Darren Straight has uploaded some of the photos he took while at Designertopia last week.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darrenstraight/sets/72157594514567740/
This is one of all the attending MSPs in front of the Expression stand
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darrenstraight/377925503/
Then one in front of the Imagine Cup stand
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darrenstraight/377928421/
WOW. That was an amazing day. Scott Guthrie is a great presenter and knows his stuff. Such an amazing event, oh already said that…
It was an early start for me, 6am to get the train to Reading, got there a little bit early so just chilled in Reception. Soon came the breakfast, bacon, egg or sausage rolls for all which is great – but maybe mix it up a little? Like egg and bacon?
The sessions where amazing, but the queuing outside made it more difficult to have a chat if you wanted a good seat but they where worth it. The session on Orcas was amazing, can’t wait for the CTP (End of February).
Afterwards I went to the Geek Dinner. Second time I had attended a dinner and really enjoyed myself, meet up with Simon Middlemiss again and others, its great to have a chat with people about technology and the world.
After that, it was off to the bar, where I had a excellent chat with Plip and Granville until the small hours (think I got to bed around 4am).
Overall, amazing day. Really looking forward to the next one, but for now – bring on DDD5!
The photos Plip took are available here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/plip/sets/72157594518882702/
Remember to fill in the feedback forms:
http://www.webdd.org.uk/Feedback.aspx
Keep an eye out for the slides, but Scott should have his on his blog soon
http://www.webdd.org.uk/Slides.aspx
Yesterday and today I attended the Designertopia event in London, which I got invited to as part of my Microsoft Student Partner program, this was a great event while being different to may of the other microsoft events. There where also five other MSPs there, it was great to meet up with some of the guys again.
Yesterday started off with a keynote with the program managers from Redmond giving a demonstrate of the applications (Ajax and Expression), while showing off some cool applications which had been created using WPF, Blend and Ajax. I always love to see real world applications using this, so this was great.
The room was then split into two halfs, one for the more creative people, with one for the more technical attendees (I stayed on the technical side for the two days). The first technical event was given by two employees from partners who had worked on applications which where created by Blend and WPF. Again, this was really great to see and gave some insight into how the technologies could be used together – plus they used Vista on a MacBook Pro to do the demos (see image). Next up was Expression Web, saw some cool features which I just hadn’t realised where there before. The last one of the day was not technical, but based on the idea of “connecting design to real business value”. This was really interesting, giving a insight into what happens in the design world while discussing when to focus on design and how to bring up the discussion with clients. At the end of the day they opened the bar for everyone to do a bit of networking. Sadly, I couldn’t take full advantage of the free bar but I managed to squeeze in a few beers before having to head home.
Today (Day 2) was a mixture of different styles of discussions. The first two sessions where based on UX with a talk on how the Vista UX came about, with some interesting screenshots from previous releases and UI mock-ups – some things from way back in 2002 which people said Microsoft had copied 😉 The creators of UniveRSS gave a demo of the app and how to use the Z axis, shame no code.
Carrie Longson from Microsoft then gave a great presentation on some of the apps which had been created with partners, this included IMG’s Golf and Fashion application and Transport for London’s tube application. Saw this before, but still great.
Jon Harris then did a truly amazing talk on Blend. He covered a lot of ground in a short space of time and I now feel confident I could use Blend. The best talk of the two days for me. It was great! Really want to use Blend now.
Overall, great event. Hope they hold another one (with more talks from Jon)
Got to do it all over again at WebDD tomorrow, can’t wait!
Karsten Januszewski has just announced Expression Blend Beta 2 and Design Beta 1. Go check it out.
With WPF/E Feb CTP available here http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/bb187358.aspx
Jamie has released an updated version of TestDriven.NET with support for Visual Studio Orcas, together with Lutz Roeder’s Reflector 5.0 which supports C# 3.0.
Read more and watch a screencast over on his blog:
TestDriven.NET 2.2 Beta + VS Orcas / Reflector 5.0
The ZaneBug 1.7 beta has been released, this includes MbUnit 2.3 support.
I have just downloaded Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC SDK.msi, after installing this, it gave me project templates within Visual Studio 2005 for Windows Mobile Pocket PC using .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and 1.0 (2.0 is not included by default in Windows Mobile 5.0).
The package also includes:
Visual Studio 2005 installer only installs the SDK for Windows Mobile 2003. This SDK includes everything required to get started developing for the Pocket PC. Smartphones have a different SDK.
At the same time, I also downloaded the Developer Resource Kit which includes the SDK, but also the SDK for smartphones and loads of developer sources such as the WeFly247 sample application, white papers and webcasts and hands on labs.
Tools and Technologies:
Rory from Channel 9 have also done some excellent screencasts on how to program WM5 which I’m looking forward to watching.
Its all mobile today!
The .Net CF framework 3.5 has been included in the January CTP of Orcas. I haven’t tried it yet, but something to be aware of and to have a look at if you have time. I’m not going to be able to try it this month, but might look at it in more detail next month (March).
Read the post here, includes feature list:
.NET Compact Framework 3.5 included in Orcas January CTP
To transfer all of my contacts and calendar (capable of more, but I didn’t have anything else) from my old phone I used ActiveSync and was surprised how easy it was.
First, sync my old smartphone with PC via USB
Secondly, plug in new phone via USB and setup partnership with ActiveSync
Finally, wait for it to finish (about 30 seconds)
My phone now has all of my calendar and contacts which where on my old phone – Excellent!!
Would be nice if I could transfer the text messages as well – anyone know how?
As for usage, I have found the PPC to be a lot more usable and feature rich, as you would expect as I also went from 2003SE to 5.0, but I can see this changing as more smartphones come out and the two operating systems merge (which is due in 7.0), also found it really easy to move from the standard keyboard to a stylus + keyboard – can’t imagine going back now…
I’ve got a new phone!! I decided to go ahead and buy it after getting frustrated with my existing phone, the Samsung i300 (Windows Mobile 2003SE).
Had it since Saturday and been really pleased with it. I love the fact that it has got GPRS, 3G and WiFi so I can check anything online when I need to. I went with T-Mobile as they offered me unlimited web and email for £7.50 a month and the tariff at £15 a month – fits in with my budget, the phone costs a little bit more, but it works out cheaper in the long run for me.
Downloaded .Net CF 2.0 onto the phone, just need to have a play around with some code now. I have got a great (well, good) idea for an application so watch this space 😉
Also started writing down all my ideas on the phone, following GTD style, which is great and finding it really useful to be able to write down notes and keep them safe (paper tends to go in a pile and get lost).
Good Points:
Lots…
Bad Points:
I haven’t been able to download my IMAP email yet. My university works great, so does googlemail and hotmail but my main account doesn’t work.
Can’t have the phone on silent, but an alarm yet – what happens if I forget to turn it off silent and use it as a wake up alarm?
Doesn’t have Crossbow/WM6 and unlikely to be upgradeable.
I will blog more as I find more…
Richard Costall have just posted pictures from the NxtGenUG Vista event with the DPE team.
Find info here:
http://www.nxtgenug.net/Article.aspx?ArticleID=136
and here
http://ukvistaofficelaunchtour.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!FC6E5398911CFD21!216.entry
Charles Torre was there from Channel 9, can’t wait to see what they have to say…
On a side note, HMV have sent me a email saying Halo 2 has finally been sent out to me 😀