.NET Banana

Most blogs are an excuse for the blogger to write deep thoughts about whatever is on their mind. I don't do that very often; my main goal in blogging is to provide info on events happening in my local area. I’ve been writing a couple of different...

New Horizons is raffling off XBoxes to folks who take .NET training. What is the plural of XBox? Is it XBoxes or XBoxi?

I made this resolution last year, and it turned out to be more interesting than I expected. I have type two diabetes, which I can control fairly well through diet and exercise. “Can control” is a long way from “does control.” This time last year, I was...

Hi, I'm Geoff Snowman, the Developer Community Champion for Maryland, DC, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The organization at Microsoft that I work for is called the “Seminar Sales Team“ and it's based in Dallas, Texas...

I spent Saturday teaching my two C# classes at Byte Back . Byte Back is a great organization in North East Washington DC that provides computer skills training at little or no cost. I was involved with Byte Back in the very early days (1997); I taught...

It's finally done. We had a launch event for SQL Server Reporting Services earlier this week. A lot of people are excited, especially because you can add it to an existing (licensed) SQL Server with no additional license fee . I've been playing around...

My day job is teaching MSDN seminars, and I'm currently learning the new material for our May and June seminars. We're experimenting with a new format that is much more demo oriented, with much less PowerPoint. Instead of our usual format with two 90...

Brian Moran from NovaSQL sent me an e-mail asking if I could publish a call for speakers. I think this is a great idea, but I'll generalize it a little. You should go and speak to your local user group. Not the other guy reading this post, but y ou ....

Here are my rough (very rough, completely unedited) notes from the Bill Gates/Jim Allchin keynotes today at PDC 05. They aren’t intended to be my final thoughts on the topic, I’m just getting what they said down on paper. This ISN'T verbatim, it's just...

VB at the Movies is a collection of dozens of short movies, each featuring a simple “How To...” Each time you watch and rate a movie, you'll collect a point. If you rate five movies, Microsoft will send you a free not for resale copy of Visual...

These are the detailed outlines for the four security sessions delivered in March - May of 2004. 1. Essentials of Application Security In this session for experienced developers, you will gain knowledge and skills essential for the creation of secure...

We're about to launch two new electives for the MCSD certification. 70-330, Implementing Security for Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and 70-340, Implementing Security for Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET . (These exams should...

I wrote this article in response to an e-mail asking how to start a user group! I believe that you need four things to make a user group work: location, speakers, online presence, and audience. I would start by identifying the location for...

Thanks to Steve Rosenbach of MAVBUG who sent me this picture from the presentation I did last night at CMAP 's Advanced SIG on “UML Modeling with Visio for Enterprise Architects.“

Level 100 (Introductory): Product/technology features, functions, benefits overview What are the new features, how will they benefit the customers and convince them that they need to buy this product What are the functions of the product and...

As many of you know, the number one priority at Microsoft these days is security. One of the ways we are implementing this priority is by focusing all the developer training sessions we do in the next couple of months on security. At Dev Days last week...

Yukon is the next generation of SQL Server. We unveiled it at the PDC last year, and if you want to know more about it, all the PDC sessions are available online . Some of the coolest developer features include .NET integration , so you can write stored...

One of the most interesting trends in software development lately has been the move to extreme programming (XP). XP advocates recommend using a test-driven approach to development. On .NET, test-driven development (TDD) is often associated with use of...

I want to mention that the Channel Nine concept is pretty cool, taking the blog to the next level. There's much more to say about this. I would like to write an article about how people outside Microsoft see Microsoft, as compared with how people inside...

Balto SQL Server Users Group has a meeting next Thursday in Linthicum at SM Consulting starting at 6:30 PM. Topic is to be determined.

The public sector developer team is holding another of their legendary partner dinners on October 20th. This will be a presentation on the new Microsoft Team System , Microsoft's new software development lifecycle tools that will ship with Visual Studio...

My webcast series on SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services is now available on demand. The ideal attendee for this series is someone who needs to develop reports, but hasn't used SQL Server Reporting Services before. In the series I assume that you've done...

Here's a list of upcoming .NET user group meetings in my territory: PA, DE, MD, DC, VA and WV. Maryland Tuesday, November 1, Baltimore, MD Central Maryland Association of .NET Professionals Clyde Barretto presents Building Custom Data Bound Windows...

Part One: Writing Secure Code – Threat Defense In this session for experienced developers, you will learn established best practices for applying security principles throughout the development process. The session will discuss common security...

Maryland and Pennsylvania Microsoft Developers User Group has a meeting next Thursday, April 29th on .NET and the CLR. The speaker is Sam Gentile , noted Wrox author. They meet in Shrewsbury , at Bowers Training (just off I-83), at 6:30 PM. Plus they...