Hello Everyone, With great reluctance, I am leaving Microsoft and will no longer be maintaining this blog.  It been a great ride over the last 4 years, and I will never forget all that this company has done for my personal and professional growth...

Why I Don't Use Google Docs By Rob Griffiths, Macworld.com When you need to collaborate with others on a project that involves word processing, spreadsheets, and/or presentations, Google Docs is an excellent solution: the ability to work with others in...

Underbelly has a great chronological timeline of the what was announced at MIX regarding Xbox Live, XNA, Windows Phone 7 development, launch partners, and Silverlight 4! Check it out!

I did an academic presentation at Bucks University hosted by the Istitution of Engineering and Technology.  The presentation was titled “Explaining the Cloud,” and it discussed at a high-level why the cloud represents a shift in how IT systems and...

Microsoft has kicked in its technology guarantee for customers who are waiting to upgrade to Office 2010 but haven’t upgraded to Office 2007.  The simple thinking is that there is no reason for businesses to delay rolling out and familiarizing themselves...

Q: What was announced today? A: Today, Microsoft announced a Release Candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2010. The RC is available to MSDN subscribers today and will be available to the public on February 10. Microsoft is encouraging developers to download...

CSS Zen Garden Illustrates the Power of CSS This is a great site that shows real-time CSS design changes by simply clicking on a new theme. What is nice about the site is that it has a lot of content that perfectly shows how content is separated from...

Snow Problem What a winter! The long range weather forecasters got it wrong, traffic in south eastern England ground to a halt at the first sight of snow – my usual 25 minute journey home turned into a 4 hour drive battling against the elements - but...

I managed to finally import, edit, and clean up the video from The SharePoint EDU Conference that took place back in the Summer 2009 in Birmingham.  There is a heavy SharePoint focus as you can tell by the name.  The content below is one of...

I’ve been meeting a lot of open-source devs lately and most tend to be genuinely surprised about the ability to now use SQL Server 2005/2008 with PHP applications. The best PHP devs, especially those who own or run development houses, tend to be a platform...

Sorry if politics isn’t your thing (it should be cause tech revolves around policy), and I am not trying to be hyperbolic when I say this but I think I’ve witnessed the most honest and open American political debate in my 27 years of life!  Although...

Kudos to Apple on a fantastic product launch!  I give props where it is due and they really did create the perfect storm for the “product of the decade."  All the elements were there.  The years of anticipation, the official fake price...

Its been amazing to see the world community mobilize against the disaster in Haiti.  There isn’t a day that goes by where I see, hear, or read an amazing story about survival and philanthropy.  Microsoft has done a lot in this area to help....

If you’ve heard or used our Arc Mouse, we now have a really cool companion item to go with it.  BEHOLD…the Arc Keyboard!    That should hold you guys over until a do a full write-up on the iPad from the Microsoft employee angle out tommorow...

Taking the audio from the original recording presented during Oxford Geek Night, I created a video of an updated PowerPoint presentation on the topic.

TechNet Webcast: Network Considerations for Deploying Communications Server 2007 R2 (Level 300) Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time Desmond Lee, Senior Consultant, Winworkers Switzerland http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail...

Sorry, this was too funny not to post!  Well played Mr. Ballmer…well played.  Just out of curiosity, can you perhaps furbish me, employee #318193 with a personally signed version of my Lenovo (I’ll even take a Dell) ?  I know its not a...

My colleague Andrew Fryer (@deepfat) was annoyed at BETT 2010 conference by the number of older teachers, headmasters, and IT professionals whining about the Ribbon UI.  I told him that some people just can’t be convinced and will only go kicking...

  Microsoft released a detailed whitepaper back in August outlining how security is done when it comes to running our Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS).  Many people are  only now just beginning to think about how businesses...

Cutting in line is encouraged With powerful co-authoring tools at your command, you never have to wait your turn to keep projects moving forward. Watch co-authoring in action ! Co-Author in Word & PowerPoint 2010 Simultaneously edit a Word 2010 document...

Use the Backstage view for quick access to the essentials The new Microsoft Office Backstage view replaces the traditional File menu, helping you quickly get to operations such as save, share, print, and publish with just a few clicks. Take advantage...

Pilot SharePoint Workspace! Ever open your computer, ready to work from home, and realize you forgot to download that one crucial SharePoint document? Work on any teams where emailing version after version of a document takes up half of everyone’s inbox...

Ars Technica has a done some reading in the in the “product use rights” document pertaining to Office 2010 Standard and Professional Plus.  The interesting bit is the wording around Office Web Apps usage.  I’ll admit that this license model...

Exchange Server in Depth: Master Concepts and Optimize Your Server Environment The latest release of Microsoft Exchange Server can help you achieve better business outcomes while controlling the costs of deployment, administration, and compliance. Microsoft...

I presented at London Geek Night a few days ago about the contributions that Microsoft made to the open-source community in 2009.  My presentation was titled, “Hell Froze over, Pigs flew, Microsoft Went Open” Hell Froze Over, Pigs Flew, Microsoft...