At my company we write a lot of tools and extensions that uses the TFS API to automate various things for us. A very common thing to automate is the creation of work items and the areas and iterations structure. Creating a work item using the TFS API is simple, just connect to TFS, get the WorkItemStore service object and create a new work item and set any fields that you want to: Creating a work item //Connect to TFS and get the WorkItemStore object var tfs = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://localhost:8080/...
Windows Azure Fieldnote Summary Windows Azure Drives [1] provide a means to represent a file based (disk drive) persistent storage option for the various role types within Windows Azure Compute. Each of the roles within Windows Azure can mount and utilize for persistent storage (that survives reboot, reimaging, and updated deployments, of a role instances). During the mounting of a VHD as a CloudDrive, the managed classes have no means to control the drive letter assignment this directly through...
One of the great things about 2012 is that I am not in our office nearly 100% of the time during business hours. This is the first time I have been able to work from our office this much in about 4 years. In fact, we have moved three times during that four years and I have only averaged about 10-25% of my time in the office. This means I can actually setup my desk for development instead of business related tasks only. That means THREE MONITORS! My first reaction after a week with this setup: I never...
With support for Windows XP coming to an end on the 8th April 2014 and IE6 standing in so many people’s way of migration, what better time to start taking the leap to a more modern browser? Microsoft have teamed up with Camwood, Citrix Systems and Quest Software, all application compatibility experts, to help jump-start your move. Join the road shows being organized around the UK between Feb and April to learn more about the technical challenges faced by departments and how you can get around it....
This is the second post about SQL Azure Federation. In my first post I described a little bit about the theory of data partitioning, included the different between the horizontal partitioning and the vertical partitioning. I also talked about the features need to be done when we implemented the horizontal partitioning. And finally, I described some basic concept about SQL Azure Federation. In this post, I will demonstrate how to use SQL Azure Federation in the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)....
TOMBSTONING (Application Lifecycle) Today we are going to talk about “Application Lifecycle” of an application in Windows Phone. Before we write our first application it is good to have a good understating on how your application is going to be treated by the phone (OS) depending on any user action. Every stage of the application is critical to think before we create our first application. Our application is going to run with so many other things that are on the phone (apps, songs, radio, mail etc.)....
I just got back from the Consumer Electronics Show 2012 (CES) which was held in Las Vegas. This is a good show for me and the company that I work for as it shows us some of the possible future trends of digital media consumption. Things presented at CES may just come and go and be quickly forgotten, but at the same time, there are definite themes on the conference that companies need to pay attention to. 3D is so yesterday! This was actually the second CES that I have been to and both were focused...
I have recently been turned on to the world of microcontrollers while doing some hobby development. Here is the first “real” program I have written with the Texas Instruments MSP430 LaunchPad development tool. Check it out…$4.30 to get a development board with 2 devices and a USB connection to your Windows PC for programming and debugging. It’s a lot of fun…especially if you enjoy bit-twiddling! The MSP430 processors specialize in low power operations. They accomplish this by enabling peripherals...
We’ve used dbdeploy.net on a number of projects and have found it to be a useful tool, especially around CI environments. We recently started a Windows Azure project that uses SQL Server and discovered that DbDeploy.Net didn’t work. There have been a few nagging issues with DbDeploy.Net as well, like the lack of support for recursive script directories, and when we looked into the code base, we discovered that it’s not really written to modern software development standards, and that getting it there...
In a previous post I talked about using the JSON to LINQ features of JSON.NET. Thanks to Bil Simser I was able to do some testing of the deserialization capabilities of this library. The key was his hint to leverage the json2csharp web site. Below is the C# representation of the search results for a Twitter query created by putting an example of the search result into this site. public class Url{ public string url { get; set; } public string expanded_url { get; set; } public string display_url {...
As many of you may already know that, I'm working at a global gaming and entertainment company taking the responsible for design and implement the next generation platform which will be running on the cloud, and also design the cloud platform as well. Currently one of the goal is to replace the active directory integrated security and identity solution with certificate-based solution in our product. In short, we need to work with Active Directory Certificate Service to request and issue the certificates...
I attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to follow and cover Microsoft, both in terms of its announcements at the show, and those of its competitors. From that standpoint, and since Microsoft announced that this year’s CES would be its last, I attended again this year and I think it was the best CES Microsoft’s had since I started attending. But the reasons for that are unexpected and surprising. Let me give you a little more context and explain why. Microsoft has, since 1998, delivered the kickoff...
ASP.NET Enterpise Manager is a web based database management system designed specifically for the management of Microsoft SQL databases through a web browser, without the need for any desktop database management systems such as Microsoft’s SQL Server Management Studio. ASP.NET Enterprise Manager is included as default with an installation of Plesk for Windows, meaning that if you are a customer who uses Plesk based Windows hosting, you will most likely have used ASP.NET Enterprise Manager at least...
Hi Everyone, By now you are very well aware of the Windows Phone and the development environment that you get after installing Windows Phone SDK on your computer. And if you have tested the tools you might have seen the Windows Phone Emulator which looks like the Test Phone Microsoft showed when they launched Windows Phone last year. Since the launch of the first Windows Phone, we have enough options to choose from on what type/size/memory/color/specs that we want in the phone that we use. Among...
Once you upgrade to the Windows Azure SDK 1.6 you also get the updated Microsoft Service Bus assemblies (version 1.6.0.0) that you can use for working with Windows Azure Service Bus (yeah, no longer AppFabric Service Bus) One of the standard implementations of Service Bus is to use the CredentialType, Credentials (the service bus namespace and the issuer key and issuer name) to create the service bus namespace URI. Once you upgrade to Windows Azure Service Bus (Microsoft.ServiceBus) version 1.6.0.0,...
I have been working on Windows Azure Service Bus for the recently concluded Azure Camps Yes, it is no longer referred as “Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus”. All the 3 components i.e. Service Bus, Access Control and Caching are hereinafter referred to as simply Windows Azure Service Bus, Caching & Access Control Service, to minimize the complexity in referring to them. Also, Service Bus and the related releases usually come as an out of bound release and are usually behind in terms of the Windows...
Today being the second Tuesday of the month is Patch Tuesday and it promises to be a busy one.See http://www.itpro.co.uk/6381... to the above report, the Microsoft patches to be released today include a critical one for Microsoft Media Player on Vista and below. (For Windows 7, it is merely important.) Whether critical or just important, you should ensure the patches...
Axiom can be a little daunting when you first start working with it. This guide is designed to get you through the first initial hurdles and get you going on your first project using the library. A Brief History Axiom was started in 2003 by Chris McGurk ( leedgitar ) as a port from the popular OGRE project . Chris led the project until 2004, adding many features and providing a solid base from which to continue. I ( borrillis ) became the project lead in September of 2005 after a long pause in the...
Apart from the Introduction that I gave from my previous blog posts about the book and the Windows Phone 7.5 Development, I think we have to jump into the technology of it. In this post we are going to talk about the Design Language, Real Estate, Input Patterns. Design Language: Design Language in my view is something that first strikes to the user/developer when they think of the application usage/development. How you want to design your application or how they users react with the navigation screens/patters...
If you are not following Shawn Wildermuth or haven't bought the Essential WP 7.5 Application Development with Silverlight I would highly recommend. I am not going to talk about why we need a smartphone or how smartphone is taking over all the World, We all know how it started and where it took and where is going to take us in the future. Since we all know the future of the Mobile Eco systems I think it will be a good time to be a part of. lets jump into our series of blog posts of Windows Phone 7.5...
I wanted to introduce to you all to a wonderful book that I came across recently by, Shawn Wildermuth “Essential Windows Phone 7.5 Application Development with Silverlight”. I never bought a text book but I decided to buy this and start reading it, as I was going thru the book I decided that I made a good buy here. This book is very easy to read and a very good place to start developing Applications for Window Phone 7.5 with Silverlight. This series of blog posts are going to be on just Windows Phone...
The SQL Azure Federation had been publically launched several weeks ago and this is one of the most existing features I’m looking forward. This might be the first post of SQL Azure Federation, and hopefully not the last one. Some Backgrounds SQL Azure Federation was mentioned in about 2009. The Microsoft told that there will be a feature in SQL Azure allow users to split one database into many based on some sort of rules But from the client side perspective, user can interact their data as if in...
Next month, the TechDays edition 2012 (14-15-16 february) will take place in Belgium. The last three years, the event passed in Antwerp, but now they are moving to a new location. Kinepolis Imagibraine in Braine l'Alleud (Eigenbrakel).The location isn't that important.The hard thing will be, to pick out the most interesting sessions, because there any many sessions in the same time-blocks. Here is a list of some sessions, i'll certainly attend:Introducing Windows Runtime in Windows 8What's new in...
In my quest to improve speed with developing software I have been investigating how to put as much as possible to the keyboard. This has opened a world of shortcuts. Today I thought I would blog about the top 5 shortcuts that I didn’t know about before that I have found useful. These are shortcuts that I haven’t seen to many people use, see how many you know… 1… Selects the Address Bar Alt + D Most useful when you are in a Web Browser and want to change the url address. 2… Move active window to other...
Today's APress Deal of the day at http://www.apress.com/97814... is Pro ASP.NET 4 in C# 2010"ASP.NET 4 is the principal standard for creating dynamic web pages on the Windows platform. Pro ASP.NET 4 in C# 2010 raises the bar for high-quality, practical advice on learning and deploying Microsoft's dynamic web solution." This is an excellent book that I recommend to all C# Development teams...
If you follow the MVP program a bit, you might have heard about Rob Eisenberg and his struggles with the MVP program. If you haven’t, well, just move along, there’s nothing interesting to read here. Still here? Good. For those of you who don’t know who Rob is: he is the creator of Caliburn and Caliburn Micro, a MVVM Framework I truly love, support and have written about here before. He is one of the bigger contributors to the Open Source community in the Microsoft technologies. If you work on anything...
Happy New Year! I am excited to be speaking at the first meeting in 2012 for the Tampa Bay Windows Phone 7 User Group As usual at Tampa WP7UG there is a jump start session for beginners before the meeting: 5:30PM An Intimate intro to WP7 Development with a local MVP Kevin Wolf in room 1, or a work session in the main room. Come on by early to hangout with other developers or attend the intro sessions. Here is the description of my presentation starting at 6:30PM: Live Tiles, Toasts and Push Notifications...
I presented two talks on windows azure recently. One among them was focusing on Windows Phone 7 app development. The other one was on MVC3 ASP .Net app. The idea was to introduce how Windows Azure can be leveraged in both these exciting platforms. The talk was demo centric; below are the slides and the demo / webcasts recordings links for the same. Talk one- Building Windows Phone Applications with Windows Azure Platform and Visual Studio 2010 Demo included: Creating a Demo application from VS 2010...
Its been a while since I've played with Message Queuing and C# and decided that I should reduce that counter.During the simple process of figuring how to follow Microsoft's MSDN directions, I ran into a couple of headaches that could have been solved with a few navigational pictures. To the small number of people that this may help (and my future self when I need to do this again) here are the needed pictures.My journey started out with google and the keywords "installing MSMQ", the first selection...
The APress $10 Deal of the day at http://www.apress.com/97814... is Pro Internet Explorer 8 & 9 Development"This book is an in-depth guide to writing applications that embrace and extend the new features and capabilities of Windows Internet Explorer 8 and 9. If you're interested in creating and shipping high-quality, feature-rich applications for the Web, Pro Internet Explorer 8 & 9 Development is the only resource you need. "...
Disclaimer:, The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and I’m not getting paid or compensated for anything. I am also an employee of Microsoft but try not to drink the Kool-Aid too much. [Update 2012-01-02: It appears posting Windows Phone app recommendations is making the rounds on the web today. My friends Jeff Blankenburg and Sarah Dutkiewicz have also posted recommendations. Also was referred to a posting on tested.com. I’ve already downloaded a few apps based on these...
The current version of MVVM Light had a couple of issues in the project templates. The most annoying one was causing a problem when creating new projects: The GUIDs used to uniquely identify the project were in fact not re-generated properly every time, and we ended up with the same GUID in every new project. The symptoms are the following: If you side-load an MVVM Light application, and then side-load another one, you will see that the first one is overwritten. Note however that this is only an...
Now that 2011 has come to a close I wanted to take a few minutes to review the year and the goals I had set at the beginning of the year (click here to see those goals). I’ll follow up with new goals for new 2012 year soon. Year in Review 2011 was a big year in many ways. This year included a change in employers, buying a condo, my oldest brother getting married, starting a new relationship with my girlfriend Sarah. helping plan 2 conferences, writing two chapters of a book, and numerous other activities....
I’m not sure I have ever thrown this down in writing. I probably have said this 800 or 900 times, but I think that HTML 5 in SharePoint 2010 sucks. The support is terrible in the two most prevalent web browsers at the enterprise level – Internet Explorer and Firefox. If you can’t even get the video tag to work in IE 9 or the latest version of Firefox then that’s a huge fail for the product with HTML 5. What I think needs to be done in the product to improve HTML 5 support so that we can move towards...
A little more than three months ago, Microsoft hosted the //build/ conference at which they unveiled the upcoming version of Windows (commonly called Windows 8, though I don’t know if the marketing folks have accepted the fact that that is the name most of us are expecting for it yet). They released to the developer world a build of it called the Windows Developer Preview (and Windows Server Developer Preview) along with various tools for creating the new “Metro style” apps. I wasn’t able to make...
I have just installed the UDDI 3 server on my BizTalk development environment. All looked good until I tried to open the publish page on the web interface. The page 'http://localhost/uddi/edit... returned a page cannot be displayed error. The same error occured when I tried to open the Subscribe and Coordinate pages.After playing around with the configuration for a while I tracked the problem down to the page using https. By connecting to the UDDI Service Console, right clicking on the...
I'm a big believer in the benefits of having automated tests live with your code. I'm not an aspirant to Red-Green-Refactor Nirvana, but I believe there is a huge value to be gained by taking the code from Button1_Click in the only Windows Form application you've ever written and placing it instead into a method that can be used by a unit test framework. Some of the benefits that I glean from this include my test being preserved past the initial implementation (when you write the next feature of...
Microsoft have just released two out of cycle updates. I suggest you use Windows update to get the latest updates. Out of cycle updates are usually critical ones.Link to the updates: http://support.microsoft.co...
Wishing a very happy and blessed New Year to you in advance! A new release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available on December 29th. We expect that its 11 new code samples covering typical programming scenarios in Windows Phone 7, ASP.NET, WPF, Windows Shell, and WDK would ease your development in the coming New Year. You can download the code samples using Sample Browser or Sample Browser Visual Studio extension. They give you the flexibility to search samples, download samples on demand,...
Every now and then I go to Tiobe to see their ratings on the popularity of programming languages. Usually there is nothing exciting out there, just a few small moves of languages so I was interested to see in December Tiobe had a headline of C++ about to be dethroned by C# Looking at the stats, sure enough, according to Tiobe C# is on the verge of taking the number 3 spot. It will be interesting to see what happens when Windows 8 hits the market with what seemed to be a revival of C++ during Microsoft’s...
Yesterday I received my copy of “Pro Windows Embedded Compact 7” by Avi Kcholi. http://www.apress.com/97814... It’s a great book for people that have some experience and knowledge Windows Embedded Compact 7 and want to learn the “black magic” behind device driver development on this operating system. The book guides the reader trough different aspects of drivers (and BSP) development, starting from the foundation and reaching some advanced topics that are not covered in the on-line reference....
The holidays have become a time rich with traditions for me. Family wise, its a time to get together and celebrate the people that love and support us throughout the year. Turkeys are cooked, gifts are opened, and well wishes are shared. But in the midst of all the goodness and emotion is another holiday that lends itself more to what Scrooge might value – capitalism, thrift, and commercialism. Yes, I’m talking about Boxing Day! Boxing Day, for my American friends, is very much Canada’s Black Friday...
Over the past few months we have been tweaking the usability of the Geekswithblogs.net Admin Tool for editing posts. We definitely suggest using Windows Live Writer for publishing you blogs due to the awesome plugins and support of image uploads, we understand the need for a non-Windows editor for posts or updates. One of the bugs submitted to us in the usage of our text editor was reformatting of posts when you publish from WLW and then make changes from the admin tool. The tool was eating up all...
Over the past few weeks we have been cleaning up the skins to support most modern browsers and monitor resolutions. This will cause your content area to have more space and support larger images. If you see any problems, please email us at support@geekswithblogs.com and we will get back to you ASAP. We have also added some changes to the “Share Link” feature to make it a little cleaner and support for Facebook, Twitter, and Technorati. We will add G+ once they support the ability to publish from...
One month in... Well, it's been a month on the new site now. I guess at first I thought everyone would just start following the new feed and the traffic would magically appear at WDN, but I still saw a lot of folks hitting GWB, presumably looking for good Silverlight links. So I announced my postings at GWB to not leave anyone out of the loop. And now I find that's annoyed some people... sorry about that! I can't see cross-posting the posts completely, so you'll just have to go to the new site to...
My latest post is up... check it out at WindowsDevNews...
My latest post is up... check it out at WindowsDevNews...
For those of you who have the Samsung Slate 7 that Microsoft gave at Build (or that you purchase yourself!), and who are travelling: I hate to take chargers for all my gadgets, especially since my Windows Phone, my Bluetooth stereo headset and my Kindle (amongst others) all use micro-USB to charge. So I just take a couple of micro USB cables and I can charge my devices from the PC. However some laptops are cutting off power from the USB ports when they go to sleep. I thought it was the case with...
Agile taught us to release early and release often, Agile also taught us to get the end user involved more frequently and directly. Goes without saying that release notes are an important part of any release. But what you don’t want to be doing is manually putting together the release notes with each frequent release you do. TFS lets you manage the application lifecycle with great ease & minimal administrative overhead, if your team is already checking in the code against work items and if you...
My latest post is up... check it out at WindowsDevNews...