Last week, the new Silverlight 2.0 runtime and SDK have been released for Mix08. It is the first update to Silverlight 1.1/2.0 since last year Mix07. It took really long time for Microsoft to update this version as they want to build Silverlight awareness with their 1.0 release first.

Today, I emailed golive@microsoft.com to inquire further information about usage license of Silverlight 2.0. I got this email from the Silverlight 2.0 license agreement page and then I sent my question to that address. Within two minutes, what a short period, I got the reply.

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

golive@microsoft.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 13): 550 5.1.1 User unknown

Did I do a mistake?

PS. Actually, I just want to know whether I can use Silverlight 2.0 in my part time project or not. It is just a Silverlight quiz game.

Microsoft products has fame in their name. As you can see from various medias, word “edition” and “release” are such a symbol for Microsoft product naming guideline. Another naming to notice, Microsoft has many acronym for indicate the state of product. For instance, “CTP” is short for “Community Technology Preview”, “SP2” for “with Service Pack 2” and “RTM” for “Release to manufacturer”.

Today, Microsoft Web Dev tools team introduces an another shiny new acronym to the world, “RTW” or “Release to the Web”. Even though it might be not the first, I’m quite sure it is not the last. lol

As a new year gift (maybe), Microsoft Press is giving away its 3 ebooks freely included

• LINQ
• ASP.NET AJAX
• Silverlight 1.0

Register today to download. Here

Since the release of Microsoft Office 2007 and announcement of OOXML, I am repeatly be asked by my friends to open an OOXML Document, docx and xlsx files, and convert it to the plain old format. Last week when I had a trip with K.Fukiat, Microsoft Thailand Academic Developer Evangelist.

He told me while on the way back to Bangkok that I can open any OOXML document without MS Office 2007. Of course, unzip it, use any text editor and treat the document as a xml file is the traditional way. For anyone who has earlier version of MS Office, you can get the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, which is freely available at Microsoft Office Download Center, and make your MS Office recognizes these new formats.

I hope that no one will ask me to convert a document again.

PS. I prefer the Open Document format but I don’t like the way people use to promote it. OOXML has better solid, real world example.