Craig Bailey on Microsoft - Main

Windows Marketplace for Mobile

Craig Bailey — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 01:10:40 -1300

I was a little disappointed to read Microsoft’s Developer Strategy for the Next Generation of Windows Phones.

Unveiled last week, this PressPass piece indicates that Microsoft will be sharing 70% of sales revenue with developers for any Windows Mobile 6.5 applications sold through Windows Marketplace for Mobile. (Note: 70% is the same as Apple shares on their AppStore)

Put another way, Microsoft is charging you 30% of your sale, for giving you the opportunity to make your app available via Marketplace for Mobile. This seems high to me. Of course, having access to a huge international market is fantastic (and well worth the 30% commission I’m sure), and the promised feedback to developers on whether their apps meet certification requirements is extremely valuable.

But in a catch-up strategy (which Microsoft is definitely in), and with established channels such as Handango already in play (although to be fair they charge a whopping 40%), I was hoping for something spectacular from Microsoft.

Microsoft may still have significant market share in the mobile space, but it is eroding, and thus the success of endeavours like Marketplace for Mobile is vital for the platform. Microsoft needs to be attracting amazing mobile developers and encouraging the development of amazing mobile apps.

Ideally we’d be seeing Microsoft offering 95% share, with weekly competitions, awards for exceptional apps (as judged by their certification committee), special promotions of quality apps, etc.

Obviously there is significant infrastructure (and thus costs) required to facilitate the Mobile Marketplace, but extracting this from developers is not the way to proceed.

No, in this catch-up-to-the-iPhone-App-Store climate, Microsoft needs to view Mobile Marketplace as a marketing expense, not a monetization strategy.

Aside: In some ways this reminds me of the mistake Microsoft made with the early versions of its developer tools for Office (VSTO). Initial versions required special ISV partnerships, followed by versions charged at a hefty license fee. Not until recent years has VSTO become part of the Visual Studio install, and even now it still has some hurdles, since it is only included in the Professional Version and above. IMO, putting the VSTO tooling in the Express versions is long overdue, but that’s a topic for another post…

Photosynth and Location

Craig Bailey — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:01:35 -1300

Perhaps you missed this little gem: Photosynth Map Explore.

I hope not, because I think it represents an interesting insight into the future of location.

A little while back I was underwhelmed with Photosynth, but I did look forward to improvements with location being tied in. Photosynth Map Explore is the answer. It’s early days, but the potential here is huge. I love it.

I was, and still am, looking forward to every photo being geo-tagged and angle coded. But here’s the obvious tipping point I missed. At some point we’ll get to a point where we have enough geo-tagged photos that we’ll be able to go in reverse. We’ll be able to upload an older photo, and with technology like Photosynth, be able to reverse calculate where it was taken.

You can see where I’m heading right? With enough photos catalogued in a site like the Photosynth Map Explore site, we’ll be able to slot in a photo and have it tell us where the photo was taken.

And the beautiful thing… every new photo that gets reverse located, adds further to the overall database, and makes the coverage even better.

The possibilities are endless. We haven’t even discussed the overlaying of timestamp data on the coverage. You’ll be able to reverse not only a location, but perhaps even the time it was taken (as landmarks, seasons and other characteristics change). And then the obvious step is to be able to do this for any frame in a video.

I’m actually pretty excited about this. And intrigued. Just as Google Maps and Live Maps has brought national security considerations into the conversation (and with just satelite imagery), imagine how potentially disruptive technology like this could be.

Find out more about Photosynth here.

(For a good overview read the LiveSide post.)

The Twitter Popularity Contest

Craig Bailey — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:10:03 -1300

I’ve been wondering what’s next after Twitter. Where are all the cool kids heading these days?

After all, it has become so mainstream now that the inevitable transformation from intimate community to marketing broadcast is all but complete. The vibe on Twitter has changed.

Yes I know, that’s what the Un-follow option is for, but that doesn’t stop the fact that Twitter has changed. And for me, I guess I’ve become a little disillusioned of late. Here’s a few thoughts.

Warning: tongue-in-cheek *analysis* follows:

People follow you to be followed back

Has this been going on for a while, or has it just started in the last few weeks?

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I have to say it is a shame to see that some of the ‘interaction’ on Twitter has changed to promotion and micro popularity contests. I realised this recently when I started getting followed by a lot more people than normal. Strange, I thought. Perhaps I’ve got something useful to say :) Think again.

The giveaway is when you get a whole bunch of new followers each day, and yet you finish the day with less followers than you started. Why is that?

Here’s another giveaway: you get followed by someone, and then they follow you again a few days later. Yep, you were quickly un-followed, and then they’ve had another go, not realising that you were a previous attempt.

I suspect that a fair proportion of my new followers are simply following me in order to get a follow back. Why? Because… if you have a lot of followers you must have something important to say, right? And if you have a whole bunch more followers that you follow, then you must be particularly important. And (so the logic goes) if you’re important then people are more likely to buy your stuff.

Now, a few months ago this was probably true. In my usual circle (technology), if you had a lot of followers you probably did have something worth hearing. But since moving into additional circles recently (SEO, social networking, small business, media, etc) I’ve seen much different behaviour. It seems as though ‘conversation’ has been replaced with ‘competition’.

Gee, I’m starting to feel a little left out in this competition…

How to feel more popular

Take my profile as an example. I’m always following new people, as well as following back probably 70% of people who follow me (the interesting ones). As such, here’s my profile as of Thursday 12 March.

You’ll notice I follow more people than follow me. Ooops. This represents a major no-no in the popularity stakes. Fun little tools like Twittergrader will help me see the light. For example, here’s how Twittergrader grades me:

Time to make amends. I need to improve my followers-to-following ratio.

No problem, I’ll just go through and un-follow a bunch of people. Here’s the results after some purging.

Let’s see how Twittergrader rewards me:

Awesome. I’m now ranked 2,000 positions higher and my grade has improved slightly. See, ranking higher is as simple as cutting back on the conversations you engage in! My online engagement experience is poorer, but I have the warm fuzzy feeling of being just a little bit more popular.

With a bit more purging I reckon I can improve my grade into the 99 percentile and fool myself into thinking I’m actually interesting!

(btw: wouldn’t it be good if Twittergrader added some categorisations too: <80 = you’re boring, >90 = scintillating, >99 = The sun shines from your…, etc)

How to be popular

A quick start guide for the newbies - here’s how to fool yourself into feeling really popular:

Find someone that actually is popular (example)
Go through their followers list and start following
Wait 24-48 hours – you can probably expect at least a 20% follow back response
Un-follow just about everyone
Inspect updated Twitter grade
Enjoy warm fuzzy feeling
Find someone else that is really popular and repeat

Advanced strategies

Here’s a few advanced tips for newbies, particularly those working in marketing departments or small businesses, who have just heard about this new ‘Twitter phenomenon’:

Do: buy in to the whole ‘Twitter is an un-tapped market’ philosophy
Do: treat every follower as a potential sale (as opposed to a conversation)
Do: send out marketing messages almost straight away (hey, people can’t wait to buy your stuff)
Do: assume that you are one of the first to discover this Twitter thing, and that you have a wonderful window of opportunity to do nothing else but promote your products
Do: promote yourself as a social media strategist/expert even though you’ve only just joined Twitter this week

Don’t underestimate the change

Hey, look, obviously I’m just having a bit of a light-hearted look at things here, so don’t take it too seriously. Sure, promotion and marketing are important – don’t get me wrong – of all people I’m especially aware of this as I build a new business with my wife.

And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with having lots of followers, or a good ratio.

The problem is when the pursuit of followers changes behaviour, conversations and engagement on what has been a wonderful, intimate, ego-less ecosystem so far. It’s a subtle change, but one that’s growing.

Am I over-reacting? Perhaps. And yes, quite possibly this is just a case of sour grapes because I’m not very popular :-)

But here’s my prediction: give it a few months and the release of soon-to-be revealed Twitter monetization strategies and I think many of the foundational Twitter members will be moving on.

And thus my opening question: Given that Twitter has changed, where are all the cool kids heading to now? Any thoughts?

Suggestions for Microsoft – Engage the Developer Community better

Craig Bailey — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:17:02 -1300

This was originally titled: “Frustrations with Microsoft – Part II” and is a follow on from my post in January. But I decided to change the title so that it comes across more positive. I don’t actually like complaining (seriously!) and my real aim is to provide constructive thought, so tweaking the words a bit will hopefully help.

That said however, I do see a problem with how Microsoft engages with the wider developer community, both here in Australia and globally. I’ve been chatting through these ideas with a few people over the last months, and whilst I get some occasional nods of agreement, I realise for the most part I’m on my own. But I’ll put it out here anyway. Let me know your thoughts…

It’s about discoverability

The issue as I see it is that Microsoft still hasn’t worked out how to engage with the wider developer community. I’m sure they know this is a problem, but I don’t see much initiative from them in solving it.

Here’s the reality: You reach developers via a Google search result.

That is, the majority of developer engagement is via a useful search result link.

And thus, Microsoft needs to work on SEOing their massive cache of developer resources (MSDN, TechNet, blogs and product sites) in order to provide appropriate content to search savvy developers. It’s about discoverability.

Before we go on…

An aside: You may or may not know that I was laid off from my job at nsquared in January. This isn’t the post to discuss why, however the reason I mention it is because for the past month I’ve been working on my wife’s site at Get Organized Wizard*. During that time we’ve been getting our heads around SEO, Social Networking and Google AdWords (amongst other things like product creation and general website development).

Here’s the biggest lesson we’ve learnt: People must be able to find you!

Obvious right? Yep. You might have great products, but if people can’t find them, then what’s the point? It’s absolutely crucial that every business understand just how important discoverability is. And by discoverability we mean two things:

1. Knowing what people are searching for, and

2. Optimizing our sites to be found for those terms (ie Search Engine Optimization).

The wonderful thing: most of our competitors have really bad SEO. By tweaking our site, we are climbing up the search results pretty quick. For some of our terms we are now on page 1. But we’ve still got a lot of work to do. And don’t get me wrong – it isn’t easy. In fact, it’s really hard. I guess that’s why there’s a whole SEO industry doing really well now…

Why do I mention this experience? Simply because I think this is a micro-shot (that’s kinda like a micro snap-shot :-) of the problem Microsoft is facing with developers.

Microsoft and Developers

Back to Microsoft engaging with developers. Microsoft has lots of great content, but it’s just not in a format that is easily found by the “majority of developers”. Keep in mind that the “majority of developers” are those still working in .NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. They aren’t the minority who are well informed on the latest tools, attend user groups and follow prominent bloggers. No, the majority are the back room guys and girls who provide and maintain the bulk of enterprise software infrastructure out there. Let’s call them the normal developers :-).

Microsoft’s problem is how to engage with these normal developers.

Here’s an example of the kinds of things a normal developer might search for:

Silverlight compared to WPF

I’ve spoken to many people who are still confused about WPF. Here’s a common question: I’ll get asked if WPF is a good strategy for web development and if it’s better than Silverlight. Silly right? Well no, actually. Because it indicates the message isn’t getting communicated well. That’s valuable feedback. And is it any wonder? Take a look at the search results – if you’re unsure what WPF is, then you’re probably still going to be confused after looking through the first page of links**. There’s an opportunity for developer engagement here.

[For the record: WPF is not a web technology, it is client side only (although it can be deployed as an XBAP). And for some clarity on Silverlight, here’s my post from 2007: Flash versus Flex versus Silverlight).]

Long tail searches

Here’s another example, this time on a longer tail term:

Microsoft is always going to rank 1 for generic terms (eg a search for SharePoint is always going to show a Microsoft site first), but it’s the longer tail terms that developers are really searching for. Take a look at this search term: “how to install SharePoint services” and tell me if you think the results** are high quality. These kinds of things are another big opportunity for Microsoft to engage really well with developers.

Damage control

And taking it a step further, it’s not only developer engagement, it’s also damage control. Take an example from my own blog:

One of the more popular posts on my blog has been this one: How to Uninstall IE8. These days (almost 12 months after I originally wrote it) it still gets a reasonable amount of traffic. Why? Because it ranks well. Here’s yet another opportunity for Microsoft – this time to capture an angry audience and soothe their frustrations. If Microsoft could rank number 1 for this search term, and then take the user to a friendly page that walked them through not only how to uninstall, but also offered solutions for common frustrations with IE8 they might just win back a few users they’d otherwise lose.

So, how do they go about this?

The solution: dedicated SEO specialists at Microsoft

As I mentioned earlier, the solution to discoverability is two-fold:

1. You need to know what people are searching for

2. Once you know what they want, you need to make the right content rank well for those terms

This is essentially internet marketing 101. Sounds easy of course, but it’s really hard. It’ll take time.

In my opinion Microsoft needs to do this if they are going to engage successfully. Instead of developers being directed to advert-laden, dodgy IT forums and years old sites when they search Google (eg see the earlier search example results), they need to be directed to appropriate content on Microsoft sites.

Each product team needs to have a dedicated group of Keyword researchers and SEO trained content authors. If they aren’t already, they should also be providing training to all their higher profile bloggers on how to target and rank for specific search terms.

Keyword researchers should be using feedback from the developer evangelists and technical specialists to narrow in on what terms normal developers are searching for (point 1 above). And then use SEO specialists with their technical writers and product managers to create/format the content appropriately (point 2 above).

Let me stress: this isn’t about lack of good content. I’ve been really impressed with the initiatives Microsoft has put into providing excellent community portals, full of rich, useful information. The problem isn’t lack of content. The problem is getting it to the right people.

Some final thoughts

The days of flashy events, road-shows and other extravaganzas are pretty much gone for the next few years. Microsoft needs to spend its marketing dollars really strategically now.

Perhaps most importantly, Microsoft needs to optimize for Google ranking (which is quite different to Live Search ranking). With things like Universal Search mainstream now, LSI pretty much a requirement, and the growing importance of micro-formats for SEO, Microsoft needs to plan strategically for Google result dominance (as well as understanding that ranking in Live Search is not going to guarantee any results in Google).

Divisional structure will be a problem

Microsoft is a big company so I’m sure there’s a ton of different departments and divisions working out how best to spend marketing and advertising dollars. The problem is that there’s often no real unified strategy for targeting developers. Each division has its own KPIs. That’s why expensive banner ads and trade magazine pages seem to be the standard approach for many marketing efforts. I’m guessing the conversion rates on these are very low, and achieve little more than brand awareness.

But if some of those marketing dollars were spent on proper SEO initiatives and driving developers to the right pages, I’m sure there’d be much greater buy-in from users, and a much higher willingness to be cross-sold to.

But hey, I’m not a marketer so I realise I’m speaking from ignorance here! So consider this last point less as a suggestion for how to do it, and more as feedback as to what I, a developer, would prefer to experience.

Conclusion: Developer engagement

Coming full circle now and back to engaging with developers, it’s pretty simple to see how Microsoft can improve their reputation significantly and foster deep developer satisfaction: Find out what they want, and make sure they can get to it! But it’ll take a change in approach from both marketing and technical teams, and with it a re-working of the incentives and KPI structures in place.

* Get Organized Wizard provides organizers and systems for organizing your life, personal organization and goal setting. Sign up for the Newsletter and get a free SMART Goals pack. Why this paragraph? Yes, you guessed it – for the SEO benefits.

** Note that your search results might be different to mine – Google tailors results based on your search history – but hopefully the results you see will be similar to mine and you’ll understand my point.

Silverlight 2 update gets it right

Craig Bailey — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:02:31 -1300

Last month I lamented the complexity Microsoft was imposing on products. Today’s Silverlight refresh is a simple example of them getting it right – it’s, um, simple.

Here’s the upgrade screen you see when hit the Silverlight install page. I especially appreciate the message (marked in the red box). One big button. Simple.

(Of course if you’ve got the developer tools installed, you’ll need to install the new developer version.)

(via Tim Sneath)

Microsoft Windows Mobile seems a little lost

Craig Bailey — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:11:55 -1300

It’s been heartening to see some glimmer of hope on the Microsoft Windows Mobile horizon (in spite of disheartening trends). The announcements at Mobile World Congress this week show that Microsoft is at least trying to improve their offering, with UI improvements in Windows Mobile 6.5 as well as various integration strategies including My Phone (hey what’s that rhyme with…), Marketplace (think AppStore) and Skyline (for pushing personal and work email). All good stuff.

But the glaring omission of course is any announcements about location on Windows Mobile. Whilst Google continues (or is that finalizes?) setting the foundation for location aware mobile platforms, Microsoft is still playing catch-up. Although I do note Google’s slowdown on the Dodgeball front :-).

Location based search and advertising have been the ‘next big thing’ for the last 2 years or so now. I’m interested to see what (if anything) Microsoft announces along these lines. Current technology (including GPS, cell tower and wireless triangulation) still appears inaccurate (eg only within 100s of metres) but the game is changing rapidly. Better technology exists (eg local company Seeker Wireless), and is easy to incorporate.

Shortly we (and the mobile services we use and share via) will know exactly where we are – and we’ll look back and wonder how on earth we survived without it.

Windows Mobile 7.0 perhaps?

(via Mary Jo Foley)

Frustrations with Microsoft – Part 1 - Complexity

Craig Bailey — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:25:38 -1300

In a word: Complexity

Yes, I know I’ve touched on this before, but it seems more apparent than ever that one of the problems crushing Microsoft at the moment is a set of overly complex experiences. We need simplicity.

One the strongest marketing messages you can broadcast is: It just works! Give me a product that just works, and you’ve got yourself a fan.

Companies like Apple (the current poster-child for ease), Atlassian, and Nokia generally get this.

To be fair Microsoft has tried to make things simpler (and perhaps too far in some cases – check out the latest version of Movie Maker for proof of that: it’s so simple it’s practically useless), but in general their experiences are way too complex.

Let’s take a few examples.

Exhibit A: Internet Explorer

The biggest example is the burdensome IE8. Bloated is an understatement.

Consider this: What do you want in a browser? Here’s how my behaviour matches my wants, I use:

1. Chrome for speed and simple browsing

2. Firefox if I want plugins (eg Firebug and FireFTP)

3. And IE if I really have too

Surely all people want is speed, simplicity, and some extensibility. Not silly slices and accelerators (that only 0.1% of users will ever even touch). And certainly not a user experience that breaks many sites that they’ve been working happily with for years.

As an aside, the whole standards compliance that Microsoft is pushing with IE8 is an answer to a question that hasn’t been asked. If Microsoft had pushed for better standards 10 years ago it would have been good. Perhaps even 5 years ago. But frankly, that ship sailed long ago. Today’s real standard is whether it works in IE7 and Mozilla. Burdening developers (and more insidiously – the users) with this annoying compatibility mode is just wrong. I was amazed to see that a ‘feature’ of the Release Candidate version of IE8 is that it will check a huge database of known sites that require compatibility mode and adjust itself accordingly (meanwhile the rest of us turned on permanent compatibility mode ages ago, and developers simply added IE=EmulateIE7 meta tags to their sites).

So, the situation stands like this: Microsoft introduce a stupid compatibility mode that no one wants. They burden developers with fixing sites that don’t render well. The outcry is huge, so instead of just scrapping the crazy notion they put in extra infrastructure to identify which sites shouldn’t use it. And they call this a feature. What are these clowns thinking?

By the way, as a simple hypothetical, imagine that all the IE competitors (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc) get together in a room. They’re discussing how they can compete against IE’s dominance. Some complain about the fact that IE is so intertwined with the OS and the unfair advantage this gives. Others talk about features. Finally one sinister person at the back suggests:

‘You know what would be good? If we could somehow get a malicious bit of code into IE so that by default it renders most web sites incorrectly. And to really seal the deal, we’ll make it appear as though it is some kind of standards compliance. That’ll stuff ‘em…’

Exhibit B: Windows Mobile

OK, next example: Windows Mobile. Much has been written about how Windows Mobiles are losing ground to iPhones (my example). Sure, the iPhone App market could be contributing, the coolness factor, and many other reasons why could be discussed. However, in my opinion, one of the big contributors is the difficulty users experience getting their devices to sync up.

In fact this is the reason I will likely be switching from my current Windows Mobile device to *gasp* an iPhone when my contract comes up for renewal.

For starters, the Sync software isn’t even built into Windows. I need to find the download from Microsoft, install it, and then go through the dance of deleting previous partnerships, creating news ones, trying to remember which settings I had syncing old contacts and calendar items and the list goes on. It’s one of the main things I dread each time I reformat my machine (approx every 3-4 months). Will the iPhone be better? I can’t be sure – but everyone (yes, everyone!) I’ve spoken to assures me it is.

However, the point isn’t really if the iPhone is easier. The point is that the Windows Mobile process is so bad that I’m looking around for other options.

Example C: Windows Live Writer

Final example: Live Writer. This is one of the better programs Microsoft has (ever) produced. It does a really good job of managing anything to do with your blog (or blog based web site – eg my wife’s site is all managed via Live Writer).

I recommend it to people all the time (see here for example).

But, do you know how to install Live Writer? You’d think it would be simple right? No, these days you have to go and install the Live Essentials pack and navigate your way through 7 programs and 3 add-ons. For Pete’s sake – Why? Has some junior in marketing just learned the *amazing* concept of cross-selling?

It’s a shame really. Instead of a simple install experience and beautiful program experience, it has now been mired with a complex and annoying installer. What’s worse, if you don’t un-tick all those extra install boxes you’ll end up with the fucking MSN toolbar installed. And don’t get me started on it trying to mess with my default search provider – another irritation.

A potential happy customer, now really annoyed.

Want to know how Live Writer should install? Then do this. Go and install Google Chrome. It’s simple and it works. And (if I’m not mistaken) uses ClickOnce – a Microsoft innovation of all things!

The test

Ask this question about IE8, Windows Mobile, Live Writer and any of their hundreds of other applications:

Q: Can we say ‘It just works’

If the answer is no, then we have a problem.

A plea for simplicity

Look, I’m a big fan of Microsoft, but sometimes I just can’t understand what their strategy is. At times, it seems they’re hell bent on making life harder and more complex for me.

So, here’s my plea: Microsoft, please stop working so hard on new features, products and services, and instead just take some time to work on simplicity. The financial returns will surprise you.

Trimming the fat?

Craig Bailey — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 12:16:07 -1300

The Microsoft layoffs (they’re reducing headcount by approx 5.21%) announced last week have been well and truly covered, with many (like Mini) saying it’s too little, too late, and others lamenting that a company of Microsoft’s stature has ‘steeped’ to get rid of it’s biggest asset.

My opinion? Well, it’s just business right? I’m sure the decision wasn’t made lightly, and who am I to conjecture as to what the proper decisions should have been? Check back when I’m heading up a billion dollar company and I might just have something worth hearing in that regard…

Is it the right decision? Time will tell.

Trimming fat

So, moving on. The item that interests me in all this, is when people talk about ‘trimming the fat’. I mean… what does that even mean?

My understanding is they mean something along the lines of ‘getting rid of the stuff (usually people) that aren’t really seen as benefiting the business’.

Now, I’m guessing that Microsoft doesn’t just hire people for the sake of it. (Of course, we’ve all seen companies with layers of useless management and wasted resource, and no doubt there is a bit of that in the halls at MS as well. But the main, I’m going to assume that most of their hires are beneficial and add value.)

So, theoretically, Microsoft’s hiring over the last 12 months (they increased headcount by approx 14%) has been pursuant to a business strategy. One that they intend to make money from.

The question thus becomes: At what point does the short-term cost outweigh the future return?

And the part answer: When the future timeline gets extended.

Timelines

So, this isn’t about ‘trimming fat’, this is about timelines. Microsoft is simply indicating that they believe the current economic conditions are here for a while. No real surprises there.

For Microsoft, the economic downturn is going to be here longer than they originally thought, and longer than the time it takes to get a solid return from their recent hiring strategy. But interestingly, not for all their strategies. A 14% increase over the last 12 months and a 5% decrease over the next 12, indicate that Microsoft still has confidence in some of their strategies from last year.

My question: How confident am I in Microsoft’s confidence? Is now the time to start buying MS stock?

SBTUG: Wed 28 Jan 2009 – SharePoint, Windows 7 and Touch

Craig Bailey — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:36:13 -1300

[Ooops! Forgot to post this on my own blog (but it’s over on the new SBTUG blog - and while you’re there let me know what you think of the revamped SBTUG site).]

Quick details: The Sydney Business & Technology User Group

When: Wed 28 January 2009

Time: 6pm (until approx 8:30pm)
Where: Microsoft, North Ryde
Contact: Craig Bailey : 0413 489 388
Cost: $5 donation (to cover Pizza)
More details: www.sbtug.com

About our sessions:

SharePoint for Managers : Kathy Hughes

Kathy will be presenting an overview of the business benefits of Microsoft SharePoint. Come along with your questions about how to best use SharePoint in your business.

Learn from Kathy’s extensive experience implementing SharePoint in a range of companies, what works best, what to look out for, and how to get user buy-in.

Windows 7 Overview + Touch + Microsoft Surface: Craig Bailey

Craig will be giving a quick overview of Windows 7, and then giving a practical demonstration with the HP TouchSmart, showing how multi-touch works and how touch on the screen can be used in business. He’ll also be showing the Microsoft Surface emulator and demoing a few educational applications, to give an idea of what can be achieved.

Please help promote the group:

SBTUG group on LinkedIn

We’ve started an SBTUG group on LinkedIn – feel free to join us if you see value in connecting with others on LinkedIn.

Facebook

Don’t forget, if you haven't already, you can join the SBTUG group on Facebook.

And please RSVP for Wed night’s event here to let us know you are coming.

Help promote SBTUG

I need your help - please spread the word about SBTUG. A blog link or some Twitter love is always appreciated :-)

Twitter

Last but not least, you can always follow us on Twitter here.

Hope to see you there. If you are keen, please leave me a comment letting me know what beer you prefer to drink.

Technorati Tags: Sydney Business & Technology User Group,SBTUG,Kathy Hughes,Craiig Bailey

Windows Live Tools for Visual Studio Getting Started Guide

Craig Bailey — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:16:27 -1300

As Nick has mentioned we’ve released a Getting Started guide for the Windows Live Tools for Visual Studio controls. The November CTP (details here, download here) has a bunch of controls for implementing Live Services in your web apps.

It includes ASP.NET controls for Contacts, Login status, Maps, Messenger chats, Silverlight streaming etc. The November CTP includes compatibility with Windows Azure and was upgraded for Silverlight 2.0.

The Getting Started guide is 53 page PDF and is available for download via pZing. It covers all the basics plus a few cooler techniques you might otherwise miss. Simply click on the image to the right to download it. Enjoy.

(via Nick Randolph)

Technorati Tags: Windows Live,Visual Studio,nsquared,Nick Randolph