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Is this Windows 7’s way of telling me that I should just pack and go home?

We’re going Egypt, baby!

It was about three weeks ago that I was at the Eiffel Tower with the rest of the WikiChildProtect team, we were a bit disappointed because after all our hard work, we had “only” achieved third place in the French finals of Imagine Cup’s software design category.

Not everything was lost though. I didn’t write about it because I left for Asia the day after and have been quite busy these three weeks, but we submitted our project for H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of Egypt, Special Award.

Today we got the results: we are among the five finalists that are going to Egypt!

So I’ll be in Egypt from July 3 to 7 :)

Unfortunately, this also means that I will have to abandon my mother for a few days and that I will miss the wedding of two of my closest friends… But I know that they all know what this means to me and they wish me plenty of luck.

I’ll try to keep you posted as often as possible about how this goes, but first I have to get back home to France so that we can prepare with the team and bring back a gold medal ;)

Where am I? Where am I going?

Questions that I ask myself more often than I should, but don’t worry, I’m not here to talk about my memory problems. I was recently asked: where are you “virtually”? I barely tweet any more and I’m not blogging either here or there …

The explanation is simple; or double or triple. On the one hand, if I don’t say anything, it’s probably because I don’t have anything to say, yet, you know that even when I have nothing to say, I usually figure out something, so what’s going on?

I’m busy! Busy with problems that have no place here, but busy with events that are way more interesting and worthy of being shared.

Let’s start with Imagine Cup, the contest organized by Microsoft upon which I stumbled 2 years ago when I got to the world finals in Seoul. Since then, I’ve had trouble staying away and this year, since it’s my last as a student, I’m participating in the Software Design category for the first and last time. I’m part of team Dotnet-France (fr) with Julien Dollon (fr), Olivier Courtois (fr), Bertrand Vergnault (fr) and, our dear mentor, Yann Lautrédou (fr).

In one quick paragraph, thanks to our WikiChildProtect project, we want to make the Internet a safer place for children with a solution that should be more efficient, more secure and, especially, that integrates a citizen and community approach that does not currently exist. If you would like more information, do not hesitate to out our press release (in French).

The French final in this category will take place on May 14th, on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. Only the first place of the national finals will earn the privilege of participating in the world finals in Egypt. Competition is tough this year since veterans that I know well are participating and/or coaching their own teams. I will let you know this Thursday evening whether I’ll be spending the first week of July in Cairo or not.

Finally, the other “projet” that has been nagging me is the three weeks following the finals on Thursday. I’m going to have to go to China to teach for SUPINFO at 山东科技大学, Shandong University of Science and Technology. Yes, I’ll admit that I did have a certain power to align the stars so that this would be my destiny, but that doesn’t change the fact that the following three weeks will not be easy.

There is a silver lining though: 10 days of vacation in the middle of these three weeks! The program for these 10 days: I have no idea!

I’m a little bit scared. I have a few clues of what I am going to do. I know that I’m not staying in China, I’ll rather explore Singapore and Malaysia. Aside from that, if you have any tips, suggestions, or friends in these countries that could show me around or even have a spare room for me in Malaysia, I won’t say no! There’s a thousand ways to contact me, so don’t hesitate ;)

Interview avec Eric Mittelette aux TechDays 09

En février, lors de Microsoft TechDays à Paris, je n’ai pas assisté à une seule conférence (ce n’est pas grave, il y a toujours les webcasts) mais j’ai quand même pu arpenter le salon pendant trois jours pour rencontrer du monde entre autres pour la WebTV de SUPINFO.

J’ai fait, avec d’autres, plein d’interviews pour aborder à peu près tous les sujets : les communications unifiées, les femmes dans l’IT, les communautés, etc. L’épisode TechDays 2009 avait été mis en ligne il y a un moment, mais ma préférée reste quand même celle que j’ai fait d’Eric Mittelette (a.k.a. ericmitt), responsable du groupe pour les les relations techniques avec les développeurs chez Microsoft France. C’est normal, puisqu’on parle développement. C’est pour ça que j’ai récupéré les rushes et je l’ai reprise en entier pour la partager ici.

Je déteste ma voix sur la vidéo, mais j’adore la discussion avec Eric, que je remercie une fois de plus pour les minutes qu’il m’a accordées, même si je sais qu’il était extrêmement occupé pendant la conférence. Je vous laisse regarder :

Enfin, si le “développement vert” ou la “Green Dev Attitude” vous intéresse, voici la conférence Développement d’applications vertes dont parle Eric.

Et comme je sais que la plupart ne voudront pas aller chercher trop loin, voici aussi l’épisode complet de la Web TV:

Fighting Fruit with Fruit

What happens when a Blackberry takes on an Apple?

This:

But of course, unrealistic ideals are easy to refute, and that’s exactly what Apple’s creative types did:

As funny as all these “ad wars” can be, RIM kind of shot itself in the foot (pun intended) with that one ;)

Azure Labs commandlets on Windows x64

I was doing the Hands on Labs from the Azure SDK the other day and one of them involves a task list that a very handy PowerShell commandlet is supposed to fill.

The problem?

Registering commandlets...
Add-PSSnapin : No Windows PowerShell Snap-ins are available for version 1.
At C:\Users\Madd0\Documents\AzureServicesKit-Feb\Labs\AdvancedSQLDataServices\Assets\SDSSetup.ps1:17 char:13
+ Add-pssnapin  <<<< AzureServicesManagement

Now, why wouldn’t there be any snap-ins available for version 1? I can see the dll sitting there and I can only assume that Microsoft released code that works.

Easy!

As many other problems developers face these 32-to-64-bit-transition days, the missing snap-in just needed to be executed in a x86 environment, but I happen to work on Vista x64 (yep, a little masochistic, I know…).

The solution then is simply to open the console called Windows PowerShell (X86) and execute the SDSCreateStorage.cmd command there—don’t forget to run as Administrator.

What do you know about IT?

Pierre sent me a DM to let me know that I appear for a second or so in this Microsoft video:

I’m guessing that many of you won’t watch it until the end, so I’m just going to copy the part that caught my attention the most:

I bet you didn’t know this

42% of global IT employment…

relies on Microsoft technologies.

Wow!

Finally, as a side note to myself: do not accept interviews late at night, especially if you hadn’t slept much the nights before ;)

Targeted Advertising by Goolge

Google’s adding Google Chrome advertising on Internet Explorer 8 posts. Playing like this is just too easy…

Just remember: do no evil ;)

Internet Explorer 8 coming out today

The final version of Internet Explorer 8 should be coming out today around noon Eastern time (1600 GMT) after several public—or more or less public—betas and RCs.

I’ll let you visit their website to get an idea of what’s new (quick: better support for standards, lighter, faster, Web Slices, Accelerators, …).

IE8 will be available for:

• Windows XP (32 and 64-bits)
• Windows Vista (32 and 64-bits)
• Windows Server 2003 (32 and 64-bits)
• Windows Server 2008 (32 and 64-bits)
• Windows 7 (natively)

I will be changing those into links to the downloads once I’m sure of what they’ll be.

I’m a “Chrome person” these days, but I think I might give IE8 a chance for a few days. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Update: Links updated and localized!

Invitation : Conférence Symfony avec Fabien Potencier

Le laboratoire Web & Dev a le plaisir de vous inviter à une présentation du framework PHP Symfony qui aura lieu au siège du Training Center de SUPINFO à Paris :

28-30 bis rue de la Victoire
75009 Paris

Cette présentation aura lieu le mercredi 18 mars de 18h30 à 20h00.

Fabien Potencier est co-fondateur de Sensio et directeur général Sensio Labs. Il présentera son framework Symfony—il est lead dev du projet—qui fait partie des plus reconnus dans le monde professionnel PHP.

La présentation sera suivie d’une session de questions / réponses avec Monsieur Potencier.

Inscrivez-vous ! C’est gratuit ;)