Registrations for Microsoft New Zealand Tech-Ed 2010 are now open! Microsoft New Zealand Tech-Ed 2010 is easily the biggest IT event in the country and like previous years aims to be bigger and better! Some of what’s being planned for Microsoft New Zealand Tech-Ed 2010: IT" “Rock Star” Speakers We’ve listened to your feedback and are seeking to bring a number of the very best technical presenters to New Zealand. Already confirmed for the Tech-Ed Keynote is Microsoft UX Director, August de los Reyes. Hands On Labs This year the hands-on labs will feature a new architecture for improved...

Microsoft New Zealand will be launching Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Azure next month in Auckland and Wellington. For those working in the software development area you might already be using Visual Studio 2010 RC and the production ready Windows Azure. This half-day event provides an insight into Visual Studio 2010 as well as an understand of Cloud Computing and Windows Azure. To help with this launch Microsoft New Zealand has lined up some excellent keynote speakers. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Our keynote presenter is Microsoft’s Sam Guckenheimer, author of Software Engineering with...

Late last week Microsoft announced as part of MIX10 that spatial data support will be coming to the Microsoft SQL Azure Platform. Microsoft® SQL Azure™ Database is a cloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server® technologies. It provides a highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. SQL Azure Database helps to ease provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any software. High availability and fault tolerance is built-in and no physical administration is required. This is...

It’s finally available to the masses! Microsoft Windows 7 is now available for download to MSDN and TechNet users. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing about two weeks ago. Information about this can be found here: http://geo.geek.nz/microsoft/… As you can imagine, Microsoft servers are being hammered right now with the demand of Windows 7. This morning I grabbed Windows 7 Enterprise x86 and x64 versions. I have been running Windows 7 Release Candidate for months now and things have been going very well. I am still using Windows 7 Release Candidate as my primary operating system on my...

I have been looking forward to this news for a few days now and it’s now official. This morning Microsoft announced that Windows 7 has RTM’d. RTM officially happens only after sign-off occurs. What happens is a build gets designated as a RTM contender after going through significant testing and meeting our quality bar for RTM. Then, it goes though all the validation checks required for RTM including having all languages of that build completed. If all the validation checks have passed – sign-off for RTM can occur. Today after all the validation checks were met, we signed off and declared build...

Microsoft has released Silverlight 3! Silverlight 3 is a big release which delivers tons of new features and capabilities. Delivering on its commitment to help enable the creation and deployment of the world’s most compelling applications, Microsoft Corp. today launched Microsoft Silverlight 3 and Expression 3, combining groundbreaking new capabilities with simplified packaging to provide the industry’s leading media and rich Internet application (RIA) solution. Silverlight 2 was released in October 2008. Since then the adoption of Silverlight has grown and we have started to see a number of...

On Friday, I mentioned that Microsoft had unveiled a whole new brand called Bing. Information about this can be found here: http://mandown.co.nz/microsoft/… Earlier this afternoon, Microsoft launched Bing along with Bing Maps publically. Browsing http://www.bing.co.nz or http://www.bing.com On http://www.bing.com I notice Bing is a preview, while on http://www.bing.co.nz its a beta. Weird! Initial thoughts is that Bing is fast, very fast in fact. I am impressed. Even the search results coming back are pretty good. I am still having a play but its looking good. Bing in the http://www.bing.com...

Microsoft today unveiled Bing. Bing is a new Decision Engine and consumer brand providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. While the new Bing consumer brand is targeted towards the search market, Microsoft has renamed Microsoft Virtual Earth. Live Search Maps was our consumer maps offering. This is the web site you go to for maps, aerial photos, directions, searching for points of interest and creating collections of your own personal data to store in the cloud. Live Search Maps is now called Bing Maps. Bing! That’s right, you know...

The long awaited Windows 7 Release Candidate is now available for download to MSDN and Technet users. Microsoft servers are being hammered right now with the demand on Windows 7 Release Candidate. I was able to grab it install it and have it running. Windows 7 Release Candidate added a bundle more features along with quite a few bug fixes. Virtual XP for Microsoft Windows 7 is also now available for download to MSDN and Technet users. Will be installing ArcGIS 9.3.1 on Windows 7 soon on my primary laptop so will post updates about how that goes. In the meanwhile, go download Windows 7 RC ...

Microsoft has released SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1. Service Pack 1 (SP1) contains all the cumulative updates and fixes issued since SQL Server 2008 was released in August 2008. It also makes it easier to deploy SQL Server 2008.  A few specific features have been added: A feature called Slipstream allows users to install the database and service pack at once, easing the process of loading the software onto hundreds or thousands of servers. Report Builder 2.0 Click Once eases deployment. Service Pack Uninstall is designed to allow administrators to uninstall the service pack separately from...