Check it out and download today. Xbox.com | Xbox.com Home. Been using it for a while and I have to say I really like it. Been enjoying the instant streaming from NetFlix and the kids like making avatars - in fact they've made a bunch of local user accounts just to mess around with different avatars.

Even if you are not going to PDC this year, keep an eye out for .NET Framework 4.0 and “Dublin”. I've been using Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V lately so I'm excited to see what's next (if you haven't picked up on it yet..."Dublin" is the next version of Windows Server).

I just received my Kicker - zKICK for Zune and fired it up. Pretty nice, good sound quality and it definitely lives up to the "Livin' Loud" slogan. I enjoyed watching the subwoofer on the back of the unit vibrate ;) Also includes line-in for connecting the various other iPods the family has. 

Finally....this is the kind of commercial we've been waiting for. I'm a PC.

If you do presentations for a living, or at least as a regular part of your day job, I like having an option to do something different for presentations now and then. pptPlex from OfficeLabs is kinda cool.

Nathan Dunlap and Robby Ingebretsen did something that looks simiar for a MIX '06 session using WPF/XAML, also fun if you are/were a comic book fan.

While I'm talking presentations, I hope everyone has seen what has been called the Lessig method in this presentation about Identity 2.0. One of Prof. Lawrence Lessig's original presentations is available here.

Lastly, I read the Presentation Zen blog semi-regularly to try to be a better presenter. Hopefully, nobody falls asleep during a presentation I do ;)

Well I finally found the release for Windows Mobile 6.1 for my Blackjack II....no thanks to AT&T. The directions and downloads were available on Samsung's site. I have to say, finding it wasn't easy, and reading all the warnings scares the crap outta you. But I bit the bullet and installed anyway...I'd give you a link, but it is specific to each provider and phone.

I like it...but I wish it had some more customization options. For example, the first panel has missed calls, voicemails, text messages, and e-mail messages. I tend to use my right-hand with my phone, thus my right thumb, so going left to get to e-mail messages (which are most often important to me during the day) is not natural. I'd like to be able to change the order of the items in the panel - easily that is.

I've been using MSN Direct for a while and I really like it...but sadly it doesn't play nice with the panel UI of WM 6.1.

So Google Chrome is all the buzz. There are definitely things I like..."tearing" off a tab and making a window out of it is at the top of my list.

One feature, the "omni bar" actually exists today in both IE and Firefox. So I'm not sure why everyone thinks this is so revolutionary?! What did I miss?! Now I'm not in the habit of doing searches from the address bar, since the dedicated search bar also exists...but that's just me. For that matter, I usually search from a Vista Sidebar gadget.

It would be great if the IE team can add the tear off tabs thing (which I've wanted since I first started using a tabbed browser, AvantBrowser, many years ago)...but nobody asked me :(

Micorosft Live Labs has released Photosynth. Pretty cool if you take a lot of pictures ... unfortunately, I'm don't :(

Been a little light on technical content and since I had to figure this out for my "day job"...thought I'd post it.

I have a need to load a bunch of Excel 2007 spreadsheets into a database as the first step in moving from a distributed Excel centric process to a centralized SQL Server process. In other words...the Excel spreadsheets are out of control ... > 600 of them.

So I went digging and found this KB article on How to use Excel with SQL Server linked servers and distributed queries. Nice...but I'm trying to import Excel 2007 which doesn't use the JET database provider, but instead uses the provider you can get separately here..."Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0".

Adding a workbook as a linked server looks like this:

exec sp_addLinkedServer @server='XLLink', 
                    @srvproduct='ACE 12.0', 
                    @provider='Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0', 
                    @datasrc='C:\spreadsheet.xlsm',
                    @provstr='Excel 12.0;HDR=No';

Now if you want to read an entire worksheet you simply do this:

select * from XLLink...[Sheet1$]

If you want to read a single cell or range of cells, you can do a pass through query:

select * from openquery(XLLink, 'SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$A1:A1]')

Better yet, as is our case, we are reading Excel named ranges (where ProductName is a named range):

select * from XLLink...ProductName

One important note on the provider string is that I included the "HDR=No" section - which means the first row of our returned cells does NOT contain column names. If you decide not to go the linked server route, then you can simply do it like this:

SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET('Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0',
'Excel 12.0;Database=C:spreadsheet.xlsx;HDR=No','Select * from [Sheet1$]')

Just thought I'd share...

Since I have only 1 cigarette lighter/power socket in my daily driver (as opposed to the 6 in the other car our family owns), on rare occasions I need to choose what is going to get charged and what isn't. Now it's a little simpler...just gotta try not to loose those USB cables !? Get yourself one of these if you are in the same boat..er, car.

Just saw this on my Engadget feed...Microsoft Surface checks into Sheraton Hotels - Engadget. Funny part is I was in Seattle, staying at the Sheraton downtown when they were filming this a couple weeks ago!

I'm something of an Olympics junkie so the coverage at NBCOlympics.com is way cool. Check it out...

Just generate what you need from here Ajaxload - Ajax loading gif generator - cool!

Ran across this theme generator for Visual Studio. Kinda neat! I'm using a darker theme like the one the site shows as a default.

I know I've gotten questions about this in the past...Composite Application Guidance for WPF. I have some WPF work I would like to do so I'm eager to get into this! Hope you are too!