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Academic Pricing for MIX10 announced…

Are you passionate about the web?

Join us for MIX10, a 3 day event full of inspiration, content, and networking. MIX10 is a 72 hour conversation to learn about Microsoft's web platform and tools such as Windows Mobile, Silverlight, Expression, and ASP.NET.

MIX10 would like to offer a discount to full-time teachers and full-time students from accredited public and private educational institutions. These passes give you full access to the entire conference, March 15^th-17^th. To receive this discounted price of $595.00 USD, please email the MIX10 Registration Team for details including eligibility requirements.

Eligibility Details

The academic rate is for full-time students and full-time staff of the academic community at the time of MIX10 with proof of enrollment or employment from an accredited educational institution. The cost to attend with a code is $595 and covers the regular conference fee only; pre-conference workshops and hotel accommodations are additional.

There has to be a better way -

Packing up before leaving PDC, I was astonished at the sheer amount of *stuff* I carry around. Here it is, all laid out on the bed…

That would be – webcam, patch cable, headphones, Zune HD (oh yeah), headset, phone charger, power monkey, car headset, backup drive, some USB cables for the phone, the phone itself, camera battery charger, 8Gb stick, and a presenter mouse. 

I’m going to have a serious rationalisation when I get home – if I can fit it all in my suitcase that is.

Office 2010 beta now available

For those in a hurry go get it here.

I’ve been using this software for the last couple of months. Would I go back to 2007?  Only if you prised it from my cold fingers – it’s that good.  Solid and stable, you really, really shouldn’t miss this.

Andy

Surface SDK Workstation Edition now available for download!

At PDC this week, we announced the broad availability of the Microsoft Surface SDK Workstation Edition. Now anyone interested in developing collaborative, engaging massive multi-touch, multi-user experiences for Surface can easily access the software at no cost through surface.com.

The Surface hardware is needed to deploy an application, and many use the Surface Developer units to create and test their applications directly on the device. The SDK Workstation Edition lets you use a PC to develop and a PC based simulator to test applications using multiple mice and tag simulation tools.

To support the launch of the SDK on MSDN, we are transitioning away from our private Surface Community site and integrating into existing public Microsoft sites:

Surface Web site (www.surface.com)

New Technical Resources section so prospective and existing customers and partners can quickly connect to the resources they need to learn more about Surface or get support on issues.

MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com)

New Microsoft Surface section of the MSDN Library (under .NET Development), providing the Surface SDK documentation and other topics about developing Surface applications.

New Surface-specific forums about designing and developing Surface applications.

TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com)

New Microsoft Surface section of the TechNet Library (under Products and Technologies), describing the basics of the Surface software and hardware and how to set up, customize, troubleshoot, and maintain Surface units.

New Surface-specific forums about the Surface software platform, hardware, and applications.

Microsoft Download centre (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads)

All Surface downloads, including the Surface SDK Workstation Edition, applications, documentation, and any software fixes.

Microsoft Support (http://support.microsoft.com)

Public KB articles for fixes, known issues, and workarounds.

Surface Solution Center to direct customers to the right self-support and assisted-support options.

PDC Brain Filling….

So, I’m Los Angeles attending the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference. Jet lag seems to now be over (I needed an alarm clock this morning to get up for the 7.30am start), and I’m looking forward to 4 days of pure geekery.

Yes – that’s a real word.  At least until Friday.

So what’s PDC all about?  This illustration seems to be the simplest way to sum it up -

I can’t wait :)

Free Online Azure Training for UK Students

From our partner ICS - 

Windows Azure - countdown to launch – for Students

The 'Countdown to launch' webinars are highly interactive live 1 hour sessions focused on helping you get the most out of your limited free ‘Dip into Windows Azure’ trial. The webinars will cover:

• Overview and demonstration of Windows Azure
• How you can benefit from your free trial 
• Understanding Windows Azure and the Azure platform 
• Azure pricing and Proof of Concept offerings
• Next steps in your Azure adoption 
• Azure resources available to you 
• Q&A session
  

Time is of the essence and spaces are limited. Participation in the Dip into Windows Azure Trial is available and free of charge until 17th November 2009 so reserve your place now.

Presented by Mark Hirst - Senior Developer at ICS Solutions.

Exchange 2010 Voice Mail Preview Fun

We’ve just been migrated to the latest version of Exchange. With the 2007 release, all my voice mail has been handled by Exchange – you get a handy little player embedded in the email window + the option to take notes.  It’s a genuinely brilliant productivity tool.

With the 2010 release, Exchange now creates a text preview of the message. And this is where the fun starts.  Apparently it works just fine with an American accent, but either I’m getting some very strange messages *or* it’s struggling with the British intonation.

My latest vm:

I will hundred so I'm calling flavor in skills fast I'm just a quick call and let you know I've.
Been talking to underwater shut down in personal our phone number projects info for is and thanks Anthony like thing might be quite keen for in terms of you mentioned call -- under such as quick cool just check would be interested in person so I'm not for thanks calling from some things in life and while and see whether it might be west and balkanize fy now I have a conversation with them.
00 yeah if you give me a call back on 700-7362 six trying I don't know I wouldn't phoenix we can check israelite side

Dare I listen?

Andy

UK Imagine Cup – Calling all problem solvers!

What is the Imagine Cup?

The imagine cup is the world’s premier technology competition for students.  In 2009, more than 300,000 students from 142 countries entered the competition making it a truly global event.

This is a chance for your students to really exercise what they have learnt in the classroom by putting it to use to solve real-world problems.

This year we are working with UK-based charities such as the Royal National Institute for the Blind, TearFund, and Leonard Cheshire Disability to produce broad project briefs for your students. This means that they’ll have the opportunity to address real issues which have an immediate impact on people’s day to day lives.

Why would my students be interested?

The Imagine Cup

· allows students to apply classroom learning in a practical situation, stretching their problem solving and technical skills

· is a great way to enhance a student’s CV, not only demonstrating their passion for technology but also demonstrating their grasp of current tools and technology

· is an opportunity to win great prizes! In addition to prizes for the winning UK teams, there is the opportunity to compete against teams from around the world at the worldwide finals in Poland.

What do I tell my students?

We’ve prepared an email for you to send to your students. This contains all the information they need to get started, as well as links to the website for registering. Please distribute this to your students to give them an opportunity to participate.

In addition, we have a presentation deck available for use in the lecture theatre.

Where can I find out more?

· UK Imagine Cup site: http://www.imaginecup.com/gb/sd.aspx

· UK Imagine Cup PowerPoint deck can be downloaded from here

· UK Project Briefs can be downloaded from here

Andy

Announcing the UK Student Azure Trial – hurry, hurry hurry!

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve launched a free Azure trial for UK students and developers (and academics of course) – can I encourage you all to encourage your students to sign up as quickly as possible? 

Let me know if you need a canned email to send out to the masses!

Of course, can I also encourage you all to have a quick look at the site as well?  It really simplifies the sign-up process, and we even deploy a sample application into your very own square foot of the cloud, just to get things started! 

www.azureadvantage.co.uk

Signup code – ADE02

Andy

Nice summary of modelling tools in Visual Studio 2010

Useful for the classroom – Soma describes UML tools in VSTS 2010

Already in available in MSDN AA (hat tip: @ericnel)

Innovative Teachers UK announce Songsmith availability

Great news for the classroom karaoke – the UK Innovative Teachers Network team have just announced that community members are now able to download Microsoft Research’s Songsmith at no cost, and are even suggesting how it could be used in teaching!

Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/teachers/archive/2009/09/10/happy-birthday-to-you-free-resources-for-teachers.aspx

Windows 7 RTM now in MSDN AA and ELMS!

I’m very excited to announce that Windows 7 RTM is now available for download in MSDNAA and ELMS!

The release for MSDNAA includes the following:

· Windows 7 (x86 and x64) Professional

· Windows 7 (x86 and x64) Enterprise (VL Edition for labs)

We have started the process of loading the Professional SKUs into MSDNAA (ELMS) and are tracking for a availability date of 8/13.

Enjoy!!

Ulster University presents XNAFest

From my colleagues in Ireland…

 WWW.XNAFEST.COM

• Are you teaching a gaming course in September-2009 in your college / University?
• Are you planning to teach XNA?
• Would you like course materials to teach XNA for a full semester?

The Microsoft XNA Academic Summit (XNAFEST 2009) will be held at the University of Ulster, Magee Campus on the 28th-29^th May 2009. The summit is for academics currently using or considering using XNA as part of a video games course and the event will provide practical advice, tutorials and demonstrations from educators and industrial experts in this area.

We have an International line up of speakers from United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium and Ireland speaking at the event. The speakers have a wealth of industry and educational experience using XNA which they will share over the 2 days. 2 of the key speakers are Diego Colombo (Italy) and Riemer Grootjans (Belgium).

Diego Colombo worked on the game engine for SBK and MotoGP titles in Milestone. He has always been attracted by game technology and worked on XNA first prototype in 2006. Back at University of Pisa he taught courses on game design and game engine programming while carrying his research on meta programming for dynamic generation of game components. Now he works in Microsoft Ireland Research.

Riemer Grootjans received his degree in electronic engineering with a specialization in informatics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium. Riemer maintains a website with tutorials for DirectX and XNA. In July 2007, he received the Microsoft MVP Award for his contributions to XNA community. Currently employed by Optrima - Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Riemer is the author of the book XNA 3.0 Game Programming Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach.

To see the detailed schedule for the 2 day XNAFEST please visit http://www.xnafest or see the attached PDF...

If interested in attending please register at http://www.xnafest.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17&Itemid=11 as places are filling up quickly and we have set a limitation at 100 academics for the XNAFEST.

PHP gets some Azure love…

Reposting at its best – this is wonderful: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2776

May 13th, 2009

Microsoft makes available PHP development kit for its Azure cloud

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 3:16 pm

Microsoft has taken the wraps off a new software development kit (SDK) for testers interested in building apps in PHP for the Azure cloud.

Microsoft made the announcement at TechEd India this week — a show running simultaneously with TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles.

Microsoft collaborated on the PHP SDK with RealDolmen. Microsoft provided the funding for the development of the SDK (like it is doing with a Java SDK for Azure being developed by Schakra).

The PHP SDK for Windows Azure, known as PHPAzure, is an open source project, available for download from Microsoft CodePlex. The SDK “provides consistent programming model for Windows Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables & Queues), according to the CodePlex site.

On Microsoft’s Port 25 blog, Open Source Community Program Manager Peter Galli said Microsoft also is annoucing “the launch of a series of projects that offer samples and a toolkit that enable PHP developers to include Silverlight controls, Microsoft Virtual Earth maps and IE Webslices and Accelerators in PHP web applications; as well as automatically generated a simple “Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD)” PHP application from a table in SQL Server.”

Today’s build of the PHP SDK is considered a Community Technology Preview.  Milestone 2 is due out in late July, and the final in late August of this year.

Couldn’t have tweeted it better myself

… and thanks to the ever insightful Rob Miles, I don’t have to:

“Perhaps I’m reading too much into the whole thing, but at the moment I kind of regard Twitter as the digital equivalent of standing on top of a bus and shouting things out. And we know what we think of people who do that kind of thing.”

He also reflects on something I’ve never been able to confess to the twitterazzi – how the heck do you find time to listen to, filter, digest and then (natch) retweet the noise of 100’s of people all shouting at the same time?  I must have that multi-tasking gene missing or something. Yet many of my work colleagues do it, and give the impression that this is something that can be done while pinning down a day-job, or in ones sleep. Hints please…

Right – must twitter that I’ve blogged about twitter.

(link: Rob’s musings)

ps – OK, so perhaps I’m not quite such a luddite with this – I certainly see a value for near-synchronous commentary on live events, and building ad-hoc communities with a short life-span. But I honestly don’t think I’ll ever have (or make) the time to filter out the drivel…