Check it out - a new landing page for Community Radio!  http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/audio/ 

The 64-bit age has arrived with the official launch of Windows and SQL 64 –bit products launch in late April at WinHEC.

Microsoft, Intel and HP want to work with valued partners and customers to take advantage of this new platform. With the 64-bit environment, you get increased performance, more scalability, reduced TCO, new market opportunities while retaining 32-bit compatibility. The Intel® Itanium® 2 processor has led the way in breaking the ground for 64-bit enabling. The new x86-64 architectures, such as the 64-bit Intel® Xeon processor, are now available in the market to broaden the number of applications that can take advantage of improved performance. The vast majority of the new servers and high-end workstations sold in 2005 will be 64-bit capable.

Route64 bit Training: (www.route64.net) is a 3 day hands-on training lab offering intensive, professional developer focused, hands-on workshops delivered by expert 64-bit technology and designed to bring the Enterprise Developer and ISV Partner community up to speed on how to build applications that take full advantage of the newest Windows 64-bit platforms.  These hands on labs will give the developer community the opportunity to migrate and test their applications on the latest 64-bit hardware from HP and Intel. 

Toronto Lab Date: May 2-4

Special Offer and Registration

      3 Day Hands-on 64-bit Training Lab including on-going technical support: $299

·      Free access to Microsoft 64-bit testing and migrating labs

·      $1700 + worth Attendee Bag which in a 1 year license of VTune® software development tool

·      HP Special: Up to 50% Discount on 64-bit development systems

·      Where can I find more information on Route 64?

• On the web site at: www.route64.net
• any questions: r64desk@microsoft.com

Why should ISVs and Enterprise and Developers care about Windows 64-bit?

• Marketing Promotion: Opportunities Inclusion in Windows 64-bit Catalogs and Web sites. Participation in case  studies and Windows 64-bit industry events.

• Increased Performance: thanks to increased memory access, larger registers, and greater scalability, an application can run 15% to 50% on a 64-bit processor.
• Server Consolidation: higher scalability and increased performance allows consolidation of servers and reduced TCO.

• Test and migrate your application: ability to test and migrate your applications while attending the training.
• Technical Support: Up to Free 40 hours of Premier Technical support. Exclusive access to web newsgroup for ongoing support

• New Market Opportunities: 64-bit opens the door to new markets which were previously reserved to high-end workstations or mainframes.

We are pleased to release Beta 2 of Community Radio (Brought To You By MSDN Canada)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/audio/MSDNCommunityRadio-18-04-05-VSLIVE.wma

Show #0.91 (Beta 2) – Live From VSLive! In Toronto

April 14th, 2005

Show Notes:

• New Hardware and Better Sound (including cool transitions...)!
• Interviews with the speakers - Barry Gervin (again!), Adam Gallant (again!), Kevin McNeish, Billy Hollis
• Midnight Madness memories...

Links:

• WMA Download –  http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/audio/MSDNCommunityRadio-18-04-05-VSLIVE.wma
• MP3 Download - sorry, not this time since it's just a beta test…..
• RSS Feed (use your podcasting client to catch the feed) – http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/audio/MSDNCommunityRadio.xml 

Introducing our second audio feature from the MSDN Canada team!

The "Community Events Audio Update" will be a bi-weekly feature providing you with a "straight forward" overview of upcoming events, training and activities.  Hopefully, we will help you better understand which events are right for you!

RSS Feed - Coming Soon.  For now it is integrated into http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/audio/MSDNCommunityRadio.xml

(Subscribe to this feed in your favorite RSS or Podcast client)

Direct Download Link -  http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/audio/MSDN_Community_Update_041105.wma (MP3 version coming soon....)

All events can be found at msdn.microsoft.ca

Featured in this audio update:

• VSLive! Toronto, April 13-16th
• MSDN Deep Dive - Building Applications for the Microsoft Office System, April 19th - May 4
• Last Developer Standing, contest begins May 2nd
• Visual Studio Team System Bootcamps brought to you by Microsoft and ObjectSharp Consulting, start April 19
• Webcast Highlight - ASP.NET 2.0

I thought I would share this news about a cool .NET application.....

Canadian Geographic finds place on the Net - Rebecca Reid - itworldcanada.com, April 7 2005

If you’ve ever wondered where the Boreal Shield is located — or you just need to ace GEOG 101 — there's a place on the Web you simply must visit.

It's Canadian Atlas Online launched this week by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in both English and French.

This online opus is a treasure trove of maps, flash animation and photo galleries. Users can explore Canada and its geographic regions virtually, moving in a snap from the Arctic, to Taiga Mixedwood Plains, and then to the Atlantic Region. (For the geographically challenged among us, the Boreal Shield stretches from Saskatchewan to Newfoundland and Labrador, and covers 1.8 million square kilometres, or nearly 20 per cent of the entire country, according the online atlas.)

Under each region are other subtopics such as “Industry,” and each page includes quizzes and interactive games as well as a resource centre for teachers. A kid’s area, called CG Kids Atlas, is also available specifically for children up to 14 years old.

Built entirely on a Microsoft platform, the Atlas Web site was created with the dynamic Web programming language, ASP.net, through Microsoft’s Visual Studio. It has a data back-end of SQL Server 2000 and uses Windows Server 2003 as its operating environment.

Ottawa-based marketing firm Banfield-Seguin Ltd. built the site (BSL).

The site needed to be built in nine months and Visual Studio was the only tool available that do the job in that timeframe, according to Danny Cassidy, digital media strategist at BSL, and project manager of the Web Atlas initiative. He said Visual Studio and ASP.net allows his firm to easily add and expand information and assets on the Web site, providing it with a far more compelling look and feel than a static HTML-based site.

Gilles Gagnier, new media manager at Canadian Geographic, said the Microsoft platform provided them with the uptime and stability they needed for the Web site.

“We’ve been using Microsoft technology since 1995,” Gagnier said, adding that Canadian Geographic went into the project with a vendor-neutral mindset, but after some research concluded Microsoft was the best platform for their purposes.

Cassidy said the biggest challenge was figuring out how to render all the information contained in the hardcopy of the Atlas onto the Web. Web-mapping specialists, DBx Geomatics Inc. in Gatineau, Que. produced all the maps.

Right now, only about 50 per cent of the Atlas has been put online but when the information is fully loaded, the site will contain about 90GB of data, of which around 40GB will be map data.

Introducing Canadian Developer Community Radio (brought to you by MSDN Canada)!

"Podcasting" - we really question the term as it seems to limit one's choice of device, but we love the concept and the power of this new paradigm of audio delivery.

So, let's call it a "BlogCast" or an "Internet Audio Broadcast" and leave it at that.

Here at MSDN Canada we are always looking for new ways to reach out to the Developer Community.

So we decided to try our hand at this new form of communication as a way to give all of you a different view to what is going on at Microsoft Canada and in the community across the country.

This is only a beta test of our new show.  It's also only the first of several ideas we have for audio content. 

For every show we will include:

• Show Notes (Text and OneNote)
• Links To Relevant Information
• Audio provided in WMA & MP3
• RSS Feed

Show #0.9 (Beta) – Live From The MSDN Web Development Deep Dive In Toronto

March 22, 2005

• WMA Download – http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/audio/MSDNCommunityRadio-DeepDive-Apr5Final.wma 
• MP3 Download - sorry, not this time since it's just a beta test…..
• RSS Feed (use your podcasting client to catch the feed) – http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/audio/MSDNCommunityRadio.xml 

The Show Notes:

MSDN Deep Dive - Building Web Applications with ASP.NET 2.0

• During this Deep Dive event, Microsoft Developer Specialists will introduce the new features in ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005, including Personalization, Master Pages and navigation controls. From there, the session will delve into core Web development concepts for creating secure, reliable and scalable Web applications.
• ASP.NET 2.0 reduces the amount of code required to perform data access tasks by adding a number of data-enabled controls.
• Create more robust applications. You'll discover how to use Object-Relational Mapping techniques to create robust, secure data access layers for your Web applications.
• Improve security. You'll find out the best way to use forms and Passport authentication, and run a .NET based process within IIS through impersonation
• Post Event Blog Links: http://blogs.msdn.com/stoey/archive/2005/03/11/394381.aspx

Last Developer Standing - www.lastdeveloper.com

• Last Developer Standing is an online contest that allows you learn .NET and gives you a shot at winning $25,000. That's right, someone will win $25,000 based on their knowledge of .NET. Now, you don't need to be an expert - the big part of the contest is learning. Every two weeks you'll receive a module that consists of some learning materials, like recommended online reading, some eBooks from MS Press, that you would otherwise pay big dollars for, webcasts, presentations and more. Then you'll take a test based on those resources. There are 9 rounds in total. You'll be competiting against thousands of developers, if you do not score the best, you don't move on. That is, if someone scores perfect on a test, and you don't, you're out of the running. We're looking forward to giving the last developer standing - $25,000. We anticipate this to go the distance, all 9 rounds with people getting perfect tests. Which is why we've created a very interesting 9th round! The final round will be played over Microsoft Office LiveMeeting! That's right we'll have an online elimination match - if you get a question wrong, you're gone.

VSLive! Toronto - April 13-16, 2005 – www.vslive.com

• VSLive! is an industry developer conference put on by Fawcette Technical Publications and sponsored by Microsoft Canada. The conference features world-class speakers from Microsoft (mostly Redmond) and industry experts. This is the conferences second year in Toronto.
• The format of the conference is 2 days of hands-on workshops and 2 days of sessions in a typical conference format. This is an amazing opportunity that happens in Canada only once a year.
• Notable speakers include:
• Prashant Sheridan, Senior Product Manager for Visual Studio, Microsoft Corp.
• Rebecca Dias, Web Services Product Manager, Microsoft Corp.
• Scott Watermasyk, Telligent Systems - Scott is a web development guru, he created the .TEXT ASP.NET application that supports millions of blogs per day on Microsoft.com
• Fritz Onion, Pluralsight - Fritz Onion is a founding partner of Pluralsight, a think-tank organization delivering in-depth technical content and training, where he focuses on Web development with ASP.NET. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book Essential ASP.NET.
• 20 more World class speakers

Interview With Rob Windsor (http://www.tvbug.com) - Sorry about the bad audio!

Interview With RD Barry Gervin - http://barry.regionaldirector.ca/Community/default.aspx

Interview With The Deep Dive Speakers

• Ryan Storgaard – ISV Developer Evangelist (http://blogs.msdn.com/stoey/default.aspx)
• Adam Gallant – Developer Evangelist (http://blogs.msdn.com/adamga/default.aspx)
• Bill Baldasti – Infusion Development

Is Your Developer Kung-Fu Powerful?  Come Prove Yourself - www.lastdeveloper.com