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Quick Link: download ASP.NET MVC Preview 1 It is a an exciting time to be a web developer. There are lots of new technologies from Microsoft coming out for the browser (IE9 changes everything), in the area of tooling (the brand new WebMatrix) and for the server – with ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 released today (27th July 2010). Download and install side by side with MVC 2 If you have Visual Studio 2010 (The FREE Web Developer edition is fine) then you can safely download ASP.NET MVC Preview 1 (download ......
Shay Friedman, author of IronRuby Unleashed (check out my review) kindly agreed to do a guest post on my blog. He explores how IronRuby can be very useful to a .NET developer, even if that developer is a die hard C# or Visual Basic developer who has no plans (Surely not! ) to use IronRuby in finished products. The power of an Interactive Console should not be underestimated – it can give you tremendous productivity gains, which is why I also recommend http://linqpad.net/ to offer similar behaviour ......
CTP1 of Microsoft® Project Code-Named “Houston” is now available. This is a lightweight and easy to use database management tool for SQL Azure databases. It enables you to swiftly develop, deploy, and manage data-driven applications in the cloud. Project “Houston” provides a web-based database management tool for basic database management tasks like authoring and executing queries, designing and editing a database schema, and editing table data. All implemented in Silverlight. Getting Started For ......
Yesterday (22nd July 2010) was mvcConf – “the Virtual ASP.NET MVC Conference”. This was an ambitious undertaking by the community to deliver a three track, 20+ session conference for FREE using Live Meeting. And… it worked great. A big well done to everyone involved. It was particularly interesting to me and my team as we are hoping/planning to do similar online conferences in UK time around technologies such as the Windows Azure Platform and Windows Phone 7 – and attending yesterday gave me the ......
My boss Marc posted a summary of my team – or in his words “a round up of where our crack team of highly-visible ninjas will be concentrating their efforts on your behalf”. In total we are now eight. Ok, nine if you count Marc. Although IMHO seven is a much nicer number but I digress (thankfully I finally no longer associate the number 7 with the movie Se7en – it has taken a while but the recent run of Magnificent Seven movies has helped!). I have a change of focus as we enter a new Microsoft FY. ......
There is a new .NET development conference coming to the UK. DevCon will take place in September and promises to have some seriously great session from top class speakers (oh – and I slipped in there as well). Its roots lie in Germany, where since the late nineties the BASTA! conference has become one of Europe's leading resources for .NET experts. Day 1 is workshops (SCRUM, Silverlight, Architectures), Day 2 and 3 is everything from CQRS to OData. I have been lucky enough to be part of “the committee” ......
Fairly frequently a relative, friend, or friend of a friend asks me “Hey Eric, you know about this stuff. I want to learn to program. How do I do that?”. First up I like to understand what they expect to achieve (which often is at the level of “Make the next World of Warcraft”) then after some expectation resetting, I start to share my wisdom In the past I have tended to point folks at: SmallBasic - which is excellent, especially for kids Kodu – which is focused on visually developing games and is ......
A couple of years back I was closely involved with helping developers take their investments in VB6 forward (I run http://blogs.msdn.com/goto100 for a time which still has great stuff in its archives). Those with sharp eyes will have noticed that the (IMHO rather poor) Visual Basic Upgrade Wizard is no longer part of Visual Studio as of Visual Studio 2010. My recommendation has always been to look to the partners for great tools to help with the grunt work of moving the code – but all these tools ......
“At WPC today (12th July 2010), Bob Muglia announced an exciting new addition the Windows Azure platform, called the Windows Azure Platform Appliance. When the appliance is released for broader availability, it will allow partners and large customers to host their own dedicated versions of Windows Azure and SQL Azure. For developers, this means that your Windows Azure applications can be hosted on-premises, in a partner’s data center, or in the public cloud without change.” This is not a bundle of ......
Exciting news. There will be a “mini” PDC this year – which reflects (IMHO) that the pace of technology coming out of the good ship Microsoft just keeps increasing. Even better than that, this year’s event will include live streaming of the keynotes, as well as concurrent live streaming of sessions. Awesome! I am blocking out both evenings right now (I’m UK based). Even better than that, if you can attend in person you will actually be at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond. We’re opening the doors to ......
The interesting thing about the Windows Azure Platform is there is never a shortage of new stuff to explore. UK based sharpcloud save $500,000 with Windows Azure Azure Portal gets Guest OS Auto Upgrade Mode You can either manually select the operating system that you want to have deployed to your nodes via a drop down box or allow automatic mode to upgrade to the latest operating system as they are released. Steve Marx has written a Windows Azure application called Swingify that allows you to upload ......