By now, you know Brian Beckman given how many times he's been featured on Channel 9 and, well, just how amazing he is. Brian is an astrophysicist and software architect currently working on a technology we can't talk about...yet...  Stay tuned for that. Dr. Beckman is the perfect choice for a new lecture in the C9 Lectures series. This is a single lecture, but there will be more interesting conversations to come on this deep and beautiful top…[more ]

Watch Zach Owns in this introductory video about how a free upgrade to SQL Server Express will give your data, and your business, room to grow.  Whether you manage your company's database, build applications for it, or both, the features and benefits of Microsoft SQL Server Express will take the pains out of growing. And unlike other free database software, there are absolutely no hidden or future costs.[more ]

Mike Morton is back at it again, this time showing how easy it is to develop, package and deploy a Silverlight WebPart to SharePoint 2010. He also walks us through the solution, package and file properties available to you in Visual Studio 2010. You'll see me giggling in this one because I can't believe how easy it is...[more ]

Wes talks about the part of Rx's IObservable contract that is not expressed in the type. What order of messages is allowed, when are methods allowed to throw, on what thread callbacks happen, etc...[more ]

When it comes to identity management intensive applications, it's hard to top Sharepoint. Whether you are signing in a portal, accessing a document or using a webpart for reaching out to external web services, your identity is going to be the factor that drives it all. Vittorio went to visit Venky Veeraraghavan, Program Manager Lead in the Sharepoint team, to discuss how Sharepoint deals with identity challenges. Venky gives a fantastic explanation of how claims-based identity and Windows…[more ]

Jeff describes the primitives of IObservable.[more ]

The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and Part Two. …[more ]

Scott at PDC09 in Los Angeles this week and got a great opportunity to get a guided tour of a piece of the Windows Azure Cloud from Patrick Yantz, a Cloud Architect with Data Center Services. You may think it's a Cloud Container, but it's not! [more ]

Fishbowl for Facebook is a WPF application created by Microsoft that takes advantage of some of the new Windows 7 features like jumplists and multitouch. Working like a WPF version of the Facebook site, you can do most of the same things you would do through a browser like status and comments, browse friend photos or upload your own, but with added functionality like dragging and dropping in new photos.

Download it for yourself at http://www.fishbowlclient.com/.