Windows .NET Blog

Windows Live! Lives...

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:09:57 -0500

Microsoft is massively increasing its offerings under the Windows Live platform umbrella and it's worth a look if you're doing anything in the web space (who isn't these days).

Visual Studio.NET 2008 goes live!

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:41:40 -0500

Well, the long wait is finally over for Microsoft-technology developers. Visual Studio.NET 2008 (formerly code-named Orcas) was released by Microsoft on Nov 19th 2007. Microsoft immediately made the release available for download from MSDN for users with a current subscription. In addition to the IDE and other developer tools, an enhanced Team Foundation Server was also released providing a series of new capabilities to users.

Scrum: Are distributed teams an oxymoron?

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:50:27 -0500

As an Agile practice, Scrum puts great emphasis on frequent daily colloboration among the team members. As an example, the Daily Scrum is a 15-minute, daily, stand-up meeting where the Team comes together to discuss the all important 3 questions - what did I do/finish yesterday, what am I working on today, and what is holding me up? Often, Scrum teams work in large, open rooms where dedicated workspace is eschewed in order to work more closely together on common tables. Whiteboards are hung on the walls with notes, product backlog items (PBIs), impediments, the Scrum burndown chart, and so on. So it would seem that a team that needs or wants to be distributed outside of a single space is a no-can-do in Scrum, right?

Wrong.

TeamPlain v2.0 is unleashed

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:57:00 -0500

You may recall that Microsoft purchased TeamPlain v1.0 from DevBiz Solutions earlier this year. This is the web based front end to the Microsoft Team Foundation Server. It's much simpler and easier to use that the Team Explorer that comes with Visual Studio. And it relieves end users from having to install Visual Studio to interact with a TFS project. DevBiz was in the middle of v2.0 when they were purchased. Since this, all has been quiet.

Until now.

Windows Workflow Survey

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:19:05 -0500

Kavita Kamani posted a link to a Windows Workflow Survey now being conducted by Microsoft's Connected System Division. They're looking for input on potential improvements for future releases, but they're also interested in hearing from developers who aren't currently using Windows Workflow. The survey takes about 30 minutes.

PowerGUI: get-beta �newest

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:28:35 -0500

Recent MVP inductee Dmitry Sotnikov has released the latest beta of PowerGUI, the free admin console for Windows Powershell. PowerGUI.1.0.11.207 includes several improvements suggested by users, including the standalone mode script editor. Last August, Dmitry demonstrated PowerGUI for Microsoft's Jeffrey Snover on Channel 9. Jeffrey and Dmitry also contemplated future enhancements: Learn and Master Windows PowerShell with Quest Software�s PowerGUI. The PowerGUI site also features several additional screencam demos.

Bundles of Advice

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:34:59 -0500

The Microsoft Patterns & Practices team has been busy bundling their advice. So busy in fact, they've decided to package the advice along with software bits including software components, test harnesses, guidance documents, How-To tutorials, and so on. And you guessed it. They're calling these things bundles.

Moving up the Food Chain

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:56:03 -0500

The astonishing, and to me, profound thing about some the new .NET technology coming out from Microsoft is how we are now beginning to move away from low-level, implementation worries and toward enabling construction of applications from ever larger abstractions. In a way, and to me at least, this is what will get us to where we need to be to deal with ever larger amounts of complexity.

Time for bigger plates.

IIS 6 is Tops in Server Survey

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:31:43 -0500

Port80 Software develops security and performance tools for Microsoft IIS Servers. It released the results of a recent survey of server usage in Fortune 1000 companies, which states that IIS 6 passed IIS 5 for the first time as the leading web server platform, with a ranking of 36.5 percent. This also puts IIS 6 ahead of the Apache server, at least among Fortune 1000 sites.

.NET Future Directions

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:44:30 -0500

So you've gotten used to .NET 2.0, and are probably reading up on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), LINQ, and so on. You're probably thinking that there's a lot of parts to .NET now, and you're drinking from the proverbial firehose.

Microsoft hasn't even gotten warmed up.

Petzold Consulting on WPF for Wintellect

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:30:16 -0500

Training and consultant services firm Wintellect has announced that noted author and sometimes U-Haul driver Charles Petzold is consulting for the company, working with clients on Windows Presentation Foundation projects. Charles' latest book, 3D Programming for Windows, was released in July. He's worked with the company previously, delivering the keynote at Wintellect's Devscovery conference last May. Visit Wintellect's site for more info on its collaboration with Charles.

Cubicaller Add-in Products

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:08:24 -0500

The Cubicaller cubicle door bell gives your workmates a way to announce their presence at your desk. (It also gives the manufacturer a way to announce that it was able to talk you out of $12.) I see the Cubicaller market really taking off after I invent the Cubi-Bag-of-Flaming-Dog-Poo.

Silverlight Talks in SL and RL

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:07:37 -0500

Amanda Silver, Lead Program Manager for Visual Basic (and 50 Cent fan) is giving a talk in Second Life, Tuesday, July 31, 4 p.m. Pacific Time (which is also Second Life Time). The talk is being held on Visual Studio Island (Here's the SLURL). Amanda will be speaking in the Visual Studio Theater. Come early to get a good view -- the theater only seats about 60 avatars.

If you miss today's talk, Brad Abrams, GPM for the UI Framework and Services team is giving a talk on the Island on August 30, at 3:00 p.m. Brad will be discussing ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight. If you're new to Second Life and want more info before signing up, check out www.visualstudioisland.com. Also if it's dark out when you get to the island, you can always Crtl-Shift-Y to force the sun to noon. For more online Silverlight training check out Dr. Dobb's Sparkleball tutorial.

As for Real Life training, Tim Sneath has posted a healthy list of Silverlight and WPF training courses happening in RL all around the globe. The courses are being held throughout August and September by Microsoft partners, including Wintellect, Dunn Training, Developmentor, and others.

Scrum: How to be consistent about Team weighting

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:54:35 -0500

Occasionally I'll return to the theme of Agile/Scrum and cover more detailed HowTo's that hopefully will give you additional insight into applying Scrum to your development practices. This time I'll cover issues around Team weighting of Product Backlog items for a Sprint, and the challenges of keeping consistency in the weights themselves.

IronRuby Pre-Alpha released

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:26:16 -0500

Microsoft's John Lam announced the 0.1 Pre-Alpha release of Iron Ruby at the OSCON 2007.
IronRuby is an .NET implementation of the Ruby programming language and is licensed under the Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL), which allows users to view, modify, and redistribute the source code for either commercial or non-commercial purposes. JOhn also announced that they're inviting any interested parties to contribute source to the IronRuby libraries (although not to the compiler proper just yet).