Hi everyone, hope you are enjoying your break.

The retail version of Microsoft’s Newest Suite is now available in Australia and as a student at an Australian University or TAFE you can grab the Professional Academic version of the Office 2010 for AUD 99.00 via Microsoft’s Its Not Cheating Program.

Following the great response to the Office 2010 beta with more than nine million beta users world-wide, Microsoft has continued to refine the dramatic overhaul that it began with the 2007 editions of the Office Suite to help users:

• Create great looking documents and presentations. With new video and photo editing features in PowerPoint 2010. Add extensive text effects and table formatting options in Word 2010. Reveal important trends in data with Sparklines in Excel 2010. OneNote 2010 makes everything you need simple to find, organise and share.
• Connect and work together more simply. Advanced e-mail management and calendaring capabilities in Outlook 2010. Work with others more efficiently using new co-authoring in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010.
• Get things done from anywhere. With Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps – the online companions to Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote, you have the freedom to view, edit, and share Office 2010 documents in the cloud with Windows Live SkyDrive.

One of my favorite improvements to Office 2010 is what Microsoft calls the Backstage view. You might remember Albert giving a demo on this if you attended our Cool Stuff & Cool Internships – Microsoft & AIESEC 2010 event. Offered as a replacement for the File menu, Backstage gives you a launching point to share documents, print out your work, set permissions, and other program specific options to get your project ready for distribution. You’ll find all of the usual document management features, like open and save, here as well, but you’ll also get a nice layout of templates for new documents, several different ways to share your work, and print settings and page layouts all in one place.

For a full overview on all of the new features and review by PCWorld, head here.

In addition to Office 2010, Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade is back again with the same low price of AUD 49.95 on Its Not Cheating Program. All eligible university and TAFE students, staff & faculty, with a valid email address are entitled to make a purchase from the offer website

More info and FAQs on the program and the offers can be found here.

For the developers out there, new APIs in Windows 7 allows you to take advantage of the new Windows 7 features like Multi-touch, Location and Libraries, quite easily. However getting information on these new APIs has previously been restricted to the MSDN documentation, and tutorials online.

For those of use that prefer our technical information printed on paper, Microsoft Press has a book that should hopefully get you started with the new APIs, creating rich Windows 7 enhanced applications in no time.

Introducing Windows 7 for Developers is that book. A collaborative effort between Yochay Kiriaty, Laurence Moroney, Sasha Goldshtein and Alon Fliess, this book looks at most of the cool new features in Windows 7, and how to use them in your own applications.

Continue reading ‘Introducing Windows 7 for Developers [Book Review]‘

In all of the news about the upcoming Wave 4 update for Windows Live Essentials (Messenger, Skydrive, Mail etc) a little thing called Office Live Web Apps appeared, and now everyone can use it for free.

There are some pretty cool things here, not only do you get online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for free, but you can also collaborate on the documents. I can see a bunch of friends collaborating on a OneNote notebook during  a lecture, or working on a report using multiple machines, all at the same time – and no need for anyone to collate at the end.

These apps are available for free, and to access them, you just need to visit http://skydrive.live.com and login with your Windows Live ID. (You already have one if you use Hotmail and/or Messenger)

Or alternatively you can visit http://office.live.com and get the same experience. Skydrive binds all of these services together, and still keeps the 25GB of space that you can use to store not only documents, but any other file you want.

From there you can create a new document and share it, or upload an existing document you have already started working on.

There is no need for any special plugin, and it should work in all of the major browsers.

Hey Kids! 

Thanks to all who came for Cool Stuff and Internships! 

Just a little momento for all the students we caught from the Office 2010 promotions (and I know some of these people are UTS kiddies. =P):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt_pv_8VAzg

And remember, keep an eye out here for events and MS promotions @ UTS!

Albert heading out… and crammng for exams.

Do you think you know the modern Microsoft?

How would you like to work in and experience a different culture?

AIESEC, the worlds largest student organisation is looking for interns to work in some of the world’s exotic locations, like Turkey, Malaysia or China.

Come along and learn how you can learn a new language, experience a different culture, and even change a community. At the same time we will show you how the modern Microsoft is different from the Microsoft you know.

Experience the cool offerings available from a modern Microsoft, and learn how you can contribute to developing countries and see the world!

When is it?

2:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Thursday 20th May 2010

Where is it?

CB02.04.11
University of Technology Sydney

I know it’s short notice, but if you will be sitting at uni on Tuesday night and bored (or just free), why not take a short walk down to Sydney uni and attend the Windows 7 tweetup, hosted by Microsoft.

The event is open to all students, and there will be a bar tab, free food, and lots of tech on display with demos and competitions – including the chance to win an XBOX 360!

Free food, a bar tab, tech and plenty of chances to win stuff, if you’re free, there’s no reason not to go!

The event is free, however registration is required due to limited capacity (~200 people), however plenty of spots still remain, so head to http://tweetvite.com/event/win7unitweetup and register.

Short URL for twitter is http://bit.ly/win7unitwtup

Where:

Hermann’s Bar
University of Sydney
Cnr City Rd & Butlin Ave

When:

7pm Tuesday 4th May

Hi everyone, hope this semester is going well. Just a quick post to let anyone interested know that the refresh for the XNA 4.0 CTP is here, along with the Windows Phone 7 developer tools.

Finally you can use the RTM version of Visual Studio 2010 (get it from DreamSpark) to try the XNA 4.0 CTP and make games and apps for Windows Phone 7, ready for when the devices like the Dell Lightning release later this year.

So if you’re interested, even if you just want to see what is coming in XNA 4.0 and don’t care about the mobile space, check out the refresh here.

Hi everyone, I hope you are enjoying your year so far.

This one is for the developers out there. I’m that if you are a keen C#, VB or C++ developer, you have been trying out the betas and release candidate for Visual Studio 2010. Well great news, Visual Studio 2010 has been released and is ready for you to start developing on.

Now remember, before you start wondering about the price, or look towards those torrent sites, you can get it for free as a student through MSDNAA or www.dreamspark.com

No excuses!

VS2010 features some awesome new additions like true multi-monitor support, editor zooming using the powerful new WPF code editor, C# 4.0 and C++0x if either of those take your fancy. Microsoft has really added features to bring Visual Studio 2010 into the future.

One feature that is really amazing is the ability to box select in the editor. Forget normal text selection, this allows you to draw a box around code, and only edit that part. Say you want to change a bunch of public variables into private variables, just box select all of the public identifiers and type private, done!

C# 4.0 alone has tons of new features, including integration with the dynamic runtime (easy scripting), and all of the Windows 7 features integrated into the .NET library. (Touch, Jumplists etc)

If you aren’t a fan of angle brackets, there are plenty of new features in Visual Basic 2010 as well, including implicit line continuation (goodbye underscore!), auto-implemented properties, and collection initialisers.

If you want a full overview of all of the new features, then head here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386063(v=VS.100).aspx

Scott Hanselman has a great overview of the key new features here:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VisualStudio2010Released.aspx

Don’t forget that you can get all of these features for free through DreamSpark:

https://www.dreamspark.com/Products/Product.aspx?ProductId=25

Something special for all of those developers who want to take advantage of the new touch input features in Windows 7 and .NET 4.0. The Microsoft Surface blog has announced the availability of the Microsoft Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch beta. This is a set of Controls, APIs, templates and Docs that were previously only available to Surface developers, and now they can be used by anyone developing touch enabled applications for Windows 7.

More details at the surface blog here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/surface/archive/2010/04/12/launch-microsoft-surface-toolkit-for-windows-touch-beta.aspx

and a direct link to the toolkit download:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=801907a7-b2dd-4e63-9ff3-8a2e63932a74

Happy coding!

Hey kids!

Hope you guys had a happy rabbit huntin season…  Opps! Err… I meant Easter! Muahaha…  >=]

Ever thought of becoming an IT professional, but couldn’t come up with the first step, or figure what steps to take to get you to where you wanna go?

Instead of having to take a trip to Mordor to find your ideal job, Microsoft have designed an IT Student Career Portal for you lucky kids!

In the portal, you can find info on career paths for:

• Web Developers
• Server Administration
• Windows Developers
• Consumer Support Technician
• Database Administration

It gives you a run-down of any job you so desire, skills you will need, experience required, potential future positions, and internships and jobs in countries worldwide!

The portal also gives you links to apply for those jobs!

You can find the Student Career Path Portal at: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/start/start-career-student.aspx

Have fun with your new toy kids! =D

-Albert rollin out!  (…with RPGs to hunt for those pesky Easter bunnies!)

Hey kids!

Hope you’re all enjoying uni this sem.  Heh heh… the irony… enjoying uni =P

Of course, if you are starting to get sick of staring blankly at books and listening to grumpy, monotone lecturers, and want to travel overseas for free and work for a year…

Then kids, look no further! Have we got the deal for you!

Ladies and gents, Microsoft has now extended their US intern and Full-Time job application deadline till the 15th April, 2010!

That means there’s still a little over two weeks to get that CV in, and grab a once in a lifetime opportunity to work overseas with one of the world’s leading IT companies.  And have it nice and shiny on your CV. =D

To apply for US Intern or full time positions with MS:

1. Go to www.microsoft.com/college and submit your resume!
2. Also send your resume to recruiter Lisa Harris (lisabar@microsoft.com)! She will answer any questions you may have about Microsoft internship/full-time opportunities.

(For more tips about CVs and interviews, go to careeradvice.heygenius.com)

But remember, you only have until the 15th of April to do it. So hurry and think fast! (COD4 players will get the joke xD)

Albert headin out! =]