I recently attained the Microsoft Certified Master for SharePoint 2010 certification.  I have long wanted to write about the experience, but honestly didn’t know how to begin.  After quite a few conversations with friends and colleagues, I thought I would share some insight about the process...

I recently got a question from a customer about utilities to include on their development machines.  My view is that you should trust your developers and let them install the tools they need.  However, some devs don’t have managers who trust their developers to do the right thing and they need...

For the past 7 years, I worked in Developer Platform Evangelism to talk to customers about the latest and greatest technologies that Microsoft would soon be releasing, and worked to gain early adopters of the technologies.  This was a very fun job, but I desired a change.  This past July, I...

Interesting question today on an internal email list: I am facing an issue with deploying Silverlight application to SharePoint site. I am getting below error Error occurred in deployment step 'Activate Features': Failed to instantiate file "Lists/CustomWCFService-SharePointListInstance/SilverlightApplication...

For SharePoint 2007, there was a nice project called Enhanced Rich Text for SharePoint Extended . Unfortunately, this solution does not work for SharePoint 2010 due to the ribbon enhancements. I needed something to work quickly, and since I am not allowed to download and review GPL licensed code (ERTE...

I’ve seen this question in my email inbox 3 separate times this week, so I thought others might benefit as well: “How do I get the value of a selected item in a ListBox with Silverlight?” One of the coolest things about Silverlight and WPF to me is the ListBox control.  This handy control lets you...

Thanks to everyone who attended the SharePoint 2010 Developer Best Practices talk at the SharePointPro 2010 Summit and Expo conference.  As promised, the deck has been uploaded.  Get it here . http://cid-09d5ededfee6c24b.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Presentations/SPPro%20SharePoint%20Development...

This made my jaw drop. http://i.engadget.com/2010/03/06/microsoft-shows-off-single-game-running-on-windows-windows-phon/ I cannot wait until the upcoming MIX 10 event to see what else is announced. 

I had the pleasure of speaking at the SharePoint TechFest 2010 event today in Dallas, Texas.  Over 650 people at this event, holy smokes it was a great time.  I had the first time slot of the day, and when I first started the talk the room wasn’t even 1/4 full (maybe about 30 people). ...

Register today for the free SharePoint Live Virtual Conference & Expo ! Hard to get out of the office? Training dollars are limited? We're bringing you a FREE virtual event on one of the most anticipated software releases - SharePoint 2010 - live from the convenience of your office. We're kicking...

I was fortunate last fall to attend a week long training class by the amazing Mr. Todd Baginski that showed off the AdventureWorks Travel Site sample.  This is a fantastic sample that shows various extensibility points needed to build SharePoint on the web sites.  Even more, the MSSharePointDeveloper...

Steve Pietrek has a great link blog ( Steve Pietrek - Everything SharePoint and Office ) that aggregates blog postings on SharePoint and Office.  If you are at all interested in seeing what’s possible with SharePoint, I highly recommend you subscribe to this great resource.  In his April 30th...

Part 5 of the SharePoint for Developers screencast series is posted to Channel9, this session focuses on creating custom field controls, content types, and lists . Previous screencasts can be accessed at http://channel9.msdn.com/niners/kirke .  Honestly, there’s no code to really post here. ...

Part 4 of the SharePoint for Developers screencast series has been posted to Channel9… this one focusing on calling SharePoint Web Services from a Silverlight client application . Show Me the Code! I started by creating a list in SharePoint based off the Links template called “SharePointSites”. ...

Part 3 of the SharePoint for Developers screencast series is posted to Channel9, “ Expression Blend and Silverlight ”. In part 1 of this series, I introduced Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 1.3 (VSeWSS).  In part 2 , we used VSeWSS to expose SharePoint lists as JSON data...

Watch the Masters on AT&T Fan Zone . The 73rd Masters Tournament will be available live on the AT&T Fan Zone from some of Augusta National's most famous vantage points. Masters fans will be able to simultaneously watch live video streams of Amen Corner, the 15th & 16th holes and other on...

While working on a demo for the upcoming NAB conference, one of the Silverlight product developers showed me a really cool API in SL3:  the WriteableBitmap API.  It’s really easy to use… you can point it at a UIElement and render an ImageSource to be used with another image.  To demonstrate...

Even more free training for SharePoint Developers.   Module 1 - Developing Solutions on the SharePoint Platform » learn now Module 2 - Web Parts » learn now Module 3 - Page Navigation » learn now Module 4 - Page Branding » learn now Module 5 - Data Lists » learn now Module 6 - Web Services...

Josh Holmes has a great post about going the the mattresses to prove ROI for your application.  His post, “ Moving From Cost center to Strategic Partner ”, is well-written and is dead on the money. During my interview process at Microsoft, my interviews focused predominantly on two themes: how do...

I just learned about a new site that we have put together, Microsoft.com/web .  This is a very cool site that lists a bunch of great information about why to use Windows Server as your web server.  It's a great collection of resources that point to events, downloads, and further information...

This post will show how to host a Silverlight control in a SharePoint 2007 web part. This post uses Silverlight Beta 2, I will try to make sure to provide an update after Silverlight RTM's if required. 10/9/2008: [ Update: the VPC image download on mssharepointdeveloper.com has been updated to use Silverlight...

Pretty cool... Faisal Khan recreated the iPhone UI with Silverlight and shows how you can do it, too. http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/silverlight/IPhone-UI-with-Silverlight-2-beta-2.aspx This will be really cool once Silverlight for mobile starts to become pervasive. I can picture someone creating...

Next week, my teammate Michael Scherotter will be holding a free half-day mini-workshop at the Microsoft office on 6th Avenue to teach people about building Silverlight and WPF applications with Expression Studio and Visual Studio. Since we work with Media and Communications companies, there will be...

Interesting post from TVBoard. There are many in the media industry who assume that the operators will not work with Microsoft. But the truth is the cable guys have never shied away from Microsoft and would probably embrace them on the advertising front. Even on the technology side, were they sufficiently...

Thanks to the folks at Lexis Nexis who attended my talk on "Microsoft and Web 2.0" today.  I went through quite a bit of material around Windows Live, the Live Platform, Silverlight, and newer technologies like DeepZoom, PhotoSynth, Live Mesh, SQL Server Data Services, and BizTalk Services...