Josh Holmes

Startupbootcamp Day 1

One of the most fun things that I get to do in my job here at Microsoft Ireland is work with all of the great startups here in Ireland. I manage the Bizspark program for Ireland, North and South. Through that work, I get to work both with startups directly as well as working with the startup accelerators and incubators here in Ireland. That’s great fun as we’ve got some [...]

Some cool Windows Phone Controls

There are a lot of very cool metro design controls that are out there that can a lot of the work and though process off of your plate if you just know where to look. For example, I just ran across this set of controls from the Coding4Fun guys that includes a duration picker, a number of different message boxes and notifications, several different colour pickers, helper classes for converting [...]

Using Windows Azure Storage from the Windows Phone

If you haven’t found Cloud Cover, it’s a great series on Channel9 that covers a lot of great Azure topics. What I particularly like is that it’s shows a lot of very practical knowledge things and doesn’t assume a tremendous amount of knowledge. I found this one particularly useful with the amount of mobile development that I’ve been doing recently. Join Wade and Steve each week as they cover the [...]

Windows Phone Camp Online

The Denmark guys had a full two day conference staffed by corp speakers that they recorded and put on Channel 9. There’s a ton of great content here that you can check out. Dev01 – Windows Phone 7.5 Overview for Developers Ben Riga Windows Phone 7.5 Overview for Developers by Ben Riga Dev02 – Building Windows Phone 7.5 Applications with Visual Studio 2010 Ben Riga Building Windows Phone 7.5 [...]

Visiting Norway

I had a blast visiting Oslo, Norway for Wordcamp Norway (#wcnorge). The last time that I went to Norway, it was just for a few hours as I flew in, did my talk and flew out. This time I made sure that I took an extra day to see part of the city. I started off at the Thon Hotel next to the Central Station and walked up to the [...]

WordPress on Windows at Wordcamp Norway

I just got done speaking at Wordcamp Norway (#wcnorge) on the topic of running WordPress on Windows. The talk seemed to be well received despite the powers that be on the demo side not being kind to me. My first install of WordPress had an port conflict with a previous version and failed. ARG! Regardless, it’s been a while since I spoke at a Wordcamp but I always have a [...]

Windows Phone Camp (Dublin)

In conjunction with the Dublin ALT.NET, we are going to hold a a Windows Phone Camp in Dublin on Feb 11, 2012. Do you have an idea for a great mobile app that you’d like to build on Windows Phone? Do you have a mobile app on anther platform and want to expand your platforms? Are you lacking ideas but still want some experience on Windows Phone? Are you a [...]

Architect Evangelist Position in Dublin

There’s a Architect Evangelist position open on the DPE team here in Ireland for someone with the right mix of passion, technical and commercial experience. Wilbour Craddock is returning to the icy tundra that forged and hardened him in Regina, Saskatchewan (yeah, I had to look it up too). Wilbour has really set the bar for this role and has left a very big hole to fill. Despite rumor’s to [...]

How People with Disabilities Use the Web

I was doing some research for a project and ran across this bit on the W3C website titled How People with Disabilities Use the Web. I love this section as it goes into something I’m really a fan of in user stories as they not only crisply get across a set of requirements, it personalizes a cold sterile set of requirements that seem fairly arbitrary to a warm and living [...]

My wife’s post

I don’t blog personal stuff all that often, that’s mostly the realm of my wife’s blog. There’s a lot of reasons that I don’t including that I like to separate my work and personal life to some degree. I live a fairly public life and am in the community all the time and I like for my family to have a little bit of privacy occasionally. But it’s my own [...]