Today I tried to download a training kit for Visual Studio 2008 as it promised all sorts of things like labs, demos, and PowerPoint presentations that might come in handy for user group meetings later on. I was prompted to view the beta page for the new download center that uses Microsoft Silverlight.

I clicked around a little bit and I do have to say that I like the new interface. The download center provided a good search mechanism to find the download I wanted. I was thinking to myself that the least Microsoft could have done would have been to take me to the download I requested instead of the home page when I realized that my download had opened in the original page and that the beta was in a pop-up window. That resolved the one concern that I had while trying to find the training kit. I am sure if I spent more time on the site I could come up with a list of things I like and those that I don't like but for now I am pleased.

My favorite feature was the alphabetical list of downloads. One of my biggest complaints about the MSDN Subscriber download page is that you have to find products by their product family in the tree view. Some products (like SharePoint) have Office in the name but are in the servers branch of the tree. It isn't a big deal to look in a couple of places and I can search by name on that site as well but I really like being able to hover over a letter and see all the downloads that are available.

I hope you all enjoyed Christmas and at least got to spend the day away from work. I came back in and was catching up on my e-mail this morning when I found 2 different messages with much the same theme. It is an important topic so I thought I would share with the rest of the world (or at least that small part of the world that reads my blog).

The first e-mail was on Pex. Pex stands for Program EXploration and is a research project at Microsoft. According to the web page explaining the project it is designed to look at code, automatically generate unit tests, and in some cases it will even suggest bug fixes. Now I know that a lot of the research projects never make it out of the lab and into our hands but if this were to become available in the next version of Visual Studio it would really raise the bar for productivity. It would also mean that a lot of menial tasks (writing simple unit test cases) could be automated and would free up the humans to do what they do best, figuring out new ways to solve business problems.

The second e-mail was from a web site. Burried in the details was an offer for a free paperback book on peer code reviews. I had to read that twice, it seems there are lots of free e-books to be had but a real live dead trees book shipped to me, well I had to click on the link. I got taken to this page where there are lots of nice things written about the book. It looks like you can trade some of your personal information for a copy of the book. I have to admit that the nice statements about the book make me think that it is a very long list of reasons why I should buy some software so I decided not to order the book. It isn't that I don't think peer reviews are a good idea but that I really don't want to buy software. When we were doing peer reviews I don't know that we found a lot of bugs but just knowing that you were going to have to give the code to someone else and then defend why you did things a certain way made you think a lot harder about commenting your code, making sure it was designed well, and that you weren't doing any "hacks" just because you could.

Last night while watching the news I saw a report of an earthquake in New Zealand. I immediately thought of all of the people that I have shared e-mails with and the few that I have met from New Zealand. It got me to thinking about how much smaller the world has become, or how much larger my view of it has become over the last few years. This year alone I have been to Canada, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, and Italy. I have also traveled around the United States and met many people from different countries. I am constantly amazed at how well we can get along when we are talking technology, cars, or other shared interests and how that doesn't seem to scale as well when "governments" and "countries" get involved.

I am sure that most people just want to get along with their neighbors, no matter how far away those neighbors might live. The Regional Director program has helped me to meet people from many different countries. We don't always agree on every topic and the sometimes lively debate is one of the real benefits of the program. One thing we all seem to do is care about how technology will affect us and our parents, grandparents, and children.

If I can come up with some good predictions of where technology will take us in 2008 I will put them down in another post. Until then I hope that technology is making your life easier, your world smaller, and helping you to keep in touch with your friends and neighbors.

I have been doing some looking at Microsoft's BizTalk Services hosted at http://biztalk.net. I was working on some of the sample applications and trying to write my own application last Saturday. I thought I had something working and was going to come back to it later to make sure it worked the way I think. I got the flu and didn't get back to it until tonight. I found that my code was failing with the error "ID3037: The specified request failed.". I tried some of the sample applications and one worked and one got the same error. I logged into the site and was told that the services had been updated. I needed to provide a secret question and answer as well as updating my password. I did that and while I was there I took advantage of the new feature to associate my Windows LiveID with the account. I thought that would have fixed the problem but it did not.

I tried a Live search and then a Google search for the error. I found some interesting entries like for obesity in Canada and women's scarves from Japan but nothing that even remotely looked relevant.

When all else fails I tend to RTFM so I looked at the What's New? page and saw that along with some updated services the SDK was updated on December 17. I guess that explains why some things worked and others didn't. Now I just have to go back through the new samples in the SDK and figure out what I need to change in my code to get it to work.

Oh the joys of working with CTP software :)

For those of you at the Utah .NET User Group last night I want to thank you for letting me come and speak to you. I am always amazed at the good questions I get and the way that people are thinking about using CardSpace. I have sent off the PowerPoint slides and the code to be uploaded on the web site.

I had mentioned that I was doing a series of video presentations on CardSpace. The first one has been posted on the MSDN Security Developer Center. The direct URL to the page hosting the downloads is http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bb968865.aspx. I would love to hear any feedback you might have.

I will be speaking at the Utah .NET User Group tomorrow on Windows CardSpace. Here is the information from the e-mail that went out.

Windows Cardspace
CardSpace is one of the components of the .NET Framework v3.0. CardSpace allows people to authenticate to web sites and services in a more secure manner than the user name and password that are common today. CardSpace allows the user to be in control of their data and to see what data is being shared with the web site or service. One of the great benefits of CardSpace is that it will almost eliminate phishing. We will look at the basic pieces of Windows CardSpace and how they are used to secure a web site. We will also talk about some of the enhancements in the .NET Framework 3.5.

Scott’s Bio
Scott Golightly is a Enterprise Solution Strategist with Advaiya, Inc. He works with Microsoft on strategic initiatives like Application Platform Optimization (APO) and Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization (BPIO). Prior to joining Advaiya Scott worked for 15 years as a consultant helping customers solve problems through the correct use of technology. Scott is also a Microsoft Regional Director for Utah. He is passionate about helping people understand technology and how it can make their lives better.

It should be a good meeting and we hope to see you there!

After a couple of trips to Europe to teach Application Platform Optimization classes I think I might have a few readers in Europe who might be directly interested in this contest. Even if you aren't elegible to participate in the contest you might want to check out the results because I am sure they will be spectacular.

1^st European Silverlight Challenge

This competition is taking place in different European countries (e.g. Italy, United Kingdom , Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, France, Spain , Belgium, Croatia, Ukraine, Bulgaria) at the same time starting right now. As an example - the German and Spanish version can be found here:

http://silverlightchallenge.ineta-germany.org/
http://desafiosilverlight.bcndev.net/

The winners of all national competitions (there are great local prizes as well) will get the chance to compete against each other on a European level and win one of our 3 master prizes – paid trip to MIX 08 in Las Vegas including conference passes and some more goodies!

http://www.silverlightchallenge.eu/Premios.aspx

http://www.silverlightchallenge.eu/

PDC08 is scheduled for October 27-30, 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. There will be a pre-conference day on the 26th. From the announcement I got...

PDC is the definitive Microsoft event for software developers and architects focused on the future of the Microsoft platform. Mark your calendars and save the date. More information coming soon.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/pdc2008

No, this post is not about the 10 types of people who either understand binary or do not. This is in reference to a comment made in one of the early shows of .Net Rocks! where either one of the hosts or a guest said something like "Soon there will be 2 types of people in the world. Those who understand batteries and those who use them." I don't remember the context of the quote. I don't even remember the exact wording of the quote but I do remember hearing that and laughing. Since that time I have decided that I am definitely one of those people who uses batteries but doesn't understand them. I do know that I want batteries that last a long time, don't over heat and cause a fire, and are environmentally friendly. Not being one who understands battery technology I am not sure if all 3 if those goals are achievable. Today I saw an article on nextenergynews.com about a battery that claims to hit all 3 of my points.

The article claims that the battery will run for 30 years, power a laptop without getting hot, and when it runs out of electricity it will be inert and will therefore not harm the environment.

The first thing I did was to look for the date that the article was published. I was sure it was an April Fools joke that someone had finally gotten around to sending to me. The date looks legitimate. I also saw a lot of comments about the article that make it sound like the site is a legitimate site and not some subtle form of satire that I just didn't get. If all of that is true then my only regret will to have not put a 4th condition on my batteries which would be that they be affordable to just about everyone in the world. I have a feeling that any company selling something designed to last 30 years will put a large price tag on it since they won't be selling a lot of them. I really don't want to pay as much as I did for my house for a battery to run a laptop that will be obsolete 28 years before the battery is.

On Scott Guthrie's Blog there is a post about source code for parts of the .NET Framework being made available at the same time that Visual Studio 2008 is released. You will be able to set up your debugging to allow you to download the latest version of the source code and symbols so you can debug into the framework code. This will be much more useful than running relfector to see what is going on as the locals window and breakpoints will work so you will be able to see exactly what your code is doing in relation to the base class libraries.

The source code is released as part of the Microsoft Reference License so you will be able to look at, but don't touch, the source code to make modifications or try to build your own framework with the code. I really love that Microsoft is trying to be more open about their code and what is happening while at the same time providing a framework that protects the IP (Intellectual Property) and trademarks in their code. I see that as being a somewhat (note I don't say ideal) happy medium between the completely closed source model and the completely open source model.

I can't wait to be able to debug down into the BCL and see what I am doing that doesn't work with what Microsoft is doing. I can't help but think that will give us better, more stable code on the .NET Framework.