I knew they had some tricks up their sleeves!!!
Both Halo and Halo 2 (the original Xbox discs) will run on the Xbox 360, with full multiplayer support,
in 720p with full-screen Anti-Aliasing.
http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=h2anniversary&p=5312619
My lust for the Xbox 360 has reached new heights.
Looks like someone was listening to me 🙂
The Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition products are now available for free download, and will be for 1 year. If you download it now your copy will not expire. They’ve promised 1 year of free downloads, but I’m hoping that after 1 year they’ll decide just to keep them free (heck, I think they should be on the Windows disc to begin with!).
Oh, and SQL Server Express Edition is FREE and will always be free.
I survived Mind Camp
But barely!
You see, I woke up Saturday morning with no voice to speak of (or with!). Perfect timing, don’t ya think? I get the chance to spend a day with some of the most interesting people in the Seattle area, and I can hardly talk!
Mind Camp itself was an absolute success.
Here are just a few of the discussions I took part in:
- Corporate blogging. Challenges, concerns, fears, goals, and accountability.
- OPML, Tagging, Gada.be
- Podcasting. How-to, equipment, software, strategies.
- MSN Search, Windows Desktop Search, Live.com
- Linux. An Ubuntu installation session.
- Lucid dreaming
- Smalltalk and Squeak!
- Mono – .NET on non-Windows platforms.
- Commuter Cars – Futuristic, high-performance, agile electric car that fits in half a lane. (Keep an eye on these guys!)
- City-wide wireless internet
Other random highlights:
- There was great MSN representation from Brady Forrest, Andy Edmonds, Mike Torres, and Sanaz Ahari.
- I talked Mike into buying a Brandon-phone and jumping to Sprint. And I’m workin on Brady too 😉
- I met one of the masterminds behind Start.com and Live.com and got a great inside perspective.
- Buzz Bruggerman was showing off ActiveWords as usual, including a new Tablet edition.
- Scoble gave out some Longhorn swag. Yeah baby!
- Even the food was good!
I’d like to extend my thanks to everyone who made the first Seattle Mind Camp happen. You not only put together a superb conference, but you pulled it off with brilliant success. Thanks.
I’ll write more about some of the sessions tomorrow. At the moment I’m still feeling pretty out of it. Back to my chicken soup!
Off to Mind Camp.
About to head off to the Mind Camp, or what my girlfriend Brittany calls “GeekFest” (which, oddly enough, sounds less geeky to me than “Mind Camp”).
I hope they have WiFi.
Found this via Dare.
In this post, Sean from the IE RSS team writes:
Our years of experience in with HTML in Internet Explorer have taught us the long-term pain that results from being too liberal with what you accept from others. Hence, we’ve adopted the following overriding principle for IE 7 and RSS platform in Windows Vista:
We will only support feeds that are well-formed XML.
This principle allows us to build a more predictable feed parser. As a platform, it’s important that applications using the platform to consume feeds can rely on the fact that the platform will always be providing information in the way that the publisher intended (trying to guess what a publisher meant to do when there is an error in a feed can be tricky, at best). We also spoke to several people in the RSS and developer community at Gnomedex and at PDC, and they wholeheartedly supported this.
Good stuff!
We’re hiring!
We’re hiring! We’re building out a new test team based in Redmond, and we need your help! We have a pretty small, close-knit, fast-moving product team – and our developers love to do what others have deemed impossible. As a Software Development Engineer in Test, you’ll help us make sure we deliver the highest quality product possible to our users.
You’ll define test strategy for your features. You’ll interact with a team of remote testers. You’ll build automation systems and tools to help testers and developers. You’ll be a voice for our users and you’ll have the responsibility of improving the user experience for literally millions of users world-wide.
We’re looking for SDE/Ts with good communication skills, experience with C++/C#, and a strong understanding of software design. Bonuses would be an understanding of COM, .NET interop, and 64-bit development. We’re looking for the best and brightest to improve the Windows Desktop Search platform, content indexing, developer APIs, and cutting-edge UI. You’ll work with consumer and enterprise users as well as teams throughout Microsoft including Windows, Office, and Windows Live.
If you’re interested, or know someone who is, check out the links below:
SDE/T Position on MS Careers site. (A little outdated, but mostly accurate)
Please submit a resume (for job 139746 or 139744) and we’d also love it if you’d e-mail us (which will help get things moving).
We also have Dev and PM positions that we’re looking to fill. So if you’re interested in either of those disciplines, let me know!
Seattle MindCamp
This weekend is the first Seattle Mind Camp. They have a nice overview of the event here. Or you can read all about it in the news here (Seattle Times) and here (Seattle PI).
The latter refers to it as a kind of “Geek slumber party.”
The Mind Camp website has a list of the names of attendees, and mine is among them. Just a few of the familiar names are Dare Obasanjo, Chris Pirillo, Robert Scoble, Mike Torres, Liz Lawley, Brady Forrest, and of course Ponzi.
A reader noticed via Scoble‘s blog that I was attending, and asked if I would accept some questions he’d like me to bring up during the discussions. I think that’s a great idea.
So if you have a question, concern, or topic that you think should be discussed – post it here! I’ll check the list periodically during the event via my Pocket PC Phone and after the event I’ll post a wrap-up of what was covered.
It’s a 24-hour event, so give me everything you’ve got!
MSN Web Search is getting better.
So for a while now I’ve been trying to give MSN Search a chance. But a few months ago when I would try to use MSN Search instead of another provider, I would quickly give up and go back to my old ways.
Then things started to change. I’d try MSN once in a while, not find what I wanted, and look elsewhere. But instead of seeing a set of clearly superior results, I started seeing pretty much the same thing. As in, no one could get me what I wanted. Not without a more refined query, digging into several pages of results, etc.
But over the last few weeks I’ve found myself using MSN Search more and more, and being really happy with the results. I really think they’re on the verge of hitting a huge milestone in terms of core relevance.
Do I expect non-Microsoft people to try MSN Search every few days? No. I think that once MSN Search is comfortable with its core relevancy, they need a big push to get a bunch of users to try it. And not only that, but they need an edge that will make it stick.
Will it happen? Stay tuned.
But in the meantime, there’s a new Channel 9 video with some Web Search geeks from my building here.
Jack Thompson is an asshole.
I think I’ve got enough evidence to back that up.
If you aren’t aware, this guy is the Anti-Violent Video Games sleezeball lawyer from Florida that even other Anti-Violent Video Game sleeze distances itself from. He also has lied about having the support of the National Institute on Media and the Family.
But most recently, he published his “Modest Proposal” – promising to donate $10,000 to charity if a video game developer created a game that he describes in the letter.
So someone did it. What do you think happened next?
I’ll quote Penny Arcade who said it best,
Thompson now claims that his repellent suggestion was “satire,” and we must conclude that his financial offer was also satire, some new breed of satire apparently that I’m sure is just hilarious to people in need.
There is good news, though. Today Penny Arcade donated $10,000 to the ESA in his name. God bless ’em.
How much will you bet that the mainstream media glosses over this one?
New Xbox 360 viral marketing campaign.
In the same vein as ILoveBees, OurColony, and Origen 360, a new campaign seems to have emerged. It’s centered around this site:
For those of you that went to whip out your calculators, yes a hex 168 would be decimal 360. Team Xbox has some interesting pictures apparently related to the story.
They also suggest that an informant told them the meaning behind the campaign will be revealed on October 18th (this Tuesday). Some speculate that it might be the first chance to preview an actual Xbox 360 game in person.
What do you think?