Doug Hennig is a partner with Stonefield Systems Group Inc. and Stonefield Software Inc. He is the author of the award-winning Stonefield Database Toolkit (SDT); the award-winning Stonefield Query; the MemberData Editor, Anchor Editor, and CursorAdapter and DataEnvironment builders that come with Microsoft Visual FoxPro; and the My namespace and updated Upsizing Wizard in Sedna, an extension for Visual FoxPro released by Microsoft.
Doug is co-author of the “What’s New in Visual FoxPro” series (the latest being “What’s New in Nine”) and “The Hacker’s Guide to Visual FoxPro 7.0.” He was the technical editor of “The Hacker’s Guide to Visual FoxPro 6.0” and “The Fundamentals.” All of these books are from Hentzenwerke Publishing. Doug wrote over 100 articles in 10 years for FoxTalk and has written numerous articles in FoxPro Advisor and Advisor Guide. He currently writes a column for FoxRockX magazine.
Doug spoke at every Microsoft FoxPro Developers Conference (DevCon) since 1997 and at user groups and developer conferences all over the world. He is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference. He is one of the administrators for the VFPX VFP community extensions Web site on CodePlex.
Doug has been a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1996. Doug was awarded the 2006 FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award.
1. What does being an MVP mean to you?
It’s a great honor being named an MVP. I truly appreciate Microsoft’s recognition of the support I’ve given the Microsoft Visual FoxPro (VFP) community over the years. And the perks are great!
2. If you could ask Steve Ballmer one question about Microsoft, what would it be?
Do you still wear the Canadian hockey jersey you got at the 2008 MVP Summit?
3. What do you think the best software ever written was?
VFP, of course. For me, it’s a software construction kit: I can literally write any software I can imagine using it.
4. If you were the manager of VFP (assuming it was still in production), what would you change?
I would make it into a .NET language. This would extend the life of VFP and bring new capabilities to the language, but also bring the benefits of VFP to the .NET world.
5. What are the best features/improvements of VFP?
The best feature of VFP not found in other languages is the built-in data manipulation commands and functions. This feature makes it easy to do things in VFP other languages can’t do at all or can only do with a lot of complex code.
6. What was the last book you read?
AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll by Murray Engleheart and Arnaud Durieux. I love rock biographies, including the ones I’ve read on Randy Bachman, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Meatloaf, KISS, and Fleetwood Mac.
7. What music CD do you recommend?
The greatest rock CD of all time: Back in Black by AC/DC.
8. What makes you a great MVP?
My willingness to share my discoveries, techniques, and code with community members.
9. What is in your computer bag?
USB external drive, USB memory stick, MVP lanyard (I usually replace the lanyard at other conferences with it), extra laptop battery, and travel supplies (European power adapter, gum, earphones, etc.)
10. What is the best thing that has happened since you have become an MVP?
Not computer related: the birth of my son Nick in 1997.
11. What is your motto?
“There are no problems, only opportunities.” (“It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission” is a close second.)
12. Who is your hero?
My friend Mike White, who died in 2005. He set the bar for me in being a father, husband, and friend.
13. What does success mean to you?
Having the recognitionof my accomplishments and the means to provide a nice lifestyle for my family.
Team RoboTree (Short Film)
The team is well on it's way to create a new short film for the competition. The students were thrown a curveball as the theme and the guidelines for the finals are the same for the second round. Essentially, the goal is to "share a perspective on how technology enables a sustainable environment". The team worked into the wee hours of the morning, took a break and then kick started this morning. Media, Drake and Ryan have been travelling all over the city by rented bicycle and using the Métro. The deadline for the film is 2:00 AM tomorrow morning, then a presentation at the Digital Theatre on Monday.
Team GreeNet (Interface Design)
Jin and Kevin are furiously working on their interface. As I type this, it's the final hour of the competition for them - then well deserved sleep as they have been awake working for the past 24hrs. The goal for the finals is to innovate and envision revolutionary interfaces for a mobile devices, a Web application and Web portal based on the theme "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment". After today, the team gets to relax a bit and wait for the judging results.
You can view more photos here. Best of luck to both Robotree and GreeNet. Go Canada!
I'm sure many of you have seen Microsoft's Patterns & Practices website and I'll bet a large number of you have read the best practices guidance there and used the application blocks available there.
Well, a new guidance stream is available on the site, this one specific to providing prescriptive guidance on WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) applications. It was formerly code-named Prism, but is now available publicly as the Composite Application Guidance for WPF.
The Composite Application Guidance for WPF is designed to help you more easily build enterprise-level Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client applications. This guidance will help you design and build flexible composite WPF client applications—composite applications use loosely coupled, independently evolvable pieces that work together in the overall application.
Using the guidance streamlines the WPF team development experience. You can build solutions that take advantage of the full power of WPF and that are highly maintainable, testable, and whose pieces can be developed by separate teams.
The code for the application block itself is available as open source from CodePlex and can be found here.
So, what's "in the box", so to speak? Well, lots of stuff. Below is a list of the things available as part of this Patterns & Practices release:
- Stock Trader Reference Implementation
- Composite Application Library for WPF
- Quickstarts (4)
- Hands on Lab (1)
- Documentation (300 pages)
- Composite Baseline Architecture
- UI Designer Guidance
- Design Concepts (3)
- Technical Concepts (8)
- Patterns (6) + Patterns Overview
- How-to’s (20)
From a perspective of which challenges it addresses for WPF development, this release is meant to provide the following jumpstart functionality:
- Modularity: The Composite Application Library promotes modularity by allowing you to implement business logic, visual components, infrastructure components, presenter or controller components, and any other objects the application requires, in separate modules. Developers can easily create the UI and implement business logic independently of each other.
- User Interface Composition: The Composite Application Library promotes user interface composition by allowing you to implement visual components from various loosely coupled visual components, known as views, which may reside in separate modules. The visual components may display content from multiple back-end systems. To the user, it appears as one seamless application.
Team Robotree includes Dan Tran (left), Media Ridha (bottom centre) taken just before Drake Birmann (top centre), and Ryan Morrison (right) left for tree planting in Northern Ontario for the summer. The students are from Fanshawe College and the University of Western Ontario. They are one of the six worldwide finalist in the Imagine Cup Short Film competition for their work called "Terra":
Terra is a fairytale about an earth-child who dwells in the forest, and has the ability to sense the environmental impact of human actions on the natural world. Upon discovering garbage from the city in her peaceful forest, Terra decides to help humanity make informed decisions to improve the everyday uptake of the earth’s energy and resources by inventing a device to determine humans’ ecological impact. Terra brings the very first ecological calculator, the “Eco-Cal,” to the city. The Eco-Cal can calculate the ecological footprint of every human being and interpret it through a display screen that shows the unseen destruction of our actions. At first, people rebuke Terra and are unwilling to listen to what she has to offer them. Then a young boy who believes in Terra’s message elps her and takes her to a willing family. The story ends by placing the fate of the natural world not simply on the imaginative technology of the Eco-cal, but on the choices of each individual to sustain the environment in the hopes of a greener future. You can view several captures of the film on my photo website and read an interview on the team's website.
Click below to view "Terra" via Channel 8:
Imagine Cup 2008 Round 3 Film: Terra
Team GreeNet includes Jin Fan and Kevin Muise from School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, BC. Another team called EcoLid from SFU also competed in the Imagine Cup competition - you can read more about the entry on the CanUX blog via my colleague Qixing Zheng.
Team GreeNet is one of the six worldwide finalists in the Imagine Cup Interface Design Competition. Jin and Kevin created a FaceBook application interface called GreeNet (seen below):
Global warming is quickly becoming one of the most important issues facing humankind, and has brought about concerns regarding sustainable practices, especially within western societies. In order to address this issue, we have designed a Facebook application with the purpose of creating a culture of conservation byproviding its users with information on their energy usage. Employing an application through Facebook provides a platform to communicate to thousands of individuals and communities within our target audience who reside in various geographic locations. Social networks, such as Facebook, have become more than a mere source of entertainment – they are a means to communicate new ideas, become an active voice in a community, and more importantly, they are an opportunity to influence culture. Our approach to designing the application was guided by a user-focused process, which has led us to create an enjoyable and informative user experience. Our system provides its users with an interface that acts as a virtual garden, where their participation in energy-conscious activities effects the growth of plants within that space. Users are also provided with information on their energy consumption, along with the consumption of their friends and communities, which can be generated through data from electricity providers. Visualizing this information is used to raise awareness of unsustainable practices through providing individuals feedback on energy consumption within their communities. In doing so, our system acts is means to change energy consumption behavior towards more sustainable practices, not only in individuals, but within society at large. To build the application, Jin and Kevin used Expression Design, Expression Blend 2.5, Visual Studio C# and SIlverlight Streaming. You can view updates on my photo website and read an interview on the team's website.
Here is a video of Kevin Muise explaining the different elements of the GreeNet interface (via Qixing Zheng from the CanUX blog):
Video: Imagine Cup 2008 Finals
The Imagine Cup is a global competition that encourages young people to apply their imagination, their passion and their creativity to technology innovations that can make a difference in the world - today. Last year, I travelled with Canadian students to Seoul, Korea with Team Robot Hospital, Team Awesome, Team iDoll and Team Omni. Team Awesome won third place in the worldwide Photography competition (the same team members won first place in 2006 for their film "Paper Heart". Check out the winning film). Check out this Channel 8 interview with Ryan Marr and Patrick Struys.
Congratulations to the two Canadian teams who made in into the Imagine Cup 2008 Finals! I will be travelling to Paris, France later today with five students from Team RoboTree and Team GreeNet. To get a feel for what the event will be all about, I've embedded a video above.
Team RoboTree includes students from both Fanshawe College and the University of Western Ontario (read a press release from the university). They are one of six world finalists in the Short Film Competition by creating a film called "Terra" which brings awareness of the impact of our actions on the planet.
Team GreeNet includes students from Simon Fraser University. They are one of six worldwide finalists in the Interface Design competition by creating a FaceBook interface called GreeNet which acts as a virtual garden, where their participation in energy-conscious activities effects the growth of plants within that space. As developers, we can all agree that having the right interface can make a big impact on the usability and popularity of an application.
In a follow up post, I'll provide more details about each team. Let's cheer on the Canadians through the finals (and Happy Canada Day)!
On Thursday, I will be driving three hours north to Edmonton to hang out with members of the developer community and to connect with a few folks who are doing some great work on the .NET Framework.
First, I will attend a meeting of the Edmonton .NET User Group (EDMUG). This meeting will feature Rod Paddock talking Silverlight and its underpinnings. Rod is well known in the developer community and is conducting this event as part of mini-tour across Canada.
Here’s the abstract of Rob’s upcoming talk:
Silverlight for Business Developers
Isolated Storage, data templates, data grids, calling Web and WCF Services… All unsexy but essential topics when it comes to developing Silverlight 2.0 applications. This talk will demonstrate the various techniques for dealing with moving, consuming and manipulating data in the Silverlight 2.0 environment.
If you’re planning to attend this meeting, please make sure to register. You can do so at www.edmug.net.
While I’m in Edmonton, I also plan to chat with Donald Belcham and David Woods about their work on Project Kassandra. In case you haven’t heard about this project, please take the time to watch this report (Windows Media Video 9, 1:53) conducted by CBC Montreal.
The purpose of this project to provide software that will translate plain text from multiple different source types (Microsoft Word, HTML, etc.) into formats that have the characters represented as images that can be more easily read by people suffering from dyslexia. You can read Donald’s original blog post about this project here.
Donald and David were two of the developers on this project and I will be chatting with them about how they implemented it.
Hope to see you in Edmonton!
As you have probably seen on this blog and the other community blogs from our group, we are occasionally given hardware from various vendors to review. In this case, Bell Canada has provided me with a Samsung Ace, a Windows Mobile 6 device to try out.
Before I get into my review, I want to preface it by providing you with some insight as to how I typically use mobile devices such as smartphones. This will allow you to get an idea of how I prioritize features the smartphone provides and allow you to understand why I grade things a certain way.
Paul's Mobile Usage Profile:
I wouldn't define myself as a complete "power user" of smartphones, but I know my way around them pretty well. I use the features that can be considered most popular on smartphones (email and calendaring, phone, some web browsing, etc.), but I am not the type of person who puts an 8GB memory card on my phone so I can load up all the newest games and gadgets.
I don't often open up Microsoft Office documents or PDFs on my phone to view or edit them, but I have on occasion done just that so that functionality is fairly important to me.
I occasionally use the camera feature but I wouldn't consider this to be a feature I use more than once a week.
Outside of the "out-of-the-box" Bubble Breaker game included with Windows Mobile, I don't play games on the phone.
For phone calls, I typically use my phone for business with some personal calls mixed in (I'd say the mix of phone usage is 80% business, 20% personal).
From a hardware perspective, there are a few things that I consider to be very important to my experience with a smartphone.
First is the feel of the keyboard buttons - before I was given the Samsung Ace to play with, I had a Blackberry 7250 (in a previous job, of course! :-) ) and the Motorola Q (with Windows Mobile 5). I loved the tactile feel of the flat buttons found on the Blackberry, and hated the rounded buttons on the Motorola Q.
Second, the phone buttons (number buttons, call answer and call hang-up) should be very easy to reach without looking and should not get in the way of a typical phone conversation. Like I have said, I owned a Blackberry and the call hang-up button on it was positioned in such a way that I often hung up the phone mid-call by mistake.
Third are the navigational buttons (like the center button, scroll wheel, etc.). These should be useable but should not cause me problems during normal use of the device (either during a phone call or while using the device as a mobile computer).
So, with that essay complete, on to the review! I've separated the review into sections (Phone Experience, Email & Calendar Experience, Browsing Experience, Application Experience, Hardware Layout, Connectivity, Overall) to make the review a little bit more intuitive.
Phone Experience
The Samsung Ace is a great phone. It has a great form factor for phone calls (I personally don't like phones that are too small) and the fact that it is not a clamshell style is a big plus in my book (with previous clamshell phones I've used, I've had horrible experiences so I'm biased in that respect).
The sound quality of the phone is excellent. The calls I receive come in crystal clear and signal strength is better than other phones I have used. A good test for this is my basement - signal strength is very low in my basement for other phones I have had and this phone has much better signal reception here.
The buttons on the device facilitating phone calls are excellent. The "Initiate a Call" button and "Call End" buttons are large and easily accessible for use even without having to look at the device. On the flip side, the button to hang up a call has never caused me to drop a call inadvertently (per the comment I made above).
The same experience goes for the wired headset that comes with the smartphone out of the box (see below). I have no comments regarding wireless headset experience (i.e.: Bluetooth headsets) as I do not have one to test the phone on.
My Grade: B+
Email & Calendar Experience
The email experience on the Samsung Ace is very good. The device picks up emails very quickly (actually, it consistently picks up new email in my inbox more quickly than my Outlook client!).
Viewing email is great. Windows Mobile 6 allows for both text-based email viewing as well as rich, HTML-based email viewing and both display very nicely. The experience that HTML-based email provides is a real joy and really helps when you are given emails in HTML format (which were, for all intents and purposes unreadable on my previously owned devices). Finally, one of the features that is very welcome for me is the ability to read secured email through certificates. With Exchange 2007, you can send emails that are read-only, do-not-forward, do-not-reply-all, etc. and in my previous Windows Mobile device I couldn't read them but now I can.
Calendaring on the Samsung is also an amazing experience. The richness facilitated by Windows Mobile 6 is fully available on the device and as a result, I can do pretty much anything with a meeting invite that I could on my Outlook client. The only thing I noticed was that in one case, a meeting invite that I modified to schedule it later in the day didn't seem to synchronize to my Outlook client. Lucky I caught that little inconsistency, but it did lead me to raise the point here.
My Grade: B
Browsing Experience
Browsing the internet is quick on IE for Mobile and it also says a lot about the speed of the Bell EVDO network. The mobile client browsing experience is nice and the images are crisp and clear on the screen.
Forms control is usually pretty good, but occasionally I run into hiccups with them. Overall, however, the forms support seems to work quite nicely.
One thing that is lacking is a good, non-mobile browser. It would be nice if a true HTML browser was included in the package as this would truly round out the whole experience. Having said that, I wouldn't use it that often as I'd probably go over my data charge limit...
My Grade: B-
Application Experience
There are a great number of applications on the Samsung Ace out of the box. Certainly many more than I saw on my previous Windows Mobile device.
I already talked about Internet Explorer and Email & Calendaring above so I won't get into that again here. But the other applications on the device are plentiful and run very nicely on the Samsung Ace. Some of the applications of note are the International Usage application (to switch between CDMA and GSM - more on that in the "Connectivity" section below), the World Clock, Smart Converter (for measurement conversion), Tip Calculator and Live Search for Mobile are all excellent.
Some of these are critical to me (Live Search for Mobile is one example - if you have a Windows Mobile 5 device or above, I strongly suggest you take a look at this free software here).
Finally, I will say that the Samsung Ace is a fast machine. I don't have the lag problems I've seen on other devices.
My Grade: A
Hardware Layout
As I stated above, I've had good and bad experience with the layout of the hardware on smartphones. The Samsung Ace is actually pretty good with its hardware layout. I described the positives of the hardware layout with respect to phone calls and it's pretty good in that respect.
The buttons on the keyboard, while not flat, are pretty good. It still took a little getting used to but overall I like what I'm seeing and experiencing in this respect. I am able to type as fast as I was able to on the Blackberry I used to have and certainly a great deal faster than I did with my Motorola Q.
The layout of the various buttons is fairly intuitive as well - you can see fairly quickly how to operate the buttons efficiently and it doesn't take long to get used to them.
I am also happy with the way the buttons light up in the dark. Only the symbols on the buttons light up rather than the entire button itself (e.g.: in the dark, the button for the "sym" button lights up only the word "sym", not the whole button). This may seem like a trivial matter, but to me it's aesthetically pleasing and actually helps me see the button better.
The one downside to the hardware layout is the center button on the navigational pane. While it is serviceable, it is flush with the "left / right / up / down" navigation square, which may look nice but makes it a little tougher to click. Not a huge deal but if you're doing something quickly and don't press the center button explicitly, you may end up somewhere you didn't expect.
The battery life is very good. With normal usage (for me), it will last two days (sometimes more) on a single charge which is a welcome change from my other phones.
Finally, I want to talk about the screen. This is the crispest, clearest screen on a smartphone that I have owned and I would say it ranks up there with the best of them in that category. While it isn't the largest screen around (that honour goes to a phone starting with an "i"...), it is easily in the top echelon of smartphones for screen readability.
My Grade: A-
Connectivity
The Samsung Ace is a great phone for a number of reasons, but one of the ones that makes it really stand out is its capability to act as either a CDMA or GSM phone. This phone will work under both networks, which is an incredible benefit if you are in an area not covered by CDMA. Although I personally have not had to use the GSM capability yet, I hear it is reliable so I can't comment about this first hand.
Connectivity and synchronization with my PC goes off without a hitch. This is a great device for synchronizing data between the two and I have not had a problem with that yet.
The only negative point to make in this category (and to me this is a big negative) is the synchronization cable. The Samsung Ace connector port on the device itself is proprietary which means you can't use a USB 2.0 A/B cable with it. This means if you lose or damage your synch cable, you'll probably be spending a lot more on a replacement than you would have if you could use a standard USB cable.
My Grade: C+ (would have been an "A" if it weren't for the proprietary synch cable)
What Comes in the Box
You get a lot in the box when you get a Samsung Ace. In fact, more than you typically get. First, you get the smartphone (big surprise there). You also get the synch cable and power charger (two more non-surprises). What you also get are adapters for non-North American power plugs. This is pretty cool given it's something you'd probably be using if you were switching to GSM as most of the rest of the world uses GSM.
You also get a wired headset for the smartphone which is nice. No bluetooth headset, but that is not an issue (nor did I expect it out of the box).
What I was disappointed in not seeing (but this is also not a surprise as most phones don't include it in the box) is a car charger kit. It would be nice to see a manufacturer of smartphones include a car charger as part of the kit for a change.
Finally, the documentation appears to be detailed enough to help you through most troubleshooting issues you might have, as well as an insert from Bell Canada on various overseas phone numbers to call should you run into technical problems.
My Grade: B+
Overall Impressions
Of all the smartphones I have used on a daily basis, the Samsung Ace is by far the best one I've seen. In fact, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in a smartphone. It's a fantastic device, looks pretty slick, runs fast and has great signal reception. It's a great addition to the Bell Mobility lineup and I think it will be a very popular product.
My Grade: A
Do you have a Samsung Ace? Leave a comment and tell us what you think of it!
[Edited (09/07/2008): Changed EDGE reference to EVDO - thanks for the comment, GT!]
Justin Lee is a software consultant for ObjectSharp Consulting. His interests lie mainly with languages, operating systems, software architecture processes and best practices, and low-level hardware architecture. Justin is an MCSD.NET, a Microsoft C# MVP, and the founder of the 1st .NET user group in Singapore. He is open to discussion about Open-Source, Linux, Mono, and other alternatives to Microsoft and .NET. He is proficient in C#, C++, Java, F#, Python, Ruby and various other languages. He has been doing freelancing for a few years now, and is currently branching out into other areas including training, consultancy, business and marketing. He speaks at various conferences like DevTeach, TechEd SEA, and various communities around the world. His blog is a brain dump for all his experiences during work and playing with new technologies.
1. What does being an MVP mean to you?
It means to have Sasha as my underling. Just joking... or am I?
But, seriously, as an MVP, I can give feedback on what I don't like about a product earlier in the process based on my experience in that area and have that impact how the product will turn out, and also share those experiences I've learnt about a product with the community.
2. If you could ask Steve Ballmer one question about Microsoft, what would it be?
"If you have one question to ask yourself about Microsoft, what would it be?"
3. What do you think the best software ever written was?
Mac OS X. You think?
Actually, I don't think there's any "best" software out there. Software is a constant iterative improvement of existing software. When "best" has been assumed to be achieved, it means you aren't listening to your customers enough, or the product is about to be dropped. *ahem* foxpro *ahem*.
4. If you were the manager of Visual Studio, what would you change?
Do you really want me to list them all? Pick a few.
- User Interface/User Experience and visualization of code analysis
- Debugging Visualization
- Multi-threading Visualization
- Pair Programming across multiple Visual Studio environments
- Better SharePoint integration
- Easier customization experience to achieve the ideal goal of making Visual Studio a Software Factory
- Extending the C# Language, and making Visual Studio understand it
- More refactoring off the shelf
- Support for better TDD
- ... You really want more?
5. What are the best features/improvements of Visual Studio?
File->New->Project. Enough said.
6. What was the last book you read?
Expert F#. I'm a language geek. I know. That's why I'm a C# MVP.
7. What music CD do you recommend?
Diana Krall – Live in Paris.
8. What makes you a great MVP?
It's probably my great looks, and because the Zohan styled my hair too. Don't Mess With The Zohan.
9. What is in your computer bag?
Lenovo Thinkpad T61, laptop power adapter, Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse, Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks, 80 gig external HDD, 140 gig external HDD, 1 gig USB thumb drive, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation power adapter, cell phone charger, laptop battery, external cdrom, Cat 5 network cable, podcast recorder, 2 earphones, calculator, Passport, bus schedules, Packets of Green Tea, umbrella, nail clipper, medicine for stomachaches, namecards, pens, pencils, papers... you get the idea.
10. What is the best thing that has happened since you have become an MVP?
It's the exposure to a wider variety of people and technologies, and it's great for picking up girls.
11. What is your motto?
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world."
12. Who is your hero?
Sasha.
13. What does success mean to you?
Success means to be able to achieve my goal of influencing technology in a large scale and take over the Aworld. Do you really think I'm kidding?
As part of outreach for the discipline of architecture in software development, our team launched the Aspiring Architect webcast series over the past year. These webcasts were a great success so my colleague Mohammad Akif has created a new series of webcasts for the month of June.
Below is a message from Mohammad as well as the listing of Aspiring Architect webcasts for the month:
Aspiring Architect Series 2008
Last year we held a Web Cast series for aspiring architects that was attended by over 1200 individuals and covered a number of strategies that can help developers and IT professionals to transition to the architect roles. The Aspiring Architect Series 2008 builds on last year’s content and covers a number of topics that are important for architects to understand. Please make sure that you have gone through the 2007 series which can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/tags/Aspiring+Architects/default.aspx . We are hopeful that you will find the upcoming series to be a very useful investment of your time.
June 16th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Introduction to the aspiring architect Web Cast series
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380836&Culture=en-CA
June 17th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Services Oriented Architecture and Enterprise Service Bus – Beyond the hype
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380838&Culture=en-CA
June 18th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – TOGAF and Zachman, a real-world perspective
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380840&Culture=en-CA
June 19th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Services Oriented Architecture (Web Cast in French)
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380842&Culture=en-CA
June 20th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Interoperability (Web Cast in French)
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380844&Culture=fr-CA
June 23rd , 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Realizing dynamic systems
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380846&Culture=en-CA
June 24th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Web 2.0, beyond the hype
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380848&Culture=en-CA
June 25th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Architecting for the user experience
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380850&Culture=en-CA
June 26th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Conclusion and next steps
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380852&Culture=en-CA
In a previous post, I mentioned that Microsoft was bringing out the new Expression Professional Subscription to help designers build great experiences in WPF and Silverlight. The Subscription is now live and can be purchased.
The site can be found here.
Again, the benefits of the subscription are many, some of which are listed below:
- Currently in Subscription
- The full Expression Studio 2 Suite (Design, Blend, Web, Media and Encoder)
- Visual Studio Standard
- Microsoft Office 2007 Standard
- Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Professional
- Windows Vista Business Edition
- Windows XP Professional
- Virtual PC
- Parallels Desktop for Mac and PC
- Design, development and test licenses
- Technical Support Incidents
- Products Announced and will be in the subscription soon
- Windows Vista Ultimate
- Microsoft Office Project 2007
- Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007
All in all, this is a great way to start building WPF and Silverlight experiences for a very low price. Pricing is also available on the site here.
As the proliferation of media (music, video, etc.), project files and programs continues to grow, so does the headache of managing your hard disk drive space. If you're anything like me, you're probably frustrated in always archiving data just to make space on your hard drive without knowing where exactly the largest file folders are. There's lots of tools out there to help with this, but over the weekend I found this great, open source nugget that helps you view where your data is on your hard drive so you can target specific folders for archive.
The tool is called WinDirStat and it's a great tool for showing you how much data is in each file on your hard drive (not to mention other, attached drives on your PC.
It's a free application and it's a great little tool. I invite you to take a look at it.
Paul
A few people have approached me recently to ask how to fix a performance issue in the ASP.NET designer in VS 2008 when using controls with large number of properties. I did my research and found a hotfix that addresses this problem. You can find the details on this team blog.
In less than two weeks, the Toronto Silverlight User Group will have it's inaugural meeting. The user group is targeted at both developers and designers who are interested in learning about Silverlight and how the two parties can work together more seamlessly to create rich user experience on the web.
As many of you know, Silverlight 2.0 includes CLR integration which makes it an interesting and important technology to look at going forward. Going to a user group activity like this one provides a great opportunity to get free training from experts,and socialize and network with your peers.
Here is the agenda.
Time: 6:30PM, Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Location: 222 Bay St. Toronto, ON (Map the location)
Agenda:
- 6:30 – 7:30: Introduction to Silverlight – presenter from New Toronto Group
- 7:30 – 7:45: break
- 7:45 – 8:45: Silverlight hands-on by presenting local Silverlight projects and talking about Silverlight features from both designer and developer perspective- Mano Kulasingam from Digiflare and Chris Ching from Infusion Development
- 8:45 – 9:30: Q&A
Register at: http://www.torontosilverlight.com/
On Saturday, May 24 - the developer breakout tracks will explode with a combination of Grok Talks, presentations on online services and many other surprises. Bring your laptop as there will be an opportunity to show off your skills and participate in the Visual Studio 2008 install fest. Requirements vary for different combinations of components within Visual Studio 2008. To install Visual Studio 2008, you need:
- Computer with a 1.6 GHz or faster processor
- Visual Studio 2008 can be installed on the following operating systems:
- Windows Vista® (x86 & x64) - all editions except Starter Edition
- Windows® XP (x86 & x64) with Service Pack 2 or later - all editions except Starter Edition
- Windows Server® 2003 (x86 & x64) with Service Pack 1 or later (all editions)
- Windows Server 2003 R2 (x86 and x64) or later (all editions)
- 384 MB of RAM or more (768 MB of RAM or more for Windows Vista)
- 2.2 GB of available hard-disk space
- 5400 RPM hard drive
- 1024 x 768 or higher-resolution display
- DVD-ROM Drive
See you at the event!
