Helmers Blog

This year I won’t be reporting live from Tech-Ed, but Microsoft will be broadcasting the Tech-Ed Europe Keynote Live from Berlin!

Just check out the Microsoft Tech-Ed Global Virtual Pressroom for the feed, or watch it below

Just a few days ago I received an e-mail with the invitation to test drive the upcoming Zune Video Streaming service on XBOX Live! Yeah..you have to pay (even during the testing phase) to test the streaming service, but when you complete a survey you will receive 1200 Microsoft Points (1 movie is about 500 Points).

I’m not sure what went wrong, but just a few moments  ago I received another e-mail in which the XBOX Beta Administrators announced that they discontinued the offer of 1200 Microsoft Points for completing the error reporting survey.

This was the e-mail I received :

 

Hello Testers,

We regret to inform you that we have discontinued the offer of 1200 Microsoft Points for completing the “Zune video streaming” error reporting survey. We appreciate your continued feedback during the testing process and can’t wait to bring the full service to you in November.

Movie night is still taking place this weekend and there will be a wide variety of movies available for rental during the Preview period. Please note that you will need to use Microsoft Points to rent these movies.

Even though the 1200 Microsoft Points offer is no longer available, we look forward to your continued participation in the Xbox LIVE Update Preview Program.

Regards,

The Xbox Beta Administrators

 

They still want us (the Testers) to test the video streaming stuff, we have to pay to test and won’t receive anything in return? Oke….when you’re participating in the XBOX Live Update Preview Program it’s normal you do something in return…but pay for testing the streaming of a movie (not much choice for now, only considerable old movies available in the Netherlands)…I don’t like that at all!

I can imagine that everybody was filling out a error report (to collect the 1200 MP’s), even the movie night hasn’t even started yet If the testing wasn’t gonna cost me anything (or they had new movies available) I wanted to try the service, but now I have to pay and they don’t have any recent movie….sorry…I’ll just skip the testing part!

During the Windows 7 deployment in Zevenhuizen Microsoft recorded some nice video’s which they published on their action website. Too bad you’re not able to skip the video, so I decided to upload the video to Youtube! If you take a good look you can even see me in the video (I’m the one at the hairdresser with the brown polo-shirt and in the deployment room which you can see later in the video).

The Windows 7 Launch has started. Check out video’s from all the launch events all over the world. Do you have a launch video and uploaded it to youtube? Just leave the link in the commentbox and I’ll post your video here!

Read the rest of this entry »

For all the non-Dutch readers who didn’t receive the Microsoft NL Newsletter : You can watch Steve Ballmer’s Keynote which he held at TechNet Live last week in The Hague at Microsoft.com. Just click the image below to watch the keynote with slides!

Do you want to read more about his keynote (and check out the pictures), just click here.