Last spring, UKeU was set up as a joint initiative between the UK Government, 12 universities and private industry.

The company had £62m of public funding and was offering undergraduate, post-graduate and life-long learning courses in subjects such as English language, science and technology and business.

 [via BBC NEWS | Education | Problems at e-learning university]

 £62m, good grief. I know as an individual sum its nothing, but the number of these individual sums I'm hearing about is beginning to add up to one heck of a lot of money and none of it seems to be leading to anything that it actually useful.

MSDN Survey Sample.  This download is a sample that demonstrates how to create a survey using ASP.NET. The questions for the survey are constructed dynamically based on the contents of a SQL Server database. When the user posts their response, their answers are inserted back into the database using stored procedures. [via Microsoft Download Center]

 Might be a giggle to have a look at.

Looking for tech feeds? - Only4Gurus list here. [via Lockergnome’s RSS Resource]

Oh, its an update for the security credentials thingy. Not putting 2 and 2 together here; I seem to remember szomething going by about an update for XmlHttp, but seeing as I don't use the credentials stuff 'ignored' it. It would have helped if the download centre had said what this was about rather than needing me to look it up in the KB - dealing with wet string here, look-ups take ages.

Critical Update for Microsoft XML 2.5 - KB832414.  This update contains Microsoft XML (MSXML) functionality that will allow applications using MSXML to continue to function correctly after security update 832894, Security Update for Internet Explorer, has been applied. [via Microsoft Download Center]

 I have that update for IE (when did that get installed); a bunch of critical updates for XML 2.5-4 has appeared on the Microsoft Download Centre news feed, they have not appeared on Windows Update. Are these updates why I am getting exceptions thrown when (I don't think) I did before. Not enough info on these updates either. Bit of a mess really!

Here's a great list of tips on Optimzing Performance with Virtual PC (VPC)

 [via ComputerZen.com - Scott Hanselman's Weblog - Here's a great list of tips on Optimzing Performance with Virtual PC (VPC)]

Well, I have most of those but XP SP2 on XP is v.slow. What I don't have is huge amounts of RAM, just 512MB. But thats probably the problem.

ASP.NET Whidbey Starter Kit Guidelines.  

Here is an outline of some of the current common requirements for ASP.NET Starter Kits:

Client	IE6, Netscape 7 (in Beta 1) Opera 7, Safari 1.2 (in Beta 2)
Hosting	All kits will be maximally functional under shared hosting under partial trust.
Common Look/Feel	All common elements between pages on a site must be in master pages. Kits need to implement one theme and be easily customizable using themes.
Membership	Kits will use forms authentication, using the membership system, whenever possible and relevant. Windows authentication will only be the default for intranet-based Kits.
Navigation	Site navigation should be easy to use, and use the sitemap feature whenever possible.
Data	Will support XCopy deployment, but also have scripts to install the kit on a SQL server.
Localization	All sites will be localized into the standard VS languages. Sites that include scenarios for end-user localization should use the ASP.NET localization features in Whidbey.
Administration	All kits can be administered using the Web Administration tool in Whidbey.
XHTML Validation	All kits will pass XHTML 1.1 validation from the W3C site.
Accessibility	All sites will be ADA508 conformant.
Programming Languages	VB, C#, J#

What do you think? Anything you disagree with, or would suggest adding (or removing)?

 [via Microsoft WebBlogs]

Aha, shared hosting under partial trust. Perhaps this partial trust mess is being sorted out in Whidbey, you never know, it may even be documented (no holding of breath at the back there).

Dave is right about Google and RSS.  Unfortunately, I think they will win unless there is a blogging tool and RSS aggregator built into IE.  ...  The synergies of the combination of weblog publishing, RSS, bookmarks, browsing, enclosures, and even potentially P2P would unlock lots of rich feature functionality that can't be done easily now.  For the good of the weblog and syndication world, Microsoft should do this.  This capability should have been been part of the browser from the start. 
 [via John Robb's Weblog]

There is nothing stopping anyone doing any of this with XUL/Mac Safari (or whatever the component based one is) or MS web browser control. Why the heck does it have to be part of the browser?

I hope the IE team haven't been diverted from fixing problems and improving behaviour into wasting their time.

If you want to see "The synergies of the combination of weblog publishing, RSS, bookmarks, browsing" then wander over to the Zeepe/iMunch beta page.

A rising number of software companies are facing the same dilemma. Once considered a diversion for computing hobbyists, open-source software is increasingly encroaching on traditional markets and, in the process, altering the strategies of powerful technology companies. Many software manufacturers believe that they have little choice but to adopt at least some form of the popular trend, just to keep pace with the rest of the industry.

 [via Pandora's box for open source | CNET News.com]

 Interesting (long) article, worth a read.