Diane's space

For higher ed students in the US, software access just became a lot easier. Microsoft DreamSpark allows students to access professional software for FREE.

The package includes:

For details, check out https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/ and watch Max interview Bill Gates.

Looks like Microsoft Research will be calling Cambridge one of its new homes. Great to see more of Microsoft joining me on the east coast. :-)

Looks like Dan Fernandez's move to the Channel 9 team is more than official. He and Brian Keller kicked off their first episode of their Yet-to-be-named show, giving a recap of their favorite things for developers. Awesome. So much less work for the rest of us to find out about the coolest new developer offerings, from blogs to samples!! What do you think? Anything they missed?

Btw, I think <insert.name.here> is a cool name already.

Ok, my videos aren't up yet, since I made a couple promises about uploading others, but I'm now active on Channel8. I uploaded the first video yesterday (Clint interviewing our University of Iowa MSP) and today I'm uploading Jen's Getting Started with XNA series. I have a bunch of things to upload myself, but I promised Max I wouldn't flood the site. I'm Diane on Channel8, so you can check out what I'm uploading or blogging about here. YAY!!

Thinking about competing in ChicTech's Games for Girls or the Imagine Cup Game Development Competition? You might consider checking out Rob Miles' new site Very Silly Games. These are small funny games with source code for XNA. Rob teaches Computer Science in the UK and I had the good fortune to meet him at the 2006 Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in India. It seems that he's also writing a book about learning programming through Game Development. Can't wait to check it out!