Greetings readers!

I had hoped to get a podcast up tonight but because of dinner taking nearly 3 hours, I didn't have the prep time I need for the show. Schedule depending, hopefully tomorrow. I do have a HUGE surprise for you guys on the show but I will likely hold that off until next week when the show is back to normal. Anyway, lets talk Day 2 at MIX 2010!

Like yesterday,  today started off with a big keynote.  Yesterday's focus was Windows Phone 7 Series (a name I still hate even after having it explained to me today) and the topic of today's keynote was Internet Explorer 9 (Internet Exploder 9 for those who are cool).  A few things was said about IE9 back at PDC but at the time they had only been working on it for 3 weeks so nothing was able to be shown until today.  As much of an Internet Exploder hater as I am, I will say that what they showed off has me extremely impressed.

A number of demos were shown that allowed you to see how much better performing IE 9 was compared to Chrome and Firefox at some tasks because it is taking advantage of GPU acceleration for a lot of the rendering and stuff.  I am not sure about the technical aspects of the demos but Chrome by far performed the worst out of all 3.  I would have loved to see a comparison with the new Opera (my browser of  choice) since it is the fastest browser there is according to various benchmarks.  As impressive as these tests seemed to be, what really made my jaw drop was when they had a netbook running multiple 720p videos in the browser at the same time and still only using around 35% of the CPU.  They were as smooth as butter and no frame drops compared to Chrome where just one video had the CPU pegged and it was dropping a bunch of frames.  This was all with HTML 5 which is impressive.

If you want to try out the power of IE 9 (although it is no where near finished and has nothing in terms of security or anything so it should NOT be used as a primary browser), head over to IETestDrive.com.  I really wish that more applications would take advantage of the GPU so there can be real innovations in terms of content possible.

I have a ton of other IE related news that will either comprise of another post of be apart of the next podcast but it is too much and far too interesting to be thrown in here.

After the keynote, I bounced around to a couple of different sessions.  I attended a session on how to create Silverlight apps which was really cool because it showed how the same app that you can run in your browser will run in a Windows Phone 7 Series device with no changes (although changes should still be made to make it a more appropriate experience).  I then attended a Silverlight debugging session what was kind of pointless since I didn't know Silverlight and it was more for people experienced with it and that face some common debug issues and this was how to fix some of the most common ones.  I then spent a few minutes in a presentation on some kind of security vulnerability that mainly seemed to effect Chrome but it was still interesting.  When the video is put up, I will try to remember to share a link as it is quite interesting.

Later, myself and fellow insider Joe Osborn got to sit down with Todd Brix, Senior Director for Mobile Platform Services Product Management and got to pick his brain about everything from the future of Zune to whether or not Microsoft Points will be used on Windows Phone 7 Series devices.  The meeting went great and I have a bit of big story type news that came out of the meeting but that is deserving of its own post because the news is so huge.

After that was done, they day was largely done at least for me until we went to a dinner that was amazingly expensive and nowhere near my taste.  If you are used to the whole 5 star restaurant and fancy food that you would see on the Food Network kind of thing, you might enjoy it but as somebody who eats mostly things like pizza, fast food, chinese food, ect, it was not to my liking.  The meal was like 4 or 5 courses and it was all I could to do swallow of the items without a display of projective vomiting.  I could clearly never handle the rich person kind of life style.

Tomorrow there is no keynote but several more sessions.  I will also be sitting down for an on camera interview with Raffi Krikorian from Twitter's Platform Team.  With any luck, maybe I can get some juicy news from that interview.  The conference ends at 4PM tomorrow so the odds of me being able to get a podcast recorded and up at some point tomorrow are looking good assuming my homework doesn't take up too much time.

Check back for more news from MIX 2010 and the major news that I promised to share very soon!

Welcome to the live blog for the Day 2 Keynote from MIX 2010 where we expect to hear lots about IE 9 and more!

Greetings Readers!

I'm sure that by now, most of you have heard at least something that has come out of Microsoft's MIX 2010 today, probably from our keynote live blog, but there is a lot of newsworthy information that hasn't been talked about too much so I am going to share a bit of a recap of all of the juicy information I found out today.

The day started off with the keynote which was quite interesting or at least it was if you have the least bit of interest in Windows Phone 7 Series.   There were plenty of demos on how to write applications to ready to demo applications from Seesmic and even Netflix.  I wasn't too shocked to see applications from Seesmic or Shazam or anything but the Netflix steaming app really surprised me considering there is still no Netflix app for the iPhone.

The experience on the phone seems to be very smooth and is obviously very dependent on having a network to connect to.  Between notifications and the fact that the phone pulls most of its information from the cloud, if you have no network connection, the phone seems pretty crippled as to what it can do.  I'm not a huge cloud fan for this reason but I will hold off until everything is ready to ship to say just how bad of an idea this is.

The capabilities of the phone are very impressive.  Thanks to the high, minimum hardware specs such as 256MB of ram, 8GB flash drive, 5MP camera, DirectX 9 acceleration and much more.  They demonstrated the whole idea of playing a 3D Xbox Live arcade game on the phone, Windows and the 360.  I wasn't as impressed by that since XNA which the phone uses has been doing this for a while, but I was impressed by the power of the phone.  The game it was playing looked to be as good if not better a quality as many of my PSP games.  In the mobile gaming market, it has the potential to be a major player.  That said, I am slight annoyed that they aren't saying what graphics chip the phone is using although I suspect that it is nVidia's Tegra 2.

There was also some interesting talk in terms of what you can do for business models.  We found out that ads can show up over your content like a pop-up ad which is extremely annoying.  We were being shown an AP News app when suddenly the bottom 1/3 or so of the screen had a Ford Focus driving on it for several seconds.  As a hater of ads that get in the way of the content and experience, this makes me want to bang my head against the wall.  Luckily, there are more ways to monetize your app but not as many as there should be.  You will be able to sell apps as normal and even let people try apps before they buy them which is awesome.  One of the things that I noticed that was not mentioned, but I love is the fact that at least with the apps, there are no Microsoft points, just an actual dollar amount.  Whether that is the case with the Zune Marketplace on the phone, I have yet to find that out but I am glad to see that they appear to be moving away from the whole points nonsense.  One way you won't be able to monetize your app, at least initially, is with downloadable content.  At launch, there will be no in-app purchases.  If you want to have downloadable for your games or whatever, you will want to hold off a while.  The last thing to note about purchases is that you can use a credit card or whatever or you can have it billed to your phone bill.

After they keynote and intro to Windows Phone 7 Series, there wasn't too much of note although I did have some great conversations with some people from Internet Explorer, XNA and others.  I will share those conversations on the next Global Geek News Podcast because I am too tired to write separate posts for those.

I hope to have the chance to record the podcast tomorrow since I didn't have time today and there is a huge surprise for you all with the new show as the new Intro is finally done and ready to go!  I can't wait to hear what you guys think about it.  Anyway, stay tuned for the live blog of day two's keynote where we will learn about IE 9 and who knows what else.  More MIX 2010 coverage to come!

Welcome to the day 1 keynote from Microsoft's MIX 2010 conference.  They live blog is below!

Greetings fellow geeks!

As I mentioned on this week's podcast, I will be traveling to Vegas to attend Microsoft's MIX 2010 c0nference.  There will be a ton of MIX coverage right here on the Blog and I am even going to try to do a podcast live from the event with whatever special guests I can grab from the conference to join me on the show.

What kind of coverage will we have?  Myself and my fellow Student Insiders will be doing a live blog of the keynotes on both day one and two (Monday and Tuesday) and I will be doing a number of interviews with various people of great influence that will be posted here as soon as I can get them posted (I'm not sure what bandwidth is going to be like).  I expect there to be announcements regarding Internet Explorer 9, Silverlight and what I am most looking forward to, Windows Phone 7 Series.  I plan to focus most of the coverage around Windows Phone 7 Series but I will have to wait and see what the big announcements are to know for sure where the focus will be.

Bandwidth permitting, I will be posting lots of pictures and videos from the event and blogging most of the time as well.  If you want to make sure you catch all of the conference coverage, make sure to subscribe with the great big button above!

The first keynote kicks off at 9AM PST on Monday morning, so make sure to be here for the live blog!

If there is anything specific you would like to see me cover or somebody you want me to interview, leave it in the comments and I will do my best to satisfy your request!

Listen to the latest Global Geek News Podcast and follow Global Geek News on Twitter!

Greetings readers!

Like any Monday morning, I woke up with a feeling of dread about the day and I didn't even have to be awake 5 minutes to know why.  When I checked my e-mail this morning, I found that I had received an e-mail from Amazon regarding my affiliate account.  As of today, my Amazon affiliate account has been terminated as well as every other Amazon affiliate based in Colorado.  Why have our accounts been terminated?  The idiots in our state legislature just passed a law for taxing online sales.  Our governor can't ride a bike without nearly getting himself killed, how in the world did we think he was smart enough to run the state?!  Anyway, below is the full statement I received from Amazon in my e-mail this morning.

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to "voluntarily" collect Colorado sales tax -- a course we won't take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado's new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.
Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

If you live in Colorado, please contact the elected morons that pushed this through and tell them to repeal it!

Listen to the latest Global Geek News Podcast and follow Global Geek News on Twitter!

Greetings readers and listeners!

Earlier today, I had an idea for a change to the Global Geek News Podcast that I thought I would run by you guys before I acted on it.  What is this wonderful idea?

I would like to start doing interviews with various influential people in the MET (media, entertainment and technology) space such as journalists, podcasters, bloggers, CEOs or whoever I think would be interesting to talk to and make it as part of the podcast.  I'm thinking that I would like to dedicate at least 10-15 minutes of every show to talking with different people about themselves and a major topic from the week.  Would this be something you guys would be interested in?

What I am also unsure of is how best to do it.  There are two different ways that I am considering, either cut down on the number of stories we cover so that the show will still be right around an hour, or tack the interview on at the end of a regular show so that the show would then run around an hour and 15 minutes or so.  Just to make sure there is no confusion, this won't change how we handle guests on the show.  We will still have an occasional guest on the main part of the show, this would basically be just me and whoever I am talking with as a one-on-one conversation.

What do you guys think?  Should I do it?  Which format would you prefer?  Should I just make this idea into something separate from the show but still apart of Global Geek News?  I need your feedback!

Follow Global Geek News on Twitter and listen to the latest Global Geek News Podacast!

Greetings everybody!

Sorry for my recent absence from the blog.  Between my trip to Microsoft that I am about to tell you about, finals, my grandmother's cancer and a few other things, my life has been all kinds of crazy lately.  Hopefully, starting today, I can get back to blogging regularly like I vowed at the first of the year.  Anyway, lets talk my trip to Microsoft!

Since technically, the first day of the trip was the travel day, I will talk about the travel day in this post and then the extra exciting stuff will start in the next post.  As of right now, I expect to do a series of at least 4 posts about this trip which will likely have a few other posts sprinkled in and some major news about the Global Geek News Podcast to wrap everything up before we get back to your regularly scheduled blog.  Anyway, lets talk the travel day!

Wednesday morning I woke up far earlier than should be allowable by law to make sure I made it to the airport in Colorado Springs with plenty of time to go through the theater that is the TSA and wait at my gate for a couple of hours.  Normally the only part of this that I would hate would be the TSA experience but having a bad case of the runs did not make things pleasant.  Luckily, I had probably the easiest experience with the TSA that I have ever had.  I did have to remove my Kindle from my bag but that was to be expected since they have had issues seeing through it before.  Apparently listening to the TSA's guide on how to pack your bag that is posted on their site is quite helpful if you want to have an easy time getting through their checkpoint.  The flights from Colorado Springs to Denver and from Denver to Seattle were nice flights but I was rather annoyed that there was no TV in the headrests of the planes which has always been the case on every Frontier flight I have flown in the past.  I am still rather irritated about this but now I know to be a bit more picky about what planes I fly on.  Other than this, the only scary part of the flight was when we were over Seattle, getting close to landing when suddenly we hit a bad pocket of air or something and the plane went 45 degrees to the left and then 45 degrees to the right before we leveled back out.  I am sure we had a decent drop in altitude with it as well.

After the flight, it took me longer than expected to meet up with my driver that was supposed to pick me up and go to the hotel.  After waiting around for a while with no sign of anybody holding a Microsoft Student Insider sign, I finally received a call from the driver wondering where I was and where to meet me.  Turns out, he was apparently on the other end of the baggage claim area that was no short distance away, but luckily we met in the middle and headed to the car.  At this point, I had the pleasure of meeting up with two of the other insiders, Tom Ziegmann (Twitter) and Joe Osborne (Twitter), a couple of great guys that I felt right at home with.

After a decent drive to the hotel which was the Mariot hotel in the Redmond Town Center, we checked in to our rooms and received a backpack full of goodies like an MSDN cup and some spending money for food and whatever else on our travel days.  We then decided to kill some time and go walking around the Redmond Town Center to see what the area had to offer.  I was quite impressed with how nice the area was and just what kind of stores where there.  They had all kinds of restaurants, and stores ranging from a board game store to a Victoria's Secret.  Yes, there was even a Starbucks.  After walking around for a while, we decided to go our separate ways for the night.  I went and had dinner with a couple of my cousins at a restaurant in the town center while they went into Seattle to have dinner at Anthony's.  My food was good, but I think they got to eat a lot better than I did that night.

After that, I went to the board game store with my cousins and then called it a night.  Having woken up at 4:30am that morning, I was quite tired.  That was the end of the travel day and the best was yet to come.  Check back tomorrow for day 2, my first day at Microsoft!

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Greetings Readers!

As I am sure many of you are aware, last night was Microsoft's CES 2010 keynote and if you watched it, you know that the most exciting thing that came out of the keynote was the power failure that delayed it close to 30 minutes (We live blogged it here).  As I stated last night, I would give my thoughts, both good and bad right here (Disclosure: I am a Microsoft Student Insider), so here we go.

I was rather surprised at the lack of announcements coming out of the keynote compared to years past.  For those hoping for a big announcement regarding the rumored new features behind Ford's Sync, you are out of luck.  Those are apparently being saved until Ford's keynote.  Hoping for a major announcement about the Zune HD?  Nope, nothing here either.  Windows 8?  Wishful thinking.  A portable version of the Xbox?  This will remain every gamers fantasy.  What was announced?  Ballmer really didn't announce much.  He gave some lines about Windows 7 being the fastest selling OS of all time and some analyst speculation that PC sales will increase considerably this year but I don't really call those announcements.  Steve announced that the HTC HD 2 running Windows Mobile will be coming to T-mobile but I am not sure anybody cares since we are talking Windows Mobile after all and T-mobile doesn't help either.  Steve said they would talk more about the future of Windows Mobile at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona next month.  Ballmer did show off some prototype "Slate PCs" that will hopefully combat anything Apple announces later this month.  The one he really demonstrated was an HP prototype that was running Windows 7 and the Kindle PC software to demonstrate how good of an e-book reader it could be and it looked to be about the same size as the Kindle 2.  Sounds nice and I will definitely buy one, but if you are going to try to compete with Apple, you need to show something that will come out a little sooner rather than some prototype.  Wait, you really wanted to know what was announced?  Ok.

As far as REAL announcements go, there are a couple fairly minor announcements.  Bing is now going to be the default home page and search engine for all HP computers.  Excited yet?  They also demonstrated what a Cable Card and a pc in your tv could do and said that with it, you can record 4 HD channels simultaneously which was probably the most impressive thing from they keynote.  They talked a bit about Media Room and some partnership with AT&T's U-verse that I still don't understand and finally they had a couple interesting Xbox announcements.  Besides all of the interesting number like units sold and games sold, Robby Bach announced that Project Natal will ship as an attachment to existing Xbox 360 systems in time for Christmas 2010.  No price although I would expect that around E3.  There was also no demo which was kind of disappointing.  They also teased a new Halo game only to have it turn out to be a trailer for Halo Reach which was announced back at E3.  I was rather disappointed but the audience seemed to love it since they could see the trailer and everybody watching the stream could not.  The big Xbox 360 announcement was Game Room.

What is Game Room?  Game Room seems to be a virtual space similar to the PS3's Home where you can run around a giant arcade as your avatar and buy and play old arcade games that look like the arcade units you would spend tons of quarters on in years gone by.  Over 1000 games are planned for the next year that will be released in weekly batches that you will have to purchase.  The coolest part is that this will be not only for the Xbox 360 but for PCs too!  How much are these games going to cost you ask?  If you want to play an arcade game on both platforms, you will be paying 400 Microsoft points aka $5.  To get it on one platform, it is 240 points or $3.  If you really want the old school experience, you can pay 40 points or $.50 and get two quarters worth of playing time on the old machines.  The games can be played with other people, in 1080p and there are cross-platform leaderboards and achievements.  This is coming in the Spring update to Xbox Live.  Personally, I am really looking forward to this because lately I have had the urge to start buying old arcade machines and turning my basement into a small arcade but now I will be able to do it virtually instead of having to completely redo the basement.  This was the only real announcement with any cool factor to it other than the HD recording.  If you would like to see the demo that the people watching the live stream couldn't watch, you can check it out here.

That was pretty much about it.  It was a very boring keynote and ended kind of out of nowhere.  It certainly doesn't make me super excited about Microsoft this year but hopefully that will change.  What did you think about the Microsoft CES 2010 keynote?  Good?  Bad?  Boring?  Exciting?  Let us know!

Hey Readers!

I don't know what the issue was earlier tonight at the Microsoft CES Keynote about having the stream blocked when the Halo Reach and Game Room trailers were shown but for those that wanted to check out Game Room which looks to be really awesome, I have found the video for you and here it is. If, for some reason, the video does not load, here is the official link: