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May 2008 - Posts

Friday, May 30, 2008 11:19 AM

Microsoft HPC Pack Beta 2 Released

Whoops - nearly forgot this one. We released Beta 2 of the HPC pack earlier this month. I am a fan of HPC - even if I have no dev skills in it :-) Head over to the connect site (and sign up if necessary) to gain access to the download.
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Friday, May 30, 2008 11:12 AM

Enterprise Library 4.0 - May release

I have mixed emotions about the Enterprise Library. When I was last doing development (a few years back) I concluded it was: Big. Which meant it took a lot of time and effort to understand and benefit from it. Inconsistent. The library was a "collection"
Posted by Eric Nelson | 0 Comments
Friday, May 30, 2008 10:58 AM

UK Developer User Groups and Events

I will be spending a lot more time working with user groups in my new role in July. As a result I went off in search of the definitive list (as I only know of around 6). Turns out it is a rather long list ! We also promote the latest events (We did a
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Friday, May 30, 2008 10:47 AM

150 days and 160+ sessions - Microsoft PDC Oct 2008

Registrations opened this week for the PDC in Los Angeles - which promises to include a lot of new stuff during those 160+ sessions. You know you want to go... http://www.microsoftpdc.com/
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Friday, May 30, 2008 10:42 AM

.NET 3.5 Enhancements Links (SP1 Beta stuff!)

Now I am the proud owner of a working VS 2008 with SP1 Beta , it is time for me to take a look at some of the resources that explain exactly what we are adding with SP1. Firstly, lets be clear, SP1 of VS2008 is not really an SP1 - it is a really .NET
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Friday, May 30, 2008 10:30 AM

Call of Duty 4 meets folder virtualization on Vista

Call of Duty 4 is a great game - but just occasionally, it trashes all your progress which is held locally. The answer is to copy your progress somewhere safe. On Windows XP you need to backup the players folder which contains progress for all user logins.
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
Friday, May 30, 2008 10:16 AM

Windows Sharepoint Services development on Vista

A LOT of UK ISVs are excited about projecting their solutions into Sharepoint which is great. But there is a small niggle when developing for Sharepoint - you need a server (even if it is just a VM). Interestingly a Microsoft partner has created a "workaround"
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Friday, May 30, 2008 10:06 AM

More bits and bobs - just for partners

The following need a little air time - enjoy! A lot of partners have shown interest in CRM Live (Which is really called Dynamics CRM Online - which isn't quite as catchy). You can try it out free for 30 days at http://offers.crmlive.com/thirtyday I know
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Friday, May 30, 2008 9:49 AM

Some bits and bobs - Silverlight, Hello World, Wallpaper

Just a few randoms which I have come across over the last few weeks while heads down on other stuff. Enjoy! An unexpected (by me anyway) Silverlight fan - TIBCO "This is our strategic direction for rich Internet applications when it comes to our
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Friday, May 30, 2008 9:20 AM

VS2008 SP1 Beta - my advice, get a good movie to watch :-)

Yesterday I set about installing SP1 Beta . I expected there to be a few problems as my machine was fully loaded with CTPs, Betas and hotfixes. Hence and rather unusually for me I read up on the issues other people had found and followed the best advice
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Thursday, May 29, 2008 9:46 AM

UK ISV interested in a half day 1:1 technology review?

Something we have been looking at recently is taking an approach we use frequently with our managed ISVs and make it more broadly available - with a twist. I am speaking of technology reviews - half day 1:1 technical sessions. During a technology review
Posted by Eric Nelson | 2 Comments
Friday, May 23, 2008 4:42 PM

Are you a UK ISV writing .NET applications in Visual Basic?

Then I would like to hear from you . We are trying to a) better understand how UK ISVs are deciding between C# and Visual Basic and b) I am personally interested in exploring how we can give some recognition to UK ISVs using Visual Basic rather than C#
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Friday, May 23, 2008 4:26 PM

The "refactoring" of this blog has started - pink or red?

The observant amongst you (i.e. those who don't use a rss reader and actually visit this site) will have spotted I have changed the theme and removed a number of ISV links etc. More to do - but I am getting there. In the meantime, you will find all those
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Friday, May 23, 2008 10:32 AM

Getting back into the groove - being a good presenter

With my change of role in July I will be doing a lot more technical presentations - to small and to large audiences. At MS I get a chance to see lots of summaries of feedback scores and I know that I always end up top half of presenters and mostly top
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008 10:04 AM

Time to "refactor" this blog...and announcing a new UK ISV Technical Blog

Executive summary :-) If you are technical within an ISV, subscribe to http://blogs.msdn.com/ukisvdev/ The Detail... This blog originally started back in July 2004 (wow - 4 years back!) with an initial focus in SQL Server 2005 early adoption for ISVs.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008 10:33 AM

The big zoomy photo thing - err... Silverlight DeepZoom

The BBC have used Silverlight DeepZoom to create a fun site/experience of Radio 1's Big Weekend - even if I was beginning to feel like a stalker at times as I tried it out. Give it a whirl . DeepZoom allows you to create a composite image with extremely
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008 10:23 AM

Windows Weekly Podcast

My colleague David pointed me at this weekly podcast over at www.twit.tv . Lots of great discussion with Paul Thurrott (even if I don't agree with it all) and definitely a good one for those car/train/tube journeys. Enjoy.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008 10:05 AM

Load Balancing WCF - summary of resources

I have gathered together some useful resources in one place to cover of the interesting topic of how to load balance requests to a service implemented using WCF - in response to a request from a UK ISV doing some interesting .NET 3.0/3.5 work. Frankly
Posted by Eric Nelson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, May 20, 2008 9:25 AM

Do you share code/publish and wonder about which license to use?

Then you are probably not alone - sharing code appears to be more popular than ever (thanks all!). There are many different licenses out there which you may wish to take advantage of - and the answer really does depend on exactly what you hope to achieve.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008 1:35 AM

Best Silverlight LOB application demo yet

This impressed me so much when I first caught a glimpse of it earlier this year. I have previously posted about the importance of Silverlight as a technology and this demo really shows the huge potential of Silverlight for building RIAs . Enjoy!
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008 1:21 AM

Have you met the UK Partner Bot?

You would remember if you had :-) The UK Partner Bot ( 'partnerbot@hotmail.com' ) is an IM Bot similar to the Encarta bot (" encarta@botmetro.net ’") except for one slight difference - Partner Bot doesn't actually know that much and seems
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008 12:50 AM

A year on: I surrender - I am no longer an Architect...

On May 7th 2007 (a little over a year ago) I posted "I surrender - I am no longer a developer...". The problem I was trying to solve was simple enough. I was trying to be helpful/valuable in too many areas which was leading to problems with work/life
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008 12:00 AM

Who stole my pause button?

Where did the go? The last four weeks have been busy - too busy. The good news is those four weeks have been full of good things, interesting things, challenging things, fun things, different things. Unfortunately there has been just too much of it and
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