Steve Ballmer hasn't forgotten about Australia

Some news just came from a reliable source – Steve Ballmer (yeah the CEO for Microsoft) is going to visit Australia – namely Sydney  – early in November to speak to developers. I wonder if he’s going to do that Developers, Developers, Developers… speech again.

Experience the Mesh Magic

Much has been said about Live Mesh, and it’s now your turn to experience the Mesh Magic. Drop me an email, and I’ll share my Mesh Magic with you. It’s a folder, but it’ll let you get a feel of what it’s like to have everything all in sync.

What do I want to make of Mesh Magic? It’s going to have all the information that you’d want to have at hand. Here’s a few to start off with:

• My uni notes
• #!SUITS stuff
• Slides from previous seminars and demos
• Anything else that might be useful in the future
• (It’s now your turn to sync and share)

So what are you waiting for? Experience.

Live Mesh – Collaborate. Share. Seamlessly.

What is Live Mesh, and how can we make use of it as students? Live Mesh is an S+S platform and consistent user experience across all your tech devices, no matter where you are or what you might be using. It might be a web browser, your portable device or your desktop at home. Mesh is great when working in groups because you now, you can forget about having to email your documents across and so don’t have to worry about forgetting to attach that document to the email. Personally, I use it to:

• Store my documents online (it’s FREE online storage!)
• Keeping my laptop and desktop in sync, so I can use either computer without having to worry about copying files across
• Occasionally using my home desktop remotely using my laptop while I’m at uni!

So, what can we expect to see from Mesh in the near future?

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Research and Development: Microsoft China

As an undergraduate uni student, there’s ultimately going to be two paths for me to take: postgraduate study, postgraduate research, or just start working. As at now, I still have no idea which way I’d like to go in the future. So the question remains: What am I going to do once I finish my degree?

To answer that question, I will need to know more about each of those career paths. Postgraduate study? Well that’s a bit like what I’m doing right now, right? Getting into the workforce might be a good way to go, but the last thing I want to do is to be trapped in the day job without the ability to escape from it and try something else like doing research.

Research has always been fascinating. Not only do they get to play with the cutting edge technology (it’s nothing like what you’d see in retail shops). I’ve also heard that there’s a lot of freedom when it comes to doing research – you’re not driven by what people buy, but rather research is driven by what you feel like doing. Wouldn’t that be nice?

So join me this Friday, 3rd October 2008, at 1:00pm at Microsoft HQ, 1 Epping Road, North Ryde to find out what research is about, and what Microsoft China can offer in a Research and Development role.

Be sure to tell all your smartest friends who might be thinking of doing research after they graduate.

More details about this event after the break!

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Student Daze – Connecting Student Partners Worldwide

Once again, I’m writing this up on a plane on my way back home. The last two days (25-26 Sep 08) has been absolutely phenomenal at Student Daze 2008 – Microsoft Student Partners Summit 2008 v1.0. Why is it called Student “Daze” rather than Student “Days”? I’m not really sure, but I think it has something to do with so many people having jet lag.

Student Daze brings a selection of MSPs around the world into Microsoft’s Headquarters at Redmond, Washington in the USA. We are given the opportunity to connect and chat to other MSPs, find out what it’s like and what’s happening in the academic scene around the world.

We also get to meet some of the greatest people from Microsoft, like Joe Wilson (again!) and Scott Guthrie, plus a sneak preview into amazing new software that’s yet to be released. Sorry, but you folks out there will need to wait until the upcoming PDC to see it. Any leaks? Well, read on for more about Popfly, Mesh, XNA, Silverlight, cloud computing and more.

Let’s get into what actually happened after the break!

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