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April 2009 - Posts

Just Imagine If You Could Change the World

That’s just what inspires these amazing students from around the world to put their minds and spirit into the Imagine Cup competition.  Now in its seventh year, the global, year-long competition challenges students to apply technology to help address Read More...
Posted Thursday, April 30, 2009 10:41 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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Well, Slap my Tag and Color Me Cool

You’ve probably seen Microsoft Tag at one point or another.  I’ve been using it in presentations as pointers to my contact information, slides, and demos, and I understand that WalMart is (or will be) using it on some of their merchandise.  Read More...
Posted Monday, April 27, 2009 8:29 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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Dear Friend

I can’t help but think how much more successful Mrs Allen R Baker might be if she got herself a copy of Microsoft Word (and a clue in terms of period placement). Just look at the spelling and grammar issues that were flagged! Come to think of it, her Read More...
Posted Monday, April 27, 2009 6:10 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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Beantown.NET Special Event: April 29th

Beantown.NET INETA User Group is hosting Rocky Lhotka , Principal Technology Evangelist for Magenic as well as Microsoft Regional Director, MVP, and renowned technologist. Rocky is the author of CSLA .NET , which is a framework for managing and implementing Read More...
Posted Monday, April 27, 2009 11:34 AM by joneil | 0 Comments

Q is for... Quirks

Quirks… we all have them, but rather than get too personal, we’ll constrain the domain for this post to web browsers.  In the early days of the web – pre-HTML and CSS (cascading style sheet) standards – browsers varied considerably over what features Read More...
Posted Monday, April 27, 2009 12:05 AM by joneil | 0 Comments
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It’s For-IE-day: Week 4

I often think of Internet searching as a U2 moment, you know, “ I still haven’t found what I’m looking for… ”  Well my life got easier with some of the IE8 search enhancements, and even better, I can add my own custom search providers right in the Read More...
Posted Friday, April 24, 2009 7:20 PM by joneil | 5 Comments
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Roadshow Hits the Bigtime on Channel 9!

Chris , Bob , and I are thrilled to see our name in lights – well, almost – as we launch the Northeast Roadshow (and more!) presence on Channel 9.  Here you’ll find a landing page with our aggregated blogs, screen casts covering Roadshow topics, Read More...
Posted Friday, April 24, 2009 12:08 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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Geek Dinner WIth SHAWN WILDERMUTH

Shawn Wildermuth , C# MVP, author, and all-round technologist, is in town next week on his Silverlight Tour , and since we all need to eat, he’s hosting a Nerd Dinner (er, make that a Geek Dinner) at the Naked Fish in Waltham ( one-click directions ) Read More...
Posted Tuesday, April 21, 2009 7:22 PM by joneil | 0 Comments

Got MSDN? Get CCR and DSS

This just out.  If you have an MSDN Professional or Premium subscription, you now have access to the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Standard Edition (an upgrade from the previous, free Express Edition). You’ll also get the Microsoft CCR and Read More...
Posted Tuesday, April 21, 2009 4:27 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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IE8 Web Slices on ARCast.tv

Dr. "Z" has launched another new ARCast.TV episode on IE8.  This time he walks us through the creation of Web Slices , a new feature that enables users to subscribe to select contents of existing sites and be informed of updates automatically Read More...
Posted Tuesday, April 21, 2009 9:18 AM by joneil | 1 Comments
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RIA = Developer + Designer

That’s an equation you’ll typically hear us evangelists espouse, with XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) being the lingua franca of the developer/designer relationship, and Visual Studio and Expression Studio the tools of choice.  It’s Read More...
Posted Monday, April 20, 2009 4:39 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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P is for… Partial Method

By now, most of you are likely familiar with the concept of partial classes , introduced in .NET 2.0 to both C# and Visual Basic .  Simply put, classes can be marked with the partial keyword indicating that their implementation is split over multiple Read More...
Posted Monday, April 20, 2009 12:01 AM by joneil | 3 Comments
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It’s For-IE-day: Week 3

Last week we took a look at Compatibility View as a way to retain the older rendering functionality just in case your site wasn’t working quite right (yet!) with IE8. Today, we’ll look at a related aspect, namely how you as web developers can detect that Read More...
Posted Friday, April 17, 2009 3:34 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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IASA Meeting: Intuit QuickBase Deep-Dive

The next IASA New England meeting will be held next Thursday, April 23rd at the Intuit Offices in Waltham . The presentation will be by Jim Salem , founder and architect in the Platform as a Service group at Intuit.   Register here!   Inside Read More...
Posted Thursday, April 16, 2009 4:33 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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Dynamic Data Resources

Thanks to all that turned out at the ASP.NET Professionals User Group tonight in Waltham to hear about ASP.NET Dynamic Data.  As promised, I’m listing the resources I provided on my closing slide here, and I’ll provide a few pointers to answer some Read More...
Posted Wednesday, April 15, 2009 11:35 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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IE8 Accelerators on ARCast.TV

My colleague Bob Familiar of ARCast.TV fame (and all round great guy) has just posted the latest episode of the Channel 9 show, and since I’ve embarked on a weekly blog post series on IE8 features, it’s right up my our alley.  I’ll be covering IE8 Read More...
Posted Wednesday, April 15, 2009 11:18 AM by joneil | 0 Comments
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Dynamic Data @ ASP.NET Professionals User Group

I’ll be presenting at the second meeting of the ASP.NET Professionals User Group this coming Wednesday in Waltham.  Fritz Onion kicked things off last month with “The Changing Face of ASP.NET,” an overview of what developers need to know before embarking Read More...
Posted Monday, April 13, 2009 9:07 AM by joneil | 0 Comments

O is for… Oomph

Oomph?!  no, I’m not making it up.  Oomph is a toolkit for developers facilitating the incorporation of microformats into web applications.  Ok, so what are microformats, you ask?  Here’s a definition from the go-to site on the subject, Read More...
Posted Monday, April 13, 2009 12:01 AM by joneil | 5 Comments
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It’s For-IE-day: Week 2

IE8 is Microsoft’s most standards-compliant browser yet, which is awesome news… unless, of course, your web application relies on non-standard behaviors that previous versions of IE might have handled just the way you wanted.  In other words, a giant Read More...
Posted Friday, April 10, 2009 3:21 PM by joneil | 2 Comments
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Azure Updates

If you’ve been putting off getting your head around Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform , now’s the time.  The team has just released a new drop of the Azure Services Training Kit comprising 11 hands-on labs – including new hands-on labs Read More...
Posted Thursday, April 09, 2009 5:41 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 Released

SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 is ready for download! There’s no significant new product features, consistent with the SQL Server teams commitment to focus on essential updates.  As such, SP1 provides a roll-up of Cumulative Updates 1 through 3 and Read More...
Posted Wednesday, April 08, 2009 11:50 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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Boston Tiki Tour

Granted, Boston and Tiki Huts are not something you normally associate with one another… although… a good friend of mine in the area does have a custom-built Tiki Bar in her living room.  But I digress! Blain Barton, my colleague from the Sunshine Read More...
Posted Wednesday, April 08, 2009 8:59 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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N is for… Nullable<T>

Nullable<T> is a generic structure introduced with the .NET Framework 2.0 to support the concept of an undefined value.  The T in Nullable<T> is a value type; reference types, like strings, support nullability by design.  For instance, Read More...
Posted Monday, April 06, 2009 12:10 AM by joneil | 0 Comments
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It’s For-IE-day: Week 1

Get it? say it real fast...  Ok, it’s a stretch, but given that I’m working on coming up to speed on the latest features of IE8, I figured I might as well drag you all along write it all down!  So over the next few – or more – Fridays (ah... Read More...
Posted Friday, April 03, 2009 4:49 PM by joneil | 2 Comments
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WCF CHAMP

I guess I’m showing my age, but the first thing I thought of when hearing about this clip (below) was the 1979 movie with Jon Voight (er, Angelina’s dad for the GenXers).  Microsoft’s recent take on the theme may not be Oscar material, but if you’re Read More...
Posted Thursday, April 02, 2009 11:19 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
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.NET Groups @ NERD

Microsoft’s new New England Research and Development Center is becoming a hub of .NET activity in the downtown area.  Two groups, one established, one new, are setting up shop in the facility.  The Beantown.NET User Group will be meeting in Read More...
Posted Thursday, April 02, 2009 1:04 PM by joneil | 0 Comments
 
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