Having Fun With .NET

Office 2010 Technical Preview for Students & Teachers

2009-06-18T16:47:13Z

There is an additional Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview program which is focused on consumers, students (teachers too!) and home users.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably fall into one of those categories If you are one of these people and would like to try out the Office 2010 Technical Preview please go here: http://connect.microsoft.com/office/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=3304&InvitationID=C2R-HKRJ-CMDH.

Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview

2009-05-11T20:35:34Z

Announced at TechEd this morning; Office 2010 Technical Preview for Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Communicator 2010, Access 2010, InfoPath 2010 and Publisher 2010.

The Art of XSD - Available as Free eBook

2009-04-28T20:18:21Z

Jacob Sebastian, a SQL Server MVP from Ahmedabad, India has just got his book published - The Art of XSD - SQL Server XML Schema Collections. What’s remarkable is that he’s managed to make the eBook available as a free download for all. A print and Kindle edition is coming up shortly.

The Art of XSD - SQL Server XML Schema Collections is a 485 page book that takes the readers step by step from the basics to advanced topics on XSD and SQL Server XML Schema Collections. Prior knowledge of XSD is not required to start with this book, although any experience with XSD will make your learning process easier.

Jacob has also implemented a group, a forum, and a blog to support the book which would allow him to discuss, answer reader questions, listen to feedback, and provide the readers latest information on the topics discussed in this book.

Office 2007 SP2 Now Available for Download

2009-04-28T20:10:28Z

Today the availability of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office system was announced. The service pack includes major performance enhancements for Office applications, most notably Microsoft Office Outlook, as well as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. One big benefit is SP2’s boost to interoperability — with this release, Office supports additional built-in file formats such as PDF and ODF. Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b444bf18-79ea-46c6-8a81-9db49b4ab6e5&displaylang=en.

How to Rule The World using Embedded Devices

2009-04-26T23:14:23Z

Rob Miles, professor on the University of Hull, is one of the presenters on the GeekNight 2009 event in The Netherlands. He’ll be reveiling how to take over the world with embedded devices, your C# and Visual Studio skills and even has an special surprise in store, it involves a mysterious button! See the video here for more madness.

On a side note: I have to say that it all sounds a bit like:

* Pinky and the brain…

Lang.NET 2009 Session Recordings Available

2009-04-24T19:50:25Z

The 2009 Lang.NET Symposium was held last week in Redmond, WA and is a chance to hear about the latest in languages, IDE’s, compilers, and more. Here’s part of the description from the site:

Lang.NET is a forum for discussion of programming languages, managed execution environments, compilers, multi-language libraries, and integrated development environments. It provides an excellent opportunity for programming language implementers and researchers from both industry and academia to meet and share their knowledge, experience, and suggestions for future research and development in the area of programming languages.

So, why do I mention this? Because the session recordings are free (and don’t even need a login).

Head over to the recordings or to the speaker/sessions page and check out talks on:

CLR 4
Code ContractsDLR
Co- and Contra-variance
F#
Visual Studio 2010
Pex
Second Life
Irony
Eiffel
IronPython
PowerShell
Axum
Reactive Framework
and others

The recordings from 2008 are available as well (and still very relevant).

New Looks and new Branding

2009-04-23T22:13:35Z

As you probably will notice if you have visited this site before, it has gotten a new look and feel to it. I personally like it very much since it gives a nicer overview from the home page, where you can more easily follow what’s happening with me (which is always a good thing ;)). Furthermore you can now see my status updates on the interwebz like twitter, youtube favs, stumbleupon and flickr in sidebar ‘Find me Elsewhere’.

Also I rebranded the site from my (previously) main domain shifd.net to havingfunwith.net. Which I think will better resemble the content that I want to start sharing from now on (more code). The old URL however will still remain to work, so no need to update your favorites (except if you want to ofcourse).

I would very much like to know what you think of the new design. You can use the ‘Get in Touch’ box below to contact me directly. There will probably still be some bugs in the beginning so please bear with me as I keep on training the monkeys.

That’s it for now! See you soon…

MIX’09 Day 1 Sessions Available Now!

2009-04-23T21:19:47Z

Take a trip over to http://sessions.visitmix.com/MIX09 and you can watch and download the sessions from Day 1:

Quite an extensive list so pick wisely which ones you’re going to watch

Software Testing Day @ TUDelft

2009-03-19T23:11:28Z

Together with Devnology (Pieter Joost van de Sande and Freek Leemhuis) Michel van den Berg is organizing a day on software testing. As the event is for Dutch people, so is the following text:

Voor dit gastcollege hebben we een aantal experts uit de software industrie bereid gevonden om hun expertise te delen met de derdejaars studenten Software Engineering. Het curriculum van het huidige trimester behandelt het onderwerp Software Testen en wordt verzorgd door Prof. Dr. Arie van Deursen.

Voor meer info check de blog post van Michel hier.

Flyer

Internet Explorer 8 RTW!

2009-04-23T21:22:30Z

Windows Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Vista 64-bit Edition or Windows Server 2008 64-bit Edition

Windows Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP

Windows Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 64-bit Edition or Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition

Silverlight 3 Beta is Live!

2009-04-24T16:24:40Z

If You Want To Develop Silverlight 3 Apps

If You Want To Run Silverlight 3 Apps

Live Search to get replaced by Kumo?

2009-03-03T19:24:12Z

Microsoft is testing Kumo- the upgrade to Live Search internally. Kumo — at least as it was conceived by Microsoft initially — was not simply a codename. It was one of a handful of new brand names (the other two I heard about being “Hook” and “Bing”) which Microsoft was considering as new potential branding candidates for “Live Search.”

I’m still thinking Kumo is likely to be the new name for Microsoft’s Live Search because, would you rather “Kumo” it than “Live Search” it?

BoomTown’s Kara Swisher posted Microsoft’s internal memo on Kumo, but more importantly posted three screen shots. All are worth a look. The interface has good groupings, a friendly nav and appears to integrate some of the look and feel that the Powerset acquisition provided.

Here are the three screenshots too:

Team Foundation Server 2010 Install Screens

2009-04-23T21:25:04Z

After last weeks announcements of the Visual Studio 2010 UI refresh by Jason Zander, today I found a couple of the new installation wizard for TFS 2010. This time it’s Willy-Peter Schaub who provides us with actual screenshots of the setup process.

Argotic a Syndication Framework

2009-03-02T20:53:26Z

I was just looking for a library which allowed me to consume both Atom and Rss feeds, and the Argotic framework project on Codeplex seemed the best one.

According to the project site on codeplex:

A powerful and extensible .NET web content syndication framework for RSS, Atom, OPML, APML, BlogML, RSD and more. The Argotic Syndication Framework is a Microsoft .NET class library framework that enables developers to easily consume and/or generate syndicated content from within their own applications. The framework makes the reading and writing syndicated content in common formats such as RSS, Atom, OPML, APML, BlogML, and RSD very easy while still remaining extensible enough to support common/custom extensions to the syndication publishing formats. The framework includes out-of-the-box implementations of the most commonly used syndication extensions, network clients for sending and receiving peer-to-peer notification protocol messages; as well as HTTP handlers, modules, services and controls that provide rich syndication functionality to ASP.NET developers.

So if you need something like this as well, go take a look at it at codeplex.

New UI for Visual Studio 2010

2009-04-23T21:21:47Z

Jason Zander just revealed the new UI for Visual Studio. It is completely built in WPF on the .NET Framework 4.0.

Personally I’m really looking forward to the multi monitor support that’s now part of the IDE, and I’m also looking forward to the extensibility features.

Go take a look for yourself at the other pictures of what the product we all love looks like

New Version of Oxite Released!

2009-04-23T21:20:44Z

Oxite is a sample ASP.Net MVC application, that provides guidance, extensions and best practices for building ASP.Net MVC applications. The famous application built using Oxite is MIX Online.

The new release contains architecture improvements and new features:

New Model, Services and Repositories
Dependency Injection (Routes, Controllers, Services, Repositories, etc)
ActionFilter Registry
Better test coverage
New validation class added
Improved background services architecture
Projects cleaned up and consolidated
Views cleaned up
No more *.cs or *.cs.designer for views in web project
Now works in a sub directory
New admin dashboard
New and update (from last version) SQL scripts included
Many other small features, improvements and bug fixes

Download Oxite source code from here.

Enjoy!

Windows Mobile 6.5 Walkthrough

2009-02-16T18:49:33Z

Engadget are at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, looks like they managed to get some time with a Windows Mobile 6.5 device - check out the review and video here.

I’ve included some previews below:

Microsoft MyPhone or My Phone?

2009-02-16T18:43:35Z

Today at Mobile World Congress Microsoft announced a new free service called My Phone. The service is available as part of a limited beta, meaning it’s possible you might get temporarily waitlisted, but the queue should progress quickly as things ramp up. Now, some of you might have heard rumors about it last week and already have questions, while others might just be curious what My Phone is all about. I took some time to talk with the team responsible for the product and hopefully this post will answer your questions and give you an idea what to expect from the service.

So, what is Microsoft My Phone? Well, basically it consists of a password-protected web site and an on-device application, which together will help you back-up, restore, and manage your mobile phone data. If you’ve ever wanted to save your text messages, hated re-entering all your contact information when you bought a new phone, or wished you could easily archive some of your pictures, then I think you’re about to be happy.

From the main site, getting started is as simple as entering your Windows Live ID. After you’re signed in to the web site, you’ll need to download the application to your Windows Mobile phone. You can either navigate to an installation link using your phone’s browser or you can have a link text messaged to your phone.

Once the application is installed on your phone, setting things up is pretty easy. You’ll need to enter your Windows Live ID and select your synchronization method, but after that the application does pretty much everything for you. By default, My Phone synchronizes contacts, calendar appointments, tasks, photos, videos, text messages, music, and documents that are stored on the device. If you want to synchronize items from a storage card you’ll need to change your My Phone settings, but it is possible. For more specifics on what can and can not be synchronized, see the My Phone information page.

When setup is complete, your phone will begin to synchronize with the online website. You don’t have to watch, but it’s kind of interesting and doesn’t really take that long if you want to stick it out. As you can see below, my first synchronization was successful and, among other things, backed up 144 text messages. Let’s go see what that looks like online.

After logging into the My Phone site, you’ll see a pretty clean interface. The My Phone service provides users with 200 MB of storage. As you can see below, synchronized data is broken up into relevant categories on the left hand side of the screen. For now, let’s take a look at my Text Messages as an example of how your data would be accessible.

Clicking on the Text Messages category, you’ll be presented with your most recent text messages. The rest can be seen by using the page drop down menu, in this case I’m on page 1 of 10. Taking a look at the screen you’ll notice a couple of things. When you click on a specific text message, you’ll see on the right side of the screen that you have the ability to delete it or archive it to the web. The little device icon on each row, indicates that all of my text messages are currently synchronized. If they were archived, you’d see a little box with an arrow. Archived means that the text message is removed from the phone and stored on the web. Anything that is archived can later be restored to the phone. You’ll also notice that you have the ability to search your text messages and filter them by type (sent/received/draft).

Switching over to videos, you’ll notice that the interface is similar, but not quite the same. Unlike text messages, for videos you’ll have the additional ability to upload to the web site for synchronization and download from the web site to your computer for local viewing. Documents, music, and photos all essentially work the same way.

The calendar, like contacts and tasks, presents a third interface that is slightly different from the others. For these categories, in addition to the functionality you’d expect, you have the added ability to create new records. These new contacts, appointments, and tasks can then be synchronized to the device.

I know that was a quick overview of what the My Phone service offers, but hopefully it helped some. If you have questions please feel free to post them as comments and we’ll try to get you an answer. You can also get more information at the My Phone team blog and the My Phone forum.

How many dimensions are there

2009-01-30T17:49:50Z

I just found this on a fellow MSP blog, really interesting theory

Part One:

Part Two:

Java to C# Orange Book

2009-01-28T12:16:46Z

So perhaps you are teaching Java and your students want to learn C# (sea sharp). Or maybe you want to learn or teach C# your self and are coming from a Java background. Well I have found the free resource for you. Rob Miles who wrote the free “C# Yellow Book” text book that I have written about before has a new free book out. This one is called the C Sharp from Java Orange Book And of course the book has an orange color.

The book (<500kb and about 27 pages) includes a host of “how do I” questions and answers that should be most helpful for people moving from Java to C#. The two languages are a lot a like in many ways but there are those little differences that can easily bite someone making a transition. Rob’s got a great collection here and I rate this as a must have for people doing both Java and C#. Thanks Rob!

First Day Eval of TechEd Barcelona

2008-11-10T23:39:58Z

So today was a long day, we left our hotel early this morning at about 5:15 by transfer to Schiphol Airport. When Michel and I arrived there we decided to start off with a breakfast because we were both quite hungry and we hadn’t had food since well like 6 hours Almost immediately I was phoned by Brian and Yousef where we were, and so we met all the Dutch MSP’s.

So fast forward to Barcelona it was really nice weather about 20 degrees and nice sunshine so that was already a vast improvement over Amsterdam where we had heavy showers on departure, so we’re off to a good start here.

After doing some initial shopping and another breakfast at Mc Donalds at the Sagrada Familia we went over to the CCIB Conference center. where we were just in time for the keynote by Jason Zander, General Manager for Visual Studio.

We’ve made a lot of photo’s and already did some interviews which will be up on Channel 8 and DotNetSkool.nl sometime next week probably.

Tonight we had diner with Microsoft Netherlands including all Dutch MSP’s which was really nice, who doesn’t love tapas ;).

So now I’m off to bed, because tomorrow will be another long day. I’ll try and keep you guy’s posted, so please keep checking back.

Getting Ready for TechEd Developers Barcelona!

2008-11-07T19:14:18Z

Regular visitors of my blog have probably noticed the ‘I’ll be there’ banner at the right side of this page. TechEd Barcelona is almost upon us. We’ll be going with a couple of MSP’s (or Microsoft Student Partners). It’s my first big event and I’m really looking forward to the sessions and social activities that are planned.

Now for those of you who are lucky enough to attend the TechEd as well, please let me know so we can meet in person, which should be great! For those of you who aren’t lucky enough to go to the event I’ll try to keep you guys updated through this blog with sessions, photo’s and other event coverage!

First Academic Event @ Erasmus University

2008-11-05T23:46:24Z

So today was the first event of an Academic Tour through The Netherlands. The kickoff of the Academic Tour was held at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and was pretty successful if you ask me. There were about 60 students attending and a bunch of Microsoft employees.

A couple of presentations were given one of which by Paul van Wingerden about Business Intelligence mainly about what it is, why it’s useful for large enterprises and how you can manipulate large piles of data into meaningful information for your company.

Secondly there was a presentation about the Unified Communications platform provided by Microsoft, and Matthijs Hoekstra had some pretty cool demo’s and showed a really cool app which leveraged the ‘presence’ of people using things like Messenger and Live Communications. Very cool stuff.

Finally we had some good conversations with students about the Imagine Cup and Microsoft in general. Oh and before I forget there was an announcement which basically means that if you’re a Dutch student, you can get a FREE hosting on Windows Server 2008 including and also FREE domain name! For more information about that, click here.

All in all a pretty good event, so see you at the next Academic Event at the University of Delft 19th of November.

Enable ‘Protected’ bits in PDC Windows 7 Build

2009-04-23T21:08:01Z

Every attendee of the PDC received a copy of the 6801 build of Windows 7 last week. Now everybody’s a bit disappointed the new taskbar is not included in that build.. or is it?

Rafael of WithinWindows.com has been peeking around in the Win7 bits and has found out that the new taskbar is actually included in the build, but disabled… nobody knows yet why they did that (they being Microsoft here).

So if you have the PDC build, and want to enable the new Taskbar, go check it out!

Live Mesh Now in Beta

2008-10-30T23:10:27Z

Microsoft just released a new version of the Mesh Client for PC that is now BETA and also for the Mac. Great work to all the team. Mesh should be updating very soon for you. Enjoy.

If you haven’t already got the Live Mesh Client then get over to www.mesh.com and download the loveliness.