February, 2010

Don’t have Silverlight? Get it here or download the video in MP4 , WMA , WMV , WMV (High) or Zune format. Here’s the second episode of Cloud Cover , the Channel 9 show where hosts Ryan Dunn and Steve Marx show you what’s in the Windows Azure cloud computing platform and how to get the most out of it. Steve’s off being a jet-set celebrity – what kind of excuse is “I’m off to Japan to shoot a commercial...

My colleagues Dave Remmer and Adam Gallant are inviting you to register and submit questions for their AlignIT: Excellence in Action Development Best Practices Webcast Series during March 23-April 27. With IT being an increasingly vital strategic asset and business enabler in organizations today, we all need to strive for excellence in execution in the IT projects we're leading. There are a number...

If you’re wondering what’s new in Visual Studio 2010, you’re going to want to catch these sessions taking place in March. You’ll get a grand tour of all the new capabilities as well as the new MSDN offerings that come with the new Visual Studio. The “What’s New” sessions are taking place in these cities: City Date Invitation Key Edmonton Monday, March 1 8ACE98 Calgary Tuesday, March 2 9FA90A St. John...

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven , a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10 , when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series . In an earlier article , I wrote that Brian Fling’s book, Mobile Design and Development , led me to a couple of instances where the number 7 appeared in writing on mobile...

Time for another installment of Counting Down to Seven , a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10 , when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series . If you’re following what’s happening with Windows Phone 7, you should follow Charlie Kindel – both his blog and Twitter account . Charlie is one of the people behind the new...

For your enjoyment and enlightenment, I present 4 articles featuring lists… Soma’s Key Software Development Trends S. “Soma” Somasegar, Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Developer Division, writes about what he sees as emerging trends in the world of software development.   He says it’s not a comprehensive list of all trends in the world of building software, but trends where Microsoft is doing...

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven , a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series. You’re going to have to wait a couple more weeks before I can tell you the specifics of Windows Phone 7 development. In the meantime, I thought I’d write about mobile development...

Don’t have Silverlight? Get it here or download the video in MP4 , WMA , WMV and Zune formats. Cloud Cover is a new show on Microsoft’s Channel 9 that covers the Windows Azure platform. In this first episode , hosts Ryan Dunn and Steve Marx show you: Azure’s Service Management API and how to use PowerShell cmdlets to manage your cloud services, and How to get started quickly with Windows Azure. They...

Whenever you do anything where money changes hands, from getting cash from the ATM to buying anything – movie tickets, groceries, a new pair of shoes or a new car to booking a flight and hotel room, chances are that there’s some Microsoft technology involved. It could be an SQL Server database, an app written in Visual Studio, a site living on IIS or Azure or a business process powered by SharePoint...

It all starts next week on Thursday, March 4th: Ignite Your Coding , the live webcast where we interview some of the biggest brains in the industry, and then hand over the interview to you! In Ignite Your Coding , my fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe and I will talk to developers who’ve made their mark on the industry and ask them how they got started, what sorts of projects they’re working...

Over at Wired’s Gadget Lab blog, there’s an article titled Microsoft’s Challenge with Windows Phone 7 is Wooing Developers . They saved the most important line for last, and in case you missed it, I’ll repeat it here: The company plans to preview its development tools at its MIX developers conference next month. If you can wait three weeks, you’ll get a fuller story. If you attend MIX (Monday, March...

Three Weeks to Go! We’re three weeks away from the day when a lot more about Windows Phone 7 will be revealed. On Monday, May 15th, the MIX10 conference in Las Vegas is expected to open with a bang as developers and designers will learn about “WP7’s” programming and design models as well as the opportunities that Microsoft’s reworked-from-the-ground-up mobile phone OS will provide. As part of a team...

Whenever Microsoft needs to make a radical change in the way they do things, they bring in a hip Asian guy. That’s why they’ve got me shaking things up on Microsoft Canada’s Tech Evangelism Team, and it’s also why Albert Shum is redefining the way Microsoft does mobile phones in his role as the Director of Microsoft’s Mobile Experience Design Team. True to my earlier statement that Canadian techies...

Are you Canadian and going to the MIX10 Conference? If you’re going to MIX10 , let me know, either in the comments or via email . A number of us from Microsoft Canada will be there and we’d love to catch up with you! Among the Canadian contingent going to Vegas are: Gladstone Grant, Developer and Platform Evangelism Lead Allan Hoffman, ISV Group Manager Paul Laberge, Web Platform Evangelist John Oxley...

A New Windows for the Phone Ever since joining The Empire, I’ve been saying that Windows Mobile needs to go back to the drawing board . While there was good technology lying in its innards – mobile versions of the .NET framework, SQL Server and Office – treating the mobile form factor as “the desktop, but much, much smaller”, was the wrong approach. In the meantime, the Esteemed Competition were doing...

Today represents a very important day for our country – the start of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. Over the next 2 weeks, we are going to be witness to some incredible athleticism and stories with the world united through sport. I can remember vividly watching previous Olympic Games in front of the television, marveling at the sheer talent and determination of the Olympic athletes in their quest...

Today is all about virtual meetings; I’m spending most of it sitting at the home office with a headset microphone clamped to my head, bouncing from one online meeting to another, magically transporting my presence over great distances. My co-worker John Bristowe is in the same boat and quipped on Twitter : “I feel like I’m playing Live Meeting Portal ”. With that remark, and since it’s a Friday, I...

Over at the design-oriented Smashing Magazine site, you’ll find Brad Colbow’s comic, The Life and Times of Internet Explorer 6 . It’s the browser we all love to hate, including we who collect a nice fortnightly deposit from Microsoft into our bank accounts. I got a great laugh at DemoCamp Toronto 21 when I said “If you got a cat when IE6 came out, it’s dead now.” It wasn’t always this way, as the first...

Every Thursday in March and April, my co-worker John Bristowe and I will host the Ignite Your Coding webcast series. Each hour-long webcast will feature a guest speaker selected from the bright lights in software development. John and I will start off by asking them about their views on the industry and how to thrive in an era of great technological, business and social change, and then it’ll be your...

If you’re looking for the latest and greatest version of Visual Studio, you’ll want to get your paws on the Release Candidate for Visual Studio and .NET Framework 4.0 ! It was made available to MSDN subscribers yesterday (if you’re an MSDN subscriber, you can download it immediately ), and will be available to the general public tomorrow, Wednesday, February 10. The changes in the Release Candidate...

Last week, I presented Kodu (pronounced “Code-ooh”) to a group of teachers and high school students at Corpus Christi Catholic Secondary School . Kodu is a system created by Microsoft Research for programming videogames without using a traditional programming language; instead, you use a combination of menus and visual programming. It was designed to be a gentle introduction to programming that would...

At long last, the fifth in my series of notes taken from keynotes at CUSEC 2010 , the 2010 edition of the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference. These are from Douglas “ JavaScript: The Good Parts ” Crockford’s keynote in which he talks about how hard it is to make software. Doug is a senior JavaScript architect at Yahoo!, the guy behind JSON , wrote one of the first important pieces...

As part of EnergizeIT 2010 we have partnered with RunAs Radio to produce some podcasts on Office 2010.  The first podcast of this 4 part series was posted yesterday.  If you don’t already subscribe to RunAs Radio I encourage you to do so.  It is a great podcast aimed directly at IT professionals. ------------------------- Richard and Greg talk to Rodney Buike about the upcoming Office...

Sheep Canada and Other Perspectives Every now and again, I make it a point to pick up some reading material on a field or industry that’s completely unrelated to my own. I find that it both satisfies my curiosity and helps me see things from a completely different perspective. In one particular case, when I found a copy of Sheep Canada lying abandoned on a subway seat, I enjoyed the puzzled and concerned...