Migrating Traditional Business Rules Applications to the Cloud Slides

May 1, 2010 at 10:37 PMalex

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PhD positions are available

April 22, 2010 at 4:39 PMalex

If you're interested in a scientific project related to the modern computational problems, check out the open PhD positions available at Microsoft at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/global/open-phd-positions.aspx.

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The “Ultimate” Event: Visual Studio 2010 & Team Foundation Server 2010

April 16, 2010 at 8:49 AMalex

The Ultimate Event is your exclusive opportunity to hear about Visual Studio 2010 from experts before the product is launched this year. Microsoft has made significant investments to and improvements of Modeling and Testing/QA tools in Visual Studio 2010. At this event you’ll get a comprehensive overview of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010, which is the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) core of Visual Studio. We’ll present enhancements in version control, reporting, project management and build management. 
Spend the day with us to learn how to take software development to the next level with Visual Studio 2010!

1) Oak Brook, IL - 04/29/2010 - REGISTER >>

http://www.msdnevents.com/default.aspx

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Scrolly UI reinvented by Microsoft and its influence on the market

February 16, 2010 at 5:02 AMalex

As you've might heard, Microsoft announced its latest generation of mobile operating systems, called Windows Phone 7 Series. One cool thing is that it was something unexpected as where Microsoft would go with its developments, how much iPhone would influence on their UI, whether it would reminicent the Zune Phone idea to some extend. The importance of that annoouncement could not be underscored as it clearly indicates the trends of nowadays interfaces.

Most importantly, systems are moving away from unauthentic 3d interfences whereever possible to the specific areas such as games, TV, AR, i.e. places where it naturally blends with the actual reality and humans expect those interactions natually to be supported by the computers. One can observe that by looking at latest web site designs, e-devices (kindle etc.), mp3-players. Moreover, people would like to offload the thinking about the process and rather concentrate on what is in their current focus and context, therefore, UI is presenting a very few choices to a user at a time in bold annotated graphics, which is clearly seen on iPhone and Zune. People then naturally interact within a context of a device through tough-based interface with system reacting to a user activity immediately through animation and other visual effects. Note that no complex visuals are required at this point as humans are accustomed to a very simple response, usually just affirmative reaction, or, a simple denial of an operation. Furthermore, response on a user action is as simple as visual or audio activity executed by the system. A person is interested in a very few contexts at a time, such as phone communication, social communication (facebook, communities), audio (music, podcasts, lectures), visual (movies, clips), planning (calendar, notes). Microsoft came up with the list of those contexts, which are available in the main menu. Very clever idea is to get rid of task bar at all as it is becoming an obsolete concept nowadays. Widget architecture is a very straight-forward way to extend the device's functionality, because it would give very rich functionality to developers hands and at the same time allows to isolate system's core modules for platform stability.

All at all, the direction where the system interaction with human is moving is clearly set by two major players on the market, namely, iPhone and Microsoft, and with the hardware manufactures's support, the future of the mobile devices looks very promising.

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Cumulative List of Application Development Guidance Documents

December 16, 2009 at 1:56 PMalex

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.Net 4.0 Downloadable Reference Source

December 11, 2009 at 5:03 PMalex

Source code for different components can be downloaded and used for in-depth debugging for .Net Framework components for Visual Studio 2010:

1. Download source code from Reference Source Code Center.

2. Install Reference Source WCF MSI in your local machine say under: 'C:\ReferenceSource'.

3. Launch Visual Studio 2008/2010.

4. From the Tools menu, choose Options.

5. In the Options dialog box, open the Debugging node and select General

6. Uncheck "Enable Just My Code (Managed only)"

  • Check "Enable source server support"
  • Uncheck "Require source files to exactly match the original version" 

7. Select Symbols under Debugging.

8. In the Symbol File Locations box, validate the location where the installed symbol files (.pdb) are present. If not, then add originally downloaded symbols location: C:\ReferenceSource\Symbols

9. Build you app, set breakpoints and F5 to debug.

 PS. I've updated this post for Microsoft .Net 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010.

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Visual Studio 2010 Team System Roadshow

December 11, 2009 at 9:47 AMalex

Featured Products/Topics: Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio Team System

Recommended Audiences: IT Managers, IT Professionals, CIO, CTO, IT Directors, Solution Architects, Software Developers, Technical Decision Makers, Developers

When: December 16th
Where: Microsoft Downers Grove
3025 Highland Parkway
Downers Grove, IL

Sponsor: Microsoft
Make sure to RSVP.

Ram Cherala is the Principal Program Manager in the Visual Studio Test Tools Business, which is part of the Developer Division at Microsoft. Ram is very passionate about building a well-integrated set of tools and technologies that enable developers build, test and ship quality software.

What: See the awesome new testing features of Visual Studio 2010
Agenda:
• 6:30PM - Food and Beverages. Bring your nagging coding issues and design challenges for open discussion
• 7:00PM - Visual Studio 2010 - Microsoft

Ram's blog is here.

PS. The registration link was updated.

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The weather service on CodePlex

December 4, 2009 at 11:11 AMalex

A while ago, I played with the service which provides weather forecasts and designed a solution to convert the web-page content into a simple text message that is delivered to a mobile phone at scheduled time. Since people seems to be interested in this project, I've uploaded it to CodePlex and here it is: http://gismeteoweathersvc.codeplex.com Gismeteo Weather Service The implementation of weather service delivery to your mobile phone using SMS based on data provider Gismeteo (http://www.gismeteo.ru). The service is offering scheduled delivery of the data according to the user's settings, and is running as a windows service. Use at your own risk and at your own expense as I'm not responsible for text messages fees that may apply while you're testing this service. Neither any guarantees regarding the functionality, completeness, blah-blah, see Ms-PL.

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Upcoming talks about .Net on LIDNUG and some PDC 2009 content

November 3, 2009 at 1:23 AMalex

LIDNUG: Project “Dublin” Overview for Application Developers

Tuesday November 10, 2009, 10:00AM

Tuesday November 10, 2009, 11:30AM

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=G2K4BH&role=attend&pw=PN6.%3CQ%5Drb

Project Code Named “Dublin” extends the hosting capabilities of the .NET 4 runtime for WCF and WF services and delivers rich monitoring, configuration and control for WAS activated services.

This session will focus on what developers need to know about “Dublin” to build easy to deploy, configure, monitor and troubleshoot middle-tier services and to unlock the rich extensibility capabilities “Dublin” provides.

Scott Guthrie Talks Shop

Monday November 23, 2009, 12:00PM
Monday November 23, 2009, 01:30PM

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=G2K4BH&role=attend&pw=PN6.%3CQ%5Drb

This event comes straight off the back of PDC2009, so be sure that there'll be a ton of new stuff announced - and who better to ask than the Gu himself?

Don't miss out.

Note: this event is PST (Pacific Time)

Phil Haack in the hot chair - Q&A on ASP.Net MVC

Monday December 14, 2009, 10:30AM
Monday December 14, 2009, 11:30AM

Ever wondered what ASP.Net MVC is all about? Well, you now have the chance to ask all the questions of Phil Haack when he takes a seat in the hot chair for a full Q&A on ASP.Net MVC.

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=G2K4BH&role=attend&pw=PN6.%3CQ%5Drb

Phil Haack's blog: http://www.haacked.com

ASP.Net MVC Home: http://www.asp.net/mvc

 

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64 bit and native components parity

October 30, 2009 at 11:00 AMalex

If your scenarios include running an assembly in 64 bit, and there are dependencies on native components, i.e. oracle drivers, COM components, make sure that you're running each one in the same processor architecture. There are the following limitations on 64 bit Windows:

  1. Process cannon run 32 dlls in 64 bit address space.
  2. 32 bit COM components cannot be instantiated in using 64 bit assembly.

You can change assembly's build setting settings to x86 if you need to load 32 bit components. Lets go to a few examples. Microsoft Visual Studio is 32 bit application capable of building 64 bit assemblies. If you need to debug 32 bit COM component, you need to build your assembly into x86 architecture. Another example is TestDriven.NET. Latest version, 2.23, by default, matches VS architecture, i.e. x86. If you want to debug Oracle driver, you need 32 bit. You can switch TestDriven.NET to 64 bit to have architecture parity. To run tests in NUnit, I'd recommend to go everywhere with 64 bit, since there is a NUnit 64 bit, and you will be sure that there are no issues once the code is built into the product.

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