PDC 2008 – Windows 7, Office 14, Azure, and So Much More

I have to admit I am kind of on information overload. I think I have about 300 pages of information I want to still read through on Azure, the new Office 14 features and functionality, and play with Windows 7 more. I am extremely excited about EVERYTHING unvieled so far this year at the PDC conference.

I wrote a short post about Azure (http://sharepointkb.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/windows-azure-services/) and hope that in the next few days I have a chance to really summarize some of my high level observations and expectations. One thing that I can say for sure though is how friendly the future is and how the online, available anytime trend is just a wonderful thing that I am super excited about.

Anyways back to reading and managing time so that somehow I not only catch up on all this wonderful news, but also get to play Fallout 3 sometime this week 😛
Richard Harbridge

Touchless – Webcam Motion Sense SDK (Free)

The other day Michael Gannotti made a post about a very interesting SDK that popped up that helps enable developers create ‘touchless’ applications using webcameras.

Check out this short video clip here: http://communityclips.officelabs.com/Video.aspx?videoId=a89a217b-fc38-4a6c-87f8-ab59a2028391

Or try it out by downloading the demo here: http://www.codeplex.com/touchless/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx

I remember a plethora of applications like this that used to exist, but it was really hard to find a good SDK to help you get started or give you an area in the community to share ideas, and now it looks like things are moving in a good way. Especially as the cost of touch screen technology and multi touch technology is still far more expensive than a simple camera 🙂

It’s very cool stuff and I highly recommend checking it out: http://www.codeplex.com/touchless

Looking forward to the future,
Richard Harbridge

Microsoft Integrating jQuery with Visual Studio

Scott Guthrie over at MS made an announcement that the open source jQuery library will be integrated into Visual Studio. (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and-microsoft.aspx) This means they also treat it as a supported product with technical support contracts, and will use it to build controls for ASP.Net.

Edit: Microsoft isn’t necessarily ‘supporting’ it like they would their own proprietary technologies, but is more releasing it with their product and making it a part of the ‘offering’ for a developer. Microsoft doesn’t own jQuery at all or anything like that, it’s still under it’s own MIT license.

Awesome.

It’s always good to see the communities tools and voice being heard and integrated, and this is one of those tools (the jQuery library: http://jquery.com/) I use often,
Richard Harbridge

Exciting (for .Net/VS Developers) .Net 4 and VS 2010

Just wanted to point out that a few days ago Microsoft unvieled some information on the new .Net and Visual Studio enhancements they are preparing for 2010.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/sep08/09-29VS10PR.mspx

That’s right I am super excited to play with the new stuff before I have even gone through every new feature released in the 2008 packages. (Personally one of the things I have been loving recently is the CSS and styling UI enhancements see Daniel Moth’s good screen cast of these here (if interested): mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/uk/msdn/nuggets/v2_CSSinVisualStudio2008_Moth.wmv)

I really like many of the new focuses that Microsoft is putting forward and the way Team Foundation Server is improving the rate of process adoption in many development groups. The further they get with the enhancements the easier it is to develop and really focus on developing (if you are a developer) without being as distracted by the troubles of communication and tracking.

Even if you aren’t a developer this is still good news, because the more they work towards that UML approach and enhance the ways Business Analysts and Consultants can communicate their requirements and expectations to developers the more powerful the developed solutions will be.

Excited for the future,
Richard Harbridge