The first MS NZ event for 'O7 after the launch is coming next month, lots of awesome content and also some nice give aways and all for just $199. Details are here

I even noticed that JD - 2006 Blogger of the year award winner -will be co presenting with JB this year. Nice stuff JD. The next generation of Microsoft tech geeks is emerging. Looks like me & JD are leading the wave but in slightly different ways (Shameless self promotion here )

I'm sure JD would agree this is just the beginning!

Just read this post on Scoble's blog and it got me thinking. I don't really care what Microsoft's intentions are to take Google head to head by offering similar services or what but I personally am very happy with the Windows Live family of services and Live Search specifically.

I think the problem is Google is just good enough for the search needs of most people and it also seems to fit very well when speaking about it  - I mean when saying "I googled this and that", it doesn't sound as easy to say I Yahoo'd blah blah or I Live Searched so and so.

Microsoft need to convince people that Windows Live - (and I'm speaking of Live Search specifically in this post) it's become my favourite area - is worth trying. AND IT IS! But on the surface there is no obvious reason that would let people use Live Search instead of Google. All of its good features have not been talked about enough, if ever, and I don't know why. Like Scoble indicates most of the people in Redmond (read MS employees, USE Google) well that's the problem! If people at Microsoft are not convinced their search engine is the best then how is it ever going to take off.

I think all what Live Search needs is for those that tried it to speak about it - what happened to all of those bloggers out there, if a word can spread through blogs online then MS people are the best to do it! How many MS bloggers do you know of?

The different features that Live Search offers need to come to the surface so people can know about them and try them. It's not just another search engine!

Here are a few things of the top of my head that I love about Live Search, go try them!

- Customizable Search algorithm
- Search Macros ( I was first introduced to this concept on Live Search and then Google came up with the very similar Personalized Search)
- Live Image Search (not having to click a NEXT button is just fantastic), the scratchpad is also a VERY interesting idea

So there goes a few. More on this topic in the future...

And what's the deal with the tag game thing, everyone currently says that everyone they know has been tagged 30 times so they aren't tagging anyone! It's interesting I have not been tagged yet, maybe my readers are not that many after all! My blog must be boring!

I read this morning on ScottGu's blog about the new Visual Studio Web designer. It looks promising! I've always found the Visual Studio 2003 annoying especially when switching views... Visual Studio 2005's designer is less annoying but still not perfect. So it's about time we see the Least Annoying - this is going to be my word - expectation - on it till I try it ! .

Here's a list of some of the new stuff in the designer taken from Scott's blog.

I look forward to playing with this when the CTP is out.

I thought I was keeping a good eye on what's happening with Live Search but Chris was faster to post about the ability to have Windows Live Search on your mobile. See his post here

I still have a couple more posts I was meant to write up last year and haven't yet, they should be coming soon. Stay tuned for more on Live Search.

I was trying to install VS 2005 SP1 on Windows Server 2003 last night but kept getting an error about an invalid signature (or something like that anyway - can't remember the exact error now)

The cause of the problem as stated on the Microsoft website  is "This problem occurs when the computer has insufficient contiguous memory for Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP to verify that the .msi package or the .msp package is correctly signed."

The solution can be found here.

Here goes my first post in 2007. Happy New Year to you all.

I was recently reading this post on Joel Spolsky's blog about the number of shutdown options available in Windows Vista. Even though they are quite a few and can be narrowed down like he suggests. I think  I have a better idea!

I have been using Vista for almost a year now but for some reason I never thought about this. But for me I tend to shut down my computer most of the time if I'm not using it and to do so I always have to bring up the start menu point the arrow to the shut down option, and now I think this is a bit annoying because I hardly ever use the Sleep button or the Lock button which are available directly on the start menu without having to go the second step.

Now here's my idea. It would be nice to be able to set a default action action on the sleep button that suits everyone's needs and this way you can setup the button to do the action that most fits your needs using one step.

I'm quite sure that most people use one shutdown option regularly and the others less? So doing so would make me use the function I do regularly without having to click the arrow and see all options every time.

So Microsoft here is my suggestion, I would like to be able to do something like this, right click the sleep button, click a menu item that says set default action or something like that, and then choose the one that suits me. I think this way the problem that Spolsky mentioned of too many choices would be minimized and I would be able to shutdown my computer by clicking the button...

Probably those of you who already downloaded and are running Office 2007 RTM know this but anyway.

The Microsoft addon for the save as PDF feature - which was taken out from the beta versions of Office - can be found here

Found this link about Live Search on the Microsoft home page.