Representing Microsoft at this year's FOWA (Future of Web Apps) conference in London, I'll be there finding out where the top people in the industry think the web is going. One of the things I'll be particularly interested in talking to people about is how their perception of Microsoft is changing with...

Steve Ballmer announced today two example apps that show off how to put the Live Services we have on offer to use. The apps "Contoso Bicycle Club" and "Contoso University" were developed by two UK Parters, AWS and Conchango in association with Microsoft UK. They incorporate many Live Services some of...

I learnt about this particular event through Mark Johnston's blog and it's a great opportunity for students to learn about Microsoft's web technologies. It's a full day of goodness with two tracks, one for design students and the other for developers. Judging from the agenda, I would say that if you...

Well, it depends a lot on your individual circumstances as a organisation but the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle have managed to do save $1,000,000. Their IT is quite big with 500 applications across 4,500 desktops and 150 thin desktops and they have just over 7200 employees. They made their savings...

Light up the Web Silverlight (codename WPF/E) is Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s Flash (estimated to be running rich web based experiences on 95% of the world’s PCs and Macs). The goal is to provide the most natural and seamless method with which to design and build rich applications that transcend both...

I have to say that Virtual Labs are a fantastic way to "try before you buy" and also a wonderful way for people to learn a tool. We've just released Virtual Labs for Expression Web so have a look and find out why it's such a cool tool for building standards-compliant websites. Here's what's covered in...

To all those who asked and provided feedback, thank you. Your voice has swayed the vote and Expression Web is now available on MSDN Premium subscription. It's a start - Expression Design and Media aren't on there because they aren't related to developer tools. But what about developers who do their own...

Extending Office Live has recently been made easier through the introduction of this web service which provides specific API access to core parts of the platform. There are also many Sharepoint Services APIs to play with via web services but some of these are blocked because of how Office Live works...

Andrew Shorten has just created the "Microsoft blog for and about UK Web Agencies". His first post is about getting started with designing rich User Experiences on the Microsoft platform and technologies like WPF, WPF/E, Expression et. al. I've been playing around with Expression for the last couple...

Target in the US have integrated Virtual Earth into their store locator section of the website. It looks beautiful and is extremely easy to use. They've customised the push pins to be actual targets that represent stores in the area and also have changed the look and feel of the pushpin notes (hover...

I admit it, keeping track of all the latest technologies coming out of Microsoft is a challenge in itself - I should know! :-) For developers it's an even more daunting challenge because their knowledge is out of date in short amount of time. For our smaller ISVs (software developers) we have launched...

The IIS website over at www.iis.net has had a revamp in the wake of the Vista launch which of course comes with IIS7; the latest and greatest version of Internet Information Server. One of the things that I like about IIS7, apart from the new management console, is the fact that as an application developer...

This little blighter slipped out the door on the 2nd and I didn't even realise! Lucky Mike Taulty has got his ear to the ground and spotted the release and also a rather nice Vista environment built with WPF/E. Kind of makes the www.seewindowsvista.com site (which was done in Flash) seem a bit average...