] in-between [ weekend, June 7/8, Orlando Convention Center

Attending Tech-Ed and looking for something to do ‘inbetween’ the two Tech-Eds?  Or just looking for a really great, free, community driven event for the weekend down in Florida?

The Florida Microsoft Community has secured Orange County Convention Center in Orlando (where TechEd is being held) for a giant community mega-event on June 7 and 8.  There’s .NET Code Camp plus SQL Saturday plus ITPro Camp all rolled into one.  And that’s just Saturday.  On Sunday we’ve got all day tracked learning in SQL, Office Communication Server, .NET Framework 3.5, Biztalk, Sharepoint, Visual Studio Team System, DotNetNuke, and more. 

Russ Fustino will also be spearheading an all day Toolshed session as well.  In addition to the learning, we’ll have OpenSpace lightning talks, MCSD/MCAD exam crams, discount certification testing, MCT training, and some extra special surprises. 

For more information go to http://www.devfish.net/articles/inbetween .  Register for an event on Saturday, and one on Sunday, and we’re good to go. 

The Northeast Roadshow

We're at it again!  It's time to pack our laptops and gear to head out across the northeast for our fifth Roadshow!  Only this time, you're getting three of us for the price of, well, zero - the events are free after all...  Jim O'Neil, our new colleague here in the northeast, is joining Bob and me as we set out to tour various cities, bringing you deep developer and architect content.  And some giveaways as well, of course. 

What's the Roadshow?

Starting with our first one in March of 2007, the Roadshow is our chance to head out to various parts of the northeast to reach the broader community.  In these free full-day events, we bring you deep technical content including not just the "how to", but also discussion of why and when you may consider technology and practices.  We're also hugely entertaining, especially when failing to hit our marks as we throw things into the audience.

Where?  When?

• May 22 - Williston, VT

• May 28 - Westbrook, ME

• May 29 - Waltham, MA

• June 10 - Rochester, NY

• June 12 - Farmington, CT**

How?

Register today (venue details and links below) - it's free - and join us for a relaxed day of low-fluff, high-signal content for developers and architects!

Note that some cities consistently hit capacity, so don't wait to register.

The Agenda:

8:30-9:00 AM -  Registration

9:00-10:25 AM - The Strongest LINQ - The Sequel (SQL and Entities)

Our story began with the previous Roadshow, where a tale of C# and VB language enhancements led us to an appreciation for how LINQ works.  Now another story  unfolds, featuring practical details of how LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Entities can make your life better as a developer and architect.  We'll quickly get you up to speed with the foundations of LINQ, then dive deeply into the specific applications of LINQ for use with databases.  Besides the how-to details of LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework, we'll also share practical insights for adoption strategies, performance optimization, and maintainability.  The slide-and-code-based equivalent of a real page turner!

10:25-10:35 AM - We'll put a bookmark in the content so you can take a break

10:35 AM -12:00 PM - Leveraging .NET in the Office

In this overview of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) with Visual Studio 2008, Jim will show how you can leverage your .NET skills to bring additional customized functionality to the Microsoft Office suite of products.   We'll look at integrating custom actions in the Microsoft Word Ribbon control , creating form regions in Outlook, and extending existing VBA investments in Excel.  With sample code galore, you can be a hero in your own office as you integrate and standardize your business's unique processes and requirements into those very familiar Office applications your colleagues and staff use day in and day out.

12:00-12:45 PM - All this talk has made us hungry.  Lunch!

12:45-2:10 PM -  The Architecture of RIA - The Silverlight 2 Story

In this session, we'll take a look at the current state of RIA (Rich Internet Application) development leveraging Silverlight 2.0.  We'll focus on the architecture of RIA's, using XAML for user interface layout and design, WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) for Web Services, Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend for the design/development environment and Windows Server 2008/IIS 7 as the deployment environment.  Hmm, all of that in one session?  Even we aren't sure it's going to fit... pre reading for this session is here.

2:10-2:20 PM - Time to relax and consider your architecture options

2:20-3:45 PM - ASP.NET's Model View Controller (MVC) - What's All the Fuss About?

It's everywhere you look: blogs, magazines, the backs of cereal boxes.  You may recall reading something about it in that "Gang of Four" book, but you're not entirely sure.  What is it?  MVC!  In this session, we'll dive into the world of ASP.NET's Model View Controller (MVC) implementation.  What the MVC pattern is, how it can clearly separate concerns, improve control over published URLs and HTML, where it might make your life easier, and of course, plenty of code showing how to use it with your websites.  You'll end the day with the background necessary to confidently stride into technology discussions and boldly say "M-V-C".

3:45-4:00 PM -  Wrap-up, giveaways, and a fond farewell

Register

See you on the road!

-Bob

Today Microsoft unveiled RoboChamps, a simulated robotics league that is open to academics, hobbyists and developers from around the world, that demonstrates the power of the Microsoft platform to enable a broad range of developers to explore new ways to use .NET for robotics programming.

RoboChamps is built on top of the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio(MSRDS) 2008 CTP, and uses that product’s robust, physics enabled simulation environment to remove the barriers of entry that exist for many today. This simulated league provides individuals with immersive 3D environments, simulated versions of robots, and compelling scenario-specific challenges where they can win real robots.

More information:

• Channel 9 video
• .NET Rocks Podcast
• On10.net video

Abstract

This series of articles takes a look at the current state of RIA development leveraging Silverlight 2. The series will focus on the architecture of RIA's, the use of XAML for resolution independent user interface layout and design, Windows Communication Foundation for Web Services, Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend for the design/development environment and Windows Server 2008/IIS7 as the deployment environment.

• Part 1 - Rich Internet Application Architecture
• Part 2 - Developing, Deploying and Invoking WCF Services from Silverlight 2 Applications
• Part 3 - Silverlight Controls, Data Binding, Templates and Styles
• Part 4 - Resolution Independent User Interface, User Controls and Deep Zoom

Silverlight 2.0 Resources

• Silverlight 2
• Scott Guthrie's Silverlight 2 First Look Series
• Brad Abrams complete end to end Data Centric Application in Silverlight
• Brad Abrams on Leveraging ASP.NET Auth Services from Silverlight
• UX Musings Blog (great samples on creating custom skins)
• David Isbitski on Deep Zoom
• Silverlight Documentation on MSDN
• Silverlight 2 Quick Starts
• Silverlight 2 Runtime
• Silverlight 2 Tools Installation Instructions

Sounds Familiar

As these articles delve into the architecture and implementation of Silverlight 2 applications, I use the Sounds Familiar music portfolio application as the source of implementation and design examples. It demonstrates several new Silverlight 2 controls and leverages a WCF Web Service for data access.

The application lists out the set of music projects that I have produced over the past 7 years and when one is selected, you get a list of tracks. These tracks can be played, paused and stopped. When in play mode, the next track is started automatically. For some projects you can download a zip of the MP3’s to add to your own music collection.

There are photographs of the studio that you can zoom into for greater detail and the liner notes for the currently playing CD will appear when you mouse over the music notes image. The menu will float in from the right when you mouse over the menu tab. From the menu you can find selections for visiting my blog, the Silverlight home page and a download link for the currently playing CD if that is an available option.

 Sounds Familiar demonstrates the following:

• Resolution Independent User Interface
• Grid, StackPanel and Canvas Layout
• Button, ListBox and DataGrid controls
• Custom User Controls
• Invoking WCF Web Services
• Data Binding, Templates and Styles
• Animated Fly-Out Menu and PopUp Window
• Using the MediaElement to provide progressive download of audio
• Image Reflection Effects
• Rendering Dynamic XAML
• HTML DOM Integration
• Deep Zoom

Source Code for Sounds Familiar

5/19/2008
Location information: Waltham, MA

Here is the information:

http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/AppliedHPCServer.aspx

Description:

Five intensive days developing parallel applications that take advantage of high-performance clusters and Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 / HPC Server 2008

This course provides in-depth coverage of high-performance application development and design using Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and HPC Server 2008. Intended for both commercial developers and academic researchers, our goal is to quickly bring attendees up to speed on the design and development of 64-bit parallel codes. Attendees learn to take full advantage of modern high-performance clusters, from running simple parametric sweeps to developing multi-core, multi-node apps with OpenMP, PFx, MPI, and MPI.NET. Discussion includes numerous practical considerations, including data distribution and collection, debugging, tracing, porting, performance tuning, visualization, and customizing the client-side submission process via the scheduler's API. The course follows a lecture/lab format, providing every attendee with hands-on development experience using a high-performance cluster. The programming languages used are C++ and C#.

If you are a Microsoft Partner with a competency in building custom development solutions on the Microsoft Platform, or you are interested in expanding your practice in this direction, then Microsoft's MSDN Field Evangelism Team invites you to attend one of our upcoming half-day briefings.  You won't want to miss this briefing to learn and takeaway new ideas and opportunities to help your business grow and prosper in key areas now and into the future.

For more information visit: http://blogs.msdn.com/johnm/archive/2008/02/18/prodev-partners-only-briefing-us-east-region.aspx

The Ted Pattison Group is offering a 50% discount on their Publishing with SharePoint course. Here are the details:

WCM401: Developing Publishing Sites with SharePoint Server 2007 WCM

Author: Andrew Connell

Format: Instructor-led Training with Hands-on Labs

Audience: Professional .NET Developers with WSS Fundamentals

Length: 4 Days

Description:
This intensive 4-day course takes developers through the process of building and implementing content-centric websites on the SharePoint platform using the latest release: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). You will learn how to leverage the new concepts in the latest release of SharePoint to build Publishing sites (aka: Web Content Management sites) such as master pages, page layouts, field controls and custom workflows as well as existing SharePoint technologies including custom Web Parts and the provided out-of-the-box Web Parts. Technologies and concepts covered specific to MOSS Publishing sites such as content deployment, support for multilingual sites (variations) and the various types of caching offered to build a well performing site. In addition, an emphasis on using Features and solutions for development is covered throughout this course in addition to using the browser experience and SharePoint Designer 2007.

Prerequisites:
Attendees should have professional development experience with Visual Studio 2005, the .NET framework and ASP.NET as well as familiarity with Microsoft Office products such as Word and Excel. It is also recommended (but not required) that attendees have a background with SharePoint Technologies such as using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and MOSS and have experience working directly with XML files in Visual Studio 2005.

-bob

It was good to see everyone at the Architect Breakfast event at the Heroes Happen Here event in Boston.

Here is the PPT and demos:

Instructions for running the GPS Mobility Demo:

-Load the project in VS2008

-Run Debug, select Classic WM6 Emulation

-Navigate within the emulator using File Explorer: My Device/Program Files/gpssample

-double-click on FAKEGPS to install the CAB

-Go to Start Menu/Fake GPS to run the application

-Select 'Enable', then click 'Done'

-Return to GPS application - Form 1 - select GPS/Start

-bob

According to Scott Guthrie, Microsoft is seeing a steady increase in  the download rate of Silverlight which is currently an impressive 1.5 Million downloads a day and rising. Check out Scott's Blog for a First Look at Silverlight 2.0.

Scott announced that Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 is available today. In addition the betas for Expression Blend and Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio are also available for download. And while you are at it you may as well go check out the videos, tutorials and hands-on labs as well.

Media

Scott demonstrated the improvements in the area of rich media. Silverlight 2.0 has built in bit rate selection and the ability to dynamically switch bit rates based on network response times. This significantly improves the streaming and progressive download experience and eliminates a good deal of buffering.

Advertising

Also demonstrated was the release of tools to allow for the easy creation of Silverlight based Ads. A new project template for Visual Studio was demonstrated that makes the creation of Silverlight based banner ads straight forward. Also demo'ed were features of Expression Encoder that allowed for the import and placement of of XAML based ad overlays into video streams.

DoubleClick

DoubleClick announced support for Silverlight 2.0. Instantiate the DoubleClick Ad component in your code behind, set the Ad Tag and define event handlers that then allow you to do anything you want as the video is streaming. Available in H2/08.

NBC Sports

Perkin Miller of NBC Sports showed off their very cool Silverlight based NBC Olympics Site. Here are the factoids:

• 2200 hours of live feed + all broadcast video for 34 sports and make it available on-line
• All HD video
• Interactivity -  linked with athlete bios, statistics, expert commentary, etc. rewind and replay the live feed
• Data overlays on the video
• Switch what sport you are watching
• Share with friends and family
• Navigate the various sports content, picture in picture overlays
• Total of 4 live feeds
• Top Ten Videos, what is most popular
• Integrated Advertising

I am looking forward to being in control of my viewing of the Olympics this year!

Rich Internet Applications Features

Scott listed out many of the new features in Silverlight 2.0 for RIA including:

• .Net Framework 3.5 in the browser
• Choose your development language (C#, VB, Ruby, Python)
• WPF/XAML Subset, controls, data binding, layout, templating and skining, animation, networking, LINQ, local cache/store, etc.
• 6-10 second download
• Controls - Button, Check Box, Radio, Slider, Calendar, DataGrid + Third Party
• Shipping all controls today as source code library in the SDK
• Shipping a testing framework for UI and non-UI, hundreds of  unit tests
• Visual Designer in VS, debugger, etc.
• Integration with Blend 
• Deep Zoom???

Deep Zoom

To understand Deep Zoom you must first understand Sea Dragon. Sea Dragon is a Microsoft Research incubation project resulting from the acquisition of Sea Dragon Software. Its aim is nothing less than to change the way we use screens, from wall-sized displays to mobile devices, so that visual information can be smoothly browsed regardless of the amount of data involved or the bandwidth of the network.

To see Sea Dragon in action, check out Photosynth or my post on the WorldWide Telescope.

So that brings us to Deep Zoom. Deep Zoom is the integration of Sea Dragon capabilities into Silverlight 2.0. It is the ability to stitch together images and allow for the navigation through those images leveraging various meta tags and the ability to zoom in on those images to see excruciating detail.

HardRock Cafe

The HardRock demonstrated using Silverlight and the Deep Zoom features to visualize their rock memorabilia collection. This new site is called Memorabilia 2.0. It gives you the ability to navigate through a series of 512 deeply integrated pictures and zoom into to see the most minute details on the instruments, documents, album covers, etc.

I am looking forward to getting back home and sharing all the details with the developer and architect community in the northeast. See you soon!

-bob

Dean Hachamovitch was on stage during the MIX08 Keynote to announce Internet Explorer Beta 1 and discuss several new features that offer designers and developers the ability to create web pages that are standards compliant and work the same across multiple browsers (even IE!)

All of these features showed off the advancements in IE8 that focus on Interoperability and Innovation.

• CSS 2.1 Compliance - showing how pages built for Firebox and Safari will work in IE. There is an IE7 compatibility mode that can help with support for older non-compliant code
• CSS Certification - test suite for CSS support, contributed 702 test cases for CSS standards body
• Performance - good progress towards making IE8 closer in performance to the other popular browsers
• HTML 5 - start of support for HTML 5, deeper integration between the browser and AJAX capabilities, support for making web pages network aware (am I online or not)
• Developer Tools - integrated develop tools for IE: script debugging, DOM inspection, CSS style tracing
• Activities - services linked to raw content on the page, for example link to Live Maps from an address or eBay from a product name. No links in code, XML definition of activity context menus
• WebSlices - subscribe to a portion of a Web page, for example a slice of an eBay page, slice of an Amazon page, a slice of Facebook, etc. The site developer adds a bit of markup to make this feature available. Making this specification available through the open standards process

IE8 Beta 1 Available Today!

-bob

Ray Ozzie took the stage at MIX08 and talked about the Microsoft/Yahoo merger,the 3 core principals that are reshaping Microsoft's core products and offerings and driving Microsoft's Software+Services strategy and 5 areas that Microsoft is focused on to deliver products and technologies that allow developers and designers to create the next generation of connected experiences.

On the 3 core principals that are driving Microsoft's Software + Services strategy:

• The Web is the Hub - the Internet is the hub of our social mesh and the hub of our device mesh. Microsoft is creating a platform of products technologies and services to support a hub based model for managing all of our social interactions and our devices
• The Utility Computing Model - there is now an ongoing transition from dedicated application servers to a combination of onsite and off site hosted solution fro all types of applications from purchased to homegrown. Microsoft is delivering advancements in our products, technologies and services to support this move to a Utility Computing Model
• Transparency, Interoperability and Standards - support for a fabric of loosely coupled, loosely federated cooperating systems offering designers and developers the tools and technologies to deliver the next generation of connected experiences.

Ray covered the 5 areas where designers and developers can work with Microsoft to create the next generation of connected experiences:

• Devices - Software that brings them together with the Internet as the hub. Common services that connect, link and allow you to manage all your devices
• Entertainment - access and enjoy your media across your devices in a consistent manner
• Productivity - Office for the PC, Office Mobil and Office Live for the Web all connected into a seamless experience with the Internet acting as the hub
• Business - Connected Business, services for business such as CRM, Dynamics Live. Utility computing for the Enterprise for their data centers and for the cloud.  Platform level investments (HyperV, System Center), Finished Services such as running Exchange, SharePoint as services in the data center or in the cloud and Building Block services such as BizTalk Services. SQL Server Data Services
• Development - platform and tools that span from the desktop to the phone to the server. .NET Framework, VS and Expression. Connected Development

Wow! Ray laid out an ambitious and all encompassing vision that is both exciting and profound. The remainder of the keynote focused on the latest releases of products, technologies and servers that are moving this vision forward.

-bob

I am in Las Vegas attending MIX08 and the air is thick with the pungent aroma of newly released technology. I love the smell of new technology in the morning. It smells like...victory!

If you want to access the video stream of the keynotes you can do that here.

-bob

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe. WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft's high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.

Ted Gould and Curtis Wong recently spoke about the WorldWide Telescope at TED. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.

The WorldWide Telescope will be freely available this spring. I can not wait!!! -bob

Pluralsight is running a great course at the Boston MTC on Visual Studio Team System 2008. Here are the details:

Four intensive days learning how to effectively use Team Foundation Server and how Team System can affect everyone's day-to-day activities

Visual Studio Team System is an integrated software development platform. It is composed of a set of client tools, collected as Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite (Team Suite) and server component Team Foundation Server (TFS). Built upon the foundation of Visual Studio 2005 Professional, Team Suite contains tools architects, developers, and testers. TFS provides the core infrastructure to manage and track progress as your team builds solutions. This course provides deep end-to-end coverage of both the client and server functionality. During the class, the hands-on lab exercises will have your team role-playing and building a software solution using the tools taking advantage of requirements management, bug tracking, testing and nightly builds. You'll be exposed to what's built-in and what needs to be added though customization. By the end of the week, you and your team should have the knowledge and hands-on experience to implement Team System in your projects.

Highlights:

· Process methodology templates

· Source code control

· Work item tracking

· Artifact management

· Distributed system designers

· Unit testing

· Database development

· Database Unit Testing

· Code coverage

· Static code analysis

· Performance tuning

· Build services

· Test case management

· Functional testing of web applications

· Load testing

· Project management and reporting

· Extending the client and the server

Summary Outline:

http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/AppliedVSTS.aspx

Who should attend:

Anyone involved with the software development life cycle will benefit from attending. However, the course is primarily targeted at developers, testers, and architects interested in using Team System to build quality software with predictability.

Next steps:

For additional information, or to register to attend, please contact Bill Williams (Pluralsight) 781.749.9238 or bill@pluralsight.com.

-bob

It was a pleasure to present at the Waltham, MA Visual Studio 2008 Get Ready Event. I presented the User Experience Track covering Office Business Applications using Visual Studio 2008 Tools for Office (VSTO), Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight. I have collected my slides and sample code and placed them into a public  SkyDrive. You can access the zip by clicking on the image below:

-bob