Developing for devices with the Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the .NET Compact Framework by Microsoft's Jonathan Wells

The .NET Compact Framework is a small footprint, binary compatible version of the .NET Framework, designed for small mobile devices. The .NET Compact Framework enables devices to interoperate easily with Web services, using the development productivity of Visual Studio .NET. This session will provide an overview on the architecture and design of the .NET Compact Framework, as well as more details on its functionality and usage. Learn how your skills in building Visual Studio .NET applications can now be applied to programming smart devices.

Location: AMP Capital Investors, Ground Floor, 50 Bridge Street (The AMP Building), Sydney.

Timing: Thursday 12 Aug 2004, 6.00 pm - 8.00 pm.

Pizzas and drinks provided. The pizza will be there at 6, so be early to avoid missing out..

To allow us to provide the correct amount of food and drink, please click through to if you plan to attend. No personal information is recorded by the page - it is used only to estimate the total attendance.

Nick Wienholt and Dan Green
Sydney Deep .NET Administrators.

Keep up to date with SDNUG happenings and download the slides and code from past months @ www.sdnug.org

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My friend, Sunny Chandra, runs a very cool ISV, Employment Programs Australia. He called me the other day and asked me why I wasn't making more noise about VFP, especially now that I was working inside. He knows that I've been a great advocate of VFP over many years (as is he), and was worried that in my new role I had taken my eye off the VFP ball.

To be fair to Sunny, I have been concentrating on other things recently. I haven't abandoned VFP though. It's a great development tool and definately has a place in the MS stable. VFP 9.0 is in public beta right now and you can download it here.

Ken Levy, the VFP product manager, publishes a letter from the editor each month in which he outlines Microsoft's plans for VFP much more eloquantly than I can.

Suffice it to say that VFP is an important part of the overall developer tools arsenal available from Microsoft. It's got some great features and has kept my family fed and housed very comforably for over a decade. VFP 9.0 has some very cool new features including a complete rewrite of the reporting engine and even better SQL compatibility. For a more complete list, See Ken's blog entry.

Sunny, I'm watching the ball again. Check back here often for updates on VFP goings-on in ANZ and elsewhere.

Peter Griffith, President of ADNUG, sends me this fantastic news:

The Adelaide Dot Net Users Group (ADNUG) is planning a Whidbey-fest at their 11th August meeting at Microsoft Innovation Centre at Santos house.

Visitors are welcome and encouraged to bring along a laptop (and possibly a power board) to load up Whidbey (currently VS2005 beta 1) and listen to some presentations on the new features which will be available.

There will be DVD's of pre-loaded zipped VPC Windows XP Images (approx 4Gig after unzipped) and CD's containing the 5 Express products. Each Express product of about 30Mb can be installed separately as an alternative to installing the whole Whidbey.

Peter Griffith
Adelaide Dot Net Users Group
08 8365 4993 0408 832 891

We've also provided the group with a bunch of Virtual PC licenses for those without MSDN subscriptions.

Frank just sent me a note asking where's the fox? He wanted a link to VFP or FoxPro or the Sydney VFP User Group or OzFox 2004. Hey Frank, did you miss this?

I think he really wanted a permanent link on the side of my blog page. It's coming. I'm still learning the ins and outs of .TEXT. I have to say I'm pretty impressed though.

Update - Just for you Frank, my first link is to the VFP home page (and includes an rss link so you can keep up to date with the new happenings in the VFP world).

ZDNet is looking for Australia's Best IT Employer. I'm certainly voting in this one. The fact that I'm sitting in the office at home (and have been all day), the fact that I get to play with the coolest toys and actually get paid to show them to like-minded geeks, the fact that ... anyway, I'll leave the rest for the submission e-mail. Suffice it to say that I boast to anyone who asks that I have the best job in the world.

Go to http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/business/0,39023749,39153304,00.htm for details about how to nominat your employer.

I'm presenting at Open Publish 2004 tomorrow afternoon. Matty spoke last year. Since he's moved to the land of ex-pats (aka Singapore) with Caroline and (soon) Tyson, he couldn't do it again this time. He passed it on to me as his successor. I have to say I'm excited and a little nervous about being able to chat to folk who generally aren't developers.

My topic is Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 - Form creation for information Workers. Should be a lot of fun, although 20 minutes is not really enough to do the topic justice.

If you're after some really cool Geographical Information System (GIS) software, check out Manifold.net. They're up to version 6 now (I started with v2 I think, back in the mid-90s). This product rocks. It has all of the functionality of it's far more expensive competitors, at a small fraction of the price. Check out the Internet Map Server (still currently a classic ASP application by the look of it).

One of the coolest things is that the Manifold team have converted their entire code base (1M + lines) to managed code! They're ready for the 64-bit versions of the OS and the .NET Framework. This thing already flies, I can't wait to see the 64-bit version.

There's also a great discussion about why they've steered clear of the *nix platform when practically all of their competitors have ports for multiple platforms.

Finally, the Manifold community is the second-most active and helpful online community I've come across, and the tech support and transparency from the Manifold staff is simply sensational.

OzFox 2004 is Australasia's only VFP conference. Featuring some of the world's leading VFP experts, the conference is being run by Craig Bailey, president of the Sydney VFP User Group (btw, they've got to have one of the coolest logos ever -- the Opera House is a Fox!). I ran the conference last year, but it looks like Craig's outdone me by far. I'm really looking forward to it.

The Super Early Bird discount expires this Saturday, so Register Now!

Following our recent very popular Twilight Developer Conference ("candle lit"!) at June's Security and Management Summit, as promised you can now download the presentations and source code from the sessions presented by Chuck, Dave and myself. Delve into the innards of the developer implications Windows XP Service Pack 2, and marvel at the new bits in ASP.NET 2.0.

To download presentations and code samples, please click here.

Most of these seem to be at reasonable times for Aussies and Kiwis (except for the Sandgropers). Should be worth a look.

Information and registration: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=32724

Information and registration: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=32725

Information and registration: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=32726

Information and registration: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=32727

Information and registration: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=32728