First of all, glad to be back, it's been a while since my last blog post but I’ve since decided to refresh my blog look & feel and more updates will be coming soon too. This should include regular posting again!

I thought it would be fitting to start blogging again today given the announcement of Steve Jobs passing. I can't say I knew a lot about Steve Jobs other than knowing that he was a co-founder of Apple Inc and that he was CEO …etc. However, most people will agree that he is a visionary individual who has helped transform the digital & computer world into what it is today. If you haven't read or watched his speech in 2005 at Stanford University I recommend that you do. There is a lot everyone can take from that I think.

So after learning of Steve Jobs' death today I thought I'd take a moment and share my thoughts on how I think his passing away will impact the industry and even the world.

Earlier this year it was reported that Apple Inc shares dropped based on news of his health. However, I personally don’t think that this time around the same will happen again. I'm no trading expert though so don't quote me on that!

For consumers: I think he will be remembered as a person who changed the way they do things daily in their lives and as a result the link he established between consumers & Apple as a company is not likely to be broken. In fact, I think it will probably grow larger in his honour!

For business people & entrepreneurs: I think he will be remembered as someone who went for what he believed in and people will look at what he's done and how he's done it which will result in younger generations following their dreams and also changing the world in their own fields and ways.

For students: well, it's all summed up in the speech he gave at Stanford "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life… have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

For everyone else: they will probably watch everyone's progress in the IT industry and maybe other industries too and will compare them to what Steve Jobs has done and achieved during his time in the field.

So in other words, I think Steve Jobs after his death may have equal or possibly even greater impact on how the digital world progresses from this point onwards. RIP Steve Jobs.

I've been thinking about this for a while. It would seem that for a while now Search has not really evolved much, it's been a little over 10 years now since Google came to life and there's hasn't been much change in the way people search the internet. Maybe there have been some changes to improve things under the hood but really, on the surface Google hasn't changed that much over that time.

In recent years Microsoft has been making an effort to try and close the gap on Google and I now thing their efforts are actually paying off! While not necessarily in favour of Microsoft I think it's definitely contributing towards consumer benefit. I will get to that later on in this post.

Over the past few years Microsoft has invested in revamping the MSN Search and has come up with Windows Live Search, Live Search and most recently Bing. You can see some of my previous thoughts and posts on Live Search in the Windows Live category on this blog.

There's no doubt that Microsoft search engines have evolved a lot over the past few years and whilst I don't always like the background images that popup on Bing there are some features in Bing that I really like. Most importantly the scrolling image search & the instant video preview in Video search. The scrolling image search has got to be be the best feature ever, I really liked this feature too when it was there for the standard search back in Windows Live Search. I just hate clicking next!

Also, if you go to the US version of the Bing search you'll notice that they've rolled out some new features such as specific searches (Shopping & Travel) in addition to Visual Search and sharing of search history as can be seen in the image below.

If you think Microsoft are not on the right track for search innovation then wait for it! Google is FINALLY actually doing something about their search engine too. They're apparently about to roll out a new look & revamp of their current search site and by the sounds of it, they're doing similar things to what Bing is doing which gets me back to Microsoft contributing to bringing the best services to consumers! Just by forcing others to continue to innovate! See the article Google's New Design Gets Official & Google's New Look Is Mobile Too for more info.
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Finally, one feature that I would REALLY love to see in future search engine's is what I'll call UserRank! I think in the time of social networking it would make some sense to allow user's to contribute to the ranking of sites and not just rely on page ranks ...etc, and while this approach does have some implications and potential of unfair usage here's how I think it would work:

For each search result that appears in the results page the page would have a button similar to Facebook's I Like this' feature. This button would then allow the searcher to tag a search result as useful and then contribute to the rank of the search result. I think this feature if implemented successfully can be good in that if someone was searching for something and finds a useful search result after a lot of digging then the useful result's rank would improve based on how many unique 'I Like this' have been done and as a result the next person searching for the same thing would find a useful result without having to do all the hard work again.

Anyway, that's just an idea! Maybe it makes some sense Thought's anyone

So the wait for the arrival of Visual Studio 2010 is almost over. Next Tuesday the 13th of April will be the official launch of Visual Studio 2010 in Australia.

The launch event for Visual Studio 2010 will be held at Luna Park in Sydney and will be part of the Australian ALM Conference which is held over 2 days Tuesday & Wednesday 13th & 14th of April.

The Australian Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Conference & Visual Studio 2010 Launch Keynote is Free and you can Register here.

The keynote speakers for the event are

• Sam Guckenheimer - Group Product Planner for Visual Studio and ALM Guru.
• Tanuj Vohra - Director of Program Management Visual Studio Test Business.

So if you?re in Sydney and are able to attend the conference you can purchase a ticket online or onsite. If you?re not in Sydney but want to follow the conference you can keep an any on the ALM Conference Blog or follow the ALM conference tweets @australianalm.

Also if you are in Melbourne, the next Victoria.NET user group session will be on Wednesday evening at Microsoft Theatre and will be presented by the Australian ALM Conference & Visual Studio 2010 launch event Keynote speaker Sam Guckenheimer.

The session details are below:

Visual Studio 2010 - A session with the man behind the product that you know as Visual Studio Team
System/ALM and TFS - Sam Guckenheimer
Wednesday 14th April 2010
5:30pm for a 6pm start
Microsoft Theatre. Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank