Microsoft is still hiring interns for this coming Christmas

In times like these, Microsoft shuffles its internals and reorganising itself (at the same time saying goodbye to some of its employees). But, business as usual, Microsoft Redmond is still hiring new talent from Australia.

It’s true. Their international recruiting team sent me a flyer about the 3 month SDE/SDET internship at the end of the year. But remember, application closes 22 Jul 09 – that’s less than 3 weeks away!

It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to work for a company of such scale. And note, this is not an internship with Microsoft Australia, it’s with Microsoft in the US! It means you get to go over there, all relocation expenses paid for, etc. It’s worth trying for.

There’ll be a series of interviews involved of course, but even flights to interview site will be paid for. Remember to send your resume to ausrec@microsoft.com.

Outlook Live Answers Sydney Mail Questions

In response to the mounting questions about the new hosted Exchange services, a new website has been launched at http://outlookliveanswers.com/ to support your everyday email.

Already, it answers a range of questions from “What is Outlook Live?” all the way to synchronising contacts with other Live services. I think this site will be welcomed by many students, especially those who are a little more technically inclined. It even tells you how not to use the Outlook Live web interface, and fall back to POP and IMAP mail access.

It looks like that this website is intended to be a specialised community revolving around solving issues and problems with Outlook Live. A feature many would find welcome is the service availability status, which we hope would remain green most of the time.

Bing – the new Live Search is now live; create your own IE8 search provider add-on.

Bing, the new rebranded Live Search, has just been made available to public. The first thing I’d want to do is to make this the default search provider in Internet Explorer 8.

Searching www.ieaddons.com, I couldn’t find the Bing search provider! But not to worry, they’ve made it just too easy to make your own search provider. Head along to http://www.ieaddons.com/en/createsearch.aspx and follow the instructions!

Essentially, it involves:

1. Search for “TEST” (capital letters) using Bing
2. Copy the URL of the first page after you made the search
3. Paste that into the search provider creator, give it a name and click install!

Update: As pointed out, this method doesn’t give you search suggestions. As a quick hack to give the impression of Bing suggestions, we can add Live Search suggestions to this accelerator.

I really wish I could add javascript to this blog so that you can just click a button to add the search provider to IE8, but unfortunately hosted WordPress won’t let me. It won’t even let me upload an .xml file! So I’ve included after the break the Open Search Description file that would give you that.

Just create a new XML file Bing.xml, and host that up on your favourite web server. Then create a shell HTML file that calls a javascript function to add this as shown.

Update: Head along to Mozilla Addons, where Long’s made the Bing search provider available for download. Even though it’s meant for Firefox, it’s based on the same open standard (open search description) so it’s the same. The “Download Now” link works in IE8 too!

Update: Get the addon now at ieaddons.com! It now uses the search suggestions from Bing rather than from Live Search.

Update! Uni notes added. Hope it’s not too late for your exams.

I’ve just uploaded my 3rd year notes onto my blog. This includes:

Designing an HTPC build

I’m about to build a home theatre PC (HTPC) that’s to be ideally less than a thousand dollars Australian. So here are the requirements:

• Small form factor (i.e. mini-ITX)
• Quiet
• Must play HD videos
• Must be able to record videos such that it can replace the TV Tuner / DVD recorder unit.
• Receives DVB-T

Looking around at what’s available, there doesn’t seem to be too many choices which would obviously make the decisions easier.

But there is one basic question that needs to be answered: The age old question of do I want to go with Intel, or AMD? (And there’s also VIA). So there’s the typical old Socket 775 Intel boards, AMD boards on the 6 series chipset, and VIA’s EPIA. Having had a chat to Richard, he suggested a build based on an AMD 7 series chipset, which sports quite a decent onboard Radeon HD graphics. reviews are OK too. Why not Intel’s Atom? Well it’s a little limited in power – I was hoping for something that’s a bit faster than 1.6(6) GHz. The AMD is a socket based motherboard, and also meant that I could upgrade the CPU if needed (although that never happens).

Why not Intel S775? Because they come with Intel Graphics. Why not the brand new Nvidia Ion chipset? It looks really good, especially that Zotac board. But unfortunately it didn’t come with a PCI Express slot which I would need for the TV card.

The final specs after the break!