NJ Geeks - New Jersey's IT Community

In this episode, the one and only Windows Azure Tactical Strategist, Steve Marx, joins Dmitry and Peter to give us an update on the Windows Azure platform. Steve talks about common real world Windows Azure use patterns, including storage and compute instance configurations.

Steve uses some strategic tactics to tell us what’s in the tea leaves for the future of Azure. Peter also responds to “cat ladies & acne-laden teenagers” by sharing “The Memo”.

Evan Nagle on Cat Ladies, Tool, and Microsoft.Data

Connect With Steve Marx:

• Steve Marx’s Blog
• Follow Steve Marx on Twitter
• Cloud Cover Show on Channel 9

Windows Azure Stuff:

• Windows Azure Team Blog
• The Windows Azure Platform
• Microsoft’s Windows Azure: What a Difference A Year Makes (Mary Jo Foley)
• Windows Azure Security Overview Whitepaper Released
• Moving Applications to the Cloud on the Microsoft Windows Azure Platform - Guidance from Microsoft patterns & practices
• Programming Windows Azure Book (O’Reilly)
• Windows Azure Lessons Learned Online Series
• The Windows Azure Platform: Articles From The Trenches
• Microsoft’s Cloud In A Box (Jeffrey Schwartz)
• Windows Azure Case Studies
• June 2010 Azure Tools Update For Visual Studio
• Intellitrace for Windows Azure

Just got word from Andrew Brust that he is launching a new user group in NYC focused on the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack!  Their first meeting kicks off on September 13th, 2010 in the Microsoft NYC office.  The group is so new that they don’t even have their website set up.  I’ll get a link up here on my blog once they do.  In the meantime, they’ve set up a registration page for the 9/13/2010 meeting on Click2Attend (link here).

Details from Andrew:

Many of you know that Business Intelligence (BI) has long been a passion of mine, ever since the release of SQL Server 7 and its OLAP Services (now Analysis Services) component.  With the growing number of BI features in Office and SharePoint, including the new PowerPivot self-service BI engine, Microsoft BI is now hitting a point of true resonance in the MS ecosystem.  The challenge is that the MS BI stack is scattered over several products, including SQL Server, Office and SharePoint.  This means information, events and support around the MS BI stack are scattered as well, creating certain barriers to successful and enjoyable adoption.

With that in mind, and with the support of others in the NYC-area Microsoft user group community, I have decided to launch a new user group focused on Microsoft BI; nothing more and nothing less.  This group’s monthly meetings will feature subjects that include deep dives on the Microsoft BI Stack’s component products, the developer story around them, third party products, and how to integrate Microsoft BI tools with other Business Intelligence platforms.

The group will meet the 2nd Monday of each month, at Microsoft’s NYC offices at 1290 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue). Our first meeting will be in less than three weeks, on Monday, September 13th.  Our Web site is under construction but should be up within one week.  For now, please simply register at the link below:

We have a great speaker and topic lined up!  It features an introduction to the entire MS BI Stack, and is a terrific talk for our inaugural meeting.  Here are the details:

Introduction to the Microsoft Business Intelligence Stack

This demonstration will provide a whirlwind tour of the major components of the Microsoft BI stack.    Borrowing from the “begin with the end in mind” approach, We’ll kick things off with an end result: a SharePoint 2010 multi-page dashboard  consisting of different business scorecards and integrated reports/charts for summary/detailed analytics. 

From there, the presentation will step backwards and trace the formative steps towards the end goal, and how developers can use the different products in the Microsoft BI stack (Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, PowerPivot, and PerformancePoint Services), to build solutions for ultimate deployment to SharePoint. 

Attendees will come away with some exposure of what each tool in the BI stack can do, and how the tools can be made to work together.

Speaker: Kevin S. Goff

Kevin is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, a Columnist for Component Developer (CoDe) Magazine, a SQL Server/Business Intelligence Senior Trainer and Curriculum author at SetFocus  LLC  and has been an Industry developer, speaker and writer since 1987

Please register and spread the word.  Thanks in advance and I look forward to seeing you on September 13th!

Andrew J. Brust
Chief Technology Officer
twentysix NEW YORK, a Tallan company

Firestarter events have been growing quite popular over the past year or two. These are all free training events that focus on a single topic from intro to 300-level in a day. Feedback from past Firestarter attendees have been universally positive.  Here in the tri-state area we’ve seen multiple Firestarter events on Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC, Agile Programming, and WCF.  Just last week, I announced that there will be Firestarters on Windows Phone 7 (9/7) and the Entity Framework (9/27) coming to NYC.

It should be no surprise that given the popularity of these events, the folks here at Microsoft have been busy working on helping create more of them!  Today, I’m happy to announce a new series of Firestarters on the Microsoft Web Platform!  These will be running from late September to December in cities up and down the east coast of the US.  There will be local stops in Iselin, NJ (9/30) and NYC (10/26)!

Come on out to learn about the latest in web development on the Microsoft platform.  We’ll take you on a tour of ASP.NET Web Forms & MVC, explore the new WebMatrix, as well as show you techniques for creating effective web applications with CSS, jQuery, and AJAX.

To the Web with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms

The tried-and-true approach for creating effective and robust websites, ASP.NET 4 Web Forms offers powerful abstractions and rapid application development features. Add in recent advances in ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 and you’ll be crafting amazing sites in no time.

Looking at ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) is a relatively new option, offering a variety of potential benefits such as separation of concerns, flexibility, control, and testability. In this session, you’ll learn the essentials, along with the latest advances, so you can get started right away.

The Web Platform Smorgasbord (Lunch included!)

Grab a bite to eat and join us for this relaxed but rapid-fire lunchtime look at a variety of web topics, including tools and tech that you’ll surely find appetizing.

Introducing WebMatrix

WebMatrix is a new option that provides a simple but powerful way to create web applications. You can create sites based on existing open-source applications, or dive right in and create from scratch. From code and testing to data and deployment, we’ll introduce WebMatrix and show you how it can make your life easier.

Evaluating Your Web Options

You’re up to speed with the latest in ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and WebMatrix, but you may be wondering how and when to choose between them. The great news is you don’t always have to choose just one. In this session we’ll talk about factors to consider, options for adoption/migration, and ways to combine ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC in the same web application.

Creating Effective Websites with ASP.NET

Knowing how to create websites with ASP.NET is important, but making them effective is the key. This final session dives into additional options and techniques that apply to both Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC applications. From scripting with jQuery and AJAX, design with CSS, markup and validation techniques, and tools for testing, you’ll learn how to set your sites (and skills) apart from the rest.

Use the links below to register for the Microsoft Web Platform Firestarter in the city closest to you.

Be on the look out soon for information regarding a series of Windows Azure Firestarters coming soon in November & December!

The Entity Framework is a set of technologies in ADO.NET that support the development of data-oriented software applications. First introduced in .NET 3.5 SP1 in 2008, the Entity Framework underwent significant changes in its second version, known as Entity Framework 4, released in Visual Studio 2010 earlier this year.  If you haven’t looked at EF before due to “V1 concerns”, now is the time to check it out. 

What better way to learn about the Entity Framework than from the east coast’s resident EF guru, Julie Lerman!  Join Julie, Rachel Appel, and Stephen Bohlen for a full-day learning event at the Entity Framework Firestarter in New York City!  They’ll spend the whole day bringing you up to speed on all you’ll need to know about the Entity Framework and how it can help with your application development.

Date: Tuesday September 27th, 2010

Location:

Microsoft NYC Office
1290 Ave of The Americas, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10104

Doors open at 8:00am. Sessions run from 8:30am – 6:00pm.  Lunch will be served.

Intro  by Julie Lerman  

Why EF exists, where it fits into ADO.NET and long term MS strategy, basics about how EF works and some simple first step demos in VS2010.

What’s new in EF4  by Julie Lerman and/or Steve Bohlen

Designer support, model first, stored procedure mappings, pass through sprocs. Lots of the other new stuff is in later talks.

RAD development with EF by Rachel Appel

Drag & Drop with WPF, EntityDataSource, ASP.NET Dynamic Data Sites.

Entity Framework POCO Support Basics by Julie Lerman

How to create snapshot POCOs and dynamic proxy POCOs, differences between their behavior, new T4 code generation, customizing T4 for more targeted POCO classes

Disconnected strategies (WCF/ASP.NET) by Julie Lerman

Leverage new methods for custom WCF/ASP.NET apps, Self-Tracking Entities, quick look at WCF Data Services/oData & WCF RIA Services

Writing Testable/Maintainable Apps with EF by Julie Lerman & Steve Bohlen

Build simple repositories, unit of work, unit tests, use them all in MVC app…

Closing/Raffle

Stay for the closing remarks and raffle.

Registration will sell out quickly, so sign up right away to guarantee your spot at this free learning event!

In this episode, Dmitry and Peter cover the latest news around the Microsoft developer space, including Windows Azure updates, interoperability, & Windows Phone 7. They also talk about the new Visual Studio LightSwitch. Is it really for cat ladies?

Peter & Dmitry discuss who the target audience is for LightSwitch as well as how some in the community feel it may or may not impact professional Microsoft Developers in the industry.

Windows Azure Stuff:

• Windows Azure Security Overview Whitepaper Released
• Windows Azure Single Sign-on Support Implemented
• Windows Azure App Fabric LABS Access Control Service Update Now Available
• Windows Azure App Fabric LABS Environment
• Access Control Service – Roadmap for PDC and Beyond
• Windows Azure CDN Supports Silverlight Smooth Streaming (Steve Marx)

Interop Stuff:

• Previous Connected Show guest, Maarten Bailleu Blogs About Hosting PHP Apps In Azure
• PHP Driver for SQL Server 2.0 is Released
• Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server 2.0 Released

Windows Phone 7 Stuff:

• Creating High Performance Silverlight Applications for Windows Phone 7
• Windows Phone 7 Voice Preview on Emulator (Feature Behind Dmitry’s Trick)
• Windows 7 Firestarters, Garages, and Bootcamps Coming to Central & Eastern US

Conference News:

• ALM Summit in Redmond – Nov 16-18th
• P&P Symposium: Redmond Oct 18-22, Moscow 13th Sept, and Kiev 10th Sept
• Don’t forget PDC on Oct 28-29th Redmond, Wa

Visual Studio LightSwitch stuff:

• Microsoft Announces Visual Studio LightSwitch
• Andrew Brust Writes About LightSwitch
• Matt Van Horn & The Folks At Infragistics Are Working On Lightswitch Controls
• Microsoft.Data and Positioning (Ayende aka Oren Eni)
• Microsoft.Data, Because the 90s Were So Good, We Want To Do Them Again (Ayende aka Oren Eni)
• Microsoft.Data – Let’s Inject Some Love Into The Conversation (Evan Nagle)
• Doug Seven – Myth Busting Visual Studio Lightswitch

In this episode, guests Ben Dewey & Kent Brown join Peter to discuss the latest release of the Apache Stonehenge project. Ben & Kent talk about the .NET, Java, and PHP interoperability project and how it now handles identity. (Interview starts at 26:21)

Also, Dmitry & Peter rap about Web Farms, Ribbons & Bows, Windows Phone 7, and Power Tools. They also take us on another trip to Dmitry’s SoapBox!

Various .NET Stuff:

• WPF Ribbon Control “officially” Released
• IIS Team Released Web Farm Framework 2.0 Beta

Interop Stuff:

• Identity “Mash-up” Federation Demo Using Multiple Protocols (Open ID and WS-Federation)

Windows Phone 7 Stuff:

• Windows Phone 7 Design Resources – UI Guide and Design Templates
• Go Get The Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Beta
• Windows Phone Development Documentation (Refreshed July 2010)
• Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit Beta Refresh
• The First WP7 Reviews Came Out On July 19th
• Paul Thurrott Shares Dmitry’s Fury
• Windows Phone 7 Firestarter, Garage, and Boot Camp Events in the US

Visual Studio Stuff:

• New Version of VS 2010 Productivity Power Tools Available (July 2010)
• Announcing the Solution Navigator for Visual Studio 2010

Ben Dewey & Kent Brown Stuff:

• Ben Dewey’s Blog
• Follow Ben On Twitter
• Stay Connected With Kent & the WCF Team via the Endpoint Blog

Apache Project Stonehenge Stuff:

• Apache Stonehenge M2 Release Adds Claims-Based Authentication Scenarios
• Ben Dewey Announces: Apache Stonehenge M2 Released
• Ted Neward Talks About Stonehenge on Connected Show #8
• Apache Stonehenge Project

With all the excitement around the upcoming new Windows Phone 7 platform, it was just a matter of time! I’m happy to announce that Microsoft is going to be hosting a series of Windows Phone 7 Firestarter events around the Eastern US starting this month.  If you’re looking to learn more about the development opportunities on this new platform, these will be the events for you!  Look out New York City…  the WP7 Firestarter comes to town on Tuesday, September 7th.

The power to build smart, visually stunning games and applications is right in your hands with Windows Phone 7. Want to see what's under the hood? You are invited to join your local Microsoft Developer Evangelists for an inside look at the Windows Phone 7 platform. You'll learn how to harness the strength of Silverlight and XNA to create compelling user experiences with rich, multi-media content. We'll also outline the new distribution and revenue opportunities Windows Phone 7 and the Windows Marketplace offer to web, game, mobile and interactive developers and application publishers.

Morning Sessions:

• Introduction to Windows Phone Development and the WP7 platform
• Building Windows Phone 7 Applications with Silverlight
• Building Windows Phone 7 Applications using XNA

Lunch (included)

Afternoon Sessions:

• Monetizing Your Apps with Marketplace
• Windows Phone 7 Services
• Light Up Windows Phone 7

Amplify your creativity, productivity and profits with Windows Phone 7 – and don't miss these full-day sessions in your local area. This is an exclusive, advance invitation for our preferred customers, so register today and save your seat.

Following the Firestarter events will be a Windows Phone 7 Garage for mobile application developers each evening featuring hands-on workshops.  (<—And I’m guessing an opportunity to see your app run on an actual WP7 device!)  These events will follow the Firestarter from 6-9 pm and require a separate registration. This hands-on workshop will feature one-on-one proctoring from Microsoft and community experts. It's the perfect opportunity to design and implement that cool new app you've been dreaming about, so bring your ideas and get ready to code. To learn more about the Phone Garage event or to register, click on an event city near you. Hurry, space is limited!

If you can dream it, you can build it with Windows Phone 7.

Use the links below to register for the city nearest to you:

Windows Phone 7 Firestarter

Windows Phone 7 Garage

Hope to see some of you at the Windows Phone 7 Firestarter in NYC on September 7th!

Oh… and if you’re not near any of these cities on the east coast, my peers in the central part of the US are hosting similar free training events by the name “Windows Phone 7 Boot Camps”.  These will be in cities like Chicago, Houston, St. Louis, and Austin.  For a listing of Windows Phone 7 Boot Camp cities and dates, see Jeff Brand’s blog here.

Thanks to everyone who attended the WCF Firestarter event in New York City on June 19, 2010!  I had a great time helping organize the event and speaking with many of the attendees about the Windows Communication Foundation.  There were over 200 folks who made it out to the Fire Starter in NYC that day, as well as an almost equal number that tuned in via our live simulcast!  Special thanks goes out to the event’s speakers Miguel Castro and Don Demsak for assembling and delivering most of the day’s content!

The recordings and content from the event are now available! 

Miguel Castro’s Blog
Follow Miguel on Twitter

Peter Laudati’s Blog
Follow Peter on Twitter

Don Demsak’s Blog
Follow Don on Twitter

Here are some links to useful information on WCF.

• What IS the Windows Communication Foundation?
• WCF Developer Center on MSDN
• Beginners Guide To WCF
• WCF Resources & Community on MSDN

Here are the links to the docs for all 3 major releases of WCF. The WCF 4 documentation is the most current, of course. The deltas between these are minor, but good to have if you’re restricted to using an older version in your organization.

• WCF 4 Reference Documentation 
• WCF 3.5 Reference Documentation
• WCF 3.0 Reference Documentation

• WCF REST Developer Center on MSDN
• Overview of REST in WCF
• WCF REST Starter Kit (most of these features are in WCF 4 & VS2010 with a few exceptions)
• Paste As XML Types in VS 2010 (Dani Diaz shows how you can use this REST Starter Kit feature in VS2010)
• Rob Bagby’s AWESOME Blog Series on WCF REST
• Glenn Block’s Blog (Glenn is now on the WCF REST team!)

• Get Started With WCF RIA Services
• WCF RIA Services on MSDN
• WCF RIA Services Code Gallery
• Silverlight Web Service Team Blog (Using WCF with Silverlight Clients)

• WCF Data Services Center on MSDN
• Getting Started with WCF Data Services
• WCF Data Services & oData At-A-Glance
• WCF Data Services Team Blog
• The Endpoint Blog

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In this episode, guest host Andrew Brust is back again, joining Dmitry & I to talk about all of the tech news from Microsoft’s Wordwide Partner Conference in Washington, DC. The trio talks about WebMatrix, Internet Explorer 9 Preview 3, Windows Phone 7, and the newly announced Windows Azure Appliance.

A raging Dmitry also shares his poppin’ passion for HTML5.

WebMatrix Stuff:

“The Gu” Gives A New Web Toolset In 4 Days…

• Day 1, the Gu giveth us IIS Express
• Day 2, the Gu giveth us SQL Compact
• Day 3, the Gu giveth us Razor
• Day 4, the Gu giveth us WebMatrix
• Andrew Brust: WebMatrix, Razor, and a Return To Simplicity
• Details on SQL Server Compact from the SQL Compact Team Blog
• Brian Swan on Creating PHP Websites With WebMatrix
• Get WebMatrix With The Microsoft Web Platform Installer

IE9 Dev Preview 3 Stuff:

• IE Blog Announces IE9 Platform Preview 3
• IE9 Destroys Chrome 6 in HTML5 Fish Tank Cagematch!

Interop News:

• Apache Stonehenge M2 Release Adds Claims-Based Authentication Scenarios
• Outlook Social Connector for Facebook
• Get the Outlook Social Connector Bits

Conference News:

• PDC 2010 Announced – October 28-29 2010 – Redmond, WA
• VS Live in Redmond – August 2-6 2010

Windows Phone 7 Stuff:

• Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Beta Released
• Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit Beta Refresh
• Get the Bits Here
• Imagine Cup winners given WP7 test devices
• Former Jersey guy, Frank LaVigne has put out a great list of WP7 resources
• Dave Isbitski – DE With Phone 7
• Danilo Diaz – DE With Phone 7
• G. Andrew Duthie – DE With Phone 7
• Glen Gordon – DE With Phone 7
• The First WP7 Reviews Are In

Azure Stuff:

• Windows Azure Appliance Announced at WPC 10
• Windows Azure P&P Architecture Guidance – Part 1 Released
• Part 2 Is In Beta
• Windows Azure “Dallas” Announcements at WPC 10
• Sink or Toilet?

Andrew Brust Stuff:

• Andrew Brust’s Blog
• Follow Andrew On Twitter
• Andrew’s Column on Redmond Review

If you don’t use an RSS reader to read my blog, then you probably noticed that things started looking, um… different, a few weeks ago.  My JrzyShr Dev Guy blog is currently part of MSDN Blogs, a developer blogging network comprised of folks who work at Microsoft.  In May 2010, the system powering MSDN Blogs was upgraded to the latest version of Telligent Community. 

As part of that upgrade, the look-n-feel of this blog has undergone a slew of changes too!  I’m happy to reveal the “new” 2010 look of the JrzyShr Dev Guy blog here, and share how I did it for the benefit of others interested in customizing their Telligent Community-based blogs.

The Weather Channel’s website recently updated itself and provided a nice history tour of it’s evolution.  I think history is great, so I’ll do the same here…

2006 - “Poison Ivy”

2008 - “Paper Clip at the Shore”

2010 – “Going Metro”

(cue the Kenny Rogers music!)

Why not? The last time I updated the theme of this blog was in April 2008.  It was due for a change.  (Okay… the reality is that the platform upgrade forced me.)

Like most software upgrades, Telligent Community 5.5 brings plenty of new features and improved functionality.  However, to move forward, sometimes you need to take a step back.  The previous version of the software that ran MSDN Blogs, Community Server 2.1, was several releases old.  The templates and customizations available in CS 2.1 were not compatible with those in TC 5.5. 

Migrating the several thousand blogs on MSDN Blogs to a new platform alone was not a trivial task.  Migrating several thousand incompatible customized templates was just not feasible.  Therefore, the MSDN Blogs team at Microsoft decided to reset everyone’s blog to a single default template with the new MSDN theme.

The new MSDN theme template looks great but I’ve always prided myself on having a site that stands out with my own custom look.  In my April 2008 post, I detailed how I themed this blog after my Jersey Shore roots.  Knowing that I’d have to start from scratch technically, I figured I’d try to keep most of the Jersey Shore design ideas and elements in the new theme. That includes my banner image featuring a view of New York City from the Jersey Shore taken here!

In Community Server 2.1, administrators could provide a collection of pre-canned themes the (non-admin) blog owner could choose from.  These themes controlled the layout of the various content elements on the page.  There was very little room for the blog owner to customize where various elements on a page ended up.  There were essentially three ways a blog owner could customize their blog theme previously through the management UI:

• Create “lists” of links which then appear in a side column of the blog. (Left or Right determined by theme.)
• Enter some HTML & JavaScript in the “News” block that appears in a side column. (Left or Right determined by theme.)
• Enter custom CSS styles to override the style for any element on the page.

The last of those three options was often the trickiest bit, having to “hunt and peck” to find the right CSS classes to override!

In the new Telligent Community 5.5, all three of those customization options are still available, however, they are somewhat superseded by the newer module & widget based layout.  Unfortunately, you will still need to “hunt and peck” to find the right CSS styles to override. (More about that later in the post...)  Now, I’ll describe how you customize things in TC 5.5.

Luckily, one of the cool things about TC 5.5 is that it is a LOT easier to customize a blog than CS 2.1 ever was!  Instead of starting from a selection of existing themes and customizing from there, TC 5.5 provides a “blank” Wireframe theme.  When the new platform went live, I immediately switched to the Wireframe theme to keep things simple. The Wireframe theme is essentially a blank slate with a white background and basic Arial fonts. 

In TC 5.5, all of the content elements on a page are “widgets”.  This includes the blog posts, the menus, the title banner, and so forth. The widgets, and the layout of those widgets on the page, are controlled completely by the blog owner via an “AJAX-y” WYSIWYG editing mode.  You can enter the editing mode by clicking the “Customize” button that appears at the top of each page after you are logged in to the site as the blog owner.

To customize a page, you have the following steps to complete after entering edit mode:

• Choose a layout.
• Choose and arrange the widgets within the layout from the widget panel using drag-n-drop.
• Customize each widget.

A “layout” sets up the top level <div> tags that define the columns and/or headers and defines their dimensions, etc. Here is an example of the layout types available in the editing mode:A “widget” is a block of content that can be inserted anywhere within the layout.  TC 5.5 provides a whole slew of widgets to choose from, including some default ones. Some examples of widget types:

• Post List – Contains a list of your blog posts
• Generic Content – Allows you to add some plain old HTML content minus JavaScript or IFrames.
• Unfiltered HTML – Allows you to add IFrames & JavaScript.
• Breadcrumb – Navigation control
• Search box
• 3rd Party Widgets – From sites like Google or Widgetbox.

Many of the widgets have options you can set by clicking on their header while in the editing mode.  For example, on the Blog Post List widget, you can control how many posts to display, whether to display a summary view of your posts, or a “detail" view where each post is displayed in its entirety within the list.

The Generic Content and Unfiltered HTML widgets provide you with plenty of flexibility in including content other than your blog posts on your site.  This is a huge step up from CS 2.1!

There are six different “pages” (or views) in a TC 5.5 blog.  Each of these pages has its own layout and set of widgets.  The blog owner must customize each of these six pages in order to create a consistent theme across their blog.  The six pages are:

1. “Home” page – As expected, seen when visitors first hit your blog’s main URL. (In my case, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/peterlau)
2. “Blog Post” page – Displays an individual blog post.
3. “Tags” page – Seen when visitors navigate posts by tags by clicking on a tag in the tag cloud. (Only needed if you use a Tag Cloud widget on your pages.)
4. “Email” page – Email form seen when visitors click Email Blog Author. (Only available if the blog owner has enabled this feature in the management UI.)
5. “About” page – Seen when visitors click the “About” link. (Only available if the blog owner has enabled this feature in the management UI.)
6. Custom Content Pages – If your blog contains custom content pages (set up in the management UI), you will need to view the particular custom page in your browser and then press the “Customize” button to style it.

Once you have set up the content layout on your blog by customizing each page, it’s time to make it look pretty.  Just like in Community Server 2.1, Telligent Community 5.5 allows you to set up your custom styles by entering CSS overrides via the management UI.  And just like CS 2.1, this is the hairy & time consuming part of customizing your blog, especially if you’re a CSS-ignorant developer like myself.

As you may have guessed, almost all of the HTML elements and CSS classes used by TC 5.5 are completely different from CS 2.1.  So, break out your favorite HTML editing tool and be prepared to hack away to figure out which CSS classes you need to override in order to achieve the look and feel you want.  The developer tools in IE8 work fine for this task, as well as Expression Web if you have it.

Not only can you use CSS to set the fonts, colors, & sizes.  You can also use CSS to tweak the layout chosen as part of the page customization. You may want to change the size, spacing, or location of various elements on the page.  For example, you can use CSS to change the width of the side columns.

Once you have everything looking the way you like it, back it up!  You can do this in the TC 5.5 management UI by exporting your theme customizations to an XML file.  If you’re smart, you’ll store that file somewhere safe, like SkyDrive!

As I figured out how to customize the site, I decided to have one layout for the Home page, and another shared layout across the five other pages. Unfortunately, there’s no way (that I could figure out) to share a layout across pages.  So, I had to customize each one individually, re-adding the same widgets to each page.  In the case of the Generic Content and Unfiltered HTML widgets, this meant copying & pasting the same HTML content into the widgets on each page.

As part of my evangelism job at Microsoft, I frequently direct people I meet to visit my blog as a source of information about Microsoft and the local NJ/NY/CT developer community.  Therefore, I wanted the home page to surface as much as that information as possible.  To do that, I chose the three column layout with a banner as depicted in the image to the right.  This is known as the “Header-Top-Sidebar-Left-Content-Center-Sidebar-Right” layout.

Let’s start at the top!  I knew I wanted to bring my banner image of NYC viewed from the Jersey Shore over from the old site.  I also wanted to add my picture somewhere prominently on the site as I’ve never had that before.  That way folks would know who I am when they visit.  TC 5.5 has a “Blog – Banner” widget, but it appears useless to me. It just displays the title of the blog in a large font over white space. There were no options to customize it at all by adding let’s say…  a banner image!

To do this, I added a Generic Content widget to the banner section of the layout on all six pages on the site.  The Generic Content widget gives you a rich text editor where you can enter content to be displayed.  You can alternatively click an “HTML” icon in the editor to enter plain old HTML.

Here is where I cheated.  I originally wanted to have my blog title and tag line overlaid prominently on the banner image via HTML and CSS positioning.  I couldn’t figure it it out.  So, I took the original image and edited it in Paint.NET.  In Paint.NET, I added my headshot and the blog title text directly to the image. I then returned to the Generic Content widget, inserted my image via the rich text editor, and that was it.

Center Content Column – Breadcrumbs & Blog Post List

In my April 2008 post, I mentioned how I wanted the content area of my blog posts to be wider in order to fit images and code samples as needed. This led me use a two-column layout previously with a single sidebar.  This resulted in a lot of non-post information being pushed “below the fold”, such as upcoming events from Community Megaphone.

TC 5.5 offers a “Blog Post List” widget that lets you choose to have a “summary” view of your posts, or the full “detail” view.  I decided to go with the “summary” view for the center column of the layout.  The “summary” view displays only the first paragraph or so of your most recent posts.  Since readers need to click through to the full “Blog Post” page to read an actual post, having a wider width on the home page was not a concern. 

That allowed me to go with a three-column layout with an extra side bar on the right to surface more information.  Summary view also lets site visitors see more posts on the Home page, making it easier to catch past posts that normally would be several scrolls of the screen away.

Another benefit of the TC 5.5’s new “Blog Post List” widget is that it enables your blog visitors to filter your posts on Most Commented, Most Viewed, aside from the default Most Recent listing.  Blog visitors can also switch to a detailed post view where the entire contents of the posts are displayed on the Home page.

There are two other widgets in the center column on the Home page.  The first is the Breadcrumb widget. This widget displays the navigation hierarchy of the blog as horizontal text links as is standard on many websites. The breadcrumb navigation root is the MSDN Blogs home page.

The second widget in the center column is the “Blog Title” widget. This widget outputs the title of the blog in HTML that is “hidden” by default, but enable’s the blog’s title to be displayed in the browser’s title bar. This widget does not need to go in the center column. It just ended up there for me.  However, you should have it somewhere on your page.

The left and right side bars are made up of several widgets containing various bits of information.  The three most important bits of information I wanted to surface above the fold besides the blog post content were community events from Community Megaphone, my latest tweets on Twitter, and my new podcast, The Connected Show.  I also brought along most of the previous content, including the the list of Microsoft-focused user groups in the NJ/NY/CT tri-state area.

I mentioned above that in CS 2.1, the only way to add non-blog content to the site previously was by entering HTML in the “News” block or creating “Link Lists” through the management UI.  The user group list and my teammates’ blogs list came from the “Lists” I created in CS 2.1. To add them here, I added the “Blog Link List” widget to the layout. 

The “Counters, etc” section with links to Brian Hitney’s World Maps and the image of “Old Barney” from my original 2006 blog theme come from the “News” block I had in CS 2.1. To add that, I added the “Blog – News” widget to the layout.

Community Megaphone is a service created by my teammate, G. Andrew Duthie to facilitate sharing and discovery of events relating to software development.  User group meetings, as well as other developer and IT Pro community events are are posted there.  Community Megaphone offers an HTML gadget you can add to your site to display upcoming events in your area.  The gadget is implemented as an IFrame which you add to your site with an HTML snippet that Community Megaphone provides.

Note: If you own a blog or a site about technology, I highly recommend you add this gadget to your site!

Twitter also offers an HTML gadget you can add that displays your most recent tweets on your site.  It is implemented as a JavaScript snippet that Twitter provides you to add to your site’s HTML.  I have also been using a gadget from PostRank that displays a list of my top rated posts. I’m not sure of the value of this gadget yet, or if I’ll keep it.  However, it is similarly implemented with a JavaScript snippet provided by PostRank.

Previously, the HTML & JavaScript snippets for these gadgets were inserted into my “News” block within the CS 2.1 management UI. When the new TC 5.5 came online, all three of these gadgets stopped working.  After some tinkering, I discovered that in order to execute JavaScript or load an IFrame, you need to insert your snippets into an “Unfiltered HTML” widget.  I added “Unfiltered HTML” widgets to the left and right sidebars in the layout to display these gadgets.

New in this version of the JrzyShr Dev Guy blog: An IE8 Web Slice for Community Megaphone!  When adding the Community Megaphone gadget via the “Unfiltered HTML” widget, Andrew supplied me with some code that also makes the gadget available as a web slice in IE8. That code is displayed below.  The web slice enables you to view upcoming events in the tri-state area directly from your Favorites bar without leaving the site you’re on.

There is also a new link that will install the Community Megaphone Search Accelerator for IE8.  Once installed, the accelerator allows you to select text on any website and search for event details on Community Megaphone. 

Let’s say you saw someone mention a community event in your web-based email, but they didn’t include a link to it.  You could select the event name, right-click and choose “Find Events by Keyword”.  If Community Megaphone has that event listed, it will open it right up for you!

Note: The Bit.ly links in the snippet below were created by me to make the code more readable.  (Community Megaphone generates some LONG URLs by default!)

Here is an overview of what the Home Page widget layout looks like:

While there are five other view pages on the site, it is the Blog Post page that is most important in this group. All of these pages have in common the need to display full detailed content (vs. summary content).  For these pages, I chose a two column layout with a header, left side bar and right content. This is known as the “Header-Top-Sidebar-Left-Content-Right” layout.  By having a two column layout on the actual content pages, the content area can be wider to support images and code snippets. 

On these pages, I kept the user group list, link to my podcast, and counters. However, I do away with Twitter & the Tag cloud.  Since visitors are likely arriving at these pages from a search engine or their RSS feed, I added the “Recent Posts” widget to display links to the five most recent posts.  That let’s folks know what else is going on on my blog.

As noted earlier, both the layout and widgets had to be set up for each of the five pages. Below is the widget layout for the “Blog Post” page.

Once all of the layouts & content widgets were set up, it was time to gussy things up with some custom JrzyShr Dev Guy CSS styles.  As noted earlier, this was the most time consuming part of this customization process.  Hopefully, sharing my styles here will help save others significant time!  I’ll break this part up into two sections.  The first is using CSS to tweak the layout.  The second is using CSS to set fonts, colors, etc.

Luckily, unlike the layout and widget customization, most CSS style classes apply across all of the pages in the blog site. There were a select few that were specific to the individual pages, but not many.

Disclaimer: These settings are what worked for my blog after “hunting and pecking” at various CSS classes. They in no way constitute “best CSS practices”. I wouldn’t know a “best CSS practice” if it stared me in the face.

While the overall layout of content on the page is controlled through the WYSIWYG editing mode, there are still items that need to be tweaked via CSS.  There were three layout tweaks I made. 

The first was to set the width of the page’s layout to match the banner image size.  Most of the page content sits within a top level <div> tag of class “layout”.  To change the overall width of the page layout, I set the width & max-width CSS properties to 1104px to match the size of my banner image.  This centers the 3-column layout within the browser, as well as causes the middle (content) column to expand dynamically to fill the horizontal space. The left & right sidebar layout columns are a fixed width of 270px by default in the Wireframe theme.

In the previous version of my blog, I had a beachy tan background color (#cdc9b4) for the area outside of the the page’s content area.  In TC 5.5’s Wireframe theme, I had to override the background-color style in two locations to get the effect that I wanted.  The first was the main <body> tag. The second was for a top-level <div> with the CSS class name “content-fragment-page”.

And the end result:

The Wireframe theme has a white header bar across the top of every page that contains the links to log in to MSDN Blogs. 

I wanted to eliminate this extra white space at the top, but still maintain the login links by having them overlay the banner image.  To make this happen required three things:

• Moving the page content container (<div class=“content-fragment-page”>) up to the top of the page.
• Moving the header container with the login links (<div class=”header-fragments”>) down slightly to over lay the banner image in the correct location.
• Moving the page footer container (<div class=”footer-fragments”>) up to compensate for the over all page content moving up.

Here are the CSS styles I applied to make this happen:

The TC 5.5 “Blog Post List” widget was designed to support a blog with multiple authors or aggregate content from multiple blogs.  By default, it displays an avatar of the author next to each post, along with the name of the blog it came from.  I thought this clutters the list on the Home page.  Since my blog is authored by only one person (me), I figured having a long repeating list of avatar photos of me would be redundant.

Here are the CSS styles I used to clear up and remove the repeating avatars:

Cleaning things up – Removed avatars & post author name.

The final part of customizing the JrzyShr Dev Guy theme was setting the font, font colors, and font sizes to give it a polished look.  It seems a lot of Microsoft oriented sites have been following in the footsteps of Zune & Windows Phone 7 with a Metro-like UI.  There are even 3rd party applications (MetroTwit & Omnimo) showing up with the Metro UI. The Metro UI is about a lot of stuff in terms of simplicity and layout.  The official Metro description from the Windows Phone 7 site:

Metro is our code name for our designed language. We call it Metro because it's modern and clean.
It's fast and in motion. It's about content and typography. And it's entirely authentic.

I kept the same font color scheme from the previous version of the site.  All of the post links and post titles are in “Old Barney” burnt orange color (#cc3300). All non-post links (stuff in the sidebars, breadcrumb navigation, etc) are in a Jersey Shore-esque blue-grey color (#7c95b3).  The color of the sidebar links makes them more subtle so the reader isn’t distracted by them, versus the brighter color links that jump out in the actual content .

Annoyingly, adjusting the CSS styles was the most tedious and challenging part of customizing the theme. There is no one CSS class that let’s you override the fonts and font sizes of the entire site. I had to manually set the font details on multiple different CSS classes.  I’m not sure this is (or was) the best way to do this.  I welcome others to point out ways this could have been done easier.

I won’t detail each style override class here.  Instead, you can find the complete listing of my custom CSS styles linked here: http://blogs.msdn.com/themes/blogs/wireframe/css/DynamicStyle.aspx?WeblogID=5598

I’m not a connoisseur of fonts.  When I first set up some temporary changes to the site, I had used the Comic Sans font in my banner image as seen in the image below:

I had no idea that Comic Sans is to typographers like nails on a chalkboard are to most humans?!  Apparently, using Comic Sans is considered by some folks to be more distasteful than using HTML <tables> for layout instead of <divs> and CSS!  There has even been an entire organization set up to ban the use of Comic Sans, chock full of good humor, and a funny video to go along with it.

Luckily, as part of my “Metro-fication” of the site, this faux pas was resolved in the final version of the theme.

Having to upgrade my blog has been a learning experience. Hopefully, my documentation of how I “re-customized” it will aid others by saving them time.  The great thing about the new platform is that it is more flexible and much easier to add custom content to the site.  Like any website, this is a constant work in progress. I’m sure there will be more tweaks and additions over time.  Some ideas right now:

• Providing a more “mobile friendly” version of the site.
• Adding a bigger & more obvious subscription button to the top banner.
• Figuring out a better way to surface older posts that are less time relevant, and more reference like.

I hope you enjoy the new JrzyShr Dev Guy blog look!  And…  as always, please share your feedback!

Two weeks ago, I posted here at about a benefit dinner being held July 7th, 2010 to support one of our own NYC area developers, Wendy Friedlander who has been stricken with a rare form of cancer.  This benefit dinner is being organized by multiple folks in the community, spearheaded by Sara Chipps.  Stephen Bohlen has posted an update on his blog that I think is worthy of being re-shared here.  In short, the dinner will be more than a dinner as some notable speakers in the community have agreed to come and speak to attendees, providing some edu-taining value besides supporting the generous cause of helping Wendy & her family.

Via Stephen Bohlen…

After taking some time to recover from treatment and reconnect with her family, Wendy hopes to return to her coding ways.

And we hope to welcome her back!

To help them financially and to show support for them emotionally, the NYC-area software development community is organizing a benefit dinner to help raise money for Wendy and her family.  This brilliant idea was started by Sara Chipps and I have been contributing what effort I can to assist in helping out where needed.

This dinner will be held At 7pm on this coming Wednesday evening July 7th in New York City – the exact location is still awaiting confirmation (and may need to vary based on the number of RSVPs we receive).

The cost of this dinner is $75 per person and 100% of all proceeds go direct to Wendy and her family.  Its likely that the dinner will consist merely of the oh-so-common user-group fare of Pizza and Soda so you can rest assured that probably $65 or more of every $75 collected will go to benefit Wendy.

You can RSVP for the dinner here – and the sooner the better so that we can begin to select a location capable of accommodating the right number of attendees.  Payment is accepted via most major credit cards, PayPal, and even electronic check if that suits you.

If you don’t think you can handle the $75 per person cost of attending the dinner, cannot adjust your schedule in time to attend, or are simply too remote to attend the event, please consider strongly making a donation directly to Wendy and her family.

Donations are accepted here and may be made in ANY amount you feel comfortable contributing.  1$, 5$, $10, $50 or more – the wonderful thing about SCALE is that even the smallest of contributions when added together can often produce GIANT results.  If even 100 people each gave $10, that would be $1000 for Wendy and her family.

Think about it.  Really.  Please.

We are very pleased to be able to announce that Charles Petzold has graciously agreed to be our featured speaker at the event!  Author of about a gazillion books on Programming, Computers, .NET, and more, if you have never had the pleasure of watching him deliver a talk, you are in for a real treat!

Clever, entertaining, enthusiastic, and informative, Charles never fails to deliver a talk worth seeing on just about any topic.  For this event, Charles has promised to deliver a very special talk on a unique topic available only to paid attendees at this benefit dinner:

The evening will include a unique presentation by Charles Petzold on an obscure (but interesting) chapter in the history of computing with appearances (in chronological order) by Cicero, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Fourier, Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Madame Curie, and Albert Einstein.

The intent of this talk is actually to take a look at some of the history of computing in a different and historical light so as to appeal not only to the technology crowd but also to be broad enough to be of interest to spouses, life-partners, and significant-others that might also be interested in attending the event.

Seriously – think about buying an extra ticket and bringing your spouse or significant other to this event – despite the presence of pizza and soda, this evening will prove to be so much more than your typical geek-fest – we promise

Venerable NYC-area (yes, and NJ-area too <g>) “.NET Dude” Miguel Castro has also volunteered to speak at this benefit event!

Boisterous, annoying, flippant, and frequently insulting, if anyone has seen a Miguel Castro presentation before you can rest assured he has promised to deliver something very un-Miguel for this event so you needn’t worry too much!

I am of course kidding :)  Miguel actually has promised to deliver a talk just for this event that’s a little different from his usual fare, but I’m sure we can count on his usual personality still being front-and-center for us all to “enjoy” !

(Seriously – Miguel is actually a great speaker who never fails to deliver an excellent and thought-provoking talk on some of the more complex technologies in the MS universe so this is a great chance to see him in perfect form!)

To sweeten the pot for attendees even more, the great people behind the screencasting / developer education site TekPub have graciously committed to provide a free 30-day unlimited access subscription to all of their content for every attendee who purchases a ticket to the event.

With screencasts on topics ranging from NHibernate to Ruby on Rails to ASP.NET MVC to Entity Framework 4 and more, this 30-day TekPub subscription will permit you to ‘drink from their firehose of content’ as much as you can for 30 days!

To accommodate those that cannot attend, anyone making a donation of $75 or more will also qualify for this guaranteed subscription offer.

Further demonstrating their commitment to the developer community, TekPub has also contributed a single 1-year subscription to their site which  is to be raffled off at the event to one lucky attendee!

We also have commitments from several other vendors (including JetBrains and more!) to donate additional software licenses to raffle off to attendees!  All of this points to a whole host of reasons why you should make it a point to try to attend this event next Wednesday evening!

And if by chance you cannot attend due to schedule, finances, geography, or other constraints, please, please, please consider making even the smallest of monetary donations.  The economics of scale can easily turn the tiniest of efforts into a very effective campaign!

Please do what you can to share info about Wendy, this event, and the donation link with your friends, acquaintances, connections, followers – heck, even share this with your ENEMIES!

Help get the word out so that we can all collectively do everything in our considerable power to help Wendy and her family through this difficult time.

If the word ‘community’ is to mean anything, then its in support of something like this that it can really show its ability to make a difference in a meaningful way.

Your contribution of money, time, effort, or just spreading the word is much appreciated by everyone!

Thanks to everyone who attended the Silverlight 4 Firestarter event in New York City on June 5, 2010!  I had a great time helping organize the event and speaking with many of the attendees about Silverlight.  There were over 200 folks who made it out to the Fire Starter in NYC that day, as well as an almost equal number that tuned in via our live simulcast!  Special thanks goes out to the event’s speakers Jason Beres, Matt Van Horn, and Todd Snyder for helping assemble and deliver most of the day’s content!

The recordings and content from the event are now available!  (Note: Some of the recordings are still being processed. This post will be updated with links once they are available.)

All photos & captions courtesy of Sam Abraham – Site Director West Palm Beach .NET User Group

Here are the links to some of the demos shown during the event:

• Rick Roll HTML-Flash Puzzle
• Rich Notepad
• Silverlight Photobooth
• Silverlight 4 Control Toolkit Demo
• Export DataGrid To Excel
• Silverlight 4 OOB Window Customization
• Silverlight Application Themes

• Tim Heuer
• Jesse Liberty
• John Papa
• Pete Brown
• Shawn Wildermuth
• and of course, Scott Guthrie! 

• Get The Tools and the Bits With The Microsoft Web Platform Installer
• Get the Silverlight Toolkit on CodePlex
• View John Papa’s Excellent Silverlight Tutorial Series on Channel 9
• Keep Up With Silverlight News & Blog Posts at SilverlightCream.com
• Expression Studio Community

I’m happy to announce that SharePoint Saturday is coming to NYC on Saturday, July 31st, 2010!  If you’ve enjoyed any of the code camps in our area, then you’ll love SharePoint Saturday.  SharePoint Saturday is like a ‘themed’ code camp with multiple sessions all on SharePoint related topics.  The event is free.  You just need to register to attend.  Registration will likely sell out quickly, so sign up right away to guarantee your spot at this free learning event.

As with the code camps, SharePoint Saturday is completely community and volunteer driven.  It is the event sponsors that make this event possible.

Join SharePoint architects, developers, and other professionals that work with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for ‘SharePoint Saturday’, on Saturday, July 31st, 2010 at the Microsoft Manhattan Office.  SharePoint Saturday will be an educational, informative & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-orientated topics.  SharePoint Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint!

Here are a few highlights for our Summer 2010 Event:

• Full Search Track...
• MindSharp is doing a Training Track...
• Over 42 sessions and 9 tracks...

Microsoft NYC Offices
1290 Ave of the Americas, 6th Floor
New York NY, 10104

Saturday, July 31, 2010 from 7:30am – 6:00pm

Next week, the NYC .NET Developers group and the NY ALT.NET user group are hosting a joint meeting on Tuesday, June 29th with a special guest. Former New Yorker, Stephen Toub is returning to town from Redmond to talk about Parallel Programming with .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010.  Stephen was based in NY for many years working for MSDN Magazine before moving out west to work on the Parallel Computing team at Microsoft. 

Please register right away to get a seat and be on the building security list! (Registration will likely close on Monday morning.)

Parallel Programming with .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010

Abstract: In the past, introducing concurrency and parallelism into libraries and applications was difficult, time consuming, and error-prone. However, as the hardware industry shifts towards multi-core and many-core processors, the key to high-performance applications is parallelism. The .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010 offer solutions to help make coding, debugging, and profiling concurrent applications significantly easier. In this interactive deep-dive, we’ll examine Parallel LINQ-to-Objects (PLINQ), the Task Parallel Library (TPL), new coordination and synchronization types, and Visual Studio tooling support in order to provide a look at the next generation of parallel programming with .NET.
Bio: Stephen Toub is a Principal Program Manager on the Parallel Computing Platform team at Microsoft. He’s excited to be back in Manhattan, where he lived and worked for several years.

For more information on Stephen, see his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/toub/

For more information on the Parallel Computing Platform team see: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/

In this episode, guest Garrett Serack from the Microsoft Open Source Technology Center joins me to discuss CoApp, a new package manager for the Windows platform. Garrett tells us how CoApp will help make it easier for developers and users to build and install open source software on Windows.

(Interview starts at 34:15)

Also, Dmitry and I rap about Windows Phone 7, WCF, Outlook PST files, Visual Studio 2010 Power Tools, and IQueryable killing his cat.

Windows Phone 7 Stuff:

• Windows Phone 7 App Contest
• Brandon Watson Says Developers To Get Windows Phone 7 Devices In July 2010
• Do you do Epic S--t? Then YOU May Be Able To Get A WP7 Device

Interoperability News:

• New York City WCF Firestarter with Miguel Castro & Don Demsak
• The WCF Product Team Is Soliciting Feedback On What Interoperability Features to Consider In Future Versions
• Two Open Source Projects Spring up around Outlook PST File Interoperability
• SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0 CTP 2 Released
• What IS a CTP?

Windows Live Stuff:

• Windows Live Essentials “Wave 4” Beta Now Available
• Get The Windows Live Essentials “Wave 4” Beta
• Channel 9 Video on The Windows Live Essentials Beta
• New Hotmail Goes Live
• Windows Live Messenger Now On The iPhone
• Office Web Apps Now Available On SkyDrive

Other News:

• Silverlight Media Framework 2.0 RC1 has been released!
• Get Started With The Silverlight Media Framework Here
• Silverlight Media Framework Screencasts and Training Videos
• Evan Nagle: IQueryable Can Kill Your Dog, Steal Your Wife, and Kill Your Will To Live
• Announcing: VS2010 Productivity Power Tools and Modeling Feature Packs!
• Geek Out Your Desktop With Visual Studio 2010 Wallpapers

Connect With Garrett:

• Garrett Serack’s Blog
• Garrett on Twitter

CoApp Stuff:

• Garrett Announces The Common Open Source Application Publishing Platform (CoApp)
• Port 25: What’s this ‘CoApp’ All About?
• Things Garrett’s Pappy Always Used To Say
• Garrett Explains How Windows Side-By-Side (WinSxS) Works
• Network World: Microsoft’s Open Source Cowboy Takes the Reigns of CoApp
• Microsoft | Open Source
• Port 25: The Open Source Community At Microsoft

Stuff My Dad Says (on Twitter) [NSFW]

Just got word via Rachel Appel that Microsoft MVP Chris Woodruff (and co-host of the “Deep Fried Bytes” podcast) is coming to town on Monday…

 
Interested in OData? Want to discover what the next revolution in data will be? In this workshop, the attendee is invited to consider the many opportunities and challenges for data-intensive applications, interorganizational data sharing for “data mashups,” the establishment of new processes and pipelines, and an agenda to exploit the opportunities as well as stay ahead of the data deluge.

The Open Data Protocol (OData) is an open protocol for sharing data. It provides a way to break down data silos and increase the shared value of data by creating an ecosystem in which data consumers can interoperate with data producers in a way that is far more powerful than currently possible, enabling more applications to make sense of a broader set of data. Every producer and consumer of data that participates in this ecosystem increases its overall value.

OData is consistent with the way the Web works – it makes a deep commitment to URIs for resource identification and commits to an HTTP-based, uniform interface for interacting with those resources (just like the Web). This commitment to core Web principles allows OData to enable a new level of data integration and interoperability across a broad range of clients, servers, services, and tools.

OData is released under the Open Specification Promise to allow anyone to freely interoperate with OData implementations.

In this talk Chris will provide an in depth knowledge to this protocol, how to consume a OData service and finally how to implement an OData service on Windows using the WCF Data Services product.

Agenda

• Introductions (5 minutes)
• Overview of OData (10 minutes)
• The OData Protocol (1 hour)
• 15 minute break
• Producing OData Feeds (1 hour)
• Consuming OData Feeds (1 hour)

About Chris…
Chris Woodruff (or Woody as he is commonly known as) has a degree in Computer Science from Michigan State University’s College of Engineering. Woody has been developing and architecting software solutions for almost 15 years and has worked in many different platforms and tools. He is a community leader, helping such events as Day of .NET Ann Arbor, West Michigan Day of .NET and CodeMash. He was also instrumental in bringing the popular Give Camp event to Western Michigan where technology professionals lend their time and development expertise to assist local non-profits. As a speaker and podcaster, Woody has spoken and discussed a variety of topics, including database design and open source. He is a Microsoft MVP in Data Platform Development. Woody works at RCM Technologies in Grand Rapids, MI as a Principal Consultant.

Woody is the co-host of the popular podcast “Deep Fried Bytes” and blogs at www.chriswoodruff.com. He is the President of the West Michigan .NET User Group and also is a co-founder of the software architecture online portal nPlus1.org.

Woody has worked in many arenas throughout the years, including healthcare, manufacturing, publishing, promotion execution and the automotive industry. He has experience with starting and running new ventures, including past work with technology startups. Woody continues to develop his expertise by learning & developing new technologies to better meet the needs of his clients, while devoting his free time to improving the development community at large, and giving back to the community in which he lives.

Last week on the Connected Show, Dmitry and I reported that at TechEd 2010, Brandon Watson from the Windows Phone 7 team said “select developers” will be getting access to Windows Phone 7 devices in July.  We both pondered what Brandon meant by “select developers”.  On the podcast, we recommended that folks keep an eye on Brandon’s blog for more details. On his blog, Brandon suggested that folks contact him for more details.  Such a silly notion.  I can’t imagine what poor Brandon’s inbox looked like after posting that suggestion! 

As it turns out, Brandon’s been a bit overwhelmed with the amount of people trying to get in touch with him about Windows Phone 7 devices!  He’s just put up a blog post talking about how he’s handling all the device requests the team is receiving.  If you’re excited about the new phones, I highly suggest you read it.  He lays out some guidelines for how YOU can get noticed by the Windows Phone 7 team and maybe get a device:  (hint: DO EPIC SH*T!)

1) Get the tools and start building apps – asking for a phone without any kind of app development in place is not going to get it done.  If you need ideas, go to our site where customers are posting app ideas for apps they want.  As of this writing, there’s almost 1,000 app ideas up there.

2) Blog about your development progress.  Screenshots and videos help a lot.  So do tips and tricks on how to do amazing things on the platform.  The important thing here is to share what you know with the rest of the community.  Those who share are engendering much love from us.

3) Tag your posts with “Windows Phone 7 Development” or “wp7dev” so that we, and other developers, can find you.

3) Build something which extends the platform and can be used by other developers.  Being developer friendly is top form.

4) Post videos of your app running in the emulator to youtube.

5) Register in the Windows Phone Marketplace.  When we know your Marketplace ID, it’s a lot easier to find you and get you a phone.

There’s more, so make sure to read the whole thing.

Quoting my teammate Andrew Duthie…  One that I’d add is to keep your local Developer Evangelist up on what you’re doing with Windows Phone 7.  Here in the NY Metro area, that’s myself & Rachel Appel.  If you don’t know who your local DE is, feel free to contact me via the email link on my blog, and I’ll get you connected. 

PS: Just don’t ask me for a device!!!!

Hi everyone, it’s not often that I have written blog posts like this.  However, a member of our own developer community here in the NY metro area is in need.  A number of folks in the community are organizing a benefit dinner for Wendy Friedlander.  If you don’t know Wendy, she has been an active member of the developer community, speaking at several user groups and code camps throughout the tri-state area. 

More about Wendy from http://devsforwendy.com…

Wendy is a 30 year old software agilista from Long Island. She's a strong WPF developer and a firm believer in the agile method of development including pair programming and TDD. Wendy is wife and mother of a beautiful girl named Kaylee who will be 2 in August.

In August of 2009 Wendy learned that she had a rare and agressive pediatric cancer called aveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. Her treatment consists of high dose chemotherapy and radiation. She has had to leave her job, and her husband has been forced into part time work in order to care for their daughter.

Please join us at 7pm on July 7th 2010 for a dinner benefiting Wendy brought to you by the NYC development community.  If you can’t make it to dinner on July 7th, you can still contribute to this great cause via a Paypal link that has been set up for Wendy at http://devsforwendy.com.  

For more information or questions, email Sara Chipps here.

A few weeks back, I announced the WCF Firestarter coming to New York City this weekend.  Registration is SOLD OUT and we’re looking forward to a full house in the Big Apple on Saturday!  You can catch all the details in my previous post, as well as at MSDN Events.  If you have registered to join us in NYC, please remember to show up!  For those who attend in person, we have a good deal of goodies to giveaway at the end of the event.  (Zune HD, software licenses, books, etc)

Firestarter events have been quite popular wherever Microsoft has hosted them around the country. However, unlike the MSDN Roadshow events, Firestarters don’t make it to as many locations.  Are you NOT in New York this weekend and feeling a little left out?  Don’t worry… we know there are plenty of folks who don’t live in the New York area!  That’s why we’re going to be broadcasting the WCF Firestarter event LIVE on Saturday via webcast!

I’m happy to announce that registration is now open for the online simulcast of the WCF Firestarter.  You can log in on Saturday morning (9am US east coast time) to watch, listen, and even interact with the presenters!  We’ll be broadcasting via Live Meeting (so make sure you install the client ahead of time), which will feature a live video stream, as well as a Q&A chat tool where you can ask the presenters questions.

Whether you’re watching online from out of town, or joining us in person in New York City, you can also follow and participate in the conversation on Twitter using the tag: #WCFFS.

Two One great ways to get some free learning:

• REGISTER HERE to join in-person in NYC SOLD OUT!!!!
• REGISTER HERE to join online from your couch

I look forward to seeing folks this Saturday in New York and around the world!