Community developer blogs

Eileen Brown

Recent Posts

• Buying software online at the Microsoft Store

  Posted: 9 hours ago

  Did you know you could buy software directly from the Microsoft store? The store is available in 7 different countries at the moment and has lots of different software on offer – not just games, but Windows, Office and Developer tools like Expression Blend and even Visual studio. Much more conveni

• When Ads go bad…

  Posted: yesterday

  Sometimes automatic Ad serving onto web pages gets it wrong. Terribly wrong. Thanks to Pete for pointing this out on Mashable.

• Is Apple going off?

  Posted: 02 Dec 2008 at 10:22

  Yes -  according to The Simpsons who lampooned it for 6 minutes.  Unsurprisingly the YouTube video isn’t available any more.  See Thomas’ post over at Mashable  for information.  I’ll just have to wait until it’s on over here – and read the comments about it over on Digg. 

• Office Communicator R2 for your mobile phone

  Posted: 01 Dec 2008 at 17:57

  Just noticed this over on Johanns blog who got it from the Unified communications team blog and it looks really really nice. I love the single number reach and the call routing features.  I transfer my desk phone number to my mobile, use simultaneous ring and have one voicemail message.  My unifi

• Amplify08 - social media done right…

  Posted: 28 Nov 2008 at 09:54

  Amplified08 was the most interesting social media conference I’ve attended in ages. Heck it was the most interesting damn conference I’ve attended! So what was so amazing about it? It was put together in just 6 weeks and advertised entirely on Twitter. I started to notice Twitter hash tags

• Amplifying your message with social media

  Posted: 27 Nov 2008 at 10:58

  I’m escaping out of the office to go to Amplified 08 in London today, partly because I’m really interested in social media and the topics that will be covered, but mainly because this whole event is a classic example of how well social media, and social networking works at bringing the correct peopl

• Removing worms and trojans from your PC

  Posted: 26 Nov 2008 at 20:29

  In case you didn’t notice the news the other day, the last security update patch we did removed malicious software from over 1 million PC’s this week.  How was it done?  The Malicious Software removal tool.  This is what it removes. So if you spend time on any of your friends machines removi

• Blogging, microblogging – where’s it all going?

  Posted: 25 Nov 2008 at 09:47

  This made me smile especially in the light of Andrews comments about microblogging the other day. David’s post titled A brief history of micro-media has a great cartoon on the demise of micromedia. There’s a lot of discussion at the moment on whether Twitter has had it’s day, whether blo

• Mary Jo Foley: Just like her blog?

  Posted: 24 Nov 2008 at 17:51

  The quick answer is no.  I had the opportunity to interview Mary Jo last month in the UK when she talked about her book.  I recorded the session and I was really pleased with the results.  So after John’s team edited the rough recording to get the repeats out of the session, I asked the wonderful Mi

• Sleeveface – fooling around with your vinyl records

  Posted: 21 Nov 2008 at 15:33

  Heck I like Sleeveface. It’s clever, it’s fun and you don’t need to use photoshop. All you need are vinyl record sleeves, and a camera. I love this image - very clever use of perspective too… so here’s how you do it. and have a look at the Facebook group to follow

• Twollowing people on Twitter…

  Posted: 20 Nov 2008 at 16:31

  Mashable points to a little app that allows you to follow anyone who follows you on twitter.  It’s called twollow   will save you a bit of time with twitter admin – which you’ll lose in all the noise that following all of these extra people will generate.  Neat idea though…

• Paying it forward in Technology

  Posted: 20 Nov 2008 at 13:31

  I’ve always believed in the pay it forward way of life – making someone's life a little bit better so that they pass it on. There’s a nice list about Random acts of kindness here that I thought I’d share with you. It’s also something that you can do technically too. Sh

• Windows Azure: dynamic provisioning

  Posted: 19 Nov 2008 at 16:37

  I was going to write a series of blog posts talking about Windows Azure from an IT professional’s perspective and how it works from an infrastructure person point of view.  I have a couple of posts partially completed in draft which I’ll post next week.   But to start things off, at Micr

• Nigerian Scammers on the phone

  Posted: 18 Nov 2008 at 17:40

  Even though I have my phone number on my blog, I don’t get too many calls – usually valid calls from customers who need help, or from people who want genuine advice.  But on Saturday I had my very first Nigerian scam call. Me: Hello Him: Hello, am I speaking to Ms Eileen Brown Me: Yes, h

• Jerry Yang leaves Yahoo

  Posted: 18 Nov 2008 at 10:23

  So Jerry Yang is going to step down from being CEO at Yahoo according to Adam at Mashable and Maggie at the BBC.  With shares at $10 or so I’ll be watching with interest to see where he’ll be off to next.  And it will also be amusing to read all of the news bubbling up around the blogosp

• And just where can you get the train to Nizhniy Novgorod?

  Posted: 17 Nov 2008 at 14:04

  I often wonder what makes a blog post interesting enough for people to read the rest of the post and realised when I saw this post the other day that it’s the catchy title and first couple of lines holds the attention. I don’t usually read the unlimited potential team blog but this post held my atte

• Some updates for our online services

  Posted: 14 Nov 2008 at 20:29

  Kevin pointed out that he’d found the new updated Windows Live services have been launched along with a new refreshed home page.  I’d noticed the new look Hotmail the other day when I logged in, but I was really impressed about the range of things that are on offer and will be coming up over a

• Falling standards in the use of the written word

  Posted: 13 Nov 2008 at 14:03

  Aargh! I’m turning into my mother.  Growling about poor spelling on signs in the food market, grumbling about poor apostrophes but this example has made me mutter all week about falling standards in retail. It bothered me so much, I went back to the shop last night (which has branches througho

• Thousands of planes in the air…

  Posted: 11 Nov 2008 at 16:15

  Off topic I know, but as a frequent flyer I was fascinated to see this simulation of planes flying around the world. watch the traffic increase as night turns to day – and the amount of night time flights over to Europe from the US. Hat tip to Kim for searching this out. Technorati Tags: Air traff

• The value of tech.net

  Posted: 10 Nov 2008 at 17:32

  I’ve  been meaning to blog about this for a while – but as I didn’t go to tech.ed last week, it sort of slipped my mind. Deeps went around tech.ed in Sydney asking people who had a technet plus subscription what value they got from the subscription.  Here’s the video of thei