*grumble* Microsoft
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 29th Jan, 2007
I saw a photo presentation a friend of mine (Michela) made while she was on holiday here in the Isle of Man and found out that she used a free package from Microsoft called Photo Story to make this. Fine, I said, I’ll download this and give it a try. I popped to the download [...]
Money titbits
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 16th Jan, 2007
Here’s an interesting conundrum. Look at the picture of the team on the right. The question is. If someone approached you with the opportunity to invest in this team would you go for it? The bottom line is that the team you are looking at grew to become Microsoft Corporation (the guy in the bottom [...]
10 ways to lose your DBA job
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 30th Nov, 2006
Here’s a good post from SQL Server Central talking about some essential skills and reminders that SQL Server DBAs should keep in mind. They range from the basic (keeps servers patched, don’t use blank password) to the essential (Loading, Tuning, Optimising) and is a valid read for anyone using SQL Server.
Read here: 10 ways to [...]
VB6 - The language of the future !
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 4th Oct, 2006
Came across this on Andy’s blog: Apparently the only language that Windows Vista currently supports is VB 6.
This blog post goes into the detail, however it appears that the following are the Microsoft development environments that Microsoft will be supporting when Vista is launched:
Visual Basic 6.0 (supported)
Visual Studio .NET 2002 (not supported)
Visual [...]
Messing with Visual Studio 2005
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 21st Nov, 2005
So, I decided not to progress down the PHP/MySQL route with SearchMann.com and opted instead to play with the brand spanking new Visual Studio 2005. So I downloaded the free Express version and played around with that instead.
The UI is nice and friendly and everything worked really nicely on my machine. I suspected I might [...]
Oh yes, it’s Friday
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 28th Oct, 2005
James sent me this link. Interesting to see Microsoft attempt some viral marketing:
http://www.businesstravelstopshere.com/lift/
Stop those Microsoft bugs
Posted by: Owen on Saturday, 22nd Oct, 2005
This was shown to us at PDC. It’s a novel technology Microsoft is implementing to ensure it’s application will be free of bugs. Find out more about WE-SYP, being pioneered by Microsoft UK here
Microsoft to drop per-processor licenses
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 12th Oct, 2005
Interesting piece of news (especially for people working in the enterprise space) today. Microsoft has decided to drop it’s per-processor licensing strategy for a number of high-end products (like BizTalk Server, Sql Server, ISA Server etc), in favour of a per-active-instance licensing model. This means that clients can deploy software on high-end kit more easily [...]
Exciting stuff at PDC
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 14th Sep, 2005
I was hoping to be blogged more while at PDC, but there’s so much cool stuff to explore, discover and catch up on, that I’ve had absolutely NO TIME TO BLOG!!
Just a preview of some of the exciting stuff mentioned/described over the last couple of days so far:
Windows Vista
Office 12 - some massive [...]
Microsoft CRM qualification
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 23rd May, 2005
Just got my Microsoft CRM Applications Professional qualification this morning. Proved to be easier than I origianlly thought it would be. The trick to learning how to use an application is to adopt the language and semantics that are relevant to that technology. Once you’ve mastered what things are called; focusing on how things are [...]
Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) for Agile Software Development
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 23rd Feb, 2005
Microsoft have released guidelines for using MSF in an Agile Development methodology. Interesting stuff Thsy describe it as:
MSF for Agile Software Development is a scenario-driven, context-based, agile software development process that utilizes many of the ideas embodied in Team System.
There’s more information and related stuff here
I personally can’t wait for Team Systems to be released. [...]
Developing E-Business Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 9th Feb, 2005
BizTalk 2004 Certification - details here
Microsoft Architectural Resources
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 2nd Feb, 2005
Jonathan, one of my colleagues at work sent out the following links to System Architectural Guidance provided by Microsoft. There’s an MSDN Architecture Webcast here and a link to order free Architecture Resources here. The free stuff includes
Architect Journal: This quarterly journal is written by architects for architects and explores a range of architectural themes [...]
Avalon Technology Preview
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 14th Jan, 2005
Have a look at Avalon ….
By popular demand, the Avalon team has provided the November 2004 Avalon Community Technology Preview for the general public.? In addition, the team has provided a batch file to enable the Avalon project item templates for use in the beta of Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition, which is also freely [...]
Problems running BizTalk 2004 on a Virtual Machine
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 18th May, 2004
Having problems running BizTalk 2004 on a Virtual Machine? (Virtual PC/VMWare). Microsoft has all the details here. Their recommendation: Do not install BizTalk 2004 on a Virtual Machine. Must be one of the most amusing KB articles out there.
