Just found out about this site about security: Hellosecureworld. Take a look at it. It's in Silverlight (always a good reason to check something out) and it has comics (another good reason). What are you waiting for: click the link!

Grz, Kris.

I just noticed at home that the look & feel of live search has changed. Steve Balmer recently stated that Microsoft is updating its whole live experience and certainly search. Could this be a new step forward to a renewed platform? Recently I found myself using live search more and more instead of google.

Grz, Kris.

Tomorrow I'm heading for Seattle for the annual MVP summit. I just got renewed so I'm quite happy to be there as a full blown MVP. This is also the first time that I'll be visiting the US. I'm very excited about the whole thing because it means also for me the chance of going to Redmond itself, the "Mekka" for people that are into Microsoft technology.

We'll be arriving on Sunday after a flight of about 10 hours and on Monday stay in Seattle itself. Tuesday and Wednesday all sessions will be at Microsoft campus and Thursday again will be in Seattle. A lot of it will be under NDA but I hope to be able to blog about my adventure while I'm there.

If you're also going: I'm staying in the Sheraton hotel. I'm a very social person that likes to meet new people so don't be shy to come to me and say hi.

Grz, Kris.

Tim Sneath, a well known evangelist of Microsoft was in Belgium yesterday. I got invited for a meet and greet with him by Microsoft Belgium. The first part was technical, Tim talked about Silverlight and we had the opportunity to ask questions. It was very interesting for me. The other fun side about it was that I got to know new people as well. Something I enjoy a lot since I'm quite a social person.

Afterwards we went with the group to a restaurant and enjoyed a very tasty meal in good company.

Here are some pictures that were taken:

Grz, Kris.

Join the conversation and explore how you can create next-generation Web experiences. Now, for the first time in Belgium, the MIX essentials conference brings you the latest information from the global MIX'08 conference held in Las Vegas in early March. With Keynote presentations from Steve Ballmer, and other international speakers, unveiling the latest Web-oriented solutions from Microsoft.

Hope to see you there too.

Grz, Kris.

It seems Microsoft recently put up a couple of new sites that might be of interest to you:

• A revamped site dedicated to the Expression family: There's lot to find already, tutorials, starter kits, forums, ... While the Expression family's mostly targeted towards designers I also used Expression Web in the past and currently am taking my first steps in Blend 2.5 preview to get to know Silverlight 2 a bit better.
• TaskMarket: a new place for freelancers to find each other for short term assignments.
  

Grz, Kris.

You can already start downloading the MIX08 sessions. I just finished watching the keynote and boy am I looking forward to Silverlight 2 final edition. Also the new capabilities of IE8 are looking very promising and I bet every web developer/designer is really looking forward to the support of CSS2.1 in it. Hopefully Microsoft decides to push IE8 to every windows installation as soon as possible after the final release so we can get rid of IE6/7 incompatibilities and CSS hacks just to get it to work.

Grz, Kris.

Ok, it seems this year has been the year of new technologies from Microsoft and yet new stuff's coming out. I found this blog post from Julie Lerman that had a talk with Scott Guthrie on how to handle everything that comes out of the firehose: ScottGu on how to deal with the Microsoft firehose.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday evening I and several colleagues attended the MSDN evening about Visual Studio 2008. It was most of the time an introduction of the possibilities of the new IDE and there was a whole lot of talk about the enhancements to the C# language. Not that I mind because that's also my language of choice. Especially the principle of extension methods look great and very interesting. Too bad however that the new enhancements of VB.NET weren't shown as that's also a language that's used very often. My current project (winforms, .NET 2.0, NHibernate, SQL Server 2005) also is created with VB.NET.

Most of the stuff that they showed, enhancements for web developers, great integration of tools for CSS that I already used with Expression Web, I already knew off. The thing that I didn't saw before is the cool VSTO ribbon designer. No more crafting with custom xml files anymore, just design. Cool. I guess several of my colleagues, that are mainly using VSTO, were glad when they saw this.

Afterwards we all had a drink and it was nice to see some familiar faces again that I haven't seen for a long time. One of the reasons why I like to go to these evenings/events is the social aspect. According to some people I'm a walking Facebook application myself.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday I went to the first of 5 sessions for my LEAP course. Taken from the website:

LEAP (Lead Enterprise Architect Program) is meant at complementing the existing skills and experience of aspiring architects with specific architect-level information about Microsoft technology. The acquired knowledge will help the aspiring architect in their day-to-day architectural work.

I found it to be very interesting. Most of the time courses are just sit and listen but this course is all about interaction. First we got some introduction talk and of course a course. Directly afterwards we were divided in groups to think about a possible solution for an architectural problem. After about an hour 2 groups defended their ideas towards each other. The group that I was in almost came out with the same idea like the other group and it was also very alike the approach that Microsoft came up with. I got to know new people, something I always like a lot since I'm not really social challenged. I'm looking forward to the next session already.

Grz, Kris.

Like Silverlight? Like search? Like them combined? If so be sure to check out the new Tafiti search engine. I especially liked the treeview option where you can see, in a rotating tree, what's been found. Probably it won't replace, for me anyway, google or live search but it shows the possibilities that you can obtain when using Silverlight.
Speaking of which, if you're in Belgium on September 20th you can join the VISUG meeting about Silverlight. I'll be there too.

Grz, Kris.

Always fun to know what those names stand/stood for and what they became when the product got actually released. Take a look here: Microsoft codenames.

Grz, Kris.

I just read the sad news about the death of a great .NET community person: David Boschmans. I knew David as being a great and nice guy that took the time to listen to the community. I heard at the VIP community weekend that he had health problems but that he was recovering. Rest in peace good man, you'll be missed.

Grz, Kris.

Hi,

if you're into Microsoft technology you'll probably know about Channel 9 and On10. While I was surfing/investigating the revamped ASP.NET site I noticed a new entry in the community toolbar: Channel 8.

Channel 8 is THE place to be for STUDENTS who want to code, connect and create technology. Stay plugged into tech news and share in the experience with students around the world just like you who want to see their creations come to life. This is also a back door directly into Microsoft just like Channel 9 but from a student point of view. This means access to the inside scoop about our products and life working inside Microsoft and information on cool things coming out. This is your community – a place for you to share your tips and tricks and even your problems. Go check out what others are doing and talk about what you think is cool.

I hope a lot of interesting content will come up there just like on Channel 9. More to watch for all of us.

Grz, Kris.

Since I became an MVP I also got into the VIP pool of people. This was my first time but it was nice to see some other Belgian MVP's but also others that made it to the VIP pool thanks to their outstanding community awareness. First we had an informal meeting as to what direction Microsoft sees the community going and where the VIPs see it going. Not all people were developers but also IT pro's were there. Some of them I already knew but most of these people were strangers to me. After we had introduced ourselves there was an IT pro that came to me and said: "thanks for the help on the forums". Apparently he had asked a question on the ASP.NET forums and I helped him out (and actually gave a correct answer too).

After that meeting we settled down in our hotel rooms, a very nice hotel in Ostend (Golden Tulip Bero). After that we gathered for a small game in Ostend where we had to find several key locations and put a card on a board that corresponded with something we could see in the neighbourhood. It was fun and actually the team I was in did win. After the competition we had a nice dinner in the Kursaal (a known building in Ostend). After that we gathered in a lounge bar with a lot of possible cocktails. I had some nice chats with several people that evening/night and not everything was tech related.

The day afterwards, which came too soon as I nearly couldn't sleep during those 4 hours I spent in the hotels bed, I was the first of the group to eat breakfast. But soon several other members of the group joined me so I immediately had some new conversations going on.

Normally at 10 o'clock the group would gather to play some other games but some of us had to leave. I was one of them as I went to Westend to team up with my parents.

Actually I had a lot of fun and want to thank the people that made it possible for me to attend it and I hope to see the other VIP people back soon.