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 applications will evolve.  It also gives a...

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 Went Open View more presentations from ukdpe . This...

Sky Player, Sky’s online TV service launches on Windows 7 creating a new and innovative way for people in the UK to watch live and on demand TV from Sky on a PC.  The service is simple and easy to use and gives Windows 7 users access to the wide range of high-quality live and on demand pay TV currently...

Doing a search on this topic, it seems that many of you out there are frustrated by the fact that a premium bluetooth headset like the Jawbone has so many problems with pairing.  The key to pairing this headset with Windows 7 comes down to your bluetooth driver.  I have a Lenovo T61p. ...

For October we are releasing 13 bulletins (eight critical and five important), addressing 34 vulnerabilities, affecting Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Silverlight, Forefront, Developer Tools, and SQL Server. Most of these updates require a restart so please factor that into your deployment planning...

I just finished installing our Microsoft IT build of Windows 7 x64 with Office 2010.  After I installed all the updates on my Lenovo T61p with 4GB RAM, I decided to reboot my machine a few times and clock it with my stopwatch.  From shutdown to usable desktop interactivity, my laptop required...

WNS140AL: Planning and Deploying Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V: Part 4 – Plan, Deploy and Manage with the Security Compliance Management Toolkit Beta Presented by Tom Cloward Tuesday, September 29, 2009 8:00-9:00am Pacific Time Click here to calculate your local time This is a joint Microsoft internal...

ComputerWorld has a great article about Microsoft releasing a “Ribbon” patch for all Vista users.  This patch will enable people to use applications that have been specifically built with Windows 7 Ribbon on Vista. “That plan seems to be in tatters now. Starting in October, application developers...

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0 is Now Available! With Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 becoming available in the near future, the Solution Accelerators Team is offering customers and partners a head start on deployment planning with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit...

Windows XP Mode Release Candidate is publically available today at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx Since the beta release of Windows XP Mode, several updates have been made responding to user feedback. These changes reflect Microsoft’s goal to increase ease of use for users...

ZOOOOOM!!!  Technology is great!  It’s like a having a one-night stand every week though it never tends to be as good as your first.  Take Apple for instance with their iPhone 3GS announcement.  Bigger, faster, cheaper is their game.  Any real buzz they had with the product was...

Here’s a feature that I’ve been missing.  I hate opening PDF files.  I prefer them in a preview pane either in Outlook or Explorer.  Credit goes to Tim Heuer for putting this awesome plug-in out there and my colleague James O’Neill who’s blog I read first.   Download PDF Preview

Microsoft has a shiny new laptop to give away to feed your recession fix!  Watch the trailers below and visit us at Road to Windows 7 .  Microsoft will be posting a new video every week with information that every IT Professional wants to know about, and best of all its not in PowerPoint format...

Every week, there is some new RC feature that gets uncovered that I don’t seem to know about.  I suppose that says how many little tiny features are actually built into Windows 7 or if you’re cynical, show’s how Microsoft communicates :)  Virtual Wifi adaptors will allow wireless cards to essentially...

I was testing out Windows Virtual PC that is used for “XP Mode” and decided to create some custom VMs for Windows 7 as a demo.  I went into it knowing full well that many cool features of Windows 7 wouldn’t be demoable simply because 3D support in a VM environment isn’t support…or at least I thought...

I love Fora.TV and I’ve been figuring out a way to take some of Microsoft’s product content and abstract it out to neutral technology discussions that are more closely related to policy and vision.  So while browsing, I was greatly surprised to see Steve B’s head on the front page of Fora. ...

Edge has a really great video with Ram Rathnam, Director of Product Management for Windows Activation Technologies.  Windows Vista introduced new activation concepts like Key Management Server (KMS) and Multiple Activation Key (MAK).  From a conceptual view, these technologies are the same...

The Engineering 7 Blog outlines enhancements made in newer solid-state disk technology that will improve user experience in Windows 7 significantly.  Because SSDs are essentially giant flash drives with no moving parts, there are inherent performance benefits in theory, however the blog discusses...

An interesting ComputerWorld article discusses how Microsoft will essentially allow users to use Windows 7 RC for 13 months from release so that early adopters can thoroughly test the software.  For those familiar with the Vista launch, 13 months is a significant extension which expired on June...

Oh is RC out already?  Well it is if you are an MSDN or TechNet Plus subscriber!  Booting from DVDs are so last decade.  If you want to install your RC copy with class, follow the instructions my buddy James O’Neill has posted on his blog .  Make that 30 minute installation into a...

I had an opportunity to catch up with Education MVP Alex Pearce who manages the IT over at Great Barr School.  Alex specializes in SharePoint but is well versed with most of the Microsoft technology stack and recently we got into a discussion around how the school has change since his arrival less...

There has been a lot of press about the leaked Windows 7 RC.  For the most part, the press and bloggers have been extremely positive. One very minor but significant tweak that I’ve found useful as an IT Pro has been full path display in the address bar.  In Vista and Windows 7 Beta looked like...

The Windows Product team have made a really smart decision to put in some effort around the Windows XP Virtual PC experience .  This feature will is aimed at businesses that need to maintain XP compatibility with line-of-business applications.  Essentially, prior to this feature announcement...

Interesting article from ComputerWorld about UAC improvements and a reduction in prompts to the end-user by the operating system. “Among the changes Microsoft's made to UAC that will drive that decrease, Cooke cited several specific examples, then pointed to the new "slider bar" that will let...