Daily Archives: July 9, 2004

MS Community Site: MVPs, How to Start a User Group and more

Community Cheerleading

I followed a link from John Bristowe to the Microsoft Communities site.

On there I saw a link for MVP Awards. It has all of the MVPs listed, with pics and bios and other information. We have a place where we can fill out all of this information. I had not yet seen it publicly displayed. Cool.

Then I followed a link for User Groups. There is a whole pile of informaiton on how to start a user group , how to find speakers, how to promote it. This is information that we also try to get out via INETA, so maybe we can find something in there to leverage in the User Group Relations Committee. Cool.

There is a TON more on the community pages. Definitely go cruise around!

Scott W bites the tablet bullet

Tablet

Scott Watermasysk was asking around about the hefty Gateway Tablet PC. He said he just wanted it for email etc. I  nearly whacked him upside the head (not really –he lives far away and my arm’s not long enough to reach all the way up there) and asked why on earth he wanted such a mammoth to do email? 🙂  I told him about the little love of my life, my Acer C110 and he just got one. Soon I have to give my Acer back to my client sniff sniff and will have a Toshiba M200 (1.1 pounds heavier), but I will be using it for more than email.

Don’t get me wrong. The Acer is a powerful little box. It’s just that because it is so small, it’s a little hard to crank out code on. The keyboard is 80% and the screen is small (and everything on it is tiny as it likes to be at 1024×768. So unless you have a burning need for a large screen (and full sized keyboard) and you are looking for something VERY portable that is still a convertible, this is definitely a great way to go.

Redmond

Just Rambling

will be in Redmond July 16-22nd with my hubby too! let the rumor mills churn. Just kidding – nothing exciting. I have to go out and convinced Rich to come as it will be the closest thing to a vacation this summer. He’ll probably hang out at REI while I’m on campus. 🙂

Hailstorm? eeeek!

Just Rambling

Okay so it freaked me out just a little to see the word Hailstorm pop into my aggregator earlier this week. It’s source was this article on Microsoft-Watch.com about a proposed service by Microsoft, that Mary Jo says sounds suspiciously similar to the original description of Hailstorm. Hailstorm is one of the things that drove me into the arms of Java a bunch of years ago. .NET and developer services of course brought me back to Microsoft.