Microsoft « Driven to Develop

Microsoft Marketing Has Lost It…

November 29, 2006

You have to watch this ~~new marketing strategy~~ from Microsoft.

Then check out their “limited time” offer.

UPDATE: Looks like they “sold out” of the offers – sorry. As a side note, I was SERIOUSLY disappointed in the site as a whole; it was almost unusable with the constant script timeouts and poorly rendering pages. I nearly missed out on the offer myself out of pure frustration.

UPDATE: Looks like they’ve pulled the video now – viral marketing has a short lifespan apparently.

2 Comments | Marketing, Microsoft, Office 2007, Vista | Permalink
Posted by David O'Hara

DDNUG: Scott Hanselman…

May 12, 2006

I've been attending Dallas .NET User Group (DDNUG) since the beginning of the year. It's been great to be around folks with similar (mostly) interests/goals plus it's pizza and giveaways. (The "luck of the Irish" seems to be favoring me as I've come home with a book, software (VS2005 Pro w/SQL 2005 standard), or a gift card pretty much every meeting. Can't beat that!) In general, the presentations have been good, with few exceptions, and usually quite timely – thank you Chris Menegay. However, last night's talk was a absolute stand-out.

I've been keeping up with Scott Hanselman via his blog for quite some time now. He's a great writer and has a real passion for what he does. On top of which, he's always got the latest/greatest in tools and isn't afraid to tell you what he REALLY thinks about something. Since he began his podcasts, Hanselminutes, I've been able to "see" a little more of his personality and am glad to report that he's every bit as cool and fun(ny) as he appears. Unfortunately, he had to catch a plane RIGHT after the meeting so I was unable to chat with him but, hopefully, they'll have him back at some point in the future.

1 Comment | .NET, DDNUG, Development, Microsoft, Programming, Scott Hanselman | Permalink
Posted by David O'Hara

Visual Studio 2005 Commercials…

March 27, 2006

(Sorry couldn’t think of a witty name for this post – guess you’ll just have to deal with “informative” instead of “humorous”.)

I just found this link to some ~~great little ads~~ (UPDATE: ads are gone – here’s all that remains) for the new Visual Studio 2005. You may or may not get some of the jokes depending on your level of geekiness.

I’ve actually had Team System installed for some time now on our development network and am really impressed. While the upgrades to the developement environment (IDE) are significant, the most important portion has been the integration of the collaboration and project tools. Being able to generate, report, and track work items (bugs/features/etc) without leaving the IDE is great and really cuts down on the amount of time needed for the project management details (once you get over the learning curve). Plus, all the project related reports are available without the need for an “update meeting” to constantly reasure “The Bobs” that you’re actually doing something.

2 Comments | Development, Humor, Microsoft, Programming, Team System, Visual Studio | Permalink
Posted by David O'Hara

Visual Studio Team System RTM…

March 21, 2006

Here’s my Newsvine seed. Wow, now I’ve got to get the latest download off of MSDN and upgrade our test install.

1 Comment | Development, Microsoft, Newsvine, Team System, Visual Studio, Work | Permalink
Posted by David O'Hara

More Microsoft Censorship…

February 7, 2006

Well, well…looks like I’ve finally seen first hand that when Microsoft doesn’t want something around. I was reading up on Commerce Server 2006 and came across a blog by Bryce Milton (a MS employee). As per my usual routine, I started to run thru some old posts to get a feel for the author. I came across this post and figured I’d use the links HE PROVIDED to read about this Richard Gregg character he referred to. Here’s the MSN link he provided (click for full size):

Strange. MSN claims they’ve “never heard of the guy”. So then I hop over to Google to see what’s what (click for full size):