Microsoft has now made the Visual Studio 2005 Community Technical Preview available to MSDN subscribers and those in attendance at VS live. The download on MSDN is a whopping 2.7gb DVD ISO image. I'm glad that it was put up as a single complete download. Yes, it takes a while to transfer, but that just gives us extra time to do our real work.

On the topic of 2.7gb downloads, I can't help but think back to the good old days of modems, Bulliten Board Systems (BBS), and files over 100k being huge! Hmm... 2.7gb at 2400 baud? if I started back in 1988, would I have the file yet? Heck, I remember going all out and buy my first 100mb hard drive! Ahh... those were the days.

Oh ya... back to the real work.

Posted in Longhorn | Rant  | Comments [0] 

Carl says that Bill said (At VSLive) that a new version of the Whidbey bits are on their way. There has been a lot of talk recently about these early releases of code. I think it's a great move to get the tools in the hands of developers as early as possible. As one recent article quotes Prashant Sridharan, lead product manager for Visual Studio, as saying “Developers will install anything, whereas an IT guy in the data center will not,"  While that's probably true, I think the importance is in getting developers comfortable with the tools as early as possible.

This new “community technical previews“ version will apparently be dsitributed Thursday to... I'm not sure to who, but I'll make sure I start checking my mailbox that day.

I hadn't noticed this before, but it also appears that Microsoft is officially referrign to Whidbey as Visual Studio 2005 and the .Net Framework 2.0. They have an excellent roadmap available here

Posted in Longhorn | Software  | Comments [0] 

Canadian cellular service provider Telus is apparently the first to sign on to use an innovative new style of keyboard called “Fastap” developed by Digit Wireless. The phones are to be manufactured by LG and distributed in Canada by Telus. For more details see the press release here. For delivery details check with your local Telus Mobility Dealer. Soon we'll need to start to sharpen our fingers!

Posted in Telephony  | Comments [0] 

April Triangle .Net User Group Meeting 4/14/2004 Preview of Indigo Service oriented architectures are becoming the norm for enterprise systems in today's distributed world. The heart of SOA is messaging standards, and the defacto standard for messaging is web services. Web Services are quickly moving to the forefront of corporate information exchange, and XML is the most common messaging format to describe the data. Indigo is the codename for Microsoft’s new messaging framework. It provides rich support for SOA that is complementary to traditional object-oriented approaches. Indigo represents the best of .NET Remoting, ASP.NET, .NET Enterprise Services, and web service Extensions (WSE), rolling them into a unified programming and administrative model. Indigo supports standards such as HTTP, XML, and SOAP, and delivers a mechanism for secure, reliable, transacted messaging. Indigo will be included in the next version of Microsoft Windows, code-named “Longhorn”, although it should be available independently at some time before Longhorn ships.

Posted in Longhorn | TRINUG  | Comments [0] 

If you're trying to figure out how to use the Data Access Application Block to fill a typed dataset, look here. Thanks Roy (and other contributors) for some great info!

Posted in Software  | Comments [0] 

If you went to DevDays make sure you take a look at the IssueVision sample code located on the DevDays 2004 DVD. It has some great example code for all sorts of things ranging from installation and deployment to using web services to update data in a semi-connected environment.

Posted in Software  | Comments [7] 

The New Microsoft Way? Thursday, March 11, 2004 6:00 PM Today in an email response to being forwarded a News.Com Link to a story about Yukon and Whidbey being delayed, I started to think about what that really meant. I sense a new trend in Microsoft's approach to things and in the end, even with delays, I wonder if it will result in a faster adoption rate of their new products. Here's my theory, and I stress MY THEORY, I have nothing official to really it on.

Posted in Software  | Comments [0] 

A big thanks to Doug and all the speakers for putting on a very enjoyable and informative DevDays 2004 in Durham, NC. Some of the key points that made it into my notes are:

Posted in Rant | Software | TRINUG  | Comments [2] 

Tonight at the Triangle .Net Users group we were treated to the best SQL Server Yukon presentation I've seen since PDC. Ok, so it's the only one I've seen since PDC, but it was worth the wait! Peter Debetta from Wintellect fame gave us an excellent look at the new .Net technologies that will be a part of Yukon and lead some great discussions on when and where using .Net code instead of T-SQL makes sense.

Posted in TRINUG  | Comments [1] 

Devdays is here!

Doug Turnure and a cast of others have started the day with a keynote. Following a couple video's about the IRL and Match.com using .Net technologies to “do more with less“, they are focusing on a number of new Microsoft products including Biztalk Server, SQL Reporting Serivices, and Whitehorse.  SQL reporting services is one of those great looking tools that I really need to take a closer look at. It looks like a very effective way to provide end users with reports on data. Whitehorse, shown by Ken Spencer is described as an “Integrated model-driven set of design tools to increase productivity and predicatability in design, development, deployment and maintenance of service-oriented distrubted systems“. Translation: Very Cool! It's far from just another code generator.

I'm going to be attending the Smart Client presentations and will post anything of interest.

Greg and I will be at the TRINUG user group table during the breaks meeting and hope to make many new .Net contacts.

Posted in Software | TRINUG  | Comments [0] 

Yesterday I attended an excellent MSDN event on security related topics. Glen Gordon presented two sessions, Writing Secure Code – Threat Defense and Implementing Application Security Using The .Net Frame (Presentations available here). While I'm finding I can always enjoy and take away something useful from Glen’s presentations, I really think Microsoft deserves some credit for getting the word out to the development community on security. Yes, they have had their own problems in the past with their own code, but they’re on a mission to make sure that none of us take security for granted and are getting the word out quite effectively through webcasts, MSDN events, and I’m sure we’ll hear even more great information at DevDays.

Posted in Software  | Comments [0] 

Microsoft is presenting an additional event following DevDays March 9th in Raleigh-Durham. Mark Scott will be giving a presentaion on . Microsoft is asking that anybody wishing to attend to register

Posted in Software  | Comments [0]