I'm writing this on the way back from sunny Leeds where Matt and I went freestyle with the demos and unleashed a load of cool technology upon an unsuspecting audience. We went at quite a pace because we had so much to cover and I wanted to let you know...

Reading last night - phew what a gig... By the end it was pretty warm in the room sorry about that - the air conditioning people went home at 5.30 - great! I hope it didn't detract from what we showed you and by the number of questions we got I assume...

Working for Microsoft you tend to develop thick skin because of all the stuff people say to you; insults, imputation, indictment & bad mouthing. I guess you could argue that it comes with the territory, it's par for the course or something you inherit...

James O'Neil shared a Microsofties experience of trying to attend one of their Google @ Work events . Find out what happened when Ryan Pollock in the marketing team of Google Enterprise found out! Now I welcome competitors to our events, so what's up...

I had some interesting questions today from customers about the level of customization an IT guy can do regarding which areas of functionality are protected by UAC. I.e. if I don't want the Firewall protected by UAC can I change a setting in Group Policy...

This week Steve talked about the new Microsoft - or Ozziesoft as it's now being coined. Ozziesoft represents a world where products aren't announced and shown off until they are ready to go out of the door - apparently. Steve uses the example of Silverlight...

If you've not quite caught the wave on the whole "searching for applications" from the start menu and you still prefer to go through via "All Programs", you might have noticed some performance problems when you open a folder and it sometimes takes a second...

Wow the innovation keeps on happening ( back story to lack of MS Innovation)... today via the Virtual Earth blog I found a rather cool video which shows off the work of the MS Research team that are doing stuff with HD Photos that size up to 4 Gigapixels...

They are finally understanding it! Another excellent name and another cool brand - Microsoft Surface . I can hardly contain myself - someone in marketing actually is changing Microsoft bit by bit. Could this be another trait of Ozziesoft - cool product...

From the initial interviews I knew that Microsoft Surface was a Vista PC under the hood and I had my suspicions that the graphics were powered by WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation - the graphics subsystem that is present in .NET 3.0 and Vista). Reading...

Yes you read it right... one of the things that emerged at WinHec was a Wireless Fridge Magnet which leverages the Windows Vista SideShow platform (back story about Vista After Hours) that can stream content from your Vista PC to the device. Cool (no...

It was only a matter of time...... I first heard about Electric Rain at the launch event for Expression in the UK and the chaps from the product team did their presentation using their software, a very sexy WPF based slide shower called Standout . Now...

Mark Wilson's gone and done a thoughtful write-up of the Vista After Hours event we did last week (was it really last week!). Now, Mark is a Mac guy but he was pleasantly surprised with the features we showed off in Vista that got him starting to question...

I'll be at this shindig - see you there! 23 May 2007, London: Web Administration Summit - An In-depth Look at Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 in Windows Server “Longhorn” Microsoft Windows Server code name "Longhorn” is the next generation of...

Shock horror, but here's some innovation from Microsoft ( back story from comments in this post ). The New York Times Reader which was originally a Vista launch app based on WPF has been ported to Silverlight on the Mac. Now because WPF and Silverlight...

This is a cool company to work for. I've worked at other large blue chip companies, small and medium companies and they don't come close to the way you feel after finishing a week of work at Microsoft. The HR team are running a recruitment open day here...

Just speculation, but upon closer inspection of the announcement of the agreement between Microsoft and Juniper networks , this little excerpt slipped out: "Microsoft is announcing that Windows Vista supports this protocol today and Windows Server ® 2008...

The new public beta for Windows Vista Hardware Assessment has been released and you can go sign up and download the beta from the Microsoft Connect website . What is Windows Vista Hardware Assessment? I've covered this before ( see here for all the detail...

Powershell is an object orientated scripting language which is extensible and is the foundation admin tool for Exchange Server 2007 and System Center Operations Manager 2007. One of our MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) talks about Windows Server 2008...

A partner I know is currently looking to render XPS and now a very clever chap inside Microsoft ( via Mike Taulty ) has been playing around with doing it in Silverlight . The app is very cool and has nice controls to boot. Bear in mind it's just a proof...

Saving the best to last :-) The Vertigo crew were commissioned by Microsoft to create an app in WPF that showed off some of the technology. What they came up with was a an app that helps build and visualise family trees. Apparently genealogy is the fastest...

QA-IQ, one of our training partners is running a Windows Server 2008 week of events starting in July. So, what's on the menu? Clinic 1: Windows Server 2008 Branch Office Management Clinic 2: Windows Server 2008 Server Management Clinic 3: Windows Server...

Configuring a wireless router or modem can sometimes be a little tricky for the average user, so one of the certifications for Vista aimed to take away the pain when setting up your home network and this video from Ben Reed on the Vista Team blog . Ben...

Last time, this event rocked and I would definitely recommend attending if you want to see and hear some impressive speakers talk about cool technology. The agenda is already published here and you can register for the event here . From the looks of it...

Shall I file that under innovation ( back story )? Yes I think I will. Technorati tags: Microsoft Innovation , Silverlight , Popfly