As announced on Soma’s blog, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Beta 1 was made available for download to MSDN subscribers today. If you are an MSDN subscriber you can visit the download centre and download it now.
If you want to know more about what is new in Visual Studio 2010 have a look at the product page or watch some Channel 9 videos.
I have installed it on a machine with Visual Studio 2008 as well and so far it appears to play nice (though I haven’t done any extensive testing).
It will be made available for general download starting Thursday, NZ time. Beat the rush, get it now!
Nigel, Nathan and I are on the road again in May/June to talk about Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Silverlight 3.
Nathan is covering Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 from an IT Pro’s perspective with no nonsense technical sessions that cover the improvements and new features of these two products. Nigel and I are doing developer focussed sessions with Nigel talking about Silverlight 3 and covering some of the upcoming features that were announced at Mix 09. I will be talking about developing applications for Windows 7 and taking advantage of some of the new features in your own applications and how to make sure your applications are ready for Windows 7. There’s even an optional Installfest at the end if you want the Release Candidate installed on your test machine.
Once again we are visiting a good number of cities: Palmerston North, Tauranga, Hamilton, Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington. You can find out more details and register here.
Hope to see you there!
With TechEd North America underway this week (you can visit TechEd online too) we are kicking off the 2009 TechEd season. Australia and New Zealand have ours in September (8-11th for Australia, 14-16th New Zealand). Planning is well underway for our local events and you can read more about how the event is shaping up over at Andrew Coates’ blog.
You may have noticed on Andrew’s blog there is a Call for Content. This means you can suggest a session that you would like to deliver at TechEd this year.
Here are the rules for submitting content and what we’ll cover/not cover if the track owners select your session(s).
All the way through the process you’ll be able to review your submission and track its status. This is the first time we’ve opened up the Call for Content publically like this and we’re likely to receive many more proposals than we’ve got slots to fill, so please don’t be disappointed if your submission isn’t selected.
Tips for Successful Submissions
- Write a descriptive, fun and enticing title
- Target 300-400 level technical content; 200 level content is in low demand
- Describe content that is new, unique or significantly refreshed from a previous presentation.
- Take a solution oriented approach
- Align your topic to the technologies listed for the track
- Ensure there is no marketing in your content
- Showcase your speaking experience
- Focus on currently released technologies, technologies in beta or technologies that will be released within 12 months of Tech·Ed
- Include one or more live demos. Historically, sessions with strong demos receive higher audience scores
Submitting a topic
So how do you go about submitting a session? Go to the Call for Content tool and register with your email address and the RSVP code TechEdANZ. Fill in all the details and hit submit. You can come back to the site at any time to update or review the progress of your submission.
We would like to invite you to attend the first Innovation Day for ISVs to be held in Auckland. This is your opportunity to 'get your feet on the ground, head in the clouds' and connect with Microsoft New Zealand for a day of technical sessions, compelling discussions about the exciting future of the Microsoft platform and how partnering with us can help you be more successful.
We will be covering the Microsoft Partner Program, offerings such as BizSpark, our Metro program for early adopter ISVs, InnovateOn, the ISV Royalty program and lots of other things you may not know about our ISV partner offerings.
Of course there will be technical content as well with demos of Windows 7 features for ISVs, a Silverlight 3 preview and Windows Azure.
There will also be a session on Microsoft Online Services and how Office 2010 is part of Microsoft’s Software+Service strategy.
So come along and see how Microsoft can help your ISV business be more successful. We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Wednesday 29th April
8am - 1pm
Microsoft New Zealand Offices.
For more information or registration, please email Thiloma Patabendi or register online. Places are limited so register today!
Imagine Cup is a competition which encourages students to use technology to transform great ideas into real world solutions every year. Student teams from around New Zealand have come up with solutions to the world’s toughest problems. Join them at The University of Auckland Business School as they compete in the Imagine Cup 2009 National Finals and find out which team will be the ultimate winner and represent New Zealand in the world wide finals in Cairo, Egypt.
For the first time ever, watch the finalists present and demonstrate their unique solution to a panel of influential industry judges live and decide for yourself who should take out the title of Imagine Cup 2009 NZ. Register your place at the finals now and get the chance to win awesome prizes including one of three XBOX 360 consoles at the finals. Everyone is welcome!
What: Microsoft Imagine Cup 2009 National Finals
Where: The University of Auckland Business School
When: Wednesday 29th April 2009, Kicking off at 6:30P.M.
Register Here: http://www.microsoft.com/nz/imaginecup09/Finals.aspx
The online version of our recent Unplugged tour has been posted. This was the tour we did at the end of 2008, early 2009 that focussed on the announcements at Microsoft PDC in October 2008.
Hey all you developers out there! How is your personal development plan coming along? Time to learn some new technology skills? Brush up on some existing ones?
On April 1st, 2009, be part of history and join developers from all around the world for the first ever 24 hour day of technology learning. Tech.Days 2009 is a virtual event that will feature 95 live sessions across 5 tracks on current and emerging technologies in developer tools, mobility, Windows, Office/SharePoint, and web development. Connect with Microsoft industry experts and your peers from around the world.
For more information, and to register, go here.
And if you really can’t make it to the live event, sessions will also be recorded and available on demand post-event.
Just a reminder that Mark Carroll and I are on the South Island leg of our Unplugged tour next week. We are visiting Invercargill, Dunedin, Christchurch and Nelson:
MSDN UNPLUGGED Developer Event – South Island: Take your Applications to the Cloud and Beyond – PDC, Visual Studio, Azure, Office 14 and Windows 7
MSDN UNPLUGGED continues in February 09 with South Island locations. We will be sharing principles, practices, patterns and tools announced at PDC in October. Come and join us to start your applications journey to the cloud and beyond. Presented by Microsoft Developer Advisor Mike Zeff and Microsoft Architect Mark Carroll. Click here for more information. We will be giving away PDC 2008 Top Session DVDs to attendees too.
Sessions from 4pm – 5.30pm
Registration is free. Location and dates below.
Invercargill 17 Feb: Register
Dunedin 18 Feb: Register
Christchurch 19 Feb: Register
Nelson 20 Feb: Register
Note: This is a 300 Level event for Developers
We are currently working on the December Unplugged events which are going to be all about some of the announcements made at the Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles recently. A lot of the announcements were around Microsoft’s cloud strategy so naturally we’ll be talking a lot about that. Here is the abstract and registration links:
| MSDN UNPLUGGED Developer Event: Take your Applications to the Cloud and Beyond – PDC, Visual Studio, Azure, Office 14 and Windows 7
Today we will be sharing principles, practices, patterns and tools announced at PDC in October. Come and join us to start your applications journey to the cloud and beyond.
Using computers in the cloud can make a great deal of sense. Instead of provisioning part or all of your infrastructure you can instead exploit Internet-accessible servers and let others worry about keeping systems up to scratch. But why just stop at the cloud? Some applications may have their code and data both operating in the cloud, others may run inside an organisation storing data in the cloud or relying on other cloud infrastructure services. Applications that run on desktops and mobile devices can use services in the cloud to synchronise information across many systems or in other ways. Whatever approach makes sense exploiting and extending the cloud’s capabilities can open up new choices for applications hosting, storage and interoperability. Presented by Microsoft Developer Advisor Mike Zeff and Microsoft Architect Mark Carroll. Click here for more information. We will be giving away PDC 2008 Top Session DVDs to attendees too. Registration is free. Location and dates below. Auckland 8 Dec: Register
Hamilton 8 Dec: Register
Tauranga 9 Dec: Register
Hawkes Bay 10 Dec: Register
Palmerston North 11 Dec: Register
Wellington 12 Dec: Register Note: This is a 300 Level event for Developers As you can see, Mark Carroll and I will be presenting this event and we are really looking forward to talking about the new cloud services and tools. The December events will be North Island and we will be doing South Island venues early in the New Year. We will announce venues and dates shortly. I will also be available to talk about our recently launched BizSpark programme for software start-ups which has been extremely popular in the two weeks sinced we launched in New Zealand. |
Yesterday we released Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (bootstrapper or ISO) and Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 (self-extractor). There is also a download available for just the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (bootstrapper and self-extracting package). These are also available from the Subscriber Downloads area of MSDN for MSDN subscribers.
If you want to see what’s new in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 have a look at this article on MSDN.
These are the main features of Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1:
- Support for Windows Server 2008.
- Support for SQL Server 2008.
- The Add to Source Control dialogs have been improved to be easier to use and more scalable.
- Drag & Drop from Windows Explorer to add to Source Control.
- Support for Version control operations on files not in bound solutions.
- Right-click access to set Working Folder/Cloak of folders from within Source Control Explorer.
- Check in date/time column in Source Control Explorer.
- Editable path field for the Source Control Explorer.
- Email work items and queries to someone.
- A new API to download files to a stream.
- Links to Team System Web Access pages from notifications.
- Improvements to the number of projects per server.
- Performance and scale improvements.
- Improvements to the VSS converter to make it much more robust.
- Support for creating Team Projects from the command line.
I decided to install Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 from scratch on one of my servers, so I could install it on Windows Server 2008 and the RTM version of SQL Server 2008. Patching an existing server is just a matter of running the TFS 2008 SP1 package, after backing up your database first just in case, but starting from scratch requires a few extra steps. You can find the exact process in the updated Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 Installation document here (note the instructions on the download page about how to open downloaded CHM files for display). In a nutshell, you need to create an installation source of TFS 2008 that has SP1 merged. The installation document explains how. Once you have created the merged installation source, everything else proceeds as before.
Also note that if you are installing TFS 2008 on a server that already has Visual Studio 2008 installed, you need to apply Visual Studio 2008 SP1 first.
Update: Oh, and if you’re working with Silverlight 2 Beta 2, it has been updated so the tools now work with the RTM version of VS 2008 SP1. Download the updated version here.
We know we have some disappointed customers that missed out on TechEd NZ tickets this year due to the speed with which it sold out. An alternative may be to head to the Aussie TechEd which runs from 2-5th September in Sydney. There are many of the same tracks and speakers as TechEd NZ and we are offering a discount to New Zealand based companies (and individuals) that want to go.
To help offset some of the additional travel cost we are offering a 20% discount (usually AUD1999.00, reduced to AUD1600.00, including GST).
To take advantage of this deal register by heading to this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/australia_discount.aspx
and then follow the simple steps.
Awww, this is so cool. I want one.
Microsoft Surface.
And speaking of MIX, in case you didn't manage to get there this year (unlike my colleague Nigel, who tried to convince us this was work), the sessions have been posted on line.
There are some really cool sessions available for watching and I also recommend you watch the keynote as it shows off a lot of the new technology announced at MIX. You can watch online, download for offline viewing and even download for playing on your Zune.
Personally, I think Silverlight is the highlight and the amount of buzz and interest it has created is staggering. Cross platform, cross browser and the power of .NET, that is Silverlight 1.1. Get the Alpha bits and try it for yourself.
Make sure you check out the Silverlight community site for demos and links to learning resources, forums and blogs. This is going to be BIG. I really liked the airline booking sample that Scott Guthrie demo'd during the keynote. You can try it yourself here.
If you are excited about the release of Expression Studio at MIX '07 then you might be interested in free training videos that cover all the products that make up the suite.
These videos are a great way to get up to speed with the new design products and you can watch them online or download them for watching later. Most of them aren't too long so you can watch them in those times you are waiting for something else to happen (or maybe watch them on the bus, train or flight somewhere).
The .NET Micro Framework 2.0 has been released and the SDK is available for download.
The .NET Micro Framework SDK Version 2.0 includes the following features:
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Microsoft Visual Studio Integration
The .NET Micro Framework SDK integrates into the Visual Studio environment, supporting C# development with productivity-boosting features such as on-device debugging, object browsing, IntelliSense®, and integrated build and deployment.
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Managed Libraries and Drivers
An on-device implementation of a subset of the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) brings the advantages of .NET development to small devices. Write device drivers and interrupt routines in C# for hardware connected through standard interfaces, such as SPI, I2C, GPIO, and USART.
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Extensible Emulator
Extend the core emulator included in the SDK to reflect your target hardware capabilities. Add simulated peripheral devices, such as sensors, displays, buttons, and servo controls. Then deploy to your customized emulator and test your code on the virtual hardware.
If you want to know more about what the .NET Micro Framework is, have a look at this page here which gives a nice overview but in summary it allows you to develop embedded applications for small devices using Visual Studio and managed code. Very cool!
