MSDN Blogs

Bike update (January ‘09)

reedme — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:59:10 GMT

When we moved from Redmond to Kirkland in December, it put me outside the “reasonable commute distance” for the Mongoose mountain bike... which may or may not have been all a part of my nefarious plan to “convince” Mrs. Reed to “permit” me to buy a motorcycle. Muwahahaha. Er-ehem. Nevermind.

But upgrade from the Mongoose, I did. Ultimately, I want something more of an “adventure bike” like a V-Strom or a BMW, but the little Dave Ramsey that sits on my shoulder these days reminded me to only buy what I could pay cash for. And the previously enjoyed motorcycle I picked was definitely a sexy red color! Gotta love that “magma pearl red”!! Vrrrooom!!!

(The bike above is the same year-model and color as mine, but I don’t have any pix of me on it yet. My 2005 doesn’t have all the decals on it that a ZX-6R normally does for some reason. I meant to ask the previous owner why he pulled ‘em off, but I forgot. Have to save some pennies and put ‘em back on myself someday soon.)

Now that the global warming has returned to the Seattle area and melted the past month of ice and snow, I finally got to ride it to work this morning for the first time. A lot less exercise than the Mongoose, but also a LOT more fun to ride!! Filling up the tank with premium for $7 was also a big plus. (The Sequoia still costs me $60+ to fill up the tank. Will definitely feel like riding in a cage from now on.)

The riding community inside Microsoft has been great, very welcoming and informative. (Read: answering my stupid n00b13 questions with a modicum of patience and sympathy.) Any other riders out there in the broader SQL Server community? I’m sure there are. What’re you riding?

Thoughts on Waiting until 20xx for WF

mwinkle — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:55:00 GMT

Usual msblog disclaimer applies, this represents my opinion!

While I was on break, a number of folks pinged me asking me about this blog post by Tad Anderson.

I find the investment in time to learn how to use 3.0/3.5 has been a complete waste time. So we have release 1.0 and 1.5 of WWF becoming obsolete in favor of version 2.0. These are the real release numbers on these libraries, and that is how they should have been labeled. They are not release 3.0 and 3.5.

First, your investment in the existing technologies is not a "waste of time." The idea of modeling your app logic declaratively, via workflows doesn't change, nor do the ideas surrounding how one builds an application with workflows. What we are fixing is that we are making it substantially easier to use, and enabling more advanced scenarios (like implicit message correlation). What you will not be able to re-use is some of the things you did the first time and thought, "hmmm, I wonder why I have to do that [activity execution context cloning, handleExternalEvent, I'm looking at you]." From a designer perspective, your not going to have to keep remembering the quirks of the v1 designer. I think about this similarly to the way we went from ASMX web services to WCF. The API's changed, but the underlying thinking of building an app on services did not. Regarding version numbers, all of our libraries are versioned to the version of the framework we ship with (see WPF, WCF, etc). Internally we struggled with what we call the thing we're working on now and decided to stick with framework version (so WF 4.0, rather than WF 2.0).

Secondly, it's important to note, we're not getting rid of the 3.0, 3.5 technologies. We're investing to port them to the new CLR, and work to make the designers operate in VS 2010. If you get sufficient return by using WF in your apps today, use WF today. If WF doesn't meet your needs today, and if we're fixing that by something that we're doing in 4.0, then it makes sense to wait. Note, I'm not defining "return" for you. Depending upon how you define that, you may reach a different conclusion that someone in a similar setting.

Thirdly, activities you write today on 3.0/3.5 will continue to work, even inside a 4.0 workflow by way of the interop activity. Much as WPF has the ability to host existing WinForms content, we have the ability to execute 3.0-based activities.

There is a larger issue of how we (the big, Microsoft "we") handle a combination of innovation, existing application compatibility, and packaging of features. I'm not sure how we avoid the fact that inevitably, any framework in version n+1 will introduce new features, some of which will not be compatible with framework version n, some of which may do similar things to features in framework version n. Folks didn't stop writing WinFroms apps when WPF was announced (they still write WinForms apps). As I mentioned, this is a big issue, but not one I intend to tackle in this post :-)

The feedback we got from customers around WF was centered around the need for a few things:

Activities and Workflows

A fully declarative experience (declare everything in XAML)
Make it easier to write complex activities (see my talk for the discussion on writing Parallel or NofM)
Make data binding easier

Runtime

Better control over persistence
Flow-in transactions
Support partial trust
Increase perf

Tooling

Fix Perf and usability
Make rehosting and extensibility easier

Most of these would require changes to the existing code base, and breaking changes would become unavoidable. The combination of doing all of these things makes the idea of breaking all existing customers absolutely untenable. We're doing the work to make sure that your WF apps you write today will keep on working, and with services as the mechanisms to communicate between them, one can gradually introduce 4.0 apps as well. Given the commitment we have to our v1 (or netfx3) customers, we don't want to introduce those kinds of breaking changes.

Kathleen's article summarizes this very nicely, and rather than be accused of cherry-picking quotes, I encourage you to read the whole article.

Questions, comments, violent flames, post 'em here or mwinkle_at_largeredmondbasedsoftwarecompany_dot_com

Viva Las Vegas! CES 09!

livesearch — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:44:00 GMT

One sure bet in Vegas this time of year is the gadget geekdom that is CES (Consumer Electronics Show). Live Search is proud to be part of the excitement, as we’ll be demoing all our latest features in the Microsoft booth at the center of this tech typhoon (located in the Central Hall, C2, Booth 7144). See how we’re making it easier to find the best multimedia content out there. Watch xRank stretch beyond celebrity search. Discover local gems with our improved Local Search. So if you’re headed to CES, be sure to come by. Let’s chat search!

The team will also be out on the town, so we’ll probably run into you! Are you a blogger attending the “It Won’t Stay in Vegas” blogger party on Jan 9^th? One of our newest search evangelists, Stefan Weitz, will be out and about at the party connecting with folks from the blogosphere. If you bump into him, please do school him on your thoughts on what you like about Live Search and what we can do better.

And don’t forget Steve Ballmer’s debut making his pre-show keynote on the night of Jan 7^th. Be sure to catch it if you can.

Aya Zook, Product Manager, Live Search

PerformancePoint Seminar - Jan 20, Malvern

jasonmorales — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:36:00 GMT

For those of you in Philadelphia area, I'd like to make you aware of an upcoming PerformancePoint seminar. This event is hosted by one of our Gold Certified partners with speciality in Microsoft Business Intelligence and SharePoint. Breakthroughs in Business Intelligence presented by Gig-Werks Microsoft Office 45 Liberty Blvd. Great Valley Corporate Center, Suite 210 Malvern, PA 19355 Seminar - 12:00-1:30pm Welcome Time - 11:30am...(read more)

Remedies for the Meltdown: What savvy healthcare organizations need to do now

hlthblog — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:34:16 GMT

In the January 6th edition of Hospitals and Health Networks Weekly on-line journal, my colleague Ian Morrison offers an insightful editorial on the impact of the world financial meltdown on health and healthcare. He rightfully points out that the health industry isn’t immune from financial downturns; only that the painful effects are often delayed a quarter or two compared to other industries.

When one considers that even in a healthy economy a third of American hospitals lose money and another third only make up for their losses because they have investment income; it becomes clear why the recent collapse in our economy is especially worrisome to the healthcare sector. For the full picture, I suggest a thorough read of Ian’s piece. If ever there was a time to “reinvent” healthcare in America, this is it. I particularly hope the Obama administration will listen carefully to the experts and dismiss the perverse incentives, rewards for inefficiency, and special interests that plague health and healthcare delivery in America.

I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers to our healthcare woes. I’m not an economist, but I do know that no country in the world can afford to provide everything to everyone. Reforming healthcare in America will necessitate some very hard choices about who gets what, when, and how. You may recall that the state of Oregon tried to develop such a “list” during the Kitzhaber gubernatorial administration. As ever more expensive drugs and treatments become available, these choices about who gets what will become even more challenging. It is clearly time for a national dialogue on the topic.

From my particular vantage point, I see other challenges for the industry. Most of us would agree that our American health system is woefully behind in its use of information technology. Depending on what studies you believe, tens or hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved by implementing contemporary IT solutions in health. However, I must also say that I tend to agree with opinions expressed by Drs. David Kibbe and Brian Klepper in their piece on THCB; Let’s Reboot America’s HIT Conversation. The holy grail isn’t necessarily electronic medical records. While there is little doubt EMRs and EHRs are part of the solution needed to enhance patient safety and care quality, more immediate gains may be realized by greater emphasis on preventive health services, personal health record solutions, home monitoring of chronic diseases, home care, and more efficient modalities and models (including the medical home concept) for the delivery of health information and medical services. HealthBlog readers know that I am a strong advocate for e-Health services as part of the solution.

The current economic climate also demands that healthcare organizations look for greater value from their existing investments in IT as well as ways to save money on new investments. If ever there was a time to be more rational about how money is spent, this is it.

In that spirit, I’d like to share some information that was recently sent to me by our subsidiary in Australia (slightly modified for HealthBlog’s worldwide audience). Is it any wonder why I so much enjoy working with my colleagues down under? They totally “get it”.

**********************************************************

Dear CEO, CFO, CIO, CMO, CMIO, VP Nursing, Physicians and other Clinicians:

In today's economic climate, many healthcare organizations are looking for ways to reduce costs, increase productivity and improve patient care. At Microsoft, we believe that making the most of what you already have is a good way to start.

It doesn’t always require major new investments on your part to improve your IT infrastructure. Visit Microsoft Health for more information on how to make more of your current IT resources. We’ll help you see where you may be able to improve your system - from the server room to your desktops, notebooks and Smartphone - to increase your organizational efficiency and reduce your overhead.

Reduce maintenance and support costs, improve your network’s performance and provide better information retrieval and security with server and application virtualization. Find out how Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center consolidated servers by 75 per cent.

Reduce travel costs and improve caregiver collaboration, information management and patient care with Microsoft unified communications. Learn how this helped Resurgens Orthopaedics save over $100 000.

Balance budgets, resources, staff and amenities- to improve patient care with a Microsoft performance management reporting solution. Read how managers at Royal Children’s Hospital of Melbourne use business intelligence dashboards and scorecards to measure performance in real-time.

Improve your day-to-day IT operations and reduce overheads by consolidating your data center and standardizing your IT environment. German hospital, Asklepios was able to make laboratory data available 75 per cent faster and radiology results 89 per cent faster - all with an 18 per cent reduction in overhead.

See if the software you already own can help improve your system- you may already have your solution in hand. Refer to the Microsoft Health Web site for more information.

***********************************************************

By the way, next month I’ll be speaking at a number of industry events in Australia. I hope to see you there. And even if you can’t attend in person, I promise that I will be detailing my travels right here on HealthBlog!

Bill Crounse, MD Senior Director, Worldwide Health Microsoft Corporation

Technorati Tags: economic crisis,health,healthcare,Obama,EMR,EHR,PHR,personal health records,hospitals,clinics,IT,health IT,Microsoft,internet,e-health,patient safety,care quality,uninsured,healthcare reform

MS-Offcrypto Examples

david_leblanc — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:30:39 GMT

In response to some questions I've gotten about details of MS-OFFCRYPTO, I've created a CodePlex project to contain sample code demonstrating the documentation. You can find it at http://www.codeplex.com/offcrypto. I had originally wanted to include sample code in MS-OFFCRYPTO itself, but we couldn't do that. Instead, we can put sample code on CodePlex. To keep it real, I did the work from my home system where I don't have access to the original source, and wrote it in C# instead of the original C++ to shake out library differences.

Please note that the sample code is not intended to replace proper documentation. In the course of helping a customer with their attempt to implement the AES encryption, we figured out a problem with the CryptDeriveKey documentation, and got that updated. If there are any nuances of the approach that are in the sample, but not the documentation, we'll update the document to match. The sample code is there to verify that the documentation is complete, and to help anyone who wants to do this.

Currently, there are 2 projects – the first is ExtractStream. I'd needed a way to get streams out of structured storage so that the rest of the sample code could be a lot simpler, and I'm also not too good at managed-unmanaged interop. You use this app to extract the stream you'd like to parse – the rest of the examples will use this. It may turn out to be a good thing having this as a stand-alone project – there's some other features we can build on this that might be helpful.

The second project is OoxmlEncrypt – it demonstrates parsing and validating an EncryptionInfo stream, as well as validating the password.

I have a third project that I need to post which does the same for the CAPI RC4 encryption, which is default for encrypted PowerPoint files, and can show up as a format for Word and Excel files. That's done – I just need to post it.

A fourth project that I'm working on (hindered by the fact that .NET has no RC4) is to demonstrate the legacy 40-bit RC4.

After that, as I find time, I'll move on to signatures. BTW, if someone else would like to contribute to the project, that's certainly possible – just let me know, and sign a release, then we can add other people as devs.

Microsoft Online whitepapers

stevecla01 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:26:32 GMT

Regular readers will know I’m all about Software plus Services and with Microsoft Online gathering pace I thought it would be useful to share some useful document that are up on the haystack that is Microsoft.com. Here I present you with 3 needles

I also noticed Eileen referenced another handy document over on here blog today - Migrate to Microsoft Online Services.

Forgive me for Microspeak for a moment but if you’re looking to move along the IO route quickly, Online is a great way to do so and if you’re looking for cost effective ways to get Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007, ditto.

Announcing the release of Project Portfolio Server 2007 Guide: Configuration Recommendations

chrisfie — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:14:25 GMT

The following Project Portfolio Server 2007 guide was released yesterday: Project Portfolio Server 2007 Guide: Configuration Recommendations, it describes key configuration guidelines.

Scope

This guide outlines some of the high-level performance potentials and guidelines of Portfolio Server based on successful user and organizational adoption. The guide focuses on areas where it is important to observe specific technical and managerial limitations and guidelines to ensure effective use of Portfolio Server.

For each function, the guide focuses on three main topics:

The function description
The function intended use
Guidelines on usage and performance limits

For more Portfolio Server documentation please refer to the TechNet Tech Center for Portfolio Server: Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007

New WPF "How Do I" Video on Formatting Data Entry (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:14:06 GMT

Today we released a new How Do I Video onto the VB Dev Center on how to format controls on data entry forms using the IValueConverter like I showed on my blog here. The IValueConverter allows you full control over the display of the data as well as the editing of that data by users in the controls.

Check out all the WPF Forms over Data videos here.

Enjoy!

3 excelentes How-to de Exchange 2007

ferglo — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:05:00 GMT

Nuestro buen amigo Carlos Dinapoli “EL Capo” :) a creado 3 excelentes videos sobre Exchange Server 2007.

El primero es para la instalación de prerrequisitos del OS para Exchange 2007

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El segundo son los pasos necesarios para preparar AD para recibir e instalar Exchange Server 2007.

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El video es de instalación de Exchange Server 2007 + SP1 en una Organización con Exchange 2003 Server.

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Saludos.

Fernando García Loera

MVP Lead | Community Consultant | Latin American Region

Que es un MVP? Como Logro ser MVP

Putting together HWTSAM

alanpa — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:02:06 GMT

I’ve never written fiction before, but if I did, I imagine I’d start at chapter one and work straight through to the end. Something interesting about hwtsam, is that it was written out of order. This practice is common in movies and television, and is done to make the best use of actors time and location changes – i.e. it’s an optimization.

In the case of hwtsam, I suppose it was an optimization as well – but mostly an optimization of my brain as I always wrote whatever chapter I felt I could do the best job on at the current moment – the order was almost sequential, but not quite.

The first chapter I wrote – the first words I wrote while I was still in the “what did I get myself into” stage was chapter 4 (test design). I knew that Ken was going to write chapter 1 & 2, and at the time I had him penciled in for chapter 3 as well, so chapter 4 was going to be the first chapter with my name on it. At the time, I also had a hunch that Bj would write chapters 5 & 6, so my “second” chapter was chapter 7 (code complexity).

When I finished chapter 7, I wrote a few paragraphs of chapter 8 (Model-Based testing), but didn’t like where it was heading, so Chapters 9 (Bug and test case management) and chapter 10 (Test Automation) followed. It was about this time that we figured out that Ken was going to write chapter 14 – at the time, my schedule was a little hectic, so we tentatively planned on having Ken write chapter 13 (customer feedback systems) as well. Meanwhile, I wrote chapter 12 (Tools), then chapter 11 (non-functional testing).

Last May – in the week before and after Memorial day (US holiday), I took vacation time to stay with my parents for a few weeks. It was nice to spend some time with my parents, but the purpose of the visit was to get caught up on my missed deadlines. In that one two week span I wrote chapters 13, 15, & 16. Over the summer, I wrote chapter 3 (engineering systems), and finally got to chapter 8 (the model-based testing chapter I had been putting off).

Chapter 8 was the most difficult chapter for me to write (I wrote 3 completely different versions before coming up with the final version), and also my favorite chapter from the book (I really don’t know why). meanwhile, Ken and Bj finished up their parts, and the rest, of course, is history.

I realize that this map of the book is confusing – if you’d like to see how it ended up in order, this post has the full table of contents.

SOA is dead; Long live…… well, Services ;-)

glenz — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:01:52 GMT

In her excellent blog post today, Anne Thomas Manes from the Burton Group declares the “official” passing away of the term SOA on January 1st, 2009.

Once praised as the solution to all IT problems, SOA did not result in measurable benefits for most, but a few, companies. I really recommend reading the article that discusses the failures and opportunities the recently deceased SOA paradigm left behind.

It is not a secret, I am NOT a fan of buzz words. I believe that buzzwords in the Software Industry are too often misused, misunderstood, and rarely keep their promise, especially if they are propagated as solutions to all the worlds problems. Nevertheless, I believe that paradigm shifts are necessary to improve on the status-quo (and in the IT field there is still lots of room for improvement ;-)). These paradigm shifts are based on the innovation curve. That means a new paradigm, if it catches on, gets first over hyped, then we get over pessimistic before we find the productivity plateau for the paradigm, which in turn triggers the adoption of new paradigms that improves on the experiences of the previous paradigms.

In the graph below I tried to capture this. The SOA hype started around 2002 and actually held up for a long time until the term Cloud Computing took over the headlines of the IT magazines.

I think this reflects very much what we see today. Cloud Computing as new paradigm includes many other current notions we use such as SaaS and Web 2.0. The interesting point to make is that we are still in the very early stages of defining the notion of cloud computing. If we ask 10 people in the industry for a definition of the term cloud computing today, then I am sure it would result in 12 different explanations. This is very similar to what we saw with the term SOA in the early stages. Let’s hope that we are not falling into the trap of equalizing the architectural paradigm with certain technology implementations (as we did too often with SOA and web services).

From the Microsoft perspective, the notion of S+S fits very nicely into the new paradigm of Cloud Computing as a natural evolution form SaaS and SOA. The S+S vision reflects the reality that we will have very diverse requirements for software systems. These requirements include the “old fashioned” but very powerful client applications, rich web applications, as well as reusable services hosted either in the cloud or on premise. Exciting times are ahead, despite (or because of) the death of SOA ;-)……

LAMP, WAMP, and WIMP

jonbox — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:53:54 GMT

I have had several of my Linux friends lately come to me about their unhappiness with their world, and if they could move their apps to Windows. I keep telling folks that this is possible, but I haven’t tried it myself. But now, here’s a resource. Keith Combs posts Running LAMP on Windows Server 2008 Webcast, which includes several videos:

installing PHP on Windows,
installing MySQL on Windows,
Installing Wordpress to utilize these on IIS7.

Now web folks know the LAMP acronym (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP). This could be hosted virtually on Windows, as Keith points out. Most folks know that this environment can run in the Windows world too, which is known as WAMP (replacing Linux with Windows, not an official acronym). Another variation is to use IIS7 in place of APACHE, which results in the WIMP acronym, which Microsoft marketing will probably not adopt. Although an unfortunate acronym result, this is a valid web stack that Keith shows is easy to setup.

To close out this thought, here is Keith’s closing statement on his webcast post: There were several important points made in the webcast. You should consider downloading it and watching the entire 90 minutes when you have some spare time. I think you'll find that there are some nuggets of information there that you may now be aware of. Like:

Apache runs really well on Windows Server 2008
MySQL runs really well on Windows Server 2008
PHP runs really well on Windows Server 2008
You can replace Apache with IIS7 and the applications will hardly notice
All of the above runs really well on Windows Server 2008 Core.
Migration is easy but not perfect so as always, test, test, test
IIS7 stores a lot of configuration data in XML and is easily edited like Apache, but unlike Apache, picks up the changes dynamically without a restart
And lots more!!!

Other IIS7 Jewels

I also found an interesting page today on our IIS community site, which some recent interesting activity. Take a look at the extensions that are out for IIS:

Content Publishing

FTP Publishing Service
WebDAV Extension

Deployment and Migration

Web Deployment Tool (Beta 2)

Media Serving

Bit Rate Throttling
Web Playlists
Windows Media Services 2008

Application Hosting

FastCGI for IIS6

Request Handling

URL Rewrite Module
Application Requestion Routing (RC)

Server Management

Administration Pack – CTP2
Database Manager – CTP2
IIS Manager for Remote Administration
Powershell Provider – CTP 2

Security

UrlScan 3.1, for IIS6

Application Platform Strategies Blog: SOA is Dead; Long Live Services

murrayg — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:50:24 GMT

Very interesting article on SOA and Services from Anne Thomas Manes.

I’m guessing there will be a lot more articles like this in the near future.

Also thought the image was great:

Here’s the link to the original article: Application Platform Strategies Blog: SOA is Dead; Long Live Services

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon
ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation

http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG
US ISV Team Blog
My GeeksWithBlogs Blog

Jobs Spotted at MacWorld

stevecla01 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:50:15 GMT

Okay…just kidding. i found this image in my archives and couldn’t resist.

feel free to add your own caption and if you know where the photo originated let me know so i can add a credit!

Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2 - eLumenotion Blog

murrayg — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:45:42 GMT

Just read a great post from Doug Ware on how to use Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) on Amazon EC2.

This is a very compelling and cost effective solution.

Once SharePoint Services are publically available in the Windows Azure Platform, I’m guessing Doug will consider a move.

Awesome how-to Doug!

Here’s the link to Doug’s original post: Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2

Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2 - eLumenotion Blog

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon
ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation

http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG
US ISV Team Blog
My GeeksWithBlogs Blog

Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2 - eLumenotion Blog

murrayg — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:44:58 GMT

Just read a great post from Doug Ware on how to use Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) on Amazon EC2.

This is a very compelling and cost effective solution.

Once SharePoint Services are publically available in the Windows Azure Platform, I’m guessing Doug will consider a move.

Awesome how-to Doug!

Here’s the link to Doug’s original post: Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2

Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2 - eLumenotion Blog

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon
ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation

http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG
US ISV Team Blog
My GeeksWithBlogs Blog

CES2009 – Grandes Anuncios, Microsoft no puede faltar

rarmas — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:38:05 GMT

Como saben por estos dias uno de los mas grandes eventos esta por empezar en la gran ciudad de Las Vegas, se trata del International CES 2009 (Consumer Electronics Show), la exhibicion mas grande de productos electronicos para el consumidor que se llevara a cabo del 7 al 11 de Enero, aqui se revelan los proximos modelos e innovaciones de los principales fabricantes, es el paraiso de los “Gadgeteers” (…que envidia no estar ahi!!! )

Microsoft estara presente como en ocasiones pasadas y este 7 de Enero a las 6:30 PM (Pacific Time) es decir 9:30 PM hora de Peru y Colombia (GMT –5), tendremos la presentacion del CEO Steve Ballmer y el Presidente de la Division de Entretenimiento y Dispositivos Robbie Bach.

Para quienes quieran seguir en vivo la presentacion pueden hacerla aqui, escogiendo el ancho de banda que mas les convenga.

MSDN Webcast

Kerrey Zheng — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:25:00 GMT

BizTalk Server 2006系列课程 BizTalk架构应用基础系列课程...(read more)

Tutorial : Using Internet Free/Busy (IFB) information – Series # 3

Deva Gnanam .J — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:19:00 GMT

With continuation from the previous free/busy article 1 & 2 , now we will see how to view other people’s free/busy information on the internet; also how to set the free/busy search path for a specific contact using Internet Free/Busy (IFB) feature & ical. How to view other people's free/busy information on the Internet? You can view the free/busy information for any one of your contacts that publish this data on the Internet. If all your contacts store this information on the same free/busy...(read more)

The Bloggers Guide to "Connected Systems"

Sanket Bakshi — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:16:00 GMT

There is a new bloggers guide recently published by Alan Smith. This guide provides a good overview of the next wave of the connected systems technologies.
It starts with the WCF & WF 4.0 and makes its way to the Biztalk 2009, Oslo, Dublin and finally even the Azure (a.k.a BizTalk Services).

Plus it includes bloggers like - Alan Smith (himself), Darren Jefford, Charles Young, Don Box, Brian Losegen, Aaron Skonnard, Jeff "Pinkey" Pinkston, Martin Fowler, Andreas Erben, Imran Shafqat.

Definitely a must-read to keep up to the CS pace. You can find the guide here.

--Sanket

5 minutes to understand SPARK and the “SPARKS Will Fly” contest

obloch — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:02:26 GMT

Mike Hall , Windows Embedded architect, takes 5 minutes to explain the SPARK program and the contest that is actually running. Bet you will want to enroll into the contest after watching the video. You still have a couple of days to enroll though! www.sparkcontest.com . Sparks Will Fly...(read more)

Windows 7 Beta 1 for MDC Attendees

benko — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:56:24 GMT

Breaking news!!!

Attend an upcoming MSDN Developer Conference and you will receive a Windows 7 Beta 1 DVD.

Register today and you’ll get the best of the PDC in your own backyard and hear all of the exciting announcements around the Azure Services Platform and Windows 7.

Experience Windows Azure
Create applications that seamlessly bridge the gaps between PC, Web, and phone
Be among the first to see Windows 7
See the latest advances in Multi-Touch Application Development
Take your .NET skills to the next level
See sessions on WPF 4.0, Silverlight 2, The Future of C# and VB, ASP.NET 4.0, Live Mesh and more

The Cost? Just $99.
And, did we mention that attendees will get some cool giveaways?

Check out the session line up…

Azure Services Platform	Client and Presentation	Tools, Languages and Framework
A Lap Around Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform	ASP.NET and JQuery	The Future of Managed Languages: C#, and Visual Basic
Developing and Deploying Your First Azure Service	Developing Data-centric Applications Using the WPF DataGrid and Ribbon Controls	A Lap Around "Oslo"
A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services	Building Business Focused Applications using Silverlight 2	A Lap Around Visual Studio 2010
Developing Applications Using Microsoft SQL Data Services	ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap	An Introduction to Microsoft F#

Register for a city near you…

Date	City
12/9/08	Houston, TX
12/11/08	Orlando, FL
12/16/08	Atlanta, GA
1/13/09	Chicago, IL
1/13/09	Minneapolis, MN
1/16/09	Washington, DC
1/20/09	New York, NY
1/22/09	Boston, MA
1/22/09	Detroit, MI
1/26/09	Dallas, TX
2/19/90	San Francisco, CA

Cool Giveaways

The MSDN Developer Conference will not only WOW you with the coolest sessions from the PDC but you will also be in the running to win one of 3 Lego NXT Robotics Kits and the WROX Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio book. Other giveaways include a Gamer Backpack filled with the latest XBox games and a Mobility Backpack full of cool hardware.

Community Courtyard

As good as the sessions are, there's always more to explore and discuss. At MDC, you'll have a chance to step into the Community Courtyard and choose what to talk about, based on your interest and passion for the subject.

Running in tandem with the presentations is an open discussion area where you will choose the subjects and the participants. Whether you want to mingle with the presenters, talk about an MDC session, a related subject or something else you have the opportunity. Borrowing from Open Space Technology and other forms of open, community-driven discussion, using fishbowls and free-for-alls, this area is yours.

Online Community

Find our tag cloud under #MSDNDevCon. Join the buzz!

MSDN Social

Facebook - Join the group

Twitter - follow the feed

Flickr - post your MDC pictures

del.icio.us - share your bookmarks

Twemes - global twitter tags

Technorati Tags: MDC,Windows Azure,Azure Services Platform,Cloud Computing,Windows 7,ASP.NET,WPF,Silverlight,Visual Studio,Parallel Programming,C#,VB,F#,Data Services

5 minutes to understand Windows Embedded CE

obloch — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:32:08 GMT

Dion Hutchings, Technical Product Manager, explains what Windows Embedded CE is in just 5 minutes… Well… 7 minutes ;-) 5 Minutes to understand Windows Embedded CE...(read more)

The First ' Microsoft Dynamics CRM Incubation Week'

crmblog — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:32:00 GMT

Wow!! What an incredible experience of hosting our first ever Microsoft Dynamics CRM Incubation week. I would say two key aspects (communal and entrepreneur) made this event a huge success.

Five Startups (out of 50+) were invited for a week at MTC Reston to learn, and develop their business idea using Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a Rapid Development/Deployment Platform. Each startup team along with their assigned advisor (Thanks Jim Steger and Dan Blake for investing your time and money) and an offshore development company (Thanks Nilesh Patel from Proteans), worked very long hours every day to develop working prototypes.

In addition to technology, we had several business/industry guest speakers to cover topics like 'How to market your solution', 'How to raise money', and 'How to build a S+S business'. On Friday, each team pitched their business plan with solution demo to a panel of judges (VCs, CRM Thought Leader, Incubator), and could walk away with their own IP (in some cases near production ready code).

The event got very good blog/PR coverage including from Paul Greenberg, well known CRM thought leader; Joe Zuccaro, neutral blogger; Jeremy Epstein, marketing expert. These blogs highlighted Microsoft’s commitment to work with startups in today’s tough economy and our investment in the BizSpark initiative.

The following awards were won by the indicated companies.

Award Category	Startup Team
Best Business Award (1^st)	Highland Martin, LLC
Best Business Award (2nd)	DubMeNow
Super Cool Award (1^st)	support4U Inc.
Super Cool Award (2nd)	Channel Blade Technologies
Advisor Award	Prime Time Software Solutions LLC

You can see the detailed event coverage at Sanjay Jain’s various blog posts (Day0, Day1, Day2, Day3, Day4, Day5). Feel free to send your questions/comments to Sanjay Jain. You can submit your nomination for future CRM Incubation Weeks by following the directions at Sanjay Jain's blog.

Thanks,
Sanjay Jain