There's been lots of talk about Windows Vista out there in the blogosphere lately. Have you been dying to get your hands on it and see what it's all about? Well, now you can! Vista Beta 2 has been opened up to the public via the Windows Vista Customer...

Check out Skyscrapr . It’s a new site for architects. You can't build a stable system without a good plan. And you can't develop a good plan without a strong model that fits the needs of the organization. A coherent vision of how all of a system...

T he Visual Studio Team System team recently announced the availability of a brand new product in the Team System family. First there were Architect, Developer, and Tester editions, now Database Professionals have their own flavor of VSTS! Visual...

Last Saturday was the second NJ Code Camp in the Microsoft office in Iselin , NJ . It was great to see and meet so many folks in the community attending! Despite a few technical glitches in the morning, the sessions mostly went off without a hitch! One...

Don't have an extra machine handy to try that new beta product? IE7 on XP? Vista? Office 2007? Load it up in a Virtual PC! I've used Virtual PC for a long time now. I found it most useful in my Microsoft Consulting days as it made it easy for me to simulate...

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...

There are still a limited number of spots available for this Saturday's code camp in New Jersey . The code camp is being held at the Microsoft office in Iselin, NJ . Don Demsak has posted an updated version of the schedule on the NJ Code Camp site . Let...

The NJ Microsoft Developers Group is meeting tomorrow, June 1st, in both the Microsoft Iselin, NJ and Rochester, NY offices. Come one, come all to learn about the Windows Communication Foundation!!! Windows Communications Foundation...

San Francisco , California . That’s where I was all of last week. And what, pray tell, was I doing there (besides enjoying the amazing California sunshine)? I attended Sun’s JavaOne conference with a group of my fellow Microsoft colleagues . We helped...

Here’s another one of those follow-up posts to the N3UG BOF meeting back on the 9 th . Another question was about a “feature” in the latest beta version of Windows Live Messenger that was driving people crazy. When you type an IM to your buddy, you can...

The registration for the 2nd NJ Code Camp , scheduled for June 3rd, is now open! For more details, visit the NJ Code Camp website and register for their RSS feed. Don XML has posted a preliminary list of the sessions . There are more yet to be added...

Three area user groups are having their May meetings this week. Check out the topics and links below for details on Philly, Central Jersey, and NYC's meetings. Looks like some cool stuff! (Too bad I'll have to skip out on all three since I'm on the west...

I can’t tell you how many times I get customers that ask me questions about migrating from .NET 1.1 to 2.0. The topic came up at Tuesday night’s N3UG meeting. It’s an important topic, and Microsoft probably doesn’t do as good of a job as they could in...

Windows Live is Microsoft’s new set of online services. Live.com is a portal page/RSS reader that provides the gateway into the world of Live services. It’s chocked full of AJAX-iness ( ß Is that a word?!) and has been evolving quickly over the past year...

When I arrived at the BOF meeting at the N3UG last night, Miguel was doing his best to try and recruit some volunteers to speak at the upcoming NJ code camp. Miguel asked the group if anyone would be interested in speaking. Not a single hand went up....

Last night, when I showed up at the Northern Jersey UG , it turned out that the featured speaker wasn’t able to make it. It was virtually a full house at Set Focus (home of the N3UG). By the time I got there after fighting the Jersey traffic , I found...

Tonight is the next meeting of the Northern NJ .NET user group (aka N3UG). N3UG meets at the SetFocus facility in Parsippany, NJ . Tonight's speaker will be Andrew Brust from 26NY (formerly Citigate Hudson). What's so good about SQL Server 2005 OLAP...

This is great! Now there is finally relief from the stresses of driving in Jersey! (or any other area where there is a lot of traffic.) I've been dreaming of having this type of functionality in my car since the day I got my license. Now, if they can...

Microsoft has been running a series of free Security Summits across the country. The New York City one is coming up on Monday the 8th. I'll be speaking at one of the developer track sessions. Come on out and say hello! Security is a top priority...

Thanks to all that attended the session last week at the Financial Developers Conference . Session Description: ASP.NET 2.0's numerous new features can be grouped into three categories: new controls (more than 50 in all), new features in the page framework...

Thanks to everyone that attended the sessions two weeks ago in NYC on developing applications with Speech Server. It had to wait until I got my new blog started up, but as promised, here are the sessions' materials and samples for download. Other important...

(oh wait! This is a blog, not a podcast! J ) Well, there… I’ve finally gone and done it! I just officially entered the blogosphere! Phew… now that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Just a few strokes at the keyboard and I’m in! Thanks...