This one crops up from time to time. You need a Microsoft LiveID for use with say Windows Messenger. But when you go through the sign up process, you only have options for a .hotmail.com or .live.com domain on your alias. If you have registered your own domain name, then ideally you want your LiveID profile to be somehow linked to that as well. Turns out it is pretty simple. There are many ways...
TIP: The Top Mistake of public speaking
I mentioned in a previous post that I was really nervous when I presented at the Microsoft Launch last week. This actually caught me by surprise, because I am usually pretty comfortable presenting in front of groups. At home that night I was wondering why I had suddenly tensed up. Was it the large crowd (the room was packed – probably more than 300 people)? Unlikely. I've done that...
TIP: Fixing the annoying Vista Windows Explorer View quirk
Like many people I was hoping that Vista SP1 would fix the issue with Views in Windows Explorer changing randomly. But alas, it didn't. Gee, must be a big bug. Anyway, there is a registry hack that fixes it – sort of. It doesn't actually fix it, rather it just sets all the folders undefined, which in effect will keep them at the current view. To enable it you'll need to add a...
MEDIA: Speaking at a Microsoft Media event
Last week I spoke at my first media event. Which was kinda fun. Here's what happened. As part of the Microsoft Heroes Happen Launch event last week, Microsoft put on a media event. It was all organised by their PR company (in this case Howorth Communications) and involved getting a few key Microsoft executives (Martin Gregory and Bob Kelly) plus a few clients (5 in this case) to tell of their...
Mick Badran on BizTalk and Carbon footprints…
Mick’s post on his recent BizTalk RFID training course is great news of course, but the snippet that caught my eye was this. When talking about customer uptake of RFID, here’s the approach that got a good response. He quotes Scott Allen (a Microsoft Technical Specialist): Scotty inspired me with his take on BizTalk RFID – he said "If you tell clients we’ve got a show...
Microsoft Office Live Workspace
I really like the new Office Live Workspace concept. Not ground breaking, but very slick. Easy to use and pretty fast. Integrates with three of your apps (Word, Excel and PowerPoint). It’s still in Beta (isn’t everything these days?) but seems very solid on first usage. Easily share workspaces with your friends, customers and community links. It is similar to SkyDrive in use, but in a...
Grant Holliday on Blockers
A great little post by Grant on how to deal with ‘Blockers’.
I loved the anecdote about a company policy for running virus scan on everyone’s machine at 11am daily.
Technorati Tags: Corporate life
MICROSOFT: Heroes Happen {Here} presentation
I had the pleasure of speaking as part of Dave Glover's session in the Visual Studio track at last Thursday's Microsoft Wave launch in Sydney. Dave's session was on some of the new productivity enhancements in Visual Studio 2008. In my spot I covered off the experiences we've had with the 2008 stack at Elcom. In particular I outlined how we, as a software development company...
TIP: How to access SQL Server Developer edition over a network
This one has caught out people for ages, so I thought I'd clarify that it IS possible to connect to SQL Server 2005 Developer edition over a network. The problem is that the Express and Developer versions of SQL Server 2005 turn OFF remote access by default (Standard and Enterprise have it ON by default). That's why out-of-the-box you can't connect over a network to it. But it's...
LINK: List of programs that break with Vista SP1
NOTE: I meant to get this out last week but you may have noticed my link blog was down for the best part of a week :-( Microsoft has released a list of programs that are affected by Vista SP1. Not much to worry about, as most have newer versions available that support SP1. Zone Alarm and the NYT Reader are probably the main ones that will interest people. (via ZDNet) Thankfully, I've...