Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 – probably the most anticipated release of the VS family – has just hit a milestone. It’s reached the MSDN subscription downloads! VS2010 Beta 2 available to MSDN http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/10/19/vs-2010-beta-2-is-now-available-for-msdn-subscriber-download.aspx VS2010 Licensing Changes http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/10/19/vs-2010-licensing-changes.aspx 4 new SKUs, Express, Professional, Premium, Ultimate What’s new in VS2010 and Learning about VS2010

Another stellar line of speakers are coming to LIDNUG – On the 29th of October we’ll be visited by Lisa Feigenbaum for a good look at Visual Basic.Net. Lisa is a Program Manager in the Visual Basic team at Microsoft. She’s going to talk about what’s new in VB.Net and answer any questions you have. Thursday, 29 October 2009 Time   10:30 AM – 12:30 PM   Subject   Visual Basic .NET with Lisa Feigenbaum   Registration   http://bit.ly/UZeXW       Lisa Feigenbaum

A good friend of mine, Mike , is even more of a social butterfly than i am. So, since he’s totally excited about going to Tech.Ed this year (who isn’t???) and because he’s a geek, he kicked off the Sara Ford Fan Club at Tech.Ed AU 2009. After talking things over a few times it’s been organised to have a Geek Meet-Up on Tuesday evening, where Sara Ford will be attending too – check out the LinkedIn Tech.Ed Australia Group for details: Tech.Ed Australia (Teched) Lastly

It doesn’t matter what flavour you prefer when you browse the big interweb today, you can still contribute to helping out. Microsoft is donating $1.15 for each download of IE8 from here – if you’re upgrading from IE6 they’ll double the donation. The donation is given to Feeding America . So, contribute in your own way – and it costs you nothing – by clicking here to download IE8 .

It’s almost like a broken record, but i still can’t stop saying it – Scott Guthrie absolutely rocks! In his open Q&A session for the Linked .Net Users Group (LIDNUG) he again dazzled us all with his “geeky” brilliance..seriously, i’m starting to think there’s at least a couple of thousand Gu clones walking around for him to retain that much knowledge! In a 1 1/2hr session he answered questions from the attendees (252) and it was as usual a brilliant session. For those that missed out – here’s

Scott Guthrie will be visiting the Linked .Net Users Group (LIDNUG) for a second time this year, with a follow up on his first open Q&A session. Event details: Topic: Scott Guthrie talks shop with developers II - Open Q&A with Scott Guthrie Date: August 25, 9:00am PDT ( list of local times ) Cost: FREE Registration: http://bit.ly/fbKNC Prizes: JetBrains ReSharper & DevExpress CodeRush and Refactor At this open Q&A session Scott Guthrie will answer questions from the attendees via

Scott Hanselman ; Author, code guru and internet legend visited LIDNUG late last week in an open Q&A session which gave us a bit of an insight into his life inside and outside of Microsoft. In his normal humorous self, Scott took is through to his garage and showed us his arcade machine, which he built himself all the while answering a ton of questions from the attendees. He also explained how he juggled work vs family life, talked about some of his likes and dislikes about working for Microsoft