Archive
July 24th 2012 Links: Software development, Windows Azure, Office
Here’s our new entry in our link-listing series:
Software Development
Ahaha, we’re not quite there yet, but we sure are getting there 
Entity Framework now Open Source
Big news: The Entity Framework source code is today being released under an open source license (Apache 2.0), and the code repository is now hosted on CodePlex (using Git).
MonoGame is an Open Source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4 Framework. Its goal is to allow XNA developers on Xbox 360, Windows & Windows Phone to port their games to the iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux and Windows 8 Metro. (PlayStation Mobile development is currently in progress.)
Windows Azure
SOSP Paper – Windows Azure Storage: A Highly Available Cloud Storage Service with Strong Consistency
Wow, that’s interesting: the paper describes how Microsoft provisions and scales out capacity within and across data centers via storage stamps, and how the storage location service is used to manage their stamps and storage accounts. Then it focuses on the details for the three different layers of the architecture within a stamp, why these layers, what their functionality is, how they work, and the two replication engines.
A must read!
Office
Microsoft’s new Office: The cloud finally takes center stage
A sneak peek of Office 2013 (a.k.a. Office 15)
Microsoft released new Office (Customer Preview)
The new Office is available online (preview).
Introducing “Napa” – Office 365 Development Tools
The Visual Studio team released a preview of a new toolset called “Napa”, which is, as they say, “the easiest way to start building apps for the new Cloud App Model”.
Hope this helps,
Carl Anderson
June 13th 2012 Links: Windows 8, Visual Studio, .NET 4.5, Windows Azure
Following the steps of Scott Guthrie’s link-listing series, here’s our new batch of links in our own series:
Windows 8
Delivering Windows 8 Release Preview
Microsoft announces its final pre-release of Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10, and Windows 8 apps (Hotmail, SkyDrive, Messenger, etc.).
Learn to build Metro style apps
Thinking of developing a Windows 8 Metro application? You’ll find all what you need here!
A World of Samples at your Fingertips
Microsoft Windows 8 samples
Visual Studio
Visual Studio 2012 RC available
Visual Studio 2012 RC is available!
Microsoft’s reasoning about their all-caps menu in Visual Studio 2012 (?!!!).
My Favorite Features: Creating Storyboards with PowerPoint
A sweat feature: use PowerPoint to create your Windows 8 Metro app storyboards!
Dev
What’s New in the .NET 4.5 Base Class Library
This article covers the big (and some of the small) improvements made to the BCL in the .NET Framework 4.5.
Scott Guthrie unveils the new Windows Azure 
Cheers,
Carl Anderson
April 11th 2012 Links: VB6, .NET Portable Class Libraries, Internet Explorer 10, ASP.NET MVC 4, eBooks
Following the steps of Scott Guthrie’s link-listing series, here’s our new batch of links in our own series:
Windows
Good news for those still using VB 6: it’ll be supported on Windows 8!
It’s the end of mainstream support for Windows Vista
April 10, 2012: That’s the date Windows Vista support moves from mainstream to extended (meaning paid for everything but security updates).
Visual Studio
Hidden Gems in Visual Studio 11 Beta – .NET Portable Class Libraries
Scott Hanselman details Portable Class Libraries which is a feature available in Visual Studio 2010 (through an extension) and in Visual Studio 11.
TFS 11 Power Tools Beta Available
Good news TFS 11 power tools (beta) are now publicly available 
Dev
Yay! All sources are on CodePlex! if you haven’t already, go check them out because that’s some good looking .NET code
The Danger of the Large Object Heap (LOH)
Another article which we like on the same subject is: “Large Object Heap Uncovered” (written by Maoni Stephens).
We actually wrote an article ourselves which is quite related to the subject as well: Manipulating SQL Blobs With Streams.
IndexedDB Updates for IE10 and Metro style apps
“IndexedDB is a W3C Working Draft that enables you to store, search, and retrieve data on the user’s device, even when Internet connectivity is disabled. IndexedDB is a feature of the Web platform shared by IE10 and Metro style apps in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.”
Hmm, very interesting…
eBooks
Grab a free copy of “Under the hood of .NET Memory Management”
We did it, it was worthy, so we thought we’d share 
Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012
With SQL Server 2012 now available, I’m sure it’ll come in handy.
Cheers,
Carl Anderson
February 20th 2012 Links: Windows 8, Office 15, Azure, Windows Phone, Tips
The latest batch of our link-listing series:
Windows 8
“It’s a window … not a flag.”
The Whole World Will Finally Get To Look At Windows 8 On February 29th
On February 29, Microsoft will finally release the Consumer Preview, a partly-finished beta, to the entire world. It’s announcing the preview at an event at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Office 15
Office 15 Begins Technical Preview
One step closer to the beta program.
Windows Azure
Microsoft’s Windows Azure Active Directory plans takes shape
Interesting 
Announcing Reduced Pricing on SQL Azure and New 100MB Database Option
Yay!! Price reductions!!
Windows Phone
Windows Phone Design Guidelines on MSDN
Looking for design guidelines on the Windows Phone platform? Microsoft recently released official ones in the MSDN. A must read for Windows Phone developers!
Coding Tips
When can I use…
Wondering if you can use this HTML5 tag, or CSS attribute in specific browsers? Check-out this web site as it provides compatibility tables for support of HTML5, CSS3, SVG and more in desktop and mobile browsers.
Debugger Canvas
Debugger Canvas is a new user experience for the debugger in Visual Studio Ultimate. It pulls together the code you’re exploring onto a single pan-and-zoom display. As you hit breakpoints or step into code, Debugger Canvas shows just the methods that you’re debugging, with call lines and local variables, to help you see the bigger picture.
Carl Anderson
January 23rd 2012 Links: Software Development, Azure, WPF, ASP.NET, Tips
Here’s our second post in our link-listing series:
Software Development
How I learned to stop worrying and write my own ORM
This post was written by one of the Stack Overflow guys (pretty good resume isn’t it?). It illustrates certain issues due to a core principle of ORMs: “the 100% dynamic” also known as “I hate databases, can’t I do everything in C#?”.
HTML5 and the Rise of Hybrid Apps
More and more apps are built in cross-platform HTML5 which is then wrapped into a native container.
Windows Azure
Scott Guthrie’s latest public presentation
New to Windows Azure, or looking for an update on where the platform is at? Check this one out, it’s the best place to start!
WPF
Announcing the Bing Maps WPF Control v1
Yay, maps in our WPF apps!
ASP.NET
An old, yet very helpful, article on the ASP.NET ViewState.
Coding Tips
How can I detect the language a run of text is written in?
Ever needed to figure in what language a unicode string is? Here’s a great post providing valuable information on the topic.
Want Source Server to Work with Managed Minidumps in Visual Studio? Here’s How!
I guess the title says it all 
PerfView: New CLR and .NET Performance tool
Vance Morrison, CLR performance architect at Microsoft, has released a new tool (free) for conducting performance investigations on .NET applications.
Hope this helps,
Carl Anderson
