Pre-order on Amazon: Developing Service-Oriented AJAX Applications on the Microsoft® Platform

For all the AJAX and ASP.NET fans out there I wanted to point out the upcoming book by Daniel Larson (SharePoint MVP). Daniel has an impressive knowledge about what's going on in .Net 3.5 and the coming SP1. The book will guide intermediate as well as advanced developers in the ASP.NET AJAX inroads. I already had a glimpse at some of the chapters and they are impressive and easy to comprehend.

The first to send proof of pre-order purchase, will receive a free book with Daniel's signature!

Developing Service-Oriented AJAX Applications on the Microsoft® Platform (PRO-Developer) by Daniel Larson The book is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Cannot wait to see this one in print!

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freemd.com = healthcare revolution?

Every once in a while there is a technology or a service that will change our perception about the way business is done in certain areas of life. One such fundamentally different approach to healthcare is presented by Dr. Stephen Schueler and his team at freemd.com.

Before I joined Global360 about three years ago, I was for almost 4 years with DSHI Systems (the makers of freemd.com) and this was one of the most interesting and dynamic jobs I ever had. This is where I learned a lot about innovation, persistence and attention to details. What's now offered as a free service, has been used and tested for many years in big call centers nationwide. It is an enormous gain for the general public to have this service freely available.

Numerous times I find myself going to freemd.com searching for information about family member's condition or simply for self education. However the most valuable feature the "virtual doctor" helped enormously in several critical occasions, where I had to make a choice whether to visit doctor, rush to the ER or simply stay at home, and this is huge!

Check it out www.freemd.com

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Software I use or not

Every once in a while I'd like to take some time and evaluate existing software that I use on a daily basis and also new programs that caught my attention recently. In this cycle I did some changes that made my life easier and I want to share them with you.

I picked several software packages ranging from VM software to HDD utilities and there were some real keepers. But before I go there let me say what I stopped using:

1. Google Docs - Very disappointing. I always strive to have some balance in my MS oriented professional life. I found that the integration between Google Docs and blogger.com would be really beneficial for me. The fact that I can work on blogs and organize my ideas from any location is also appealing. However two issues bothered me so much that I had to put an end to this. The first one was the broken integration between Google Docs and Blogger. Why on earth offer a cool feature and not make it work! For months I tried to live with the fact that the blog post title was not properly transferred to the feed thus making my blog entries look broken. Google's forums contained numerous complains about it, but never got fixed for more than a year.  I also found that making formatting work properly was always a game, since there was some strange transformation going on. Posting code snippets is always tricky, but man that was terrible experience. No more. I switched to Live Writer and I am supper happy. True I don't get to work on any PC, but for 95% of the time home and work are fine, and the formatting works great. Not to mention the plugins, which add tons of good features. Most notably the code snipped import.

2. Norton Anti Virus - After dealing with this software for many years and the lack of support and the constant upgrade issues, the hog it has become recently is unbearable.  My wife's PC literally stopped working after I installed the latest version. Needless to say I uninstalled it and while I am looking for an alternative I use AVG. I am looking for something light, effective and fast.

But I am really exited about the new software I got to use recently.

1. VMware Workstation- This is such a relieving change. As most SharePoint devs and presenters, I work in VM most of the time. Snapshots, memory management, USB support, networking options, all these features work so much better for me. The only annoyance I encountered is that after upgrades there is some nasty bug that happens every time. There is a fix posted on VMware's forum, but it would be best if it they work it out. It looks like an issue from couple of version behind.

2. One Note - This is a great tool to collect notes, snapshots and track ideas. Helps me immensely to jiggle multiple projects. The export feature makes it super easy to send out a package to somebody on the team.

3. Diskeeper Pro - A must for every PC, I've had older versions and this one seems to be doing a great job. I don't have much to say, because the thing just works it's magic in the background and rarely I have to do something with the UI.

4. Windows Live Writer - just what I needed for my blogging. Lightweight, simple control, extensible with tons of good plugins, formatting works.

Now back to business until the next cycle of software evals.

 

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Microsoft drops Yahoo bid - is this good for me?

Every once in a while we whiteness huge deals with the equivalent of tectonic movements to shake the industry. The Microsoft/Yahoo deal would've been the biggest financial transaction of the Internet era. This deal would've impacted not only the industry and all Yahoo employees, but also everybody in the Microsoft ecosystem. This ecosystem includes a huge number of partners, ISVs and developers outside of Microsoft. This ecosystem is where I leave, so naturally I asked myself "What is the impact of this deal/no deal on my life as a professional and as a consumer?"

My first reaction is that I feel really relieved that somebody wise stopped the ".Net  Bubble 2" from inflating at a higher rate. Let's face it - search and ads are big, but please, somebody has to keep things real and I am glad that Steve Ballmer did not cave in to the sheer racketeering that was going on. When irrational investors make mistakes, they loose their own money; when irrational executives make mistakes, they get the boot, and the way it looks Yahoo's executives will be in the hotspot pretty soon.

True, the giant from Redmond needs Yahoo to buy market share and expand at a faster rate in the search & ad market, but do they need them for their technology? Heck, even Yahoo is bailing out on its own technology and trying to outsource to Google vital services in which they invested billions of dollars. Considering that Microsoft also has a formidable technology stack in search technology, this is probably not a big selling point.

But is this really the way to beat Google? History shows that real winners emerge by opening completely new markets and expanding existing markets, rather than simply trying to conquer market share. The main reason is that market share with no innovation and authenticity to back it up is lost in a jiffy. Think of what happened to Lotus in the hands of IBM a decade ago and you'll see what I mean.

I'd rather see Microsoft taking a slower and agile approach, with smaller acquisitions, leading the way to reshaping their vision of personal computing and letting Yahoo to gradually withdraw in the Internet pantheon next to companies such as Netscape and the like. If this is what Microsoft's withdrawal from the Yahoo bid means, I applaud it!

Let's assume that the Yahoo deal is completely dead. Since Google did not deliver on the promise to create the next wave of Internet based office and personal productivity applications (c'mon how many years of fluffy Google Docs BETA!), it is about time for Microsoft to not only step up to the plate, but also to reshape our perception of personal computing. With so many devices in our hands and information that we need at our fingertips, both business people and consumers need a virtual desktop experience, which includes search of the web, but also of personal data and applications such as Excel and Word in the context of this connected network of devices. With their latest announcement of Live Mesh, Microsoft is doing exactly this. For me personally this is the huge deal. I am really tired of juggling personal and work computers and data on several devices and I can care less about ads. They are not interesting anymore. I learned to ignore them, the same way I fast forward the ads on my DVR. If Live Mesh is the answer of Microsoft to the challenges of the market, I hope they will  pull this off, and also figure out a way to open it to the community so that it becomes a truly open platform with support for third party devices and operating systems.

 

This Deal is dead! Long live innovation and authenticity...

 

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MVP Summit 2008 simply a different type of conference

After a week in Seattle attending the 2008 MVP Summit I needed a break of couple of days before I can get get back to normal. The Summit is certainly a very different type of a conference. Here are couple of variations I would like to point out.

Regular conferences dive directly from day one into regular sessions. Slide decks, presentations, code samples etc. At the MVP Summit on the contrary /I can speak only for the SharePoint track/ we started with some rigorous physical, tactical and strategic training. The master of ceremonies <Lawrence/> got us on a bus and in the woods (short from traveling blindfolded) and whoever did not pass the test of running and shooting paint potions for hours could not go to the next level. The good news is that everybody was fit enough to make it :) . Due to strict NDA some call it "Paintball", but believe me it was more than that. Thinking about it, this will be the first conference ever, where I may lose weight rather than put some pounds. Here is me (right) with John Holliday and Kit Kai loading potions in special buckets:

Another huge difference is that MVP Summit has several keynotes. One to begin with and two at closing. One of the closing keynotes came from the Boss (Ray Ozzie) and the next one from the Big Boss (Steve Ballmer). Ray Ozzie spoke about the value of building and supporting product communities once a star product reaches critical mass. Steve Balmer electrified the audience with his energetic performance. More about what they said here.

The third difference is that what happens in between the agility training (aka Paintball) and the keynotes is very interesting and intensive, but also cannot be shared freely. The event itself was organized flawlessly and facilitated its purpose to get closer product teams and the community.

Talking about sharing, the best part of all is that I met a lot of talented and opinionated people with a mindset of sharing their knowledge with others. Some contribute primarily by answering questions in MSDN groups, others speaking at conferences and code camps, writing books or supporting community software projects.

Thanks to the organizers and the sponsors, who made this a truly remarkable experience.

Different conference indeed...

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November SCDNUG Meeting, Great Event

Tonight's meeting of the Space Coast Dot Net User Group showed what user groups are all about. Ken Tucker (MVP) presented Introduction in Linq. The informal atmosphere and the fact that most of the attendees already knew each other, enabled a great dialog and discussion. We also kicked off our book review program and Walt Williams volunteered to write a review about Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0. I hope in addition to his review, he'll find time to share some of the content and the examples in the book with the group. This is just another great opportunity to learn the latest technologies and contribute to the community.

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Microsoft releases source code for .NET Framework 3.5

Last week ScottGu in his latest post unveiled a plan by Microsoft to release the source code of .Net Framework 3.5 to developers under the Microsoft Reference License and to add automatic debugging support for the framework libraries in Visual Studio 2008. Needless to say this is one of the biggest steps the software giant is making to help developers be more productive. One apparent improvement is that we'll be able to see what actually happens in those sealed classes, but we'll also have the choice to learn from the code new developer techniques or why not write alternative solutions. I also anticipate that a plethora of developers from the community will be digging deep into the code making suggestions for improvements, finding bugs, writing books about new tips and tricks and helping Microsoft define the next versions of the .Net framework.

It is a win-win situation and a change of monumental proportions for the .Net developer community, which will certainly increase the popularity of the .Net framework and its reliability.

.Net developers of planet Earth - rejoice!

Dovizhdane.

One Closed Chapter is a New Beginning

Today Global 360 released Insight360. This is an incredible product, which allows business analysts to create business models, run simulations, what-if scenarios and optimizations in a collaborative environment and finally deploy the optimized process in production. Read more about it here: http://www.ebizq.net/news/8449.html?rss

As a member of the R&D team, who worked on this product I am excited to see Insight360 "hitting the shelves". This is my first product release since I joined Global 360 and I am glad I was part of this project. I had the opportunity to work with some great people and learn quite a lot not only about SharePoint (which is used only for the collaboration part of the product named Team Studio), but also about agile development, testing and distributed teams.

The good news is that we have some great new products and features coming up next and my SharePoint affair is not coming to an end. The next project I stared working on is a collection of specialized AJAX enabled web parts, so expect some posts about ASP.NET AJAX integration with SharePoint.

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Acquired Taste of Vista

Definition: acquired taste Something one learns to like rather than appreciates immediately.

This weekend I finally got some time to make the step and upgrade to Vista. There's been a lot of talk about what it does better and what it does not. Nevertheless I am getting the impression that the media and some colleagues are concentrating a bit too much on the negatives. Well there are issues primarily with drivers and unsupported hardware, but for fairly new machines the new operating system actually brings a wealth of benefits. One to mention ... the new driver model utilizes far better the new multimedia hardware and multi core systems.

The first step was to run the compatibility assessment. The Vista Upgrade Advisor checks the hardware and points out issues that prevent the installation from completing. In my case I had to uninstall only an older version of Norton Antivirus. Other than that I've got couple of warnings about unsupported software, but most of them turns out work fine. So once this was done I moved forward with the upgrade.

In stark contrast to previous versions of Windows, which were some sort of marketing slideshow, the Vista upgrade has a very clean interface and I like that. Set the type of upgrade and the time zone and leave the PC for an hour or two to do its job. That's exactly what I did. Left the PC and got back to my game with my son. Sometime later I was greeted by the new face of Windows.

The "Aero" interface, the eye candy everybody is talking about, strikes immediately with its rich visual effects and smoother look. Definitely more than eye candy. Each window runs in its own memory segment and the overlapping screen refreshes of the past are gone. I realize not all flavors of Vista are shipped with Aero, but maybe not all users will appreciate the dynamic visual effects any way. In only a few clicks I started noticing UI improvements, which I know will make my workday easier. The Welcome Center gives some good overview of new and old features and its interface is organized in different levels of dept. This makes learning gradual and paced to your needs. The sidebar nicely fits the widescreen of most new laptops and makes use of the width of the screen. A rich library of gadgets already exists and there are numerous samples on how to create one for developers of all skill levels.

Needless to say security has many improvements, soo many that your head spins. The most interesting for me are Windows Defender and User Account Control (UAC). Windows defender will stop or disable suspicious programs that are trying to run at startup and classify the software, so that you can decide what to allow running and what not. Finally something that tells the user in a simple way what programs run at start up on your PC and applying an algorithm to determine if this is appropriate.

UAC is by far the most controversial measure of all. It is really reassuring that something in your PC is watching for actions that require access to core system resources. For most users this should be a rare occurrence and probably a good thing. But the way I see it, most important of all is that UAC will not allow machines installed with default settings sitting somewhere on the Net to be hijacked. This only will drastically improve the security of Internet as a whole.

Nevertheless for developers UAC is a bit of a pain. True, we have to live with it to make sure our apps run properly for the target audience, but MAN that's a lot of additional clicks and keystrokes. My wrists and hands are already giving me signals of pain when I overdo it and UAC is not going to make it easy for them either. An advertisement of a major competitor characterized UAC as a secret agent that puts to question each and every action th PC makes and with all honesty they hit the nail on the head. After several decades of AI actively being part of science and computing it seems very drastic that Microsoft decided that only humans can determine whether one action is dangerous for your PC or not. This is a pretty strong message and it might work, but would it?

My guess is that we are going to see the evolution of UAC very soon. People just don't like the hassle. They would much rather purchase software that claims to do the job of UAC than "carefully read each message" and click OK. Many will simply disable UAC. In other words if Microsoft doesn't come up with a solution that at least allows the user to save her answers on per program level (i.e. educate UAC), the industry will catch up fast and let the people enjoy their AERO interface. Altogether UAC is a huge leap in the right direction and there is no turning back.

Other major improvements come in the area of backup and recovery. I installed Vista and immediately created a full PC backup to an USB drive. Amazingly the format of the image is VHD. Great, now you can actually crank up an old backup in a VM and retrieve files. It would be best if you can right click on the VHD file and mount the virtual drive to the host PC. In addition the recovery console in Vista actually can help you (how many times did you use the one in XP anyway) and you can fully restore from a backup. I didn't try this yet, but the prospect of finally having reliable full backup embedded in the OS is great.

Other features that momentarily caught my attention are the Start menu, the Services tab in Task Manager, the navigation in Explorer and Add/remove programs shortcut in My Computer, which by the way is called Computer.

The start menu is not cascaded anymore and using the search it is incredibly easy to find not only documents but execute programs as well. The services tab in Task Manager needless to say is very convenient for developers and the likes to easily access the service list and start/stop them or jump to the underplaying process. I loved the add/remove shortcut on the toolbar of Computer that opens the applet with one click. No more drilling in control panel.

The cherry on top of my cake is one little gadget I really will use a lot for documentation and blogging - the "Snipping Tool". Finally it is easy to take snapshots from any part of the screen (not only program windows using the ancient PrtScr). There are probably tons of low cost tools out there that do the same, but having this tool within the OS is very helpful.

Now don't ask me why I started writing about taste and wound up ranting about Vista. One thing we humans take always with resistance is change. The bigger the change the bigger the resistance. The stronger the taste the more time you need to enjoy and appreciate it. Vista concentrates the collective wisdom of thousands of people about the way personal computing should work in the future. It is possible that not every decision they made was right on target, but even if they got closer than their previous attempt (and believe me they did) that's called progress.

Install Vista, give it some time to acquire the taste of it, and focus on the future...

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I'll wait until SP1 comes out...

Couple of days ago I received an E-mail from the IT department. The subject was Microsoft Vista and Office 2007. In the E-mail he takes a position that became quite popular lately: Don't bother installing newly released software because we are not going to support it until SP1 comes out. The usual IT concerns about things not working as expected and being so different that actually nobody can use them and so on... This is not the first time I see IT departments taking such position and in many occasions this is a good rule of thumb to let "the other guys" figure it out first. Big corporations have a large number of installed base and run complex applications so this may be the way to go. On the other side of the spectrum the small guys are often too fragile to make big investment in a technology before it becomes mainstream, so this approach might be OK for them too.

Nevertheless I cannot justify such position when it comes from a mid size stable software company, which on top of this claims to be innovation leader and Gold Microsoft Partner. It just does not fit.

One other principle of software development I recall is dogfooding. This is when you use internally the software you create and sell to improve further your development. In the same line of thought this principle is applicable for third party software you integrate with. Naturally Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 fall in that category, since we already develop software running on these platforms.

So my question is: If a software company wants to be on the fast track of innovation, does it wait until SP1 of Product-My-Platform comes out, or starts its evaluation and use as the RTM (or even BETA) release become available?

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