A little bit late, but the invitation for the first Maine Code Camp just went out!

When:  August 27th, 28th, 29th, 2010
Where:  Mt. Blue State Park, Weld, Maine ( Link to offical site )
Sign up: http://www.maine-devnet.org/Home/SignUpForEvent.aspx
More info: http://www.maine-devnet.org/Home/Meetings.aspx

Amazon sells various versions of Visual Studio 2010. Here is an overview of versions and this will give you a good indication of prices. Below the prices is a feature comparison also…

Visual Studio Professional

 Visual Studio Premium

 Visual Studio Utlimate

Visual Studio 2010 Feature Comparison

Debugging & Diagnostic
IntelliTrace (Historical Debugger)
Static Code Analysis
Code Metrics
Profiling
Testing
Unit Testing
Code Coverage
Test Impact Analysis
Coded UI Test
Web Performance Testing
Load Testing1
Microsoft Test Manager 2010
Test Case Management2
Manual Test Execution
Fast-Forward for Manual Testing
Lab Management Configuration3
Database Development
Database Deployment
Database Change Management2
Database Unit Testing
Database Test Data Generation
Development Platform Support
Windows Development
Web Development
Office and SharePoint Development
Cloud Development
Customizable Development Experience
Architecture and Modeling
Architecture Explorer
UML 2.0 Compliant Diagrams (Activity, Use Case, Sequence, Class, Component)
Layer Diagram and Dependency Validation
Read-only diagrams (UML, Layer, DGML Graphs)
Lab Management
Virtual environment setup & tear down3
Provision environment from template3
Checkpoint environment3
Team Foundation Server
Version Control2
Work Item Tracking2
Build Automation2
Team Portal2
Reporting & Business Intelligence2
Agile Planning Workbook2
Test Case Management2
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010
MSDN Subscription - Software for Production Use
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 CAL	1	1	1	1
Microsoft Expression Studio 3
Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate, Communicator 2007, Project 2007 Standard, Visio 2007 Professional, SharePoint Designer 2007
MSDN Subscription - Software for Development and Test Use4
Windows Azure™	†	††	†††
Windows (client and server operating systems)
Microsoft SQL Server
Toolkits, Software Development Kits, Driver Development Kits
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft Dynamics
All other Servers
Windows Embedded operating systems
MSDN Subscription benefits
Team Explorer Everywhere (tools for cross-platform development)
Technical support incidents	4	4	2	2
Priority support in MSDN Forums
Microsoft e-learning collections	2	2	1	1
MSDN Magazine
MSDN Flash newsletter
MSDN Online Concierge

† Azure benefit includes 250 compute hrs/mo, 7.5 GB storage, 3 GB SQL Server database capacity, 1M .NET messages/month
†† Azure benefit includes 100 compute hrs/mo, 5 GB storage, 2 GB SQL Server database capacity, 500k .NET messages/month
††† Azure benefit includes 50 compute hrs/mo, 3 GB/mo storage, 1GB SQL Server database capacity, 300k  .NET messages/month
1. May require one or more Microsoft Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010
2. Requires Team Foundation Server and a Team Foundation Server CAL
3. Requires Microsoft Visual Studio Team Lab Management 2010
4. Per-user license allows unlimited installations and use for designing, developing, testing, and demonstrating applications.
UML is a registered trademark of Object Management Group, Inc.
Windows is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

The site has been up for a little while, but I forgot to post about it. Develop-One created this for Law Offices OF Edwards & Johnson, P.A. – Attorneys at Law.

Visit them at: www.lincolnmainelaw.com

Last week I mentioned and demonstrated a custom snippet in VS2010 during my BAND talk. Turns out there is an open source tool for helping you create snippets: snippetdesigner.codeplex.com, for more information and background info check Greg’s blog.

I guess Amazon is following suite with other more brick & mortar kind of companies and has decided to jump in the wireless plan market.

Last night at the BAND meeting Eric Burdo did an open mic talk about usability testing. He referenced two books by Steve Krug. Both seem like a good read to me and both are available on Amazon.

At BAND last night I had some interesting discussions about Windows Phone and as Daniel showed me the racing game on the Zune it suddenly hit me. Windows Phone is not going to be a iPhone killer, at least not based on a single feature that will blast the iPhone away. It is going to blast a hole in the Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable market.

Everything I’ve seen so far about Windows Phone makes it equal to the iPhone as a phone, but the focus on XNA and XBox Live integration will make it that everyone that has an XBox is going to want to have one… It’ll be interesting to see if my hunch is right. It took me a while to figure it out, since my view of the Windows Phone has been influenced by me thinking about ‘enterprise’ applications and how Windows Phone fits in there.

At the Augusta MSDN Roadshow event 2 weeks ago Chris Bowen showed a device and he didn’t show any details about what the Office/email/Outlook experience looked like on the phone. Considering it will still be a while before the devices hit the market makes me believe that a lot of development is still going on in that area and that Microsoft will have some surprises in store for us. I expect the Phone 7 offering to be well beyond what a Blackberry offers. Time will tell.

The hardware specs for Windows Phone 7 require manufacturers to provide at least 8GB of memory. My wish is that these phones will have at least 64GB of memory. That way I can put all my media (music, pictures, movies) and office files on my phone and not have to lug around a USB stick anymore, plus with Office on the phone I’ll be able to actually use the files. Perhaps WP7 will allow me to do a remote desktop session into my phone? :-)

Can’t wait to get one of these phones! :-)

Microsoft has announced two open source solutions for accessing Outlook .pst files. Read the press release here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/may10/05-24PSTToolsPR.mspx

I’ve been able to find the following on Codeplex:

PSTViewTool : http://pstviewtool.codeplex.com/

PST SDK: http://pstsdk.codeplex.com/  [Thanks to Greg!]

Also, doing a search for Outlook on CodePlex offers a lot of solutions for looking at Outlook data or integrating with Outlook: http://www.codeplex.com/site/search?query=outlook

Update: Added the PST SDK.

Silverlight 4 offers the opportunity to databind against a command. This is useful in MVVM scenarios. For some reason there is no quick implementation of a command (or I have been unable to locate it) so I wrote my own ‘QuickCommand’:

          #region QuickCommand publicdelegatevoid Execute( object parameter
); publicdelegatebool CanExecute( object parameter
); publicclass QuickCommand :
ICommand { private Execute _executeMethod; private CanExecute
_canExecuteMethod; public QuickCommand() : this( null, null )
{ } public QuickCommand( Execute executeMethod ) : this(
executeMethod, null ) { } public QuickCommand(
Execute executeMethod, CanExecute canExecuteMethod ) { _executeMethod = executeMethod;
_canExecuteMethod = canExecuteMethod; } #region ICommand
Members publicbool CanExecute( object parameter
) { if ( _canExecuteMethod == null )
{ returntrue; } else { return _canExecuteMethod(
parameter ); } } publicevent EventHandler
CanExecuteChanged; publicvoid Execute( object parameter
) { if ( _executeMethod != null )
{ _executeMethod( parameter ); } } #endregion } #endregion QuickCommand

The Quick command allows you to assign a lambda expression to a ICommand property like this:

          public
          class MainView
{ public MainView() { About = new QuickCommand(
c => MessageBox.Show( "© Develop-one, 2010" )
); } public ICommand About { get; set; } }

This ICommand property can then be used for databinding a button control (I removed the default namespace declarations):

          <
          UserControl ... xmlns:ViewModel="clr-namespace:DevelopOne.Sample.ViewModel"><UserControl.DataContext><ViewModel:MainView/></UserControl.DataContext><StackPanelOrientation="Vertical"><HyperlinkButtonContent="About"Name="hyperlinkButton1"HorizontalAlignment="Center"Command="{Binding
About}"/></StackPanel></UserControl>

See how the ‘Command’-property of the button binds against ‘About’-property of the MainView class? Sweet!

Almost manage to miss it in my inbox, but I just signed up for the Maine MSDN Roadshow event! It will be held on May 11th in Augusta, ME with thanks to State of Maine (John rules!) for the accommodations and of course Microsoft for making Chris and Jim drive all the way up north :-)

The Agenda:  A Payload of Awesomeness

“Fore!” – Slicing Into What’s New in Silverlight 4

Silverlight is all about driving your applications into the fairway of user experience.  Silverlight 4 tees up many new features to help you create rich applications that will hook your customers’ interest.  You’ll see Visual Studio 2010’s improved designer, microphone and webcam support, core API and XAML improvements, new out-of-browser options, and more.  Of course, these features aren’t rough to use, and you’ll get into the swing of things in no time.

“Don’t T(h)read on Me” – Snaking Through the New Parallel Programming Options

Many developers recoil at the prospect of writing and debugging multithreaded and multicore applications.  The great news is there’s plenty to help in .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010.  We’ll sink our teeth into Task Parallel Library, PLINQ, Visual Studio 2010 debugging features, and new Framework classes that offer ways to make efficient programs and help shed those concurrency worries.

“Weaving the Next Web” – ASP.NET 4, Windows Azure, and Beyond

Visual Studio 2010 makes it easier than ever to stitch together masterful applications.   Continue to ply your existing skills with an improved Web Forms experience, or quickly spin up interactive forms-over-data sites with Dynamic Data.  And of course you can hook right into ASP.NET MVC to craft testable and extensible solutions.  It doesn’t end there though, from the fabric of the same development environment, you can swiftly shuttle your applications, Azure-aware, to the cloud.

“It’s Your Call” – Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, and XNA

Windows Phone 7 is dialed in for a holiday 2010 release and developers can answer the call today by leveraging Silverlight or XNA skills to create and extend applications or games to reach to new customers in new ways.  This demo-heavy session will give you the 411 on using Expression Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 with the Windows Phone 7 tools.  After seeing what’s new, you won’t want to put this opportunity on hold.

Sign up here.

I just had a little scare with Outlook. After installing VSTO 2010 beta 2 64bit on my system my Calendar folder was suddenly corrupt. Luckily there is an excellent (free) way of repairing a broken .pst file. It’s just a little hidden. Read this KB article to find out how to do it.

Tip to Microsoft: Why not register this file as an “Repair” option to a .pst file, allowing me to right-click and fix my broken .pst file?

I just implemented a little routine to upload a file to an FTP site using SSL. I started looking at purchasing a component to help me out, but it turns out the .NET Framework offers all you need.

            public
            class FtpStatus

{

            public FtpStatus()

    {

        Succes = true;

    }

            public
            bool Succes {
get; set; }

            public
            string Message
{ get; set; }

}

            /// <summary>
          

            /// Upload a file using FTP and SSL.
          

            /// </summary>
          

            /// <param name="host">Full name
without the 's', e.g. ftp://secure.develop-one.com</param>
          

            /// <param name="filename">Filename including
server path, e.g. /Upload/test.txt</param>
          

            /// <param name="file"></param>
          

            public FtpStatus UploadFile( string host, bool useSsl, string username, string password, string filename, byte[]
file )

{

    FtpStatus result = new FtpStatus();

            string target = host + filename;

    FtpWebRequest request = (FtpWebRequest) FtpWebRequest.Create( target );

    request.EnableSsl = useSsl;

    request.KeepAlive = true;

    request.UseBinary = true;

    request.UsePassive = true;

    request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.UploadFile;

    request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential( username,
password );

            try
          

    {

            using ( Stream stream = request.GetRequestStream()
)

        {

            stream.Write( file, 0, file.Length );

            stream.Close();

        }

    }

            catch ( System.Net.WebException exception )

    {

        result.Succes = false;

            string message = ( (System.Net.FtpWebResponse)
( exception.Response ) ).StatusDescription.Replace( "\r\n", "" );

            if ( message.IndexOf( ":" )
> 0 )

        {

            message = message.Substring( message.IndexOf( ":" )
+ 2 );

        }

        result.Message = message;

    }

            return result;

}

Nowadays there are a variety of tools and services available that provide insight into the quality of the code. In order to quantify quality a number of metrics are collected and used to create a maintainability index number. Visual Studio Team System gathers metrics to put a number on the quality of your code. While Omnext offers code is a company which offers services around providing insight into the functioning, quality, and size of software. Now what to do once you have a number? What does it really mean, other than wanting to be good and not score low on a report?

I offer a basic solution:

A project which scores high on maintainability can be maintained by junior to medior skilled developers.
A project that scores low requires senior developers to maintain the application and effectively do what a junior could do on a better code base.

This leads to a simple mathematical deduction.

A senior developer costs 30% to 40% more than a junior. Therefore a bad system will cost 30% to 40% more to maintain than a good system. Of course the increase is not quite linear so if we put it on a sliding scale/table we get:

Feel free to refer to this as the Blomsma Code Metrics Cost Factor.
:-)

Last week at the BAND user group meeting in Bangor me and Chris Bowen had a little unresolved discussion about how SQL Azure manages backups. Today I found (thanks to Ben Rees) a segment of a presentation that was done at PDC’09 by Dave Campbell and Tony Petrossian. I grabbed the screen that covers what is and what will be available when it comes to backup.

1. Automatic failover. Every SQL Server instance will be configured for automatic failover. This is part of the standard service, no additional charge.
2. BCP, SSIS or other custom tools. Today (3/1/2010) there is only one way to create backups and that is pull the data to a local backup. You end up paying for bandwidth usage.
3. Database clone. A on demand backup which creates an (almost) instant replica of your database. Useful before doing schema changes and you could easily schedule the creation of a daily clone if you wish to do so. You pay for the storage. This feature should become available 1H 2010.
4. Continuous Backup. Backups run as specified by user where you will be able to restore the database to a specific point in time. Pricing not available yet. This feature should become available 2H 2010.

Update: Original video is here.

VS2010 is not yet available on Amazon.com, but VS2008 with MSDN subscription is. If you purchase VS2008 with a MSDN subscription today then you will still qualify for a free upgrade to VS2010 when it goes RTM.

More info on the offer here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/howtobuy/ultimate-offer.mspx

Now that the Release Candidate is available and RTM is scheduled for April 12th it will be time to see how you can get licenses for these great tools.
Read the Licensing Whitepaper to find out what you need: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2b1504e6-0bf1-46da-be0e-85cc792c6b9d

Visual Studio will create ‘obj’ folders within your solution to store a bunch of temporary files. You can remove these files in a number of ways.
One easy way is to use Windows 7 Search to look for all the ‘obj’ folders and just delete them manually.
To do this I use the ‘kind’ keyword in the query box.

Tip: Just typing ‘kind:’ will give you a list of choices to choose from.

For a complete overview of the Windows 7 Search syntax go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx

Another extension method… I just ran into the need to humanize some strings into more friendly ones. This can be used to humanize the name of an enumeration. It will turn a “CamelCasedString” into a “Camel Cased String”.

publicstaticclassStringExtension
{
   ///<summary>
   /// Humanize a "CamelCasedString" into "Camel Cased String".
   ///</summary>
   ///<param name="source"></param>
   ///<returns></returns>
   publicstaticstring Humanize(thisstring source )
    {
       StringBuilder sb =newStringBuilder();

       char last =char.MinValue;
       foreach (char cin source )
        {
           if (char.IsLower( last ) ==true &&char.IsUpper( c ) ==true )
            {
                sb.Append(' ' );
            }
            sb.Append( c );
            last = c;
        }
       return sb.ToString();
    }
}

Soma just announced that the beta period for VS2010 and .NET 4.0 has been extended and the release date is being pushed back a couple of weeks (no new date mentioned yet).

Also, in addition to the 2 beta’s that have been released there will be an additional public Release Candidate that everyone gets to play with :-)

Read more: http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/12/17/visual-studio-2010-and-net-framework-4-beta-period-extended.aspx

Bing Maps just released a new (beta) way of exploring maps. It allows you to walk and look around ‘inside’ the map. With Sophie sitting next to me on the couch we took a walk around Fenway Park.

Use this link to jump to the ticket office: http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/default.aspx#5872/lat=42.34667&lon=-71.098862&alt=-48.11&z=30&h=137.8&p=2.9&pid=5082/5003/0.6002=q:Fenway+Park,+Boston,+MA+USA:lat:42.3586715525037:long:-71.0566996783018

I’ve been doing some research into writing a DDE client in C#. Turns out there is project on CodePlex called NDde (http://www.codeplex.com/ndde) which offers a good starting point. For some reason it took many Bing’s and Google’s before stumbling onto this little gem.

Today I wanted to provide some feedback on a cool product (Live Mesh) I’ve been beta testing. I clicked the feedback link and saw this:

I guess I’ll have to learn Japanese :-)

Update: Feedback for Live Mesh can go here: https://connect.microsoft.com/LiveMesh

Update: Vote for my suggestion: https://connect.microsoft.com/LiveMesh/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=516914
My suggestion is:

I'd like to be able to temporarily take a folder offline. I imagine being able to right click on a Mesh Folder and choose from being offline for X amount of minutes or X hours.

Scenario:
As a developer I share my sources folder across multiple machines. Every recompile in Visual Studio leads to files getting synced. I don't need them to be synced until I'm done for the day/morning/afternoon.

I imagine this feature appeals to anyone who shares a folder with high frequent changes.

The schedule for the December Software Development Event is set (see below). There is another great line up of speaker and it looks to be a great event. Sign up at: http://www.sdn.nl/SDN/SDNEvent/SDNEventdecember2009/tabid/132/Default.aspx.

The event will be held at;
Van der Valk Hotel Houten
Hoofdveste 25
3992 DH Houten

Schedule