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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Sean McCormack has released a new build of Zanebug. This version includes a number of refinements that make it play nicely with TestDriven.NET and Visual Studio. Sean has put up some documentation for the TestDriven.NET/Visual Studio integration here. This is a section of the main Zanebug 1.6 documentaion which has recently been made available (read about Transactional and Repeated tests there).
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
You bet your auntie's pink satin bloomers it is!Several hours pouring over the core plot this morning generated a satisfactory synopsis, but it took the additional input from someone who knew nothing about the exiting story to put the icing on the cake (my sincere gratitude to Adrian Pegg for that).... As everyone around Heather is stripped of body parts and life, her only way out is to discover and sever the secret link between twins.I'd pay to see it!*Last post on the subject unless by some miracle I win the competition in which case I'll never shut up about it!Actually, now that I think about it, I have a lot to say on the subject of screenwriting - not from a successful professional viewpoint or course - but it is a creative process and a fulfilling journey which I believe I need to take in my life, however it turns out.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Does Microsoft get Web 2.0? I'm heading out to Mix06 this weekend; looking forward to the unlikely combination of Bill Gates and Tim O'Reilly at the keynote, the latest from the Internet Explorer team, and Microsoft's perspective on the programmable web.
Watch this space for blog reports, and drop me an email if you are going along and would like to chat - tim(at)itwriting.com.
Tags:
mix06
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
There's been quite a lot of buzz recently about mobility, especally since Exchange SP2 was released, and I have quite a few conversations on the subject. Our mobility demos during the Exchange unplugged sessions went down a storm, and I've had several mails since then commenting on how inplementing Windows mobile has changed the way that people work. So we've decided to do a re-run of the very popular mobile opportunity day that we held in London. We delivered one of these sessions last year, and felt it was about time to replay the session. You can register for the event here, and if you want to ask the Jason or Ewan or any of the other presenters a question on implementing your mobility solution, then they'll be in the pub for a geekout on mobility after the event.
Of course, you don't need to ask a question - just soak up the stimulating conversation about gadgets whilst enjoying your pint...
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Sean McCormack has released a new build of Zanebug. This version includes a number of refinements that make it play nicely with TestDriven.NET and Visual Studio. Sean has put up some documentation for the TestDriven.NET/Visual Studio integration here. This is a section of the main Zanebug 1.6 documentaion which has recently been made available (read about Transactional and Repeated tests there).
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Las Vegas, the world's casino capital, is betting on some winning technology to draw in even more players.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
and its free too!
I used this a while back but stopped when my free trial ended.
Microsoft bought it in November and its now part of the Windows Live suite and there is a Mac OS X version too.
Microsoft Corp has acquired FolderShareTM, a leading service in the emerging space of file synchronization and remote access technology that helps customers access information across multiple devices.
FolderShare customers will continue to be able to enjoy the service at http://www.foldershare.com.
Launched in 2002 and owned and operated by Austin, Texas-based ByteTaxi Inc., the award-winning FolderShare service saves customers the hassle of sending large files via e-mail, burning them to CDs or DVDs and mailing them, or uploading them to a Web site. Instead, it allows customers to sync important information, making it well suited for personal or small-business use. The FolderShare service also enables private, remote access to customers' own files from any Web browser.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Have been musing about various logic puzzles latelty and thought I would open one up to the audience, so here it goes!
The Bus Riddle:
You live 5 minutes away from a bus stop, the bus waits at the stop for 30 seconds every 10 minutes. You wake up early one morning and have no idea what time it is, but you are late for work!
If running is twice as fast as walking. What do you do?
Suggestions in blog comments! ^_^
Ian
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Ian has posted about a University in Brazil that has successfully deployed IPsec based network isolation to a thousand desktops in only two days! Ian links directly to a case study article that explains how they went about the task of segmenting their network.
IPsec is an oft misunderstood technology due to it's complexity - there's a great deal of guidance available on the subject as I've blogged about many times - type in "ipsec" in the search field to the left hand side of my blog to find out more - click here to see for yourself. Of course you can browse to the main IPsec area of the Microsoft website too.
As mentioned in earlier posts you can take advantage of Security Configuration Wizard's ability to implement IPsec based signing and encryption - there's blogcast showing you how to do so - click here to view it.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Well for those avid readers of this blog would know I bash bush alot, heres a video that was on Digg and gave me a good laugh...
Bush talking to the Troops about Iraq and what he really feels should happen! Finally, it looks like this guy does know what the world thinks...
While on the subject of bush, take a look at the other mistakes my favourite son-of-a-president has said... Enjoy!
UPDATE:
Ah just found another cool video of the man of the man of teh post, this time trying to explain what 'Tribal Sovereignty' means... heres a google listing of articles relating to this dating back to year 2000... gosh he's a funny guy!
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Well for those avid readers of this blog would know I bash bush alot (maybe too much that I get harsh emails reminding me about the CIA knocking on my door and respect for the president etc... well folks, I really dont care. He's the american president, not ours...!) so with that in mind, heres a video that was on Digg and gave me a good laugh...
Bush talking to the Troops about Iraq and what he really feels should happen! Finally, it looks like this guy does know what the world thinks...
While on the subject of bush, take a look at the other mistakes my favourite son-of-a-president has said... Enjoy!
UPDATE:
Ah just found another cool video of the man of the man of teh post, this time trying to explain what 'Tribal Sovereignty' means... heres a google listing of articles relating to this dating back to year 2000... gosh he's a funny guy!
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
10 Random Thoughts.
# 2 Repetition engines
New media is rapidly becoming like old media.
'Memetrackers' (newstrackers) are dragging 'new media' into the land of the repetitive, the shallow and the incestuous.
They are not what I meant when I described attention engines. I want my niches, not personalized mass new media.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
The UK has the world's highest level of digital TV viewers at nearly 70%, says a report by Ofcom.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
The Next Big Thing is: There is no Next Big Thing.
Baloney.
I liked Don Dodge's response to the 'there is no Next Big Thing':
"The Next Big Thing does exist...it just doesn't look BIG to IBM. That is a common problem with large companies. When you have revenues of $40B to $100B no one thing will move the needle. Nothing looks big or interesting. Innovative or disruptive technologies are viewed as a threat to the core revenue stream, rather than promising new opportunities. This is the premise of The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen."
Don works at Microsoft. He's 100% working with companies that could become the next big thing, and lists 32 of them. I've personally only heard of three that he mentions: Akimbo, Newsgator and Onfolio (Don - didn't we just buy them??). I need to find out more about Adesso Systems ('WinFS today'), Digipede (gridware) and Fractal Edge (data visualization).
(Don - check out RSSLabs (in Boston too...) - they're using .NET to do some interesting stuff in the RSS and OPML space: OPMLSearch.com, OPMLWorkstation.com and TopTensources.com. Bela, Jim and John are the people there.)
If you're a startup and wanting to get in touch with someone at Microsoft, here are some people that could help you out.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Web Designer with exp in CSS, hand-coding HTML and Javascript required immediately for rolling contract based in Glasgow (salary negotiable). You should also have good Dreamweaver and Photoshop exp along with a strong understanding of portals. Role will involve designing client's website, whilst providing existing technical teams with the graphical templates and components required to build other
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Hackers have managed to get Windows XP running on an Apple Mac computer.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Have been musing about various logic puzzles latelty and thought I would open one up to the audience, so here it goes!
The Bus Riddle:
You live 5 minutes away from a bus stop, the bus waits at the stop for 30 seconds every 10 minutes. You wake up early one morning and have no idea what time it is, but you are late for work!
If running is twice as fast as walking. What do you do?
Suggestions in blog comments! ^_^
Ian
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Jen is currently reading through for typos and glaring grammar errors while I start to consider the required tag-line and 100 word synopsis ("easy, one for each page!" I hear you cry - unhelpfully).Sever - when you lose your family, just make a new one.Sever - making new friends, out of the bits of old ones.Sever - it's got scary bits in it.OK, maybe none of those, but you get the idea.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Firms keen to find out how easily disabled people can navigate their website can now call on a testing service.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
I hadn’t seen this yet: Windows XP boots on a Macbook Pro
Conclusion: Some people are able to reach unbelievable levels of boredom
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Much discussion of Richard Grimes post on Vista and .NET. I recall reading this months ago (or one very like it) but suddenly it is getting noticed.
It's a good read, but I disagree with his conclusion, that:
Microsoft has lost its confidence in .NET. They implement very little of their own code using .NET.
Nevertheless, there is a story here. Longhorn was introduced with fanfare at PDC 2003, and we were given an alpha release; it worked but performance was dire. Longhorn went downhill in 2004, with mutterings about train wrecks. Then came the infamous Longhorn reset, when the team backtracked and almost started afresh, using Windows Server 2003 as the base code. Since the reset, the vibes about Longhorn/Vista have been more positive, and the preview releases more encouraging. However, as Grimes notes, one of the changes is that less .NET code is used at the core of the operating system.
Grimes is right, there was a change of heart. What I can't figure out is why he thinks this is a problem. Building an OS in managed code makes no sense to me. Decoupling .NET from the core OS is an advantage. In other words, Microsoft did the right thing.
I share some of Grimes' complaints. Microsoft's messaging to developers has not chimed with its own practice, particularly for desktop applications. In addition, contrary to some of Microsoft's statements, COM is not dead.
That said, I strongly disagree with Grimes' conclusion. Microsoft is using .NET for critically important code: Sharepoint, Windows Communications Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Live and Office Live, to name some examples.
Much of Microsoft's .NET usage is associated with the Internet as platform or "Web 2.0", which some people (myself included) see as the future direction of computing. My perception is that Microsoft and others have increasing confidence in .NET in this context.
An aside: Google just bought Writely, a .NET application. Maybe that will change as Google revamps the code, maybe it won't, but it's a small example of how .NET is making waves.
As for Grimes, I respect his expertise but I'm not clear why he is being so negative. Something happened a year ago that persuaded him to give up on the platform, after investing much time and energy in it and writing an excellent book. It is Grimes that has lost confidence in .NET, not Microsoft.
Tags:
grimes
development
vista
programming
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Vodafone agrees to sell off its struggling Japanese phone business for £8.9bn to telecoms group Softbank.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Sanyo agrees a joint venture with Taiwan's Quanta Computer to manufacture flat-screen television sets.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
Fifteen aspiring bands are bidding to have a song released on a mobile phone network in the US.
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Published on 17 Mar 2006 from
I've not blogged very much (at all) about the new role I started about 8 weeks ago, so I thought it was about time I did.
In January, I joined the Data Programmability (DP) product group. My official title is 'Community Program Manager'.
What this means is that I don't 'own' any products, features, specs, or any development of code to do with the actual product lines our team is responsible for developing and servicing. What I do 'own' is our engagement with our team's external customers and the community of developers that use our technologies.
The DP team itself is responsible for Microsoft's data access and programming technologies: ADO.NET and SQL Native Client (OLEDB, ODBC, ADO, MDAC, JDBC, or SOAP/HTTP). This stuff is everywhere. Within Microsoft's products, you'll find our team's technologies in Windows, in Office, SQL Server, Indigo, Visual Studio and plenty of others. Externally, any time a developer is accessing and programming with data from any data source using C#, VB, C++, ASP.NET, or the .NET Framework, they're using our technologies. I mean it, our products are everywhere.
There are really two sides to my role. The first to help our customers get more out of our current products and technologies. We do this in a numbers of ways - forums, blogs, newsgroups, MSDN Data site, events, support, etc. A lot of this effort is focused on helping our customers solve problems they've run into and trying to make is easier for them to find answers be it via the community, through documentation and help content and occasionally directly through the product team itself (especially in the Forums - we have two: The .NET Data Access and Storage Forum and the SQL Server Data Access Forum). The other side of my role is to help our team have sharp eyes and ears in terms of where the market is going, where the customer pain points are today and scenarios they are trying to enable today and in the future. Customers in this context vary from the IT departments of large and medium-sized enterprises, to ISVs, to individual software architects and developers. Again, we're engaging with customers in a number of ways in this regard, including Software Design Reviews (SDRs), Community Technology Previews (CTPs), Technology Adoption Programs (TAPs), newsgroups, Product Feedback Center, meet-ups at events that customers are attending and even comments on the team's blogs. (We have two team blogs - Data Access and SQL Protocols) In fact, practically any way we can to get direct input from customers about they want out of our technologies and how they could improve. We incorporate all this input into our product plans so as the products evolve, they do so with the aim of making our customers' lives easier and enabling them to do the cool stuff that they want to do.
It's the first time I've worked within a product group at Microsoft. My previous roles have been in marketing, so I'm learning a great deal about how products are designed and developed in the developer space. I'm also getting a very real feel for our customers, something I didn't feel when I managed broad communications projects. I actually get to meet customers here and discuss problems we can actually do something about, most of the time.
The culture of our team is quite different to what I've known previously too, in a good way. Compared to other groups I've worked within, DP is uber geeky. I love it. No conversation I might strike up with team mates here is too geeky. For my first four weeks of settling in, my manager sent me off to meet a whole bunch of different folks within our immediate group and related teams (WinFS, SQL, DevDiv) each with their own perspective of our technologies and the role these technologies have to play in the wider scheme of things. The word 'complex' doesn't even come close to describing the interactions and interrelations between all these different teams and their technologies.
There are plenty of interesting people in our team too. It's fun. In my second week I got to meet Brian Beckman, a PhD from Princeton. He used to an Astrophysicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, while designing operating systems. In 1992 he joined Microsoft and is now working on LINQ. As he talked I thought I was watching one of those Channel 9 videos. And then there is Erik Meijer, who's alter ego is VBTV's "Head in a Box" (you'll just have to watch the videos in which he stars as, well, a head in a box). Erik is another language designer, previously working on Haskell before joining Microsoft Research. Today, he's also working on LINQ. I'm working closely with a number of team members such as Tim Mallalieu, who lives and breathes data models, Pablo Castro - the Technical Lead for ADO.NET (Pablo is not only a very smart and friendly chap, but also a very entertaining presenter), Debra Dove - PM for SQL Server Data Access, Holly Knight - GPM, Lance Olson - GPM and co-author of Network Programming for .NET Framework and David Sceppa, author of Programming ADO.NET. Plenty more too, but just to name a few...
Well, this was going to be a quick post, but it didn't turn out that way. Bottom line is I'm having great fun in this team. I'm learning lots. I'm meeting, interacting and helping *real* customers and doing the kinds of things I hoped I would when Microsoft. It's all good right now.
