Alexander’s Blog

For those of us who live in the Seattle area and have been wondering for years if Microsoft will stay in the Puget Sound area, there’s some great news. Microsoft has announced that it will build up to 2.2 million square feet of new office space on its Redmond campus over the next 20 years.

Among other things, this would bring an additional ten to twelve thousand new jobs to their 400-acre Redmond campus. And if that’s not the coolest thing, how about this? Microsoft will spend up to $30 million on transportation, utilities and other infrastructure improvements around their Redmond campus. Since Seattle has one of the worst traffic congestions in the nation, this can have a significant impact on the surrounding neighborhoods, hopefully for the better, but only time will tell. Microsoft plans to finance ways to ease congestion around state Route 520, the main bridge that connects Microsoft’s campus to Seattle, with additional lanes on surrounding roadways, intersection improvements and a new overpass over 520.

Microsoft’s director of campus development for the Puget Sound region said “This confirms we intend for our world center to remain in Washington State.”

More info…

If you try to add a Hotmail account to Outlook Express you may notice the following error when you try to synchronize the folders.

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Could not connect to Hotmail as MyAccount@hotmail.com.

Account: ‘MyAccount (Hotmail)’, Server: ‘http://services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.asp’, Protocol: HTTPMail, Server Response: ‘Access to Hotmail via Outlook and Outlook Express now requires a subscription. Please sign up at http://upgrade.msn.com’, Port: 0, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0×800CCCF6
**********************************************************************************

MSN Hotmail no longer supports Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) for free user accounts. Outlook Express uses the DAV interface to connect to Hotmail. Only paid Hotmail accounts will work correctly with Outlook Express. If you configured Outlook Express or Outlook to access your Hotmail account before DAV support was ended, you may still be able to use Outlook Express to open a free Hotmail account. However, eventually Hotmail will no longer support DAV for all free Hotmail accounts.

I’ve been able to use the accounts I’ve added before DAV support was discontinued and they work just fine. Check out Microsoft’s KB article 878462 for more details.