Knowledge Matters

Windows Phone 7 BootCamp in Dallas next week

PhilWheat — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:52:42 +0000

I had several people ask me about our Windows Phone 7 Developer Bootcamp series – well, we have one coming up in Dallas and I promised to post the registration. Well here it is! Dallas, TX I’ll have the information for the rest of the local boot camps as they get a bit closer

Generation Gap

PhilWheat — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 02:31:53 +0000

OK, been quiet for just TOO long. Wanted to post a quick observation to break the silence. I’m an old Geek. (If you’ve met me you know I can’t lie about that.) But I do try to keep up with ideas (and hopefully get ahead of a few.) But something’s been bothering me and it’s a very SOCIAL not Technical thing.

I’m still used to having my username assigned.

Gen Today is used to generating their own username.

THIS IS KEY.

If you’re a corporation – you’re used to on-boarding people (Spellchecker wanted the hyphen, I’ve never seen it in real life) and part of that process is generating a user ID that more than likely permeates through the organization. Sometimes two or three or a dozen. You expect people to have this as their primary, most of their waking life identity. Their identity is key to their day job, and anything they do outside of that MUST be separate.

If you’re an independent you expect to have control over your ID and anything that may be pre-generated becomes a task and something that you’re just going to have to deal with, but like waste disposal, do it as quickly and efficiently as you can to get back to the real stuff. If you don’t have this – unfortunately you don’t really succeed as an independent, you end up on someone’s staff.

If you’re of my generation – your “True Name” may be something supplemented an alias you don’t hang your hat on in public. It’s your RPG/Shadow/Ghost name. “Mr Slippery” isn’t a name for someone that has an office address. Something you say what you think with (hopefully) little hope of reprisal. If you don’t have one then traditionally you may have been a “Lurker.” Someone that hears much, says little and stays in the wings of the theater.

But that’s changing. More startup companies and business are identifying either both online and offline as the same thing, or identifying with their online identity first. You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your given name, so to some extent that’s not as surprising as it might be.

I find this VERY interesting.

IASA Austin Openspace, June 17-19

PhilWheat — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:40:00 +0000

Got the word from Brandon Satrom that IASA Austin is having an OpenSpace event June 17-19. All you going to TechEd will be back in time, and Doc List will be organizing. Set your calendars and alarm clocks and don’t be shy about signing up, from my experiences during the last event here in Austin, it’s going to be a great chance to learn and network!

http://iasaopenspace.eventbrite.com/

Micro Framework 4.1 Beta, now with Open Source contributions

PhilWheat — Tue, 18 May 2010 19:34:21 +0000

If you’ve been following the path of the Microsoft Micro Framework (and maybe talked with us at the ‘08 Austin Maker Faire) then you know that things have moved forward and open sourced a LOT. Well, today we just announced that the beta for .Net Micro Framework 4.1 has opened up on http://connect.microsoft.com. Take a look! Some very cutting edge stuff going on there!

OData with Doug Purdy

PhilWheat — Thu, 06 May 2010 17:49:55 +0000

Just a heads up on some good content – tomorrow (Friday, May 7th) Doug Purdy is going to be presenting on OData in our Architect Innovation Cafe, 2-3pm central. If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at OData or just want to hear more about it and make sure you’ve got the latest info, this would be a great chance.

You can register for the webcast at http://bit.ly/OData_Guide

SharePress

PhilWheat — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:27:48 +0000

Use SharePoint, but also like all the work that communities around WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are doing? Guess what, there’s an answer. SharePress. I could write it up, but it’s already been one over at http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2010/04/01/introducing-sharepress.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bsimser+%28Fear+and+Loathing%29 –

Win a MakerBot CupCake 3d Printer

PhilWheat — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:57:10 +0000

The Twin Cities HackFactory is looking to raise some funding and is raffling off a CupCake 3d printer. I wanted to help spread the word both because the giveaway is so cool, and it’s a great program to support.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/03/win_a_makerbot_cupcake.html

The revolution will be printed

PhilWheat — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:38:00 +0000

This past week, for me the big news in consumer electronics wasn’t what you probably thought. The big names all were all talking mobility of one fashion or another, but one of the companies that can make a claim to bringing printers into the home is now applying that same talent to 3d Printers. Yep, that’s right HP is now working with Stratasys to bring 3d printing to a much wider array of people. This has huge potential for localsourcing manufacturing and changing how economics work in quite a number of markets.

http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/357-Stratasys-and-HP-join-forces-to-make-3D-printers.html

Thoughts

PhilWheat — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:18:00 +0000

He was alone with his thoughts. They were extremely unpleasant thoughts and he would rather have had a chaperon.

— Douglas Adams, Lft, the Universe, and Everything (1982)

Setting up a SharePoint Development environment.

PhilWheat — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:56:00 +0000

One of the most common questions I get asked from developers is “What is the best way to set up a SharePoint Dev Environment. And they normally get a much longer answer than they’d like – there are a lot of things that can affect the answer – how many people are working together, what are their roles, how locked down are your developer boxes, are you using TFS… the list goes on.

Well, things are changing for SharePoint 2010. And it’s a change for the better – I’ll cover a lot of the new items as we go along, but I would like to point out that the MSDN documentation now calls out the “standard” process for setting up a dev environment. You can find it at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx and use it as a basis for putting together your own customized development environment.

If you want a little more discussion on the matter, you can see what’s going on in the SharePoint Dev Wiki at http://www.sharepointdevwiki.com/display/sp2010/Building+a+SharePoint+2010+Development+machine