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

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

I’ve been following GM’s progress over the last six months, and I thought I would have a look at what the market thinks they will do over the next year

Firstly, looking at a simple pricing model for Credit Default Swaps (CDS) - the risk-neutral probability of default using a binomial model

γ₀= s₀/((1+r₀+s₀)*(1-RR))

where

s₀ = CDS premium

r₀ = Interest rates

RR = Recovery rate

Some assumptions:

• Interest rates are constant (not far off – U.S. interest rates are 4% and the curve is pretty flat),
• The CDS premium is constant over the year (curve is pretty flat, but slightly inverted).

Using

s0 = 1400bps (USD, MR restructuring)

r₀ = 4%

RR = 38%

Gives a value of 19.1%, so this tells us that in (simplified theory), the markets believe that GM has around a 1 in 5 chance of defaulting within the year.

This number seems very high - historical data suggests that the chance of a BB rated bond is around 1.3% and B around 6.6%

The article below investigates why that may be the case

http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt0312e.pdf

References:

Credit Derivatives  - Gunter Meissner - Page 104

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1405126760/qid=1144335586/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_0_1/203-2251018-4885533

Attached spreadsheet:

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.

I've always been interested in developing an application that would trade automatically and generate me money (who wouldn't). After seeing some of the odds that we being offered on the NZ vs Scotland rugby match last weekend, I looked around to see how I might automate a betting application.

Betfair offer a webservice

http://bdp.betfair.com/index.php

with plenty of ducumentation

http://bdp.betfair.com/apidocumentation.php

with charges of £1000 a year for personal users

http://bdp.betfair.com/personalapi.php

This would probably have been a viable solution a few years ago - with potential for arbitrage opportunities.

(looking for back under 100% or lay over 100%).

However, I think the market would now be satured, with people chasing smaller and smaller opportunities - some products are shown below

http://www.arbmirage.co.uk/

http://www.welldonesoft.com/

http://www.probabilitytheory.info/

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.