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windows
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...
The phone revolution that is under way at the moment is insanely interesting and continuously full of buzz about directions, failures, and promises. The movement started with Apple completely reinventing what a smart phone was all about and now we have the followers. Though – don’t dismiss the followers, they are usually the ones that come out with the leap frog products when most of the world is thinking about jumping on. Remember the often used analogy – the USA invented the TV – but it was Japan...
This is a group that is focused on entertainment in the aviation industry. I am attending their conference for the first time as it relates to my job at Swank Motion Pictures and what we do for our various markets. I will post my notes here. The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment by Patrick Cosson, Veebeam TV has been the center of living rooms for sometime. Conversations and culture evolve around the TV. The way we consume this content has dramatically been changing. After TV, we had...
TV, iPad – Tablet – SmartPhone – PC These are my notes from this session at Digital Hollywood Fall 2010 in Santa Monica, CA. SPEAKERS: Colleen Brown – CEO Fischer Communications Scott Fierstein – St. Director – Interoperability Policy and Standards at Microsoft Alan Bell – former EVP and CTO of Paramount Pictures Paul Sweeting – founder and principal at Concurrent Media Fred Taylor – Sr. Marketing Manager – IP Multimedia Access Broadband Communications Group Yun Chao Hu – Open IPTV President and...
For those that didn’t know, I have recently left a long run at Thomson Reuters (which is a great company BTW) for a new gig as CIO of Swank Motion Pictures. This company works in the movie distribution business to cruise ships, trains, universities, and more. Some links if you are interested: http://www.onboardmovies.com/ http://www.swank.com/colleg... https://www.swankhealth.com http://www.k12digitalmovies... http://www.swank.com/digita... and more more more …. The thing is that...
My latest book was just released. From Wrox – Professional Silverlight 4. This was a fun book to do as Silverlight is a great technology and will be one of the core technologies that will be used for so many applications now and in the future. Microsoft really put together something quite splendid here and you will find that this book is a good dive into the technology. The Silverlight 4 platform continues to add excitement to building rich Internet applications (RIAs), and it offers new user interface...
My two latest books are out! Professional ASP.NET 4 in C# and VB Professional C# 4 and .NET 4 From the back covers: Take your web development to the next level using ASP.NET 4 ASP.NET is about making you as productive as possible when building fast and secure web applications. Each release of ASP.NET gets better and removes a lot of the tedious code that you previously needed to put in place, making common ASP.NET tasks easier. With this book, an unparalleled team of authors walks you through the...
I think back to the days of the first versions of Visual Studio (when it was called Visual Studio .NET, remember?) and I think about how far Microsoft has come with this IDE. It really is the best IDE on the market. There is so much to this IDE it is amazing. It now can really handle managing your complete software application development lifecycle. For me, it is (besides Windows 7) the best and most successful product Microsoft has developed. You can obviously get this now and it is available on...
Well, another year, and heck …. even another decade and 2010 is going to be such an important year, or kick-off year for technology that I thought I would take a stab at making some technology predictions on what I think might happen this year. Technology always has these “next thing” items coming forward that it is really hard to even really know what is for real. Technologies might be quite good – but it will also take additional things like community ground swell or true behind-the-scenes business...
One of the cooler displays at PDC 2009 was a sample container that is something that is part of the Microsoft super data center strategy. To make Azure real, Microsoft has invested a ton into setting up the most state of the art data centers around the world. The idea is that Microsoft will provide a seamless means for customers to upload their applications, data, and capabilities to the cloud and leave the hardware, IT, and bandwidth management to them. To meet these ends, Microsoft is building...
The second day keynote at PDC 2009 in Lost Angeles was shared by Steven Sinofsky and Scott Guthrie. Steven is the President of Windows and Windows Live Division and it really must have been a great day for him as he came out for the first time in a major conference with the new Windows 7 launched and the old Vista problems just fading away into Microsoft’s past. There is a lot of excitement for Windows 7 and there is excitement for the new Windows 7 APIs that are available for developers to work...
The first keynote of Microsoft’s PDC 2009 conference in Los Angeles has come and gone. Ray Ozzie kicked it off with some of the main messages that gave everyone insight into how Microsoft sees the direction of IT, programming, processes, and more. It was an interesting session that really focused on a few things, but most importantly it focused on Microsoft dedication to the Windows Azure platform and the big thing (to me), the idea that they are dedicated to making a seamless experience between...
I arrived to Los Angeles last night to be ready first thing Monday for my first day at the Microsoft Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC). Microsoft has really shortened this conference in regards to size and expense – that’s for sure. Obviously it has something to do with the economy. So, we’ll see how this conference will be done on the cheap. Doesn’t mean it has to be bad, but it should be different. So for this year, this PDC is cut down from four days to three. Other things that are different...
I always look for software that has a footprint smaller than what is offered from the standard software for folks on the market. For instance, I use Foxit rather than the Adobe Reader as the software download for this is 1mb rather than 80mb and hardly has anything running on your machine while Adobe Reader (IMHO) is spyware/junkware. I am a complete audio junkie or audiophile (as some call it) and I have never been 100% happy with the standard Windows Media Player. It is a fine piece of software...
Last year’s St. Louis Day of .NET was so successful that we were turning away people from the registration process (we were limited on the number of bodies we could have). This year’s event is at the Ameristar Casino – so that means more space! This year it was decided to run this conference over two days instead of one. There are currently 53 confirmed sessions for this event. Last year was so much fun – I’m looking forward to this year’s event. REGISTER TODAY...
One of the features that has been available since the Vista days and is also contained in the Windows 7 release is Microsoft’s Desktop Gadgets. Gadgets have become quite the popular set of little tools that lots of people like to completely litter their desktops with. You can think of them as mini-applications that run on your desktop for common tasks that you perform or common pieces of information that you need. Microsoft is in no way the first to the scene with this nor the most popular. Though...
I successfully installed the RTM version of Windows 7 last night. I got a copy of an .iso file for this due to my participation in the Windows 7 beta program. It was very nice of Microsoft to provide everyone that participated in the invited portion of the beta program to a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate! Thanks Microsoft for that. I downloaded the 64-bit version of Windows 7 and burned that to a disc and booted up my machine to this disc. I have to say that it was just a little confusing at first...
It has been known for a little while now that Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows 7, will be released to the computer makers to install as the machine OS for the computers they are getting ready to sell in late July. Then later in the Fall (OCT 22nd), it will be available to the public for purchase. This is welcome news for many who were not as successful with Vista and are quite tired of Windows XP. I was definitely in that camp. I have a lot of computers that I run at home and they were all Windows...
Microsoft just recently made some announcements that they will be releasing the new Zune HD. The new Zune HD will also support the now much loved multi-touch capabilities that has made the ITouch and the IPhone as famous as they are. From the image above you can see that the new Zune HD is going for an advanced look with the beveled edges. I owned a Zune first generation and then I bought myself a Zune (120GB version) later. I really did like it mainly because of the very large screen that I could...
Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) is out and the incredible thing is that Microsoft has provided this operating system (OS) for free to the entire world. They will only let you download the OS for a limited time – so if you are thinking of getting it – you should be getting your hands on a copy of it as quick as you can. Microsoft is offering both a 32bit or a 64bit version that you can download. This is NOT the final version of the OS though – that is something to be aware of. If you install this...
Good news for us all is that the RC build of the much-anticipated Windows 7 is going to be made available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers on April 30. For the rest of the world, you won’t have long to wait, as the Windows 7 RC will be available on May 5th as I previously reported on my Twitter account. For those that are not aware, RC means Release Candidate, as this is the pre-final version of the operating system and it is supposed to include everything that will be in the final shipping version...
My latest bookwas just released new and improved and with a fresh mint taste! Last month my AJAX bookcame out and this month is it a book that is a continuation of a great series of ASP.NET books. This is an update to the best-selling Professional ASP.NET 3.5 book that the three of us put out about one year ago (time flies). If you are an ASP.NET developer, I (no doubt) advise you to get this book as there has been plenty added to it to bring it up with the latest release of ASP.NET. This service...
I think that Microsoft is missing a large opportunity with the Microsoft Office product. I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. To me, it has been evolving in the wrong manner over these last few releases and it has bothered me greatly. You might be saying, “what is Bill talking about here, they just did a major and well-received upgrade to Microsoft Office with the Office 2007 release!”. I do have to say that you are right in that regard – but what I am talking about is Microsoft Office...
Before I had posted a small blog entry on how it was basically impossible to get the Cisco VPN software working on a Windows Vista machine. It turned out to be one of the most hit blog entries I had – mainly due to the amount of help that was being provided in the comments. In the comments, many folks tried to help others with a solution. Though, one of the last entries I read recently was about a gentleman that pointed out that if you get all the Vista updates, that it seemed to just work. There...
I wanted an eReader of some kind. I knew that. This is a cool technology. First off, no matter if you get an Amazon Kindle or a Sony eReader, then you are in for a definite treat. This is one cool gadget and if you like to read books or magazines or whatever, then you are going to love the portability in carrying an easy-to-read library with you in a nice convenient little package such as these gadgets offer. For those that haven’t seen this in person, the big deal with this all is the piece of the...
I’ve been playing around a bit with Google Chrome lately. I switched back to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 as it answered a lot of the frustrations that I was having with Google Chrome (some key pages I like not rendering correctly). Though, when I switched one of my computer’s operating system to Windows 7 Beta 1, I was even more frustrated. The IE that came installed on Windows 7 was a less than superior IE than what I could download off of the Microsoft site. I tried to install the latest IE...
Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 8 comes on Windows 7 (of course) but I am unable to tell what version of IE this really is. Here is the About dialog from the one that comes on the OS by default: If you look at the version number – it is 8.0.7000.0 – which I really don’t think is too real as it looks like the Microsoft programmers just set all the build numbers to 7000 for the sake of being Windows 7. A little annoying but I understand the fun they are trying to have. The reason for all this conversation...
I have installed Windows 7 on “bare metal” on one of my machines. This was a laptop that I work with and it was a very easy install. First off, it was the quickest OS install that I have ever experienced. You can tell that Microsoft spent some significant time working on the performance and quality of the install and bravo to the team that worked on that feature! I also used the 64-bit version of the operating system. More and more people are turning to 64-bit and it is really starting to be the...
I am now getting Beta 1 of Windows 7! I just noticed it on MSDN. Outstanding. I have a few computers I will be putting this on. UPDATE: Here is it online for others as well: http://technet.microsoft.co... Also some others things: Windows Online Readiness Kit Windows 7 at a Glace (Whitepaper) Engineering Windows 7 Blog Windows 7 Quick Reference Guide...
UPDATE – DON’T DO THIS FIX AS IT WORKED FOR ONLY A SHORT WHILE. IT RETURNED BACK TO THE SAME PROBLEM AS BEFORE. YOU CAN DO THIS TO TURN YOUR ZUNE OFF FOR THOSE THAT ARE REPORTING HEATING PROBLEMS, ETC. UPDATE 2 – It seems this update will work if you want to use your Zune for a short while. It has to do with the clock on the Zune it seems. You can do this and it will work, but once you plug it into charge in your computer – it will fail again. UPDATE 3 – Microsoft has posted their fix: http://www.zune.net/en-us/s...
It seems that at 2am last night, most (if not all) 30GB Zune players became a brick! I use my Zune a lot and this is rather disturbing to tell you the truth. My Zune only shows the Zune logo and the progress bar at full and will not respond to any kind of button presses. I can’t even turn the dang thing off --- so I’m probably doing a good job of burning that image into the screen of the player till the batteries run out. Here are some announcements from others on this matter: CruchGear TechRadar...
Well, according to Neowin.net, Windows 7 Beta 1 will be released on January 7th, 2009. I think the "7" for the date might be there for a reason! :) Microsoft released an Alpha version of Windows 7 to the attendees of PDC this year, but it was missing the new skin that we will see in Windows 7. I have been rather down on Vista (as many others were) as I could only use it for my book writing, but was unable to effectively use Vista for my normal work at Thomson Reuters for many reasons not worth going...
This weekend, I had some free time, and what does every developer do with this free time - I went to my TechEd 2008 DVDs to watch some sessions. But in loading the DVDs, I realized that they wouldn't work as I thought. I was only getting a reminder that I needed to install the Beta 2 version of Silverlight (the RTM of Silverlight 2 is out now). Tim Heuer put up a nice blog post stating a solution to the problem and he also has a little Silverlight application on his page that allows you to search...
I would like to first thank the academy ..... Thanks to Oracle and the award as the Oracle Enterprise Developer of the Year for 2008. This was announced today in Oracle magazine. http://www.oracle.com/techn... This was about using ODP.NET and Oracle to develop and deliver top-of-the-line .NET financial applications. At Thomson Reuters, I work for Lipper, and we are using an Oracle backend system that gets its data delivered via a set of WCF services to a series...
This keynote is all about Windows 7 (the Vista that shoulda been) and new things from ScottGu's team. While yesterday was about the back-end infrastructure of the new cloud platform Azure from Microsoft, today's keynote focused on the front end of Microsoft. One funny question from Ray Ozzie was wondering what we would do at work all day if we didn't have a computer on our desk. Here are some random notes from the keynote. "The PC will be more relevant in the next era." - Ray Ozzie Today we barely...
This session is by Scott Hunter, Program Manager at MSFT In July 2007 - ASP.NET Futures was released That was followined by an Extensions Preview of ASP.NET 3.5 in Dec 07 Then in March 08 - we started doing some new stuff - ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 - MVC and more The ASP.NET will continue to release out-of-bound items. CodePlex is the main driver for that. www.codeplex.com/aspnet - This is where you will find the interim drops. Currently there are ~1,000 downloads today If you want to see all the latest and...
Well, probably the most exciting picture (for me at least) that I got was a picture of me and Anders Hejlsberg (inventor of C#). He is quite the nice guy. We had dinner last night at a restaurant near the convention center. It was a great evening. Here is another shot as I was leaving the keynote. There are sooo many people here, it's great...
Ray Ozzie, chief architect at Microsoft, opened the keynote. Here are my random notes: Ray thanked everyone for coming to the event and stressed how important we all are in Microsoft's success. He then stressed his work as an ISV in the past and how he also sat in the audience like we are today. PDC is about Microsoft's take on the revolutions happening in the world. It is about combining the best aspects of combining software along with the best aspects of services. Tomorrow Ray will talk on stage...
Well, this is the first day at PDC 2008. This is, by far, my favorite conference. This year's PDC has a lot of energy and excitement. I think, partially, the reason is due to the fact that the last PDC was canceled (I had signed up for that one). The last PDC was in 2005 - so this one was due. I was invited by Microsoft to the conference as part of the Microsoft Regional Director program. You can find more information on the RD program by reading some of the blog posts from other fellow RDs at www.theregion.com....
No, it's not the PDC 2008 World Champion Darts competition, but actually it is one of the coolest conferences on the planet. Microsoft's PDC 2008 (which stands for Professional Developer Conference) is a conference that is focused on the future Microsoft technologies. While TechEd is focused on the here and now - PDC focuses on things that are coming in the next 18 months or so. This is by far my favorite conference as there is quite a bit of energy and the crowd is excited and hungry for knowledge....
First, I would like to say that I am quite the Microsoft guy and I am at my first non-Microsoft conference - Oracle OpenWorld 2008. Within my organization, Thomson-Reuters, I lead a team that built a new product platform. Our platform has an Oracle 10g back end and a complete .NET 3.5 middle tier and presentation layer. I have been to a lot of PDCs and TechEd sessions and it is interesting some of the differences between the two conferences. The first big difference is in how they do these keynotes....
The last half of this year is being completely focused on cloud computing. Microsoft is focusing a lot of attention in this space and are focusing on setting up development centers around the world to assist customers in hosting logic and data centrally in the cloud to make use of for your global applications. It really is the next step in expansion of the Internet and is something that will be greatly adopted by organizations all over the world. There are some tricky areas that still have to be...
I'm for the first time at a non-Microsoft conference in my life. I am at Oracle's OpenWorld 2008 in the lovely city of San Francisco. So far so good. The biggest surprise is really how big this conference is. There are more than 43,000 people at this conference. Wow - amazingly big. The other thing that is different than the TechEd and PDC conferences that I attended in the past is that there are a number of keynotes here and it seems that the first ones aren't that important and they build up in...
Well, like most, I downloaded Google Chrome and gave it a whirl. So far, I like it. There are things that bother me - but overall - I like it. Here are some of my likes: It is faster. It does seem to deal with JavaScript quite a bit faster than other browsers. Pages load faster than before for me. This is probably the biggest plus of the whole thing really. The look and feel of the application is more modern looking (again, from my perspective) and it provides more real estate for browsing by default...
All of a sudden I couldn't sync my Zune anymore on my Windows XP computer. I would always get an error that there was an error on the installation of the hardware when I plugged the Zune into the USB port. The actual error I would get was: There was a problem installing this hardware "zune" I tried all sorts of "fixes" including installing the Zune software update and uninstalling the Zune drivers, but nothing seemed to be working. There were folks on the Internet saying that I should format the...
You see a ton of charting components out there for .NET. Whenever you look into any magazine for developers in the developer space, you will see all sorts of advertisements for charting components of every kind. One of the main things these companies show is the new fancy and shiny charts as proof that they are the obvious choice in your applications that you want to build. As a developer, you might look at this chart and say, "Wow, this is new and this would look wonderful in my application". I...
I attended a session (title above) by the famous Doug Seven. Doug is always one of the better speakers out there and he covered how to construct your projects to work with various systems that improve the overall application and approach. Focus was put on unit tests and code coverage and the importance of incorporating these items into your development process. It is surprising to me that this is not yet the norm of application development. Again, I said this in a previous post, but development teams...
I'm in TechEd at the moment and I am sitting in a presentation on Unit Testing. Unit testing is something we have been doing on my teams for some time now and it is an intricate part of our development process. I am a big believer in continuous integration for development and part of the automatic build process includes a unit test run through the application/component that we are working with. The results of the unit tests are then deployed (automatically as well) to a server and made accessible...
TechEd is going good. This years TechEd is a bit different than the many that I have been to before. The keynote was ok - not great, but not bad. I was hoping for some customers to come out on stage and present the really cool things they are doing with Microsoft's technologies. I love seeing front line implementations and the hills they had to climb to get to what they have. But there was none of that this year. They brought out a robot as part of some new Robotics group in Microsoft and they brought...
Ever want to get information for a reliable source then find what you need in a book but really not that interested in buying the entire book? Well, that is the type of customer Wrox is going after with the introduction of their new "Chapters on Demand" service. You are now able to purchase individual chapters as a PDF file. Looking at the site, you will also find a lot of free chapters made available as well. Rather interesting to see how it goes - some people will love it and others will not. Funny...
Two of my latest books just hit the market - Professional C# 2008 and Professional Visual Basic 2008, both from Wrox. The back cover of the C# book is as follows: Updated for .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio® 2008, this book is the ultimate guide to C# 2008 and its environment. Beginning with a look into the architecture and methodology of .NET, the team of superlative authors explains why the C# language cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather, must be considered in parallel with the .NET Framework....
It is quite easy to say that the IT world is a diverse world. For instance, it is quite rare that you would find an enterprise that is built upon a single vendor’s technology stack. Instead, you most likely find that a company is made up of a patchwork of systems. Some of the systems are based upon UNIX, some Microsoft, and some others (sometimes items that are considered legacy). A company’s software and data repositories are something that grows quite organically over time. Usually you will find...
The new edition of the Wrox ASP.NET book is officially on the shelves today! Amazon received their shipment and it is now in stock for a CHEAP $34.64. My co-authors, Scott Hanselman and Devin Rader, revamped this book and added quite a number of new pages to deal with the new features from AJAX to IIS 7 to LINQ to this book. We really focused on helping the ASP.NET developer understand the tools, APIs, controls, and environments at their disposal for this release. ASP.NET is, in my humble opinion,...
You have a host file found at C:\Windows\system32\drivers... that allows you to specify IP addresses and their mappings to a URL. For instance, when you type in http://www.reuters.com or something similar - you are actually going to an IP address (216.35.67.135) that is mapped using a DNS server somewhere. Sometimes you are not going to want to do the DNS lookup, but instead use a specific and known IP address when a URL is typed in within your browser or if your application is using URLs...
Though just rumors at the moment, there has been some talk in some computer journals that they are hearing that Vista's Service Pack 1 is going to be released in the next few weeks. One reported that Microsoft is aiming for February 15th for the *much anticipated* release. I, myself, have seen these rumblings in both Wired and Computer World magazines. Though the RC1 build has been out for some time, I have always been rather wary of installing a beta or an RC build of a service pack. I really worry...
UPDATE: THIS DEAL HAS EXPIRED IT SEEMS. SORRY. Almost - but really I consider this a giveaway. Amazon is selling the Wrox Box for $30 USD! That is incredible really. There are four books in this box and there are some really good ones that I have on my shelf! These books and content include: Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Professional C# 2005 Professional .NET Framework 2.0 Professional .NET 2.0 Generics CD-ROM with more than 700 pages of bonus chapters from 10 other .NET 2.0 and SQL Server(TM) 2005 Wrox...
Oracle just released its latest version of ODP.NET. This version, for Oracle 11g, provides enhancements and the much anticipated Instant Client and User Defined Types (UTDs). One big issue in the past when you were working with ODP.NET for your ASP.NET applications was that you had to install a tremendously large Oracle client application that took some time. Now with the instant client, you simply XCopy your client to the server you want it at. Very easy. UDTs was also another feature that allows...
I got one of the first Zune players when it came out. There were things that I liked/disliked about it. The worse thing about it was the software that it came with. It was clunky and not to practical so I really didn't end up using it that often. Though, with that said, Microsoft recently released the new 2.0 version of the Zune software which was basically a complete new software package. With the new software and the changes to the firmware that was made to the Zune player along with the client...
Spent the weekend so far using the new release of Visual Studio 2008 and ASP.NET AJAX. More specifically, I have been using the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Adding the new controls to your VS2008 toolbox is a straight-forward process, but when I added them - at first everything was fine - but after a few hours they seemed to magically disappear. Trying to add them again didn't seem to do anything at all as nothing changed. Right-clicking on the VS2008 toolbox and selecting Show All actually did...
You will now find that Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2008 on MSDN for certain subscribers. It will be there soon for everyone, but if you are a Volume User on MSDN, then you might not find it there yet (as of yesterday). I was pretty excited for this release. Once installed, I had to also install JetBrain's ReSharper and it requires you to do a command line install. Once the .msi for ReSharper is on your machine, you will have to use the following command to install it for VS2008. msiexec...
Yes, we have Windows Server 2008 coming. Yes, also SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, the .NET Framework 3.5, and more - but probably one of the more exciting new items to come at this same time is IIS 7. As Scott Guthrie states in his recent blog post on IIS, this is a major update to the technology. IIS 7 will allow for a plug-in architecture and allows you to take out all the pieces of the IIS stack that your applications don't need. It also allows you to build your own extensions and plug...
Microsoft just launched a beta version of an application called Tafiti. A nice test application from Microsoft that demonstrates - probably most importantly - the use of Silverlight. For those new to Silverlight - Microsoft's official one paragraph description of this technology is: "Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming...
Some folks are lovin their Vista machines while others are cursing as they are having problems (mostly with the drivers and some lockup issues). It really does only depend upon what you are using your machine for. Though, Microsoft has just released some performance and reliability patches out there: http://support.microsoft.co... http://support.microsoft.co... The first one takes care of the following issues: This update resolves the following issues: • The screen may go blank...
Oracle has released a new version of ODP.NET as a Beta today. You can find it here. This release offers some outstanding features ODP.NET developers have been waiting for. The new feature list is as follows: Oracle Data Provider for .NET Features Instant Client Support: Smaller ODP.NET client installation User-Defined Types: Map Oracle objects and collections to .NET custom types and support REFs to object types Process Database Down Events: ODP.NET automatically frees connections of a downed Data...
Another book! I and some friends just finished a new release of our Visual Basic book. This is another book I wrote with the wonderful Kent Sharkey! :) We really cleaned up this version of the book. This book came together quite well and shows not only the core of .NET 2.0 in depth - but it also covers the new ground of .NET 3.0. The .NET Framework 3.0 includes the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). The table...
Talking with Microsoft, I learned of some of the additions they are making for .NET Orcas (due at the end of this year). I am investing quite heavily into Windows Forms projects here at my company; therefore this environment is quite important to what I am doing here. Some of the highly touted items that are being added to Windows Forms are a lot of WPF interoperability items. This was announced at last year's TechEd, but the idea is that you will be able to host WPF controls directly inside of a...
Recently, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Looking at this release, you would have maybe noticed that it was fine and dandy for Windows XP, but it isn't going to work on Windows Vista. Microsoft is building a special release of VS2005 SP1 for Windows Vista. The bad news is that it isn't ready yet – but the good news is that it just made beta today. You can download this beta here. Enjoy...
Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie are the keynote speakers to this Microsoft-centric Web Developers conference held in the beautiful desert of Las Vegas. The conference is from Monday, April 30th till May 2nd and has sessions on everything from Windows Live, to AJAX, to LINQ, to the topic I am most interesting in right now - WPF/E. I wonder if my friend Laurence is going to be there...
When working with your new version of Windows Vista, after you install your Cisco VPN Client software - which I did - you might get the error: "Reason 403: Unable to Contact Service Gateway" This is due to the fact that your VPN software will not work on Vista. There is presently a version out there (in beta) that works on Vista and you can find it here: UPDATE - NO GOOD INSTALLS AT THE MOMENT. THERE ARE SOME IN THE COMMENTS
Installed Windows Vista back on my machine. Took it off for a while due to the fact that the new Zune software didn't work on Vista. It does now - so I'm back! :) In installing Windows Vista, for the second time - one thing that took me a while was finding all the software for my Microsoft Keyboard with Fingerprint Reader. You can find the software for both the keyboard and the fingerprint reader here: http://www.microsoft.com/ha... It is two separate pieces of software...
I just really started playing around with WPF and XAML and how to build an application in this new format. I really like it, but at the same time, I have a lot to still learn! For my first example, I wanted a form that would have some sort of event that caused UI to change in some manner. For this, I put together a form with a simple Button control on it and a place to put some results on the form after the button is clicked. This form really needs two pieces to work - Window1.xaml and Window1.xaml.cs....
I installed Office 2007 on my laptop. This was for me an upgrade from Office 2003 and the upgrade went beautifully. It launches by asking you for the Office key right at the beginning and you can copy and paste the entire key in at once as it is a single textbox (which is a nice feature). You can also provide the key later and just install Office directly without this key. From there, you are provided two buttons - Upgrade and Custom. For kicks, I pressed the Custom tab to see what it was installing...
As everyone is probably blogging ... Vista is out! Yeah! Very nice. I am quite looking forward to have Vista on my machine full time now as a finished product and I am very much looking forward to MSFT Office 2007 and the abilities it gives developers to more easily build within its environment. Have you seen the new VSTO Special Edition for Visual Studio 2005? If not, then this is something to check out. It seems quite easy to program to from the demos that I have seen. I am also looking at the...
There are so many new items out for download today. The first set are all the new .NET Framework 3.0 downloads: .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components Windows SDK for Vista and the .NET Framework 3.0 Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation) Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP There was also a release of VSTO 2005 SE: http://www.microsoft.com/do...
Java has always been good at getting its code down to the smallest of devices. .NET made attempts at entering this space a little while back when SPOT came out that allowed .NET developers to write code for some small devices such as some Microsoft watches. SPOT has gone away it seems but the work applied there has brought forth the new and upcoming .NET Micro Framework. This is a development environment that will allow for .NET development on a small device. The size of the framework will only be...
One thing to be aware for your servers in the spring of 2007 is that there is going to be a change to when Daylight Savings actually occurs. Here is a post from a newspaper on the matter: "Lawmakers made recent changes that will extend DST four to five weeks beginning in 2007. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 will change DST’s duration from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday in November. Those in favor of the change said the US will save on energy costs by taking advantage of the extra hour...
http://www.microsoft.com/do... The new CTP is available for the Orcas version of Visual Studio. This is the version which will allow for Windows Presentation Foundation development. I understand that the Windows Workflow Foundation and the Windows Communication Foundation pieces are not yet included and will come in a later version. This CTP includes what some of the items which will be in the post-.NET Framework 3.0...
I have been working in the area of Web services for some time and I am on a project where I needed to distribute some extremely large datasets to some clients (Windows Forms). So, imagine an interface where you need to request information about an entity and you have a service where you can send in an array of entities to then get back an array of result sets about each one of the identifiers passed in. We had one such application and it worked quite nicely in that we built some ASP.NET 2.0 Web services...
So many releases ... so little time. The July CTP release of .NET 3.0 has been put out. Some links: The Annoucement .NET Framework 3.0 July CTP Runtime Components Windows SDK for .NET Framework 3.0 July CTP Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation Release Candidate 4 .NET 3.0 July CTP Read Me File Determining Which Build of Windows Vista and .NET 3.0 Development Tools is Right for You Windows Communication Foundation Virtual Labs ...
http://www.oracle.com/techn... Oracle has released ODP.NET for those that need to work with Oracle from their ASP.NET applications, Windows Forms applications, and more. This is what you would use for your .NET 2.0 applications as well. This release includes the following: Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET 2003 10.2.0.2.20 Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2005 10.2.0.2.20 Oracle Data Provider for .NET 1.x 10.2.0.2.20 Oracle Data Provider...
http://www.microsoft.com/do... The June CTP of WinFx, .NET 3.0, Avalon, Indigo, Windows Workflow was released today. Nice
When I sent to install a clean image of Windows XP on my new Thinkpad T60, it wouldn't proceed as it couldn't find any hard drive to deploy the OS to. To get around this, you have to step into the BIOS by pressing the ThinkVantage blue button at the top of the keyboard. Once there, go into the CONFIG section and scroll down to SATA. From here, change the setting to Compatibility and then ESC out and end by saving the changes made. Reboot and you will then be able to install the OS...
At TechEd 2006, I was quite impressed with the new SQL Server Everywhere. I am not sure why ‘Everywhere’, but I guess just because this program is so dang easy to install, that you will just start using it in all of your applications – therefore it will get installed ‘everywhere’. SQL Everywhere was formally called SQL Server Mobile and has been expanded to now run on the desktop. Rather excited about it myself as we are going to use it as a local store in our new smart...
Dang, I really really wanted to run Windows Vista on my new Lenovo (formally IBM) Thinkpad T60. I installed it just fine and got all the drivers working, but I need three things in order for this to be my work laptop. One, I need Microsoft Outlook and that worked just fine. I need our work-based messaging program to work. It didn't at first, but you can run this program using the Program Compatibility Wizard and assign it to run in a Windows XP SP2 context. Then the last program I need is Nortel's...
I attended this talk about how to build Windows Forms 2005 apps that can later deal with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) components. Interesting, but the entire talk could have been covered in about 15 minutes. Recommended links from the talk include: Windows Forms Websitehttp://www.windowsfo... Windows Forms FAQhttp://www.windowsforms.... Windows Forms Interoperability Bloghttp://blogs.msdn.com/m...
Do you classify yourself as a Windows Forms developer? Do you have a stack of .NET books by your bedside? If so, I am looking for a senior Windows Forms tech lead (team of 8) for an important and exciting project with an outstanding company. Here are some points about the job: Must be a US citizen or already have legal status to work in the US Must be able to relocate to St. Louis. Must be self-starting and enthusiastic Must be capable of being a team leader over a multi-cultural group of developers...
Windows Live is now offering some bird-eye views of some locations on the planet. Really, the only bird-eye views available are of some major destinations like Disneyland or the Empire State Building or something. Here is a shot of Niagara Falls: Because of this, you will find that it is impressive, but not that useful. I am not sure why this is presented except to get people to the site to check out the other maps. I think it would take a long time to get these bird eye views of the rest of America....
https://www.microsoftelearn... I just noticed that Microsoft is offering a bunch of free online e-learning courses. These courses usually cost $99. Have fun. The courses include the following: Course 2924: Building Data Components in Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 (2) Summary: This course provides students with a focused, hands-on environment to experience the new features and functionality related to building Data Components in Microsoft® Visual Studio®...
Friend and former co-worker, Laurence Moroney, has put out an article this month on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Whew! In addition to the Professional ASP.NET 2.0 book I have coming out this month, I also co-authored two other books coming out this month: Professional C# 2005 & Professional VB 2005 Both these books were reworked for the lastest release of both of these languages. The table of contents for the Professional C# 2005 is as follows: PART I: THE C# LANGUAGE.1. .NET Architecture. 2. C# Basics. 3. Objects and Types. 4. Inheritance. 5. Operators and Casts. 6. Delegates and Events. 7. Memory Management...
I just had a conversation with the head of the Microsoft Windows Forms team in the developer lounge and told him that one of the biggest questions I get about Windows Forms is whether or not it is dead. Avalon is coming and the rumor was that this 2005 release of .NET 2.0 was the last release of Windows Forms. Asked about this, his reply was that IT IS TOTALLY NOT TRUE! His comments included: This is not the last version of Windows Forms (Windows Forms is not dead) The Windows Forms team is still...
After Bill Gates spoke, Jim Allchin came out and gave a presentation geared at developers with the promise of showing lots of code (which was done by Don Box and company). Here are some of the highlights from Jim's presentation: First Jim showed everyone an IBM computer from the Microsoft museum with Windows 1.03 loaded. He then showed us the OS booting up and then pulled up the game of Reversi. Funny, I remember all those screens he showed ... I must be getting old. The point of showing that is...
After Bill Gates keynote, Microsoft allowed us to go down to the distribution center and receive “The Goods” as they call it. This is a five disc set which includes a mass amount of software including: Windows Vista Beta 1 Visual Studio 2005 Team System Beta 2 SQL Server 2005 June CTP Virtual PC 2004 Virtual Server 2005 R2 Beta WinFX & Other Stuff Windows Vista CTP: PDC 2005 There is a spot for a sixth disc, but it is empty in my set. I am unsure if that is intentional or if there...
It was interesting that they only allowed photography of Bill Gates for the first minute of his presentation. Also, you weren’t allowed to use your laptops in the crowd as well – so I ended up taking my notes on paper instead of doing it with Microsoft Word like I normally do. Oh well. So, there was a lot said at the Bill Gates keynote, so I will only go through what I think were the highlights of the presentation. Video – Bill started off with a bit of humor and presented a video...
I recently received Windows “Longhorn” Vista Beta 1 in the mail from my MSDN subscription and decided to install it on one of the extra computers that I have at my house. I have installed “Longhorn” in the past, but I was quite interested to see what has changed in the install process this time around. The install process has changed quite a bit from the last time I installed it. It is a very graphical install process instead of the blue screen DOS style install process that...
Some of us got to see some of the outstanding demos of this product at the latest MVP summit - but now the Windows XP Media Center 2005 has launched: Microsoft Launches New Media Center PC One of the first channels available is the new Reuters channel giving you instant access to news and video footage. We have it running here in the office and it was a great way to interact with the news ..... now to build my own media center pc at home .... hmmmm...
INETA, a non-profit organization dedicated to thesupport of Windows-programming based user groups, isadding two new board members.In the search for these new additions, we are askingfor either your application and/or suggestions forthese posts.INETA will decide sometime in November. A boardmember's position on the board lasts for three years.If you are interested, we ask for you to submit asmall "resume" (of sorts) which details out yourinvolvement with INETA and/or community-based usergroups. (Send...
Hey ... if you are in St. Louis, we have Jeff Julian and John Alexander tonight! September Meeting - Test-Driven Development and Unit Testing in Microsoft .NETMonday, September 26, 20045:30 - 6:30 pm Welcome6:30 - 8:30 pm ProgramJeff Julian, John Alexander One City Place DriveCreve Coeur, MO 63141[MAP] Unit Testing is a crucial piece of the development process. The problem is, most of us don't put the time in to properly construct this portion of the process. By skipping this portion, we cause issues...
When people talk, trade, and listen to digitalized music - in most cases they are talking about their MP3 collection. MP3s are everywhere and their have been a few companies that have been fighting the wave saying that they are offering a better solution to digital music/audio. For example, Microsoft has been pushing WMA files as *the* solution for years now. They say they sound better - maybe so. Sony has their Atrac format which they say is better - maybe so. All this while the rest of the world...
I just built a new computer and put XP SP2 on it and then went out to upgrade the Media Player (hehe, always the first step). I then found that the Windows Media Player 10 has been released. http://www.microsoft.com/wi... I have to say that I really like the new media player. It took me a second to figure out how to find the File dialog (you have to right-click your mouse on the upper-most bar) as it doesn't appear by default. Is it possible that my .mp3s actually...
I was just on Amazon buying the first ever Barbie XBOX game (I have a 6 year old daughter!) and when I was done purchasing it - Amazon gave me a list of recommendations from all the stuff I look at. I thought my recommendations where funny: Your Recommendations: SpongeBob SquarePants: The Battle for Bikini Bottomby THQPrice: $36.95 Used & new from $34.97 Finding Nemoby THQPrice: $19.99 Used & new from $13.00 Programming C#, Third Editionby Jesse LibertyPrice: $30.57 Used & new from $22.95...
My Books Articles Wrote Introduction to the My Web Pages Starter Kit, 2007 My Web Pages Starter Kit Internals, 2007 Introduction to the Media Share Library Starter Kit, MSDN 2005 Extending the Time Tracker Starter Kit, MSDN 2005 Introduction to the Time Tracker Starter Kit, MSDN 2005 Extending the Club Web Site Starter Kit, MSDN 2005 Introduction to the Club Web Site Starter Kit, MSDN 2005 Extending the Personal Web Site Starter Kit, MSDN 2005 Introduction to the Personal Web Site Starter Kit, MSDN...
Something I saw at the MVP Summit this year and never mentioned cause I still thought it was top top secret and I would have people chasing me down if I even whispered ANYTHING to my mother about this at all is now available for pre-order from Amazon. The Microsoft Portable Media Center is an MP3/Video/Photo player that is out there to compete with Apple's IPOD. This, from the demo I saw of it in the MVP Summit, is a pretty cool device. There seem to be two models available - the Samsung Yepp YH-999...
I hate to say this, but I think that the browser wars are back - and back in a big way. The reason - well, I think partly for these little thoughts and concerns that are going around my head today and yesterday. I am having more and more problems browsing around the Internet as time goes on it seems and I am getting slightly annoyed about it - so I am thinking - “I wonder what it will be like to use THIS browser here?”. I was a big Netscape user till Netscape 4. Once IE4 came out - I...
Information Week's John Foley did a little write up in this week's issue about me and my job. If you want to learn a little bit of what I do at Reuters, then take a look. It is titled: Work/Life: At Reuters, Mr. How-To Hits The Road...
Jan Gray – Architect //blogs.msdn.com/jangr Abhi Khune – Development Lead //blogs.msdn.com/akhune Slow Software Stinks – Don’t Ship It! Symptoms – Locked-up UI, bad citizenship, poor scaling Causes Mistakes in architecture, reuse, interfaces, data representations, algorithms Not paying attention; low prioritization Where are we? Where should we be? Is premature optimization the root of all evil? How to optimize the right stuff, the right amount, at the right time? Put...
Started with a skit of two actors – one being IT and another representing development. They complained about each other and made some funny jokes about each other. Then Andy Lees was introduced. The crowd liked the skit. Andy Lees Corporate VP, Server and Tools Business States that 70% of the time IT is standing still Cause of this is complexity MSFT will reduce IT complexity Windows Server System components (SQL, Exchange, OS, etc.) all work together seamlessly … this reduces complexity...
The pre-keynote videos and presentation was in a lot lower key than previous TechEds that I have attended. Steve Ballmer was introduced and got a light amount of applause. There weren’t the funny videos that we have seen in the past, which was a strange exclusion I thought. Some notes I took of Steve Ballmer’s speech: MSFT will spend 6.8 billion (USD) on R&D this year. Thoughts: Geez, that is a heck of a lot of money. In fact, he said that only Pfizer spends more on R&D than Microsoft....
In the continuing series of FREE presentations for user groups and others to use, Microsoft has released to INETA a presentation entitled: 'Microsoft Client Presentation Roadmap'. [ DOWNLOAD PRESENTATION HERE ] This presentation looks at: * Presentation history* Windows Forms 2.0* New Controls and Click Once* Avalon and Longhorn* XAML* and plenty more..... It also includes a demo to use in the presentation. Even if you are not presenting this to a group, it is a great learning tool. Take a look and...
A Reuters video and case study about our lightweight architecture that we use for our customers has appeared on the Microsoft site. These items are associated with the ad campaign that we are going with Microsoft on Windows Server System. I had the privilege of working on these items - so enjoy
Besides looking at the candidate's issues and how they hold a pen or something of that matter, I usually head out to their websites and take a look at the code they are putting out there as well. It do find it interesting in how and what technologies people use when using technology as a tool. My review here of Presidential code is by no means saying who you should vote for - I stay away from those conversations - but use it as you wish - that's all! My first stop was in Texas country! 1) Republican...
The first company that Microsoft focused on for the Windows Server System ad campaign has showed up in the computer rags and online. You can see the Microsoft page on it here. The Reuters ad will first appear on March 15th in Computer World magazine. I am quite excited about it as it took a lot of people's effort to make happen
Whew ... I can finally talk about it! For about 2 or 3 months now, I have been working on a Microsoft/Reuters joint ad campaign that is going to be coming out in about a week and a half, but which was announced only this week in San Francisco. Microsoft is doing their first ad campaign focused on Windows Server System - a brand that encompasses quite a few components (such as Windows Server, SQL, BizTalk, etc.). The focus of the ad was to focus on what real people in real companies are doing with...
Holidays have come and gone and it always brings with it relatives that need help with their computers. I set my brother up with some programs for his troubled machine and it made me think that I would post here all the programs I put on EVERY computer I own. I would love to hear what else people use as well on their machines. So if I ever do a clean install of Windows. I put on the service packs (not connected to the Internet of course) and once that is all in place, I head directly for: Windows...
Here is an interesting opinion piece on the idea of Microsoft running the Linux kernel on Windows - why they would do it and what they would get out of doing such as move
I read this press release and was a little shocked. In Microsoft's battles with Lindows.com, it seems that they opened a can of worms. Now the jury is going to be deciding whether the word “Windows” predates Microsoft's use of it in 1983 and Microsoft is in jeopardy of losing their trademark over the Windows name. Read the entire release here
I got this in a Microsoft email this morning: Don't Miss the New Winter Fun Packs! Download these free Fun Packs for Windows Media Player 9 Series, Windows Movie Maker 2 and Windows XP games. I downloaded the Windows Media Player 9 Series Winter pack - which has a pretty interesting visualization that I like. I also downloaded the digital photography Winter pack (not mentioned here ... but it is there) and that has a neat screensaver changer with six real nice desktop wallpapers that change at an...
FINALLY! I got a machine together - not all the parts I wanted - but good enough to get Longhorn on it. Final piece was the DVD drive. I did a clean install of Longhorn. I was quite interested in how the install process would proceed. So I will detail it out as much as I can for those people that are strange and love these details (like me). First off, there was no blue install screen where you would see the default drivers and such being installed. The first things requested was a page where I had...
In the EU trial that is going on, Real Networks used Windows XP Embedded against Microsoft. Windows XP Embedded allows people to select the parts of Windows XP that they need to create smaller versions of the operating system - for things like ATM machines and the like. Real Network contends that just the existence of this product shows that things don't need to be bundled. Ouch! READ MORE HERE...
Watch what you do Europe! Just read this article about a Microsoft threat that they may get a substandard version of Windows if they continue down the path that they are going
Every wonder where the name "Longhorn" comes from? I did and heard a little story that went like this: Come and listen to a story about a man named GatesA rich pioneer looking to keep Windows rich (with features of course)And then one day while skiing Blackcomb and Whistler tooHe had to make a pit-stop along a highway 99 jewel...Longhorn bar that is, pints of beer, burgers too.... Well the first thing you know ol Gates got an ideaThe patrons said "Longhorn is what we got here"said "Vector GDI is...
I am not a fan of the official name “Visual Basic .NET” for the VB language. It was too bad that the .NET moniker name was thrown on everything. Microsoft obviously has as well since they changed the beta product “Windows Server .NET 2003” to “Windows Server 2003”. So I have been asking around if they are going to do the same thing with Visual Basic .NET. In most of the presentations here at PDC though - you see “Visual Basic .NET” - BUT if you go to...
Second day keynote …. In the beginning, there was a video of attendees. The most exciting part was Donny Mack and Asli talking about Indigo being the stuff in your watches to make them glow. They were shown in their shades and holding their little dog! Quite groovy guys! Notes on Eric Rudder Keynote: What Microsoft hears from you: Don’t make me rewrite everything! Moving code from development to production is too hard Give me more code samples … in my favorite language Help me make...
Jim Alchin - ** how developers can do this? Fundamentals - WinFS - Indigo - Avalon Announcing WinFX - next step behind Win 32 - builds on the .NET Framework Well-structured programming framework for Windows Continued commitment to back wards compatibility MS-DOS – Win16 – Win32 - WinFX Add ref and release you will not have to think about. WinFx Developer Preview - namespace chart Software fundamentals - challenges System, application, driver reliability Deployment complexity and expense...
Avalon: Best of the Web, Best of Windows Bringing together the advantages from both worlds Web Seamless deployment, update and administration flowable layout progressive download and rendering Declarative model Windows Unrestricted functionality Integration with Windows desktop Good offline support Scalability and performance Broad developer language Developer Experience Declarative Programming Extensible Application Markup – codenamed XAML One to one correspondence with object model Key role...
In the keynote for PDC ... FIRST DAY rockin! FROM ME: I feel like Dorothy and have landed in the land of OZ! Tons of people for the Bill Gates keynote with giant monitors all over the place. They started with showing us all the HALO PDC video which is a total riot. After that we got a little emotional clip about the history of Windows starting from the beginning. Bill Gates talked about this being a record PDC - more signups than any other PDC. Man, he is starting to age when you see him 20 feet...