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PDC Day One begins

Posted in Blogging, microsoft on October 27, 2008 at 1:48 pm

After a very interesting day of pre-briefings, which I can’t tell you about until tomorrow evening due to a non-disclosure agreement, we are now ready for the official first day of Microsoft PDC.

Kicking off the conference is chief software architect Ray Ozzie, who has taken on the role previously held by Bill Gates. For Ozzie, this is a critical opportunity to engage with developers, as well as being the biggest key influencer community he has had to address since the departure of Gates from day-to-day operations at Microsoft.

With the medium and long-term plan for several enterprise and consumer technologies unclear, Ozzie must today provide a clear roadmap that developers can both follow and buy into, in order to ensure that alternative operating system and application platforms do not gain any further ground due to disaffected users and coders.

You can join us for our live blog of the keynote by clicking here. We begin at 4.30pm UK time today (Monday), but I recommend you load up the page from 4.15pm onwards to make sure you don’t miss the start. This is a text-based live blog so there’s no need for speakers or the need to watch video. The idea is that we distill the keynote down to the bare facts rather than you having to sit through all the waffle as well.

Rated: 100% (2 votes)

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The PDC pre-show buzz

By Chris Green in Reader

Posted in Blogging, In-Flight, Travel, microsoft on October 26, 2008 at 5:06 am

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Greetings from Los Angeles, site of Microsoft PDC 2008.

Had a very disappointing flight over with Air New Zealand, what would have been an OK trip was marred by terrible customer service, but that is a story for another post.

The flight over did at least give me a chance to catch up with a few other PDC attendees, other than fellow journalists, to ask them what they were hoping for and expecting from PDC.

The responses were all pretty similar - decision makers and developers are looking for a fresh long-term roadmap for Microsoft’s core enterprise products, and all are looking forward to finding out more about Windows 7.

Perhaps the most interesting comment on the plane was this: “Vista is OK, and certainly not as flawed as most people claim it is. The trouble is that perception is 9/10ths of the battle and Microsoft has already lost the fight. Too many people THINK Vista is rubbish, and will never be convinced otherwise. Windows 7 is Microsoft’s best hope of winning back the masses, much like they did with Windows XP.”

Wise words indeed. More from me tomorrow.

Rated: 73.33% (3 votes)

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Getting ready for PDC

By Chris Green in Reader

Posted in Blogging, Travel, microsoft on October 23, 2008 at 2:28 pm

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In about 48 hours from now I’ll be taking off from London Heathrow en route to Los Angeles.

I’ll be joining journalists from around the world heading stateside to cover Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference, known as PDC.

This is no ordinary IT conference, its the most important event in the calendar not only for Microsoft, but for most of its partners, developer community and enterprise customers. Never mind knowing what the company is planning to do 3 months from now, PDC is where you find out what the company will be doing five and 10 years from now.

The key takeaways this year will be roadmap information and deep drill-downs into Windows 7 and the next version of Office, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Everything that Microsoft makes is in play, from the Xbox 360 to keyboards, mice, databases, servers and CRM systems.

Personally, I’m still holding out hope for a new version of Microsoft Bob.

We will be live blogging from the keynote on Monday, as well as bringing you news from the show floor every day of the show. Keep an eye on the site for more PDC coverage over the next week.

Rated: 68% (5 votes)

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Live blogging the Apple Keynote from Macworld

By Chris Green in Reader

Posted in Blogging, Mobile Data, Mac OS, Apple on January 15, 2008 at 1:00 pm

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Later today we are going to try something new

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