Friday, August 22, 2008

Vista batter saver got Danish locale! + RC2 branch

Great thank (how will it be in Danish?) to Bjarke Istrup Pedersen for Danish translation of Vista Batter Saver.

Download public beta 2 r2 with Danish locale >>

If you would like to take a challenge and test new RC2, you can do it also (no locale yet). It includes additional functionality and dozen bugs fixes.

Download latest RC1 >>

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

I'm leaving consulting field - joined new project for full time

Dear readers,

I leaved mPrest, the company, I worked for last 5 years and joined the project, that aspires to make the World better. Currently, I cannot disclosure too much, but briefly, I will not consult and manage client's projects anymore. This does not mean, that I'm quitting Microsoft and it's technologies, I'm just beginning to develop product(s).

Also, I'll keep blogging. It will be probably less "problem solutions" and more "how the stuff works", but actually, I'll blog less. In addition, I promised to Microsoft, that I'll contribute some of my time for community activities such as lectures, QnA sessions, presentations and open source activities. But this will be only small part of my time. Mainly, I'll work to accomplish my project.

All my contact information remains the same, so, if you have urgent questions, you can ask. Also, if you want to be in touch more, you can follow me in Twitter.


© Image copyright by National Geographic, photographer - O. Louis Mazzatenta

Thank you, and keep reading...
Tamir

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

WPF DataGrid CTP is here. It’s also open source!

Huge amount of people asked me about DataGrid control in WPF. There are some 3rd parties providing this control for free and not, However, I always adviced them to wait until Microsoft will release it with (or after) Arrowhead. So here comes the King. Some boys and girls from MS WPF dev team have OS initiative and released WPF toolkit. It’s absolutely free and includes all sources. Also it renewed with WPF DataGrid CTP and other tasty Futures inside with full source aside.

Microsoft goes open source? It does!

image

Download latest WPF toolkit >>

Monday, August 11, 2008

.NET 3.5 SP1 is RTM and available for download

For all those who asked, .NET 3.5 SP1 is final and available for download. What’s inside?

  • ASP.NET Dynamic data
  • Core improvements for CLR
  • A lot of performance improvements in WPF
  • ClickOnce enhancements
  • ADO.NET with Data Services and Entity Framework
  • LINQ2SQL and Data Provider for SQL Server 2008, that was released last week
  • WCF with easier DataContract serialization

Download it with Web Installation or as Full Package

For more information, please see Read Me and KB about .NET 3.5 SP1 RTM. If you faced with any issue, please provide us with feedback via MS Connect

Friday, August 08, 2008

Expert days – last minute changes

Next week we’ll starting Expert Days, so you have a last chance to register for Windows Presentation Foundation for fellow developers (12-Aug) and Mastering Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 (13-Aug). Those sessions will take place in Bein-Thumi Herzeliya and start in 8:30.

We have not enough participants to open Advanced .NET 3.5 SP1 (14-Aug) [not enough people know WPF so far in Israel?], thus I would like to propose another kind of session – something like we used to do in Dev Days. You’ll come with your WPF applications, prepare to ask questions about problems with those apps and we’ll solve it together during the day. I will not have slides for this session – it will be live QnA+Discussions meeting. This specific session will take place in Megamot college in Petah-Tikva (not in Bein-Thumi, like all others). What do you think?

Last notice, if we will not have at least 26 attendees (currently for this session we have only 10), neither Advanced .NET 3.5 nor WPF QnA will be opened. Also, all people registered for those sessions will be refunded. So, now you will choose whether and which session about WPF we will open Thursday next week.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Tech*Ed SA is over – thank you

So, Tech*Ed South Africa is over, and I want to tell thanks to all attendees - presenters and visitors. The event was great as well as the organization.  As usual, my Visual Studio just stopped working between sessions yesterday, so I had to reinstall it during one of sessions to be ready for next one. Also in XNA session XBOX deployment did not worked for some reason and bandwidth was awful, so this fun session was not very effective. However, how it can be interesting without those technical problems?

Visitors, it was very fun to read feedbacks. Here just snack preview of it (not including comments like “Enjoyed”, “Brilliant”, “Nice!”, “Exceptionally good”, etc…:

“Level 300? Should have been marked as a 200?”
”Now this was 300 Advanced level”
”The description said Advanced but if was very very VERY advanced”
”I was definately in the wrong session coz I am only a begginner in Reflection and this was a 300 Advanced session... my bad :-)”
”The speaker was very well prepered, thus did not strukkel to speak. i understand the topic very well, but still enjoyed the talk.”
”sometimes he sounds more like Borat than a knowledgeable speaker. There were a number of sniggers in the audience at his comments, which distracts from the content.“
”Brilliant presenter, speaks fluently and clear, not like all others. Are you from Canada?”
”Excellent, not applicable for business, but bring more of these. MORE.”
”Probly the wrong sesion for me but was interesting”
”Host's setup of machines was troublesome.”
”SA Bandwidth issues reduced the effectiveness of the demo side of things.”

Guys, please let’s set it clear (at least for me):

  • 100 – Go to sales department
  • 200 – Slides with nice pictures – no code
  • 300 – Visual Studio, Code, some slides
  • 400 – All code – almost no theory and slides
  • 500 – Machine code
  • 600 – Come offline it will take time

And now, my favorite one: “Guys,    I would like the trial versions of the following softwares:    1. Visual Studio 2008  2. SQL Server 2008  3. Expression Studio v2.0  4. SharePoint Server 2007    I would appreciate if i can get it before tech-ed closes.  Thanks and please contact me if you could assist.”. I sent you an email with links to all requested trials. Keep doing! :)

I saw about 100 visitors of my blog. They recognized me. Also when I gave my business card (with blog address), almost everyone told: “Oh, I know this blog – very good one”. Charming, that in spite of bandwidth issues, there are my blog readers in SA. If you were in my session and want to tell anything publicly, just leave a comment here.

Tomorrow noon, I’ll leave SA back home and ‘ll start to prepare to Expert Days (do you remember? It’s next week). Unfortunately, I almost had no time to see Africa, but, maybe, next time. Thank you, all again.

Hello, goodbye!