I can't believe almost 6 months has passed since the last Build conference . This year the event will be held between June 26–28 in San Francisco where Microsoft will share what's next for Windows, Windows Server, Windows Azure, Visual Studio, and more. Visit the Build site to get yourself...

The holidays are definitely for spending time with family and friends however for me, when there’s an app/dev contest to win I can’t help but think about coding. It started innocently enough as a few members of my team said they had some ideas for an app and that building them and comparing...

On November 14, 2012, Microsoft will be hosting Windows AzureConf, a free event for the Windows Azure community. This event will feature a keynote presentation by Scott Guthrie , along with numerous sessions executed by Windows Azure community members. Streamed live for an online audience on Channel...

It seemed like a simple task really; capture a still image from a webcam and save it to a file. Unfortunately something that appeared so simple was quite complex. If you’re familiar with C++ and want to use the Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) API, have at it. My personal preference is to stay with...

Fortunately I’ve had the chance to attend many events dealing with technology but my favorite, for a number of reasons has to be a semi-annual internal Microsoft conference held in Seattle that brings together all ‘softies from all over the world. I recently attended this conference (which...

Using Windows Server AppFabric makes it easier to build, scale and manage Web and composite applications that run on IIS but when it comes to error logging, tracing and performance analysis, things can get a bit tricky. Therefore let’s discuss how to incorporate some logging features into a Windows...

I’ve wrote quite a few blog posts about Anders Hejlsberg (i.e. Visual Studio Asynchronous Programming , Visual Studio 11 ) and deserving so as he’s one of those people that once you meet him you soon realize just how much knowledge he has to offer. You also quickly comprehend just how little...

I’ve been using the Visual Studio (VS) Developer Preview a lot lately and while there is no doubt that some items may change when this gets to the Release To Manufacturing (RTM) stage, it’s clear that from the new Team Foundation Server (TFS) advances to the new language enhancements, there’s...

So you want to copy a work item (WI)? Well TFS does indeed have a copy command via the UI which will create a new work item based upon a certain type. The issue here is that this could be a timely process based upon the number of copies that need to be made. Not to mention the fact that this is...

Developers worldwide get All-In-One code relief Every day, developers scour the Internet to make short work of typical programming tasks, only to find questionable, if not unreliable, sample code. Enter the Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, a free repository of over 640 code samples covering 24...

Full disclosure: I’m a big proponent of Visual Studio but when it comes to creating data screens over and over again is, what’s the word I’m looking for – tiresome. Combine that with having to find and tweak some code because this new application works slightly differently than...

If you have no idea who Anders is (for shame!) then like any true computer geek you probably turn to Wikipedia. Yes, you know you’ve made it when you get your very own wiki page . Seriously though, Anders is a Technical Fellow in the Developer Division here at Microsoft and I had the pleasure to...

Let’s face it, when it comes to software development there’s always a bit of tension when a tester enters a bug and assigns it to the developer who worked on that piece of code. No one likes to have someone say: “ Hey, you made a mistake ” or “ This is broke and it needs...

I recently was asked a question about the Entity Framework’s (EF) “Stored Procedure Mapping” context menu from the designer. There were actually two issues wrapped into one question. The first part of the question was around the ability to replace stored procedures (SP). The second...