Channel 9

C9 Conversations: Yuri Gurevich On Logic, Imperative, Abstraction and Algorithms

Charles — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:10:00 GMT

Welcome to the latest installment of C9 Conversations. For this episode, we were very fortunate to get a chance to converse openly with one of the world’s preeminent mathematical logicians, the great Yuri Gurevich.

Dr. Gurevich is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He is currently a principle research scientist in Wolfram Schulte’s RiSE team (Research in Software Engineering group at Microsoft Research).

Originally, Dr. Gurevich started his career as an algebraist. Later he became a logician. Then he moved to computer science, where his main projects have been Abstract State Machines, Average Case Computational Complexity, and Finite Model Theory. Dr. Gurevich has been honored as a Dr. Honoris Causa of the University of Limburg, Belgium (1998), as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (1996), as well as a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1995).

Dr. Gurevich's fundamental work on the theory of Abstract State Machines (ASMs) is of paramount importance for theoretical and applied computer science. The significance of the theoretical concepts developed by Gurevich is confirmed by the substantial impact they have on mathematical modeling of discrete dynamic systems.

*This is probably the only interview in C9's history where a good case is made for imperative programming versus declarative and functional (this starts right off the bat at around 02:31).

Tune in. Meet Yuri Gurevich.

PhizzPop Develop & Design Challenge

Laura Foy — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:48:00 GMT

The unique nature of The Phizzpop Design Challenge is that it pits agency Davids and Goliaths against one another to show the most innovative integration of Microsoft technologies to achieve the website redesign goals of BGCA. Don’t miss your opportunity to show off your skills to an elite panel of judges, advance BGCA's mission, and land $50k in the process. Download the brief and get started today!

Jason Zander: Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate Released

Charles — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:06:00 GMT

The Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate is here! Your Beta 2 feedback has been incredibly helpful to the engineering team. A big Thank You from Visual Studio!

Here, Visual Studio General Manager Jason Zander sits down with us to discuss how the Visual Studio engineering team addressed your Beta 2 feedback and made some helpful updates to the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. Jason even demos some of the improvements made in the VS 2010 RC — and on quite a modest PC.

Jason and his team went to great lengths to improve the overall experience of writing applications inside VS 2010. Performance. Performance. Performance... Of course, Jason and team want you to have the final word regarding whether the updates hit the mark, so please download the RC and take it for a test drive. Your feedback is critical to the VS team and they thank you, as always.

Help Desk Episode 1 with Chris Pirillo (Pilot) - Show Notes

Nic Fillingham — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:46:00 GMT

Show Notes & Links from Help Desk Episode 1 (Pilot)

1. Bas (from the Channel 9 forums) [8:33]

How do I change the program associated with an extension when you choose 'edit' from a file's context menu?

Answer: Gov says that this must be edited manually in Windows 7

A Bing search finds this 3^rd party app for Windows Vista and Windows 7 that claims to be able to edit file associations (including “Edit”): http://defaultprogramseditor.com/

2. @r*er (via Twitter) [9:37]

@ch9live What is the easiest way to have a window maximized across multiple screens?

Answer: Chris suggests: http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

3. CodySmith (via FriendFeed) [12:32]

ok what is the differences between home premium and ultimate do you really need ultimate?

Answer: Jamie says check out the Products compare page to see the differences between the different versions.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare

4. JoshRoss (via Channel 9 forums) [14:02]

How do I get cmd.exe to run in full-screen mode, with Windows 7, when Aero Glass is enabled?

Answer: Gov says that this is not possible. You can run command prompt in full screen however you will still see the Windows 7 UI/chrome

5. MadHugh (via FriendFeed) [16:05]

How do you use the play to feature in a home where the family already has a big plasma and wants to stream from a laptop. It looks like Western Digital has a 1080p DLNA add on box shown at CES

Answer: Gov says Windows 7 will automatically detect DLNA devices on the same HOME network as your Windows 7 machines.

More info about Windows 7 and DLNA: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/NicFill/Windows-7-Play-To-in-Action/

6. albertoslopez (via Twitter) [18:45]

@ch9live Guys, Is there a way to remove the ugly-ass shortcut "arrow" from desktop shortcuts in Windows 7? Thanks. 2:14 PM Jan 27th from web

Answer: Jamie says there is a Registry hack that will remove the shortcut icon overlays but investigate/execute at your own risk.

A Bing search finds: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-a-tweak-ui-for-windows-7-vista

7. Stilgar / Mihail (via email) [20:17]

Me and my coworkers are staying after work to play a few games of StarCraft. Every now and then Windows 7 crashes really hard. The game freezes and there is nothing you can do except for press the power button. Ctrl+Alt+Del does not work. The problem has occurred on all our computers randomly.

http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/11659-starcraft-freezes-after-1-5-minutes-playing-13.html

As you can see the rate at which the game freezes varies (from once every 1-5 minutes to once every 10-15 hours in our case). The hardware configuration, driver versions, running software, etc. also varies greatly. Compatibility mode is useless. Some people suggest forcing the process to run on one and the same core but it seems that this does not help either. The most tech savvy guy in the thread says that it is a DirectDraw problem. There are other threads on other forums that contain the same "solutions" with many more people confirming that they do not work for example here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=93382&currentpage=9

Another interesting fact is that StarCraft works flawlessly on Vista.

Answer: Gov says this is a “Race Condition” issue. You can try stopping explorer.exe before launching the game by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to bring up task manager.

Richard says: You could also write a script that closes explorer.exe before launching StarCraft

8. Dr Herbie (from the Channel 9 forums) [23:46]

Occasionally (less so on Win7 than on Vista) my PC will freeze during the 'Loading Windows' stage. How do I go about figuring out what's causing it?

Answer: Gov says try the Windows Performance Analyzer/Tool Kit to measure your systems boot performance: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc305187.aspx

Richard says: Unplug peripherals like USB devices to see if that fixes the issue

9. @r*er (via Twitter) [27:14]

@ch9live In brief, what occurs when you run an application in compatibility mode?

Answer: Gov says that one of the many things that compatibility mode does is “tell” the application running that the OS is something other than Windows 7

10. @xXCodySmithXx (via Twitter) [30:57]

@ch9live i have another question as well what do you guys think the best anti virus software is for windows 7?

Answer: Windows Security Essentials: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ - it’s free, lightweight and accurate

11. W3bbo (from the Channel 9 forums) [33:41]

"How do I get Windows to stop searching inside *.zip and *.cab files, especially after I've extracted files so it returns double results?"

Answer: Gov says open the Folder Options dialogue (byz typing “folder options” into the start menu) select the Search tab and check/uncheck “Include compressed files (ZIP, CAB….)”

12. @mattwhiting (via Twitter) [34:45]

@ch9live Is there any way to cascade Word documents or Outlook emails with one click as you could with Vista?

Answer: Jamie says Hold shift + Right click the respective icon in the taskbar

13. @r*er (via Twitter) [36:19]

@ch9live running XP mode on win7. Now I am unable to run my old virtual machines because they are in a standby state. How can I fix this?

Answer: Unsure – Need more info on the problem

14. DannyMinick (via FriendFeed) [37:13]

I am using Windows DVD Maker and the software tells me that I need to trim my movie, as it exceeds the size available on the DVD. How do I do this?

Answer: Try the new Windows Live Movie Maker http://download.live.com/moviemaker/

15. Sabot (via Channel 9 forums) [48:59]

I want to upgrade my work laptop (Lenovo T400) to Windows 7. It currently runs XP Pro. I want to know will the group policies etc still work or is there some gottcha I need to be aware of? I've run the upgrade advisor and it's given me allot of info about programs and drivers just not if it will bust any policies or configurations.

Answer: Gov says generally speaking the group policies in XP still apply for Windows 7.

Check out http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Group-Policy-management-for-IT-pros for more info.

Also http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd367850(WS.10).aspx

16. Sidney (via FriendFeed) [40:42]

Can you explain the process of explaining Windows 7 on a netbook?

Answer: Richard says use the official Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool: http://wudt.codeplex.com/

17. Carmine007 (via Twitter) [41:54]

@ch9live: is it possible to get taskbar to run directly like in xp on windows 7, I know i can enter directly through toolbar

Answer: Unsure – Need more info on the problem

18. IntelMan (via Channel 9 forums) [42:51]

Is there a tweak to make Windows Live Photo Gallery render faster with a calibrated profile? Perhaps this is a bug the Windows Live Team needs made aware of?

Answer: Unsure – Need more info on the problem

19 eInfinity (via Twitter) [42:20]

@ch9live I have 2 screens and I have XP. Can I have 2 mice. Can I use 2 mice at once? 2:12 PM Jan 27th from Chromed Bird

Answer: Gov says you can have two mice but only one cursor.

20. ZippyV (via Channel 9 forums) [45:14]

I've got a problem with Windows Vista. I've got a 7.1 speaker system attached and when I play music (doesn't matter which media player) only the front 2 speakers are used. Why can't I get music from all my speakers?

Answer: Gov says potentially two reasons. 1) your audio source may only have two channels 2) you may need updated drivers for your speaker system/sound hardware

Richard says what speaker configuration does your machine “think” it is setup for?

21. Sushovande (via Channel 9 forums) [47:55]

How do I remote desktop to my home computer from work? / How can I remote control a PC over the internet?

Answer: Richard says try Live Mesh – www.mesh.com

22. @wwejason (via Twitter) [49:39]

@ch9live You should Can you please explain the difference between Libraries and real folders in (Windows) 7 so that Joe User can understand.

Answer: Gov says folders/directories are the actual locations on your hard drive where the files are stored. Libraries are a collection of folders/directories – kind of like a collection of shortcuts in a single view

More info: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/developers/archive/2009/04/06/understanding-windows-7-libraries.aspx

23. Simon (via Twitter) [53:10]

How can I change an office 2007 key later to upgrade to a higher/another version of office? Can it be done?

Answer: Unsure, check support.microsoft.com

24. Jay Pugh (via email) [54:25]

I have a question that relates to Windows 7 home Premium. My home network is 3 XP machines connected wired and wirelessly with a Linksys router. Each XP machine has shared folders that do not require a password. When you go to network, on Windows 7 pc, and view the three XP pc’s and try to open one of them Windows 7 asks for a user name and password for that one XP pc. On the other 2 XP pc’s you can click to open the pc and see and browse the shared folders. No request for a user name and password. I am stumped.

Answer: Gov says check the Windows 7 event log. Make sure all machines are on the same workgroup. Create a username/password on each machine – use the same username/password on each machine.

25. LiteBulb (via Twitter) [56:44]

Is there a way to share and sync your speech recognition training between machines?

Answer: Gov says unsure but probably – will investigate

26. @Da_Bear_Man (via Twitter) [57:26]

@ch9live can I use homegroup with one win7 and one winxp?

Answer: Richard says no. Homegroup is Windows 7 only. You can connect to the homegroup and interact like another machine on the network but you can’t join the Homegroup.

27. Prasad DV (via Email) [58:17]

I have an old laptop running on Intel BIOS without Hardware Virtualization support. How do I run my old Virtual PC vhd files on my system? Neither Microsoft Virtual PC nor Windows Virtual PC are supported on my system?

Answer: Gov says uninstall Windows XP Mode and install Virtual PC 2007 SP1 then install Virtual PC 2007 SP1 Editions and they should work.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=28C97D22-6EB8-4A09-A7F7-F6C7A1F000B5&displaylang=en

Ping 47: Avatar, FourSquare, Bing & Twitter, Farmville

Laura Foy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:56:00 GMT

Paul decided to take a little vacation so our good friend Adam stepped in to bring us the hottest stories on Microsoft Campus. Some are....

James Camerons Avatar & Microsoft
Office for Mac loves you!
FourSquare coming to Windows Mobile
Bing Twitter Maps
Farmville & MSN Games

TWC9: Sara Ford, recognize touch gestures, make Windows 7 into a hotspot

Dan Fernandez — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:31:00 GMT

This week on Channel 9, Dan is joined by special guest host Sara Ford to discuss the week's top developer news, including:

Sara's leaving the CodePlex team to work as a Developer Evangelist
Nitin Bharti - 7-Part video series on using Microsoft Expression Blend, via Alvin Ashcraft
- Interesting because: It's a free set of videos that cover the essentials of using Blend, including controls, data-binding, animation, and more
John Papa - Creating Custom Pre-loaders/splash screens in Silverlight
- Interesting because: There are certain things you can and can't do in Silverlight's splash screen
Channel 9 Team - Simplifying how to share content on Channel 9
- Interesting because: Most people didn't discover the share feature on C9 and those who did used primarily used Twitter and Facebook
Don Syme - Introduction to F# Lecture Series
- Interesting because: It's a three part series with Don Syme who created the F# language
Greg Duncan - The Complete Windows 7 Shortcuts
- Interesting because: This is arguably the most comprehensive list of Windows 7 shortcuts
Code Project - Manoj Kumar - Gesture recognition for Touch Devices
- Interesting because: This library helps take raw multitouch data from Windows 7 and interpret specific touch gestures
Chris Pietschmann - Turn your Windows 7 PC into a Wifi hotspot
- Interesting because: It's a free, open source 100% C# app that enables you to make your PC a wireless hotspot (great for travel)
Jason Zander - Visualizing Dependency Graphs using Visual Studio 2010
- Interesting because: Jason walks through how to use the Dependency graphing tools and discusses DGML (Dependency Graph Markup Language) an XML representation of dependency graphs that Visual Studio extensions could use to visualize dependencies
Wes Hutchins - Visual Studio Gallery Beta 2 extensions to be unpublished
- Interesting because: If you use or have created an extension in the visualstudiogallery, realize that all beta 2 extensions will be removed
Windows Azure Team - Windows Azure Drive and beta SDK available
- Interesting because: Azure Drive enables you to mount Azure as a drive

Picks of the week:

Dan's pick: The Top 20 Xbox Live Indie Games for 2009
Sara's Pick: Hurricane WhoDat - The Saints are going to the Super Bowl for the first time ever, and whodatnation is one of the most entertaining sites for Saint fans

The Access Show: Client performance improvements against SharePoint lists

tina10 — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:46:00 GMT

Today’s guest is DJ Cole, architect and primary developer of SharePoint connectivity performance improvements on the Access development team. DJ dropped by to talk about how Access 2010 connects to SharePoint, and to discuss the work necessary for improving client-side performance.

As with most performance work, beauty is in the eye of the user. When users work against a server on the other side of the world, performance makes a difference. Data, after all, only travels as fast as the speed of light. Our goal for Access 2010 was to make the connections to SharePoint lists nearly as fast as local tables. Additionally, we had to ensure requests didn’t swamp the server, bottleneck throughout the network, or cause the client machine’s CPU or RAM to thrash. We found that caching data in local tables, combined with conservative usage of resources on the server, network and local machine, provided the best user experience.

This Access 2010 performance improvement builds upon the Access 2007 architecture. Read more…

For additional information about the latest release, check out the Access 2010 Intro series on the Access team blog.

C9 Lectures: Dr. Don Syme - Introduction to F#, 1 of 3

Charles — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:15:00 GMT

F# is Microsoft's first functional programming language to be included as one of Visual Studio's official set of languages. F# is a succinct, efficient, expressive functional/object-oriented programming language under joint development by Microsoft Developer Division and Microsoft Research. During the course of Erik Meijer's fantastic lecture series on functional programming fundamentals several of you asked for examples of specific topics in F#. Well, we listened.

Dr. Don Syme is a principal researcher in MSR Cambridge. He has a rich history in programming language research, design, and implementation (C# generics being one of his most recognized implementations), and is the principle creator of F#. Who better to lecture on the topic than Don? This three part series will serve as an introduction to F#, including insights into the rationale behind the history and creation of Microsoft's newest language.

Get the slides for this lecture here.

Read Don's Blog.

Brian Peek's PDC Laptop Leak Fix

Larry Larsen — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:48:00 GMT

Brian Peek picked up a PDC Laptop on eBay and found that the latest accelerometer driver (v1.00.00.16) wasn't correctly closing handles, resulting in his machine having 5 million handles open. So he did what any self-respecting Niner would do, he disassembled the code and created a fix. If you happen to have a PDC Laptop, you can download the application and the source code here. Additionally, you can find more details and code samples on Brian's blog. Keep in mind the suggested way to obtain drivers is through Windows Update, so your mileage may vary, caveat emptor, etc.

Kodu Tutorials Available

Larry Larsen — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:47:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Kodu being available on the PC. If you'd like to find out more about using Kodu, or if you know a young potential dev who needs help getting ramped up, the Microsoft Research Blog has posted some tutorials on using Kodu. Tutorial #1 covers Basic Navigation, tutorial #2 covers the Edit Mode Tools, #3 goes over the features on the Load Level menu, and tutorial #4 goes over the Main Menu Options.

Silverlight TV Episode 6: Creating Custom Pre-Loaders

John Papa — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:39:00 GMT

Silverlight MVP John Stockton of Ascentium appears on the show to explain how to create a custom pre-loader (sometimes called a splash screen) for Silverlight applications. He demonstrates how to create a custom preloading animation and progress indicator while a Silverlight application loads. He also discusses what you can and cannot do when creating a pre-loader since the pre-loader runs using script and XAML prior to the Silverlight application being fully loaded. Lots of code in this episode!

You can download the source code for the demo from this episode by clicking on this link. John Stockton has more links on his post here.

Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.

Countdown to MIX10: We Are a Year Round Community

Larry Larsen — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:34:00 GMT

Do you think when the MIX event comes to a close that we close up shop and go away for a year until the next conference? No way. Meet Thomas Lewis (or TommyLee as some of us like to call him), manager of the MIX Online team. Folks like Thomas and his band of designers and developers keep the conversation going by writing strongly voiced editorial pieces about the standards-based web, speaking at events all over the globe, or building and releasing (for free, of course) open source software for folks to use. This team is breaking down barriers and giving a unique perspective to the web . . . one you may not necessarily expect to hear from Microsoft. And we like it that way! Meet Thomas, and the whole MIX Online gang, in Vegas at MIX10. Register today. http://live.visitmix.com/

Simplifying how to share content on Channel 9

Dan Fernandez — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:35:00 GMT

Hey folks,

We've just released an update to Channel 9 that simplifies how you share content.

We've now added two dedicated sharing icons for Twitter and Facebook on a video page, as shown in the image.

Clicking on either of the links will ask you to login with your Twitter (via tweetmeme.com) or Facebook credentials respectively to share the link.

While this is a pretty minor change, we did want to discuss some of the reasons for the change.

Familiarity - The Facebook and Twitter sharing icons are likely to be well-known niners and by making the sharing feature more obvious, the hope is that more people will share content.
Simplicity - The previous implementation of the share feature provided seven sharing options and had a dropdown menu of options.
Usage data - Based on how the share feature was used, Facebook (#1) and Twitter (#2) were clearly the most used options.

Thanks,
- Channel 9 Team

Windows MultiPoint Mouse SDK 1.5 Exposed

Laura Foy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:01:00 GMT

The MultiPoint Mouse SDK v1.5 has just shipped and it is changing the game- and the way we think about interacting with our computers. Here are some of the highlights:

The new SDK features several improvements as well as Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 compatibility and support for both 32 and 64 bit applications/OSs. Full list can be found here on our developer blog.
Microsoft has also shipped a beta for an application based on the MultiPoint Mouse SDK called Mouse Mischief. Mouse Mischief is a PowerPoint plug-in which exemplifies the SDKs, VSTO compatibility and is available for public download.
In addition, various large Education ISVs such as Scholastic Education have released their killer apps on the SDK and developers can download and play with these apps at our new Application Showcase.

Binding Silverlight Controls to a Data Service in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

Kathleen McGrath — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:09:00 GMT

In this video, programming writer Steve Stein demonstrates the new Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 drag and drop data binding features applicable to Silverlight applications. The video demonstrates how to create a Silverlight application that displays data from a data service. You can follow along step-by-step in the corresponding Help topic.

Kathleen McGrath
http://blogs.msdn.com/kathleen

Multi-Core and Parallel Programming Practices

Robert Hess — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:51:00 GMT

In case you haven’t realized it, the new trend in computer chip technology is multi-core. This is where most of the speed improvements moving forward will come from on our computers. To take full advantage of this however it is necessary to design your applications using Parallel Programming practices, also known as "parallelism".

In today’s episode, we will meet with Stephen Toub, who will share with us some of the overarching concepts associated with parallelism, and some of the ways we are trying to empower developers to develop applications to take advantage of it.

You may also want to check out Stephen’s presentation from PDC09 on this topic here:

Manycore and .NET 4: A Match Made in Visual Studio 2010

And here is the full set of PDC09 sessions related to parallel programming practices:

Overview:

The State of Parallel Programming

Managed code in Visual Studio 2010:

Native code in Visual Studio 2010:

HPC Server:

Accelerating Applications Using Windows HPC Server 2008

Research and Incubation:

Ping 46: iPad, Ballmer & Gates, MS Paint, Office & Olympics

Laura Foy — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:47:00 GMT

The hottest stories on Microsoft campus this week include:

The iPad is here
Windows on Big Bang Theory
Ballmer signs a Mac
Gates Dances...SunDances...
4 years in MS Paint
Olympics & Office

Full Multi-Point Mouse demo

Ron Markezich: Microsoft Online Services Corporate Vice President

Charles — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:26:00 GMT

Meet Ron Markezich, the Microsoft corporate vice president responsible for Microsoft’s Online Services business. Learn about Ron’s career at Microsoft, and hear his thoughts on the past, present, and future of Microsoft Online Services.

What is BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), exactly? When did Microsoft form its online services vision? What does Ron think about the current state of online services? What are the next steps for Microsoft’s online services and the online services industry? How does online services fit into Microsoft's future plans?

Tune in.

Learn more in the Microsoft Online Services community:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/msonline
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MicrosoftOnlineServices
MOS Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/

The Access Show: Classified ads demo

tina10 — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:52:00 GMT

Microsoft has an internal classified ads Web site that allows employees to buy and sell stuff—think of it as a company Craigslist. Barath Balasubramanian a tester on the Access team decided to recreate the app using Access 2010. I asked Barath to join us on The Access Show for a little show and tell. He plans to share it on Office Online once we ship Access 2010 (it will automatically show up inside the Access’ BackStage New page). In the meantime Barath has shared a beta copy on UtterAccess.

Hopefully, it inspires some of you with new ideas for the contest.

Silverlight TV Episode 5: Using Metadata with MEF

John Papa — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:07:00 GMT

Hamilton Verissimo, Program Manager working on MEF, makes a return visit to Silverlight TV to follow up his discussion of MEF. This time Hamilton discusses different ways metadata can be used with MEF and suggests some pros and cons for each. As usual, he dives right into the code samples and gives some great guidance on MEF.

Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.

endpoint.tv - WCF Partner Neuron ESB

Ron Jacobs — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:36:00 GMT

Recently I sat down in the studio to have a look at a very cool product built on top of WCF. Our friends from Neudesic have built a really cool ESB implementation called Neuron ESB.

TWC9 - Silverlight 4, Win 7 Driving, Editable MVC Routes, F# Missile Launcher

Dan Fernandez — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:23:00 GMT

This week on Channel 9, Dan and Brian discuss the week's top developer news, including:

Silverlight team - Silverlight 4 for Facebook
- Interesting because: It's a beautiful app that shows off Silverlight 4 features, including Out-of-browser support
CodePlex team - CodePlex now supports native Mercurial
- Interesting because: Mercurial is a popular distributed version control system (DVCS) and Brian Harry who runs the TFS team said that "I fully expect that we will be adding distributed version control to TFS"
Nic Fillingham - Help Desk with Chris Pirillo pilot aired on Channel 9
- Interesting because: The feedback from the show was mostly positive and Chris plus some Windows gurus worked well.
Bertrand Le Roy - Server-side resizing with WPF
- Interesting because: If you need to dynamically create images on the server-side in ASP.NET, you should use WPF instead of GDI+
Pete Brown - Win 7 Driving using the Windows Sensor and Location API and WPF 4
- Interesting because: Pete built a demo that plots his GPS coordinates on a x-y grid (vehicular etch-a-sketch) and Pete discusses changes in the location API for the RTM of .NET Framework 4.
Tina Wood - 157 PowerPoint Templates
- Interesting because: Chances are you're not the best PowerPoint designer so being able to look through a series of reusable nicely design slides will make your life easier.
Walter Ferrari - Excel file viewer in Silverlight 4
- Interesting because: You can visualize Excel data in Silverlight and it's a working example of how to read xlsx files.
Justin Angel - What you can do with Silverlight 4 COM+ support, via Lester Lobo
- Interesting because: It's the best summary of what you can do, including read/write to any file, run an exe, add to startup, execute SQL, use Text-to-Speech, and more
Scott Guthrie - Extensible Output Caching with ASP.NET
- Interesting because: Output caching now supports extensibility so you can create your own output-cache provider.
Phil Haack - Two ways to do Editable routes - FileSystemWatcher (full trust) and App_Code
- Interesting because: The filesystemwatch method enables you to not have to restart your app domain to add/edit routes and the comments provide good alternatives to different ways to have editable routes.
Jason Haley - How to query Azure log tables with LINQPad
- Interesting Because: Using LINQ on data tables makes it easy to sort and filter your log file data
Eric Lippert - The difference between a destructor and a finalizer
- Interesting because: A destructor is deterministic (you know when memory is collected) a finalizer is non-deterministic (the garbage collector decides when to clean up), and the C# spec incorrectly uses the term destructor while the CLI spec correctly uses the term finalizer.
VB Team - What didn't get into VB10 - A future wish list
- Interesting because: The VB team wants your feedback on which features are the most important and why.
Coding4Fun - Louis Ingenthron - Making an Ocean with XNA
- Interesting because: Walks through how to simulate an ocean in XNA including using high-level shader language (HLSL)

Picks of the week

Dan's pick: Chris Smith - F# Missile Launcher with speech synthesis and facial recognition, via Coding4Fun
Brian's pick: Code Project - Tamir Gal - SharpPcap - Packet capture Framework for .NET

Nikolai Tillmann: Moles - Replace any .NET method with a delegate

Peli de Halleux — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:00:00 GMT

Nikolai Tillman, a member of the RiSE group at Microsoft Research, gives a short demo of Moles, a new framework that allows replacing any .NET method with a delegate. In the context of unit testing, one can use Moles to isolate from environment dependencies (such as time, file system, database, etc...) even when those dependencies are hard-coded through static method or sealed types. In this demo, Nikolai goes through the famous Y2K bug and how to test it...

Moles tutorial (pdf)

The Research in Software Engineering team (RiSE) coordinates Microsoft's research in Software Engineering in Redmond, USA.

Have You Seen Bing Map Apps?

Larry Larsen — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:41:00 GMT

Here's a tip you might not have seen yet. If you go to http://www.bing.com/maps/explore, you'll see a panel on the left. At the bottom of that panel on the right edge you'll see a button called "Map Apps". If you click that you'll find 19 applications that run on top of Bing. Some of the apps include:

Twitter Maps updates from Twitter are applied to Bing maps around the world.
Photosynth 3D photo browsing through synths inside Bing.
Urban Graffiti Images of spray painted graffiti in cities.
Urban Murals These are murals across the world including things like the huge guitar mural on the side of Hard Rock Cafe Nashville.
TrafficLand An amazing array of live traffic video from across the U.S.
Local Events See what events are happening around you.
Newseum See newspaper front pages for cities across the world.

A Look at Seesmic Look

Larry Larsen — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:27:00 GMT

Seesmic recently launched Look, a Twitter client aimed toward tech novices and people who want a very clean, simple Twitter experience. TechCrunch called it A Tablet-Friendly Twitter Client For The Oprah Crowd, that's a good description. The UI of Look allows for a comfortable touch experience and WPF gives Look a polish that really makes it worth having even if as a second Twitter client.

Seesmic Look organizes groups of Twitter feeds into a "Channel". For a company like TIME, they can have a single landing page with bigger graphics where you can see all of their Twitter accounts like CBS News and GMA. Look also allows you to follow Tweeters without having a Twitter account, which means you can follow without anyone knowing you're following them. Microsoft Sr. Platform Strategy Advisor Daryll McDade stopped by to give us a peek at Look and tell us more about it. You can download Seesmic Look here.