Paul Ballard's WebLog

After what seems like months but in fact has only been.... months, I'm finally ready to release what I hope will be a useful bit of code for anybody wanting to use Outlook 2007 Form Regions.

While Windows Vista and Office 2007 are generally available to the public now, Microsoft is hosting launch events all of the USA over the next month.  But last week several MVPs got the opportunity to visit local retailers and give demos and offer advice on Windows and Vista to customers at major retail outlets like Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's Electronics, etc.  I volunteered to work at Best Buy #167 in The Woodlands, TX (Just north of Houston).  They had some nice Vista end cap displays including an early look at the new HP TouchSmartPC which drew a lot of attention.  While traffic was light the evenings I worked (the weather in Houston has sucked lately) I am happy to say that I was able to show off Office 2007 to several customers who then decided to buy it.

Many of you may have seen the recent game of blog tag going on called "5 Things...".  I got tagged by David Walker from Tulsa and so here are some things about me that you probaby don't already know.

While I was editor for TheServerSide.NET, one of the more fun things I got to do was to write up humorous (hopefully) articles and cartoons.  I've been missing that lately so I've decided to cut loose here in blogland.  So here now are my predictions for 2007.  Read and be amazed. 

I am honored to say that I have received the Microsoft MVP (Visual Developer - Visual Basic) award for 2007.  I want to thank Ed Hickey, my MVP lead, for once again considering my efforts in the community worthy of recognition. 

Santa Claus, in the form of my beautiful wife, brought me a new Sandisk Sansa e270R for Christmas this year, and I must say that it truly rocks!

Well the year is officialy over now, or will be within a matter of hours and like a beaten candidate on election night it's also time for me to concede victory in my bet from last year to Rob and all of the other AJAX smitten developers of the world. 

One of the nicer new features in Outlook 2007 is the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds and read them just like emails.  There's been a bit of confusion lately though about how RSS is tied to the Email Send/Receive in Outlook 2007.  So for those people with huge bloglists, here are detailed instructions on how to separate the retrieval of RSS feeds from your normal email by using Send/Receive groups.