Archive for Community
April 22, 2008 at 1:22 pm ·
Filed under PR, Community, Releases
Climate change is a problem that affects everyone on our planet. As is often the case with problems of this magnitude, it’s hard to feel like one person can make a difference. In reality however, every little bit helps. Carbon Grove can help you make your small contribution to fixing things and hopefully also help you show others that you care.
The Internet Explorer team at Microsoft helped to launch this site. They were eager to create a special experience for their IE users as well as show one small piece of their commitment to the environment. Not only is Internet Explorer the exclusive way to take advantage of Carbon Grove, but Microsoft’s Silverlight technology has made browsing the three forests a breeze.
Check it out :)
So, I took the test and it said I need to cut back on driving to work and take a bike or go on foot for shorter trips. I’ll keep that in mind. :) I planted a tree too, it’s in the Rain Forest and it’s a coconut tree. You can see it grow below :)
Thanks for the pointer, Barb!
April 17, 2008 at 10:44 am ·
Filed under Community, Mix Event
I’m helping out a little bit on the Mix Essentials event at the Louvain La Neuve campus on the 24th of April. What’s going to be presented isn’t anything new if you are up to speed with what’s been announced at Mix08 in Vegas, but if you weren’t able to make it to Vegas and still want to get a hands-on experience, this event is your place to be.
There are two tracks to follow: Interactive Web Developers technical track and the Web Designers & Business strategists track. Each have their own breakout sessions with presentations and deep dives into the latest releases of our products.
Steve Ballmer is going to be present for the closing keynote, and I’ve managed to get a Q&A slot for the key bloggers who’ve attended our previous events or joined influencer programs in the past year.
Sign up for Mix Essentials on the dedicated site, and mark the date :)
April 17, 2008 at 9:02 am ·
Filed under Community
After an amazingly successful TechDays and Heroes Happen Here launch event in real life, it’s time to rejoin the virtual team and focus on the launch event in Second Life. The .Net developer user group has been growing and growing, and the time has come to launch Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 in the virtual paradise on Microsoft Island. The planning of the day can be found on Zain’s blog.
I’m setting up a cool afterparty with live music to close the event after the sessions. Consider yourself invited. Mark the date: April 26th, 2008
Get a shortcut to Microsoft’s island right here
March 26, 2008 at 12:00 am ·
Filed under Community, Mobile
I’m a very satisfied user of Windows Mobile 6, and since I’ve signed up for their newsletter, I’m learning more and more shortcuts and tricks to handle my HTC Tytn with ease. It’s really cool how they make things better by sending out free ringtones, by giving you tips on how to maximize your experience and how to gain time by using shortcuts to handle your data. This month’s newletter pointed out how to easily put a phone number in your contacts book starting from a missed call. You can read all about that here. For a full overview of all tips and tricks so far, click here.
The Windows Mobile team actually tries really hard to make me happy, and they succeed pretty well. For instance, this link goes to their ‘themes’ web page, where you can download a bunch of cool themes to redecorate your phone. I’m not a guy that pimps the phone twice a week, but a nice change every now and then really is appreciated.
One of the best things I like about the Windows Mobile Owners section is the free ringtones. It’s always great fun to sit in the restaurant at Microsoft and hear the standard ringtone go off, only to then find a dozen of people grabbing their phone to see if it’s them. With the selection of free ringtones, I’ve already found quite a few really nice custom sounds that differ my device from a bunch of others. You can also compose your own ringtone, but I haven’t gotten into that yet. I’ll do that the next time I’m on holiday, somewhere in 2012 :-)
This month, the mobile newletter pushed out free invites for Zumobi, a really cool app you can download. Zumobi lets you use your smartphone to easily zoom in and out of snack-sized bites of entertainment and information throughout the day. When first downloaded, Zumobi includes a 16-subject arrangement, but you can download other subject-specific widgets for free or even create your own. From your Windows Mobile phone, go to http://wmoc.zumobi.com to download Zumobi directly. Your version of Zumobi will include a Tile first available only to Windows Mobile Owners Circle members, the On 10 Tile, which brings you great content from Channel 10, the Enthusiast Evangelist channel, which is definitely worth a look!
February 29, 2008 at 2:58 am ·
Filed under Community, Digital Life
The UK sub has launched a pretty trendy Silverlight section to their site to demo a range of Microsoft products that fit in ‘the digital life’ in a fashionable way. As my fellow UK EEs pointed out, this is a really cool piece of work that shows you the possibilities to maximize the full potential of the tools you have at hand. Check it out, you might find some nifty things to play around with and impress your friends/coworkers with.
Select one of the four journeys and find out how ‘our’ products can fit seamlessly into your life. I dare you :)
The Canadians made a lot of work of their Microsoft Home Magazine too, and they list a bunch of tips, tricks and tools to help you maximize your everyday products. don’t forget to check out the template gallery, it list some very nifty DIY tutorials that show you how to do cool things in a just a few easy steps.
In Belgium, we’ve got the WoW Factory. Basically it’s the same concept but it differs from the others in the fact that consumers are invited to upload and share their ‘recipes for fun’ with the rest of the world. The best recipes are rewarded with a cool webcam. I love the way the old classic product pages are being replaced with modern approaches that add value to the products we have out there on the market. Things like this make it interesting for consumers to explore, and (in my opinion) it invites them to connect on a more emotional level with Microsoft as a company.
February 26, 2008 at 9:40 am ·
Filed under Buzz, Community, Releases, Live Services
There’s a bit of a talk about that ‘wonderful Google feature’ and ‘the cool chatback tool’ which they just released. I can’t see why it’s so revolutionary and why everyone is so enthusiastic about it. It’s just a chat interface. Then the main arguement of ‘yeah but people don’t have to sign in’ doesn’t really make sense either. Windows Live Messenger offers this feature too, and anonymous chatters can use the web application as well. Before I joined Microsoft, I did use GoogleTalk too, but I got turned off about it because it jammed regularly and felt buggy (at that time). The thing I dislike the most about it is the fact that you have an automatic sign in every time you log on to the GMail site. Sometimes I want to check the mailbox without everybody knowing I’m online. And to my knowledge GMail doesn’t offer the “don’t show me online” feature. Last time I checked you couldn’t even set any of the options, you never have been able to. Imagine that would be same with Live Mail! The internet would be too small to cope with all the complaints and rants! I don’t like it when things are decided for me. I’d rather have options. That brings me to the following announcement:
“The Windows Live Messenger IM Control does NOT require the anonymous (web site visitor) to have a WLID (Windows Live ID) to chat with the semi-anonymous user (from web into their client)” said Angus. It’s an option to sign in, if they want to make themselves known, but not needed to start a chat.
As Angus Logan leaked yesterday, the cool thing about the Windows Live Messenger IM Control is that we’ll have dev tools for it available shortly. That opens up a huge range of possibilities in the very very very near future.
Stay tuned for some very exciting news about this one :)
February 22, 2008 at 12:34 pm ·
Filed under Games, Video, XBox 360, Community
From the presspass: In a landmark announcement during the keynote address at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC), Microsoft Corp. promised to soon allow Xbox LIVE members to play, rate and share community-created games. As the first in the industry to pioneer high-speed online gaming and high-definition games, Xbox 360 once again broke new ground by introducing a new, open distribution service for games created by the community and soon playable by its 10 million Xbox LIVE members. Community-created games on Xbox LIVE will quickly double the size of the Xbox 360 game library. By the end of 2008, Xbox 360 owners will have access to more than 1,000 games, making it the largest, most creatively diverse library across all next-generation platforms.
That is really AWESOME news. Especially because the game created by fellow Belgian Loïc Dansart (”Little Gamers”, a 2-D high definition action side-scroller based on the famous Web comic) has been selected to be made available together with 6 other XNA created games. The platform will be opened up, so that ‘consumer generated games’ can find their way to a worldwide audience!
The game was developed using Microsoft’s XNA technology, so it’s currently able to run on both PC and XBOX360 (the later requires a Creators Club membership). A fully playable XBOX360 prototype of 5 levels was submitted to the Dream, Build, Play! competition, and it won a place as a finalist. Currently, the full version is in development, and should be available for Windows in a few weeks.
The game is a 2D action sidescroller which borrows many gameplay elements from action games such as Metal Slugs and Madness Interactive and mixes them with the webcomic feel and humor of Little Gamers to create a unique cute but deadly combination.
An Xbox 360 community game created using Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio software and XNA Creators Club membership will be able to be submitted for distribution on Xbox LIVE. Each community-created game must then undergo a thorough peer-review process and be evaluated for accuracy in representation and appropriateness. Community game developers will be able to beta test the process this spring and will be able to distribute their games on Xbox LIVE by the end of this year.
Related:
Little Gamers - Teh Game (info + download)
PressPass Release
Check out the comic!
See the demo below:
February 19, 2008 at 6:01 am ·
Filed under PR, Community, Releases
Microsoft just made the announcement that it is opening up its developer and designer tools free of charge to college students in 10 countries around the world – the first phase of the new Microsoft DreamSpark™ program. Belgium is one of the countries on the list. :)
DreamSpark will be live as of February 19th in United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. Additional country rollouts are planned throughout the year with full availability expected within 12 months. While this is initially an offer for university students, the intention is to expand DreamSpark to high school students later this year. Further details are being finalized now, but the most important part is that Belgium is already in the list.
Students will be able to any of the following software products via Channel 8 (channel8.msdn.com) and will have to go through a quick online third party-driven authentication process to validate their student status. Once this is done, they will be able to download the software of their choice– one title or all.
- Microsoft developer tools.
• Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• XNA Game Studio 2.0
• 12-month free membership in the XNA Creators Club
- Microsoft designer tools.
Expression Studio, including:
• Expression Web
• Expression Blend
• Expression Design
• Expression Media
- Microsoft platform resources.
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Windows Server, Standard Edition
This is REALLY great news for all the tech and design students out there. It’s literally hundreds and hundreds of Euros you can save whilst still being able to use the quality tools that can help you realize your potential and become a pro. Everything will be made available through Channel 8, so go dig there if you’re ready to fire off the rocket!
Extended interview with Joe Wilson after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »
February 4, 2008 at 2:25 pm ·
Filed under Games, XBox 360, Community
A little while ago a part of the American nation was shocked as it was pointed to ‘extremely graphical scenes of a sexual nature’ that were to be seen in the Mass Effect game for XBox 360, which was just released on the market. The scenes of frontal digital nakedness could seriously confuse younger gamers and therefor the game should be forbidden or at least edited so the graphic sex would be removed. Despite the fact that the violence of the game really outstands the (mostly suggestive) sexual actions, and despite the fact that Miss Cooper Lawrence, who raised hell on a talk show where she pointed the nation to this fact, the game has now 1.4 million copies sold. Which would make it a popular game.
Miss Cooper Lawrence gave her honest and sincere opinion on the scenes of a telepathic encounter between a man and an alien with a blue skin. This was soon descripted as ‘interracial sex’. Obviously she has never seen Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek, where such close encounters are happening ALL THE TIME! Other than that, Miss Cooper Lawrence based her judging on pure hearsay, because since the game still had to be released at that time and the gameplay takes up to 30 hours, so it seemed really unlikely she would have had the skills or time to have run through the game to be confronted with those specific scenes. EA Games demanded an apology, and miss Cooper Lawrence actually did so, publicly, in the New York Times. She said she realized that she was wrong and that, now that she has seen the scenes (a french kiss and a bum are all that’s shown) she thinks it’s rather ridiculous and thus she overreacted.
One of the other reasons why she was so fast to apologize could also have been the fact that her book ‘The Cult Of Perfection’ dropped to the bottom of Amazon’s ‘most popular books’ list faster than she could say the name of the game. A few disgruntled fans had catapulted bad reviews into her general direction and the book dropped down the charts like a brick in a river. It was obviously an orchestrated event because one of the negative reviews read: “Obviously I haven’t read a letter in this book, but that doesn’t really matter”. Yes. Payback in a consumer generated world can be a mass effect. :)
December 10, 2007 at 7:11 pm ·
Filed under MicroLife, Community
On the side, when I got the time for it, I help to manage the Microsoft Islands in SecondLife. After a long struggle, we finally got full control over the Visual Studio island, one of the initiatives in this Virtual World. Together with Zain Naboulsi, I represent Microsoft in a community called ‘.Net Developers’. At this time we are well over 400 users, and on every event, we get between 20 or 30 people who show up to discuss technical issues, coding issues or just to network.
One of the big starter events we had to establish a better connection between us and the members of the group was the big C# Day, last Saturday. I’m pretty happy with the turn-up of people, and we really had a fun tutorial thanks to Kyle and Robin [and their team], who’ve been coding around the clock to get this thing up and running.
So, I think all went well. All participants had to click a cube, and they then received a cube that floated above their heads. It then said which piece of code they had, and which piece they were looking for. If two participants then had a match, the cubes turned green. In a notecard, they could then compile the code to form a script. [more detailed info about the cube-thing: here]
I’m pretty thrilled with the progress the group is making and the turn-out at the meetings, I really hope we can kick this even further and invite external speakers to share knowledge, to give hands-on presentations and to publish podcasts, vidcasts and so on. If we can organize Microsoft Island in a way so that it offers tutorials and useful information, I’m sure we can please a rather large audience and reach out to a group of people who code to live and live to code.
More information on the SLDNUG website.
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