Some of you were waiting for this beta and finally the wait time is over, the beta was released yesterday and now you can download it
A lot of new features and cool functionallity was added in this version, we hope web developer will find the new capabilities appealing enough to build richer applications and deliver a nice experience to their end users.
You can find a complete description and the official announcement at ScottGu’s blog post.
Please let us know what you think and enjoy this new set of functionallity!
Nestor.-
At Microsoft we are always looking to get feedback about our products and technologies from communities and influencers. Today we have released the 2nd Community Technical Preview (CTP) for Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework 3.5. You may want to download it, try it out, let us know what you think, blog about it, and tell your community and customer contacts.
Parallel Extensions simplifies development by providing library-based support for introducing concurrency into applications written with any .NET language, including C# and Visual Basic. It includes the Task Parallel Library (TPL), which provides imperative data and task parallelism; Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), which provides declarative data parallelism; and all new Coordination Data Structures (CDS), which provide support for work coordination and managing shared state.
In addition to CDS, this upgrade provides several improvements, including a new scheduler that is more robust, efficient, and scalable. TPL also exposes new functionality, including methods for continuations. PLINQ now runs on top of TPL, clarifies order-preservation, and provides several new operators.
This download works with the .NET Framework 3.5 as a simple, small-footprint installation that drops a single DLL, documentation, samples, and registers the DLL with Visual Studio 2008.
We have kicked off this launch with some announcements in various channels, including some posts on our blog. More posts and announcements will continue to roll through as we build up on rolling thunder toward PDC in October. More information on Microsoft's Parallel Computing Initiatives are available externally at http://msdn.microsoft.com/concurrency and internally at http://devdiv/sites/pci. Here are the initial posts to our blog:
Enjoy!
College students from across America will showcase their innovative creations in the U.S. finals of Imagine Cup 2008 next week in LA.
This year's theme is around the environment or how to use technology to help sustain the environment!
The student finalists worked for months to design their own software programs, video games and digital photo essays to get into this event. The event is a full three-day event where besides networking, competition, and a valuable experience winners could get generous cash prizes, invaluable exposure to experts in entrepreneurship and innovation, and a springboard to start their careers.
Now in its sixth year, Microsoft's Imagine Cup seeks to channel the enterprise, ingenuity and technology prowess of the world's students into groundbreaking solutions that address real-world issues and challenges. In the U.S., more than 16,000 students registered to compete this year from over 125 colleges across the country. The winners of the U.S. finals will have a chance to advance to the Imagine Cup worldwide finals in Paris from July 3 to 8, where they will pit their imagination and passion against the best young programmers, technologists, designers and digital artists from around the world. Globally, more than 185,000 students from 100 countries registered for the Imagine Cup.
Love to see the results...
My friend "El Guille" (Guillermo Som) just finished his new book about VB.
El Guille is a famous book author, an experienced industry speaker, a VB MVP and VB Guru who is a mandatory reference at the Latin America and Spaniard developer communities. He knows almost everything about VB and because his community involvement (online and offline) he has a large "fans club" at the developer communities along the region.
Looking for good VB content in spanish? just take a look here http://www.elguille.info/NET/NovedadesVB9/Default.aspx
Nestor.-
Ecma Office Open XML Document Format Appears to Win Approval as an ISO/IEC Standard. Looks like the market is going to get a strong format that will benefit end users involved in document management.
A Joint Technical Committee of the International Standardization Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has concluded its formal process to evaluate Ecma International’s submission of the Draft International Standard (DIS) 29500: Office Open XML (Open XML).
While the final vote has not yet been announced formally, publicly available information shows overwhelming support for Open XML. According to documents available on the Internet, 86% of all national body members support ISO/IEC standardization, well above the 75% requirement for formal acceptance under ISO and IEC rules. In addition, 75% of the Participating national body members (known as P-members) support standardization, also well above the required 66.67% requirement for this group.
In my personal opinion another outcome of this process will be the community factor. The whole process was an opportunity for Microsoft to learn more and more about the importance of the community (in this case the international standard community) and why a consistent participation as an active member is key as well as engage the influencers. Having a solid or the best technology is not enough; our consistent involvement in the community is also needed to have the community embracing our proposal.
For those of you interested in more details about this new standard check these sites for more detailed information:
· Oliver Bell - DIS29500 Becomes IS29500
· Stephen McGibbon - Microsoft: OpenXML "appears to win approval as an ISO/IEC Standard"
· Jason Matusow’s post is now live: IS29500 - Open XML Is An International Standard
On a personal note, I’ll we be trying to gain access to the process debrief in order to learn about the influencers in the standards community because they played a key role for this certification.
Nestor.-
Yesterday I was talking about the value of the experts and influencers for Microsoft with the springboard experience where we had them sharing their knowledge about deploying Vista with the IT Pro community.
Today I got this nice announcement from my team in Brazil about the Brazilian version of Visual Studio 2008 which was a collaborative project between the Brazilian community influencers (MVPs and MCTs) and Microsoft Corporation.
The localization into Brazilian Portuguese of Visual Studio Language Pack for Express edition has been a truly collaborative effort and a great community project. This project started back in early 2007 with the community glossary project that we ran with MVPs/MCTs in Brazil (We asked them to vote which terms needs to be localized and which ones not) and continued with the engagement for the whole content with our community partners and the academia (University of Sao Paulo).
Today we are releasing the following language packs of the VS2008 tools:
· Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions Language Packs: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BF3CB4CB-4C4D-43BF-90AB-652BFA9EEC5B&displaylang=pt-br
· NETFX 3.5 Core: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=pt-br
· NETFX 3.5 LP: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C78987B9-97F4-455F-BEE7-F6BFA4AD774E&displaylang=pt-br
· NETFX 3.0 Core: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EC2CA85D-B255-4425-9E65-1E88A0BDB72A&displaylang=pt-br
· NETFX 3.0 LP: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B3E05715-4D28-4C18-9A60-E26C0E3FFE1E&displaylang=pt-br
· NETFX 2.0 x86 Core: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BC3B77-E02C-4AD3-AACF-A7633F706BA5&displaylang=pt-br
· NETFX 2.0 x86 LP: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5F7F4632-C9C0-4E79-B269-C2AEE9D1962E&displaylang=pt-br
· NETFX 2.0 x64 Core: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=029196ED-04EB-471E-8A99-3C61D19A4C5A&displaylang=pt-br
· NETFX 2.0 x64 LP: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1CC39FFE-A2AA-4548-91B3-855A2DE99304&displaylang=pt-br
· VSTOR Core: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=54EB3A5A-0E52-40F9-A2D1-EECD7A092DCB&displaylang=pt-br
· VSTOR LP: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1DCA6E2D-5C1F-4DF8-BE5A-3D1561B8F0E3&displaylang=pt-br
· NETFX Readme: http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/7/1/B71AE76F-578A-48E8-831F-994DF11E3C8F/dotNetReadMe.htm
· Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions Readme: http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/7/1/B71AE76F-578A-48E8-831F-994DF11E3C8F/VS2008ExpressReadme.htm
Besides the commercial strategy with these Language Packs we are enabling our Brazilian customers to learn and use Visual Studio 2008 more easily, in their native language with the terms that they use and understand and not the results of a literal translation. We at Microsoft are proud of this, and the influencers (MVPs/MCTs) were key to succeed
!
Nestor.-
I have been following some discussions about Vista in the web and many of those are not necessarily favorables. This is a good example that the conversation is taking place with or without you J
Today I got a piece of information which captured my attention, people who uses Vista tends to be more satisfied than people who is not using it. Does this means that the non positive sentiment of some conversations is coming from non Vista users? Not necessarily but is a good reminder about how powerful is the word of mouth.
Obviously there is a very well known rule that states: when you get the most from your technology investment, you are more satisfied with it (Value perception) and this is mainly driven by your level of knowledge on how to use it (productive usage).
As a community & Influencer business guy, I also know that the best place to gain access to the right information to increase the knowledge is at the community through experts.
Microsoft recently hosted a live, interactive virtual roundtable on Windows Vista adoption and deployment. Mark Russinovich and a panel of independent industry experts openly discussed known challenges, solutions and workarounds, and shared tips & tricks.
Is really nice to see how the community ecosystem (community experts and manufacturers) is gaining maturity and today more and more companies recognizes that their community experts are playing a key role and companies are engaging them frequently to discuss issues, problems, functionality and practices.
If you are interested in Vista take a look at the Springboard Series site for additional guidance, resources, tools, and straight-talk articles about Windows Vista
Nestor.-
The west region developer evangelism team: Tim Heuer, Jason Mauer, Woody Pewitt, Rob Bagby, Lynn Langit, Anand Iyer, Bruno Terkaly, Mithun Dhar and JD Lewin will be on the road in a remarkable adventure called TheCodeTrip .
TheCodeTrip is a bus tour road trip across the western United States with developers and influencers cruising around and geeking out ROCK STAR style culminating at the MVP Summit in Seattle on April 15. In addition to the many in-person events, it's also an online TV show chronicling our adventures via video blogs and producing some exceptional how-do-I style screencasts targeted at the developer and student communities. The West region DPE team will be tracking the bus live with Live services and blogging about their adventures along the way. With all the great announcements coming from Las Vegas there could not be a better time to share the MIX love and bring great developer content around Visual Studio 2008, ADO.net, IE8 Beta, Silverlight, Windows Live Services, Windows Mobile to the masses. How to recognize the bus? look for a bunch people having fun and getting the most up to date information.
Where and When?
|
CodeTrip Schedule |
|
|
3/6 |
Las Vegas |
NV |
|
3/7 |
Salt Lake City |
UT |
|
3/8-10 |
Boise |
ID |
|
3/11 |
Spokane |
WA |
|
3/12 |
Missoula |
MT |
|
3/13 |
Bozeman |
MT |
|
3/14 |
Billings |
MT |
|
3/17 |
Cheyenne |
WY |
|
3/18 |
Boulder |
CO |
|
3/19-20 |
Denver |
CO |
|
3/21 |
Albuquerque |
NM |
|
3/22 |
Phoenix |
AZ |
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3/25 |
San Diego |
CA |
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3/26 |
Irvine |
CA |
|
3/27 |
Fullerton |
CA |
|
3/28 |
Pomona |
CA |
|
3/29 |
Camarillo |
CA |
|
3/31 |
San Luis Obispo |
CA |
|
4/1 |
Santa Cruz |
CA |
|
4/2 |
Mountain View |
CA |
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4/3 |
San Francisco |
CA |
|
4/4 |
Sacramento |
CA |
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4/5 |
Chico |
CA |
|
4/7 |
Medford |
OR |
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4/8 |
Corvallis |
OR |
|
4/9-12 |
Portland |
OR |
|
4/14 |
Olympia |
WA |
|
4/15 |
Seattle |
WA |
Join us if you are in town...
Nestor.-
I am a fan of web 2.0, every day I discover a new site or a new service that makes my life easier. Managing my bookmarks in delicious I saw a tag that is growing fast, that one is becoming big in my tag cloud and it is sites. Every week I subscribe to a site and bookmark it because is becoming impossible for me to memorize these and there is not space in my Internet explorer toolbar for more links.
Today I read this article "13 email addresses that can be useful" and besides I liked many of those I started to play with one called "Xpenser". Xpenser is an application that helps you to log, organize and report your business travel expenses. So far you may be saying: So what! well what I found interesting of this site was the convergence of Web 2.0 and "old" technologies to offer a multi channel experience.
Xpenser allow you to log your expenses using the following channels:
- Email
- Instant Messaging
- Twitter
- SMS/Text Messaging
- Voice in partnership with Jott
I am not sure if Xpenser is a successful site or not, however I consider this initiative a good example of how we will see the convergence of web 2.0 technologies towards the "Persona" concept rather than the "Service" concept existing today via partnerships. Think about Twitter, it is supposed to be a real time log of your activities and obviously when you are on a business trip several of your activities includes an expense.
Another lesson is the importance of traditional technologies such as: Mail, IM and text messaging. This offers covers a vast spectrum of consumers from pioneers/innovators to laggers.
Nice example of business strategy and partnership in my opinion. The url of this service is http://Xpenser.com if you want to take a look or try it.
Nestor.-
One possible answer is SPACE and the SkyDrive team is on it. Today I got this cool announcement from the SkyDrive team: The new release of SkyDrive offers additional space and it is five times bigger than the space you had before — that’s 5GB of free online storage for your favorite documents, pictures, and other files.
I'm on the road a lot and I found SkyDrive useful not only for the business, also for the personal side because I am using SkyDrive to storage the pictures that I take when I am on the road and people at home moves those to my media center; another use is for my passport and other personal stuff. I have my passport digitalized in a private folder so if I lost it I can easy print a copy from a public computer and go to the local embassy to ask for a replacement.
Also I'm using SkyDrive to store all the pictures required for my home insurance and other documents. Get creative, now you have up to 5 GB of storage ....
This release also include the service expansion to a significant number of countries, take a look of the official blog post.
Nestor.-
<a href="http://technorati.com/claim/gtaefu2j6w" rel="me">Technorati Profile</a>
Today, Microsoft announced an unprecedented software program called Microsoft DreamSpark, this program will provide college and high school students with no-cost access to the latest Microsoft developer, designer tools and Microsoft platform resources.
Microsoft DreamSpark will help students with their academic and career success and the most important the students will get familiar and better prepared in popular developer tools that are widely used by the market.
You can find more information about DreamSpark at Channel 8 including a cool interview to Bill.
This initiative will change Students' lives and the community in my opnion...
Only 3 weeks until MIX08.
Ray Ozzie will keynote in addition to Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki. Dean Hachamovitch will show off IE8, along with Scott Guthrie who has a keynote chock full of coolness. The first ever UX Track is going to demonstrate what's new for designers.
Dean Hachamovitch, the guy who runs the Internet Explorer team is going to share more about Internet Explorer 8 including a sneak peek at some of the features. You won’t want to miss this keynote to see how the next version of Internet Explorer is shaping up.
Scott Guthrie answers the question, "What's Coming for MIX08?" In Part 1 and Part 2 of this interview, Scott Guthrie gives a preview of the technology that will be discussed at MIX. Scott talks about IIS 7.0 for developers and also covers everything from Windows Presentation Foundation improvements to Web development frameworks including Dynamic Data and the MVC Framework, to dropping some hints about upcoming tooling support, and the major improvements in Silverlight 2.0.
Remember, MVPs are going to be attending MIX. Don't miss the opportunity to talk to them
I'm not sure if you are aware about these nice news:
For your pocket the good news is: The early bird price was extended until the end of January so there is still time to register at a 20% discount!
For your professional career, these are the good news based on your interest:
1) MIX08 to debut the first ever MIX UX Track which is 3 days of solid content dedicated to creatives / designers. Lou Carbone, David Armano, Dan Roam, Kim Lenox and others will speak. In conjunction with Adaptive Path, the User Experience track is just one of the many great reasons for all types of designers and creative professionals to attend MIX this year. http://visitmix.com/2008/mixux.aspx
2) The deadline for this year's CSS contest, RESTYLE, has been extended. People interested can still restyle the MIX08 Homepage and win a pass to MIX08, 3 nights at the Venetian, $$ and more, more, more! http://visitmix.com/2008/restyle/
3) Have you been listening to The Signal? Each week a new episode debuts featuring a speaker or MIX crew member talking about some of the upcoming coolness happening at MIX08. Listen to their interviews with Molly Holzschlag, Kip Kniskern, Jonathan Snook and others as we countdown to Vegas. http://visitmix.com/blogs/TheSignal/
4) There is a community contest that will feature community created skins of the application on the big screen and on the screensavers of the computers available to attendees at the show. The best skin will win an XBOX 360. Entering the contest is easy: everything you need to know can be found here http://www.visitmix.com/blogs/News/403/ including links to screencasts and instructions that show how easy it is to do the restyle.
Hope this info is useful for you folks and don't miss the opportunity to talk to the MVPs attending Mix 08.
Nestor.-
I would like to open a space to discuss key topics around community in particular the influencer space, content and voice of the customer. As you know I have been involved in the influencer business since 5 years by managing one of top influencer programs in the market: The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Americas (Canada, US and Latin America) and Japan.
During this 5 years I also got involved with other influencers programs such as MSDN Regional Director (RD), International .NET Association (INETA) and Culminis because many of the MVPs are also active participant at those programs and by observing behaviors and types of contributions I identified a natural segmentation among the participants regardless the fact that in one or another way they are influencing the technical communities.
After this exposure several questions came to my mind and I will address each one later in order to see if I can get feedback from the community to properly define and measure instead of continue working in an isolated bubble. As a “microsoftie” the first question was: Metrics; which are the right metrics and how to measure the influencer power.