…to Hamburg.

See you there.

As of this weekend the beta version of ActiveSync 4.2 is available for download.

“Microsoft ActiveSync provides a great synchronization experience with Windows powered PCs and Microsoft Outlook right out of the box. ActiveSync acts as the gateway between your Windows powered PC and Windows Mobile powered device, enabling the transfer of Outlook information, Office documents, pictures, music, videos and applications from your desktop to your device. In addition to synchronizing with a desktop PC, ActiveSync can synchronize directly with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 so that you can keep your e-mail, Calendar, Notes, and Contacts updated wirelessly when you’re away from your PC.”

No change-log so far. So please try for yourself on a non-production machine with a non-production Windows Mobile device. Thank you.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/downloads/activesync42.mspx

“Microsoft is challenging developers worldwide to create conversational robots, or BOTs, for MSN® Messenger and Windows Live™ Messenger. The most original, useful robots collect $40,000 in total prizes.”

“Robots or “BOTs”, are software programs that you can add to MSN® Messenger and Windows Live™ Messenger. If you add a robot to your contact list, it can chat, give you customer service support, perform searches, make suggestions, play games and more.”

Source: http://www.robotinvaders.com/main/Default.aspx

We invite you to be among the first to experience the clarity that Windows Vista can bring to your world. The Windows Vista Customer Preview Program makes a pre-release edition of Windows Vista Ultimate broadly available to the public for the first time.

It’s available for public download and testing now. You can grab your bits here and here.

This version now is time-limited:
“Windows Vista Beta 2 (and RC1) is time-limited, pre-release software that will expire on June 1, 2007.”

You can also order Beta 2 and RC1 DVD kits there.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/preview.mspx

Munich.

I am on the road now

As this is a germany-only-offer I’ll do it in german:

“Die Entscheidung ist gefallen! Die überwältigende Anzahl von 6477 Teilnehmern hat es der Jury sehr schwer gemacht. Dennoch stehen die deutschen Vertreter für das Weltfinale in Indien jetzt fest. Die vielen tollen Ideen und Euer super Engagement möchten wir mit Euch gebührend feiern – denn eine Party unter Palmen bei 25° Lufttemperatur und 31° Wassertemperatur geht auch in Deutschland. Wir laden Dich hiermit herzlich zur Imagine Cup Beach Party am 30. Mai 2006 in das Tropical Island Resort nach Brandenburg ein.

Es sind noch ca. 50 Plätze für Studenten frei. Also los und anmelden! Die Vergabe findet nach dem First-Come-First-Serve Prinzip statt.

Hier auch ein kurzer Blick auf die Agenda:

Source 1: Imagine Cup Beachparty 2006
Source 2: Microsoft Imagine Cup 2006

I just installed Vista on two of my machines…. And WOW! That’s really going to flash everyone who will be using it in the future…

More to come soon.

I am at the Microsoft Studentpartner Summit 2006 in Duesseldorf-Mettmann at the moment. And of course I made some panoramic views:

“The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is the ECMA standard that describes the core of the .NET Framework world. The Shared Source CLI is a compressed archive of the source code to a working implementation of the ECMA CLI and the ECMA C# language specification.

The Shared Source CLI goes beyond the printed specification of the ECMA standards, providing a working implementation for CLI developers to explore and understand. It will be of interest to academics and researchers wishing to teach and explore modern programming language concepts, and to .NET developers interested in how the technology works.”

Source: Shared Source CLI 2.0 download

I don’t know why but I am in movie-making-mood. So I did another movie showing some of the features of Windows Live…:

• 
  
  customization


• 
  
  searching web, news, images,…


• 
  
  adding gadgets…

click to view

Today is all about GUI So it’s the perfect time to point you to a gallery that shows the brand new UI of Office 2007 Beta 1.

yes, this is word…

I really do like the new interface – I am using it for some builds now and it’s in the first place not what you would expect from Microsoft. It’s designed and features high usability… and when you will start using it you will acclimate really fast like I did.

Source: Jensen Harris

Oh yeah. It was time to replace the worn out battery of my notebook (HP compaq nc8000) and replace it with a shiny new one. And since I want as much wireless time as possible I ordered a new multibay battery with it. Everything arrived today and: god is that awesome!

My nc8000 now actually does the 10 hour long run with the two batteries fully loaded…hurray!

That was a delicious and even more entertaining dinner…

matie “housewives kind”

betroots soup – baked salmon trout-bread dumplings

fillet of oval – tuna risotto

White chocolate parfait – sweet olive litchi-espuma

yeah, things have to be discussed…

my team and I wish you a binary christmas…

I did not write for over a week now – I simply had no time to write – but now I want to give you a short update on what happened the last days:

2. December: the 360 arrives. I had only some time to unpack and testdrive PGR3 – in fact it’s what was promised – the next generation gaming console. (please make a firmware update so that the DVD drive is more quiet).

yes, there’s an apple keyboard attached to the 360.

To raise the pain-bar the desperatly needed XBOX VGA cable is not available anywhere around. I actually have to wait till it’s available again. Until then I am using the 360 via PAL-60 – which is – oh well …

There are some nice and some bad things to say about the 360 – one thing I just found out and impressed me: when you want to type – let’s say in XBOX live – you might want to use the on-screen keyboard. But when you attach a commonly used USB keyboard to the 360 – you can use it for the typing job … I wasn’t expecting that.

late last week I attended the 3rd “Speakers Acting” Training held by Vision Voices Executives Alexandra Schwarze and Martin Marx. As you can imagine it was a fantastic and enriching experience.

And the this weekend it finally happened: SIXT gave me my the first V6 – a Mercedes Benz ML320 – what a … hell of a car.

hmm… a SUV at >220 km/h… hrhr eat this mother nature!

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you what I did with the addictive ML – We took a trip to Berlin to meet with the guys of the Chaos Computer Club Berlin who are organising the 22th Chaos Communication Congress. As things work out we will be in Berlin at 25th of december with 10 people – recording and streaming the whole congress for you. Working closely together with the guys from congress-tv, congress-streaming… I can only cross fingers and hope that everything is going to happen as planned and discussed.

Source 1: http://www.visionvoice.de
Source 2: http://www.ccc.de
Source 3: http://www.ccc.de/congress/2005

Nico held is talk this friday – and here are his slides for you to download.

Microsoft beta-tests the Windows Live services at the moment… go and have a look there… some really great ideas and services are coming up the next months:

Source: http://www.live.com

As you may have noticed I was in Munich on monday. Taking part at the community event and the ready-to-rock launch party at the offices in Unterschlei

I held a 3 hour lecture at the “.NET Chaostage” event at the FH Deggendorf last week and I got this really cool present from Helena:

It’s a real silicon wafer from Intel (of course a not usable one with contamination). But cool, eh?

go for it… If you want some more information about the Imagine Cup…take a look here and here.

Source 1: Imagine Cup 2006 Overview
Source 2: Imagine Cup Registration

.Net Chaostage

Das Angebot an technischen Fortbildungen und Informationsveranstaltungen, gerade zu neuen Technologien wie auch der Bereich .NET, gestaltet sich im Großraum Deggendorf sehr übersichtlich. In Zusammenarbeit mit dem von Prof. Dr. Michael Ponader geleiteten „WI-Forum“ der Fachhochschule Deggendorf, veranstalten wir in unserer Funktion als Microsoft Student Partner im Rahmen der neugegründeten .Net-Usergroup ein Fortbildungsevent.
 
Die Vortragsreihe findet am 4.-5.11.05 (Freitag/Samstag) statt und beschäftigt sich mit zahlreichen Themen, darunter mit dem .NET Framework 2.0, Programmierung, Business Intelligence, WebServices und vielen mehr. Das Angebot umfasst Vorträge zur Schaffung einer Gesamtübersicht und Workshops, in denen die Teilnehmer das Wissen selbständig aber mit Unterstützung kompetenter Referenten erarbeiten können.

Die Veranstaltung richtet sich dabei jedoch nicht nur an Studenten der Informatik!
Zahlreiche Themen beschäftigen sich mit Inhalten, welche durchaus auch Betriebswirte – Vortrag zu Business Inteligence, Medientechniker – Vorträge zur Webanwendungen, aber auch für die Mitarbeiter der FH-Deggendorf – zum Beispiel Vortrag zu Security, ansprechen.
 
Eine Übersicht über die gesamte Agenda können Sie unter folgenden Link einsehen:
http://www.fh-deggendorf.de/dotnet/
 
Die Speaker wurden sorgfältig ausgesucht. Sie verfügen sowohl über umfangreiches Wissen und fundierte Kenntnisse auf ihren Gebieten, als auch über Erfahrung im Bereich der Präsentation. Näheres zu den einzelnen Referenten können Sie auf der oben angegebenen Seite erfahren.
 
Gerne würden wir dieses Angebot an Sie herantragen und Sie herzlich zur Teilnahme einladen.
 
Diese Veranstaltung ist kostenlos und dient ausschließlich der Fortbildung. Falls Sie an dem Event teilnehmen möchten, würden wir Sie bitten sich unter der angegebenen Url anzumelden.
 
Sollten Sie Fragen haben oder weitere Information wünschen, können Sie uns gerne kontaktieren.

______________________________
Microsoft Student Partner
Microsoft Academic Program (MAP)
Microsoft Community Leader and Influencer Program (CLIP)
.Net – Usergroup Deggendorf (INETA)
Fachhochschule Deggendorf

Phone: +49-991-343875
Email:  helena.lindenau@studentprogram.de
Email:  sebastian.fuchs@studentprogram.de
Web #1: http://www.fh-deggendorf.de/dotnet/
Web #2: http://www.studentprogram.de/
Web #3: http://www.ineta.org/

If you didn’t attend this this years PDC05 you can watch and listen to nearly all tracks from this professional developer conference for free:

Anybody want to make some comments about the myth that Microsoft does not talk about it’s technologies in-depth?

Update: Be aware of the fact that if you want to download ALL of the material(like I am doing at the moment) it’s about 24 gigabytes…

Source: http://microsoft.sitestream.com/PDC05/

For the next 3 days I will be at the Microsoft Company Meeting – a great opportunity to meet some people I normally wouldn’t have the time to…oh and to visit “Starlight Express” in Bochum

Source: Microsoft Company Meeting 2005

I really quarreled with me if I should post this article. But I do it because of the great music. One more word about my thoughts: I only want to have such real-life content on this website that regards me and my adjacency. Since this website is about technology and interesting things I don’t want to deal with daily news – and catastrophes are such news I don’t want to deal with on this website.

But now go and buy this album. It’s really great – and that’s not only because it’s completely made by Musicians who are also Microsoft Employees.

“This album has been made possible by the generous donation of music from 16 artists. These 16 artists (or contributing artists) are employees of Microsoft, and will receive no compensation from the sale of this album.

In soliciting content for this compilation, there were submitted many times the number of tracks than could fit on the CD. While the artists and tracks below represent the public face of this generosity, the willingness of the music community at Microsoft to contribute was immediate and significant. Thanks go to all who submitted tracks – both those on this album, and those not.”

Source: http://www.songsforthesouth.com/

“Ending weeks of speculation about which upcoming video game platform will give gamers the most bang for their buck, today at the German Games Convention, Microsoft Corp. revealed that consumers can get their hands on Xbox 360™ — the most powerful and feature-packed next-generation video game and entertainment system — for as little as $299.99 U.S./€299.99/