As part of the Government Leaders Forum - Americas, Microsoft has just announced the availability of professional-level developer and designer tools as well as training to students around the world, at no charge. Whether you are in university or high school, these is an amazing opportunity to prepare yourself for a successful career. The initiative is known as DreamSpark and you can visit the website for more information - check out the FAQ pages for details on how it all works. Students will need a Live ID account.

Isn't it amazing that just when you have yourself convinced how busy you are, you suddenly find yourself with way too much time on your hands? Well, I've been itching to play around with Microsoft Labs Photosynth for some time now, so I decided to give it a bash without leaving the confines of my little home office. I like the effect but I only achieved a ranking of "36% synthy". We'll do it better next time :-)

There's a definite knack to getting this right. On the Photosynth website you will find an instructional video and a PDF, full of tips of what to do to get the best results. It costs nothing and all you have to do is sign up to get a Photosynth ID which basically uses Windows Live ID.

There is a 20GB limit so I was pretty confident of being able to back in and delete and edit to my heart's content. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the means to do this. Hopefully this will be remedied as people will want the opportunity to improve their synths over time.

While you're at it, check out the new Deep Zoom technology which is incorporated into Silverlight. I just gotta try this one out and see what I can come up with :-)

P.S. The really persistent among you may be able to read the code on the monitor screen! If you're going to do this, remember to put post-its everywhere you have something sensivitive written as this is viewable by everyone out there!

For all the people out there with a love-hate relationship of the new Office ribbon, here's something to grab your attention. Despite, the fact that the "experts" spent 10 years studying people's interaction with Office applications in order to come up with the magic ribbon, more than a few people are extremely frustrated on first contact with it! So, we now have help videos, a sort of multi-media, social office assistant.

The Office team have come up with Microsoft Office Labs in an effort to ease the learning curve of their Office "power users"... I'm keeping a straight face, honest :-| In short, the Office Labs umbrella site has two new projects which Microsoft has just gone live with: Community Clips and Search Commands.

Given the pace with which Microsoft have been releasing new products lately, this is a welcome source of information. I may be a developer, but I put mastering Office tools right up there with programming the VCR... one day I'll master it...

I just noticed a new link when checking my hotmail this morning, to "Windows SkyDrive". Microsoft are offering 5GB worth of free online storage. It works with Windows or Mac with Firefox or Internet Explorer.

There are personal, shared and world folder options. File transfers are SSL-protected. What I found particularly interesting is that you can use the shared folders to colloborate with colleagues and set permissions for each person on a folder level. Nice angle :-)

I'm getting tired of emailing stuff between work and home. I'm also tired of getting down under my desk fumbling with a flash stick, so I think I'll give this a test drive for a while.

You can learn more here.

Up until today, CodersBarn was based on BlogEngine 1.1. using XML. I was having ongoing problems with the comments system, and honestly believe that without feedback from readers, nobody gains. So, for the past week, I have been working on porting it to the new 1.3 version using SQL Server. 

The comments system is now up and running :-) Please feel free to comment on any existing posts or to make suggestions on what content you would like to see from an ASP.NET point of view. Use the contact form to ask questions or to request code snippets. I will attempt to respond to all emails. Over time, the goal for this blog is to move closer to a real community, a community that shares the knowledge rather than guarding it like some trade secret known only to the few.

The CodersBarn blog only began last summer and is already receiving over 5,000 page views per month, roughly 2,300 unique hits. It takes a little time to find a niche that needs to be filled. In the future, I see this blog offering up more and more practical, "How To" articles and code samples. It's not a news blog and doesn't attempt to create traffic by throwing up cheap links to other people's work. The original idea was to create a place for students of software and professionals alike, to speak candidly about this great profession and where it's heading.

Hats off to Mads Kristensen and his colleagues who put BlogEngine.Net together. It's an amazing piece of blogging software and was sorely needed. Prior to the launch of this free blog engine I was already procrastinating for over a year on coding my own engine... a case of the mechanic's car? The availability of this software and the ease of installation saw this blog designed, a name chosen and registered, and the first post published, all in a single weekend. This migration to a databased version was made particularly easier by the availability of intructional installation videos from Al Nyveldt.