From Username & Passsword to "InfoCard"

Richard Turner - InfoCard Product Manager and Garrett Serack - Program Manager

AntiPhishing.org has stats on how many phishing sites there are.

InfoCard lets me use differetn identities at different web sites based on what information I want to give out.

InfoCard is PC based. MS is working on a device based solution.

Self issued cards are stored locally and not corroborated anywhere.

Managed cards are used by a trusted 3rd party. It doesn't contain any actual data, just the list of fields and a place to go to get the details.

InfoCard runs under a separate, restricted desktop.

Web site receives encrypted token and needs to decrypt it to get the information. This helps to protect against man-in-the-middle attacks.

InfoCard has basically 1 method called GetToken that you can program against.

With a managed card you have to authenticate to the STS (Secure Token Service) using a token, X509, Kerberos, hash, or user name and password. That will then get the data to put into the card to return back to the relying party.

Identity Metasystem - Standards based infrastructure for exchanging identity information across federated providers over the Internet.

Integrating with InfoCard

1 Update the database to associate a user with a card

2 Create an association page - Accept the info card

3 Update the sign in page

4 Update the registration page

IdentityBlog.com has code in PhP to accept InfoCard running on Apache.

WinFX which includes InfoCard wil be on Vista. There will be a deployment mechanism for XP and Windows 2003 Server.

Beta 2 coming soon with a release 2H06 (he said Q406).

You can import and export cards in v1 to synchronize between PCs. They are working on ideas of devices.

There is a commitment from the AD team to support STS in Active Directory. Until they create it Microsoft will ship code to integrate.

InfoCard v2 will support one time password generators.

There is not revocation mandated with v1. It is up to the issuer and possibly the trusting party to handle the revocation.

 

IIS7 as a Developer Platform

Thomas Deml - Lead Project Manager IIS

IIS7 ships on Vista and Longhorn server

Error support is better in IIS7 with a stack trace on the local machine. The messages are tied to a database that will evolve to give you better trouble shooting.

<system.webServer> tag in web.config to configure IIS settings.

New configuration GUI supports both ASP.NET and IIS settings.

New UI is completely remotable over HTTPS.

Extend IIS with C, C++, C# and VB.NET.

Use features of ASP.NET for different file types ie. Forms auth for jpeg.

IIS7 Ectensibiltiy - Class based C++ API or managed code implementing IHttpModule or IHttpHandler and can take advantage of built in features.

IIS7 has an ISAPI mode that provides compatibility with IIS6 Integrated mode puts the work from aspnet_isapi.dll directly in the pipeline. Configured at the application pool level.

IIS7 will ship on Vista including the home SKU. On the lower end SKUs only 10 requests will be processed concurrently.

Metabase is gone. Configuration loaded in process.

 

Build Your Next Generation Internet Site Using SharePoint Technologies 2007

Jackie Bodine - Program Manager - Windows SharePoint Services

SharePoint is an ASP.NET 2.0 application with master pages and all of the controls. You can plug in other ASP.NET 2.0 controls into SharePoint 2007.

There will be functionality for governance. Integration with WF to do workflow.

Page layout can be customized based on content type using master pages. You can have many layouts for a particular content type.

Will integrate with ASP.NET 2.0 web parts.

Content Query Web parts that integrate with RSS feeds so you can click on the web part and get the results as a feed.

Web services for the content and admin functionality.

Submitting content for approval will start an approval workflow.

UI provides "Item Pickers" to allow you to choose what you want to put in the content pages without having to write a lot of HTML.

Support for RSS on everything, Blogs, Wikis, and Discussion Boards

SharePoint 2007 supports multiple farms. You can have an authoring farm and from there push content out to the production farm. The users from the Internet only hit the production farm so any mistakes won't be visible to them.

Document Library and task list synchs to Outlook.

Pictures can be put in-line. The markup is "sanitized" based on the tags that Microsoft knows about. Any un-recognized tags will be removed.

 

Joe Belfiore - Corporate Vice President - Microsoft Corporation

Off line capability and rich 3D graphics can help you to create applications that will be immersive for the end users and help you to have a deeper, richer relationship with them.

Darin Brown - President Avenue A Razor Fish

Smart client can enable rich advertising so even though we skip TV adds they can find us on the web.

Joe

Ultra Mobile PC

Windows Mobile Devices

Smart Phones?

Windows Vista Media Player will allow you to group your music by genre, artist, title, etc. as well as year.

Windows Media Center will allow your application to appear on millions of TVs world wide.

Windows Vista will have 2 SKUs for consumers that have the Media Center extensions in it and it will be available in 190 countries.

 

Lessons From the Trenches - Engineering Great AJAX Experiences

Scott Isaacs - Architect- windows Live Frameworks

Mashups (Remixing other people's context) is the real revolution in Web 2.0.

Mashup is a philosophy in design that allows you to integrate. It is reuse within a site and leveraging code already written.

In windows Live every UI element is a gadget.

Live Clipboard lets you copy, paste, and share content across the web. Bind behavior to classes in the CSS. Interoperable between IE and FireFox due to microformat embedded in the page.

You need to be aware you can ony have 2 connections to a web site so when you are doing AJAX you might hit that limit in getting lots of content. You need to prioritize connections. Usually user actions are higher priority. Put images, scripts, etc. in their own sub domains so they have their own 2 connections.

When a browser loads a script it is single threaded and serialized.

Never expire static content. Instead change the URL to break the cache.

LocalLive.com has a permalink button to get you to the start. The live site updates the hash (after the # sign) to make a new URL for the browser so the back button works correctly and you don't need to reload the entire page.

 

Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere

Not dependent on WPF.

CTP in Q3 later this year.

Plugin expected to be < 2MB

Grid, Canvas (absolute positioning), and stack layouts.

Use JavaScript and built in WPF/E controls to scale, spin, and rotate vector graphics in the browser.

Support .NET Framework model that uses IL and a small managed runtime to provide standard coding model.

Support for WPF styles.

 

Artificial Artificial Intelligence - Using the Amazon TURK and Web Services

Amazon has a lot of web services. You can store data with them but they charge you for the access and the storage.

You load information into Mechanical TURK and your Amazon payment information and then some human will do the work.

The idea is to replace expensive R&D with relatively inexpensive human labor.

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides web services API for computers to integrate artificial artificial intelligence directly into their processing by making requests of humans.

www.mturk.com has a realtime listing of jobs available and how much the person offering the job is willing to pay.

You can set qualifications on what the people have to know before they can work on your HIT (Human Intelligence Task) and also you can reject work that someone has done if you don't feel that they did something useful. Of course the workers can rate the requester and if you reject too often then you get a bad reputation.

[These are my notes as I took them. I am not the best note taker in the world but this is what I wrote down]

Bill Gates Keynote

Tools changing rapidly broadband, devices, deyboard, remote control, cell phones

Browser experience and beyond the browser experience focus of the conference

IE7 provides: 1. Streamlined UI 2. Security - low rights mode, opt-in for active controls, block phishing, new certificates to show how long the site has been around. 3. Presentation - RSS feeds and doc store

Releases of IE will be more rapid

Web sites specialize in an area and then combine them into applications

Office 2007 - InfoPath and Excel viewable in a browser

Atlas has a go live license

WPF - declarative programming model

Live Software = Software that assumes connectivity to the web

Microsoft is focused on building a platform for Live Software

Aber Whitcomb - CTO - MySpace.com

Reduced CPU from 85% to 27% with ASP.NET 2.0

MySpace gadget in Vista sidebar to show slide show of pictures.

Profile 2.0 uses Atlas to drag and drop regions to update public profile. Looks like a web part manager.

Ashley Highfield - Director of New Media & Technology - BBC

Use broadcasting/multi casting and P2P to get TV programs down to the desktop.

DRM is an important model. Need to allow UK viewers rights for free for 1 week but external viewers must pay.

Gadget in Vista to view content.

Tim O'Riley - Q&A

Q: How do you explain innovation outside fo established frameworks?

A: Microsoft has always been about leading edge innovation and then making that better and  easier for the masses.

Q: Do you see the Internet taking over from the OS?

A: We will provide a comprehensive set of tools. There is still room for other innovation.

Q: Will your tools only support MS tools?

A: There will always be areas where Microsoft doesn't have expertise that will be available.

Q: Social computing where the more users you have the better software you have is important. Do you see that coming into Microsoft? i.e. Dr. Watson error reporting and live update

A: Help text is updated monthly based on the feedback

Q: OK that is explicit. What about implicit like anti-phishing in IE7?

A: Reputation is important in IE7. You can set it so you will be warned if millions of people have not used the site.

Q: It seems data rather than API could be the lock-in?

A: Eventually data should come from the community

Q: You are starting to face competition from people who have different business models. How do you compete?

A: Microsoft has pushed hith volume/low cost. There will always be smarter and better competitors.

Q: iTunes is "software that spans more than a single device". Is it something you will dow?

A: iTunes is different because they make money on the hardware. We should be making services that span devices and it is all about the user experience. You shouldn't have to configure devices. They should know what I like.

Q: How do you see competition on the phone?

A: It is different because there are intermediaries that provide content but competion will open it up. Competition between telcos and cable will make everything better for us.

Q: How do you see publishing and books changing in the future with the hand held devices?

A: We see leaps with music and video. We are working on getting the right devices so people will want to read on the screen.

Q: With the web and  periodic releases we can get changes quickly. Microsoft is much slower to release. Will you be more agile?

A: It depends on the product. SQL and OS wll be slow but IE, MSN messenger, and others will have quicker releases.

Audience Questions:

Q: Can you open up the APIs so we can share contact information?

A: Sure, it is standard in Vista. Presence, calendaring, addressing, etc.

Q: For an ISV using IE we have a problem with too many releases of the browser. How do you not break us?

A: The UI piece will rev more often than the core rendering piece. Also looking at administrative policy to make sure versions are consistent.

Q: … not sure what the question was …

A: WPF uses a templated approach to dynamically layout.

Q: What are you doing to be changing the licensing to make it easier to see what the upgrade path is?

A: For large companies the cost of the tools is small. We are working on getting prices down.

 

 

Dean Hachamovitch - Browsers and RSS

Next generation browser goals - Succeed through:

1 Great browser experience

2 Customer confidence

3 Rich site experience

IE7 Beta 2 build on the web

Open search is open standard on searching. You can us it to add ability to put your site in the UI of IE7.

Print improvements to make sure things are not cut off.

Zoom up and down on the size from presets at the bottom of the UI.

IE remembers if you have set your security settings to put you at risk and will block sites. You can continue or use 1 click to reset permissions.

Phishing filter, High Assurance Certificates, InfoCard

InfoCard is not a user name/password manager it is designed to eliminate the need for user name and password.

InfoCard uses standard web protocols so any web site can use it.

www.meyerweb.com - CSS demo that actually works in IE7

RSS moved to platform service to share feeds between applications.

Yahoo!, Amazon, and E-Bay are using RSS extensions to allow you to view, sort, and search data.

Scott Guthrie

Atlas provides client side JavaScript libraries. There is also work to integrate the client libraries into ASP.NET membership providers.

Atlas March CTP has a go live license

 

Developing a Better User Experience with Atlas

Atlas has a server side model that renders the initial UI and behavior. On the client side it will take user input and request updated UI and behavior.

Atlas server scripts let you create AJAX apps without having to learn JavaScript and communication protocol.

<Atlas:UpdatePanel> control lets you mark parts of the page that can be updated independently.

Setting an UpdatePanel to be conditional means it wll not update with the rest of the UpdatePanels. If you want to update it you can server side by calling the Update method on the UpdatePanel.

There is a timer control to have something happen at specified intervals.

Atlas ahs control extenders to let you provide responsive user input.

Client side controls and script library to provide data binding on the client among other functionality.

Client scripts can be pulled out of the Program Files directory but you will have to write your own server side code to do the integration.

http://atlas.asp.net - tutorials, samples, and forums and source doe from these sessions.

 

Developing a Windows Presentation Foundation Application

Expression Interactive Designer and VS 2005 can use XAML.

PropertyElement syntax lets you assign objects (XML) as properties.

 

 

Back by popular demand!

You are invited to attend a free SQL Server 2005 Overview: Development, Business Intelligence & Management training class.  Microsoft is pleased to offer this training at no charge.

 

REGISTRATION ENDS March 27, 2006 by 12 noon

Elements of this syllabus are subject to change.

This one-day course provides students with the knowledge and skills to understand the new features in SQL Server 2005 as well as take advantage of the significant improvements made to SQL Server in the areas of infrastructure, development, and business intelligence.

Audience

This course is intended for experienced rich client developers, web developers, database administrators. This lecture based class will cover key features of SQL Server 2005 as well as a look into how to convert existing SQL Server 2000 databases to SQL Server 2005.

At Seminar Completion

Students will be able to effectively use:

·        SQL Server Developer Platform – SQLCLR, Client, XML, TSQL Enhancements

·        Business Intelligence Platform – Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Integration services

·        Infrastructure Platform – Migration, Management, Enterprise Availability

 

Prerequisites

Before attending this course, students must have:

·        Experience using SQL Server 2000

·        Experience managing SQL Server 2000 databases

 

Lunch

In appreciation for your attendance to this seminar, Microsoft will be providing lunch.

 

Seminar Dates and Location:

March 29^th, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Microsoft Corporation

123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100

Salt Lake City, UT 84116

801-257-6400

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/rockymtn/saltlakecity.mspx

 

Register today at: http://www.microsofttraining.com/devonsites

Class/Invitation ID 304560 or click here

I checked the registration and there are 65 people registered for tomorrow's SQL Server class in the Microsoft offices. The room only holds 65 people so we are officially sold out. I am looking forward to the event. We will have 2 MVPs and one RD speaking at the event and the agenda looks like it will have a lot of good content. I will post a pointer to the slides after we get them posted.

I took the beta of the second exam to upgrade my MCSD.NET to the version 2.0 certification today. Just like the test on Monday the things that seemed to mess me up were the syntax questions. Today it was the XML format for doing remoting and WSE 3.0 stuff. To be honest I just open the help and copy the XML snippet or use the WSE 3.0 configuration tool from Visual Studio and change values so I wasn't 100% sure what all the XML tag names were. I felt I was better prepared for the test today but I am not 100% confident that I passed.

I understand that Microsoft wants to see if I really know what I am doing but I felt that asking about the XML I would have to manually type when there is a tool to do it for me automatically seemed a little picky.

Microsoft unveiled their new Ulta Mobile PC (code named Origami) today. It looks really cool. You can get information about it on http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc/default.mspx.

Next week there will be free training on SQL Server 2005 available in the Microsoft Offices. Details below:

You are invited to attend a SQL Server 2005 Overview: Development, Business Intelligence & Management training class.  Microsoft is pleased to offer this training at no charge

 

REGISTRATION ENDS March 10, 2006 by 12 noon

Elements of this syllabus are subject to change.

This one-day course provides students with the knowledge and skills to understand the new features in SQL Server 2005 as well as take advantage of the significant improvements made to SQL Server in the areas of infrastructure, development, and business intelligence.

Audience

This course is intended for experienced rich client developers, web developers, database administrators. This lecture based class will cover key features of SQL Server 2005 as well as a look into how to convert existing SQL Server 2000 databases to SQL Server 2005.

At Seminar Completion

Students will be able to effectively use:

·         SQL Server Developer Platform – SQLCLR, Client, XML, TSQL Enhancements

·         Business Intelligence Platform – Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Integration services

·         Infrastructure Platform – Migration, Management, Enterprise Availability

 

Prerequisites

Before attending this course, students must have:

§         Experience using SQL Server 2000

§         Experience managing SQL Server 2000 databases

 

Lunch

In appreciation for your attendance to this seminar, Microsoft will be providing lunch.

 

Seminar Dates and Location:

March 15^th, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Microsoft Corporation

123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100

Salt Lake City, UT 84116

801-257-6400

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/rockymtn/saltlakecity.mspx

 

Register today at: http://www.microsofttraining.com/devonsites

Class/Invitation ID 304439 or click here

I took a beta exam yesterday to upgrade my MCSD to the new certification. If you are looking for hints or outright answers to the test you are looking in the wrong place. All I will say is that I should have studied more. I thought I knew about the subjects on the test, and I still think that I do but when the questions came down to which method do you call on this object I was doing some guessing. I think that intellisense has made me a little bit lazy and I couldn't remember the exact method names.

I won't know if I passed or not for up to 8 weeks (that is all part and parcel of the beta exam) but I am hoping I passed so I can maintain my MCT credential.

I have part 2 of the exam on Friday.

Just in case you are available to speak in Denver on May 20 you might want to check this out:

FRONT RANGE CODE CAMP

SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2006 / DENVER, CO

 

Front Range Code Camp is a one day Developer community building event being presented by everyone in the developer community on development focused topics. It is by pre-registration only and someone may register as a speaker or an attendee. Please visit http://www.frontrangecodecamp.com to register to attend and feel free to invite others.

We expect 100-150 to attend the Code Camp.

 

Microsoft is graciously hosting the Code Camp at their Denver Tech Center offices. They’ve opened six multi-media classrooms for our use.

 

Code Camp sessions are 1 hour long, to the point, and filled with code and actual hands-on demonstrations. Each session is kept to an hour so we can pack several sessions into the day. These sessions are about showing your favorite flavor or development tools. A successful session will go deep into a single topic. 

 

This is a GREAT opportunity to get noticed in the Denver developer community for all (both experienced and none experienced presenters).

 

Because these sessions are different than the standard conference sessions, there will be a mandatory speaker preparation meeting about a week before the code camp. For those of you flying in there will be a meeting the night before and you will have a chance to test your hardware.

 

You must bring your own laptop for your presentation. You’ll have a chance to test the video connections during the speaker prep meeting. There will be a room on site for speaker prep during the day of Code Camp.

 

Any code samples you show must be made available for download from Code Camp web site.  The code must be emailed no later than May 15^th.

 

We are not covering travel and expenses for speakers, but you will receive a way cool shirt and some swag.

 

If you’re interested please submit a session title, abstract, and bio at http://www.frontrangecodecamp.com/Presenters.aspx

or send email to Richard Lawrence at richardl@frontrangecodecamp.com

It appears that Microsoft has announced the versions for Windows Vista. There is an article on engadget that lists 6 different versions. I don't know how much of these new versions are the result of market surveys and how much it is the result of lawsuits over the bundling of tools but I think it will be confusing for some people. I suspect that the big box retailers will have just one or maybe two different versions that they sell and it will pretty much boil down to you buying that one but I can see problems for programmers if we have to remember what version of the OS has what tools installed on it and more especially if certain functionality is disabled because you don't have the right version.