Hopefully by now you’ve heard Visual Studio 2010 and Fx 4 Beta have shipped, if you live in Oz and not an MSDN subscriber then the best place to download it from is http://www.microsoft.com/australia/visualstudio/default.mspx. 

If you are feeling a bit nervous about installing on your base machine then install it in a Virtual Machine, it works just fine!! 

There is a great set of training resources for Visual Studio 2010 & Fx 4 Beta 2 in the form of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit. 

You’ll find material covering

1. What’s new for Common Language Runtime
2. ASP.NET 4
3. Windows
4. Windows Workflow
5. Windows Communication Foundation
6. Silverlight
7. Data Access
8. Parallel Computing
9. Extensibility Framework
10. Application Lifecycle Management

so check it out and get up to speed fast with the Visual Studio 2010 and Fx 4 Beta 2!!

Ohhh, lol, I have installed VS2010 Beta 2 on my ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-H with 2 gigs of RAM, running Windows 7, that plus TFS 2010 B2 Basic – ok, it’s not going to set any speed records but useable and fun for trying stuff out esp when you are on the move…

Cheers Dave

Wow, just spotted this amazing solution utilising Windows 7 Touch and Silverlight 3 with Deepzoom.

Check out http://rubrik.ch.msn.com/reportagen/zermatt.aspx and click on the Info button and read how it was created, stunning!!

Yes, it works with a mouse too if you don't have Windows 7 with a Touch display (or for that matter Windows 7), but yeah, the experience is not as immersive!!

Check out the Windows 7 Training kit if you want to build amazing stuff too!!

Cheers Dave

original posting at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/bb821275.aspx

On 16 May, Western Australians rejected by referendum a proposal to extend their trial of daylight savings. As a result there will be no daylight savings in WA this year or for the foreseeable future.

This change will affect Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office Outlook and other Microsoft, third party and custom applications, which are currently programmed to adjust their clocks on 25 October 2009. However, we have taken important steps to help you proactively address the issue.

The Australia 2009 Daylight Saving Planning Guide provides detailed guidance on preparing Microsoft solutions in complex environments for changes in daylight saving. Click on the links below to download the document in your preferred format:

• Australia Daylight Saving Planning Guide (Word, 1.5mb)
• Australia Daylight Saving Planning Guide (XPS, 1.4mb)
• Australia Daylight Saving Planning Guide (PDF, 2.7mb)

What is the impact of Daylight Savings changes?
Effects can range from the incorrect time display on the clock, to calendaring problems, to changes in business critical services that are time dependent.

What is affected?

• All Microsoft Windows PC, server and mobile devices in the affected time zones must be updated to ensure accuracy of internal time zone tables and correct operation of the system clock.
• Microsoft Office Outlook calendars may need to be adjusted. Client and Server-based tools are available to automate this service.
• Microsoft, third party and custom applications which schedule events at future dates should be reviewed to ensure they will operate correctly from 25 October onwards. Previously scheduled events may also need to be adjusted.

What do I need to do?
Thorough planning and testing for these changes is critical to ensure the change results in minimal user impact, so to help customers prepare Microsoft has developed the Australia 2009 Daylight Saving Planning document which details the nature and impact of the DST changes, along with planning guidance to avoid user impact.

What if the systems have been previously patched?
Where servers, workstations and mobile devices have been added to the infrastructure, organisations will need to audit their environment to ensure all systems are updated according to the organisation's Daylight Savings Plan.

Where the environment does not have a consistent Daylight Savings Time (DST) update level, appointments may have been created with a mix of correct and incorrect DST transition dates.

You can find more information at www.pdcbof.com and follow them on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pdcbof

See ya there!!

Cheers Dave

In case you missed this on other channels, WebsiteSpark Program has arrived and you can find more details at http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/09/24/announcing-the-websitespark-program.aspx and http://blogs.technet.com/jorke/archive/2009/09/24/announcing-websitespark-in-australia.aspx

Also, Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2 has shipped and there is a great selection of applications from the Web App Gallery

Cheers Dave

Nigel was after a few pointers for Widget development for Windows Mobile 6.5, so thought useful to blog as well!!

The model for widget development is similar to that of Apple, Nokia, Opera etc – HTML, JavaScript, CSS – the platform APIs differ for example persisting setting, creating enus etc, but same concepts.

1. Developing Widgets for Windows Mobile 6.5
2. Getting started with widgets on Windows Mobile 6.5
3. Useful info on setting up dev environment – important thing is that the 6.5 is a developers toolkit and must be installed after the 6.0 refresh SDKs – see blog item...  SDK, DTK, DRK: WTF?!
4. Nick Randolph’s blog at Nick's .NET Travels - lots of great stuff on Widget Development...
5. And get yourself signed up on Codemasons site – The Codemasons' Guild
6. The W3C spec for widgets is at Widgets 1.0: Requirements

Cheers Dave

This is time well spent, check out the Windows 7 Compatibility training session.

Some of the resources referenced are

1. Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5
2. Microsoft Application Verifier
3. Chris Jackson’s “The App Compat Guy”
4. More Windows 7 Sessions

and finally head to over to “Give your application the green light”, get yourself registered, it’s free, stacks of resources and support, get ready and get your application in to the online catalogue in time for the Windows 7 Launch on October 22nd.

Cheers Dave

I’ve been running the released version of Windows 7 64 bit on my Lenovo T61p for over a week now, it’s rock solid and fast!!  Setup was very straight forward but alas for now Windows Update did not install the nVidia Quadro 570M Graphics Driver for me automatically, a bit annoying!! Anyways, simple enough to fix – see below…

1. Standard Windows 7 Install
   
2. Apply Windows Update updates
   
3. If Windows Update doesn't detect the nVidia Quadro 570M Graphics Card then go to http://catalog.update.microsoft.com, install the ActiveX control and then search for the “nvidia quadro 570m windows 7“ driver - make sure you get the driver that matches your CPU Architecture – x86 or AMD64 for 64bit.
   
   Download the appropriate CAB, create a folder somewhere, double click on the CAB to open, copy all the files from the CAB to the folder you just created and the run setup from the newly created folder...
   
4. If Aero is not enabled (which it almost certainly wont be after the graphics driver update) then from the control panel search box type "fix" without quotes and select "Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects" and run the wizard.
   
   
5. Optimise Disk Access - from device manager, select hard disk, properties and check the "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device" option as below.  This is just a me thing, always do it, read the warning etc…
   
   
6. Install Windows Virtual PC Release Candidate
   
   http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx
   
   Install Windows Virtual PC RC (Release candidate is the best current version for Windows 7 RTM). Install Windows XP Mode RC if you want to support Windows XP and integrate application in to the Windows 7 Shell - see http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/1/B/51BF59CD-8C09-4153-8C60-F801F6FF59EA/Windows%20Virtual%20PC%20and%20Windows%20XP%20Mode%20RC%20Installation%20Guide.mht
   
   See http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2009/08/04/windows-virtual-pc-and-win-xp-mode-rc-now-available.aspx for more info on Windows Virtual PC
   
   Virtual Disk Boot is well worth investigating - see http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2009/08/01/virtual-hard-disk-getting-started-guide-download-now-available.aspx
   
7. Download the Lenovo Function Button Utility for Bluetooth and Wifi from http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-68000 . Run the download file to unpack the driver then navigate to the setup directory and run setup to install the driver. I didn't install the Display Magnifier - there is one built in to Windows 7. This is the only other Lenovo driver I manually installed, I follow the less is more principle when setting up my system...
   
8. Loaded up my favourite Windows 7 Desktop Theme Pack - http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson/archive/2009/01/25/my-windows-7-theme-pack.aspx, but yeah the themes in the box rock too!!
   
9. Added in my preferred Windows 7 Federated Search Connectors - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/742-windows-7-search-federation-providers.html
   
10. Add the Outlook Federated Search Connector (you need Office SP2 Installed) – from “Search Programs and Files” search off the start menu type “Searches” (no speech marks), select the “Searched” folder and drag and drop the Microsoft Outlook Connector to your Windows Explorer favourites.  I renamed to Outlook…
    
11. I’ve come to prefer the Taskbar pinned to the left side of the screen – habit carried over from my ASUS Eee PC 1000H netbook.  To do this right mouse click on the Taskbar, select properties and the set the Taskbar location on screen option.
    
12. Installed Office 2007, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Express and Developer Editions, Office Communicator, blah blah blah and fully service packed.
    
13. Create a Windows 7 Windows Virtual PC Image and installed Office 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 betas and pinned them to my Windows 7 host Taskbar – love it, seamless and all beta stuff running in separate environment

Cheers Dave

Follow these links to download the Expression 3 Starter Kits:-

• Prototyping with SketchFlow Starter Kit [link...]
• Venture Into Gaming Expression Blend 3 Starter Kit [link...]
• Silverlight Support Web 3 Starter Kit [link...]
• Expression Web 3 Super Preview Starter Kit [link...]

And for more info on Expression then check out http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

I often hear from folk in smaller cities in Oz that there is limited access to solid training!!  So great news from the guys from Readify in conjunction with Crimson!!

If you live in or near Darwin or know someone who does then be sure to let them know about these training opportunities!!

Cheers Dave