My good friend Chris Craft started a 30 days of mobile development series last weekend. If you are into mobile development or would like to learn more about it… Check it out. He explains the app, explains the technology, provides screen shots, and provides code in C#. For you VB.NET people… visit Lou Vega’s blog for the VB.NET code.

From Chris’ site:

Over the years, I have given many presentations on developing Windows Mobile applications. One thing that I have heard time and time again is that people have a hard time writing their first mobile application. I think sometimes people have a hard time taking those first steps. It is easy to think that it will take too much time, and that it will be too hard. But that is simply not the case.

But instead of telling people, I’m going to show them how easy it really is. The key here is simple: “Taking baby steps is better than taking no steps at all!”

I plan on writing 30 mobile applications in the next 30 days. I will publish both the executable and the source code for each application.

My goal is for each of these applications to be useful, interesting, and straight-forward. Someone considering writing their first Windows Mobile application should be able to look at these applications and “get it”.

One of the great things about his series…

He is looking for more ideas for his applications.

I encourage you to go to his site and leave him a comment… you never know, he may choose yours to write as part of his 30 day challenge.

Russ Fustino is coming to Florence, SC this Wednesday! Russ is a MSDN Developer Community Champion for Microsoft. (Register for the event here) Russ is stopping by on his way to Raleigh from Tallahassee!

FYI: A copy of Office Ultimate 2007 will be given away!

Did you ever feel inundated with developer tools? Did you ever feel you are missing something that could make your life easier as a developer and as a power user? There are so many tools available to choose from and it keeps getting tougher to  keep up with. Tool familiarity continues to be one of the top developers challenges. This series of seminars is all about tools for developers, by developers.

Welcome to this new, fresh and original ground breaking MSDN seminar series from Russ’ Tool Shed called … It’s All About The Tools.  This is the first installment of many more to come. This session is tech talk about tools for developers. Join Microsoft Florida Developer Evangelist Russ Fustino for his take on what’s hot in the developer’s toolbox. There’s something here for everyone, from beginners to experts. Oh, by the way, you might want to put your hard hat on for this one!

In this session you will see demonstrations the following tools and a few more surprises…

Fiddler
Web Stress Tool
IE Developer Toolbar
Visual Studio IDE tools
   code convertors
   obfuscator
   snippit manager (and the snippet tool in vista as a bonus)
   toolbox scratch pad
   Refactor
   Visual Studio Express tool’s
   Visual Web Developer Express:
   Web Administrator
   Membership and personalization
Visual Express C#
   XNA Express
Live Services
   Spaces
   Live Writer
   MSDN article on search provider (2007.08)

Silverlight 1.0/1.1 XAML Designer (Expression Blend)
Community Tool Web Site Review 
Top downloaded SDK’s
GotDotNet: http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/ide/
MSDN Dev Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/powertoys/
CodePlex home: http://www.codeplex.com/Default.aspx
Download center and more!

To find out more and register for the event go here. This is going to be an awesome event!

Florence, Columbia, Charleston, Conway, Myrtle Beach, Fayetteville, Wilmington, Charlotte (anyone from anyplace)…

You are ALL WELCOME to attend this FREE event.

I have known about this for a while, but just recently stumbled upon it again.

Here is a cool site at http://www.databaseanswers.org to assist with data model designs.

They have hundreds of database designs specific for certain types of needs such as…

• Blogs
• Cemeteries
• CD Collection
• Games Store
• Help Desk
• MP3 Music Site
• Tracking Software Problems (naturally I would never need this one…)

163+ data models…

Thanks Chris Craft for first sharing the site with me!

Windows 2008 RC0 was released yesterday. I am really looking forward to using IIS7. I am anxious to setup a few web sites with SQL 2008 and see how it works and performs.

Get it Windows 2008 RC0 here
Get SQL 2008 CTP here

Cool Benefits of Windows 2008 (taken from here)

• Cross-site copy allows you to easily copy Web site settings across multiple Web servers without additional configuration.
• Built-in virtualization to virtualize multiple operating systems—Windows, Linux and others—on a single server. With virtualization built into the operating system and with simpler, more flexible licensing policies, it’s now easier than ever to take advantage of all the benefits and cost savings of virtualization.
• Protection of your server with security innovations that reduce attack surface area of the kernel, resulting in a more robust and secure server environment.
• Protection against malicious software with User Account Control with a new authentication architecture. (NOOOOOOOOOOO)
• Simplified management of your IT infrastructure by using new tools that provide a one-stop interface for server configuration and monitoring, as well as the ability to automate routine tasks.
• Effectively pinpointing and resolving trouble spots with powerful diagnostic tools that give you ongoing visibility into your server environment, both physical and virtual.

And the one I really want to see…

• Delegated administration of applications and sites so you can give control to different parts of the Web server to those who need it.

My understanding is that this will allow web hosting companies to give more control of IIS to clients hosting their web applications on your server. Pretty cool!!!

Thanks Somasegar for the announcement.

Jacob Sebastian wrote a very cool article on ”power of the merge”…

How many times have you needed to merge data between tables… or mobile devices to central servers…

“MERGE, a new keyword which performs INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE operations at one go”

His example:

Old way to merge tables:

    1 /*
    2 Pseudo code used for saving sales order information with SQL Server 2005
    3
    4 — save order header information
    5 If OrderNumber found in OrderHeader
    6    Update the information
    7 Else
    8    Insert the information
    9 end
   10
   11 — save order detail information
   12 Delete from Order detail table all items not in the order info
   13 Update Order detail for all items present in the order info
   14 Insert into order details all new items in the order info
   15 */

New Way using Merge

    1 /*
    2 Pseudo code for saving the same order with the MERGE statement of SQL Server 2008
    3
    4 — save order header information
    5 MERGE order info to Order Header table
    6
    7 — save order detail information
    8 MERGE order info to order detail table
    9 */

“No, I did not miss anything. You can write the code in just 2 lines.”

Check out entire article here.

Microsoft will stop supporting SQL Server Service Pack 3a next Tuesday, July 10th.

Be sure you update your SQL Server Instances to SP4.

Here is a look into the Google Headquarters!!! Kinda kwel!

http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/inside_google/1.html

Hal, when are we getting the professional massage room?

                                                Thanks Dean for sharing…

Update:
Found a few more:

This one has a video about what it is like to work @ Google. It contains employee interviews and shows Google’s approach to ingenuity. The 20% Rule is awesome. This is a Google sales pitch to make people salivate wanting to work for them… let me wipe my drool… 
   http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/want-to-work-for-google-take-a-look-inside

Has a few aditional pictures.
   http://desinotes.com/2007/05/02/the-torture-of-working-at-google-in-googleplex/

Find our more @ http://www.google.com/jobs/

A high-level performance comparison between Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and existing Microsoft .NET distributed communication technologies.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb310550.aspx

Bottom line conclusion is that WCF is 25%-50% faster than Web services. Way cool!!!

Can’t wait to prove it!

Thanks Kirk!

I noticed today that MapQuest now has an Aerial View of their maps. If that has been there long… oh well… shows how long it has been sense my last visit to the site.

I decided to pull up my house (similar to a previous post)

Looks good to me!!! Let’s zoom in another click.

Huh… where did my house go??? Hurricane? Tornado? Huh… does not even look like it zoomed in?

Craziness!!! And yes… both of these are from MapQuest!!!

This will be the first time we have done anything like this… so brace yourself. 

Pee Dee Area .NET Users Group
April 10th 6:00 – 8:00
Directions: here

April 10th’s Meeting will be held in two parts. (Make plans to attend now)

Part 2: Normal meeting at 6:00. Brian Hitney (structuretoobig.com), a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft will be speaking on Windows Vista Internals and Architecture.

Part 1: Brain will be speaking to the PDANUG users at 2:30 – 5:00. ACS Technologies will be hosting the event at their location in Florence. (Directions below). He will be discussing how to better build scalable web solutions with .NET. He will discuss Windows Communication Foundation if time permits.

**SPECIAL NOTE**
If any member of PDANUG would like to attend the 1st session hosted at ACS Technologies, PLEASE let me know ASAP (). I am trying to finalize plans, space, and snacks!!! Brian said he was going to bring 10 XBOX 360s to give away… Just Kidding…

Special Instructions: Directions here. Google maps does not get the exact location correct but it gets on the correct street. The actual location is closer to the other end of the road near the intersection of I95 & I20. You can’t miss the buildings. “ACSTechnologies” will be on the building. If you are attending; the meeting will be in the Khaki colored building on the left… not the “Salmon” colored building.