I now post exclusively to http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde . Thanks, jmp

As nice as Chicago is, it's generally a bad idea to connect flights through the Windy City. I know I'm not the first to make this observation, but I think this might be a good place to keep a few notes to self. On another note, it would be great if...

The MapPoint Web Service SDK puts tremendous power in the hands of developers. The Windows Presentation Foundation puts tremendous power in the hands of developers. How might they be put together? I think I have an approach that I'd like to share which...

When I first joined Microsoft, I was sent to help build an application for a large telecommunications company which had some heavy-duty mapping requirements. This app needed to enable the display and design of undersea fiber optic cable networks. I had...

In browsing around the Windows Vista developer center ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista ), I noticed the 3rd party control link on the WPF page. From that page ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/downloads/presentation/ ), you can access dowloads...

I had a "New York Minute" yesterday - it went something like this. I stepped out onto the Avenue of the Americas into the pouring rain yesterday afternoon and began my hike downtown in search of some Szechuan dumplings. I had packed a rather large...

Software as a Service is a topic of great interest in the ISV industry of late. Because end users increasingly demand a hosted option, many ISVs are assessing the ways in which their business models, technology and operations should evolve. We have...

It's been a while since I posted on this this (does it still qualify as a series?), but I'll continue and in the hope that I'll be able to pick up the frequency. In the first postings in this series, I discussed how I'd like to build a small CRM-ish application...

My well-traveled laptop, now loaded with WPF demos on Vista, is on its way to my esteemed colleague John Wiese . I trust John will take good care of it and return it to me shortly. If not, I trust he'll ghostwrite a series of killer blog postings under...

Two of the major enhancements to Office 2007 are the addition of ribbons and task panes for developers adding on to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and other Office applications. Together, they represent a major opportunity for ISVs to leverage the...

The SQL Server team released 8 new report packs today, which I found out about via my esteemed colleague, Sureesh Sreedharan . These report packs are free, and cover: · SQL Server Integration Services · SharePoint Portal Server 2003 · Dynamics...

Since it looks like the NDA wraps have been removed from Office 2007, I believe I can now post about it here and let you know where I think it presents some interesting opportunities for ISVs. Having just returned from the Office Developers Conference...

Another theme that's emerged from cross-country conference junket I've been on of late is that Microsoft has embraced RSS and will soon make it pervasive in its productivity tools and operating systems. This is great news for both developers and users...

It's been a while since I've posted. I've been on the cross-country conference junket of late, and after stops in Redmond , Las Vegas , Redmond , Charlotte , and Redmond again, it's time to get back home and get back to blogging. So of course, I'd like...

Well after a bit of extra effort, I managed to get my "cutting edge" laptop configured as follows: x64 Vista Build 5270 x64 SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition Office 12 Beta 1 Visual Studio 2005 Professional Added the Vista WinFx 3.0...

One of the more challenging tasks facing ISVs on the Microsoft platform is navigation of all the technologies new to production and those due to arrive soon. It's often not exactly clear how these technologies are intended to be used and how they're intended...

After reviewing my last post on this topic and reflecting a bit, I realized that my demo app sure sounds a lot like a customer relationship management application. That prompted me to look into our customer relationship management product (MSCRM 3.0)...

Well, my fancy new 64-bit laptop completed its odyssey and finally arrived. I was able to get build 5270 of the 64-bit version of Vista up and running in a partition on the hard drive, and will return to digging into WinFx. It should be quite an interesting...

About a week ago, I was all excited to get started on a series of WinFx posts centered around a demo app I'm building. My manager had generously approved my order for a new high-powered 64-bit laptop and I had been eagerly polling our internal ERP portal...

Having just returned from the TechReady2 conference in rain-soaked Seattle, I realized that knowledge of all the great technologies I had just seen and heard about would quickly pass through my mind if I didn't do something to make them stick. I also...

In my last posting, I showed how to call the low-level API exposed by WLDAP32.DLL to authenticate via an LDAP bind. The authentication function - ldap_simple_bind_s() - returns a 0 when the credentials supplied were successfully authenticated. I left...

I'd like to take an opportunity to introduce my ISV Architecure/Developer Advisor colleagues - starting first with the east coast first. Alex Onik is my counterpart based in Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to the Microsoft platform, he has significant...

Hi, While I'm up too late, I should mention that Ron Jacobs has posted a podcast on Identity Management up on Channel 9 Wednesday. You can check it out at http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/ARCast_with_Ron_Jacobs . jmp

Well, its a new year, and therefore its an appropriate time to begin my journey into the world of LDAP and Identity Management. I'd like to start by discussing some of the recent history of LDAP on .NET (dating no further back than .NET 1.1), and then...

I guess one of the telltale signs of the advancing creep of age is the passage of one's pop culture heroes into obscurity - another sign is the tendency to begin or end one's sentences with the phrase "back in the day." So rather than attempt to forestall...