Last week I spoke at TechEd India and the Visual Studio 2010 launch. It was a great event with over 3,000 attendees, far more than attended the Visual Studio launch in Las Vegas! Senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, S. Somasegar, did an awesome keynote. I did three sessions:

• Building applications with OData
• Building Line of Business Applications with WCF and Silverlight 4.0
• Building Silverlight Business Applications with RIA Services

Something happened to me that never happened before in my 13+ years of being a professional international speaker: I lost my voice! I was in Indonesia the week before and picked up a small bug and had no voice. This was a new challenge for me, and Microsoft offered to cancel my sessions, but I figured why would I let no voice stop me from delivering my sessions!! So I decided to throw away the slides and just code. I had no voice anyway, so I spoke the universal geek language of code.

I think that the sessions went very well, however, since the code was written on the fly, I don’t have full demos available to download. For the RIA services talk, I ripped off Brad Abrams blog here and basically showed items 1-5, and 8-9. For the WCF/Silverlight session, I ripped off myself, you can see a walk through here on my blog (substitute the music data in my blog with IPL cricket teams since that is what I did in India). For the OData session, I have written a ton on data services here on my blog, and check back after TechEd USA and I will post a full demo with Silverlight 4.0 and the new OData client (which shipped yesterday.)

At TechEd, Telerik also had a booth and I tried to help out the best I could with no voice. We were bum-rushed for the free tee-shirts and we gave away about 300 tee shirts in about 1 minute.

Telerik also had a party with the Indian MVPs at the Opus Lounge in Bangalore and we had some tee shirts for the MVPs. We made them put them on right there. :)

We had some epic karaoke and I continued my tradition of singing with an MVP Lead female songs as Abhishek Kant and I sang “Like a Virgin” to bring down the house. What little I had of my voice was now completely gone!

See you next year TechEd India!

This week I will be speaking at the Great Indian Developer Summit in Bangalore, India for the second year in a row. My sessions are:

GIDS.Net (Tuesday)

• Data Warehousing Made Easy
• What's New in SQL Server 2008 R2 (PowerPivot is shown here as well!)
• Sharing Business Logic between Silverlight and .NET

GIDS.Web (Wednesday)

• Building Line of Business Applications with Silverlight 4.0 (RIA Services)

GIDS.Seminar (Friday)

• Agile Tools and Teams

In addition to my talks, Telerik will also staff a booth and have demos of all of our products and some tee shirts to give away. I will also be at the booth all day to answer your questions on my talks.

See you at GIDS!

I’ll be speaking at TechEd India and the Visual Studio 2010 Launch in Bangalore, India this week. I’ll be doing three sessions:

• Tuesday 2:30- Building RESTful Applications with the Open Data Protocol
• Wednesday 12:30-Building Applications with Silverlight 4.0 and WCF RIA Services
• Wednesday 2:30-Exploring the Silverlight 4.0 Business Features

In addition, Team Telerik will be staffing a booth with Tee-shirts (hopefully if they get out of customs on time!) and live demos of our products and our brand new product to be announced today! See you at my sessions or at the booth!

Last month Telerik released its new LINQ implementation and last week we released the new Data Services Wizard for Telerik OpenAccess, which supports both traditional OpenAccess entities and the new LINQ implementation. I will a walk you through the process where you can connect to a database, add a new domain model, wrap it in a new WCF Data Services (Astoria) service, and add a CRUD enabled Silverlight application. All in 30 seconds!

Step 1: Build your Domain Model (20 seconds)

Open Visual Studio 2010 RTM (or 2008) and add a new ASP.NET project. Right click on the project and select Add|New Item and choose Telerk OpenAccess Domain Model from the item template list.

The Visual Entity Designer wizard comes up. Select the database server you are using in the first screen (SQL Server, Oracle, SQL Azure, MySQL, etc) and then also build your database connection string.

Next select the tables, views, and stored procedures you want to map and click finish.

Step 2: Using the Telerik Data Service Wizard to create the service and Silverlight client with CRUD operations (10 Seconds)

Now the easy part. Find the model in your project, it will be by default EntityDiagrams1.rlinq, and right click it to bring up the context menu.

Then select Data Services Wizard|Data Services for .NET 3.5 SP1 Version 2 (Astoria)|Add to Project with new SL Client|Your Project Name. This is the “express” version of the Data Services Wizard. From there it is almost on auto-pilot, you just have to confirm adding the Silverlight Application via the standard Silverlight dialog. All you have to do it hit F5 and run the application!

The wizard will create the new WCF Data Service (Astoria), add a new Silverlight application, add the service references, and build your standard CRUD forms in Silverlight, one for each entity you expose. While I suspect that you will want to skin the application and add some validation, the wizard is great for doing the plumbing work for all of the CRUD operations-leaving you to worry about the design and the business logic. We are going to add more to this wizard in the future, things like more control over the layout and validation, play around with it and let us know what is important to add!

After a great beta cycle, Telerik is proud to announce today the commercial availability of the OpenAccess Data Service Wizard. You can download it and install it with Telerik OpenAccess Q1 2010 for both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 RTM. If you are new to the Data Service Wizard, it is a great tool that will allow you to point a wizard at your OpenAccess generated data access classes and automatically build an WCF, Astoria (WCF Data Services), REST or ATOMPub collection endpoint, complete with the CRUD methods if applicable.

If you are familiar with the Data Service Wizard already, there will be two new surprises in the release version.

If you generated a domain model with the new OpenAccess Visual Entity Designer, you have only one file added to your project, mydomainmodel.rlinq for example. The first surprise of the new Data Service Wizard is that if you right click on the domain model in Visual Studio, you can use an “express” version of the Data Service Wizard and generate your service with just one click! This is pretty awesome, you can create your domain model from a database and create a service in well under 60 seconds.

Surprise number two is that if you are using the new Visual Entity Designer, we now give you the option, in both the full wizard and the right-click “express” version to create a new Silverlight application as a consumer of your new service. The Wizard will generate a Silverlight application with the full CRUD methods for you. You can go from File|New Project in Visual Studio to a full domain model generated from the database, a full WCF or Astoria service, and a fully functional CRUD Silverlight client in under 60 seconds!

The Silverlight application generation feature is a very “1.0” feature and we have big plans for it moving forward. We will look forward to your feedback as what to add to this application generation feature next. While I expect you to put your own skin on it and write some validation code, the application we build for you is a great starter and will save you from having to write all of the asynchronous CRUD code in your client. Visit our forums and let us know what you think.

Lastly, when OpenAccess releases its Q1 Service Pack later this month, the Data Service Wizard will be part of the main product install, so there is no need for a separate install moving forward. Our release cycle will now be in sync with OpenAccess and we have a lot planned for Q2, I will post an updated roadmap here soon.

As you all know there was a massive earthquake and then a devastating Tsunami in December 2004 in Aceh, Indonesia. A bunch of us .NET programmers got together and auctioned ourselves off on eBay. The Microsoft .NET community raised well over $10,000 for IDEP Foundation, a charity based in Ubud, Indonesia. What we liked about this charity, besides that our fearless leader Julie Lerman found them, is that they are based in Indonesia and had instant access to the disaster area and would be around years later when the world would forget about the Tsunami.

Today I visited the IDEP Foundation headquarters and its outstanding founder Petra Schneider in Ubud, Indonesia. (Sadly there was another earthquake in Aceh today, but the damage was not nearly as bad.) It was awesome to learn what IDEP has been up to: they have been up to a lot. For starters, they are *still* in Aceh, more than 5 years on. They are now past disaster relief work and teaching sustainability (farming, hygiene, etc) and disaster readiness. Petra showed me photos of their work not only in Aceh, but all over Indonesia. I saw photos of what the money we raised went to: the “buckets” or a bucket that contained one week’s supply of cooking oil, rice, sugar, all the basic necessities. They were handed out to thousands of people who needed it. I can report back  the .NET community and all of those who donated that our contribution made a difference.

Today, IDEP is growing and even training other charities on how to operate. They are making some great games for children that teaches sustainability and disaster readiness. Why not at least join their Facebook page or even consider donating some time or money. :)

A lot of times we give money to a charity and then we never get to see the unsung heroes that do the work behind the scenes. Today I got that chance and it was very special. If you are ever in Indonesia, look them up!

Petra, me, and Avi at IDEP’s training center in Ubud, Indonesia.

IDEP Foundation is an NGO in Indonesia that teaches Permaculture and Disaster Risk Reduction & supports communities in need in times of disaster.
http://www.idepfoundation.org

I want Microsoft to succeed in the mobile space. As a consumer, I want more choice than Apple and Google. A successful Microsoft in this space will only increase the innovation and drive down price. I held out against the iPhone and Android until my Windows Mobile phone literally fell apart. (It was held together with tape for 3 months when I was in denial.) A few months ago when I walked into the store here in Hong Kong there simply were no good Microsoft options if you wanted touch, music, maps, facebook, etc. So I ordered a Nexus One.

I was excited by the Windows 7 phone when I first saw it. That said, I will not buy the new Windows phone unless two things happen.

• First, I will not, under any circumstances, buy the phone from a carrier. Carriers are pure evil and lock the phone, install their own crap on it, and remove native features. If Microsoft wants to change the nature of the industry, they have to create a phone that everyone wants and make it real simple to get one. Apple started the revolution by making a phone that everyone wanted, did not allow the carrier to install their own crap, but did force you into a deal with AT&T (in the USA) and will not unlock the phone. Google continued the revolution by selling the phone on the Web unlocked, but only in 4 countries. If Microsoft makes us buy the phone from carriers, game over-that is a step backwards. Microsoft should continue the revolution and make the phone cheap and not sign any deals with any carriers. They should go direct to the consumers and sell the phone world wide for $300 at electronics retail shops such as Best Buy. It will nothing but revolutionize the way we buy mobile phones in the USA.
• Second I won’t buy a phone that has the word “Windows” on it. Change the name to something cool. “iPhone” and “Nexus One”, even “Android” are just cool. Windows is old and stale and makes me think of laptops and such. Microsoft has a tendency to over brand “Windows.” They have done a great job at that. The problem is that the consumer market Microsoft is targeting doesn’t care about the Windows brand. They like the XBox and even the Zune brand. Go with that. Microsoft keeps talking about how “we have changed our game” with the “Windows 7 Phone Series.” I’m sorry but that sounds a lot like Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Database Professionals Edition.

Last week I was out with some friends and we were trying to google for something. After someone was painfully slow on their Blackberry, I whipped out my Nexus One. Immediately, they all said “wow, is that the Nexus One?” Before I knew it, I was doing a product demo. I had five people standing around me playing with the phone. Microsoft, please don’t embarrass me when I pull out my “Windows Phone 7 Series.” That is just a lame name. Give it a cool name and make it available everywhere for cheap. Let me buy my “XZune” Phone at Best Buy. Soon.

Someone sent me this link that was posted on MSDN a month or two ago. I am interviewed about my charity work in Nepal, Telerik, Entrepreneurship, and SQL & Windows Azure. Fun stuff.

GoDaddy.com, the top Internet domain name registration company, announced this week that , the company had been hacked "due to a lack of enforcement against criminal activities by the Chinese government." In addition, the Chinese government has been forcing all domain registrars to get photos, business ID and signatures for anyone registering a .cn domain. Speaking before the US Congress this week, Christine Jones, GoDaddy’s lawyer, said “We decided we didn’t want to become an agent of the Chinese government” and has ended its operations selling .cn domain names.

Google and now GoDaddy have both stood up to China. Who is next?