There are so many tools you can use today to create ASP.NET 2.0 web applications (such as Visual Web Developer Express and Visual Studio 2005), but the places where you can show off the result of your work are quite limited.

Recently the Belgian/European hosting provider Hostbasket also started providing ASP.NET 2.0 Beta 2 hosting. And it's free until ASP.NET 2.0 is officially released. On top of that, you also get some disk space on SQL Server for storing your data.

What happens when a geek interviews Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer? ... He asks questions such as:

• Why does Microsoft care about developers?
• Why does Microsoft have an evangelism team?
• What is your call to action for developers right now?
• Microsoft is a leader in transparency and blogging. Why did you allow blogging?
• Can you give us some examples of where Microsoft is innovating?
• If you were in my position what tough questions would you ask Microsoft's CEO?
• What do you want to be remembered as?

See the 10-minute video at Channel9.

With Microsoft Global Contact Access, you can use Pocket Outlook on your Windows Mobile-based Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition to look up contacts in the Global Address List (GAL) on your corporate Exchange server. You can also check your co-workers' schedules to see if they're free or busy, and add multiple recipients to a meeting request.

Even if you're away from your office you'll have all the information you need to connect with any co-worker in your organization, and send them e-mail or request a meeting.

Available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/downloads/global/default.mspx.

Just saw the keynote at TechEd 2005 Europe with Andy Lees, Corporate VP Server & Tools at Microsoft. I'm sure several people will address the details, but there is one big overall theme that I remembered from this keynote: "the Microsoft platform allows IT departments to deliver the promise of enabling businesses without disabling/limiting the information workers".

Somewhat less marketing and more concord, this means having developers and IT pro's really working together. It also means really fulfilling the end user's needs without limiting them because of technical and IT related constraints. But in the end, it means enabling a business to run more succesfully.

Just one example (since there are a lot more examples): don't ask end users to use 6 applications (e-mail, CRM, sales, support, order entry, shipment follow-up, reporting, ...) to work with only 1 customer. It's time consuming, inproductive and frustrating.

Some companies don't use have a "Human Resources Department"; they have an "Employee Department" instead. Which "IT Department" dares to call itself the "Enable Department"? Anyone?

After Virtual Server 2005 and SQL Server 2005, we just announced that attendees for TechEd 2005 Europe will also receive a free* copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition (see Terms and Conditions on the TechEd Europe website). What a deal...

BTW: you can still register if you want...

Oh oh, it seems there is only a limited number of free Beta Experience kits available. So if you want to receive a copy of Visual Studio Team System Beta 2, SQL Server 2005 April CTP and a WeFly247 training CD for free, it's time to act now (if you live in the EMEA region): http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience.

At this moment there are only 5796 kits available, but the number lowers almost every minute.

Direct links for:

• Belgium (English): http://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/betaexperience/nlbe/
• Belgium (French): http://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/betaexperience/frbe/

Steve Lanuit is a Belgian developer that is rather experienced with Managed DirectX and he's blogging. Steve is one of the developers of the "New World" project, the Belgian Imagine Cup 2004 finalist in the software design invitational.

You can find his blog at http://zeknight.blogspot.com. He already posted 2 HLSL examples with source code.