Mike Calligaro came to Microsoft thirteen years ago to help build a supercomputer. But, two days before his arrival, the project evaporated, leaving Mike on the payroll but without a position.   This isn't an unheard of situation for new hires, but Mike's story, detailing all the…

I've been reading the latest Time cover story on education today. And they are talking about the need for students to be able to find information and not just memorize it. The fact of the matter is that all too often schools have kids memorize things they don't need, will seldom us and which can be…

Today Microsoft XNA Gaming Studio Express was just released. What does that mean? It means the software is no longer beta and now has Xbox 360 support! To deploy your Xbox 360, you do need to be part of the XNA Creators Club which is available on Xbox Live Marketplace for $49 (U.S.) for…

In this article, the ZMan walks through creating Tiny Tennis, a Pong clone, using the XNA Framework The ZMan TheZbuffer.com Difficulty: Easy Time Required: 1-3 hours Cost: Free Software: Visual C# Express , XNA Game Studio Express Hardware: Download: Download December 11th... a day…

A cool gadget, if you're impatient about Vista. You can add this one in your Vista's Sidebar, in your Live Space or in Live.com. You can also add this in your live messenger :

Earlier this week I was in Barcelona, Spain, presenting at a Microsoft customer event called the Health Industry Leaders Innovation Forum. Healthcare executives from across the EMEA region came together to share information on how they are using information technology in healthcare and to exchange…

Ever want to have your Christmas lights rock out?  Brian Peek has written a great article showing off how to animate your Christmas lights for Coding 4 Fun using some Phidget Relays, some code, and some electrical parts. With enough time and effort, you'll be able to rock them out in sync…

Ok, what is Mono?  Mono is an open development initiative that is attempting to develop an open source version of Microsoft.Net.  At this this point, the API coverage is limited to .Net 1.1 with limited support for 2.0. So why care?  If you want your application to be a bit more…

Remember back in May when the question was which next-gen disc format would take the lead and own the market for removable storage, video games, and movies? Well now it appears we're starting to see some signals that HD-DVD will soon be dancing around the ring in triumph.Over at Digital Trends, Rob…

Rob Short is an operating system pioneer. He helped Microsoft transition from the 1980s with DOS and 16 bit windows into the 32 bit world with Windows NT in the 1990s. More recently, Rob was part of the team that further enhanced windows to take advantage of the 64 bit processors of the new…