JWiese's WebLog

A Program Every ISV Should be a Part of...

John Wiese — Tue, 08 May 2007 23:06:00 GMT

Are you an ISV beginning to develop on Microsoft technology, want to be more tied into Microsoft? If you are not already a part of the Microsoft Partner program then the Empower program is for you. I suspect many of you don't even know that this program exists, and so I wanted to clue you in. This is a great program for small ISVs who are just getting started. To get started you need to join the Microsoft Partner Program as a Registered Partner, this is free and very easy to do, once you have that done you can join the Empower program.

What's required of you?

Empower is a 1 year program, although if you need more time to complete your application you can renew your membership.
Membership costs $375 in the US (fees vary by country)
You need to be developing a product on either: Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003, SQL Server, Mobility or MBS

So, what does joining the Empower program get you?

1 MSDN Universal subscription

1 subscription + additional 4 user licenses (TTL 5 licenses)
all MS product licenses included in the subscription can be used for testing, development up to TTL 5 licenses
Beta product access
Download of latest versions
Online Managed Newsgroup
Online Technical Concierge

5 Internal use licenses for Windows XP, Office XP/2003, Exchange, SQL, Windows Ent. Server & SharePoint

I highly encourage you to find out more by visiting the Empower website

Debugging Series: Part III - Basic Application Crashes (.NET)

John Wiese — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:18:00 GMT

Some of you may have seen my recent webcast on debugging .NET application crashes. I was asked at the end of the webcast to post a walkthrough here on my blog and it has been a long time coming. I will be putting this together tomorrow and posting it here as an edit to this post, so stay tuned, it is coming :)

Where'd John go????

John Wiese — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 21:15:00 GMT

It's been a while since I've posted here in my blog and thought I should let you know that I have moved most of my "announcement" type blogs to our team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde, so you can get your fix of announcements there. I will continue to post occassionally here, but will keep it more to the debugging stuff and to other interests in the computing world. Like the Zune!!!

I can't wait to get my hands on one of these. I spent a good portion of time a week ago ripping my entire CD collection to my hard drive so I am ready to put it all on my Zune. I'm really psyched about being able to take video with me when I hit the road so I can catch up on my favorite programs (Eureka, The Big Break, Monk, any golf events...in case you were wondering).

Well, if you want to read more about the cool features of the Zune check out some of the sites online:

http://www.zuneinsider.com

http://www.zunesphere.com/

http://www.zunezone.com/

...and many others

Struggling with .NET Interop?

John Wiese — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 16:36:00 GMT

Recently I was given a copy of a really good book on interop to review, titled ".NET 2.0 Ineroperability Recipes- A Problem-Solution Approach" by Bruce Bukovics. This is a great book if you are struggling with getting your new .NET 2.0 code to talk to your older C components, COM components or COM+ Enterprise Services components.

Bruce has done a great job at making this a very usable book. Everything is broken out into little segments, so you can find the specific problem you are trying to solve, and in a couple of pages of reading and sample code figure out the answer. He presents the Problem ina clear and concise sentance or two, then comes the Solution in exactly the right amount of detail. After the Solution comes "How it Works", with sample code and info about it. This is a great resource to keep handy on your desk as you will be using it frequently, at least I found that I have been :)

For more information check out the book at: .NET 2.0 Interoperability Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

Introducing Landscape Smartphones

John Wiese — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:36:07 GMT

Get Your Applications Ready for the First Windows Mobile Powered Smartphones with 320x240 Screens

The Motorola Q and Samsung i320 bring the first landscape 320x240 screens to Windows Mobile® powered Smartphones. These devices will be in the hands of many of your new and existing users. Is your app ready?

Adapt Your App now with the new Landscape Smartphone emulator image and Microsoft's guidance, tools, and resources. They'll help you ready your code for the latest announced devices and be well prepared to support additional form factors as they hit the market.

Visit the Adapt Your App page in the MSDN Windows Mobile Developer Center; it's a one-stop source for all the latest information and resources you need to build resolution-aware applications.

Emulators
Tools
White papers
Sample code
Webcasts
Hands-on labs

Great Resource for Designers

John Wiese — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:32:32 GMT

Have you ever spent 15 minutes or more trying to remember or simply find a site you knew was out there but couldn't remember the URL for? Well, now there is a site that has links for everything you need: http://www.nextdesignnow.com

Next Design Now has all the links you need to web sites, videos, blogs and more for things like Windows Vista, WPF, .NET Framework 3.0, ATLAS, XAML, Expression, Gadgets and more!!!

WinFX is now .NET Framework 3.0

John Wiese — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:22:00 GMT

By now I'm sure most of you have seen the announcement that the WinFX framework has been rebranded as the .NET Framework 3.0. This may cause a bit of confusion for some, and some of our marketing and evangelist resources have posted some pretty good blogs to discuss the changes. Here are some of those blogs to check out:

Announcement: http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/

Good overview of change: http://blogs.msdn.com/kaevans/archive/2006/06/11/626299.aspx

New site full of info: www.netfx3.com

Mobile Client Software Factory - Patterns and Practices

John Wiese — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 20:51:00 GMT

The Microsoft patterns & practices team has released the first Community Technical Preview (CTP) for the Mobile Client Software Factory. The factory will help architects and developers design and build mobile LOB solutions. The Mobile Client Software Factory will include a prescriptive architecture, application blocks, and other guidance/tools for enterprise architects and developers targeting Windows Mobile powered devices. If you’re serious about building mobile enterprise solutions, join the community, download the latest pre-release drop, and start contributing feedback today!

Debugging Webcast

John Wiese — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 22:34:00 GMT

I will be presenting a debugging webcast for ISVs on June 15th. This will be the first in a series of webcasts that I hope to continue over the coming months. Next weeks webcast will cover the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows package, which is an excellent continuation of the Debugging Series blogs I have going. Here's the info:

Event Date: 6/15/2006

Presenter: John Wiese

Event Time: 1:00 PM Pacific, USA & Canada (DST) = GMT - 08:00

Duration: 60 minutes

Description:

When it comes to developing applications one essential step is debugging. During the development process you can debug the code to your heart's content, but what happens once you sell your application? What do you do when your customers call you, screaming, "Your application crashes every 10 minutes!" or "I have to stop and restart your application every 5 hours because it runs out of memory!"? Well, Microsoft has a package of debuggers created specially for these types of tasks, and with the right knowledge and practice you too can utilize these tools to solve these problems and others--just like the Microsoft Support team does. This first webcast in the series will discuss where you can get the Microsoft Windows Debuggers package and what it contains. We'll briefly look at the UIs and talk about how each tool differs and when you might use each one. Future webcasts will begin to dive into actually using these debuggers on real live issues.

BI Webcasts

John Wiese — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 21:58:00 GMT

We have a great set of webcasts centering on the Microsoft BI strategy that I highly recommend looking into if you want to know more about what Microsoft is doing in the BI area. They are also incorporating the dimensional strategies of the Kimball group into the presentations.

Webcast	Time & Date
Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) Using the Kimball Method	June 6, 2006, 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PDT
Designing a Scalable Data Warehouse / Business Intelligence (DW/BI) System (Level 200)	June 20, 2006 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PDT
Using SQL Server 2005 Integration Services to Populate a Kimball Method Data Warehouse	July 11, 2006 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PDT
Getting Started with Data Mining	July 17, 2006 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PDT