Today @ PDC We've seen a nice introduction of the new UX enhancements included in the new version of Windows. Including the new TaskBar, Libraries and search integration, device management integration with different local/remote storages and devices. Notification area is another nice improvement allowing to control wich icons are shown. Another nice demo involved the touch capabilities including gestures and new commands for mouse/touch, on screen keyboard and multitouch capabilities. Disk management

Here I am. at last I can attend to my first PDC. I'm in L.A. since friday night and it's been only action here... Tim huckaby's party was so cool, met with almost all the attending RD fellows... A little bit far from LA (Carlsbad, CA) but really worth it!!. To finish the night, my friends Reymarx and Christian took me into a very nice electronic party, wich included "Sasha", one of the most relevant D.J. today.. Yesterday we had our RD private side meeting, covering many important

There are new session information available for the PDC 2008. Check it out: https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/sessions.aspx See you @ LA Cheers RG

In the last few days I had the chance to check out some new titles from O'Reilly, one is "C# 3.0 Cookbook 3th Edition" and the other is "Programming C# 3.0 5th Edition". I'm not a real fan of language based books, but the evolution of C# through it's 3 versions, arises the need for this kind of books. "Programming C# 3.0" is a book that covers all the aspects of the language from variable declaration to lambda expressions. I like that it doesn't limits

Last Week I was helping an MS friend, Jose Mauricio Alvarez (from DPE Andean region) with a very interesting talk about S+S --> Software + Services. This is just a specialization of the SaaS concept, extended to include client software which consumes services exposed as SaaS. Personally, I think that this is one of the most important focus shifting that has to (and in fact, currently is) happen(ing) in terms of the way your software reaches the customers, there are many advantages around it, and

Last Week I assisted to RAF 2007 (Regional Architect Forum) @ Cartagena, Many architects from different countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru among others) came and participate of 18 sessions about Architecture, SAAS, Development Process and other interesting topics. Congrats to the DPE Team, because this event was a complete success. Ricardo Gonzalez Vargas Software Development Consultant Microsoft Regional Director Microsoft Most Valuable Professional http://www.devsynergy.net rgonzalez

Today I've received my new Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 Web cam, It has very nice features including an automatic face tracking technology, a web cam dashboard to include cute vide effects and a complete integration with Live Messenger. Cool toy. Check it @ http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/digitalcommunication/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=001 Ricardo Gonzalez Vargas Software Development Consultant Microsoft Regional Director Microsoft Most Valuable Professional http://www.devsynergy.net rgonzalez@mvps.org

I've just downloaded the Windows Live Writer tool , and this is my first post with it. One of the main reasons to me for not being a frequent blog writer, is the lack of nice tools to do it, so I think I'll start posting more than before.... try it, it's really nice and easy to configure allowing you to manage more than one blog account. Cheers, Ricardo Gonzalez Vargas Software Development Consultant Microsoft Regional Director Microsoft Most Valuable Professional http://www.synergytpc.com http:

Last week, I was @ Medellín, helping Microsoft with an interesting initiative called "Microsoft Installation Festival". This initiative is based on the MSDN Academic Alliance program, wich allows students to access the MSDN software an price of 0 (except office wich costs about US$30). Many students don't know that, so, the most valuable effect of this initiative is precisely to make students to take advantage of those benefits and start using the technology more intensively. We made the event in

This is very important news for all students, enthusiasts, and many people that would like to review and use the products. Even with the limitations compared with the other editions, VS Express editions cover a wide spectrum in software development. The announcement includes VC++ Express edition VC# Express edition VB Express edition SQL Server Express Edition Visual Web Developer Express Edition Visual J# Express Edition Check all details @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/ Cheers, Ricardo