Global Agenda Mission: Pwning for a Cure - Nov 8th
For those of you in the Atlanta area that are big time gamers, here is your chance to get a sneak preview of a great first person shooter game that is being developed in Alpharetta, GA. If you live in the area, you should definitely check this out.
Some good friends of my at Hi-Rez Studios are putting together a a chance to get a sneak preview at there new game, Global Agenda. This event is organized to raize mony for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I am a part of their Alpha Test, which we play every Thursday and Sunday. The game is awesome. It is amazing how much additional functionality comes out every week. I get my tail kicked most of the time, but I have a lot of fun. The other Alpha testers are awesome, but every once in a while I get lucky and kill one of them. Here's a snipet from their press release, followed by the link:
Mission: Pwning for a Cure will be held at Computer ArenA in Roswell, Georgia on Saturday, November 8th from 12-5pm. The event, co-sponsored by the Georgia Department of Economic Development's Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office, will include hours of Global Agenda matches, game development seminars, a silent auction, raffles, prizes, music, and food. Hi-Rez Studios will also provide attendees with the unique opportunity to register for the invitation-only At-Home Alpha Testing Program and join the Global Agenda community.
http://www.hirezstudios.com/hi-rez_press5.html
posted: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:22:49 GMT
TVTonic and the Olympics Rocks!
I've finally arrived!!!
Three years ago as we were building our house I had the whole thing wired with CAT-5. Everyone said I was crazy since WiFi was working so well. I responsed with, "yeah, WiFi is great for my laptop, but when I'm streaming my TVs through my computer, I'll be happy it's hardwired".
For the past year I've been streaming my movies to my XBox 360, and that's been great. None of that compares to the excitement I've had using TVTonic to download the Olympics and stream them to my XBox. With two young kids, I've missed a lot more than I wanted to. I saw part of the opening ceromonies, but I missed all the cool parts that everyone at work was talking about. During my digging to find videos online, I found TVTonic. This absolutely ROCKS!!! I was able to select which events I want to watch (Opening Ceremonies, Swimming, etc.) and it began downloading it all. Then, as new events take place, it records those too. It's like having a Tivo that will go back in time. The picture quality is very good, and I don't have to sit at my computer to watch it, although I could. It plays through Vista Media Center, which I then hit through the MC Extender.
If there are any events that you missed and still want to see, check this out. You won't regret it!
posted: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:58:04 GMT
Microsoft BI Conference 2008
It's official! I'm now registered for the BI Conference 2008 in Seattle from October 6-8, 2008. I'm very excited about this event. It looks like there are going to be some good sessions, although I was hoping they would some MDX sessions. Looks like you have to wait for PASS Community Summit 2008 for those. The likelihood of me swinging a second trip to Seattle a month later is slim to none.
If there are any other GWB members that are planning to be there, let me know. It would be great to meet up.
posted: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:19:57 GMT
SlickEdit
I am one of the fortunate ones who had the opportunity to evaluate SlickEdit. I happened to choose the Visual Studio plug in, as I use exclusively Visual Studio for development. My first thought was, “Where is it?” This tool is integrated with Visual Studio so well that you think it is part of the product. Obviously my second question was “What hasn’t Microsoft bought them and included it in their product?”
I’m not as much of a hard-core coder these days, but I still find myself using Visual Studio on a daily basis. Some of the things that I found really helpful were the “Show Diff” and the “RegEx Evaluator”. I am thrilled about the show diff functionality. VS 2000 had a windiff feature, but for some reason MS left that out of 2005. I have an old dev box that I terminal service into to do file diffs because it still has VS 2000. Thanks to SlickEdit I can stop that practice.
I know there are a ton of other features that I am looking forward to exploring. This product has a nice “SlickEdit Tools Assistant”, which is one of the better help systems I’ve seen in a software produce. As I dive deeper, I’ll keep you updated with any cool features I find, as well as anything that I think needs improvement. So far, I like what I’ve seen.
posted: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:01:48 GMT
Xobni for Outlook Now Available to All
I received a broadcast email today from Xobni announcing that they have released Xobni for Outlook to the masses. You can download it here: http://www.xobni.com/download
and read about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/technology/05xobni.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
To give you a little understanding of the people behind Xobni, I want to fill you in on my experience. I've had a beta copy of Xobni installed on each of my three PCs. My home PC is runs Vista Ultimate and Office 2007. This PC runs with two profiles (myself and my wife). I ran into some issues with Xobni if you shut down outlook, you couldn't re-open it unless you go to task mgr and kill it. For this reason, I un-installed it from my home pc. During the uninstall it asked for a free form text of why you were un-installing it. Being a good beta user, I filled it out. A few days later I received an email from Matt Brezina, co-founder of Xobni. He asked they could set up a call and talk through the problems I was experiencing. I was so impressed with their drive for quality, that I agreed. I ended up having an hour long call with Greg Thatcher from Xobni, during which I let him remote control my PC, review log files and do some testing to make sure he fully understood my issue. During this time he started digging for more information around performance and other user experience areas. I have never seen a beta program that was this dedicated to getting it right. I can't begin to express the amount of respect I have for these guys. What an awesome organization!
posted: Mon, 05 May 2008 21:30:15 GMT