If you are going to TechEd this year you should also check out ]inbetween[ my counterpart in Florida Joe Healy AKA devfish and the local Florida community is putting on a great event the weekend between the two weeks of TechEd. I had not wanted to go to TechEd until now but my team is out of budget for T&E for the year so I will have to miss this.

From all that I have seen Brad Abrams as the best wrap up of what is in SP1 at hi blog post Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 "SP1" Beta. It did not hurt that I stopped looking after I found it ;).

OK I know everyone in the .NET community reads Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com but just incase you missed this you need to checkout this cool new tool RockScroll in him post titled Introducing RockScroll. It is a way cool to visualize where you are in your code page!

This is an update to my last years list of SoCal user groups, like last year I wanted to have a resource that people can go to get an idea of what Microsoft Developer focused user groups are in Southern California so I have updated the list with the best information I can find. Again I do not clam this is the holistic but I hope that others will comment about other groups.

And again this list is not in any type of order! If I have any of this incorrect or you have a group you think that should be listed please comment on this post.

San Luis Obispo .NET User Group
http://www.slodotnet.org/

Central California .Net User Group
http://www.centralcaldotnet.com/

Inland Empire .NET User's Group
http://www.iedotnetug.org/

LA C# Developers Group
http://www.lacsharp.org/

LA Fox
http://www.lafox.org/

Los Angeles SQL Server Professionals Group
http://www.sql.la/

Los Angeles .NET Developers Group
http://www.ladotnet.org/

Los Angeles Connected Systems User Group - CS-UG.org
http://cs-ug.org/

South Bay .NET
http://www.southbaynet.org

Orange County .NET Server Users Group
http://www.ocnsug.org/

Southern California .Net Architecture Users Group
http://www.SoCalDotNetArchitecture.org/

Orange County C# Developers Group
http://www.occsharp.org/

Southern California .NET Developers Group
http://www.socaldotnet.org/

Orange County Visual Basic .Net Usergroup
http://www.ocvbug.org/

SoCal DotNetNuke Users Group
http://www.socaldug.org/

Orange County FoxPro Developers Group
http://www.ocfox.org/

Orange County Internet User Group
http://www.ociug.org/

Orange County Connected Systems SIG
http://www.ocdotnet.org/

San Diego .NET User Group
http://www.sandiegodotnet.com/

San Diego .NET Developers Group
http://www.sddotnetdg.org/

San Diego SQL Server Users Group
http://www.sdsqlug.org/

San Diego .NET User Group ASP.NET SIG
http://asp.sig.webpublishing.com/

San Diego Connected Systems SIG
http://www.sandiegodotnet.com/ConnectedSystemsSIG/

XP San Diego
http://www.xpsd.org/

Hawaii .Net
http://hawaiidotnet.org/

Community TJ.NET
http://www.tjnet.org

Last week I presented to to about 30 to 40 people in Irvine about developing applications for the Mobile platform using the Compact Framework. The audience was great, lot's of good questions and interactions, I had promised to post all the content after the class and while this fulfils the terms of that statement I am sorry it has take me this long.

There are still some Mobility Metro events scheduled see Loke Uei Tan's blog entry More Mobility Metro events for more information. I talked to Loke this week and he has assured me we will be doing more of these events in a few more months as well.

Wan to get up to speed on on .NET 3.5 (I know I do!) the Microsoft Corporate Platform Evangelism team released the .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit it has information on:

A lot! My two big things are Threaded Text Messaging & Cut, Copy, and Paste on a Non-Touch Screen device :).

The only problem now is Version has not said it would update the Q 9m, looks like it's time to go shopping.

Windows Mobile 6.1 – New Windows Mobile Software for Pocket PC and Smartphone

Have you been thinning of ways you could create solutions for your customers or company on the Windows Mobile platform? Well you are in luck! I am going to be running two Mobility Metro Events in the Microsoft offices San Diego and Irvine on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 and Thursday, April 24, 2008. I will post the full details below... I hope to see you there!

asp.netPro magazine is looking for feed back as to the best products for developers out there... check it out and lets let the venders know who is on top this year asp.netPRO Readers Choice Awards.

You will now see why we don't do the marking for Microsoft products!

Jason did a killer job editing and setting up the shots for this, good job man!

While at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo I was doing a demonstration of Internet Explorer 8 Beta and showing off a new add-on type called Activities. During the demo I had a weak moment and said that it looked so easy to implement that while the bus was driving on the way to Mountain View, CA after the meeting I would implement an Activity for Wikipedia. I thought I understood what I needed to do from just looking at the Windows Live Maps sample but I wanted to make sure. So I found the current documentation Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit and the Activities white paper and gleaned the rest from the available samples. Here's what I came up with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<openServiceDescription xmlns="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0">
  <homepageUrl>http://en.wikipedia.org/</homepageUrl>
  <display>
    <name>Define with Wikipedia</name>
    <icon>http://en.wikipedia.org/favicon.ico</icon>
  </display>
  <activity category="Define">
    <activityAction context="selection" >
      <execute action="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search={selection}" />
    </activityAction>
  </activity>
</openServiceDescription>

I did learn that you need to use the proper capitalization for the category so that the new Activity will be grouped with the other Activities of that category in the "Manage Add-ons" dialog.

Once you have the XML file you need to install it, it turns out quite easy to do:

<button onclick="window.external.addService('http://thecodetrip.com/common/wikipedia_activity.xml')">Add Define Activity</button>

Now a button like this oneAdd Wikipedia Define Activity (yes it's live) will show up.

So how long did this take? Including a stop at Taco Bell on the way out of San Luis Obispo this took less than an hour to implement! Now that is an easy way to improve the user's experience and help drive traffic to sites.

That's right the Code Trip is coming to Southern California we will be doing some fun events while the bus is here. The bus will be coming from Phoenix to San Diego on the 24th some time in the early evening. We will be keeping the bus at my families winery in Rancho Bernardo (Bernardo Winery) where it will stay  until about 4:30p on the 25th where it will be heading to the San Diego .NET Users Group meeting in Scripps Ranch Library where we will get to hear from Michele Leroux Bustamente and Jon Galloway on SilverLight and WCF. We will have Pizza and a bunch of giveaways!

That night we will be driving to Irvine and staying at the Hyatt next to the Microsoft Office where we will have the next event on the 26th. We will hear from John Bowen about the iZooFari project and David Robinson about SQL Server Data Services. This event is being sponsored by speakTECH!

On the 27th the Code Trip is earning it's pay! We have three event we will be at:

Cal State Fullerton
USC
LA Geek Dinner

At each we will have different things going on so any of them will be a good place to catch us!

On the 28th we have a special party at RedBull planed we will hear again from David Robinson and we will see some cool SilverLight applications but mostly we will be socializing and getting to know other developers in SoCal. Space is quite limited so please register soon!

And finally we will be stopping at Cuesta Community College in San Luis Obispo where we will speak to a few classes and have a community meeting as well.

I hope if you are in SoCal you can make one or more of these events I am sure you will see some new stuff and have a bunch of fun!

W00t late last night Jason got the Code Trips home page to be the map that we had originally wanted to to be there. You need to check it out! When we have Internet connectivity we publish to the server once a minute the potion of the bus and every 2 minutes any client looking at the map will poll for the current location.

Good job Jason!

I am a D&D fan, the original D&D books were some of the fist non school books reading I ever did. The creator of the original game was Gary Gygax and I found out yesterday that he had died. I did not know what a good tribute to him would be but today from Scott's web site I saw this cartoon from xkcd.

This morning Tim, Jason & myself got up and walked a few blocks from the Venetian and found the Code Trip bus and all I can say is WOW! I was more than a little skeptical about the bus but all my doubt was totally erased. This bus evidently just came off tour with the current incarnation of Styx and has been used at the Super bowl (not sure I want to know what for) there are six bunks and a back a front lounge and a small frig and sink crammed in the middle. Each bunk has a DVD player and can watch the TV station that is being watched on the DirectTV throughout the bus (as seen below). I am now way excited to get this trip going and I hope everyone can make a little time to come out and see this insanity as it rolls along!

The bus as we first found it

one of the bunks with TV folded down