http://www.windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=98404&News=1

Didn't VS2008 get launched last year?

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,a2c68db2-3cc8-4024-bb91-46d4067f9557.aspx

It doesn't seem long since VS2005 and SQL 2005 were launched

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,1e4ec06d-b1d6-40cf-97a1-db9f9b71f29a.aspx

I will make the effort to upgrade the web server to 2008 when the next installment of the action pack arrives.

Been out for a few weeks now - will attempt an upgrade in the next few weeks

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DasBlog19Released.aspx

UPDATE: Site now running on 1.9.6264.0

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/02/amazon_ditches_google_microsoft/

http://a9.com/amazon

I'm not sure how financially driven this decision was, but my (very) unscientific testing a few months ago put Google behine Yahoo and Live

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,e038a044-fe1d-4275-860d-f60bf549954a.aspx

Mine arrived yesterday - I will install 2003 R2 in the next couple of weeks

http://ts2blogs.com/blogs/nealw/archive/2006/04/05/1105.aspx

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40009848

After posting about Web 2.0 today

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,b8496159-335c-4d61-8cc8-f2b5bc084c31.aspx

I got an email informing me that MS have released the March CTP of Atlas

http://atlas.asp.net/Default.aspx?tabid=47

If I were doing web development I would get up to speed on this, but find myself working on Winforms apps these days. MS use the following site as an example of what can be done

http://www.pageflakes.com/

http://www.sony-psp-review.com/news/515

I was just about to buy one of these so will hang on for a week. The new gadgets (GPS etc) look interesting.

The third week's information has been put on the origami site

http://www.origamiproject.com/3/

and after the flash intro directs you to

http://origamiproject.com/default.aspx

and

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc/default.mspx

Looking at the screenshots, the product may be somewhat bigger than a PSP and isn't something that will slot into a pocket. Bill Gates was talking about this last year.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/apr05/04-25WindowsThirdDecadePR.mspx

Not much info available on an annoying Flash website

http://www.origamiproject.com/

but there are rumours that it may be an equivalent to the PSP. I would buy if for this alone if Outrun wasn't being released on the PSP soon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000E0K40W/qid=1141301098/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/026-0058056-7028455

If it contained VOIP functionality

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,4b8aca2a-b26f-4beb-aed0-f4c8b38ca938.aspx

this would make it even more interesting.

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS9651574577.html

Week 2 link on website became enabled today. The message says we can find out what the product is next week (9th March)

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39253949,00.htm

I can't see how this will be enforced - it seems as unlikely as

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1418165.stm

http://www.thebusinessonline.com/Stories.aspx?&StoryID=8C6C0A89-A9B7-4BD0-9CE2-11830FA31E15&SectionID=F3B76EF0-7991-4389-B72E-D07EB5AA1CEE

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/feb06/02-14MOCMobilePR.mspx

This looks very interesting - I'm looking forward to seeing how much the software will cost to run this

• Retake offer on selected exams

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/2ndchance/thankyou/default.asp

• Three free beta exams available

Exam 71-547 Pro - Designing and Developing Web-based Applications by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework (promo code: PRO547)
Exam 71-548 Pro - Designing and Developing Windows-based Applications by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework (promo code: BTA548) 
Exam 71-549 Pro - Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework (promo code: 549BTA)

This follows on from some exams released for beta recently (552-554)

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,8f62f25d-6d3c-4cdc-b73b-3ae7cbf3b72b.aspx

• Three exams are Live

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-528.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-431.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-441.asp

 

I am probably doing the CQF this year, so will leave the MS upgrades until next year.

http://officelive.microsoft.com/

Apparently only available for U.S. at the moment (yawn).

One interesting fact is that it would appear that you can register a domain name for free. A .com usually costs around £12/year  - I guess MS will attempt to encourage people to upgrade to the paid for service to subsidise this.

http://www.sleepycat.com/

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060209_810527.htm

As the second article states, on first impressions, this doesn't appear to make much sense.

I can't see the appeal of open source databases -  MS SQL offers all I need, and is free in basic form

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/default.aspx

With this version, there is no governor (unlike 2000), and it can support 1GB RAM and 4GB database size

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

All these security offerings from MS are getting confusing. This used to be Anti-Spyware Beta 1 and was bought from Giant a few years ago. I have been running this for a while on my Windows 2003 machine, but found that it didn't pick up some things that the free MS virus scanner did.

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,212b4ad3-ae6b-4d99-8618-b410bd41a60e.aspx

As OneCare isn't available for Win 2003 I will continue to use Defender with frequent online scans until I get my hands on Microsoft Client protection - I have signed up for the beta.

$50 per annum, $19.95 if you sign up in April. This license covers up to 3 P.C's

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/feb06/02-07OneCarePricingPR.mspx

It's a shame that you have to pay extra for this service rather than get it as part of the O/S, but I guess MS have been burnt so many times in the past (IE, Media Player) for bundling services with the OS, they felt they had to charge

http://www.techspot.com/news/20278-vistas-onecare-not-to-include-antivirus-says-microsoft.html

At present, this is only on offer to US XP users.

Norton offer protection for £45, so I expect MS to undercut this when it becomes available in the UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000B69T1O/qid=1139470510/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_11_1/026-0058056-7028455

25% less code - new features include

• ASP.NET membership provider
• Master pages
• Generics

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/bdasamppet4.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E54BF6FF-026B-43A4-ADE4-A690388F310E&displaylang=en

Furthermore, it appears that MS may have listened to complaints about the proposed pricing structure

http://weblogs.asp.net/rmclaws/archive/2005/05/12/406635.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/subscriptions/chart/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/subscriptions/transition/default.aspx

Looks pretty interesting and good value, but is taking place in Newport for some reason.

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/architecture/architectinsight/default.mspx

The following 3 exams are in beta from Feb 13th to March 12th.

• Upgrade MCAD to MCPD Windows Developer

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcpd/windev/

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-552.asp  (promo code 552BTA)

• Upgrade MCSD to MCPD Enterprise Application Developer

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcpd/entapp/

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-553.asp (use promo code BTA553)

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-554.asp (use promo code UPG554)

 

Register via Thomson Prometric

http://securereg3.prometric.com/

or Pearson VUE

http://www.vue.com/ms/

Nathan Weinberg has a play with the latest version of IE7 Beta 2

http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2006/01/23/internet-explorer-7-beta-2-preview/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4623076.stm

Allegations of fraud from internet firm Livedoor caused the Nikkei to drop almost 3% - so far this week it has lost 6.8%.

What is surprising is that the market shut not because of the index dropping too much, but because volumes were too high - systems should be designed to cope with this.

The original was one of the best books for .NET

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735614229/qid=1137503273/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-8223383-2541264

the new version is out in the next couple of months

http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/6522.asp

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735621632/qid=1137503273/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl/026-8223383-2541264

http://www4.imagine-msn.com/minisites/messenger/default.aspx?locale=en-us

Had the latest quarterly update of the Action pack delivered. It now includes

• SQL 2005 Standard edition
• Visual Studio 2005 Express edition

You can get this free from here - MS have waived the first year free of $49.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/faq/default.aspx#pricing

• Visual Web Developer

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vwd/

More details can be found here (when they get round to updating it!)

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/sales_and_marketing/actionpack/contents.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/office/officelive/default.mspx

I'm surprised by the lack of publicity surrounding this. Whenever a developer tool is released such as VS2005, I am inundated with information. I can't find much regarding Office Live.

http://news.com.com/Gates+Were+entering+live+era+of+software+-+page+2/2100-1016_3-5926237-2.html?tag=st.num

Tools like Outlook Web Access have been available for years (using AJAX before AJAX was invented). There will be 22 applications available - with one, "Mojo", allowing real time collaboration.

http://www.siliconvalleysleuth.co.uk/files/msft-live_mojo.wmv

I was looking at Windows desktop search this morning

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/default.mspx

or if you want the toolbar as well

http://toolbar.msn.com/

Google have released this in the last few days

http://pack.google.com/

The pack includes (I've only looked at the things I will use day to day)

• Mozilla Firefox

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

I use this for aggregating RSS feeds via the Sage plugin.

http://sage.mozdev.org/

RSS isn't natively supported in IE6, although you may be able to use a tool such as

http://rssexplorer.planet-hood.com/

along with a news aggregator.

IE7 will have better support for RSS

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/08/02/446280.aspx

• AdAware SE Personal

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

I used this a while ago before AntiSpyware came out

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=321CD7A2-6A57-4C57-A8BD-DBF62EDA9671&displaylang=en

• Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition

6 month subscription - not sure how much after that. The Microsoft equivalent is still in beta

http://safety.live.com/site/en-US/scanner/wlscEula.htm?safety&/site/en-US/center/howsafe.htm

• Google desktop

This enables you to search for anything on your machine (emails, photos etc) from one place. The link for the MS equivalent (Windows Desktop) is above.

 

If I were Microsoft I would be getting concerned. Although there is nothing here that stands out over it's MS equivalent, the fact that you can download it as one coherent package is more than Microsoft are able to offer at the moment. If I were MS, I would be pushing "Windows Live" more, and placing all these offering under the "Live" banner.

http://www.live.com/

I will be downloading Windows desktop search this evening to discover how efficient it is.

This event is being held in London on the 6th Feb 2006. Registration cost £69 and all attendees get free Microsoft Software Package which includes SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition and BizTalk Server 2006 Beta.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/roadshows/sqlservereurope/index.cfm?action=dynamic&v=5008&p=5043&code

Note that the website doesn't mention the software but the newsletter does

An article in The Times this morning drew my attention

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9063-1974207,00.html

A junior CDO trader has been suspended for overstating his position by £30mm. It would be interesting

a). To see what type of CDO he was trading

b). To learn how he got away with it for 2 months - how did he circumnavigate the risk and P+L procedures.

http://www.skype.com/products/skype/windows/

MS are doing some webcasts for the financial sector on 13-17th 2006

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdndotnetunwrapped.mspx

http://www.financialdevelopers.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4586308.stm

I reckon that the CDS traders have already priced this in, so will be interested to see how the U.S. markets react when they open

http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/01/05/416980.aspx

Mike Nash explains why MS deviated from the normal monthly cycle. This patch wasn't due until the normal monthly cycle date - 10th Jan.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms06-001.mspx

If this fix works, and there are no problems introduced, considering the amount of testing required to make sure the fix doesn't affect any versions of any MS software, I reckon it's not a bad response timewise.

I heard about this one sometime last week and didn't think much of it until reading Motley Fool today

http://boards.fool.co.uk/Message.asp?mid=9740717&sort=whole#9741509

For someone to post a message on a financial bulletin board means that people are getting pretty worried.

I personally wouldn't install a third party fix, I'd. Reading on the MS Security response centre blog, they make the valid point that unless you click on a link in a dodgy email that then takes you to a dodgy site, then you don't have a problem.

http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2005/12/30/416694.aspx

The fix will hopefully be out on the 10th

Reading the advisory, they state that OneCare is now in beta, although it appears to be only for US customers at the moment

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/912840.mspx

I will attempt to download tonight and have a play.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vwd/download/

They are even offering 3 months free ASP.NET 2.0 web hosting

This event has been running for a while now.

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/lifesquared/

More details here

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39235376,00.htm

http://www.pcplus.co.uk/news/home_news/microsoft_living_life

Apparently it's invite only, but if you know an MS partner you may be able to blag your way in.

One thing that seemed interesting is Microsoft TV - a platform that enables TV to be delivered over the internet

http://www.microsoft.com/tv/IPTVEdition.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/nov05/11-16Office12Beta1PR.mspx

Only available to partners that pass the information worker competency

https://partner.microsoft.com/competency/iwsolutions/40021577

It's not yet available on MSDN download.

Amazon recently released their mechanical turk service

http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

It allows people to submit requests (by web services if required) for small pieces of work for human subjects to process. There seems to be quite a following

http://mturkey.blogspot.com/

http://turkers.proboards80.com/index.cgi

it seems like a useful revenue source if you have some spare time on your hands

"Mechanical Turk" comes from the famous hoax of hiding a chess master in a cabinet and claiming that it was a machine that was beating all oponnents and not the master himself.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/014029919X/026-8942662-7382048

Microsoft have released a case study of how an investment bank (BarCap) has used SQL 2005 to developed a fixed income solution.

http://members.microsoft.com/customerevidence/search/EvidenceDetails.aspx?EvidenceID=13659&LanguageID=1&PFT=Microsoft%20SQL%20Server%202005&TaxID=20363

It's impressive how much resource MS throws on these early adopters - 11 consultants would normally cost around £15k a day.  

I notice that the report mentions that readers and writers no longer block

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms130975.aspx

It will be interesting to see how much of a performance hit snapshot is - prior to 2005 alternatives such as "READPAST" or "NOLOCK" hints could be used - although this took a large amount of testing to ensure you got what you expected. 

A few years ago I worked on a product using MS tools in beta

http://members.microsoft.com/customerevidence/search/EvidenceDetails.aspx?EvidenceID=1850&LanguageID=1

When I joined, the company had already been using .NET in beta 1 for around six months, and we went live with beta 2. Looking back, it was a brave decision, and for us developers lucky enough to be involved, gave us a chance to get ahead on the technology curve.

I am currently working on a similar system to the BarCap solution, although using SQL 2000 rather than SQL 2005. SQL 2005 has been in beta for donkeys, so I think the stability would be there, but I personally don't believe there would be a compelling case to upgrade.

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/technet/itsshowtime/

Requires passport login

Microsoft announced this today

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/nov05/11-01PreviewSoftwareBasedPR.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/misc/11-01LiveSoftwareFS.mspx

I'm sure I've seen this in development - the following link looks familiar

http://www.live.com/

At the moment all that is on offer is a customizable homepage and a replacement for Hotmail. Seems a bit early to be launching  a beta - guess they are worried about Google and co getting too much publicity.

On its way is OneCare - I talked about this previously

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,8f69e4f8-de2c-4c2a-90d0-bf16932fa013.aspx

I wonder how much of this will be free - I reckon it will be a monthly pricing structure for apps such as OnceCare.

XBox Live arcade looks pretty interesting - I love the retro gaming

http://www.xbox.com/en-us/livearcade/default.htm

It's interesting to see Microsoft now starting to offer some of its services over the web. In the past Office was seen as too monolithic to be offered over the web - maybe Office 12 will be different.

Coinciding with the release of next generation SQL and Visual Studio, Microsoft have released three new certifications

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/newgen/

• Technology specialist (MCTS) http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcts/

This requires one or two exams - similar to passing one exam to attain MCP

Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications

Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 2.0 Windows Applications

Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Applications

Technology Specialist: SQL Server 2005

Technology Specialist: BizTalk Server 2006

The professional qualifications will require renewal every three years.

• IT Professional (MCITP) http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcitp/

IT Professional: Database Developer

         The database administrator has an upgrade path from an exisiting MCDBA

IT Professional: Database Administrator

IT Professional: Business Intelligence Developer

• Professional Developer (MCPD) http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcpd/

 Similar to MCSD - I wonder how much overlap the windows and web tracks will have - there was a lot for the MCSD.NET

Professional Developer: Web Developer

Professional Developer: Windows Developer

These first two appear to be MCAD equivalent - the following has the ability to upgrade from an existing MCSD.NET (available next summer)

Professional Developer: Enterprise Applications Developer

MS area also offering e-learning courses until 1st November 2006 - a SQL example is listed below.

https://www.microsoftelearning.com/sqlserver2005/

It appears that the old certifications (MCSD, MCDBA) will continue for a while longer. It will be interesting to see if the exams are interactive rather than multi-choice, and when Transcender release test products. I think I will do the MCSD and MCDBA upgrade exams late in 2006.

For those that don't like book studying, the following might be worth looking at.

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/depts/cctm/microsoft/

I covered the architecture qualification in a previous post (apparently it will cost $10000 to apply)

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,edbfa0d1-7cb6-40bc-ba2f-a880f05a03fd.aspx

It would appear that the SQL beta exams are imminent - you can sign up here

http://www.zoomerang.com/recipient/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB224MR5DUMAT

I was of the understanding that beta invitations were sent out on the MCPFlash newsletter - obviously not!

VS2005 and SQL2005 are available to download for MSDN subsribers

http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/

.Net Framework 2.0 is available here

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856eacb-4362-4b0d-8edd-aab15c5e04f5&DisplayLang=en

Sells core brokerage business to private equity group for $768 million and Refco Inc. files for bankruptcy. None of the regulated subsiduaries have filed for Chapter 11.

Look's interesting.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/coding4fun/coolapplications/KPL/default.aspx

Here

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=57E27A97-2DB6-4654-9DB6-EC7D5B4DD867&displaylang=en

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windowsserversystem/launchtour/default.mspx

Might be worth going for a freebie or two - I went to one a few a years ago and got a copy of VS2002.

Here

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/r2/default.mspx

Prerequisite is to have SP1 installed. It installs .NET Framework 2.0 so I may hold back on installing in case it affects my VS and SQL 2005 installations.

In terms of pricing, MS are classing this as a full release rather than a service pack, meaning than everyone not on software assurance will need to pay to upgrade - can;t really see many people taking this one up.

Actually, they've ben out for almost a fortnight now, but I've been a little busy at work. SQL can be downloaded by all

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2005/productinfo/ctp.mspx

whereas VS2005 requires an MSDN subscription

http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/

I'm probably going to wait until the release comes out on the 7th November before upgrading from Beta2.

The other day a friend tried to send a voice message to me via Messenger - this was the first I  knew that 7.5 was out

http://messenger.msn.co.uk/xp/downloadDefault.aspx

I assume this is an attempt to compete with Google talk

http://www.google.com/talk/

http://www.jabber.org/

Finally got around to upgrading from 1.6 to 1.8. Download can be found here

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=127624

The upgrade went smoothly - the next step is to get it working with ASP.NET 2.0 - the documentation suggests this will be easy.

http://www.codezone.org.uk

This site is run by Microsoft for UK developers. I've set my page up here

http://www.codezone.org.uk/DetailPage.Codezone?GUID=369394fa-71e9-471e-bffc-61525099d579

Will be interested to see how the site develops as it matures