June 6, 2009 By 140 Comments

Leo Laporte Blows up at Michael Arrington

Leo Laporte and Mike Arrington were talking about the Palm Pre on Twit.tv when Michael Arrington and Leo Laporte when at it.  Michael was asking Leo Laporte whether or not he actually paid for it, and Leo got extremely upset.  Anyway watch the video for yourself.  I warn you it’ gets a little rough.

Personally I know first hand that when you get your ethics questioned, you say things you might regret later.  However getting your ethics questioned is not fun, and really shouldn’t happen if you’ve proven yourself time and time again.  Leo is one of those people that has never given a good review of anything if he hasn’t meant it. 

He is one of my favourite tech personalities and a childhood hero like Mr. Rogers and Mr. Dress Up! He got a free Palm Pre to try for 7 days, and will probably go buy a new one anyway.  Palm was smart and gave him one for a few days because they knew he might not be able to get one in time for his internet show.  That’s all.

Filed Under: Real World News Tagged With: , , ,
March 1, 2009 By 47 Comments

Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2009

Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2009

Seattle and Redmond are buzzing with the Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2009!  I got in Saturday morning and had a chance to spend some time with a good friend all day that works on the MSN team.  This week about 1,500 Microsoft MVP’s will converge at the Microsoft corporate headquarters and engage is awesome discussions with a ton of Microsoft’s key product teams.  MVP’s will share their real world experiences with the product teams, and also have the opportunity to sit in on some amazing presentations provided by Microsoft (about 680 sessions to chose from).

I personally don’t know of any other company in the world as committed to customer feedback, and listening to their customers as Microsoft. A lot of the critical and objective feedback that will be given over the next few days will ensure that the Microsoft products constantly evolve and push the software industry to constant evolution.

How big is the event?  97 countries are represented, 37 languages spoken, and about 90 different Microsoft technologies will be discussed.

I’m all registered up and have my MVP kit in hand.  Since I got in yesterday, I had a chance to tour around the Microsoft Campus’s and check out some of the cool sights in Seattle.  Today should be an exciting day as hundreds of MVP’s head to the Washington State Convention and Trade Center to register for the event.  Then the day kicks off right after lunch with some optional side sessions.  I’ll be heading over to a presentation on Azure around 1pm and then going to pop in for a session with the Windows International Online team.  Later on in the day the welcome keynotes get going with Toby Richards, General Manager of Microsoft’s Community Support Services and Rich Kaplan, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Customer & Partner Advocacy.

I will be pretty busy twittering and taking pictures over the next few days, not sure how much time I will actually have to blog.

You can read the Microsoft PressPass official press release here:

1,500 Global Tech Professionals Take Center Stage at 2009 Microsoft MVP Global Summit

More Pictures from MVP Global Summit:

Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2009 Pictures

Filed Under: Microsoft, Microsoft MVP, Real World News Tagged With:
January 20, 2009 By 60 Comments

Watch Obama’s Inauguration

Barack Obama - Change we can beleive in The eyes of the world will be on Barack Obama today as he takes the oath of the office to become the 44th President of the United States.  Over a million people will be at the event.  With the advances in technology in the last few years, Barack Obama’s inauguration will be the most well documented inauguration in history.  Social Networking sites and tools will all be a buzz for the entire day.  Cell phone networks will be working overtime.  What is the best way to watch Obama’s Inauguration?

The Moment will be a pretty cool site to check out over the next few hours.  Photosynth allows a series of two-dimensional pictures to be stitched and interpolated into a three-dimensional representation of a moment in time. The more angles and photos, the more complete the rendering.  I’ve made a few myself in the past and the output is very impressive!

Also if you want to just watch the live stream on the official Presidential Inauguration Committee stream, make sure you go to their live Barack Obama Inauguration Live Feed.  The stream is powered by Microsoft Silverlight technologies.

Filed Under: Imaging, Microsoft Research, Real World News, Silverlight Tagged With: ,
October 25, 2008 By 95 Comments

New Microsoft .NET Logo

New Microsoft .NET LogoThe new Microsoft .NET Logo launched today.  Expect to see the new logo all over the place over the next few weeks.  The original logo was designed in early 2000, and officially launched with the release of Microsoft .NET 1.0 in January of 2002.  I really like the new logo as it goes fairly well with the Live Mesh and Silverlight logo’s.  It’s nice to see some new energy at Microsoft over the last little while.  Next week should be a huge week for Microsoft with the PDC (Professional Developers Conference) kicking off in Los Angeles.  For those that don’t think Microsoft innovates anymore, you should really check out the PDC. 

Next week you will hear some major announcements centered around things like the Microsoft Could OS, Silverlight, Microsoft .NET 4.0, Live Mesh, Visual Studio Team System, ASP.NET 4.0, Team Foundation Server, Windows 7, Microsoft Dynamics, Windows Communication Foundation, Microsoft XNA Game Studio, SQL Server 2008, Dublin, Oslo, Exchange Web Services, SharePoint , F#, Expression Studio, and a ton more. 

It’s an exciting time to be a software developer! Even if you don’t use any of the Microsoft technologies, the things Microsoft is working on will only make your lives better!  Microsoft is really starting to push the envelope in so many areas, and competitors have no choice but to try and keep up. 

As a side note, I noticed that on the Google Android you can’t change your search provider to anything other than Google.  Also in Google Chrome you cant change the search provider either.  With the Monopoly they have on search, I’m surprised the government hasn’t stepped in yet.  Microsoft whispers into the wind and they get sued or slammed.  Google clearly makes it impossible to switch search providers, tracks all users browsing history and sends it back to the Googleplex, and nobody says boo.  Boo!

 

New Microsoft .NET Logo

Technorati Tags:
Filed Under: Google, Microsoft, PDC, Real World News
September 26, 2008 By 34 Comments

Silverlight 2 Release Candidate 0 Released

Microsoft Silverlight The wait is over!  Microsoft has released the first Release Candidate for Silverlight 2.0.  The full version number is 2.0.30523.9.  The version that will be released as Silverlight 2.0 will be 2.0.30903 and should be available here once released.  This is an important release in that it allows developers of Silverlight applications to test their applications and prepare them for the imminent release of Silverlight 2.0.

Some of the most exciting changes besides the much cleaner path between Silverlight and the full .NET framework is the addition of three controls that we have been waiting for (although we already rolled our own): ComboBox, ProgressBar, and PasswordBox.

There are a slew of changes that really stabilize and standardize this release, however you should be aware of things that will break your existing applications, so read the guide from Microsoft.  Also, Microsoft has provided some developer release notes that are quite useful so you should make sure to check those out as well.

Anyway, my downloads are done so I am off to play around with the new toolset and runtime.  Enjoy!

Get the Tools to build Silverlight 2 RC0 Applications

Microsoft Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1 Preview

Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Get The Silverlight 2 Release Candidate 0 Runtimes

Download Silvleright 2.0 Release Candidate Runtime 0 for Windows

Download Silvleright 2.0 Release Candidate Runtime 0 for Macintosh

Breaking Changes in Silverlight 2 Release Candidate 0

  • Important! Migrating Older Code to the Newer Release
  • ContentPresenter now derives from FrameworkElement instead of Control
  • Layout Rendering Slightly Changed
  • Cross domain hosts of Silverlight must set the right MIME type for XAP (application/x-silverlight-app)
  • Exceptions now thrown in HttpWebRequest.EndGetResponse()
  • Font URI is Restricted to Assembly Resource
  • Browser.HtmlElementCollection replaced with by Browser.ScriptObjectCollection
  • Exceptions When Changing Some Properties on an Active Animation
  • System.Windows.Controls.Extended.dll renamed to System.Windows.Controls.dll
  • VisualStateManager Changes
  • KeyDown Sent Synchronously
  • MeasureOverride/ArrangeOverride on Canvas Now Sealed
  • UriTypeConverter moved to System.dll
  • HtmlPage.UnregisterScriptableObject Removed
  • RenderingEventArgs Changes
  • ContentPresenter and ContentControl Changes
  • Removal of FileDialogFileInfo Type and OpenFileDialog.SelectedFile(s) Properties
  • Removal of FullAccess Option on the ExternalCallersFromCrossDomain attribute in the Silverlight 2 application manifest
  • KeyFrameCollection Changes
  • Request stream must be closed before calling HttpWebRequest.BeginGetResponse()
  • HtmlWindow references on Safari/Mac will no longer evaluate to true
  • Address property removed from all WebClient EventArg classes
  • Constructors Made Internal
  • Exception type change for System.Xml exception type
  • Cannot create classes in XAML that do not have accessible constructors
  • Get AG_E_UNKNOWN_ERROR in Silverlight 2 but not in Silverlight 1
  • Platform looks for generic.xaml as a resource at themes/generic.xaml
  • HTTP Polling Duplex OM Changes and Reengineering
  • Breaking change to Silverlight native hosting IXcpControl COM interface
  • Content-Type is allowed on cross domain request by default
  • Enforcing delegate type check when two delegate objects are combined
  • Miscellaneous API Changes

Well there you have it!  Of course as always you should check out Scott Gu’s blog for all the awesome details of the release.

Filed Under: Blend, Microsoft Expression, Real World News, Silverlight, Visual Studio
« Older Posts