You’ll find the demo here on Joe’s blog. The rest of the site – and in particular Joe’s forums – are also well worth a look if you’re in the process of getting to grips with LINQ.

Many books introduce C#, but if you don’t have the time to read 1200 pages, Accelerated C# 2008 gives you everything you need to know about C# 2008 in a concentrated 500 pages of must-know information and best practices.

C# 2008 offers powerful new features, and Accelerated C# 2008 is the fastest path to mastery, for both experienced C# programmers moving to C# 2008 and programmers moving to C# from another object-oriented language.

You’ll quickly master C# syntax while learning how the CLR simplifies many programming tasks. You’ll also learn best practices that ensure your code will be efficient, reusable, and robust. Why spend months or years discovering the best ways to design and code C# when this book will show you how to do things the right way, right from the start?

The first edition of this book was released at the 2001 Tech Ed conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Since that time, this text has been revised, tweaked, and enhanced to account for the changes found within each release of the .NET platform (1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and now 3.5).

The last version, .NET 3.0, was more of an augmentative release, essentially providing three new APIs: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). As you would expect, coverage of the “W’s” has been expanded a great deal in this version of the book from the previous Special Edition text.

Unlike .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5 provides dozens of new C# language features and .NET APIs. This edition of the book will walk you through all of this new material using the same readable approach as was found in previous editions. Rest assured, you’ll find detailed coverage of Language Integrated Query (LINQ), the C# 2008 language changes (automatic properties, extension methods, anonymous types, etc.) and the numerous bells and whistles of Visual Studio 2008.

Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate Evaluation, with the 3 descriptions/options

Evaluate the Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate today

[1] http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/buzzentry.jspa?threadID=2581

I thought that Double-Take’s article on how to protect SQL Server instances was particularly useful and – as a 5KB PDF – very accessible, too.

If you’re to believe Microsoft, Stirling, their next version of Forefront security products, comes close to this standard. Check it out.

The article concerns the new ASP.NET Control Extenders derived from the System.Web.UI.ExtenderControl base class. These extenders allow you to add additional functionality, most usually AJAX of JavaScript user interface enhancements, to existing controls that you’ve already declared on your ASP.NET page. They provide a very neat method of keeping your UI code separate from your business logic. Scott provides a fully worked example of just the right length to make excellent lunch-break reading.

All of this comes about from the latest rumblings about the Warsaw API—which is indeed the UCMA. Curious? Joe says this about that:

There have been a number of names for this API. Until recently it was called UCP.NET and within our team we still refer to it as Warsaw, which some of you may have heard. Speech Server is built on top of this API and it allows you to create efficient SIP clients and SIP servers. This is the recommended API for creating middle tier applications and it is designed to be highly scalable. I will cover this API in depth in this series.

Looks like it’s in beta 3 now, but surely this is an API developers are interested in if they’re working on the space where Speech Server and SIP converge.

We have a book on Office Communications Server coming, and in the meantime we have a an excellent book, Pro LCS, that covers Live Communication Server administration in great detail.