As I mentioned in an earlier post, Ignite Your Career is Microsoft’s webcast series on career, skills and personal development. Having a plan and “sharpening your saw” are two of your three best hedges in these uncertain economic times, and they’re what Ignite Your Career is all about.

(In case you were wondering, the third hedge is to have a solid network of friends, colleagues and acquaintances in your areas of interest. That’s what gatherings like EnergizeIT, DemoCamp and Coffee and Code are for.)

Ignite Your Career is about your career and “skills portfolio”, so the topics covered in our webcasts aren’t Microsoft-specific. No matter what platform(s) you work on, no matter if you’re a developer, sysadmin, administrator or manager, if you work in technology, you’ll find value in Ignite Your Career. As for Microsoft, we’re part of the tech ecosystem, and an ecosystem with vibrant, thriving techies is a healthy one, regardless of the tech they choose.

The first Ignite Your Career webcast takes place this Tuesday, March 3rd, from 12 noon to 1 p.m. Eastern and the topic will be Industry Insights and Trends. Here’s the abstract:

The nature of technology is one of continual change; a fact of life for professionals in the ICT industry. As a result, you need to be on top of what is happening in the industry in order to position yourself and your organization to benefit from these trends. This panel discussion will arm you with the information you need from experts in the ICT industry in order to stay on top of your game.

Here are the speakers:

	Joel Semeniuk Joel Semeniuk is a founder of Imaginet, a Canada-based Microsoft Gold Partner. He is also a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP in Team System, and INETA speaker, and has a degree in Computer Science.
	Jeff Kempiners Jeff Kempiners is Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Avanade Canada. As CTO, Jeff is responsible for the strategic direction and adoption of the Avanade Solutions Portfolio within Avanade Canada. A seasoned leader, Jeff has more than 12 years of experience in IT management and consulting.
	Jay Payette Jay Payette has been consulting public and private organizations in the field of technology for over 5 years. He currently works for the Ottawa office of Accenture in the Systems Integration and Technology practice.

All Ignite Your Career webcasts are absolutely free of charge. You’ll need a Windows Live ID (also free; if you have MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger or Passport, you already have a Windows Live ID) to sign up to see the webcast.

Some links you might find useful:

• Sign up for Tuesday’s Webcast, Industry Insights and Trends.
• Email a question to Tuesday’s presenters.
• Find out more about Ignite Your Career and the upcoming webcasts.

Websites You Shouldn’t Have Missed in April 2008 is a collection of 52 links featuring graphic design tutorials, Ajax, CSS, tips for freelance workers, free fonts, icons and graphics, tools and generators, WordPress themes, typography sites and sites to inspire you. Well worth perusing.

Here’s a first in a series of regular updates on the just-released and much-awaited Grand Theft Auto IV…

A Hint for Those of You Who Can’t Speak Niko’s Language

In some of the dialogue between Niko and Roman, they switch between English and (I’m assuming here) Serbian. The bits in Serbian are asides that aren’t crucial to the story and can be inferred from context, but if you really want to feel like Niko, you’d like to know what they’re saying, right?

The solution is simple: just turn on subtitles (you can do this from the Game menu). When they speak in Serbian, the English translation will appear in grey text.

Another 10 Minutes of Gameplay

For those of you who haven’t yet had a chance to try out GTA IV, here’s another video showing the next 10 minutes of gameplay (the video showing the first ten minutes is here), featuring:

• A little exploration of Roman’s apartment,
• a carjacking (which isn’t as easy as it used to be),
• exploring the hood,
• abusing a sportscar until it explodes (with Niko in it),
• respawning outside a hospital,
• noodling with Niko’s appearance,
• and fun in multiplayer mode (including a rocket launcher mishap and gunning foos down with a pistol and fully-automatic weaponry).

An Observation from GameSpy

Here’s something from Fargo’s Thought for the Day, which is included in GameSpy Daily, an email newsletter from GameSpy:

Thoughts on Sandbox Games

Since around the time that Grand Theft Auto 3 and The Sims came out, the phrase “sandbox game” or “open world” has seeped into gaming literature and even into marketing speak. It kinda drives me nuts, because a “sandbox” in and of itself isn’t very fun. It’s easy to screw it up.

Ask any game designer and they’ll tell you: if you put a person in an open world, where they can do anything they want, they spend a few minutes testing the limits and then he or she will get bored. The real trick to these games is to provide a lot of directed gameplay even if people don’t realize it. The object of an open world is to let the player set his or her own agenda, and then to provide tons of cool gameplay once they decide what to do. Sims 2 is a great example: you can do whatever you want, but no matter what decisions you make for your characters, you’ll always run across interesting mini-games or tough decisions to make in order to accomplish your goal.

Of course the Grand Theft Auto games have an overall story that you can work through via a series of directed missions, but even when you go “off the rails” and start freestyling in the sandbox world, you’re never far from the guiding hand of a designer encouraging you to collect something, discover something, set a new record, kick off a minigame, etc. Few design teams can do an open world right — but when they get it right, the experience is spectacular.

Filter Google Results by Date with a URL Trick: “Google can reorder search and news results from the last day, week, a few months, or entire year by adding a small string to the end of the search URL. Just add this string — &as_qdr=d — to the address bar and hit enter. You’ll get a custom drop-down box that lets you re-order results based on date.”

How to Get Skype Running on Your 64-Bit Linux Box: If you’re running Linux on a Core Duo or AMD64-based machine, you haven’t been able to run Skype on it…until now! If you’ve got a 64-bit machine running the latest Ubuntu — version 8.04, a.k.a. “Hardy Heron”, enter the following on the command line and you’ll be Skyping away (and not just text chat, but audio and video as well): sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32asound2; wget -O skype-install.deb http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu; sudo dpkg -i --force-all skype-install.deb; (there’s also stuff for getting Skype to work on previous 64-bit Ubuntus and dealing with a webcam that refuses to work).