Trouble moving from Windows Live Custom domains to Office 365

on Office 365, Windows Live

If you are a user of Windows Live Custom Domains, you may have heard that Microsoft is retiring this service and users are encouraged to sign up to Office 365 as an alternate service. If you’re thinking about switching your services then I recommend you hold off and read the points below first! I tried to switch and I got burned by the process. Hopefully the comments below are of help to you Dear Reader. Signing up to the service As it turns out, the initial sign up process is the easiest thing to do. You can choose a…

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Introducing devbloggers.com

on Blogging, Community

Sometime back, I wrote about Getting Involved in Open Source. Since then, I’ve been wanting to take Scott Hanselman’s advice on board but to date I have not found a particular project that I felt comfortable participating in or one that fit all my interests. If you look at how much is available out there it is a bit overwhelming! As a result, while still trying to decide which open source project I wish to participate in, I figured maybe I should start working on something of my own. Welcome to *devbloggers.com* As a software developer, one…

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History of Microsoft: A trip down Memory Lane

on Microsoft

31/7/2020 UPDATE If you've found information in this post useful then you might also like the post A Brief History of Bill Gates: From Microsoft to Today which was kindly sent to me by Anna J. who's son was doing a project about Bill Gates and the start of Microsoft and came across my post! Thanks Anna for sharing this link! If you’re a software developer using the Microsoft development platforms you are probably either currently at the Microsoft Build 2014 conference or like me you might be just catching up on the conference content through the…

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Microsoft Build 2014 Keynote Summary

on Build 2014, Microsoft

So earlier today Australia time the Microsoft Build 2014 conference kicked off with lots of new announcements. If you haven’t watched the 3 hour keynote and are interested to know what was covered here’s a quick summary of the presentation.  Windows Phone 8.1 Cortana: The Windows Phone personal assistant revealed. Uses Bing at it’s core and is different that competitor products in that it is able to better understand users as opposed to just being a voice command system. The Verge’s The story of Cortana, Microsoft’s Siri killer. *Notification Centre: *Windows Phone now finally…

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Satya Nadella: The chosen Microsoft CEO that was Meant To Be

on Microsoft

By now you will have heard that Microsoft has selected Satya Nadella as its new CEO replacing Steve Ballmer effective immediately. Nadella is an Indian born 22 year Microsoft veteran who most recently held therole of *Executive Vice President – Cloud and Enterprise. *Despite not being very well known publically to many outsiders, Nadella’s achievements in the Cloud and Enterprise divisions which includes Microsoft’s Windows Azure have been remarkable. So why Nadella? Microsoft took over 6 months to announce a replacement for Steve Ballmer since he announced his retirement back in August. So, after such a long search…

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Getting Involved in Open Source and the Dev. Community

on Community, Open Source

A while back I blogged my thoughts about where my career path has lead me and what I feel I would like to do next. In those two posts I’ve mentioned the possibility of getting new certifications but I was wondering if that would be a correct path to pursue. In order to help myself decide which path would be of more help to me going forward I decided to seek advice from Scott Hanselman. I’m sure most of you probably know Scott but if you don’t then go check out his website. I promise you that…

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The Start button is back, just not as you know it

on Microsoft, Windows8

So by now you’ve probably heard that Microsoft is bringing back the Start button in Windows 8.1. This follows some of the backlash that Microsoft has received since the removal of the Start button/menu in Windows 8. Whether or not this is an important change I guess this is debatable. However, I think the important distinction to make here is that the Start*Menu* is NOT coming back! The start menu that you’re used to from previous editions of windows is gone for good. I just wanted to put this out there just in case people…

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Pondering the future of an IT Career: Part 2

on Career, Microsoft

In Part 1 of this post I’ve shared my assessment of how my career has progressed so far since I joined the IT workforce and I mentioned the things that I like and the ones I don’t. In this post I will expand further on the comments that I mentioned under The Future and* How To Get There* sections. In those sections I noted that I like working with new technologies and that I really enjoy doing R&D to find the best ways of utilizing technology to solve business problems as well as being passionate about…

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Pondering the future of an IT Career: Part 1

on Career, Microsoft

For a while now I’ve been trying to think of how best to shape the future of my career. Over the past 7+ years I’ve worked in many environments on various roles and responsibilities. However, I now feel that it’s time for a change. After working in my current role for over 5 years, I’m at a stage where I feel that there is not much that is new for me. No new challenges …etc. This has lead me to start thinking about what the next step should be and I’m hoping that through this…

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Exposing your data using .NET WCF Data Services: Part 4

on Windows Azure, WCF Data Services

In the previous posts in the series Exposing your data using .NET WCF Data Services we’ve covered everything required from building a data driven application from scratch to making the application ready to be fully running in the cloud. The final step in this process is to publish/host the application on Windows Azure. Below are the steps required to do so. Creating the Windows Azure cloud service The first thing that needs to be done is that we create the service to host our application. To do this I’ve chosen the Cloud Service option and specified the…

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