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...
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...
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...
While I am thinking about Silverlight, I am looking forward to Devin Rader and company's new Silverlight 1.0 book from Wrox that is coming out this Fall! Devin is one of the main characters from Infragistics and due to the nature of his job of building controls for this company - he is usually neck deep in all the latest and greatest stuff coming out of Redmond. Stay tuned. Buy today: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCD... http://www.amazon.com/Silve...
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...
If I were to pick one tool to add to Visual Studio for my day-to-day coding, it would be ReSharper by JetBrains. I have been using the tool since version 2.0 and it is currently in version 3.0. It provides a ton of tips/corrections/advice as you type code. It provides better tooltips, better Intellisense, and extremely better refactoring than what you get out of the box with the default Visual Studio. For those of us out there that grab hold of the latest betas as soon as possible, you might be wondering...
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...
At least this is the first review of the Professional XML book that I have seen - there may be others. But Tech-Unity did a review and got some of the purposes of the book right on the button - "This isn't a book about learning XML. This is a book about integrating XML into advanced programming and development. As the blurb on the back goes, "Wrox Professional Guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals". If that...
The big news of the day is that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer introduced Microsoft Surface. A table computer that allows the end user to interact with the computer through their fingertips! No keyboard - no mouse. First thing you should do is take a look at the movies Microsoft made about this: http://www.microsoft.com/su... The ability to drag and drop items around with your fingers. The ability to place a digital camera on the table surface and automatically pull the images / send them / edit them...
I have been looking at the best ways in which Lipper can work with Excel in our next-generation application and took a look at ExcelPackage - an Office Open XML file creation library. I was quite impressed with how easy it is to create Excel documents on the fly with our latest financial information and then to delivery that file to the end user via a web service or something. The nice thing is that you can create exciting looking Excel documents (using Office 2007) on the server with very little...