My colleague Chris Adams has just told me about a campaign we’re running in the UK this Christmas to help raise money for the Child’s Voice Appeal – the latest fundraising initiative from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). The initiative raises money for Childline and NSPCC’s help lines, which provide vital help to children who are at risk of, or experiencing, cruelty or abuse.

Customers who chose Microsoft Store to make their purchases of Microsoft Office and Windows Vista this Christmas will contribute towards achieving the NSPCC's vision to ending child cruelty.

Every purchase made via our special campaign site will result in a 15% donation of the purchase price at no extra cost to the customer towards the Child's Voice Appeal.

To support this activity visit our campaign site at www.microsoft.com/uk/nspcc

You may have noticed a whole ton of announcements about Windows Live yesterday. There is plenty of very cool stuff - I love the new groups feature for example, pop aggregation on hotmail, the great new home page, having video preview pics and videos/picture linked to emoticons.....and lots more.

But one thing I want to call out is that Windows Live Skydrive (www.skydrive.live.com) now provides a massive 25GB of free storage space.

Fantastic!

When I posted this entry before the PDC I couldn’t – for obvious reasons - say that this training is actually for Windows Azure, and includes a developer key to Live Services.

What does this mean? It means that if you attend the training you’ll be able to develop using the Live Services CTP, something that only PDC attendees have been able to do so far.

It might be worth watching some of the Live Services sessions to get a flavour of what it’s all about – this is really cool stuff. For example, try this session: http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/BB04/

As a reminder, you can register for this FREE classroom-based training here: http://www.lsjumpstart.com.

And for the avoidance of doubt: While the training is free you are responsible for travel and accommodation etc. Which is a pretty good deal IMO.

As you may know we have some big announcements to make today at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles.

However even if you’re not there you can get a front row seat by watching the video streamed live from http://microsoftpdc.com/

It starts at 8.30am Pacific, which should be 3.30pm UK time (assuming I’ve managed to negotiate the Daylight Savings changes correctly).

Definitely worth watching this, there’s some very exciting stuff happening. And don’t miss tomorrow’s either, there’s much more to come.

Yes it’s true. This training is not only free but it’s classroom-based training. You’ll get the inside track on how to build on Live Mesh and the Live Platform. In addition to getting training on these technologies ie you get trained on the existing APIs and the upcoming ones, all attendees will get access to the CTP (community technology preview) – you not only get the bits, but also access to the cloud. 

You’ll hear much more about these technologies at the upcoming Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles, and it’s likely that these courses are going to get booked up very quickly once the various announcements are made.

So…get in now. The dates and locations are below, if you’re UK based the nearest ones are Amsterdam and Berlin. And although the courses are free, you are responsible for your travel, accommodation etc. But it’s still a pretty good deal.

Book here: www.lpjumpstart.com

Dates and Locations (it’s a 2-day course)

It’s pretty rare these days that I’m pleasantly surprised by something. However, it happened recently when I bought an in-car kit for my Zune player. Frankly, my expectation levels weren’t that high. Not because I suspected there would be anything wrong with it per se, but rather because I have used these kind of gadgets before and found that they never worked that well.

So what does the Zune In-Car kit do? It plugs into your cigarette lighter and into your Zune, and transmits your music on an FM frequency of your choice so that you can tune in your car radio to listen to it. Perfect for car music systems that don’t have an aux socket.

My doubt about the kit was based on a previous FM transmitter that I bought a while ago that frankly didn’t work all that well. The reception was poor and crackly and I could never seem to find a frequency that was reasonably clear.

What about the Zune kit then? Well, when you unpack it, it’s evident that this is a fairly classy piece of kit. Yes it includes the necessary plug for your cigarette lighter and for your Zune, but also provides a nice digital display that is magetised so that it can easily be slotted onto the end of the cigarette lighter plug.

And I quite like it that the end of the cigarette lighter plug has the Zune logo on it. Nice little touch.

You also get a rubber pad for putting on the dashboard, which you can then put your Zune onto so that it doesn’t slip around.

I like that too. But then came the real surprise – the FM transmitter uses RDS to display the artist and track number on your radio. Now that’s pretty cool. When you switch it on you see “Zune” displayed on your radio, and when you start playing a track it changes to show the artist and track name.

So in the example below I’m listening to Rihanna.

Now, in my car the same information can also be displayed on the dashboard in the middle of the speedometer dial.

Even nicer. So I can see the artist and track name that’s playing on my Zune without having to look away or try to peer at the Zune player itself.

Of course, while the Zune is attached it’s also effectively running off mains power and charging, so you have no fear of running out of juice if you’re going on a long trip.

And finally, the wire from the cigarette lighter to the Zune acts as an aerial so reception is pretty good – it’s definitely much better than the previous device I used.

All in all I can definitely recommend the Zune in-car kit. As I said at the beginning it’s not often I’m pleasantly surprised by something but it has definitely been the case with this piece of equipment.     

Ok, I know I’ve been lax at blogging lately and it might seem like this first blog post for a while is actually some kind of sales pitch…which might make you wonder if I’ve been turned into a salesman (no, I haven’t).

Actually I’m posting this because I’ve run up against this question a few times recently so thought it would be useful to share, and to hear any other views people may have.

So the question is: You have bought a netbook machine that doesn’t have an optical drive ie no CD drive or DVD drive. But you want to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, etc…how do you install it?

Well one obvious answer is to buy Microsoft Office from our online store, and you’ll have the option of downloading the product rather than having it shipped to you on CD.

Pretty simple. And no it isn’t really a sales pitch even if it does sound like one.

Now – does someone else have a better way of doing this? Assuming you want the best productivity software you can get ie Microsoft Office, and not some other product.

Huge congratulations to some of my colleagues who have just won recognition from the Computer Weekly Blog Awards.

These are:

• Steve Clayton’s “Geek in Disguise” blog won the “Company Blogs” category
• Jason Langridge’s “Mr Mobile” blog won the “Wireless and Mobile Blogs” category
• Mike Taulty’s “Bits and Bytes” blog won the “Programming and Technical Blogs” category
• Ray Fleming’s “UK Schools” blog won the “Public Sector Blogs” category

Fantastic job. All of these blogs are well worth reading, but a special call out for Steve Clayton who won the Company Blog award - a terrific achievement and well deserved, his blog is an excellent read.

Take a look at http://sirius2.intersoftpt.com/, some nice new Silverlight components.

It's worth viewing the source code if you're a dev, it's incredibly easy to use this stuff.

Looking forward to seeing this being used widely.

I’ve been running with dual monitors for some time and find it’s a really useful way to work, whether you’re writing code or writing a letter. And with monitors getting to reasonable price points these days it has become increasingly common to see this kind of setup.

However, unless you’re prepared to spend time with Photoshop (or free alternative) to hand-craft your own two-monitor-wide background, you’ll be stuck with the same background picture on both monitors.

And that’s just not quite cool enough.

I’ve seen postings that walk you through how to do this on XP, but not on Vista. So I was really pleased to find that Binary Fortress Software provide a little free utility that makes it really easy to do. They offer a pro version for $10 Canadian which is worth a look, if nothing else to show your support.

Download it from http://www.binaryfortress.com/displayfusion.

And if someone knows of another easier way to do this on Vista let me know…but in my opinion this is a great way to get the job done.

Those of you who read my earlier blog post and set your homepage to http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-us will have been enjoying the twice-daily updates of photos from the Olympics as the backdrop.

However Microsoft China decided to go one better and have a full page backdrop of the Birds' Nest stadium on their page (see http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-cn). Very nice.

It's amazing the number of people who have seen the Olympics pictures on my screen and asked "how do I get that?". It's one of those simple little things that's a great idea - credit to the search team.

The Live Mesh team have just opened up the ability for UK residents to sign up to the service. Previously it was only available in the US. In addition to the UK, residents in Australia and New Zealand have also been given the ability to sign up.

Get in quick at www.mesh.com, or read the team's blog post for more info.

This has been in the wings for a while now so it’s good to see it being rolled out. The Live Search homepage (www.live.com) now has a rather pleasing background image – that will be changed over time – with a series of hotspots that you can roll over to explore search information related to the image.

While it’s currently only being rolled out in the US, you can get to see and use it via this link: http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-us (which just changes your location to US on the search page).

It will be interesting to see how this develops, it’s a nice concept.

Read the full story at the live search blog.

This is another of those "in case you haven't seen it" posts....so in case you haven't seen it I would recommend taking a look at http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/.

What is it? A number of people who were very skeptical of the value of Windows Vista - but had never used it - were told that they were getting a sneak peak at a brand new operating system from Microsoft called "Mojave". They loved it - they saw how fast it ran, how easy it was to use, how useful it was and gave it a big thumbs up.

They were then told that Windows "Mojave" was in fact Windows Vista. Their reactions are great, here are some of my favourite quotes (remembering that these are people who hate Vista but have never actually used it, and have just found out that the operating system they've been looking at is in fact Windows Vista):

• I need an upgrade and it looks like everything I would need
• I had no idea you could do all this with vista
• Actually it's totally different to what I heard it would be like
• It just seems so easy
• Now I know Vista I like it

And there are plenty more, that's just a sprinkling.

Whatever your opinion this is an interesting experiment in perception versus reality. For us I think it's a good lesson in just how powerful advertising and the Press really can be in setting people's expectations and their perceptions of....well of just about anything.

To me the important thing here is to start challenging many of the so-called truths I have that are based on something I've heard rather than something I've experienced. And I'm not just talking about IT-related issues, I mean anything that I believe, where my opinion is based purely on information provided by someone else.

Maybe I'm just slow in picking this up. But almost everyone has a vested interest and it's worth bearing that in mind whenever you hear or read anything. It cuts both ways of course - I would expect people to apply the same principal to everything we say too.

And you can be sure that includes the things you read in blogs :-)

If you haven't come across our Silverlight Streaming service before now I would recommend taking a look. Why? Here are three reasons to get you started:

1) It's free

1) Allows you to stream high quality video on your website for free

2) There is no branding associated with it ie visitors to your website won't see our branding, just yours. Oh, and it's free.

But even better than it being free, you could now actually get paid when people view your videos. How? If you allow us to display some contextual ads.

We have launched a pilot of the advertising platform which makes this all possible and you can sign up for it (well, actually you can "register your interest" at this time) from here: http://advertising.microsoft.com/publisher/sls