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• Mix it up!

  Hi! I'm Alfred Biehler, working with Microsoft UK alongside Claire in Microsoft's Developer platform group. My focus is on all our UK developers, and I've been given the opportunity to attend the MIX conference at Las Vegas. My expectations of the event was high, and I'm not disappointed! For starters: You can join in this amazing event by going to http://www.visitmix.com. You can see the sessions on http://sessions.visitmix.com, and/or you can even attend a UK re-run later this year in the UK... more details to come. Let me briefly share with you the biggest wow moments for me during the first keynote, that just finished: IE 8 beta is available for download now. (This beta is intended for developers). Amongst the new capabilities shown in IE8, was the ability for web apps to detect and act on losing a network connection, and a back button that really goes back - even on AJAX pages! SQL Server as a service has been announced. This is huge! I've been talking about this since the end of 1999, and it's fantastic to see this now becoming available. This would allow developers to build applications that draw data from "the cloud", without the need to manage and run the database yourself. Silverlight 2 beta 1 has been announced, with awesome demos, including how we'll experience the Olympics in a few weeks, how HardRock Cafe has a memorabilia site utilizing DeepZoom (seeing a 2bn pixel photo, zooming into any area very quickly), Aston Martin's virtual showroom experience and more. I really enjoyed seeing also some of Microsoft's partners (that also competes with us) on stage, e.g. AOL email using Silverlight, and DoubleClick (Google) for building Silverlight Adverts. And lastly - we saw demos of how Silverlight apps just worked on Nokia phones after the agreement that has been reached yesterday with Nokia to support Silverlight on their phones. One statistic that blew me away, was that we're getting about 1.5 million downloads and installs of Silverlight per day. If you do have a moment - go and have a look at the sessions @ Mix online! Alfred Posted Wednesday, March 05, 2008 3:29 PM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: .NET, Beta, Events, Microsoft, Silverlight, Software design, Technology, Web

• Robotics and .NET Fundamentals webcasts

  Dan Waters has posted a series of introduction level webcasts on his blog. The content includes: Introduction Getting Started Setting up the Create Serial port communication in VC# Express Teaching the robot to sing More on serial port stuff Setting up and utilizing Bluetooth Driving the robot in a square Intro to VPL and MS Robotics Studio Learning how to drive the robot via a dialog box See how you can use VPL to create a program without writing any code whatsoever Introducing Autonomous Behavior Using the iRobot Create's sensors and a flow diagram to back up when an obstacle is encountered Conclusion to the series and you can access it here. Claire Posted Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:41 AM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: .NET, Robotics, Training

• Tales from the Inspiration Tour

  The Inspiration Tour is underway and our presenters Ed Dunhill and Ben Coley have so far presented at Manchester Metropolitan University and Staffordshire University. Check out their blogs to read comments from the students and to access links to some great accompanying resources. Next they are off to Bradford, Hull, Essex and Aberystwyth, oh and stopping by Nottingham to help with GameCity. Those of you who have already booked a date should now have an email from me with the electronic version of the flyer and in the next few days you should receive a poster tube with some hard copies too. Don't forget to let me know how many students will be at your session so that I can send you enough t-shirts and other items to give out. One smart university set up a simple registration system so that they would know when the event was sold out and conversely, if more marketing needed to be done. We do this with all of our internal events and allow for a 30% drop-out rate. If you have any questions about the tour or still haven't booked your slot yet then please email me i-claipe@microsoft.com. You can check date availability here Claire Technorati Tags: Inspiration Tour, Students Posted Thursday, October 11, 2007 10:52 AM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: .NET, Embedded, Imagine Cup, Silverlight, Student, XNA

• Inspiration Tour

  We’re very excited in the Academic team, we’re just about to launch the “Inspiration Tour” and we can’t wait to go out and meet you all. Ed Dunhill           Ed and Ben will be out on the road during the next six months, so why not take a look at our Inspiration Tour web page to find out more and beat the rush to reserve your tour date now! Ben Coley                                               The aim of the inspiration tour is to bring technology to you and your students, everything from the . NET platform to some of the really cool stuff that’s around at the moment like Silverlight, XNA and Microsoft Embedded technologies. Spaces will fill up fast so please email us if you are interested in securing a date. Posted Tuesday, August 21, 2007 9:28 AM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: .NET, Academics, Careers, Events, Imagine Cup, Students, Technology, Training, Web, XNA