer app criteria: I didn't know I needed it before I had it It works beautifully and has changed the way I work/live Now I have it I can't do without it Moving my life to the cloud...

Just want to say thank you to everyone who took time out of day to come and share their view of Microsoft and our technologies. We rely a lot on large scale surveys for our take on the health or otherwise of the the NZ developer community, so it was good...

At PDC 2008 last week, we announced a new way to program Live Services, the Live Framework (in CTP). Check out the overview of Microsoft’s Live Platform Services . On the 8th/9th Dec in Sydney we are holding a 2 day Live Services Jumpstart provides...

The final PDC session has just finished and the event comes to an end. There's thousands of people heading to the airport - hopefully with their heads full of ideas and schemes that they will take back to their countries and organisations, where they...

Thinking about the cloud So last day at PDC (Thursday) - no big announcements or showcases today. I just went to Gianpaolo Carraro's session on expanding applications to the cloud - a kind of architectural guidance talk which might contextualise cloud...

Wow! That's all I can say. I've just come out of the Microsoft Research (MSR) keynote given by Rick Rashid at PDC where the attendees were given a tour through some incredible technology innovations. He did a pass through (full details here ): Highlighting...

It's been a big couple of days here at PDC where we've made some of the biggest announcements in the history of the company. There's plenty of press coverage of the release so I'll give you a high level, personal perspective: Monday 27th of October saw...

Love these online bling badges... So we've arrived in LA. Just checked the PDC website there's been some updates and changes. The good news you'll be able to watch the keynotes live - bad news is they're on about 4.30am NZ time. Spotted a few likely looking...

Just in from Darryl's blog: While the rest of the world has been able to purchase and renew Visual Studio and MSDN online for some time, we have for some reason lagged behind.  But now that lag is behind us and we can now order a new subscription...

Man - I'm starting to get excited. The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) starts on Monday in LA and Mike Zeff and I are attending to host NZ press and partners. The announcements that will be made next week have been guarded pretty closely...