I’m pretty excited that we are putting on a full day about the Microsoft cloud computing platform, Azure.  Since many, many people still don’t know how to get started, we will spend the day getting you setup with some good resources and information for you to be successful with the Microsoft cloud platform, what we call Azure.

Check it out here: http://bit.ly/cVEZXD

I'm in the process of hiring for some really fun field evangelist roles at Microsoft.  I have created a jobs page with a FAQ in case you are interested or know some else who might be looking for a fun technology job.

I've been working for Microsoft for over 9 years, came from my own business for 17 years, and can't think of a better place to work.

Enjoy!

Scott

I understand that the great thing about calendaring standards is that there are so many of them.  However, as a consumer of calendars, a lot of them, there has to be a better way.  We’ve been smart about consolidating our short messages with twitter, our blog posts with RSS readers, even our social lives with MySpace and then Facebook.  Can someone please intelligently explain to me why I can’t have a calendar application that allows me to consume many calendars in a single view.

Yes, I understand that the online calendar providers like Live, Google and Yahoo allow you to get their calendars consolidated.  You can also enable Outlook to do a consolidated calendar.  Unfortunately, in the end they all seem to be mutually exclusive.  All I want is:

• A single calendar, no matter where I am, Web, PC or Mobile.
• The ability to configure calendar feeds from places like: Exchange, Live, GMail, Yahoo, Eventbrite, Facebook, and other social groups.
• The ability for my calendar to know the security context of the individual feed:  Can I write/read, read, or only see free/busy.

The closest I’ve come to this calendar nirvana is using my Microsoft Exchange Calendar connected to Live Calendars using the Outlook connector which gives me read/write access to my shared Live calendars directly from Outlook.  Using this method my work calendar remains on Outlook/Exchange, my personal calendar is on Live and my family calendar is shared on Live.  Using Outlook and Outlook Web Access (OWA) I finally get a decent consolidated view when I overlay the calendars.  The connectivity and latency is even a little better in Outlook 2010.  However, I still can’t get connected to my son’s baseball team calendar.  :-(

Is this really too much to ask?  Anyone seen other ways to tackle this problem?  Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Scott

After an extremely long absence due to time constraints and technical issues, my blog is back.

Yesterday we (Microsoft) reached a significant milestone in the development of the Open XML standard with ECMA and ISO.  Once finished, the Open XML standards will be the foundation for document exchange across productivity application from any vendor.  For those of you that don't know, Open XML, the foundational document formats within the 2007 Microsoft Office System, is under review for ratification by the International Organization of Standardization (ISO). The process is currently in the final ballot resolution phase and the final outcome is anticipated in March 2008.

As part of the ISO process for considering Open XML as an ISO standard, a technical committee at ECMA is reviewing and responding to all (3,522) comments submitted by National Standards Bodies during the first phase of the process.  On 11/19, ECMA issued a first batch of proposed dispositions to 662 of the 3,522 comments.  On December 11, 2007, ECMA is issued a second batch of new dispositions bringing the total number of proposed comment dispositions to just over half of the total received (literally 50.1%). 

Included in the proposed comment dispositions are a number of significant and positive changes to the original ECMA Open XML standard submission – with the work done to date, we believe that ECMA is taking the National Body comments seriously and proposing revisions that will make the Open XML standard better.

The ECMA announcement is available here:

http://www.ecma-international.org/news/TC45_current_work/New%20set%20of%20proposed%20dispositions%20posted.htm

Open XML Developer Site: http://openxmldeveloper.org/ 

Open XML information on the Microsoft site: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=open+xml+site%3Amicrosoft.com&src=IE-SearchBox 

Additional information from Brian Jones, Microsoft Office PM Over halfway there… including some positive changes to the Open XML standard

Are you a Professional Developer or Architect working for a Microsoft Partner Organization in the U.S.?  Then you may want to consider joining Partner Huddle, an online social community for members of the Microsoft partner community.  To learn more about the social and how to join check out the following blog Tis The Season For Partners on Facebook.

Act now and you may qualify for a special holiday offer that expires on December 17th.

My collegue David Chou does a great job of distilling the new platform, here is an excerpt... 

We're all so busy that we sometimes don't have the time to check out new technology.  However, this time please take a minute and check this one out.  A while back Microsoft bought this great little company TellME.  Today I had a chance to use it and I'm BLOWN AWAY.  Instead of using your cell phone 411 service, try calling 1-800-555-TELL (8355) or send a text message to 83556 (I put in  Sam's Club in Glendora, CA) or pull up http://m.tellme.com on your mobile device.  You can do a free directory search OR get sports scores OR a host of other things.  Here is a link to some tips for using the service as well:  http://www.tellme.com/products/TellmeByVoice/TellmeTips

I now have a TellME contact entry that I can handsfree dial from my car!

Sometimes it's the small things that make the biggest difference.

Scott

I love SharePoint, it's easy to customize, the lists are flexible, it integrates directly into office (especially the calendars into Outlook) but I had no idea is was this community friendly.  Take a look at the "Community Kit for SharePoint" on the http://www.codeplex.com site.  It's a site template you add to SharePoint to give you community functionality on top of the SharePoint infrastructure.  Super Cool!

http://www.codeplex.com/CKS

 Scott

Post: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2007/10/29/virtual-earth-3d-recording-windows-live-maps.aspx

Scott