Blog

After having a few internet issues on the road the road and not wanting to pay $30 a day in the hotel to use internet over the last few days we hit the shops in search of wireless broadband. In … Continued

So we’ve done the first 2 legs of our SQL UG tour. Wednesday night we went to Canberra.  Thanks so much to Peter Ward for saving us with his mobile broadband.  Smallish crowd but some interesting questions and some really … Continued

Time has flown by and we start the first leg of the SQL Spatial with Virtual Earth User Group tour this week. So for those in Canberra and Adelaide, watch out…we’re coming to town! Looking forward to meeting a few … Continued

John and I sat the Virtual Earth Beta Exam 071-544 – TS: Microsoft Virtual Earth 6.0, Developing last year.  As it’s a beta exam you don’t find out if you passed for about 2 months.  This morning we checked the … Continued

Today I was asked to do what seemed like a fairly simple task: Take an Excel 2003 file, add a couple of columns of data and save to a new Excel file programattically. I haven’t done any coding Excel for … Continued

The ROM for Windows Mobile 6 for the Imate JasJam has finally been released.  So I’m taking the plunge and installing it on my phone.

2008 started well, with a nice email this morning informing me I’ve been made a Live Services MVP. What a great honor to be part of a pretty exclusive group. Have a look at my MVP profile here.

Back in December, John did a podcast with Craig Murphy about Windows Live, Virtual Earth and the community in Australia. Check it out on Craig’s site here:  http://www.craigmurphy.com/podcasts/041-John-OBrien.mp3

I blogged about a bit of a roadtrip of SQL User Groups for a presentation of SQL Spatial.  We’ve now added a second Hobart session to the list – Hobart .Net Usergroup.  The blurb for our talk is: SQL Spatial … Continued

Being the last day of the year, always a good time to review what we’ve done this year.  It’s been a big year and it has gone way too quickly.  Here’s a quick review of our year: January – Saw … Continued

Being the last day of 2007 and all, I thought I’d do a recap on the ViaWindowsLive community site.  Since we launched the Beta site on September 7, we’ve had 27 articles sumbitted by you..keep them coming. Article Contributions John … Continued

Here’s one I always have to look up. You’ve cleared out all the data in your tables and you want to set the autoid back to the beginning…or you want to start it at a particular number. DBCC CHECKIDENT is … Continued

While helping out on a project, I ran a few unit tests.  When it ran, my collegue remarked, “There’s the letter coming out of the printer now”. I was a bit surprised and asked if there was a config setting … Continued

Came across “Agent M” today on this blog.  “Agent M” is a Windows Live Agent to help it’s banking customers with enquiries, faqs etc.  If you want to have a play with it just add m.m2u@maybank.com.my to you Live Messenger friends … Continued

Our unit will be vacant soon..so we went in search of a realestate agent that does LET ONLY.  Let me tell you it was SO hard to find.  All seem to only do with property management.  After calling about a … Continued

After working at home, for ourselves, on fixed priced work for over 12 months I’m finding it difficult to work in an office again.  It’s not just feeling cut off from the world…it the change in mentality. In an environment … Continued

So in this day and age is it considered polite or an insult for a guy to give up his seat on a bus to a gal? Now that I have temporarily rejoined the crowd of cummuters it’s interesting to … Continued

Bored this Christmas and looking for something cool to play with? How about playing with some very new code that combines Silverlight and Windows Live Services. If you haven’t played with it you should: http://tafiti.mslivelabs.com/ And the big announcment today … Continued

Dell has some great Christmas deals out and while looking at their catalogue I noticed they have some wireless xbox 360 controllers for windows. I had always wanted to pick one of these up and now wireless – even better! … Continued

What do you do when you’re a C# developer plunged into a world of VB.Net?  The project I’m working on requires me to use VB.Net.  Which isn’t too bad most of the time but the syntax can be quite different.  … Continued

So I did a dash out to BestBuy when i was in Seattle and picked me up a HDDVD player.  Get it home only to discover that the US players don’t have the switch to change from 110 to 240 … Continued

Know it’s like a week later but thought it was still worth writing about the trip home… Got kicked out of the hotel at 2pm so wander the streets for awhile..well as long as i could stand the cold which … Continued

Today was my big adventure out to Microsoft campus..started off not so well when my cabbie had no idea where to go and drove around in circles.  Lucky a nice catering lady showed us the way…otherwise i may still be driving in … Continued

Well after yesterday’s long journey I fell asleep about 7pm only to wake up about midnight wide awake..stayed that way till about 4am when I crashed and re-work at 10am!  Dammit..missed the free brekkie and early start to the morning. … Continued

After lots of flying and waiting in airports I made it to Seattle.  Almost came without a jacket and my ipod but John was really nice and went home and back to grab it for me. Qantas has got lounges in the … Continued

I’ll be in Seattle next week as part of the review panel for the Virtual Earth exam.  I took 71-544 Virtual Earth 6.0 Developing a few weeks ago.  Last week we received an email asking if we’d be interested in … Continued

Spent the last 2 days in an office where i’m not allowed to blog, use facebook, twitter, msn or check my various email accounts.  I’ve definatly been suffering withdrawal and feeling completely cut-off from the world. Trying to decide if … Continued

I am very proud of the growing community around Virtual Earth. In only six weeks since it was released the community site that I run, http://www.viawindowslive.com/ has had ten articles submitted using the latest version 6 of the API. The articles … Continued

Derek Chan has published a great introduction to communicating with Virtual Earth from server side code. The article is a good read to understand the basics of ajax before proceeding onto more complex examples or using asp.net ajax extensions. Read … Continued

Here’s an update on ViaWindowsLive for November.  Top Content www.viawindowslive.com/VirtualEarth.aspx http://www.viawindowslive.com/ www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/Messenger/MessengerIMControlPresence.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/GettingStartedwithVersion6.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Blog.aspx Top Articles Messenger IM Control & Presence Getting Started with Version 6 Clustering Pins in Virtual Earth 6 Whats new in Virtual Earth 6 Adding … Continued