What's the latest on Windows Azure and Microsoft's cloud platform?

David Chappell discusses his perspective on this fast-changing area with Bob Familiar.

The Russ’ Tool Shed team has been busy lately and has published 18 videos, over the last 18 day period on Channel9. We have created clips from the TV Show It’s All About The Tools from Episode 1 , Episode 2 and Episode 3 along with  co-host of the TV show, Microsoft MVP, Stan Schultes.

Each clip is about ten minutes. Some may just want to know about one of the tools, so it is more discoverable when searching. It’s the same great content, just sliced up a little differently into Russ’ Tool Shed Tooltips. 

Visit  http://channel9.msdn.com/toolshed every week for content to come which includes:  Live ID Services, IE 8 Dev Tools and SSIS Data Profiling, Episode 4 and more!

Sample code, ppt and demo scripts are at: http://code.msdn.com/toolshed and tool download links are at http://channel9.msdn.com/toolshed

Here are the 18 Tool Shed Videos… Phew!

· Tool Shed Tooltip #1: Expression Encoder Plug-in to Silverlight Live, from Episode 1

posted: 6/12/2009 12:31:00 PM

In this clip, see how you can publish directly form Expression Encoder to Silverlight Live with this plug-in. This clip is Russ' Tool Shed Tooltip #1, the first of the clips from Episode One of the TV…

more...

· Tool Shed Tooltip #2: Live Services, Virtual Earth, SQL 2008 Geospacial, from Episode 1

posted: 6/13/2009 9:40:00 PM

Learn about Live Services and see how to hook up Virtual Earth to the new SQL 2008 Geospatial support. What is it? Windows Live Web Services enable developers, designers, and enthusiasts to quickly…

more...

· Tool Shed Tooltip #3: SysInternals from Episode 1

posted: 6/15/2009 12:58:00 AM

Learn about this treasure chest of tools called SysInternals. This is a must for your developer toolbox! What is it? SysInternals utilities  help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows…

more...

· Tool Shed Tooltip #4: Fiddler from Episode 1

posted: 6/15/2009 11:46:00 AM

Are you coding applications that communicate over the wire? If so, you got to check this out! Also, did you know Fiddler has add-on tools? What is it? HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP…

more...

Got popcorn? Expression Blend 3 SketchFlow and a ton of “GOT TO KNOW ABOUT IT” content is all packed in just 1 hour of Episode 3. Try something different tonight and take an hour break from coding. You know you deserve it. Grab your favorite beverage and pizza and enjoy this entertaining, enlightening and educational Episode 3. If not, you can wait for the Tool Shed Tooltips of clips from the show over the next few days and weeks. Either way ... tune in. All content is current along with sneak peeks at future tools.  It will feel like you are at a live event, but in the comfort of your home or office.
In this video, you will find tools to help solve these common developer challenges…

Finding a XAML Editor for your web page
Prototyping tool for great design of your web site
Need authentication on the web?
Some of the pages on my web site load really slowly - how do I figure out what's going on?
Have you ever eyeballed every record in your table to find an abnormality? 

Tool Shed Theme Song
Introduction
Demo 1 - Expression Blend 2 , video and animation intro
Demo 2 - Expression Blend 3 SketchFlow ProtoTyping 
Demo 3 - Live Services - Live ID
Demo 4 - IE 8 Developer Tools
Demo 5 - SSIS Data profiling by Guest Speaker Microsoft MVP, Jessica Moss
Developer Community Update by Microsoft MVP, Don Demsak

Home page and resources:

Find all show related resources at: Http://channel9.msdn.com/toolshed

Find links to the source code, PowerPoints, and demo scripts at: http://code.msdn.com/toolshed

You will love our guest speakers, Microsoft MVP Jessica Moss and Don Demsak ... Jessica amazes us on Data profiling and Don does and incredible job with the latest happenings in Developer Community.

Special thanks to co-host Stan Schultes, recent co-author on his book on DotNetNuke 5, Jessica Moss, Don Demsak, Carl Franklin, Pensacola Junior College, Main Campus, and the SQL Saturday Pensacola 2009 Team, especially Karla Remail, the live studio audience, and the many volunteers who made this show a reality!   

I have reposted all of the Tool Shed Tooltips and Episode One and Episode Two with Hi Def default views, so the code and PowerPoint slides are crystal clear. Feel free to comment or email Russ Fustino on what tools you use and love and would like to see on future episodes.

Also, please note all of the resources on right of the page at: http://channel9.msdn.com/toolshed including a link to all Episode PowerPoint’s, demo code and demo scripts! Yes, demos scripts, how often do you see that? So if you are a teacher or student  or want to do presentations to co-workers, or at seminars, or just use them as labs to learn, check out this resource at http://code.msdn.com/toolshed . Each release corresponds to an Episode.

Here are some of useful links from the speakers we have had on the shows and more:
Russ Fustino: www.russtoolshed.net
Stan Schultes: www.vbnetexpert.com
Joe Healy: www.devfish.net
Brian Johnson: http://bufferoverrun.net
Jeff Barnes: http://blogs.msdn.com/jbarnes/
Don Demsak: http://donxml.com
Jessica Moss: http://www.jessicammoss.com
Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi: http://www.sedodream.com/
Jason Beres:  http://blogs.infragistics.com/blogs/jason_beres/default.aspx

Stan and I are planning on are filming a live studio audience Episode 4 at the Tampa .NET User group (signed release form required) on Wednesday, July 22, 2009, at the Tampa Microsoft Office at 6:15PM along with guest speaker Microsoft MVP, Bill Reiss. If you are attending, I can use some volunteers, like camera operators, a sound engineer and door control. I'll teach you at the event, everything to run the camera or sound, if you don't have much experience. Drop me an email if interested at rfustino@microsoft.com Stay tuned.

Note: For those of you new to channel9 viewing, many different formats are available for download besides viewing in the default player; everything from Zune to WMV High Quality. Simply locate the dropdown menu below the embedded player on the channel 9 page for your desired download selection. If the default view stops to buffer often, then I recommend trying to download WMV High Quality. You can clearly see code, all video and PowerPoint’s in High Def (HD) at full screen. It only takes about 15 to 20 minutes to download this episode at average home speed connections. The high def WMV file is a little over 200 Meg.

Remember, you have to know the code to get into the shed. KNOW THE CODE. Get some popcorn and enjoy the show! Russ

If all goes according to plan, I will publish Episode 3, recorded at the Pensacola SQL Saturday earlier this month, on Wednesday or Thursday this week. Content includes; Expression Blend 2.0, Expression Blend 3.0 SketchFlow feature, Live Services Live ID, IE8 Dev Tools and SSIS Data Profiling. So, stay tuned to the Tool Shed on Channel 9 and enjoy all the Tool Shed Tooltips in the mean time.

ARCast.TV - Dynamic IT, Trends in IT Operations

Microsoft System Center products and solutions help capture and aggregate knowledge of IT infrastructure, policies and best practices to help IT organizations build manageable systems and automate operations to reduce costs, improve application availability and enhance service deliver. Dhananjay Mahajan interviews Vij Rajarajan, GM of System Center, about his vision of the future of System Center and how it is poised to help Enterprises prepare for new industry trends and challenges. We will learn how System Center fits in the Dynamic IT and broader Microsoft strategy. We discuss how Enterprise IT Architects can help prepare their organizations for upcoming changes.

I will have editing finished up in a day or two and published on Channel9. Here are the photos form the event which took place at the Pensacola SQL Saturday on June 6. Thanks to Carolyn Smith, the photographer. Check out Episode 1 and Episode 2 if you have not done so yet.

Here are the photos form the event which took place at the Orlando Code Camp. Thanks to Carolyn Smith, the photographer. If you have not seen Episode 2 yet, click here.

Next meeting: This Thursday 6/25 on LINQ at Discovery Point, 1812 Crossing Blvd, Odessa, FL‎ - (813) 792-9451‎. Time moved up 30 min for Pizza to 7pm.

 http://www.pascousergroup.net/content/

Here are photos from the formation meeting last month.

http://www.gatormug.com/

Tuesday June 23  5:30 at the offices of Infinite Energy, 7001 SW 24th Ave, Gainesville, FL - (352) 331-1654 (Please enter building# 6901 through the east parking lot):

Silver Arcade is a community dedicated to free online games built with the Silverlight platform. The community is supported by a web application built with the MVC Framework, Silverlight, NHibernate, MEF, Windows Azure, jQuery, xVal, log4Net and Textile. While implementing Silver Arcade a variety of interesting architecture decisions were made. In this talk, we will drill into the code base of a real application and examine topics such as:

* Data Access through advanced use of an ORM
* How Business Rules defined in one place can be verified on client and server

* Messaging and Asynchronous processing of events
* Solid patterns for MVC development

* How IoC and SoC can influence an architecture
* Modern client-side techniques with MVC and jQuery

Yup! You read that correctly. I have published 18 videos, one per day, over an 18 day period on Channel9. I have created clips from the TV Show It’s All About The Tools from Episode 1 , Episode 2 and Episode 3 along with  co-host of the TV show, Microsoft MVP, Stan Schultes.

I have done this for a few reasons. Many developers do not have an available hour to listen to the entire episode. Each clip is about ten minutes. Some may just want to know about one of the tools, so it is more discoverable when searching. It’s the same great content, just sliced up a little differently into Russ’ Tool Shed Tooltips. 

Visit  http://channel9.msdn.com/toolshed every week for content to come which includes:  Live ID Services, IE 8 Dev Tools and SSIS Data Profiling!

Sample code, ppt and demo scripts are at: http://code.msdn.com/toolshed and tool download links are at http://channel9.msdn.com/toolshed

Here are the first 18 Tool Shed Videos…

· Tool Shed Tooltip #1: Expression Encoder Plug-in to Silverlight Live, from Episode 1

posted: 6/12/2009 12:31:00 PM

In this clip, see how you can publish directly form Expression Encoder to Silverlight Live with this plug-in. This clip is Russ' Tool Shed Tooltip #1, the first of the clips from Episode One of the TV…

more...

· Tool Shed Tooltip #2: Live Services, Virtual Earth, SQL 2008 Geospacial, from Episode 1

posted: 6/13/2009 9:40:00 PM

Learn about Live Services and see how to hook up Virtual Earth to the new SQL 2008 Geospacial support. What is it? Windows Live Web Services enable developers, designers, and enthusiasts to quickly…

more...

· Tool Shed Tooltip #3: SysInternals from Episode 1

posted: 6/15/2009 12:58:00 AM

Learn about this treasure chest of tools called SysInternals. This is a must for your developer toolbox! What is it? SysInternals utilities  help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows…

more...

· Tool Shed Tooltip #4: Fiddler from Episode 1

posted: 6/15/2009 11:46:00 AM

Are you coding applications that communicate over the wire? If so, you got to check this out! Also, did you know Fiddler has add-on tools? What is it? HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP…

more...

If you have not registered for the SQL Saturday code camp itself yet FOR THIS WEEKEND JUNE 6, please do so at:

http://www.sqlsaturday.com/

You will need a ticket and signed release form to be admitted into the session, for only this one session, “Russ’ Tool Shed Presents – It’s All About The Tools TV Show – Episode 3”… at the Pensacola SQL Saturday . You will find the ticket attached to the release form in the bag given out at check-in. The ticket and form will be in 160 of the bags. We will have a max seating capacity of 45. So, what we will do is like southwest airlines. Your ticket will have a number on it. If you do not see a ticket and release form in your bag your ticket number will be 161. We will start admitting attendees with ticket numbers 1 thru 10, then 10 thru 20, etc when the doors open at 12:45pm sharp until we have 45 five attendees in the room. So, it is possible you could get in even with a ticket number as high as 80 for example, if we have 35 no shows. This way seems to be the fairest. Kind of a lottery system. Session starts at 1:00 sharp and goes until 2:30 with doors opening at 12:45 in the auditorium in the  Planetarium Building, building number 21. It will last for 90 minutes. We will have edit points about every 5 to 10 minutes and if someone leaves we will allow an entry to replace. To summarize…

Ticket and a signed release form are needed for entry to the TV Live Studio Audience

Russ’ Tool Shed presents…

“It’s All About The Tools TV Show ”

SWAG! Live studio TV Audience!

Host Russ Fustino, Co-Host Stan Schultes, guest speaker Microsoft MVP Jessica Moss.

Auditorium - 1:00 sharp to 2:30

Doors open: 12:45—bring signed release & First 45 admitted in order of Ticket #

Tools:

Expression 3.0 Blend SketchFlow, By Russ

Live ID, by Russ

IE8 Dev Tools, By Stan

Live Writer, By Stan

SSIS Data Profiling, by Jessica

and if time VS Debugging tips and tricks and a VS add-in from Codeplex to manage your code snippets

This is an all volunteer effort! Thanks to all who have contributed including a special thanks to Karla Remail. Here is the content we will be covering in this TV Show episode…

Finding the right tool to solve these common developer challenges…

Finding a XAML Editor and prototyping tool for great design of your web page

Need authentication on the web?

Some of the pages on my web site load really slowly - how do I figure out what's going on?

My browser-based blog posting tools are clunky or difficult to use - there's got to be an easier way!

Have you ever eyeballed every record in your table to find an abnormality? In every table?

And if time:

Why is this application not working?

VS Snippets, snippets, snippets, how do I organize them?

Here is the write-up on the TV show format … I should have Episode 3 edited and posted in a couple of weeks and up on Channel 9 at http://channel9.msdn.com/toolshed . This landing page will also have URLs for TV Show resource links and source code. Check out Episodes One and Two at:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/toolshed/Show-Its-All-About-The-Tools--TV-Show-Episode-One/

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/toolshed/Show-Episode-2-Its-All-About-The-Tools-TV-Show/

TV Show Episode Abstract

Did you ever feel inundated with developer tools? Did you ever feel you're missing something that could make your life easier as a developer and a power user? There are so many tools available to choose from and it keeps getting tougher to keep up with them. Tool familiarity continues to be one of the top developer challenges. This series of seminars is all about tools for developers, by developers. Join Microsoft Florida Developer Evangelist Russ Fustino & MVP Stan Schultes and others as they bring you demos and discussion about their favorite developer tools. Each episode adheres to a basic structure which is slightly modified to create new and different scenarios from show to show. This structure is composed of the following elements:

· An introduction by Russ Fustino and MVP Stan Schultes and an agenda for what tools are going to be reviewed in the episode. Tool Shed Theme song, toss swag to audience…

· A reading of fan mail from the previous show

· An introduction to the guest speakers. This could be DE’s, MVP’s or RD’s or industry influential’s

· Each tool will be introduced with the following 5 bullet points and take 5 to 10 minutes to demo. It will be high level and fast paced… Live studio audience can ask questions

o What is it?

o Download Site:

o Example Problem(s) it solves:

o Installation Notes:

o Usage Notes:

· Community Update… what’s going on locally and nationally, including MSDN Events, MVP Program, RD Program, Code camps, User groups, INETA, community megaphone and code zone updates

· Next Episodes tools.

· Credits running side by side with closing interviews from the presenters and audience

This will be fun!!!!

Russ Fustino

Microsoft Developer Evangelist.

I published http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/toolshed/Show-Episode-2-Its-All-About-The-Tools-TV-Show/ today!

I would appreciate if you all can spread the word as it is entertaining, enlightening and educational and an attempt to build developer community online. It  includes content on:

· Demo 1 - VSTS DB Pro

· Demo 2 - SQL Reporting Services

· Demo 3 - Virtual PC

· Demo 4 - DotNetNuke and Web Installer

· Demo 5 - MSBuild Extensibility talking to Twitter by Guest Speaker Microsoft MVP, Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

It also features our own DPE East Brian Johnson doing the developer community wrap-up at the end. He talks about community megaphone, channel 9, devfish, MSDN events, MSDN Flash, BizSpark, Dream Spark, MVPs, SQL Saturday, Road Shows and how we will be giving away Windows 7 RC at upcoming developer community events and more. He did a great job.

For best quality, download the WMV High Def. It’s about 1 gig. I put instructions in the post above for new channel 9 viewers about that as well as I found many did not know there was a dropdown under the player for all of the different formats from high def down to Zune when I did Episode 1. The High Def WMV download is very crisp and clear at full screen.

I’ve tremendously enjoyed working with all of the MVP’s involved in this effort.  They include Carl Franklin, Stan Schultes, Jason Beres (Episode 1), Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi (Episode 2) and Jessica Moss (Episode 3 to be filmed this weekend). They are all awesome.

I also have resources for all of the tools and developer community events and programs discussed on the TV Show  at http://channel9.msdn.com/toolshed and all of the power points, demo code and demo scripts on Http://code.msdn.com/toolshed .

Content suggestions welcome. Here is my list for Episode 3…

Expression Blend 3.0 Preview SketchFlow – Russ

Live services – Live ID – Russ

IE8 Dev tools – Stan

Live Writer – Stan

SSIS Data Profiling – Jessica Moss

If time…

Debugging Tips and tricks  - Russ

CodePlex VS Snippet Manager Add-in - Stan

Thanks! Let me know what you think! I value your input.

Make some popcorn and enjoy!

Russ Fustino

Microsoft Developer Evangelist

Remember, you have to know the code to get in the shed. KNOW THE CODE!

Joe Healy and Jeff Barns did a great podcast as part of the blog entry for the most recent MSDN Flash. It is worth listening to and very enjoyable to hear all that is going on in the state of Florida. It’s an action packed 15 minutes. Check it out at:

http://www.devfish.net/fullblogitemview.aspx?blogid=667

If you do not subscribe to the MSDN flash email newsletter, your homework assignment tonight is to sign up at  http://msdn.microsoft.com/flash

http://www.pascousergroup.net

Meet and greet is scheduled at the Starbucks on 54 by the Suncoast Highway (589 – called the Veterans by Tampa) at 7pm Thursday night on 5/28. I plan on attending and I am bringing some swag to give a way. 2 Microsoft Explorer Mouse with BlueTrack technology which works on virtually any surface. 2 copies of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition and a copy of Windows Home Server. Hope to see you there! Thanks to Greg for organizing this and he is previewing Windows 7 Ultimate! I can’t wait to see it, how about you?  :)

Russ

From Scott Guthrie’s blog…

LIDNUG (Linked .NET Users Group) is hosting an online chat with me today (Wednesday) from 11:30am to 1pm PST (Pacific Standard Time).  Anyone is free to join and the agenda topic will be open – so bring your questions!

Click here to learn more about how to register and attend it.

Hope to chat with you more then,

Scott