 Monday, May 12, 2008
You may already know this but the beta of .NET 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 are out today. You can download and install the beta from here. See ScottGu's blog for some release and install notes here. It fixes a lot of bugs and rolls up a ton of service releases, etc, but this is not your ordinary service pack. SP1 of .NET Framework 3.5 actually adds brand new functionality to the .NET Framweork. For example the ADO .NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services (formerly code-named "Astoria") both ship new with the .net 3.5 SP1. This changes the definition of a "service pack" since we have new functionality added. Since these are new features it will not break anything old and it is ok to install over your current 3.5 installation. But we really have .NET Framework 3.75. Download and enjoy.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Red Herring magazine, an influential .com survivor, compiles a list of the most important firms in the technology and bio-tech space. The companies that innovate and set trends and influence the market. This is like the Fortune 500 list but for tech. This is an important list, in the past Google and Amazon were at the top. The List of the Top 100 European Companies is now out and Telerik is on that list. This great for Telerik of course but even better for the .NET community. First it shows that .NET is gaining more and more momentum when Red Herring awards a .NET component vendor as innovative, influential, and trend-setting. (They usually reserve those terms for open source.) Second it show just how global our community is, Telerik is an Eastern European company with headquarters in Sofia, Bulgaria, and one of only three companies on the Red Herring 100 from the former Eastern Block. That a company's founders grew up under communism and then can be labeled by Red Herring as innovative and influential in our market is totally awesome. Shows you how technology (and .NET!) can change the world. Congratulations to the .NET community and to Telerik.
Monday, January 14, 2008
The dot com era was crazy. Companies that had no business plan, no revenue, no customers, but a great team, web site and investors would IPO for $100 million. Everyone had stock options and got rich on paper. Once all of these companies went bankrupt and were delisted in the crash of April 2000, everyone was poor again since their options were underwater and worthless. The common phrase is “I wallpapered my house with my useless stock options.”
I too wallpapered my apartment with Zagat Survey stock options. I was the Chief Technology Officer for two years during the .com era and saw it all. I got there as a consultant in 1998 when the company had just 30 employees and the server for the web site was under Sal’s desk. (Sal being the entire IT department at the time.) When I joined as CTO in late 1999, I helped with my colleagues secure $34 million in Venture funding from General Atlantic and Kleiner Perkins and build a great team.
The place became a true .com with 27 year old Harvard MBAs running around, employees bringing in their dogs to work, an air hockey table, and a web site that had one mission: drive traffic. The company swelled up to 200 people, but I build out an amazing web farm and an .NET application a year before .NET shipped. We filed for an IPO. Then the crash happened. I then had to preside over massive layoffs and the eventual loss of my own motivation and left in January 2002 to start Corzen.
Today it was announced that Zagat is up for sale and at a valuation of at least $200 million. When General Atlantic and KPCB invested in the height of the .com bubble, Zagat was valued at $96 million. That means that all the employees and former employees with vested stock options (including myself) now have .com options that are above water. Well above water. I am going to scrape down the wallpaper and deposit them into my brokerage account (I hope Fidelity Investments does not mind the glue.) I guess the .com era is not over if some companies are still paying out.
Why would Zagat sell? They do a nice little business of book sales (estimated 5.5 million books sold a year) and online paid subscriptions. The problem is that Zagat is so Web 1.0. While it is technically user generated content (the ratings are not by reviews, but surveys), Zagat is still stuck in the Web 1.0 mindset (no-one pays for content anymore! Wait that was Web 1.0 too!) and has to compete with Chowhound, Facebook applications, blogs, and scores of other user generated sites. Its business model is obsolete in a Web 2.0 world. It is adapt or die. Or adapt or sell to the highest bidder and let them figure out how to make Zagat 2.0.
Monday, September 24, 2007 Wednesday, September 05, 2007
I'll be speaking at my 10th (maybe more I lost track) SDC in two weeks, speaking on:
Database Design Patterns
XML in SQL Server 2005 & 2008
The Internet Service Bus-WCF, CardSpace, BizTalk Services
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
The joke goes that whenever Microsoft says to you “Thanks for your feedback” you can usually translate that to “Go Fuck Yourself.” Not this time. We gave our feedback and Microsoft listened. Today they announced that they will be making Expression Web available starting today to all MSDN Premium subscribers. This is great for developers! (and great for Microsoft.)
Read about it here.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Do you believe that software can change the world? How about the opportunity to work on an application that promises to help accelerate a cure for cancer?
Microsoft is sponsoring a project to be built by InterKnowlogy for The Scripps Research Institute. And I am the hiring manager!
We are embarking on Release II of the application. I have decided to include four developers from the community in the development team (working for Interknowlogy virtually). Here’s what we are looking for in a software development engineer.
- Well-rounded skills in software application development.
- One who has been working primarily with C# for at least the past two years, with an additional minimum three years of Microsoft .NET framework application development experience (and preferable some 2.0 and 3.0 experience).
- Familiarity with Object Oriented design methodology.
- A successful candidate will have experience with Windows client application development (.NET WinForms, preferably WPF) and web services.
- Desirable to have experience with SharePoint, preferable Office SharePoint Server 2007, Office Document XML, or other custom Office applications. You should also have experience working within a distributed development team.
Does this sound like you? Tell me why we should consider you for this opportunity by replying to Calling all Developers with a one-page word document telling us what you are most proud of in your career and why you should be selected to work on this project as well as a link to your online presence (blog, home page, myspace profile, etc). You can work from home, as long as you have a reliable internet connection!
We are going to move quickly on this so tell me now why you would be the right person for the team. This is a paid position. And you might even get some publicity for participating! Thanks for considering being a part of this important project!
About InterKnowlogy:
InterKnowlogy, experts in Microsoft .NET Tools, Servers and Platforms, is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. InterKnowlogy, is a professional services organization specializing in custom application development and network services focused on Microsoft® .NET. Having customers large and small around the world, InterKnowlogy is well known within the .NET ecosystem worldwide as one of the leaders in .NET application development.
About Scripps:
The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, is one of the largest private, nonprofit biomedical research organizations in the US and a world leader in the structure of biological molecules. Scientists at Scripps Research wanted a better way to organize biological research information and share it with their colleagues. InterKnowlogy developed an application built on the Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.0 with Windows® Presentation Foundation, and Windows Vista™ giving scientists a powerful tool to visualize and annotate research results. This application allowed for faster scientific collaboration, easier access to data and a dynamic development process. You can read the full case study on Microsoft.com.
Thursday, January 25, 2007 Tuesday, January 09, 2007
I've been tagged so I have to tell you 5 things you might not know about me.
1) I have suffered hearing loss as a child.
2) When I was a small boy my parents took me to the circus at Madison Square Garden. They bought the special seats so I would be chosen to ride around in the rings. I loved it, I was waving to everyone inside the world’s most famous arena-I remember it like it was yesterday. When I got back to my seat my mom asked me: “Did you like it?” Little 5 year old me replied: “It was ok. I am surprised they did not give me a speaking part.”
3) When I was 17, I was riding my bike and I was hit by a car and left for dead on the side of the road where I broke all my ribs. When I got up my first words were “where’s my bike?”
4) I do not have a daughter in Australia, nor did I ever date Britney Spears.
5) I actually get more pleasure when the Yankees lose then when the Mets win.
In order to keep the "chain" going I tag Richard Campbell, Clemens Vasters, Carl Franklin, Fahad Majeed, and Hans Verbeeck.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
See Steve Ballmer open the NASDAQ today alongside fellow RD Tim Huckaby at 9:30AM EST. Then you can watch SteveB and Tim launch Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 at 4:30PM EST. Tim is doing the demo of the Scripps Cancer Research solution (the one he let me demo at the PDC). Watch the demo here.
Monday, November 20, 2006 Tuesday, October 31, 2006
We return to Barcelona for TechED 2006! Of course I will be doing some sessions (see below) as well as judging the “Speaker Idol” contest.
See you in Spain!
SQL312 T-SQL Querying: Tips and Techniques
Stephen Forte , Richard Campbell
Wed Nov 8 10:45 - 12:00
Take your queries to the next level! This interactive session focuses solely on advanced querying techniques to get the most out of your SQL Server. See a series of real-world examples to extract data from your databases in ways you've never seen before. Techniques demonstrated include an ultra-fast way to do crosstab queries in SQL Server, running totals and ranking. Along the way you'll get some insight into how SQL Server works and the new capabilities in SQL Server 2005.
SQL407 XQuery Deep Dive: How to Write and Optimize Your XQuery
Stephen Forte
Thu Nov 9 09:00 - 10:15
SQL Server 2005 provides deeply integrated native support of XML. Besides storing the data as XML, it provides XQuery support as the key to unlock the information stored inside the XML document. This session gives you an introduction to SQL Server's XML and XQuery support and it demonstrates how to write and optimize your XQuery expressions. In particular, it discusses the use of XML Indices and how to read XQuery generated query plans.
SQLWD04 The Query Governor: SQL CLR in Action
Richard Campbell , Stephen Forte
Thu Nov 9 17:30 - 18:45
See how .NET takes SQL Server 2005 to a whole new level! In this Whiteboard Discussion learn how to build a query governor, a set of tools for evaluating whether or not a query should be run. Most query governors are simple limiters, automatically cancelling queries when they run too long or aborting queries with too high of a cost. The CLR makes it possible to programmatically evaluate the cost of a query without executing it! Combined with some techniques for determining the state of the server, you can build a governor is flexible and smart. This interactive Whiteboard Discussion makes it easy to explore different applications of this technology beyond the query governor.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Check us out in Bulgaria on .NET Rocks.
Check out Martin's great blog post here. 
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Our next meeting is Thursday. Because of security you now have to register for this free event! Register here.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
CAB and the Smart Client Software Factory |
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| Subject: |
Microsoft Pattern & Practices Team’s Composite UI Application Block (CAB) and Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF) ease the development of modular, extensible, and maintainable smart clients.
Starting with a general, theoretical overview of smart clients, we’ll quickly move into a deep examination of CAB centered on working code. We’ll dig into the anatomy of CAB/SCSF, uncovering some key design patterns used in the toolset: Model-View-Presenter, Publish-Subscribe, and Dependency Injection. Throughout the talk we’ll share best practices and consider design decisions for achieving modularity and extensibility in your own smart clients with the CAB/SCSF tools and guidance.
By the end of the tour, those new to CAB should find their learning curves greatly reduced. Intermediate-to-advanced CAB hackers will take away some hard fought tips-toward and tricks-to taking their composite smart clients and plug-in architectures to the next level.
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| Speaker: |
David Laribee, President, Xclaim Software
David Laribee is President of Xclaim Software, an ISV offering document, claim, and policy management software for the commercial property and casualty insurance industry. He has 10+ years experience designing, developing, and architecting enterprise applications with Microsoft technologies. David has worked with the .NET Framework since the zero-day in internal IT, product development, and rapid prototyping contexts across a wide variety of industries. He writes about agile practices, software architecture, and the business of software on his blog at http://laribee.com/.
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| Date: |
Thursday, October 19, 2006
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| Time: |
Reception 6:00 PM , Program 6:30 PM
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| Location: |
Microsoft , 1290 Avenue of the Americas (the AXA building - bet. 51st/52nd Sts.) , 6th floor |
| Directions: |
B/D/F/V to 47th-50th Sts./Rockefeller Ctr
1 to 50th St./Bway
N/R/W to 49th St./7th Ave.
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Friday, September 08, 2006
I've been helping out with an event over in Bulgaria. Two days, tons of content. If you are anywhere near Bulgaria, it is super cheap to attend! Click here to register.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006 Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Client/Server, N-Tier and SOA: Today and Tomorrow
Join Rocky and Steve in a discussion about the present and future of Microsoft's client/server communication technologies, including Remoting and WCF. Learn whether client/server and n-tier will be replaced by SOA, or whether these architectures can co-exist. Find out how these technologies and concepts apply to you as you build web, Windows client/server and occasionally connected Windows smart client applications. You'll learn about today's options, tomorrow's options and how you can help position yourself to move forward over time.
Speaker: Rockford Lhotka, Magenic Technologies & Steve Lasker, Microsoft Corporation
Rockford Lhotka is the author of the Expert VB 2005 Business Objects and Expert C# 2005 Business Objects books from Apress. He is a contributing author for Visual Studio Magazine and he speaks at major conferences around the world. Rockford is the Principal Technology Evangelist for Magenic Technologies, one of the nation's premiere Microsoft Gold Certified Partners.
Steve Lasker is a Program Manager for Visual Studio at Microsoft. He is responsible for many of the data design time features in Visual Studio. Steve’s team owns the Typed DataSet designer, Data Wizards and the new Data Sources window. His background in broadcast engineering, e-commerce startups, and consulting has taken him through the cycles of client, browser, CE; and with .NET, returned to client-based apps that leverage the Internet as the transport.
Date: Monday, September 11, 2006
Time: Reception 6:00 PM , Program 6:15 PM
Location: Brooklyn Marriott , 333 Adams Street, Brooklyn , Room/Floor TBD Directions: A/C/F to Jay Street/Borough Hall R to Lawrence Street/MetroTech 2/3/4/5 to Borough Hall
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
One of my developers in India, Pradeep Tiwari, has posted an article on Reflection and the CodeDom.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Leveraging SQL Server 2005 Query Notifications in ASP.NET 2.0 and ADO.NET 2.0
Subject: Both ADO.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 take advantage of SQL Server 2005's Service Broker. Although ADO.NET 2.0 is only able to receive query notification from SQL Server 2005, ASP.NET 2.0 has an implementation that will also know about database changes in SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 7. This session will demonstrate how to receive notifications through both ADO.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2 as well as cover the pros and cons and the many rules surrounding Query Notification.
Speaker: Julia Lerman, The Data Farm
Julia Lerman is an independent consultant who has been designing and writing software applications for 20 years. She lives in Vermont where she runs the Vermont.NET User Group. Julia is well known in the .NET community as an INETA Board member, Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider and prolific blogger. She is a frequent presenter at DevConnections, DevTeach and other conferences as well as writing articles for MSDN Magazine, CoDe Magazine and other well known technical publications. You can read Julia's blog at thedatafarm.com/blog.
Date: Thursday, August 17, 2006
Time: Reception 6:00 PM , Program 6:15 PM
Location: Microsoft , 1290 Avenue of the Americas (the AXA building - bet. 51st/52nd Sts.) , 6th floor
Directions: B/D/F/V to 47th-50th Sts./Rockefeller Ctr
1 to 50th St./Bway
N/R/W to 49th St./7th Ave.
Monday, June 05, 2006
See you in Karachi! You guys are making me do 6 sessions!
Writing Secure Code
ASP .NET Design Patterns
XML in SQL Server Part 1: XML Data Type
XML in SQL Server Part 2: XQuery
Merge Replication with SQL Server Everywhere Edition
The CLR in Action, A Query Governor (with Richard!)
Friday, June 02, 2006 Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Whenever the Dutch put on a conference, things get a little crazy. Luckily you can listen in on some of the fun on .NET Rocks as well as Mondays.
My red light district story is 21 minutes in to the .NET Rocks, just don't tell my mom....
Monday, May 08, 2006 Monday, April 10, 2006
Today I saw one of the most amazing things in my life. So subtle yet so powerful. While on my way to speaking at the Gdansk .NET Users Group we passed the docks. The place where communism died.
Not everyday you can walk past something so historical and so important in the history of the world. What is funny is that my friend Michal Chaniewski just said very casually as we passed: “Oh here are the docks. You know we had strikes here in 1980 led by Lech Wałęsa.” I said “they were not just strikes man.” I studied the Solidarity movement in Poland very closely in university and Michal was being very modest. He said, “I guess. What happened here did change Europe.” I replied: “What happened here changed the entire world.” We went on to talk about Lech Wałęsa and communism and then of course .NET.
Just across the street we went to the offices of Computer Services Support, an old communist era building to have the first ever user group meeting of the Gdansk .NET Users Group. I was honored to be the first speaker. While talking about the Model-View-Controller design pattern, I was amazed that I was standing just meters away from a place that changed the world. You can see the docks from the classroom.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Thursday, January 19, 2006 2:30 PM - Thursday, January 19, 2006 8:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Language: English-American
Microsoft Corporation
Central Park Conference Room
1290 Avenue of the Americas
6th Floor Microsoft Facility New York New York 10104
United States | | |
General Event Information
Products: Visual Studio.
Recommended Audience: Developer and IT Professional.
Do you want to speak directly to the team that has brought Visual Studio 2005 to market?
Prashant Sridharan, Group Product Manager, Developer Marketing, and the NY .net User Group are pleased to announce an in-depth look at Visual Studio 2005 and what it can do for Enterprise Customers. The session will feature a project room where you can get assistance on your projects from Microsoft and community experts.
Agenda
- 2:30 - 3:00 PM - Registration/Welcome
- 3:00 - 4:00 PM – Visual Studio Team System + Team Foundation Server
- 4:00 - 4:45 PM – What’s New for Web Developers? (ASP.NET)
- 4:45 - 5:00 PM Coffee break
- 5:00 - 5:45 PM – What’s New for Smart Client Developers? (Windows Forms/Click-Once Deployment)
- 5:45 - 6:15 PM Pizza
The session will be followed by the NY .net User Group meeting. This will feature a presentation on: What's New in the .Net Framework?
For more information on the NY User Group meetings, please visit: http://www.nycdotnetdev.com/
Thursday, December 22, 2005
And claims another one of us. Clemens Vasters is joining Microsoft. I have known this for a long time but he has finally made it public. Clemens you are a sellout but have fun! It was even front page news!
Monday, October 17, 2005
Have you ever been to a Microsoft conference and listened to them carefully? They make up words.
Now those who know me know that I also make up words all the time-my staff at Zagat use to keep a list on a whiteboard, and then hold contests to see who can figure out what my new words mean. The problem is that since I attend so many Microsoft conferences as a speaker, I start to pick up Microsoftese. What is even worse is that I now use these “words” in every day life. When I am in the hardware store and ask about the “functionality” of the new vacuum cleaner I want to buy. Or when I am buying a new electronic toothbrush I ask if one model is more performant than the other?
Functionality is a word now, even if Microsoft made it up. I decided to start using performant in my new SQL Server book. I got this comment from the editor:
[LF] Steve: I don't think "performant" is a word.
And the tech editor replied:
[JFC] "performant" is one of those classic 'words' that Microsofties use in presentations; techies understand it, but it's not really a word. Please revise, and avoid its use in the future.
I decided to use it anyway. I then emailed Bill and Andrew on the topic hoping they would think it is funny, but got this reply from Andrew:
----
From: Andrew Brust
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 1:44 PM
To: Zack, William; Stephen Forte; Wzack (E-mail)
Subject: RE: some humor from book hell
I agree with her on that one. It’s not a word, and it should be revised. If you don’t take it out, the copy editors will.
-----
I decided to challenge Andrew on this one. I looked it up. It is in Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English.
So I guess it is a word after all….
Thursday, October 13, 2005
My brother, Richard Campbell, and Carl will be in town tomorrow night, come on and check it out:
NET Rocks NYC!
.Net Rocks NYC! at our very own user group. Be part of the fun. Click
here to register.
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280187&Culture=e\
n-US
Friday, October 14, 2005 6:00 PM - Friday, October 14, 2005 9:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Language: English-American
Microsoft Corporation
1290 Avenue of the Americas
6th Floor New York, New York 10104
United States | | |
General Event Information
|