January 2007 - Posts

Have we reached 1000 winners yet? (UK developer launch)
31 January 07 11:17 AM | ianm | 64 Comments   

I have just received the first set of data re the number of winners in the launch competition. The answer may surprise you: We've had many (many!) thousands of entries, and I can confirm that we're past the 1000 mark for Windows Vista winners. However Read More...

Video downloads (for UK developer launch)
26 January 07 05:07 PM | ianm | 6 Comments   

I'm going out on a limb....which I tend to do from time to time....but I have a proposal for readers of this blog who are interested in getting hold of the download versions of the technical sessions from the developer launch event. We have a new set Read More...

"Thank You" email has been sent (UK developer launch)....for day 1 only
26 January 07 02:23 PM | ianm | 14 Comments   

I can confirm that the "thank you" email has now been sent to attendees of the first day UK developer launch. If you only attended the second day, that email goes out at midnight tonight. Why? Different systems apparently. So why is this important anyway? Read More...

Some questions you might have on your mind (regarding the UK launch)
25 January 07 07:21 PM | ianm | 9 Comments   

I'm aware that readers of this blog are waiting for answers to three questions (maybe more, but let's start with these): For people who attended the physical launch, you want to know when the "thank you" email will be sent giving you your choice of software Read More...

The road trip continues
25 January 07 02:29 PM | ianm | 0 Comments   

The launch event may be over....but there is still stuff happening in a slightly different form (and of course the online launch continues until 19th Feb). As I mentioned in an earlier post , a number of my colleagues are travelling around the UK visiting Read More...

Answering some of the comments
20 January 07 10:26 AM | ianm | 64 Comments   

There have been quite a few comments to various of my blog entries, all covering the competition, so rather than try to answer them all individually I'll try to cover them here: 1) People have mentioned that while they saw London Underground on stage, Read More...

The competition
19 January 07 05:59 PM | ianm | 36 Comments   

You may have to refresh your browser to see it, but to save you the bother the link is here: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/launch2007/dev/competition.mspx It's also on the left-hand nav Read More...

We're going to pull the download option for a while (the streaming version is still ok)
19 January 07 05:03 PM | ianm | 13 Comments   

Folks - my apologies, but we've taken the decision to pull the download option for the videos. It's a classic case of "death by success" - we have so many people downloading that even with a massive pipe people are still seeing poor download speeds, as Read More...

Some issues with downloaded versions of videos
19 January 07 12:52 PM | ianm | 13 Comments   

We've had some reports of people have "file corrupted" messages from some of the videos they download from www.microsoft.com/uk/launch2007/dev . We're looking into this, looks like the download is interrupted which causes the problem ie it doesn't download Read More...

Looking for the keynote for developer launch?
19 January 07 12:04 PM | ianm | 9 Comments   

It will be available on www.microsoft.com/uk/launch2007/dev absolutely as soon as possible. The delay? We need to sync the presenation slides with the video scenes. This was set up yesterday but we tweaked the slides slightly this morning, which means Read More...

My email to Bill Gates
16 January 07 10:41 AM | ianm | 17 Comments   

I love working at Microsoft. And that's not as sickly sweet as it sounds, it really is a fun place to work. There's always interesting stuff going on and lots of incredibly clever people around. Another cool thing is that I work for the richest man in Read More...

Into the home straight for developer launch event: Satellite trucks and film crews - it's like a film set
15 January 07 08:32 AM | ianm | 7 Comments   

It's surprising just how much effort it takes to put on a launch event. But then, there are quite a few moving parts - some of them quite literaly: we'll have a truck with a huge satellite dish parked at the venue so that we can upstream the keynote live Read More...

Software for launch event attendees (physical event)
09 January 07 11:36 AM | ianm | 8 Comments   

A number of people have been asking the following quite reasonable question: We know that we're giving away 1000 copies of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office for the online launch event, but what about people who are attending the physical event at Thames Read More...

Read this if you're planning on doing the day 2 assignment for the developer launch
09 January 07 08:47 AM | ianm | 0 Comments   

As you may already know, our UK developer launch event is held over 2 days, with day 1 a series of technical tracks and day 2 a technical code-writing exercise where you'll build a working application using Windows Vista or Office 2007 (or both if you Read More...

Yes we really are giving away 1000 free copies of Windows Vista and Office 2007 to UK developers
05 January 07 10:17 AM | ianm | 43 Comments   

A while ago, I posted a blog entry about a free software giveaway we were planning for the UK online developer launch event. As I haven't said much about it since you may wonder if it's actually going ahead. Well have no fear, yes it's absolutely going Read More...