John Alexander's Blog

And for the last post of 2009…

The biggest tech flops of the decade…Enjoy!

I’ve thought about it.  I predict that social aspects of the web will explode in 2010.

http://mashable.com/2009/12/02/farmville-bigger-than-twitter/ This is just one example. From iPhone apps to search services that mine real time status.  Hopefully, GeeksWithBlogs will be somewhat in the middle of this. We were an early integrator of twitter as part of our community.  I guess we’ll see what happens!

Recently I was in a meeting to discuss the new features of Team Foundation Server 2010.  The senior management team asked many questions and was duly impressed.  Afterwards, I thought that the QA would make a good blog post. It was then I remembered this great post from Brian Harry earlier this year.  Read it for a great introduction. Oh and Happy New Year!!

Hello,

Here are the companion resources for the “Dancing with SharePoint” presentation at SharePoint Saturday Kansas City! We talked about best practices to create a SharePoint virtual development environment, ways to get the most functionality out of the box, and some great development tools. Thanks to all who came!!!!

“Power User Books” – For getting the most out of the box

The SharePoint Shepherd's Guide for End Users

Essential SharePoint 2007: A Practical Guide for Users, Administrators and Developers

Beginning SharePoint 2007 Administration: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Virtual PC Resources and Best Practices

 Virtual PC Tips by Scott Hanselman

How to Create a MOSS 2007 VPC Image – This is a great series of articles on setting up a virtual environment, especially part 20 which is about creating differencing disks.

Here is another great article on differencing disks by Andrew Connell.

SharePoint Development Tools

Here is a list of the Tools demonstrated during the presentation:

STSDev

WSPBuilder

U2U CAML Query Builder

For the person who asked - “How to Use CAML (with examples)”

Search Query Web Service Test Tool for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007

SharePoint 2007 SDK – includes BDC Editor

Simego MOSS BDC Design Studio

Lightning Tools BDC Meta Man

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions, Version 1.1

A 30 day Virtual PC environment for SharePoint:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD

Visual Studio Team System 2008 vpcs with new expiration dates!!!!

The last set of images was set to expire December 31, 2009. These images were updated with new expiration dates (January 31, 2011) and all of the latest Windows updates.

This virtual machine is running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, SP2. It contains a full installation of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server SP1, Team Build 2008 SP1, Team Explorer 2008 SP1, Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite SP1 and all necessary prerequisites. In addition, it has been updated with Office 2007 SP1, current Windows Updates as of December 1, 2008, the October 2008 Release of the TFS Power Tools, Team System Web Access 2008 SP1, and the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider. Team Foundation Server is installed in workgroup authentication mode and thus does not require a domain controller.
This release also contains 38 hands-on labs and sample data. Please examine C:\MSLabs inside the image.
This virtual machine does not have anti-virus installed. It should not be connected to any network until it has anti-virus installed. In addition, the operating system and programs installed were patched with all updates as of December 10, 2009.

Public download locations:

Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 + Team Foundation Server 2008 (Hyper-V)

Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 + Team Foundation Server 2008 (VPC 2007 SP1)

Team Foundation Server 2008 ONLY (Hyper-V)

Team Foundation Server 2008 ONLY (VPC 2007 SP1)

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and Team Foundation Server 2010 – Beta 2, WITH SAMPLE DATA

This VM included everything you need to learn and demonstrate the ALM capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 (with the exception of Lab Management – the product team is hard at work on a solution for configuring Lab Management in a VM). This VM is available in the virtualization platform of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and Windows [7] Virtual PC). Hyper-V is highly recommended because of the performance benefits and snapshotting capabilities.

Available in 3 delicious flavors:

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Hyper-V)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Windows [7] Virtual PC)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Virtual PC 2007 SP1)

Merry Christmas!!!

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is known world wide for its impressive educational and research programs.  They have an initiative called OpenCourseWare, which is a collection of free lecture notes, exams, and videos. No registration required.

“MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.”

Get started here.

As if it couldn’t get any better. Thanks Channel9!

“The Silverlight 4 Training Course includes hands-on-labs, a video and a whitepaper designed to help you learn about the new features in Silverlight 4 focusing on three major areas: Enabling Business Application Development, Empowering Richer Experiences and Moving Beyond the Browser. Some of the new highly anticipated features include Printing, WebCam and Microphone support, custom right-click, rich text, HTML support and access to local files with trusted applications.”

Oh, just in case, you aren’t familiar with Silverlight, click here.

Channel 9 has several new online courses!

Interested in SharePoint 2010 development? Go here…Now!!!!

In a recent post I told you about the online PDC videos available for free. Now the DE’s have picked their favorites.  The Developer Evangelists and Architect Evangelists spend a ton of time supporting the local user communities and are great!  My AE, Clint Edmonson, rocks!

Anyway, from the ISV DE Blog…

“Our team has put together a list of videos from Professional Developers Conference (PDC09) that we think are important for ISVs. All the videos are online. You can access the video itself or just the slides. The videos include the screen and a video of the speaker giving the presentation.

You can get a list of all the recorded sessions at PDC09 Videos.

Here are the list of some of our team’s picks…”

If you have been playing with the SharePoint 2010 beta then you may have run into a few issues. The Microsoft SharePoint Developer Documentation Team has put together a list of issues that the developer community is running into on a regular basis!

Nicely done.  Check it out here…

This month's meeting will be a social/networking/bar camp type meeting. It will be a good chance to just talk and socialize over beers/wines/ cokes.

For those who are interested, we will be meeting at Coach's Bar around the corner from Centriq.

Click for directions and map: 414 W 103rd St, Kansas City, MO 64114

See you there!!!

If you’ve ever wanted to play around with a Microsoft Surface app but didn’t have the resources to get your own table. This is for you!  Until recently, even the SDK was very hard to obtain without access to the device.  Microsoft has expanded access and created several new resources for you to try. check it out!

• Surface Web site (http://www.surface.com)
  • A new Technical Resources section to help you connect to the other available resources and support.
• MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com)
  • A new Microsoft Surface section of the MSDN Library (under .NET Development), providing the Surface SDK documentation and other topics about developing Surface applications.
  • New Surface-specific forums about designing and developing Surface applications.
• TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com)
  • A new Microsoft Surface section of the TechNet Library (under Products and Technologies), describing the basics of the Surface software and hardware and how to set up, customize, troubleshoot, and maintain Surface units.
  • New Surface-specific forums about the Surface software platform, hardware, and applications.
• Microsoft Download center (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads)
  • A new product category for all Surface downloads, including the Surface SDK Workstation Edition, applications, documentation, and any software fixes.
• Microsoft Support (http://support.microsoft.com)
  • Public Surface KB articles for fixes, known issues, and workarounds.
  • Surface Solution Center to direct customers to the right self-support and assisted-support options.

If you were like me last week – bummed because you weren’t able to make one of the coolest
PDC’s in years.  You’ll be happy to know  (as I was) about a very generous and cool offering from Microsoft – made possible by some very hard work from the channel 9 guys!

You can view ALL the sessions here!  All of Day 1 is up (including PPTs) and Day 2 and 3 content will follow shortly with the plan being everything up by mid week!

Great job guys!!!!!!!!! And thanks!!!!!

I stumbled across a recently released collection of guidance and best practices for SharePoint DBAs and those who love them.

From the download page…

“ This book is a guide for database administrators who implement or maintain Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It provides guidelines for improving the performance of Office SharePoint Server 2007 solutions that run on Microsoft SQL Server 2008…”

Get it here in either doc or pdf formats.