In Paris for a week and working at Microsoft’s new “Le Campus”. It’s very new and very cool. One of the coolest things about the building is the smart elevators. They are not a new thing, but you don’t see them very often in the USA. Here’s how they work.

Step 1 – enter the floor you want to go to.

Step 2 – it tells you which car to get in.

Step 3 – ride the car to the floor (there are no controls inside the car).

Why is this better? It groups people together in cars going to similar floors, which makes the trips shorter, faster, and more energy-efficient.

I was in Mobile Alabama for the week talking Team System and got invited to the Lower Alabama .NET User Group (LANUG) to speak on VS 2010 and TDD. This was a fun evening, good pizza, and test-first software development. Thanks to Ryan Duclos and Matthew Hughes for coordinating this. if you attended, the files are linked at the bottom.

Attachment: LANUGDemo.zip (28k)

I’ll be presenting a talk on Unit Testing and TDD using Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 in Mobile, Alabama next month. If you are in the area, please join us at the ITT Technical Institute on Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009 at 6:00 PM. Thanks to Morrison Management Specialists for sponsoring the event.

Contact Ryan Duclos to RSVP or if you have any questions.

Also, be sure to attend Alabama Code Camp 8 (Jan 23, 2010)

The Developing SharePoint Applications guidance helps architects and developers design and build applications that are both flexible and scalable. It shows developers how to provide IT professionals with the information they need to maintain those applications and diagnose problems when they arise. The guidance also discusses approaches for testing SharePoint applications, such as how to create unit tests, and how to stress and scale test.

You can review the guidance project on CodePlex as well as on Microsoft’s site. You can download the guidance document (11 mb) here.

Join Microsoft and your fellow developers September 15, 2009 for an afternoon at the Overland Park Cinemas exploring the next generation of client experience from a developer’s point of view.

Topics include Windows 7 for Developers, IE8 for Developers, and Building Business Applications with Silverlight 3.

The event starts at 1pm. It should be a fun afternoon.

You can register here.

Microsoft is hosting a Silverlight 3.0 Fire Starter event in Redmond, WA on the 17th of September. The event has a spectacular speaker line-up with Scott Guthrie keynoting the event followed by Tim Heuer, Adam Kinney, Karl Shifflett among many other rock stars. The entire event will also be broadcasted online via Live Meeting.

Register for the Live Event | Register for the Live Webcast | Visit the site | or Call 1-877-MSEVENT

I wanted to make sure you were aware of the upcoming Community Choice Awards. Nominations opened last week and will close on August 10th. Here is the promotion that is being sent to through emails and in the magazines …

Welcome to the 2009 Community Choice Awards (CCA), as presented by Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine! These awards allow YOU to decide what IT products get chosen for acclaim and recognition. We want to hear from IT pros, DBAs, and developers about what they think the best products are in a given category.

Click HERE to nominate your favorite IT products. Here are the award categories:


• Best Active Directory & Group Policy Product
• Best Antivirus/Malware Product
• Best Auditing and Compliance Product
• Best Backup and Recovery Software Product
• Best Business Intelligence and Reporting Product
• Best Cloud Computing Product or Service
• Best Database Management Product
• Best Database Monitoring and Performance Product
• Best Deployment Product
• Best Development Tools Product
• Best Hardware: Server
• Best Hardware: Workstation
• Best Hardware: Mobile device
• Best Hardware: Networking Product
• Best Hardware: Appliances Product
• Best Hardware: Storage Product
• Best Interoperability Product
• Best Messaging Product
• Best Microsoft Product
• Best Mobile and Wireless Software Product
• Best Network Management Product
• Best Patch Management Product
• Best Scripting Product
• Best Security Product
• Best SharePoint Product
• Best Systems Management Product
• Best System Utility
• Best Training and Certification Product or Service
• Best Virtualization Product

There are still openings for tonight’s Boise IEEE Career Building Workshop. RSVP if you are interested in attending. This workshop is for those that want to improve their resume.

Workshop highlights:

• Resume review
• Networking Opportunities
• IEEE Career Resources
• Free Food

Tonight, August 5, 2009 7:00PM – 8:00PM
Library! At Hillcrest. Limhi Conference Room.
5246 W. Overland Road, Boise ID
Located in the Hillcrest Shipping Center at Overland and Orchard.

The career building workshop is to help improve a participant's resume, offer an opportunity to network among peers, and to present the career building resources available through the IEEE. Bring three copies of your resume to the event to have it reviewed. Event is open to members and non-members. Space is limited. Reserve your place by emailing to boiseieee@gmail.com, and include the following in the email.
For questions, contact jrekiere@ieee.org.

It’s released, but not yet available for MSDN subscribers. That said, you can download the Trial Edition and get your hands on it. My understanding is that you can product key activate it later, when it shows up on MSDN.

Click here For more information on Express Studio 3, including a top 10 list of features. I’m most excited about #7 …

Team Foundation Server Integration – share your Expression Studio project files with those of your colleagues by using check in and check out functionality with Microsoft Team Foundation Server integration.

There’s a new book out (download or Lulu) which blends content from Microsoft's {You Shape} It campaign. Developers Developers Developers Developers is a free download and released under a Creative Commons license.

Here’s a snapshot of the table of contents … 

• Working with Brownfield Code by Donald Belcham (Microsoft MVP)
• Beyond C# and VB by Ted Neward (Microsoft MVP)
• Remaining Valuable to Employers featuring Barry Gervin, Billy Hollis, Bruce Johnson, Scott Howlett, Adam Cogan, and Jonathan Zuck
• All I Wanted Was My Data by Barry Gervin (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Efficiency Upgrade by Derek Hatchard (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Getting Started with Continuous Integration by Sondre Bjellås (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• On Strike at the Software Factory by Daniel Crenna (Microsoft MVP)
• C# Features You Should Be Using by Ted Neward (Microsoft MVP)
• Accelerate Your Coding with Code Snippets by Brian Noyes (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Is Silverlight 2 Ready for Business Applications? by Jonas Follesø (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Innovate with Silverlight 2 by Daniel Crenna (Microsoft MVP)
• Real World WPF: Rich UI + HD by Gill Cleeren (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Hidden Talents by Peter Jones
• Creating Useful Installers with Custom Actions by Christian Jacob
• Banking with XML by Peter Jones
• Sending Email

I ran across this document today, which details out Microsoft’s virtualization strategy on implementing 64-bit (Hyper-V) virtualization in the classrooms. As virtual machines do more, and require more resources, so must the hardware/software requirements of the training centers be updated.

In a nutshell, here are the requirements for HL6:

Hardware

· 64-bit Intel Virtualization Technology or AMD Virtualization processor (2.8 GHz dual core or better recommended)

· Dual 120 GB hard disks 7200 RPM SATA or better (striped)

· 4 GB RAM expandable to 8 GB or higher

· DVD (dual layer recommended)

· Network adapter

· Sound card

· Video adapter aero-capable recommended

· Super VGA monitor (17 inch/ 43 cm)

Software

· 64-bit Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition

· Hyper-V role configured

· Microsoft Learning Lab Launcher – Hyper-V version

I happened upon this interesting Microsoft site the other day. You can lookup the end-date for mainstream as well as extended support for your favorite (Microsoft) software product, such as Team Foundation Server 2008:

You can lookup by index, product family, or by searching.

You can read more about Microsoft Support Lifecycle here. Be sure to checkout the list of obsolete products too (like Microsoft FoxBASE).

According to Bloomberg, the deal was for $7.4 Billon in cash. This should prove interesting, especially since Oracle now owns two major database platforms (Oracle and MySQL). On one hand this means (arguably) a single competitor for Microsoft’s SQL Server, but yet a company that has an alternate operating system (Solaris) and a major database component, so potentially a competitor to Windows. It will be interesting to watch this.

Here are the details on Sun’s site and Oracle’s site.

… but not in the way you might think.

Our geek lunches and impromptu geek meetings usually end up happening at the Oriental Express (a.k.a Jimmy’s) here in Boise.

Check out the fortunes that 3 (out of 4) eaters at our table received last week:

The 4th guy (I’ll assume it was Chris Frye) got a fortune about love or romance or something. So last year!

“Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning”

-Anonymous