Darren Straight’s Blog

Date: 11th, 12th & 14th December 2006
Location: Rare Studios, Twycross
Cost: Free

BOOK HERE

In conjunction with Rare, the Microsoft UK Academic team are pleased to invite you to a one-day hands on lab, where you can get a test drive of XNA Game Studio Express, with expert help on hand to help you understand the technology and its application. We’re going to be joined by a team of experts from Rare, who will also be on hand to talk about the company, and may even show you around.

You’ll leave with everything you need to start developing applications with XNA. This is a fantastic opportunity to give XNA Game Studio Express a test drive in a unique environment!

Due to very limited spaces, this event is only available to UK academics and research students who are planning to implement XNA technologies in their teaching and research practice. Participants will be expected to provide their own laptop with Windows XP in order to participate in the lab sessions.

This event will run on 11th, 12th and 14th of December from 10am until 4pm.

Programme: TBC

Contact email: ukmsacad@microsoft.com

Earlier today I got word my friend Rob at A Welsh View that a Chinese company has made a Windows Live Messenger client for Symbian S60 3rd Edition phones (N80, N73, N93, etc) but that it wasn’t known if this was an official release or not!

Well I found out after doing some research that MSN Mobile China is infact officially offering this free native Symbian 9.1 based client for Windows Live messenger for Nokia S60 3rd Edition devices like Nokia N80, N93, 3250, E60, and even the older S60 2nd Ed devices like 6600.

However because it’s been released by MSN Mobile China you may not be able to connect to it unless you’re from China, though some people outside China have got it to work, so maybe it might be a good idea to give it a go by going through the following stages:

1. Go to this link- http://mclient.msn.com.cn/
2. In Step 1, choose the third option in the first drop down
3. In the second drop down, select your phone model
4. In Step 2, choose the second button which says PC and it will start the download

For more information check out the following sites (in order of which I visited):

Site 1 | Site 2 | Site 3 | Site 4 | Site 5 | Site 6

Hey everyone, as you know or may not know I’m now a UK Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) 2006/2007 and well I’ve just arrived home from Reading (UK) after spending the past two days there for my first ever Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) Events.
And well what can I say, it was great, I met lots of new people, had lots of really interesting discussions and got a whole load of freebies which will definitely come in useful as a MSP!

So let me give you a quick overview of what I did, I arrived at Reading Sunday afternoon at around 13:00 and once I had checked in and had a wash I met up with some fellow MSP’s, these MSP’s being Grant Downeh, Ian MacGillivray, Paul Shemmell, Philip Stears and Will Perry. Once we had all had a drink we headed down to Reading Town Centre in the hope of getting some food, we eventually came to end up in the Slug and Lettuce at the Oracle, not too long after that did two other MSP’s come and join us, these being Emma Guy and Matthew Bell.

Once we had all eaten our food we started to make our way back to the hotel so we would make it in time for the Social Event which Microsoft had planned for us.

At 6 o’clock Stuart Leddy and Matt Duffin both of who are interns at Microsoft, came to make sure we were already to head down town for dinner at Zizzi’s, once there we all started to sit down at the tables and then we suddenly found out that we were all going to be in on different teams anyway, I ended up being on Team Vista with Chris Weeks, Paul Shemmell, Richard Makepeace and Zacharias Joubert along with Dianne Terry the Marketing Team Lead for the UK Academic Alliance Team.

Anyway after some fun and having dinner we all headed back to either our hotel or homes (in the case of the people living in Reading already) as we knew we had an early coach trip the next day to the Microsoft Campus were Breakfast would be awaiting for us.

And well… I’m going to stop here because I’m under a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)

Haha just kidding, well not about the NDA, but about stopping, however that dosent mean that I’m now going to tell you detail by detail of what I did at the Microsoft Campus, as that just would’nt make your time as a MSP (if you become one) as exciting as mine, plus anyway I’m getting quite sleepy now and don’t really feel like writing a ton out right now!

So here’s a a quick summary of the agenda

• 08:00 Depart from Accommodation
• 08:30-09:15 BREAKFAST
• 09:15-09:45 Welcome to Microsoft! (Andy Sithers)
• 10:30-10:45 BREAK
• 10:45-11:15 .NET and Visual Studio Flyby (Matt Duffin)
• 11:15-12:15 Windows Vista and .NET Framework V3.0 (Mike Taulty)
• 12:15-13:00 LUNCH (10/15 MINUTE TOUR OF THE MICROSOFT CAMPUS)
• 13:00-14:00 XNA Games Studio (Andy Sithers)
• 14:00-15:00 ASP.NET & Atlas (Mike Ormond)
• 15:00-15:15 BREAK
• 15:15-16:15 Introducing Office 2007 (Chris Rothwell)
• 16:15-16:45 Final Roundup
• 16:45 Leave the Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park

But hey, want to know more about a particular part? just ask!

Ohh and before I forget, thanks goes to the whole Microsoft UK Academic Alliance Team and everyone else including MSP’s for making this such an enjoyable event, this is surely going to be a Good year for MSP’s with the release of Windows Vista, Office and lots more!

Update: Just noticed that today is the 500th day since my blog was started so it’s kind of cool that it coincides with my first MSP Event at the Reading Campus, so hey here’s a pic of some stuff I got!

Anybody else having troubles accessing anything on Blogger.com?

I’m just getting a 503 Errors:

HTTP Status 503 - Servlet NewFrontend is currently unavailable

——————————————————————————–

type Status report

message Servlet NewFrontend is currently unavailable

description The requested service (Servlet NewFrontend is currently unavailable) is not currently available.
——————————————————————————–

Apache Tomcat/4.1.24

All I can say is that right now I’m so glad I dont use Blogger!

Hey everyone just thought id let you all know that thanks to Chris Crum the Content Manager of WebProNews, I’m now a blog partner for them. You can see what articles of mine have been published on WebProNews by checking out my author page here!

It’s nice seeing my name on a list which contains some top tech bloggers like Robert Scoble, Andy Beal, Jeremy Zawodny, Nathan Weinberg and more. So thanks again Chris for asking me if I would like to be a blog partner.

Any platform. Any browser. Any language. Windows Live makes it easy for developers to extend and customize applications through open service APIs, straightforward licensing, and permissive terms of use.

The new Live for You webcasts are your opportunity to get trained on Windows Live in advance of the official product launch. Be among the first developers in Canada to learn how to leverage services of Windows to build applications and mashups with greater ease and control. Plan to attend Microsoft’s Preview Event in-person or via webcast at 7pm EST on Thursday, November 2.

The weekly Live for You webcast series will follow each Tuesday starting November 7, 2006.

November 07 - Leveraging Windows Live Search (12:00-01:00 PM)
November 14 - A Richer User Experience with Virtual Earth (12:00-01:00 PM)
November 21 - How cool are Windows Live Gadgets? (12:00-01:00 PM)
November 28 - Writing Bots for Windows Live Messenger (12:00-01:00 PM)

You can sign up for the in-person event and the rest of the webcast series from the following link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/liveforyou/

Microsoft’s general manager Scott Guthrie who runs the teams that build IIS, ASP.NET, Atlas, CLR, Compact Framework, Windows Forms, Commerce Server, Visual Web Developer 2005 and Visual Studio Tools for WPF has now announced the first official Beta release of Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX v1.0. You can download it now from the http://ajax.asp.net site. Available on the site are three download options:  

1. The ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 “Core” download. This redist contains the features that will be fully supported by Microsoft Product Support, and which will have a standard 10 year Microsoft support license (24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year). The download includes support for the core AJAX type-system, networking stack, component model, extender base classes, and the server-side functionality to integrate within ASP.NET (including the super-popular ScriptManager, UpdatePanel, and Timer controls).
2. The ASP.NET AJAX “Value-Add” CTP download. This redist contains the additional higher-level features that were in previous CTPs of “Atlas,” but which won’t be in the fully-supported 1.0 “core” redist. These features will continue to be community supported as the the team refine them further and incorporate more feedback. Over time they will continue to move features into the “core” download as they finalize features in this value-add package more.
3. The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. This project contains 28 free, really cool, AJAX-enabled controls that are built on top of the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 “Core” download. The project is collaborative shared source and built by a combination of Microsoft and non-Microsoft developers, and you can join the community or just download it on CodePlex today.

Via: O’Reilly

Following my recent post about Windows Live Mail M8 finally being rolled out onto some server bays, Windows Live Mail M8 is now officially released and availbale to all!

Windows Live Mail is Friendlier

Check out these new M8 features that make WLM friendlier to you, your browser, and your friends:

• Choose which of your multiple email addresses an email should be sent from
• Personalize the look and feel of your inbox using themes
• Access other Windows Live products from the Windows Live Jewel
• See more of what’s important to you: we squeezed a bunch of pixels out of the interface to give you more room to read your mail, view your contacts, and do everything else you need to do.
• Use the back and forward buttons (and their shortcut keys) in your browser to navigate around WLM! I love shortcut keys.
• Learn more about WLM through balloon tooltips that highlight features all around the product
• Along with many other improvements to the Light version of WLM, you can now manage your folders with ease.

Windows Live Mail is Faster and More Reliable

• We know that all of you love blazing fast performance from your web applications. We also know that some of you have slower connections or somewhat older computers. To meet these needs, we dedicated an entire team to improve performance. I can proudly say that they’ve done that: your messages and contacts display faster even with the new features!
• If you’re looking for even faster performance (and something more similar to Hotmail’s look and feel), check out the Light version of WLM. While this version doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the rich version, it’s even faster than the original Hotmail!
• We also put a team on making WLM more reliable. While they’ve improved many other things, I’m most excited about their work to make the entire login process more resilient (thanks for your comments and feedback on that!).

Are you interested in participating in the Adobe Fireworks 9 Prerelease Program by evaluating early builds, giving feedback on features, and guiding future direction?

If so then why not go ahead and Apply for this Opportunity!

As you may have already noticed today, neowin have been pointing to what is supposedly the final version of Internet Explorer 7 packaged into a Yahoo Mail Download, now I’m not sure if the version which is included in Yahoo Mail is really the final version of IE7 or not but it does seem to be, plus this same version of IE7 can be found on the microsoft Servers at the following links:

Windows XP SP2 Edition
Windows Server 2003 32-bit Edition
Windows XP & Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition
Windows Server 2003 ia64 Edition

Still no official news from Microsoft though!