Microsoft Student Partners

Wooooh! We just got back from Game Camp ‘08 and despite a number of technical issues that caused some glitches when transferring our XNA demo to our Xbox 360, we had an awesome time!

Clocking in at around 230 participants with an XNA overview & demo, a number of industry and university presenters, and topped up with an industry Q&A panel the event was roaring success. There’s lots of feedback (thanks if one of these is yours!), I’ll let everyone know what the main points were when we finish collating it all.

Thanks to everyone who came along - I hope you enjoyed it all, we certainly enjoyed putting it on and are looking forward to WA Game Camp ‘09!

P.S. Keep on the lookout for source code, slides, photos and more from the event…

[Show as slideshow]

Register Now at xna.wamsp.com.au

Kicking off what will hopefully become a twice-yearly event, the UWA MSP’s launched the first UWA Installfest that CS has seen in a long time! The event included free copies of Microsoft software from MSDN-AA, including handouts of Office Ultimate trial CDs (to be used in conjunction with “It’s Not Cheating“).

Luke doing some installing…

A local UWA MS enthusiast (*not* one of the MSPs!)

P.S. Keep your eyes peeled for information about our upcoming Xbox XNA demo…

If you live in Perth, Australia, are a student and would like to be involved in the Imagine Cup 2008 competition, please contact us asap.

Three WA MSPs are entering as a team into the competition and we require a graphic artist for some of our program artwork.

You would need to be experienced in creating digital artwork and be ready right away.

If you are interested please contact us on the contact page.

Luke
MSP (UWA)

As my day job is working in an Accounting practice I come across problems all the time, that can be solved with computers.

One day I was given the task of looking up the historial share prices of stocks. Given the number of stocks, this wasn’t going to be a nice job, as I would have had to lookup each stock individually.

Another problem that existed was all the major finance websites that have historical data often get it wrong. Just plain wrong. I’ve found errors with Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, etc, etc.

So to do this job, I made a little .NET program called StockPrice.

Using Visual Studio 2008 I was able to very quickly (about an hour) come up with a multi-threaded program that grabbed historial prices from 3 major sites and compared them to each other, giving what it thinks is the most likely price on that day. Further more, Visual Studio 2008 allows me to OneClick publish the program for automatic updates and installation from the web.

If you are interested, please download it and take a look. I am very interested in any feedback you may have. I am happy to support it to an extent at http://forum.wamsp.com.au.

You can check it out at http://www.tidesoft.com.au/stockprice

Luke
MSP (UWA)

One of the common issues that I have is that I want to join in on Open Source projects (because their doing something cool, for experience, etc); but they are usually in some weird\archaic language (like C or PASCAL) whereas I’d MUCH rather use C#.NET. Alternatively, they have a Linux setup and would prefer other developers to be using Linux as well (to avoid cross-OS issues before a final release is ready).

Codeplex is self-described as “Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site”. So, while there are projects on there that Microsoft has started (eg AJAX Control Toolkit, bluePortal, Gimme and many others); there are thousands that are being run by individual teams. In fact, Microsoft has gone as far as to say guarantee it “does not control, review, revise, endorse or distribute the third party projects on this site” – ensuring that the community-oriented aspect of the Open Source projects is not questioned (personally, I believe that some of the projects should be reviewed by Microsoft…).

What Codeplex Offers for Developers

• File space and a great looking site to release their project
• A community of like-minded developers
• An integrated Issue Tracker and Discussion system; allowing the community to participate as well
• Ability to use any technology to create a project, and any licence to release it
• A Team Foundation Server for Version Control and Work Item tracking
• WebTrends to gain statistics on people viewing, interacting with and downloading your project
• SVN support (for those not wanting to use TFS)
• A completely Ad-less interface

What Codeplex Offers Everybody

Mainly, an easy and excellent way to find Open Source projects and communicate with the people managing and running these projects. To keep up to date, Codeplex also allows Syndications (RSS) for all projects - allowing you to stay up to date easily.

Codeplex is also working on the “Codeplex Client” that will allow anybody to get any piece of code from Codeplex without having to be a Contributor, Developer, Coordinator or even without requiring a registered account at all.

Codeplex is also always trying to improve itself; and so is self-listed (a MetaListing?).

Some Cool Projects

These are just some things that I thought were pretty nifty

For Developers

• AJAX Control Toolkit - An extremely useful set of ASP.NET AJAX controls
• BlogEngine.NET - An ASP.NET based blogging app
• Silverglobe - A Silverlight-based 3D globe\map
• Script# - Compile C# into JavaScript
• NetMassDownloader - Allows batch downloading of the .NET source code
• IronPython - Python for .NET (with Visual Studio 2005 integration)

For Everyone

• Rawr - For people who love World of Warcraft
• BeyondPod - RSS and Podcast manager for Windows Mobile
• GMobileSync - Allows Google Calendars to sync with Windows Mobile
• GameKnight - A Nintendo GameBoy and GameBoy Colour emulator (built entirely in C# and DirectX)
• Vista/XP Virtual Desktop Manager - Allows multiple desktops in Windows

If you are spot a cool project, or are working on one, leave a link in the comments!

- Daniel
Curtin MSP

UWA MSPs are pleased to announce Installfest 08.

The idea behind InstallFest is to help out students and staff get software on their PCs that they may normally find difficult, such as downloading large amounts of data from MSDNAA.

We will have hard media available for people to install from, and Installfest techs available for questions.

Venue: Computer Science Room 1.24
Date: Monday 7th Apri
Time: 1pm - 3pm 

For more information, please post at http://forum.wamsp.com.au

So as Microsoft was kind enough to give delegates to the Heroes Happen {2008} events a copy of Windows Server 2008 and I have been in the market to build a new server, I figured this is the perfect oppurtunity.

I’ve decided to log my progress here, including getting some feedback as the best way to go.

Read the rest of this entry »

I personally manage between 5-15 WordPress sites depending on clients needs at the time.

One of the biggest issues for me is keeping track of each site. Stuff like:

• Is each site updated to the latest WordPress version?
• Is each plugin on each site updated the latest version?
• What plugins are installed on each site?
• What configurations are on each site?

In addition, updating each site to the latest versions of first WordPress and then each plugin is a huge time eater.

What multiple site Admins such as myself need is a single, simple management interface that remotely retrieves information from each site and displays it in a dashboard style interface. In addition, the ability to push out changes, such as updates would really be the peak of multiple site management.

After some thought, I believe wordpress.org would be the best place to host this utility. Admins could login to wordpress.org with their wordpress login, and immediately see aggregate information of their wordpress hosted blogs. In addition, they would be able to add non-hosted blogs, and includes those in the aggregate.

Each blog information could be collected via a password protected RSS style feed. This feed could be turned on or off (default as off) in the options section of each blog.

The simpler the better. Eg. It could be as simple as a table such as:

You could click on each blog to drill down or update, etc.

Rather than actually write the update module, the application could be set to simply “trigger” backups, updates, that were included in plugins, or if wordpress release official modules.

This idea could be extended to no end. Features such as the ability to write a single post and have it published to each of your sites would be good. Perhaps for events such as server maintenance.

Any thoughts? Please comment!

Luke
MSP (UWA)

So it’s on again this year! You can get the full version of Office 2007 Ultimate for only $75 or $25/year by clicking on the banner above if you are a TAFE or Uni student or staff.

You just have to register with your TAFE or Uni E-mail address.

The entire program is available from the site for instant download, or you can opt to have a DVD sent to you for a small fee.

If you go to Curtin or UWA you can also see your MSP who has free DVDs you can use. You just have to go online to get your license key.

Any questions, please see the forums at http://forum.wamsp.com.au

Luke
MSP (UWA)

Weird tributes to the original HoTMaiL way of spelling things aside, how many of you have ever tried to send a somewhat complex html email that needs to be read in clients other than Outlook? One of the best ways to achieve this is to write out the HTML yourself, but there seems to be next to no support for this in Outloook and meagre support in Thunderbird (an old extension).

If you’ve installed Vista or Server 2008 and you happen to be wanting to write HTML email - then your in luck! The new “Windows Mail” client (which replaced Outlook Express) comes with a convenient “Source Edit” mode that lets you view and edit the source of your email on the fly:

Things to Note:

• Make sure you should be sending HTML mail before you send it. Not everyone can / likes to receive HTML email so it’s a good idea to provide them with a plain text alternative.
• Use style=”" attributes rather than the <style> tags to define CSS. Although this will make your HTML mighty messy, it will ensure that everyone actually renders your styles. Clients like gmail will not render <style> tags no matter where they are placed.
• It’s recommended that you send a few test emails around to the different clients (web and otherwise) around (Live, Google, Yahoo, Outlook, Thunderbird etc.) to see that your mail is rendering as you expect it to. I recently sent an email that Yahoo rendered with blue text that underlined when the mouse hovered over it. Go figure.

So it’s official. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has been released to end users for download.

We at WAMSP have been using SP1 for awhile now, and I can honestly say, it makes Vista the Windows OS you want on your desktop. Faster file copies, less UAC prompts and other good stuff.

Read all about it on the Vista SP1 Overview page.

Or just Download it from these links:

Microsoft Downloads: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (x32)
Microsoft Downloads: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (x64)

Remember, most Computer Science students have access to Windows Vista completely free of charge via the MSDNAA program. So if you haven’t already loaded it, or you were waiting for SP1, now is a great time to try it out.

Luke
MSP (UWA)

WA MSPs Oren, Daniel and Luke joined the Microsoft Crew for Heroes Happen {2008} at the Perth Convention Centre today!

The event was to launch three major Microsoft products, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008.

Following the Keynote were individual tracks for each product detailing the new features and technical aspects of each. It was very informative, and the new features look awesome.

Each delegate got a pack of goodies, including a full version of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise.

If you go to Curtin or UWA and would like a free 90-day trial DVD of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite please contact us and we’ll organise you a copy.

More pictures of the event can be found on flickr.

If you want to register or be notified of Microsoft events like this in the future checkout this link.

I came across an interesting thing today while wandering around the web (as you do…).

Firstly, the new version of Silverlight, as well as the announcement and release of Silverlight for Series 60 Symbian phones. Even though the Silverlight site claims that Silverlight is “cross-device” the only devices it is being offered on is PC and Symbian phones - what happened to PDA’s? Why would Microsoft release Silverlight to a competitor (ie the Symbian developers) when they haven’t released it on their own devices?

To solve this conundrum, I decided to visit the Windows Mobile Developer Centre to see if there was a beta of Silverlight or, in the least, some sort of announcement. Then I noticed the kicker: there is a RSS Feed collator box on the homepage entitled “Rich Internet Applications” that is pulling no feeds, though it has the cryptic message of “The ability to create Rich Internet Applications on the Windows Mobile platform is coming soon. Stay tuned…”.

Silverlight on Windows Mobile; it would defiantly bring both of these platforms to the next level - and make it that much better for developers.

- Daniel
Curtin MSP

UPDATE:

It appears that Microsoft did announce Silverlight 1 for Windows Mobile: http://silverlight.net/learn/mobile.aspx
Still, this doesn’t decrease the prospect of how cool it will be.

Thanks to Jim Wilson (http://www.pluralsight.com/blogs/jimw/) for pointing this out.