I am honored to be speaking at the Fox Valley .NET User Groups Day of .NET this year. The Fox Valley Day of .NET is a GREAT event. Every year, they have speakers from all around come and present on topics that will challenge you and make you that much of a better developer when you leave.

This year's event is held at the UW Fox Valley on Saturday May 4^th from 8 AM to 5 PM.

You can see the whole lineup at http://dayofdotnet.fvnug.org/. The downside to the day is so may of the presentations overlap. Some great talks!

I usually try and speak every year at the Day of .NET. The only year I did not speak, I won an Xbox, so that worked out pretty well!

Here are past presentations

2012 - PhoneGap

2011 - Microsoft Azure

2010 - SharePoint 2010 - A developers overview

2009 -Xbox!

2008 - Silverlight

My presentation this year will be a bit of a different topic for me, it is a much more soft presentation than what I have done in the past. It is called Being You: Building Your Personal Brand Online. Specifically, we are going to look at using Windows Azure to quickly and easily setup a blog. We will then dive into things like configuring how the blog looks and setting up the ability for users to share with popular social media sites. In order to increase search relevancy, we will go through setting up Authorship markup for your blog to make sure you are identified with what you write. We will then create a Windows 8 application from the blog. It is going to be a lot in an hour!

If you are interested in Web technologies and broadening your developer skills, I encourage you to register!

Update: That did not last long... Apparently Microsoft will soon enable the ability to log in via aliases (from Outlook.com blog). Hopefully this will be an optional feature.

I have had my Microsoft account migrated from the old Hotmail to the new Outlook.com look for a while now. In general, the new Outlook.com has a MUCH better user interface than the old Hotmail.

I have also been migrating away from my Gmail account to a different email provider. I have been using Gmail for a LONG time, since 2004. However, some recent privacy snafus on Google's part and the abandonment of Google Reader inspired me to migrate over. So I have decided to give Outlook.com a try (and don't worry, I have no illusions about Microsoft and my privacy eitherJ)

Now that I am paying more attention to Outlook I have run across a feature I wasn't previously aware of, and it is awesome. What feature is that? Outlook.com email aliases.

First, a quick overview of how I use email. I have personal email, hosted on a Google apps domain. This is what I use for emailing with family and friends. Not being a huge spam fan, I then use my Google Gmail address for all things "Internet". So for sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or Netflix I sign up using my Gmail address.

The one problem with this is there are some sites I trust with my email address more than others. I know some sites are going to spam me than others and are more likely to "share" my email address. For example, once Tickemaster gets your email, everyone has your email. Some sites you visit require you to have an email address to access content, and you have no idea what you are getting yourself into. With Gmail, I have used the + trick, which allows you to create a disposable email address that will automatically come to your account. For example, if your email address is me@gmail.com, you can use your address name and a plus(+) sign, me+SpamingNewsletter@gmail.com and email will go to your original address. I usually end up forgetting these over time. The other thing is, you are not fooling anyone. Even if you use me+SpammingNewsletter@gmail.com, people know your email address is me@gmail.com.

So this is where Outlook.com email alias feature comes in, and it's awesome.

First, to create an alias, go to the Gear icon and choose Mail Settings. From there, under account, choose Create an Outlook alias.

You can choose to create an address from any of Microsoft's current email domains; Live, Hotmail and Outlook.

Type in your new email alias and then you are given the option to create a new folder where all of your email gets moved when it is sent to the alias or you can send it to your inbox

Now you have a new email address associated with your default outlook.com account.

Here is what I find so great about this.

First, you can create multiple aliases, up to five a year, associated with your account. Personally, I have created two separate outlook.com aliases. One, I use for the Internet I trust. For example, my Facebook, Netflix, Linked accounts, etc. They all have been, or are in the process of getting migrated to an Outlook alias. I have a second alias, for the Internet I don't trust. These are things like Ticketmaster, or mailing lists. Essentially, anyone I am afraid of sending me spam. I can then log into my default outlook.com account, and see emails to both of those aliases and they are in folders.

The second thing that I like about the outlook aliases is that you cannot log in with them. So, let's say LinkedIn gets hacked and my email address is in the hand of a bored script kiddie in the Ukraine. They will not be able to access my account at all because the alias is just for email and NOT account access.

It appears email aliases have been around for a long while in Outlook/Hotmail, I was just never aware of them. They are a great tool in helping clean up your accounts on the internet, and they add an extra level of security in case one of the sites you access gets hacked and your account is one of them. Check them out!

Update: That did not last long... Apparently Microsoft will soon enable the ability to log in via aliases (from Outlook.com blog). Hopefully this will be an optional feature.

Your personal information is not used at all