Exciting Releases from Microsoft

In case you missed it here are some exciting recent releases from Microsoft:

• Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile – Developer Preview
• SQL Server 2008 – Release Candidate 0 (MSDN Subscribers only)
• Silverlight 2.0 – Beta 2 (Runtime and Developer Tools)

Windows Sideshow for Windows Mobile – Developer Preview

What is this? Here is the official description:

Windows® SideShow™ for Windows Mobile® is an application for Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PCs and Smartphones that allows you to use your Windows Mobile device as a Bluetooth SideShow-compatible device. This enables you to use your phone as an extra window into your PC. You can both access your computer’s information from your Pocket PC or Smartphone, and control the computer through a gadget interface. While the phone is out of range, or when your computer is off, you can continue to view content sent to the phone previously. This makes it easy to send information to the phone that you'll need later on.

To me this is very exciting. I always though this technology had potential but it seems that the hardware side has not caught on. Now that my mobile phone could help fill the hardware void developers can finally start thinking of creative ways to use this.

SQL Server 2008

If you don’t have time to install and this test yourself you can instead check out the SQL Server 2008 Test Drive Videos / Virtual Labs

Silverlight 2.0 – Beta 2

For more information you can see my previous posts on the subject:

• Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2, almost here! – Learn more about it
• Silverlight 2.0 – Beta 2.0 NOW AVAILABLE! – Download it
• Silverlight – NBC Olympics – See it in action

Presentation Tips

One of the things I hope to start doing more of is presenting to audiences. I know I keep saying this is what I am going to do (and no http://www.betterknowaframework.com is not dead either, just stalled), but I really believe that is my path.

As with anything new I like to start getting prepared early so I decided to put together some links of presentations tips from people I personally fellow and a few other from random Internet searches. Here it that (small) list in case you also have a similar interest:

• 11 Top Tips for a Successful Technical Presentation – Scott Hanselman
• 10 Tips on How to Setup Your Laptop before a Demo – The Moth
• 18 Tips for Killer Presentations – Life Hacker

Best of luck to all of you at your first or next speaking event!

Excellent MSND Magazine Articles

While MSDN Magazine tends to have really excellent content occasionally things standout even more that I think its worth mentioning here. Two examples of such articles can be found below:

Penetration Testing (By James Whittaker)

In this installment of Security Briefs, James Whittaker explains the rules and the pitfalls of penetration testing so you'll know how to avoid them.

Passion for the Craft (By Scott Hanselman)

Scott Hanselman ruminates on the term "5:01 developer" and why success in any field requires passion and craftsmanship.

Closing

Don’t forget that all MSDN issues are available for free online at this link. Have your own favorite article? Post the link as a reply to this thread.

Q&A: Excellent Podcasts

Today a colleague of mine from Finland asked me “What good podcasts do you listen to or know of?”. I could have sworn I posted on this topic but cannot find any reference, so here is a quick list:

.NET / Microsoft

• DotNetRocks
• Hanselminutes
• TechNet Radio
• Sparkling Client (Silverlight focused)

Security

• TWiT: Security Now

IT Pro

• RunAsRadio

General IT

• TWiT: Windows Weekly
• This Week in Tech

Tip: Use your Zune Marketplace or iTunes software to automatically deliver these podcasts to your device of choice (they both support it for free).

This of course is simply my list and I look forward to your feedback

Related Post: What is a screencast?

Excellent Silverlight Blog Posts

One of my peers is a huge fan of Silverlight and has a Flash background to help make his input very valuable.

As of a few days ago he has started blogging and already has two very excellent examples of using Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 for some effects on controls like glow and shadow.

Check it out for yourself: http://blogs.msdn.com/timrule/

(His site has full sample code downloads and working prototypes)

Silverlight 2 - Excellent Demo Links

While Silverlight.net has some excellent and constantly growing set of links for sites that use Silverlight a few standout to me and I wanted to share them in the list below:

Working Applications

• Digg Client by Jose Fajardo

Demo Applications

• Woodgrove Online Banking

Specific: DeepZoom demos

• PhotoZoom - MS Live Labs
• Hard Rock: Memorabilia

Note: Some links above use SL2 Beta 1 and therefore require this beta runtime

Useful Presentation Tools

When presenting we all face many challenges but some of them can be negated by great tools. Yesterday I was asked about one such tool and decided to not just send one link but put together a summery of a few such tools.

Presentation Tools

Tool	Description
ZoomIt	This utility allows you to zoom to a particular part of the screen through a simple keyboard short-cut (ctrl-1) and back to normal view by pressing ESC. You can also highlight an area with a red marker by clicking the left-mouse button while zoomed in. This free tool has other good features and is definitely worth the small download.
SharedView Beta2	While doing demos or presenting in person is always great its simply not always possible. SharedView is a great (and free) tool that allows you to setup a meeting with up to 15 people to share your screen. Other tools exist but this one is free and works well. The one downside of Beta2 is there is no support yet for voice-chat so a separate phone conference will still be required.
Snippet Manager	One of the challenges of presenting a code-centric demo is speaking and writing code at the same time. Few have mastered this technique and the rest of us need something to help make this process easier. One such tool (written by Karen Corby) helps manage this process by allowing you to create a pre-configured snippet library that can be easily dragged into a presentation to give you the benefit of showing code as it "comes together" without having to write it while speaking.
Camtasia	A pre-recorded video can be a lifesaver during presentations. Complex tasks on the screen recorded once can then be shared as many times as necessary without mistakes. While other products exit Camtasia studio is worth every penny and is arguably the best in the market. (Price: $299.00 but worth every penny)

Home Media Center PC - Top 5 Tips, Things you did not know

A few weeks ago my buddy Steven Lindsay put together a video called Top 5 things you didn't know you could do with your Windows Vista Media Center PC. The vide is excellent, short and to the point. This is definitely worth watching if you have a Media Center PC, so check it out.

Tips List:

• Setting up recordings on items not yet listed in the TV Guide
• Internet TV
• Sports Tips: Live Sport Scores and more
• Using Windows Home Server as a Media Server
• Media Center Extenders (Addition displays around the house)

Visual Studio Team System - Branching and Merging

Since the 2005 edition Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)  has supported complex Branching and Merging scenarios that facilitate parallel development of various kinds.

While VSTS makes the basics behind this process fairly simple using a rich GUI interface (or command-line of you prefer) the topic itself is complex involving many patterns and scenarios. To help people understand the proper ways to leverage this functionality various resources exists and some of them are below for your reference:

The Basics

Before learning the complex activities behind Branching and Merging you must understand Source Control in VSTS.

• Working with Team Foundation Source Control
• MSDN Webcast: Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Enterprise-Class Version Control (Level 200)
• How Do I: Promote, Model, Branch, and Merge?

Branching and Merging

• Branching and Merging Team Foundation Source Control
• Branching and Mergin Primer for Team Foundation Server
• Branching and Merging Guidance - Codeplex
• Using Source Code Control in Team Foundation
  

Branching and Merging Videos

• Branching Discussion with Doug Neumann

Silverlight 2.0: Additional Tool Links

The other day I posted an entry titled Silverlight 2.0 - Get Started with some descent links to get people going. Since then though my tool-chest has expanded to include two additional resources:

Deep Zoom Composer

We are pleased to present a technology preview of Deep Zoom Composer, a tool to allow the preparation of images for use with the Deep Zoom feature currently being previewed in Silverlight 2 Beta 1. The new Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight allows users to see images on the Web like they never have before. The smooth in-place zooming and panning that Deep Zoom allows is a true advancement and raises the bar on what image viewing should be. High resolution images need to be prepared for use with Deep Zoom and this tool allows the user to create Deep Zoom composition files that control the zooming experience and then export all the necessary files for deployment with Silverlight 2.

Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=457b17b7-52bf-4bda-87a3-fa8a4673f8bf&displaylang=en

Training Resources:

• The Weekly Source Code 18 - Deep Zoom (Seadragon) Silverlight 2 MultiScaleImage Mouse Wheel Zooming and Panning Edition
• Deep Zoom Composer User Guide (Document download link in the page)

Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview

We are pleased to present our next preview of Microsoft® Expression Blend™. Use Expression Blend 2.5 to create and modify managed Silverlight 2-based applications. Expression Blend for Silverlight 2 includes all of the features in Expression Blend 2 but has not reached the quality level of Expression Blend 2 for WPF or Silverlight 1 development.

Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=32A3E916-E681-4955-BC9F-CFBA49273C7C&displaylang=en

Conclusion

Both tools are excellent to play with but do expect some bugs as these are very early releases.

I plan to put together some demos using both tools here and will blog about it in the future. Its an exciting time to be a Microsoft developer!

Silverlight 2.0 - Get Started

Recently I started learning everything I can about Silverlight 2.0 (Beta 1 specifically) due to a work related project.

I have been a fan of this technology in principle from the first time I read it will bring .NET into the browser but now that I have actually used it I must say I am very impressed at many levels.

While in the near future I plan to start blogging about this technology in more detail for now here are some links to get you started if you have some interest.

Getting Started:

Prerequisites:

You're going to need Visual Studio 2008 Standard or higher (sorry no express support at this point)

Get the development tools for VS 2008:

• Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008
• Silverlight 2 Beta 1 SDK

Get the Silverlight 2.0 Runtime:

• Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 Runtime

Learn

Read these resources:

• Get an Overview
• Learn about Silverlight Architecture

Bonus Content:

• Learn why DeepZoom is really amazing
• Visit the Wikipedia page on Silverlight

Get Coding:

Go through the basic tutorials:

• ScottGu’s blog tutorial series on Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1
• Silverlight.net: Learn section (featuring: Tutorials, how-do-I videos and Quick-Start guides)

Conclusion

Beta 1 release of Silverlight 2.0 is excellent and the tools are definitely enough to get you going (and will improve in the next few releases trust me).

Be warn though bugs do exist, this is a BETA after all.

Want to learn/see even more? visit: Silverlight Official Website

ISO Mounting Software

Many companies today release software for download, trial and use via ISO Images (both DVD and CD formats). Microsoft is one such company and much of what I download from them is locked away in these easily-burnable files.

The big downside for me in this model though is that most of the time I simply want to install what's in the ISO image and don't require physical media. To resolve this problem many software packages exist (for Windows XP/Vista machines) but some are better then others.

Virtual Clone Drive

One such package is Virtual Clone Drive by SkySoft. This is an excellent and free piece of software that makes Mounting and Un-mounting ISO images as simple as clicking on them. Here are the features listed for this software from the official website:

Features

• Supports all common image formats such as ISO, BIN, CCD
• Supports up to 8 virtual drives at the same time
• Easy to use - just double-click an image file to mount as a drive
• Virtual CloneDrive is freeware, you may use it at no cost.

Even though their website only lists support for Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP I have found this software to work perfectly (so far) in Windows Vista.

(I don't have SP1 installed yet for Vista but hope it wont break this software)

New Podcast: Sparkling Client

Today I discovered a new a well produced Podcast called Sparkling Client. Here is how they describe themselves:

Sparkling client is a podcast about Silverlight and other RIA technologies. If you're interested in learning how to write great websites that use Silverlight, ASP.NET AJAX, and others, give us a listen

At the time of this post they have 6 episodes up and some very interesting interviews and coverage of Silverlight. If this technology space interests you make sure to check them out, you wont be disappointed:

http://www.sparklingclient.com

Free CD Burning Software: CDBurnerXP

Something common to most geek's is that we have been burning CD/DVD's since before most average people even knew it was possible. I still remember my first CD-Burner, a very ancient IBM drive that I purchased at the time for well over $500.

Today the options for software and hardware in this area is extremely diverse and Windows even support some limited Data/Music CD burning capabilities built right in.

Unfortunately if you want to do more advanced burning such as handling ISO files you still need a 3rd party solution. Luckily a free one exists called CDBurnerXP, here is the official description from their website:

CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Everyone, even companies, can use it for free. It does not include adware or similar malicious components

I have used this before and had great results. Before spending money for a different solution I highly encourage everyone to check out this free and neat product: http://cdburnerxp.se/

Developers Note: And best of all, its made in .NET 2.0

Keeping up with Microsoft DEV

One of the hardest things to do today (and something I constantly talk about on this blog) is keep up with the amount of technology coming out of Microsoft for developers.

Many times I get asked, "Dmitry, how do you do it?". To answer this question I typically want to say "I don't do a good job at all", because on many days it feels that the technology wagon passed me by days ago and I still have not caught up.

But honestly I probably do as descent job at keeping up with it all as humanly possible. To get even that far I use a collection of Blogs, Magazines, Newsletters, and colleagues who I follow five to six days out of the week. This took some time to get just right, but finally I have reached the right formula for me.

So what is this secret formula? If you read this blog,  you probably have already seen a large amount of posts on the various things I recommend in terms of Blogs or Magazines, so there is no need to repeat. Honestly, the formula that I have works for me and has no guaranty of working for anyone else, so sharing it in that much detail is really pointless.

Instead, lets talk about the one thing I can always count on, the MSDN Flash Newsletter.

MSDN Flash Newsletter

I honestly believe that if your a Microsoft developer, you need to be reading your MSDN Flash newsletter on a regular basis. This customized news source has been one of the best ways for me to keep up with Redmond, its really an excellent publication with high grades for quality.

Even if I miss some big announcement or don't get caught up on my blog reading I am always sure that when this newsletter arrives in my email, it will have exactly the main highlights I should be spending time on.

To subscribe for yourself visit the link below, and trust me you wont be disappointed:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/flash/default.aspx

ISV Innovation

Microsoft has recently lunched a new website called ISVInnovation.com. The general idea seems centered around making training seem more fun by introducing limited edition action figures for IT personas and provide interactive tours.

The various training areas include the following sections and is focused (as expected) on the latest technologies:

• 2007 Office System
• Windows Vista
• SQL Server
• Visual Studio
• Windows Mobile
• Server 2008

In my opinion this does border a little on the silly side but at least its a fun and different approach to training and personas of IT people, which at times can be a bit stale. Check it out and judge for yourself: http://www.isvinnovation.com/

MiX08 and Live.com SDK's

MiX08, finally here and rolling forward

MiX08 is now in motion and a ton of very interesting information is making its way out. If you happen to have two hours to kill I highly recommend viewing the Keynote given by Ray Ozzie, Dean Hachamovitch, and Scott Guthrie.

Some of the Keynote highlights include:

• Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 that has support for .NET 2.0 CLR in a download less then 5 megabytes
• IE 8.0 beta 1 that as you can imagine has a whole set of improvements (some controversial)
• Expression Studio 2 Beta that continues to evolve this platform for designers to create rich experiences using WPF

Live.com SDK's

While much of Live.com development tools and SDK's have been out for some time now I think its also important to highlight in this blog post.

Live.com is a very strategically important platform in Microsoft's vision for the web and this can be seen in an extensive suite of SDK's available for us developers to build on top of. I have said this before: Microsoft is now about building platforms and communities first, and concrete products second.

Here are just some of the things you can start prototyping today in the Live.com toolkit of SDK's and tools:

• Silverlight Stream SDK that allows you to post your Silverlight content and let Microsoft host it for free. (As long as you don't go over some relatively reasonable bandwidth and disk space usage caps)
• Virtual Earth SDK that allows you to create map driven experiences on the web
• Windows Live ID SDK that allows you to create login mechanisms powered by a common Live ID that many people already have
• Windows Live Contact SDK that allows you to build social networks using peoples exist contact data stored in Live ID services such as Messenger or Hotmail (Note that the user still retains the ultimate keys to this information)
• Messenger SDK that allows you to build your own Instant Messaging experiences (wow... to me this is very exciting)
• Live Search SDK that allows you to integrate Live Search into various web scenarios
• Alerts SDK that allows you to integrate with Alert Notifications services and go well beyond the interfaces currently provided by Microsoft for what is possible with Alerts
• Windows Spaces SDK that allows you to integrate with the various API's made available by spaces such as Blog API's, General API's, Social Networking API's, Photo API's, and more
• Web Gadget SDK that allows you to create Web Gadgets for Live Spaces
• Windows Live Photo SDK that allows you access to the photo storage system provided by Live Photo Gallery
• Admin Center SDK that allows you to control the Windows Live Admin Center through a web service API
• Application Based Storage SDK that allows you to store documents, photos and data in the "Cloud" (Do I smell Amazon S3 competition coming? this does feel like a step in that direction)
• Windows Live Writer SDK that allows you to extend the Live Writer platform with plug-ins
• Agents SDK that allows you to create an interactive experience with your users or customers through messenger that is powered by voice synthesis technology and task automation (Is this Microsoft Bob in Messenger? Hmm)
• Live Tools and Controls for Visual Studio that allows developers using Visual Studio to easily integrate Live.com services into their websites by using the control model they are very familiar with

and trust me there is more, so check it out for yourself: http://dev.live.com/ (or this link that also seems to have a lot of resources)

This is an exciting time to be a developer, lets start building Web 3.0 (or whatever version we are up to)

SkyDrive is Live

I am a little late with getting this into my blog but Microsoft has announced that SkyDrive is now out of Beta.

For those of you who don't know SkyDrive is Microsoft's free online hard drive through their Live.com product line.

One immediate improvement is the storage space that went from One gigabyte to Five gigabytes. This is a nice amount of free storage but do note there is no way to upgrade the disk space at this time.

One thing that still bugs me though about this product is the inability to move files once something is uploaded. This seems like a standard enough of a feature to be (still) missing from the product at launch. Over time though I'm sure this service will improve as its competitors such as GDrive are right behind it (At least if you believe the rumors).

Visual Studio 2008 Article in QBS magazine

Today I found a blog post on Daniel Moth's website regarding his Visual Studio 2008 Article in QBS magazine.

The article is an excellent summary of Visual Studio 2008 highlights and unique attributes. I highly recommend everyone who does not yet have a strong understand of the new environment take a look at it (You know who you are).

Link: VS2008 Article for QBS magazine

(The link above goes to Daniel's blog, which can then take you to a PDF version of the article)

Enjoy!

Getting started with WMI in .NET

WMI Overview

Being a Software Engineer first and an IT person second I never find servers as interesting as the software that they run. The big change for me is when I bring the two together in a project. One such project did exactly this by allowing me to interface with a core server services called WMI to automate parts of a deployment process.

What is WMI? Here is the definition found on the Wiki page:

A set of standards specifications that allow for management information to be shared between management applications

Combine this interface with the ability to use it directly from .NET code makes for some interesting possibilities. Imagine being able to query remote servers for Environment variable data, Disk Driver statistics, Running process information, or any of the other useful statistics exposed through WMI.

WMI though can be very complex to implement properly but the basics are simple. For example to query for information like Environment Variables on a remote server:

1. Create a ConnectionOptions object and specify a set of credentials if your connecting to a remote box (you don't need credentials if your connecting locally)
   
2. Create a ManagementScope object providing it the name of the machine which will be in your "scope" and provide the ConnectionOptions object you created earlier
   
3. Create a ObjectQuery object and specify your query, for example: select VariableValue from Win32_Environment where name = "SystemRoot"
   
4. Create a ManagementObjectSearcher object by providing it the ManagementScope and ObjectQuery. Once created you would simply execute the Get() method and get your
   ManagementObjectCollection collection that can be iterated through to retrieve
   ManagementObject with the actual data.

WMI can also be scripted from JScript, command-line or tools like FinalBuilder, PowerShell, etc. This extends WMI automation beyond just the development group letting other savvy IT professionals to manage their system without our assistance.

Getting Started with WMI for .NET Developers

Recommenced Learning Path

To get started with WMI in .NET 2.0 I would recommend the following steps:

• First read up on what WMI is from a more complete source then this blog, like this Wiki article:

WMI Wiki Page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Management_Instrumentation

• Second learn about WMI's query language WQL as its very useful to query information out a remote server:
  

WQL (SQL for WMI): http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394606.aspx

• Third learn all about the .NET WMI implementation and check out the various code samples on the MSDN library:

MSDN: WMI .NET Overview: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms257340(VS.80).aspx

Other References

• WMI Made Easy For C#(By Kevin Matthew Goss): http://www.csharphelp.com/archives2/archive334.html
  
• A Quick Introduction to WMI from .NET (By Jim Murphy)
  http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/04/07/wmi.html

WMI is extremely useful in various scenarios and I hope this reference post helps you get started.