The .NET Show

The .NET Show: The Final Episode - Silverlight

After over seven years, and 63 episodes, the time has come to bring The .NET Show to a close. Trust me, the decision is not based on any lack of content or slowdown in the advancement of .NET and related technologies, far from it!

As proof, in this episode we focus on one of the more exciting new developments in .NET, which of course is Silverlight! Joining me in this episode is one of our more regular guests, Scott Guthrie, general manager for .NET Platform Technologies, along with Jason Zander, general manager for the .NET Framework.

We discuss the overall scope and usage of Silverlight v1.0, and how it provides a cross browser as well as cross platform experience with exciting graphics and media capabilities. We also look at Silverlight v1.1, and how it will provide the rich programming infrastructure of .NET which will also work cross browser and cross platform.

To close out this episode, Erica interviews Sanjay Parthasarathy to learn about his background, motivations, and perhaps just a little bit about how to play cricket.

While it is with a certain amount of sadness that we bring the show to a close, we are pleased to have played a role in spreading news and information about the great platform technologies coming out of Microsoft.

But you may also want to keep your eyes on Channel 9... you can never tell who might pop up over there...

And here is just a little bit of background and history of the .NET Show:

It was back in mid 1999 that I was asked to think about how we could create a professionally produced media experience that would provide a developer audience with the latest details about all of the great platform technologies that we were producing. From those brainstorming sessions “The .NET Show” was born (it was then called “The MSDN Show”).

Our first show was made available in December of 1999, and since then we have produced over 60 unique episodes covering a broad range of platform technologies and features. We’ve had episodes focusing on BizTalk, SQL Server, Win64, ASP.NET, Visual Studio, Code Optimization, ADFS, TabletPC, Indigo, WinFS, Avalon, Managed DirectX, and many more. My guests have included Brian Valentine, Paul Flessner, John Shewchuk, Anders Hejlsberg, Andrew Layman, Michael Wallent, and of course Bill Gates.

The .NET Show provided a focused and engaging venue for leadership on the various Microsoft platform technologies that are important to communicate to developers. To further appeal to developers, the show was consciously launched in an unconventional and cutting-edge format, far ahead of average consumers' access through broadband internet access. We pushed the envelope on both the form, and the function of the content, with the hopes of providing our audience with an engaging, informing, and perhaps even slightly entertaining experience.

The format and the success of The .NET Show led to several other web-based technology broadcasts from Microsoft, as well as from various other companies. The overall media experience continues to grow and evolve turning the web into a broad reaching tool that is changing the landscape of video and information distribution. We were glad we were able to be there at the beginning, and played a role in experimenting with the potential it provided.

...see you on the Web!

-Robert & Erica

The .NET Show: ASP.NET AJAX Extensions

I’m pleased to announce that the latest episode of “The .NET Show” has now been posted:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode062/manifest.xml
the topic for this episode is:

The .NET Show: ASP.NET AJAX Extensions
In this episode I meet with Brad Abrams, Matt Gibbs, and Bertrand Le Roy to examine the features, capabilities, and potential of the recently released ASP.NET AJAX Extensions for creating web-based applications which break free of the need for doing a full page re-fresh to update the content within the page.

We discuss not only AJAX in general, but specifically how ASP.NET brings about a much better integration with how developers can use this technology in their websites. We look at how this functionality has been seamlessly added into Visual Studio, as well as the various way web designers and developers can utilize it to improve the performance, as well as the interactivity of the solutions that they are developing for the web. Bertrand runs through several demos that clearly illustrate how ASP.NET AJAX is an important technology for anybody currently developing web based solutions to look at adding to their repertoire.
 
Then in our Somebody@Microsoft.com segment, we feature Rowena Branch, a Readiness Product Manager in the Global Readiness group. This is Erica Wiechers first appearance since the birth of her new son Evan, who makes a brief cameo appearance near the start of the show.

-Robert Hess

The .NET Show: Office Live

http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode060/manifest.xml

You know, one of these days this whole blog thing will gel for me and I'll actually keep things up to date. But knowing my luck, by the time that happens blogs will be so passe that I'll still be out-of-date.

The .NET Show: Vista Readiness 

I forgot to post an announcement about the "Vista Readiness" episode that we put up back in October, and now we FINALLY have our next episode available. So if you didn't catch the Vista Readiness episode please check that out. In that episode, I talk with Manmeet Bawa, Doug Wood, and Mark Taylor about the issues invovled with getting applications ready for running on Vista. Now that Vista is out, this is clearly soemthing that developers are needing to be aware of. While Vista has a high degree of backwards compatibility with existing Windows applications, there are some cases where applications might have been doing things that will no longer work on Vista, usually due to the increased security that has been added. And in other cases there are features of Vista that applications should be taking advantage of in order to be better integrated into the overall system.

Ok... that catches me up with the present day. Now on to the current episode.

To begin with, I want to appologize for the delay in getting this episode posted. We filmed it back in November, and in fact we've already filmed two more episodes since then. There was one issue after another which caused it to get delayed, most noteably was the fact that the entire backend infrastructure for streaming media on msdn was switched over, and it took us a while to shoehorn our rather special format into this new framework, as well as just get used to the whole system, then there was some news from Erica... but let's not get ahead of things yet. You'll have to wait until the "next" episode to find out a few more details about that.

The .NET Show: Office Live

If you haven't yet seen it, Office Live is a new online service that is being offered to expand on the overall Office suite of applications. It allows small businesses to create their own web space for use by not only their customers, but their employees and associates as well. Basically it consists of two different parts. A "Public" website, as well as a "Private" Sharepoint site. The public site is just your standard website with various pages that users can browse through for additional information about your company, business, or organization. Office Live provides a pretty impressive web-based set of tools for allowing you to create, modify, and design these pages. The private site, is essentially a Sharepoint Server site that you can use for maintaining documents, lists, and even databases for keeping your employees and associates up-to-date with almost any sort of information that is important to you. You create individual accounts for people to use to access this data, and can even create e-mail addresses which people can use for communication. It is essentially as if you had your own IT department and a Sharepoint Server within your company, but without the hassle of having to manage it.

In this episode I talk with Rajesh Jha, and Tara Brown about Office Live. They explain further details about what Office live is, and how it is utilized. In the second segement, Tara walks us through some of the processes of creating and maintaining an Office Live website.

Our next episode is on "Windows CardSpace". This is an exciting technology that I'm anxious to let you all know more about... as I've said this episode is already filmed, and essentially ready to post (now that we've gotten all of the bugs out around the process of using the new system), but I'm going to hold off for a couple of weeks just to make sure that you all have time to view the current "Office Live" episode.

New Episode of The .NET Show: Longhorn Server

Ooops, I've been a bit lax, and forgot to post the announcement for the latest episode.

Windows Server "Longhorn"
http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode058/manifest.xml

Yeah, you might recall that "Longhorn" was the codename for what is now officially named "Windows Vista", but there is also a "as of yet not officially named" Server version of this product as well, and so at the moment we are just refering to it as Windows Server "Longhorn".

In this episode I start off by chatting with Julius Sinkevicius and Volker Will and hear from them about just a few of the new features and capabilities that will be part of the product. While it will include all of the basic capabilities of Windows Vista, it also includes some new and exciting features that will illustrate similarly exciting "Sever" based enhancements.

In the second segment Volker Will stays on and we walk through a demo that illustrates the new "Virtualization" capaiblities of Windows Server "Longhorn". This is bound to help folks better manage their loading and distribution of different servers throughout their network infrastructure and allow them to better utilize their hardware assets.

The Next Episode:
We just finished filming the next episode, which is on "Vista Readiness". Look for this episode to be posted near the middle to end of October.

New Episode of The .NET Show: DSI

The .NET Show: DSI

This is the third of four episode in which we will be investigating some of the core technologies and products that are associated with the ITPro. But don't worry, we are also not forgetting about the developers in the audience.

DSI stands for the "Dynamic Systems Initiative" and it represents a development process that allows the developer and the systems administrators to work together in a much more orchestrated manner, which will allow them to create more efficient and more secure applications.

In the first segment, Ed Anderson shares gives us an overview of what DSI is all about, and how this concept is being used to improve software development and operations.

In the second segment, Dmitriy Nikonov uses Visual Studio to illustrate how it allows developers and systems administrators to both use an SDM file to help them model the applications execution environment and expectations, but doing so using tools that are best suited to the specific tasks involved with those jobs.

Then finally Erica meets with Victus Wont, a program mangager for MSDN and TechNet.

-Robert

New Episode: The .NET Show: IIS 7.0

Scott Guthrie is a familiar face to "The .NET Show" and so we welcome him back in this episode to share with us details about the upcoming release of IIS 7.0. He's joined by Bill Staples, and together they explain a lot of the great changes that have been added to this product.

We'll also hear about the new website IIS.NET, which will play the same role for IIS as ASP.NET has played for ASP. IIS.NET will be launching soon, so if it's not up yet, check back again soon!

In the MSDN News Update, Erica provides details about:

• Windows Live Developer Center
• Microsoft's BioIT Alliance
• The roadmap for Speech Server 2007
• Microsoft's acquisition of Lionhead Studios

And in the somebody@microsoft.com segment, Erica talks with Tracy Lovejoy, an ethnographer working in the Mobile and Embidded Devices team.

New Episode of The .NET Show: WMI Scripting

The .NET Show
	For the next several episodes of "The .NET Show" I will be focusing on the issues and interests facing the ITPro. My current line up starts with WMI Scripting, followed by IIS 7.0 (which I am filming on Wednesday), then DSI (Dynamic Systems Initiative), and lastly Windows "Longhorn" Server. We had a lot of fun filming the WMI Scripting episode with Greg Stemp and Jean Ross. They did a great job at keeping things not only informative, but lively and entertaining at the same time.  The .NET Show: WMI Scripting  (http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode055/manifest.xml) Greg Stemp and Jean Ross from the TechNet Script Center really cut loose and provide wonderful insights and details about WMI Scripting and how it can assist the ITPro in managing their systems infrastructure and deployment environment. One of their tougher challenges is convincing the ITPro that WMI Scripting is not only approachable, but easy to work into their process of managing the large number of systems that they need to be able to configure, maintain, and monitor.     Jean Ross explains how she and Greg assist ITPros through their Script Center  WMI Scripting can, and should, play an important role in helping the ITPro with many of their daily tasks. One problem however is that many ITPro's won't feel that they have the luxury to take the time to learn "programming" in order to take on such a challenge. Greg Stemp, and Jean Ross want to help solve this problem and assist ITPros to realize that learning WMI Scripting is not something that will get in the way of their normal day-to-day operations, and in fact it will greatly assist them in being able to better manage the systems under their control. Greg and Jean run TechNets "Script Center". This is an online resource that provides information, details, documentation, and assistance to people that are trying to work with WMI Scripting while often trying to support a large number, as well as a large variety, of systems. In our first segment, they detail for us exactly what the Script Center is, and the various features and services that are available there, as well as describing who they view their customer as, and how WMI Scripting can really provide beneficial functionality to them in an easy to access manner.   Greg Stemp describes how to monitor system operations using WMI.  In our second segment, Greg Stemp fires up his laptop and runs through a series of simple demonstrations that really illustrate the power and capabilities of WMI Scripting. Not only showing how simple it is to easily access and report on information associated with his local system, but also how it can gather information and details from other systems on the network. He also shows how WMI Scripting can utilize applications such as Excel, or even PowerPoint to automatically generate reports, charts, and even presentations that can be used to communicate this information to others. Hans Bjordahl shares with Erica his experiences working on the Outlook team, his transition to MSNBC as well as details about his cartooning experience. As our special guest in the Somebody@Microsoft.com segment, Erica talks with Hans Bjordahl. Hans has recently transitioned over to a position in MSNBC, but this isn't preventing him from still doing some cartooning in his spare time. He holds the distinction as producing the first Internet Cartoon with "Where the Buffalo Roam", and these days he is also producing the strip "Bug Bash".  We had a lot of fun pulling this episode together, and look forward to continueing with this ITPro focus in the upcoming episodes. So check out this episode, and let us know what you think by dropping us a note in the "comments" section of this blog entry! Thanks -Robert Hess

New Shows Coming!

Just because I haven't posted anything for a while, doesn't mean we're gone! It just means, well, I'm not really that good of a "blogger". Perhaps I should ask Scoble for some tips.

Yes, I realize that it's been a few months since the last episode, this was unfortunately just due to a variety of circumstances. Vacation schedules, product cycles, and marketing budgets.

We will be posting a new episode in a week or two, we filmed it a couple of weeks ago on "WMI Scripting", I'm currently scheduling the filming of the next episode, on "IIS 7.0", and after that I plan on doing one on "DSI", and then following that "Longhorn Server". And if all works well schedule wise, each episode will be a month apart.

So Stay Tuned!!!!

-Robert

New Episode! The .NET Show: WinFX SDK (Live! from PDC'05)

The .NET Show: WinFX SDK (Live! From PDC'05)
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode054/manifest.xml)

Yeah, it's been a while since the last episode was released, but hey! there's been a lot going on! (ok, probably an old excuse).

To film this episode, we went "on location" to beautiful downtown Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This was the site of "PDC'05" (Microsoft Professional Developers Conference), and flimed it on a special set done up for us in the center of all of the activity. It was a lot of fun, and we enjoyed the chance to get out and chat with a bunch of our viewers.

The PDC is all about development, and so it only made since to do an episode that was focused specifically on the development tools and documentation for the upcoming Windows Vista. So my guests for this episode were Steven Goulet, the Group Program Manager for the Windows SDK, as well as a couple of the folks who work for him, Christine Kleinke, and Brent Rector. Steven and Christine shared with us the varioius features and aspects of the SDK, and how to try to create great developer documentation to aid all of you in the development of your Windows applications. Then Brent joined us to show off some of the tools that are included as part of the SDK, there really are some handy utilities that they provide that when properly used can greatly aid your development tasks.

For our next episode, we are working with the Visual Studio's team to provide some insights on the capabilities of the new "Team System" that is being rolled into Visual Studio 2005.

Thanks
-Robert Hess

The .NET Show: LIVE! At the PDC

Are YOU going to the PDC?

WE ARE!

No doubt you'll be seeing Erica, myself, and our camera crew all over the PDC where we will be filming various special segments for the PDC as well as filming our next episode.

In our PDC episode, we'll be talking with Steven Goulet and some of the members of his team. They are the brains behind the "Windows Vista SDK", which represents the core of the API information and resources that you will use for developing applications for Windows Vista. Steve will share with us some of the insight about how the SDK comes together, how they try to organize and maintain the SDK, as well as some of the additional tools, sample applications, and resources that they've gathered together to make your development tasks as easy as possible.

If you'd like to join us for the filming of this episode, here are the details:

Date: Wednesday, September 14th
Time: 12:30 - 1:30
Place: Lunchroom

Ok, so "Lunchroom" is a tad vague... This year the lunchroom is split in two. Tables on the left, tables on the right, and in the center is where the expo hall, hands on labs, store, etc are located. In the back left corner of this center section we'll have a small stage set up that faces out toward the lunch tables near it (or at least that's the plan!). Sit at those tables during lunch, and you'll be part of our audience. I guess this is what they call "dinner theater?"

This same stage will be used by ".NET Rocks" for recording content for their show as well!

Hope to see you all there!

-Robert

New Episode! The .NET Show: Windows XP Media Center Edition

The computer is in the midst of an important transition. The time was, when it was  "just" a computer, that hunk of metal on your desk that you used for writing documents, playing games, or programming on (until the wee hours of the morning). Lately, we've seen the computer move off of the desktop and into your phones, cars, and even watches. They are doing more then just becoming an "appliance" like a toaster, but are showing how they can deeply integrate their services and capabilities into various parts of our lives.

Windows XP Media Center Edition (or just MCE for short), is an illustration of one way that the rich feature set of the computer can almost invisibly provide us with a new level of data integration by turning itself into a rich media component of our A/V system.

In this episode of The .NET Show, my guests discuss the role that MCE plays in the home, and how it can help change the way people interact with their various media services today. John Canning and Charlie Owen provide details about the broad range of potential customers for MCE, and how different partners can integrate specific experiences within the MCE environment. Then Michael Creasy joins Charlie Owen to show some actual coding, and illustrate how easy it is for an MCE application to re-purpose many of the media services within specialized applications.

Sure, this isn't quite the same thing as running your toaster at 3ghz, but providing such a seamless experience for your home media usage is a pretty compelling illustration of where computers are going.

Thanks
-Robert Hess

NOTE: At the end of this episode we mention that the next episode will be on IE7... timeing constraints are going to force us to push that episode off for a while. The next episode will be one that we film down at the PDC. See you there!

New Episode! The .NET Show: Management Services

The .NET Show: Management Services
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode052/manifest.xml)

I think that the only time that I actually add "Event Logging" code to my applications, is when I'm doing it to demonstrate some feature or aspect of the event logging code. And the event logs themselves, I rarely look at them at all, except to delete them from one of the antiquated servers running in my office when their disk space gets low.

Somebody was telling me the other day at how much better the eventing system is getting, and how much better application health and management will be, which will be great news for IT administrators... and while monitoring system events will be helpful, it will be even better if all of the applications being used in an enterprise environment utilzing the improved logging system as well. So it sounded like this would be a good topic to discuss on the show.

I invited Alex Sutton and Marty Hough to explain some of the great work they've been doing with the Management Services of Windows, as well as show their new event viewer, codnamed "Crimson", which tries to address most of the needs and issues that have surrounded the original Event Viewer that hasn't really changed much since Windows NT was first released more than ten years ago.

Do you think your usage of the Managment Services will change much after watching this episode? Let us know why, or why not, by dropping us a note in the "comments" section of this blog entry.

Thanks
-Robert Hess

New Episode! The .NET Show: 64-Bit Windows

The .NET Show: 64-Bit Windows
(http://m sdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode051/manifest.xml)

Don't you sometimes wish that system innovation would just slow down for a while? No? Me neither :->

It seems like only yesterday that we were focused on moving from the 16-bit world to the new and improved 32-bit one, and now I'm pleased to announce that the 64-bit world is not only looming on the horizon, but it is already here!

In my current episode of The .NET Show, I talk with Larry Sullivan, Volker Will, and Kevin Frei to learn more about the move to 64-bit, and what it might mean to your development efforts.

Larry Sullivan and Volker Will explain the benefits of moving to 64-bits.

In the first segment, Larry Sullivan and Volker Will discuss with me not only the value of 64-bit windows, but the issues and needs facing developers who are moving their applications as well. The process is a lot easier than it was in the 16-to-32 days, this time around it will usually be just a recompile that is necessary in order to get your applications fully enabled for the new 64-bit processors.

		Don't blink, or you'll miss Kevin Frei showing how quick and easy it is to move your application to 64-bits!

In our second segment, Kevin Frei illustrates how easy it can be to convert an existing 32-bit application over to 64-bit... it really can be just as easy as a re-compile. There can of course be other little issues that might make it a little more difficult than that, but most of this will be related to how properly you coded up your usage of ints and pointers, and if you are using any third 32-bit DLLs that won't be directly callable from a 64-bit applications (No "thunking" layer this time around!).

So check out this episode, and let us know what you think by dropping us a note in the "comments" section of this blog entry.

Thanks
-Robert Hess

New .NET Show Site Design

With our 50^th episode, we’ve also redesigned The .NET Show site. Some of the changes include:

• Cleaner, updated home page, with a look similar to the MSDN Dev Centers
• .NET Show blog postings available from the Show home page
• Episode pages have a cleaner, updated look (MSDN TV and .NET Show use the same template now for consistency) and include such additions as Related Links, a quick-viewing Details box, and shorter blurbs
• Cleaner looking Archive that can be sorted/filtered by title, date, or topic
• Older archived shows have been moved into the MSDN Archive
• New .NET Show imagery throughout the site (based on the new animation sequences that debuted with our 50^th Show)
• .NET Show site now has its own left nav

We hope you like the changes and improvements to the site. Please let us know what you think!

The .NET Show: OUR 50th EPISODE!

That's right, the .NET Show has been "on the air" now for over 5 years, and we've just published our 50th Episode! Sure, if we were doing weekly shows we would have hit this milestone a long time ago, but that's not the point :->

The .NET Show: The Future of the Platform

For such a special show, we figured that we should also have a slightly special topic, and special guests as well. Instead of talking about specific and actual technologies, I figured that you might want to try to get a little inside view of how we think about the "platform" here at Microsoft, specifically to hear about this from some of the people who are going to be responsible for breathing life into the platform as time goes on.

In the first segment, I have a bit of a round-table discussion with Brad Abrams, Michael Wallent, Steve Millet, and John Shewchuk regarding what they think the issues are that face us, and developers in general, in architecting the Windows platform moving forward. No, you won't hear any "spoilers" here, but you will hopefully get an understanding of how we are trying to solve various problems, as well as provide opportunities for new types of applications and solutions in future versions of Windows and the .NET Framework.

In the second segment, I talk one-on-one with Rick Rashid. He is a Senior Vice President here at Microsoft, and is in charge of Microsoft Research. They always seem to have a pretty fun and exciting job, experimenting with a wide variety of new technologies, techniques, hardware, as well as trying to breath a little life into just barely fleshed out concepts. Rick shares with us some details about various things that keep him busy, and what might someday make its way into some of the applications we use ever day.

And lastly, as a special treat, Erica Wiechers has a personal conversation with Bill Gates, hopefully providing you with some great insights as to who he is, and what he enjoys doing for fun. Did you know he's a big bridge fan (that's bridge the card-game, not bridge the commuting challenge).

We also had a little extra fun with this episode, not only filming in front of a live studio audience, but we also added a little extra footage around the show just to keep things interesting. So check out this episode, and let us know what you think by dropping us a note in the "comments" section of this post.

Thanks
-Robert Hess