TheSociableGeek.com

A funny thing happened on the way to my home page…. They changed it!  Well, kind of-sort of.  When I open up MSN.com on my development PC, this is what I see. It’s much brighter than its predecessor and easier to navigate. In addition, it has added some cool social media integration into the lower right hand corner.

Not only will it show my Windows Live, Facebook, and Twitter feeds, but it will also let me post from here as well.  I know this is not terribly new, but I did not expect it from MSN.com. It was a welcome surprise. 

Here is the funny part, not every user gets to see the new site. As a matter of fact, I get the old MSN page on every other computer in my house. In addition, when I do a Bing Search , I cant find anyone talking about it’s “New Design”. 

Finally, after searching every place I could think of, I found this one reference to it on its Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/msn.com , at the bottom of the page is this one line :

“On November 5 2009, Microsoft released a preview of their homepage and new logo. It’s expected to be widely available to over 100 million U.S. customers early next 2010.^[21][22]”

So, if unlike me, you don’t get the preview and want to see what it looks like, head over to http://www.msn.com/preview.aspx

Let me know what you think.

Daniel

I have finally reached Paris. After 2 planes 15 hours, 3 naps, and a chicken dinner, we landed in Paris in the oui hours of the morning (6am to be exact).  We area staying in the 6th district near Notre Dame and on the way to our apartment, one of the funny things I noticed was how small the cars were, not an SUV in sight. This made a lot more sense once I saw the size of the street were were saying on

When we finally reached our destination, we started getting settled in and when I popped open my laptop, I discovered that the Sensor and Location platform, or more specifically my IP location provider was able to determine I was in Paris and automatically changed my weather gadget to show me the local weather.   The sensor and location platform is one of the cool new things developers can use as part of Windows 7. Although it is very useful for gadgets, it can be used for any type of application that wants to be aware of its surroundings.  Go check it out, you will like it.

Image via Wikipedia

Join me for one of the coolest things to come out of the dev community in quite a while. I will be doing a seminar on Windows 7 Multi-Touch, and SketchFlow.   You can see the Agenda below, but you will really want to see the MultiTouch and SketchFlow stuff.  See you there.

Irvine
September 9, 2009

1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Click here  to register

Event ID: 1032423014

Los Angeles
September 10, 2009

1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Click here  to register

Event ID: 1032423015

San Diego
September 10, 2009

1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Click here  to register

Event ID: 1032423016

MSDN Presents: The Next Generation Client Experience

Windows 7 for Developers (MULTI- Touch) = Cool

Windows 7 is almost here! With it are numerous improvements and new features to take advantage of in your applications. Watch and learn as we demonstrate how to utilize the new taskbar, multi-touch support and more.

IE8 for Developers ( Showing how to create an accelerator)

IE8 makes your web better… faster, safer and easier.  This is true for developers too.  In this session, we will illustrate how developers can take advantage of some new technologies in IE8 such as accelerators to enhance a user’s web experience.  We will also illustrate the built-in developer tools in IE8 and how to take advantage of them.  These tools include a powerful CSS tool, script debugging and a script profiler.

Building Business Applications with Silverlight 3 and RIA Services

Silverlight 3 has launched.  In this session, we will illustrate how you can build powerful line of business (LOB) applications with Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3.  We will begin with illustrating how you can build powerful prototypes with SketchFlow in Blend 3.

I attended DrupalCampLA last weekend (8/8/2009) and had a blast talking to people. We were there to show how easy it is to install Drupal on and windows web server (IIS) using the Web Platform installer.  Since we were a sponsor of the event as well, I decided to bring a Windows 7 Multi-touch machine to show everyone.  It was quite a hit.  Most of the attendees had never seen or heard about the multi-touch features of Windows 7.  A number of them were impressed with how it really made their websites come to life for demo purposes.  While I was there I was able to share information on Rob Bagby’s talk about how to integrate both Silverlight and Windows Azure into a Drupal Installation.

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While I was in the sponsors room. I also took the time to quickly demo how easy it was to install Drupal on my Windows 7 Machine.

• Install MySQL
• Run the Web Platform Installer.
• And you are ready to go.

Since most of the attendees were consultants that implemented Drupal for their clients, they were excited to find out that they could install it on IIS. This gives them a greater chance of landing clients and greater flexibly in the operation systems that their clients use.

All-in-all, it was a great event and a great time.

See you Socially ….. Daniel

I have been a life long Cubs fan ( I know, I know, don’t say it ). So when I turned 40 we flew to Chicago to see my family and catch a cubs game. We had a great time and I took a TON of pictures. This was one of my favorites. No retouch, no photoshop, not paint (lol). The sun was shining through the upperdeck bleachers onto the back of this guys jersey.

And to top it off, Zambrano is by favorite Cub. He pitches, fights, AND hits homeruns.. how can you not like him.