Yesterday I was please to present to the Southwest Computer Conference with David Lynn. We presented two different sessions, the first session was about the Microsoft web sites tips and tricks and the second was about Windows 7 and Windows Live.

For the first session I talked about how to find information you want on http://www.microsoft.com. My first suggestion was don’t rely on the home page to get you where you want to go try typing in the product name you are interested in for information about Power Point type http://www.microsoft.com/powerpoint but what happens when you type http://www.microsoft.com/moviemaker and you don’t go to a product page? You will get directed to a search page looking for that term where you can add additional terms to find the product you are interested in. We also talked about how to use the support\knowledge base side of the site http://support.microsoft.com, my big suggestion was to pay attention to the key words a the end of the articles. The keywords are the best words to use in search terms.

The second session was about Windows 7 and Windows Live. I covered several features of Windows 7 that included:

• Windows Search
• Desktop Enhancements
• IE8
• Windows Easy Transfer
• For XP
• How to
• Action Center
• Problem Steps Recorder

A good place for a description of all of these features and more can be found "What's Coming Windows 7".

David covered many of the features Live.com including:

• SkyDrive
• Photo Gallery
• Messenger
• And much more…

We had some comments and questions that generated interest in:

Running Windows 7 on a hello Kitty Netbook
The link to register your Windows 7 Release Candidate (note is looks like you are going to download it but you will not have to do the download)
Where to get the Live applications http://download.live.com/
Photosynth

I think that is all the topics that came up, please leave a comment if I missed something…

We really enjoyed the day and hope we can come back next year for more.

By way of Kurt Shintaku and the Swiss IT Professional and TechNet Blog here is a cool way to know what is going on with Power Management on your Windows 7 box.

Windows 7 – Power Management Reports

So I hope you have heard of it but I wanted to make sure you know just how easy it can be to become a BizSpark startup… all you need to do is email me woodyp (put an at here) microsoft (yes a dot here) com and I will get you started within 1 working day. What do you get you may ask all kinds of free software from Microsoft and once you have your application working and are ready for some exposure we will help you with that as well. If you have any questions at all about the program please let me know.

Just yesterday I commented on twitter how I dreaded giving a 101 talk on the .NET Framework and I was pounced on in twitter and email with comments about how needed that type of content is desired. Like many people once I know something I tend to think everyone knows it… I need to break myself of that!

So today I found a two (new to me) sites that Microsoft has for getting stated…

• Ramp Up
  • This is new part of MSDN that has some quite complete content and helps you track a learning plan.
• www.msdev.com
  • This is a site targeting solution providers but anyone can use the content

Update: SI forgot one of the more amazing offers Microsoft has going right now. it’s called Jumpstart and you get 60 days of free hosting, free Expression Web and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express.

Well no one except Jas (the guy who hired me in to Microsoft) noticed that I have now been at Microsoft for 4 years... WOW I know there were several people who did not expect me to make it this long and to be honest I did not expect to make it this long but now it looks like I may make it for my desired 5 years. Just to review I started at MS as a Developer Evangelist where I got to help support the local Microsoft community as well as reached out to non-Microsoft communities. This was a great job I loved helping get support from Microsoft, this year I took on the challenge of the Architect Evangelist position (I call my self a Technology Evangelist as I self identify more as a developer). In this job I am more focused on working to make early adoption of Microsoft technology successful and then evangelizing the use of the solution. In my option I have not done an outstanding job in this position, it kills me as I want to be the best at anything I do! This coming year I will be looking to be outstanding in this job or what ever they have me doing.

What I have learned in 4 year:

• Most people think Microsoft is something it’s not!
• Big companies can bring out the best and worst in people
• To succeed you have to self promote
• Having big company benefits make wives happy
• I love to deliver not just work processes
• and more that I don’t want to make too public ;)

I helped Suresh Sreedharan a ISV Architect Evangelist execute the first Windows 7 Incubation Week. I will not go in to at much as we had a real writer Tamara Chuang stop by on the last day of the event and she did a great story read more…

What 4 developers did with Windows 7 in 1 week 

Mix Online Labs has released a great tool to help creating jQuery scripts for common interactive scenarios… If you go to the Glimmer site and read the related blog posts for more information I especially like the post by Tim Aidlin about the development of Glimmer.

[Cross posted with Strategy and Architecture Council blog]

Joe Shirey and I (Woody Pewitt) have recently concluded a series of Architect Councils titled The Importance of the Client. In 2 weeks and 1 day we did 10 events in 7 cities and while it is always great to meet customers working with our tools and technology due to the break neck travel involved we are happy it’s over!

We talked about what investments Microsoft as made and is making for web development including ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, AJAX Control Toolkit and ASP.NET 4.0 AJAX Preview 4 as well as the work we have done on Internet Explorer 8. We talked about the commitment Microsoft has made with IE8 as far as browser compliance. We also showed some of they ways developers can extend the IE8 shell\chrome with Accelerators, Web Slices and Search.

We had several questions about IE8 and Group Policy and the complete information about Group Policy and Internet Explorer 8 are available but I am happy to say that the developers tools can be turned off. There are many other setting that are manageable via Group Policies in IE8 checkout the Internet Explorer 8 Deployment Guide for more information on how to get IE out to your users with the settings you wan to have for your environment.

If you are interested in the slides I presented I have put them out on my SkyDrive.

Some links that may be of interest were:

• What's New in Internet Explorer 8
• SilverLight Demos
  • Hard Rock Memorabilia
  • Kelley Blue Book Perfect Car Finder: Photo Edition
  • SnapFlow
  • Local Chess
• As an example of a ClickOnce once and rich visualization of data with WPF I showed Vertigo’s Family.Show application.
• For an example of an application that extends the reach of a web site I showed Slideshare’s SlideShare Ribbon that enables interaction with Slideshare from within PowerPoint 2007.
• As examples of extending on to the mobile platform I pointed out Pandora for Windows Mobile.
• I also talked about rich mobile applications with the example of PockeTwit.

For all of you who made it to the events thanks for showing up for those who did not sorry we missed you but we hope you all can make our next set of events witch will be on line. Stay tuned to this blog for details.

The West Region DPE Customer team (the team I work for) is just about to start our 3rd quarter Architect Councils. This Architect Council will be the last in person set of events our team will be doing this fiscal year 4th quarter will be all virtual.

This time around the topic is “The Importance of the Client” we will cover The Value of the Client, The Changing Face of the Web, Creating Powerful Applications on Computers and Devices and The Future of the Client. This is a topic that I am passionate about! Way too often software developers are now creating only online experiences for there users but ask a consumer I bet you often they don’t like the experience. Compare that to when the consumer gets a rich client application I will bet dollars to donuts they prefer the client application.

Locations

Click on the city name for details and to register

3/24/2009 – Bellevue, WA
3/25/2009 – Mountain View, CA
3/26/2009 – San Francisco, CA
3/31/2009 – San Diego, CA
4/1/2009 – Irvine, CA
4/2/2009 – Los Angeles, CA
4/7/2009 – Denver, CO

Today I at Startup Weekend LA and so while I am up in Los Angeles where should I eat? Pink’s of course… OK so this was the first time that while close I had the time and motivation to wait in the line (I am told it’s always at least a 30 minute wait) and wow was it worth it!

I had a basic a Bacon Chili Dog and fries and now I am totally craving a Poli Bacon Burrito Dog! While there some “famous” guy walked up of course I am so out of it that I did not know who he was but a bunch of people in line got pictures with him while we all waited (he waited like the rest of us, I thought that was quite cool of him, I just looked him up it was Donald Faison). If you ever find yourself close to Pink’s I totally suggest you give it a try, I may find myself down there again this weekend!

Microsoft has teamed up with several web hosting partners to offer 60 days of free web hosting and Microsoft also gives you the software to do the development with.

This should make it easy for anyone who wants to tryout the Windows web platform. For all the details and a list of the hosting companies go to the web page Microsoft Web Platform and enjoy!