Good morning, all. I interrupt the normal cadence of this blog to bring to you just a little bit of bragging. And a challenge. “Oh great.. what did you do now, Kevin?” imageThis week I’m in Seattle, Washington, attending Microsoft’s bi-annual internal technical training event, “TechReady” (TechReady 14 to be specific.) One of the benefits of being a Microsoft employee is that we can take certification exams for no cost. And at these events, Microsoft brings in Prometric to facilitate a testing center for people attending the conference. So this year as in years past, my teammates and I have been taking (and mostly passing) certification exams.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 2/2/12 6:52 PM

I highly recommend this book to any role involved with developing .NET software. I personally do not find software development an art form. It is not an unpredictable activity driven by crazy business users that come to work every day inventing a new way to operate their businesses just to savagely changing your requirements. Project teams that use changing requirements as an excuse for their dates constantly slipping and bugs being pushed to production are simply not good development teams and they are poorly managed. Even when you're in an environment where requirements are volatile, proper architecture and process engineering can level the playing field.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/30/12 4:27 PM

TreeHouse Interactive, a provider of on-demand partner relationship management (PRM) and marketing automation solutions, has announced the release of its Reseller View PRM system for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The new integrated offering puts enterprise-class partner management capabilities in the hands of Microsoft Dynamics CRM users for the first time. Reseller View is the most complete PRM solution available, offering a password protected enterprise-class web portal that can be customized to include any navigation desired and match any corporate branding guidelines including a company-branded URL. Its unmatched feature set automates partner on-boarding and enables partner information to flow seamlessly between Dynamics CRM and Reseller View. Once in the system, partners can register opportunities or receive leads directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM while logged into the Reseller View portal. Some of the available features include: deal registration, lead distribution, automated training and certification, partner marketing enablement, automated contract management, MDF/co-op management, automated partner on-boarding, partner locator, advanced document management, and partner marketing automation.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/30/12 2:44 PM

In 2000, Microsoft announced that it is building a brand new runtime and a framework called .NET. At the heart of .NET was the Common Language Runtime (CLR) designed to execute an assembly like language known as Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL). This was at a time when Sun was trying to lure the developers away from Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C++ to their flagship Java platform. It was not just Microsoft but an array of language and platform players were seriously threatened by Java’s dominance. Microsoft realized that by supporting more languages on top of .NET could bring multiple vendors to join them in challenging Sun.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/30/12 1:30 PM

I personally do not find software development an art form. It is not an unpredictable activity driven by crazy business users that come to work every day inventing a new way to operate their businesses just to savagely changing your requirements. Project teams that use changing requirements as an excuse for their dates constantly slipping and bugs being pushed to production are simply not good development teams and they are poorly managed. Even when you're in an environment where requirements are volatile, proper architecture and process engineering can level the playing field.

One of the reasons for incompetent software development teams is what I like to call home brewed enterprises. A company that does not welcome external resources to the table when they are changing to meet the demands of today's hi-tech requirements for doing business will usually create a home brewed mess. The attitude that 'we have figured out how to run our business over the past 30 years and can figure out how to move forward on our own', is shortsighted and destine to fail. If your people are not continuously learning what the newest industry standards, best practices, programming language features, process engineering techniques, and management skills that have become available are, then you need to turn to outside consultants that are doing that to help you through changing times.

One other thing, you have to actually take and execute their advice. I don't know how many times I have seen consultants brought in, asked for their opinion, only to have their advice ignored because the internal team did not have the skillset to execute their advice. If you don't have the skillsets available for building software right, you should not be building software, period.

There is a much bigger gap between the professional software engineer and the average company software developer than most companies realize. They miss it because they have no one on their team that has experienced an actual software development project run right. Most company's IT departments are hitting about 10% of their potential. The reason the business doesn't know any better is because some improvement, no matter how little, is better than no improvement.

The business simply believes the productivity gains they are getting for the half million dollar projects are what they have to pay. When in reality a shop that is practicing best practices could deliver five to ten times more functionality with a much higher quality for the same cost. Getting the message through to them after years of developing garbage is tough cookie to crack. That would mean a lot of people, from IT to the business, would actually have to say I was wrong. It would also mean that things would need to change, and home brewed enterprises hate change.

The author of this book has done every software developer who does not want to be just another home brewer a great service. He has taken today's best practices from the .NET world and compiled them into one place. Granted a lot of the topics he covers will require further reading, but he has done a great job of introducing a ton of best practices along with the tools and resources you need to implement them.

He does not just give you a bunch tools with an example, he also gives you sound advice on how to determine whether or not the tool or practice is right for your environment. This author has a very clear understanding of the fact that there are different teams with different skillsets in different environments and not every practice is right for every team.

An example is his advice with agile processes, which is that you must have an open and trusting environment for agile to succeed. I have repeatedly seen agile process jammed down team's throats that couldn't handle it. They were not mature enough. They should have first been run with an experienced architect and project manager in place under the unified process in order to gain experience.

The book starts out with a chapter that introduces several healthy concepts that should be understood about best practices in general. They include Practice Selection, Target Areas for Improvement, and Overall Improvement.

The book continues with 12 more chapters. They include .NET Practice Areas, Achieving Desired Results, Quantifying Value, Strategy, .NET Rules and Regulations, Powerful C# Constructs, Automated Testing, Build Automation, Continuous Integration, Code Analysis, Test Frameworks, and Aversions and Biases.

The book covers a ton of topics some of them include Technical Debt, Retrospective Analysis, Prospective Analysis, Application Lifecycle Management, Patterns and Guidance, Research and Development, Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle, Success Conditions, Documented Architecture, Improving Manageability, Increasing Quality Attributes, Personal Process, Commitment to Excellence, Coding Standards and Guidelines, Code Smells, Brownfield and Greenfield Applications, Boundary Analysis, Test Code Maintainability, Unit Testing, Automated Integration Testing, MSBuild Fundamentals, Automated Deployment, The CI Server, CI Lifecycle, Static and Dynamic Code Analysis, Mock Object Frameworks, Dunning-Kruger Effect, Ostrich Effect, Gambler's Fallacy, Ambiguity Effect, and Focusing Effect.

The downloadable code is very well organized and usable. Each chapter includes a readme document that describes the code samples. The download also includes an Excel spreadsheet of the .NET Best Practices Scorecard that is found in Appendix B.

Appendix A is a nice collection of all the resources used in the book including books, articles, guides and tutorials, and tools.

My wife has accused me of going to work and speaking a foreign language and that is why no one understands what I am saying. The foreign language I have been use is called Best Practices and Industry Standards. It is a language that is constantly evolving. This book has the most current version of it as it relates to .NET. If I get my way, this book will be mandatory reading to be able to join my team. I suggest your team do the same.

I highly recommend this book to any role involved with developing .NET software.
Pro .NET Best Practices

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/28/12 6:38 PM

Seems just the other day – actually it was two weeks ago – that we divined that HP, imagining blowing Google away, would pull out the stops to get the webOS that it bought, put in a tablet that failed in the market, dropped, then open sourced – life’s funny like that – in shape to publish the code in stages. And what do you know – surprise, surprise – HP Wednesday committed to a timetable for getting the thing out in steps by September under the lenient Apache 2.0 license. HP is making much of the fact that it materialized the roadmap 47 days after it said it would open source webOS. God knows whether HP or anybody else will ever really exploit the thing. For HP it depends on the auspices – like two bald eagles seen circling Google or Apple talons extended.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/28/12 5:00 PM

GSX Solutions, a provider of proactive, consolidated monitoring, reporting of enterprise collaboration environments, including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) and Lotus Notes has announced a new GSX Monitor & Analyzer release, with plug and play ease of use and the delivery of a full range of monitoring enhancements for Microsoft environments. The latest GSX Monitor & Analyzer release provides a new set of features that meet the management challenges of enterprises using Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, BES or Lotus Notes for critical business services.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/26/12 10:01 PM

Perfect for those people looking to get into WPF, Silverlight, or XAML for Windows (Windows 8) development. I have read a lot of the WPF and Silverlight books out there and there are some good ones. The difference I find with this book is that it is XAML centric so the scope is more isolated. A few months ago a fellow developer of mine had to build some XAML forms to integrate with a third party shell. This book would have been the right level of information he needed to knock the project out. The first chapter offers an overview view of XAML. The introduction is followed by 8 more chapters and two appendices. The chapters include Object Elements and Attributes, XAML Properties and Events, Markup Extensions and Other Features, Resources, Styles, and Triggers, Layout and Positioning System, Form and Functional Controls, Data Binding, and Media, Graphics, and Animation.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/26/12 3:51 PM

Irrespective of what the Agile Manifesto says (“Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation”) we do require a signed contract for ANY medium to large software outsourcing engagements – and that includes agile projects. Why? Because when there is a commercial arrangement between two parties for delivery of any service where a significant amount of financial transaction is involved, there needs to be a clear agreement on: What is the service that is going to be delivered and what will be the charges for those services? What happens when things go wrong? Dos and Don’ts of how the interaction will happen.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/24/12 2:30 PM

I still remember the first time I was on a project that used NAnt and CruiseControl.NET. It was years ago and both were new tools with plenty of bugs. The project manager took one of the team's architects and dedicated him to getting CI up and running. I didn't work with him for another 9 months. It was a complete nightmare. Every morning was dedicated to finding out why the builds failed, fixing the issue, and then manually rerunning the builds until successful. Then it was off to show management the new build reports. It didn't take long for them to not want to be hassled with the process. A year after it all began the code base was removed from the CI process and went back to manual builds. Not a very good story to start the review of a book on CI that I highly recommend you read. Times have changed, the tools have improved, and with books like this available you have no reason to not give CI a go. You may have plenty of excuses, but no reasons. Luckily this book contains a nice summary of excuses commonly used and does a nice job of debunking them.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/23/12 4:19 PM

A federal court in California has upheld the validity of a key RPost patent reinforcing the company’s claims to own the technology for registered, legally recognized, court-admissible evidence of e-mail content and delivery going back to 1995. RPost’s 35 patents, granted in 21 countries, broadly cover verifiable proof of e-mail delivery and value-added outbound e-mail processing. On December 27 the District Court for the Central District of California granted RPost a summary judgment finding its US patent 6,182,219 valid. The decision is a lead-up to RPost’s infringement suit against Trustifi Corporation but the 20-page ruling is expected to impact the suits RPost also has pending against Swiss Post, Canada Post, Adobe-Echosign, DocuSign, Zix Corporation, RightSignature, Farmers Insurance and Telarix, among others. They are all being sued for treading on ‘219 as well as other RPost patents.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/21/12 9:00 PM

A rare, if not unheard of, confluence of stars Thursday meant that IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Google all reported their calendar Q4 numbers after the market closed. Of the lot only Google came a cropper, losing $57 after-hours, down 8.9% when last we looked to $582.58, on a scary drop in its search advertising. Paid clicks were down 8% while costs were up 35%. Earnings were up 6.3% but that still counted as a miss by Wall Street’s lights. Google was supposed to return $10.49 a share on revenues of $8.41 billion. Instead it did $8.22 on record-breaking $10.58 billion, up 25%, which worked out to $8.13 billion after paying commissions. The reaction may, in part, be a way to punish Google for buying Motorola Mobility, which delivered a disappointing quarter on January 6 on depressed device sales. The purchase, if regulators wave it through, will likely play havoc with Google’s income statement.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/21/12 7:00 PM

HP has named Bill Veghte its chief strategy officer, replacing CTO Shane Robison who was ousted three months ago. Veghte, who used to run the $15 billion Windows unit at Microsoft, joined HP in 2010 as head of software, a job he will keep. He is also supposed to head HP’s cloud and webOS open source initiatives. HP said that as chief strategy officer, Veghte’s supposed to “help define the IT industry’s future and make certain HP continues to lead the way,” adding that his “new role reaffirms HP’s commitment to providing customers with the latest platforms, products and services needed for success in a rapidly changing world.”

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/21/12 9:30 AM

Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft Office 365, the company's next-generation cloud productivity service, is the first and only major cloud-based platform to offer leading information privacy and security standards for customers operating in the European Union and United States. As part of its contractual commitment to customers, Microsoft will now sign the EU's model clauses, which will help customers certify compliance with the European Commission's stringent Data Protection Directive, and the U.S.-mandated Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/20/12 8:22 PM

Today Microsoft made major announcements on the pricing of System Center 2012. It's now one product, just two SKUs. Today during the "Private Cloud Day" live webcast event, Microsoft announced major change in how we think of and purchase the System Center suite. Summary.. it's no longer a separate set of products, but it is just one product: System Center 2012. Ready to try it? http://aka.ms/syscntr In a nutshell: System Center is now just one product, that comes in two editions, with many components. Standard Edition is licensed per two physical processors, and each license gives you management rights of two virtualized servers. Buy as many as you need for the number of virtualized servers you want to manage. Datacenter Edition is also licensed per two physical processors, but it provides use rights for management of an unlimited number of VMs per license.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/17/12 10:14 PM

This article is about How Kinect and Surface 2.0 will have impact on the retail experience. From Microsoft Press releases. Throughout the retail and hospitality industries one axiom reigns supreme: The customer is always right. Though dating back to the 19th century, it remains a hallmark of excellent customer service. And while the phrase is still as essential as ever, making good on it has become more of a challenge - and more of a possibility. A collective of buyers, store planners and supply chain managers work together to anticipate next year's hottest products, create pricing strategies that position the store well against its competitors, and keep the shelves replenished with just enough merchandise to meet demand. Meanwhile, a retinue of store managers and employees focus on serving the customer and selling that merchandise. Underpinning all these efforts is an array of applications and devices that is often outdated, disconnected and more a source of inefficiency than it is a driver of business value.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/17/12 7:00 PM

I highly recommend this book to everyone in the business of building software. Before you attempt to automate your testing, read this book! Every once in a while a book is put together that should be read by every person with a relationship to software development. This book is one of them. Everyone dreams of automating their software testing, but few make it a reality. This down to earth book is the stories of 28 teams that went for it. It includes both successes and failures. That is not something you see everyday. Many books simply provide you the success path. This book also provides you with the steps you could possibly be taking that could lead to failure helping you to change your path before fully failing.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/17/12 4:12 PM

AMD has named Rajan Naik chief strategy officer, reporting to CEO Rory Read. Naik, 40, was a partner in McKinsey’s technology practice. His charter will embrace both the company’s short- and long-term strategy development, including market opportunities, strategic partnerships and investment strategies. Read said Naik “possesses a strong track record of execution in strategic planning, product and market strategy, and operational performance. He will help ensure strategic and operational alignment across our business to take advantage of growth opportunities in lower power, emerging markets and cloud computing.”

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/15/12 7:00 PM

The world is getting smarter – more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. At the same time, IT leaders are faced with the challenge to do more and support aggressive business growth, while reducing costs. Business leaders feel pressure to initiate new revenue streams, drive faster time-to-market for new services and meet changing customer expectations. With cloud computing, business and IT can create and deliver value in fundamentally new ways by removing IT boundaries, improving speed-to-market, and empowering users to drive innovation like never before. Next-generation cloud platforms and new “as-a-service” industry solutions are emerging to help shape this innovation. In his general session at the 9th International Cloud Expo, Rich Lechner, Vice President Energy & Environment at IBM, discussed the latest in these cloud technologies and how they enable companies to truly re-think IT and re-invent business.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/15/12 7:00 PM

Gartner has revised its outlook downward and now expects worldwide IT spending to total $3.8 trillion in 2012, up 3.7% from 2011. The researcher previously thought spending would grow 4.6% – roughly a $100 billion more – but says “faltering global economic growth, the eurozone crisis and the impact of Thailand’s floods on hard-disk drive (HDD) production have taken their toll on the outlook for IT spending.” It figures all four major technology sectors – hardware, enterprise software, IT services and telecommunications equipment and services – will experience slower spending.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/14/12 6:00 PM

Between unimaginative products, competition from tablets and smartphones, the flood-created squeeze on hard drives and high prices, PC shipments dropped somewhere between 0.2% and 1.4% in the fourth quarter compared to 4Q10 according to IDC and Gartner. IDC is the more optimistic one. And remember Q4 is usually strong because of the holidays. HP was the author of its own peculiar problems. Although still the sector’s leader it shipped 14.7 million boxes in Q4, 16% fewer units than the year before because of doubts over the fate of its PC unit.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/14/12 5:00 PM

It’s another snowy day up here in Minneapolis, but earlier this week I had the pleasure of traveling down to tropical Kansas City. Overland Park, KS, to be more specific. And on that particular day we decided to try something new. We (John Weston and I) asked our attendees to write down questions, topic areas, off-hand remarks, and comments on slips of paper during the event. What we wanted to do was help facilitate some more discussion during our IT Camp. An IT Camp is like a TechNet Event without (or with minimal) PowerPoint. It’s more of a discussion than a presentation. It’s interactive, loose, and fun. We have some topics to discuss and certainly some information to disseminate, but we want the conversation to be driven mainly by the audience. Anyway.. the reward for good questions was a T-Shirt. And the result of this ask of our guests was phenomenal. I have sitting here on my desk a pretty nice stack of questions; most of which we were able to answer during the event, but some we didn’t have time to get to.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/13/12 8:38 PM

This is a very well put together book. It includes a single example company that the book grows and changes throughout the book. Sometimes examples get on my nerves. They are either too lightweight to mean anything, or sometimes too complex, and end up distracting you to the point of not wanting to continue read the book. The authors do an awesome job with the case study in this book. It really made it an enjoyable read. The book begins with a nice introduction to ODP. It introduces viewpoints, viewpoint languages, viewpoint correspondences, fundamental concepts, and UML4ODP. After a nice introduction to ODP the book has a chapter covering each viewpoint. They include the Enterprise Viewpoint, Information Viewpoint, Computational Viewpoint, Engineering Viewpoint, and the Technology Viewpoint. This part ends with a chapter titled Correspondences—Joining It All Up. The correspondences link the viewpoints together providing traceability between the viewpoints.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/13/12 8:17 PM

Microsoft says the Thai floods did more damage to the hard disk drive and component supply chain than people thought and that industry-wide PC sales in Q4 will probably drop more than the ~1% loss analysts have projected.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/12/12 3:30 PM

This new service allows users to get PC apps on iPad. Need to see redlines in Word? Edit Excel graphs? Present PowerPoint animations? Now you can. Based upon OnLive's instant-action cloud gaming technology, OnLive Desktop delivers a seamless Windows desktop experience, with instant-response multi-touch gestures, together with a full on-screen Windows keyboard and handwriting recognition, enabling complete and convenient viewing and editing of even the most complex documents. Rich media, such as video, animation, slide transitions and even PC games, never before practical via remote desktop delivery, run fluidly and dynamically with instant-action interactivity. OnLive Desktop makes remote feel local.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/11/12 9:02 PM

So I’ve been living under a rock again and I had never gotten around to checking what’s new in Visual Studio 11. The Developer Preview has been around a while and I wanted to check it out today and was surprised to see some new SharePoint development features that I am really excited about. If you have been following me, you know I have been doing some work with Office 365 and SharePoint Online, so when I read about the new Publish feature in Visual Studio 11, I had to check it out. Let’s start by creating a new project with a simple web part. We’ll look and what’s new and see how exactly we can publish to SharePoint Online. Open Visual Studio 11 and go to the New Project menu. If you are familiar with this menu in Visual Studio 2010, you will quickly notice some differences.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/11/12 7:23 AM

Performance is one word that is used to describe multiple scenarios when talking about application performance. When someone says I need a High Performance Application, it might mean any/all of the following: Low web latency application ( meaning low page loading times) Application that can serve ever increasing number of users (scalability) Application that does not go down (either highly available or continuously available) For each of the above, as an architect you need to dig deeper to find out what the user is asking for. With the advent of cloud, every CIO is looking to build applications that meet all of the above scenarios. With the advent of elastic compute, one tends to think that by throwing hardware to the application, we may be able to achieve all of the above objectives. The patterns employed to achieve the above scenarios at times are different and it is important to find the right approach to the solution that meets the above objectives. We will examine some of the common patterns that can help us to achieve the objectives

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/7/12 8:00 PM

Surveys conducted by Scott Ambler have consistently (2008, 2010 & 2011) shown that Agile and Iterative Projects have been more successful. Apart from the fact that Agile has been consistently been more successful compared to traditional approach, these survey result show two more interesting result – one of them is very surprising. 1) The gap between “Iterative + Agile” and “Traditional + Ad-hoc” has been increasing It is not clear why there is a dip in the success rate of all types of project in 2010. But, leaving that aside, the gap has been consistently been increasing (2008=7%, 2010=13% and 2011=18%). So, does it mean that people have really mastered the art of how to manage Agile and Iterative projects? Or, does it been, people who are good at project management have abandoned Traditional approach and migrated to Agile or Iterative approach?

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/5/12 12:15 PM

This book is not only about DI, it is about proper object oriented programming. Every .NET architect and developer should read this book. Sometimes my ability to be a complete ignoramus really annoys me. When I first saw this book on the upcoming list of books to be published I thought, "That sucks, I just got done reading Dependency Injection by Dhanji R. Prasanna last year. I don't need to read the .NET version", and so I ignored this book. As time went on I saw all the great reviews coming out about the book and it made me curious. A buddy of mine had purchased it and I know that Manning gives ebooks with there book purchases, so I asked to borrow it. I ordered the book the next day. I have nothing bad to say about Dependency Injection by Dhanji R. Prasanna, it was a great book. The difference is this one spoke my language of choice, .NET. It made the read so much better for me. Plus all the coverage of the popular DI Containers for .NET rocks. This book is broken down into 4 parts the first part introduces DI. Part two is a catalog of patterns, anti-patterns, and refactorings. Part three covers Object Composition, Lifetime Management, and Interception. Part four covers all the popular DI .NET Containers which include Castle Windsor, StructureMap, Spring.NET, Autofac, Unity, and MEF.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/4/12 7:38 PM

Another year has gone by. Happy New Year everyone. It is time to update my book recommendation blog. There have been a ton of books come out this year both good and bad. Be sure to check out the Shiny Turds book section which lists books that do not Cut the Mustard *-Do not Buy-* section. It is the last in the list. I have added books to most sections and deleted some of the older ones that do not have much value in today's market.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 1/3/12 3:50 PM

There is not another one like it out there. This book has been one of the most enjoyable reads I have had in a long time. The introduction and the first chapter was a walk down memory lane. It was nice coverage of how we got to where we are today in the software development world. Each chapter goes into a deep explanation of the topic being covered. There are three parts in the book. I list them below with the chapters in each. Part I: The Roots of Object-Oriented Development- Historical Perspective, Object Technology, Generalization, Inheritance, Genericity, and Polymorphism, MBD Road Map, Modeling Invariants, and Application Partitioning. Part II: The Static Model- Classes, Class Responsibilities, Associations, Referential and Knowledge Integrity, Generalization Redux, and Identifying Knowledge. Part III: The Dynamic Model- The Finite State Machine, States, Transitions, Events, and Actions, Developing State Models, and Abstract Action Languages.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/29/11 4:00 PM

After our previous article “XenDesktop on Microsoft Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V: Best Practices”, we decided to expand on this series and post some additional articles that are more specific to Hyper-V itself and in particular, tuning performance of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. We’ll discuss processor, memory, disk I/O, and network I/O tuning tips, but [...]

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/29/11 10:00 AM

Amazon, which hired an investment bank for the purpose, according to Reuters, and Microsoft together with its buddy Nokia, according to the Wall Street Journal, have kicked the tires at RIM. Reuters says RIM “turned down takeover overtures from Amazon.com Inc and other potential buyers” without knowing who those others might be before the Journal waded in. It still thinks Amazon and RIM are talking. RIM’s board and its co-CEOs, behaving like Yahoo’s, apparently prefer to try to catch the falling knives by themselves. No formal bids were supposedly made by anybody and the Journal says it’s “unclear how extensively RIM has been involved in any takeover discussions with Microsoft and Nokia.”

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/25/11 8:00 PM

Reuters says IP firm IPCom has sued maybe 30 German retailers so far for patent infringement for selling HTC phones. HTC last month dropped an appeal of an injunction IPCom got from a German court in 2009. That made the injunction enforceable. The phones enjoined are any devices using UMTS technology, which is everything HTC sells. IPCom subsequently sent maybe 100 retailers a notice to stop selling the phones by December 20. They didn’t cooperate so it started suing. The penalty is supposed to be a fine of up to €250,000 ($326,000) for each violation. To head off IPCom HTC rushed into a court in Düsseldorf last week and got a preliminary injunction to stop IPCom from sending retailers the cease and desist letter. IPCom told Bloomberg the amended language doesn’t stop it from threatening legal action.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/24/11 10:00 PM

The Apache Software Foundation, where Oracle sent OpenOffice in June after it adjured the stuff, said Tuesday that it will put out OpenOffice 3.4 in the first quarter whose code will all be under the Apache license, resolving lingering incompatibility issues. It used what was ostensibly an open letter to the Open Document Format community to distance itself from the new German Team OpenOffice.com fork and its fund-raising attempts and warn it about misusing its trademark including “OpenOffice.org and all related marks.”

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/24/11 7:00 PM

Workday, the six-year-old SaaS ERP start-up co-founded by David Duffield after a resistant PeopleSoft finally fell to Oracle, is planning to IPO in the second half of next year, according to two unidentified Bloomberg sources. It’s supposed to want to raise $200 million-$500 million. Workday, a threat to Oracle and SAP, is credited in some quarters with provoking SAP to spend $3.4 billion on SuccessFactors, a direct competitor, a price that could tickle Workday’s valuation. It has raised in the neighborhood of $190 million over repeated rounds, including an F round in October that reportedly included Michael Dell and Jeff Bezos. Duffield has also supplied millions of its bankroll. Bloomberg says the company is in the market for an IPO-savvy CFO.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/24/11 7:00 PM

The Düsseldorf court that blocked Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Germany in September said Thursday that the changes Samsung has made in the modified Germany-only Galaxy Tab 10.1N are enough to distinguish it from the iPad and that Apple is unlikely to win a ruling against it on February 9. Apple had complained to the court that the re-worked “N” was still a dead ringer for its widget and wanted it blocked too. Apple objections are based on its European design IP. The “N” tablet has a thicker bezel design and the speakers are now on the front. Samsung’s label is also reportedly bigger.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/24/11 5:00 PM

It’s quite clear from reading this book that Peter Gasston is very knowledgeable about CSS 3 and, as he points out in the preface, this book is a culmination of five years of work that he has spent writing about CSS3. There is a clear order to the chapters. The earlier chapters are well implemented and the items discussed there are used on a regular basis. The final chapters are more speculative in nature. The author takes a very methodical approach in the book. He covers numerous topics in a clear and well-thought-out manner. He provides several examples for each topic that is covered. There are 17 chapters and an appendix. After each topic is introduced, the author informs you as to which of the major browsers implements the feature. The last chapter discusses the future of CSS3. The appendix collects all of the browser support tables that are found in each chapter.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/19/11 4:59 PM

This book will take you to the next level of using SharePoint and Silverlight together. I can say that it did that for me. I have done a lot of SharePoint custom development and I see Silverlight as the answer to the horrible web part programming model Microsoft has made available in SharePoint. I have yet to see anyone write SharePoint web parts that aren't spaghetti code. Every major web part implementation I have seen has been a big ball of mud, and I have seen a lot. I moved to Silverlight for web parts as soon as I could. It is a great programming model. Microsoft continues to play the top secret game with regards to Silverlight so rumors of lack of browser support in the next year or two are being allowed to flourish. I am not willing to tell customers they should spend a year or two investing in Silverlight just so they can start over when they finally start reaching maturity. So for now, because of Silverlight, SharePoint custom development is off my future list of recommendations as well.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/19/11 4:06 PM

After an eight-week trial Novell’s private antitrust suit against Microsoft for monopoly abuse went to the jury early Wednesday morning. The jury reportedly deliberated into the evening after peppering the judge with questions about what the AP said was technical testimony presented at trial. One of the notes sent out was said to have baffled the judge and he told the jury to disregard the issue. Novell claims it should be paid around a billion dollars on the allegation that Bill Gates killed an interface WordPerfect needed to be Windows 95-compatible to give Microsoft Word a market advantage. The move supposedly forced Novell to sell the once-reigning word processor and its companion Quattro Pro spreadsheet to Corel at a $1.2 billion loss in 1996.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/16/11 6:22 PM

Please hold your skepticism, keep an open mind, go through the following points and only then pass a judgment on my prediction that “three years down Windows Phone would have overtaken Android." The UI is different but very well designed for mobile and tablet. The same view is expressed by most experts and most owners of “Mango” phone. Google and Android handset manufacturers are fighting legal battles with Apple in so many different countries. These battles are prompted by similarity in the design and user interface.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/16/11 9:39 AM

All in all if you are considering Windows 7.5 development you owe it to yourself to get this book, digest it, and then keep it by your side. This book starts with a great introduction to the Windows phones. It introduces Metro design language, hardware specifications, input patterns, the application lifecycle, out-of-the-box services, live tiles, and the marketplace. By the time you are done with the introduction you have a solid understanding of the Windows phone context. The book continues with ten more chapters. They include Writing Your First Phone Application, XAML Overview, Controls, Designing for the Phone, Developing for the Phone, Phone Integration, Databases and Storage, Multitasking, Services, and The Marketplace. The author has a really nice writing style which makes the book an easy cover to cover read. It will also make a nice reference.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/15/11 4:10 PM

All in all if you are considering Windows 7.5 development you owe it to yourself to get this book, digest it, and then keep it by your side. This book starts with a great introduction to the Windows phones. It introduces Metro design language, hardware specifications, input patterns, the application lifecycle, out-of-the-box services, live tiles, and the marketplace. By the time you are done with the introduction you have a solid understanding of the Windows phone context. The book continues with ten more chapters. They include Writing Your First Phone Application, XAML Overview, Controls, Designing for the Phone, Developing for the Phone, Phone Integration, Databases and Storage, Multitasking, Services, and The Marketplace. The author has a really nice writing style which makes the book an easy cover to cover read. It will also make a nice reference.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/15/11 4:10 PM

How is Microsoft using Office 365 internally? How can a Hybrid Cloud combined with Office 365 work to your advantage. In part 2 of this 30 part series we introduced the topic of Hybrid Cloud. That is the combining of Public, Private, and or traditional IT into a system that works for you. One of the great Hybrid examples I like to talk about is internally here at Microsoft. Microsoft is an extremely email centric company. Email is beyond a mission critical app for us. As such we spend a lot on our internal Exchange infrastructure. I have been on a beta test program for many years helping our Exchange team test the next version of Exchange before they are released.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/14/11 12:00 PM

This book is great for the SharePoint end user. I kind of think of it like the top 70 FAQs about SharePoint found all in one place. Although this book is a little out of context for the books I usually read about SharePoint, I was looking for a book to recommend to the user's of the SharePoint 2010 environments I working. I am currently upgrading a 2007 environment to 2010, so the users are going to need a good reference for common tasks. This book fits the bill. Each topic begins with a Getting Ready section that tells you which SharePoint version the task can be done on. It then has a How to do it section that explains how to accomplish the task at hand. This section not only contains written instructions but also usually includes detailed screenshots.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/13/11 3:15 PM

This book is great for the SharePoint end user. I kind of think of it like the top 70 FAQs about SharePoint found all in one place. Although this book is a little out of context for the books I usually read about SharePoint, I was looking for a book to recommend to the user's of the SharePoint 2010 environments I working. I am currently upgrading a 2007 environment to 2010, so the users are going to need a good reference for common tasks. This book fits the bill. Each topic begins with a Getting Ready section that tells you which SharePoint version the task can be done on. It then has a How to do it section that explains how to accomplish the task at hand. This section not only contains written instructions but also usually includes detailed screenshots.

read more

dotnet.sys-con.com | 12/12/11 4:07 PM