November 2007 - Posts

Parallel Computing Developer Center

Parallel Computing

Microsoft’s Parallel Computing developer center is dedicated to providing information, ideas, community, and technology to developers to make it easier to write programs that perform and scale well on parallel hardware.

The Manycore Shift: Microsoft Parallel Computing Initiative Ushers Computing into the Next Era

Welcome to the Parallel Extensions team blog!

posted Friday, November 30, 2007 9:58 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Zune Features

Microsoft Challenges the iPod (Again)

I don't understand why the Zuney PR Team needs to be accepted by the iPod centric crowd, reading the reviews you would think that everyone on planet Earth owned an iPod.

I don't see as many iPods bopping around town this year as I did last, were they all lost or are they just not durable?

Here are some of the iPod features that the Zune lacks: Games, alarm clock, stopwatch, world clock, password-protected volume limiter, graphic equalizer, notepad, auto-synched copy of your computer’s calendar and address book, and..... an apple peeler, nutcracker and toenail clipper.
posted Thursday, November 29, 2007 10:32 AM by paul with 0 Comments

GameDev Day '07 Boston

GameDev Day '07 Boston - XNA, Gaming, and Game Development

Gamers, isn't time you started learning how to create your own game?  

Come to GameDev Day '07, a free event being hosted at Harvard University on December 1st, sponsored by Microsoft in association with the Harvard Interactive Media Group (HIMG).

Everone is invited and it's FREE. Saturday, December 1st, 10 AM - 4 PM

Harvard University [directions], Sever Hall [map]

posted Wednesday, November 28, 2007 10:38 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit

The Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2008 features and a variety of framework technologies including: LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual Basic 9, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, VSTO, CardSpace, SilverLight, Mobile and Application Lifecycle Management.

A great way to help us all learn; Download Now

posted Tuesday, November 27, 2007 10:54 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Silverlight Lights Up the Web

Microsoft Silverlight: Light Up the Web

Learn the basics of Silverlight and how you can use the Microsoft tools — Expression Blend, Visual Studio, and Extensible Application Markup Language - XAML - to build rich, graphical sites.

Light up the Web with Silverlight, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET-based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. A progressive five-part series will set the stage for developers and designers with more webcasts to follow. Sign-up and tune in to these webcasts today.

posted Monday, November 26, 2007 11:10 AM by paul with 0 Comments

TED Prize Winners

Announcing 2008 TED Prize winners

Inspiring and something to aspire to....view the video announcement.

posted Wednesday, November 21, 2007 1:39 PM by paul with 0 Comments

Visual Studio 2008 SDK

Visual Studio 2008 SDK Version 1.0

The Visual Studio 2008 Software Development Kit SDK 1.0 includes tools, documentation, and samples for developers to design, build, test and deploy extensions for Visual Studio 2008. You can also use the VS 2008 SDK 1.0 to create custom tools environments based on the Visual Studio 2008 Shell.

Before starting your project get more information and news about Visual Studio Extensibility VSX, at the VSX Developer Center and on the VSX Team Blog .

posted Wednesday, November 21, 2007 12:55 PM by paul with 0 Comments

XNA Game Studio 2.0 Beta

The beta release of XNA Game Studio 2.0 is here!    Download Now

This Beta release is your chance to try out the new features available in XNA Game Studio 2.0, including support for Visual Studio 2005, multiplayer support over System Link and LIVE, and many more features and enhancements, many suggested by you, the community members.

If you’re an existing XNA Game Studio Express user, you won’t have to worry about uninstalling anything – XNA Game Studio 2.0 Beta lives comfortably side-by-side with XNA Game Studio Express.

posted Tuesday, November 20, 2007 10:26 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Visual Studio 2008 RTM

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 shipped!

This morning Microsoft's Developer Team shipped Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5, let the downloads begin!

If anyone asks why should I upgrade - it's all about performance and reliability.

LINQ is now part of the ecosystem.
XNA Game Studio will finally snap into Visual Studio and Microsoft Robotics Studio is going to enable the next generation of incredible devices.
 
posted Monday, November 19, 2007 1:27 PM by paul with 0 Comments

Visual Studio 2008

Look for Visual Studio 2008 Downloads on Top Subscriber Downloads early next week

Great news, Visual Studio Code Name Orcas is just about ready for it's release into the wild.

Visual Studio 2008 is anticipated out early next week, with availability for Subscribers. Check out the Top Subscriber Downloads area for VS 2008 downloads.

posted Saturday, November 17, 2007 9:56 AM by paul with 0 Comments

XNA Game Studio 2.0 Soon

XNA Game Studio 2.0 Beta Available Soon

Soon well be able to use Visual Studio to write games!
While your waiting for XNA Game Studio 2.0 watch Hilary Pike walk you through some of the key gaming concepts.
Introduction to Gaming: Modify your first 2D Game using XNA Games Studio Express.
posted Friday, November 16, 2007 12:11 PM by paul with 2 Comments

ATI Radeon HD 3800

AMD Unleashes Enthusiast Gaming Performance for the Masses with ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series  


AMD-ATI today announced the availability of the ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series of GPU's, the world’s first series of graphics processors to deliver Microsoft’s DirectX 10.1, 55nm process technology and tri and quad multi-GPU support with ATI CrossFireX.

The ATI Radeon HD 3800 series begins a new era of enthusiast performance at mainstream prices.

We're all enthusiasts now, anyone who works with computers everyday now owns several, we all have home networks with large LCD's for our home entertainment and media systems.

I hope to get my hands on a ATI Radeon HD 3800 very soon and I'll let you know how the Windows Vista drivers respond.

posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 10:37 AM by paul with 0 Comments

INETA Blog

Welcome to the INETA Community Activities Blog

At last INETA is blogging!

I hope they'll drop the newsletter format altogether...our inboxes need some relief .....

The goal of this site is to allow us to increase our team's voice in the community, helping to share what we're doing as well as to promote your community activities such as Code Camps, special user groups events, and other items of interest.

posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007 12:54 PM by paul with 0 Comments

Windows Live Messenger IM Control

Windows Live Messenger On Your Blog

One of the coolest new features released with the latest Windows Live Services is the Windows Live Messenger IM control.  What this provides is a way for people to reach you when they don't have either a Windows Live ID or Messenger installed or something like that. 

posted Tuesday, November 13, 2007 11:55 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Hafnium Age

Intel's Fundamental Advance in Transistor Design Extends Moore's Law, Computing Performance

We entered the Hafnium age today as Intel announced their entirely new transistor formula that hopefully will alleviates leaks. These Intel Core 2 Extreme and Xeon processors are also the first to be manufactured on the company's 45-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process, further boosting performance and lowering power consumption.
posted Monday, November 12, 2007 12:24 PM by paul with 0 Comments

Digital Impact

I attended two conferences in NYC this week, Ad-Tech and The Future of Television.

At Ad-Tech I met Spammers and Pop-Up Ad Affiliates and too many people spending other peoples money foolishly. Most of the attendees seamed to be recent emigrants to the Internet, causing this native to wonder where have they been the last ten years? MySpace, Facebook and YouTube were companies they all read about as blogs were talked about, but RSS is still a mystery to them.

The Writers Strike was evident all over midtown Manhattan this week. When I walked by the picket lines they handed me a flyer - We're only asking for our fair share. On the back of the flyer were the names and phone numbers of billionaire Media bosses, but nowhere was there a URL. All these writers and not one blog, what's wrong with this picture?
 
The best quote from the Future of Television conference came from Shelly Palmer of the Emmy Awards, he said of the Writers strike that the DVD dispute was settled and now it was just the Internet.......
posted Saturday, November 10, 2007 10:53 AM by paul with 0 Comments

Robotics Developer Dinner

Developer Dinner for Partners Microsoft Robotics Studio – An Introduction

Developers are always hungry for new ideas and Robotics Studio is making the future accessible to C# and VB.Net programmers.

December 5, 2007 - 6:00PM – 8:00PM Microsoft Innovation and Technology Center , Reston, VA
December 6, 2007 - 6:30PM – 8:30PM Microsoft Office , Washington, DC
posted Wednesday, November 07, 2007 3:34 PM by paul with 0 Comments

I want My Gphone

Where's my Gphone?

Andy Rubin, Director of Mobile Platforms at Google has just joined the conversation by announcing the Open Handset Alliance and introduced Android in a video as an important part of our strategy of furthering Google's goal of providing access to information to users wherever they are.

Are they still sleeping in Seattle?
I just emerged from a session with Google at Ad-Tech in NYC.
posted Monday, November 05, 2007 12:29 PM by paul with 1 Comments

Social Device

I, Robot: The Man Behind the Google Phone

The NYTimes Markoff rips off Isaac Asimov, but gets everybody to link to him today because we are now finding out who is behind the Google phone.
 
Andy Rubin who's company Android.com was acquired by Google is heading up the project that will put Google Mobile on billions of phones worldwide.
 
Andy's earlier company Danger Inc created the Sidekick, so he understands this market and the potential for a ubiquitous mobile device that returns Google web services to users around the globe.
 
Andy was also a Microsoft employee on the defunct Web TV project, how did they let him get away?
 
Markoff missed the connection to Googles earlier announcement about OpenSocial,  the first release of Goggles Mobile phone service - the phone is after all a social device.
posted Sunday, November 04, 2007 12:10 PM by paul with 1 Comments

Social Shopping

Become.com has just announced the launch of its new social shopping functionality, designed to give users a tightly-integrated shopping search. You research products to get the information you need and find where to go for the best prices.

I met Become.com CEO Michael Yang at the first Web 2.0 conference and we met again at this years Web 2.0 Summit and he told me they have attained profitability in just three years, nice going for a company in the service of helping consumers decide where and how to spend their hard earned money.
posted Friday, November 02, 2007 4:26 PM by paul with 0 Comments