geekspeak

geekSpeak Recording - Composite Application Development with David Kelley

glengo — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:55:00 GMT

In this geekSpeak, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) David Kelley discusses composite application development in Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). He covers the Silverlight Designer/Developer workflow, tooling, design patterns, anti-practices, and working with distributed teams. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Mithun Dhar. Links and related resources mentioned in this episode can be found here.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To see upcoming live geekSpeaks, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Guest Info: David Kelley, Senior Software Architect, IdentityMine

David Kelley is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Microsoft Silverlight, and he has been building Web-based, distributed applications for more than ten years. He is a Silverlight user experience architect at IdentityMine, and his passion is building user experiences that are elegant and easy to use. David's career highlights include a Silverlight demonstration with Bill Gates at TechEd 2008, and developing the "Entertainment Tonight" Web site for the Silverlight 1 launch and Emmy Awards. In his spare time, David is the executive officer of the Seattle Designer Developer Interaction Group.

geekSpeak Recording - WCF Deployment Strategies with Keith Elder

Brian Johnson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:29:00 GMT

In this geekSpeak, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Keith Elder shares tips and techniques from his experience deploying Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services with Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7) in the enterprise. We look at setting up IIS7, configuring IIS 7 with multiple host headers, and how to make IIS7 work with WCF. This geekSpeak is hosted by Glen Gordon and Lynn Langit.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Presenter
Keith Elder, Senior Software Engineer, Quicken Loans
Keith Elder is the host of the popular online technology podcast Deep Fried Bytes. He is also a team leader and senior software engineer for Quicken Loans, the nation's largest online mortgage lender based in Livonia, Michigan, and he is the founder of the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, .NET User Group called Hub City NUG. Keith is an experienced technologist, systems administrator, software engineer, speaker, trainer, and all around geek. He has logged thousands of hours of teaching and has trained countless developers from various business sectors, ranging from top auto manufactures to Fortune 500 companies to universities. As a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and International .NET Association (INETA) speaker, he speaks throughout the United States at major technical conferences, Code Camps, and .NET user groups. Keith's ability to explain complex topics with a friendly, common sense, southern attitude makes him a highly regarded speaker at technical conferences. You can read more about Keith's interests, hobbies, rants, and raves on his blog at http://keithelder.net/blog/.

geekSpeak Recording - Accessibility and WPF with Robert Altland

glengo — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:28:00 GMT

In this episode of geekSpeak, we explore how to write accessible applications using Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Microsoft Silverlight with Robert Altland, a principal consultant with Neudesic. Robert provides a quick review of UI automation, the new accessibility framework for WPF, and Silverlight application development. This geekSpeak is hosted by Lynn Langit and Mithun Dhar.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Guest Info: Robert Altland, Principal Consultant, Neudesic, LLC

Based in Irvine, California, Robert Altland is a principal consultant with Neudesic, a leading Microsoft .NET professional services firm and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Robert's career has spanned the spectrum from design to development, which gives him unique insight into Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Microsoft Silverlight application development. He has been developing enterprise Web and Windows-based applications using the.NET platform since its release, and Robert has been actively developing WPF and Silverlight applications for the past two years.

geekSpeak Recording - Touch-based Computing with Brad Cunningham

Brian Johnson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:10:00 GMT

In this episode of geekSpeak, get acquainted with the tools and techniques for building touch-based interfaces for your applications. Industry expert Brad Cunningham walks you through the basics of the various hardware and software aspects of development, the gestures typically used, and more. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Lynn Langit and Mithun Dhar.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Presenter
Brad Cunningham, Senior Software Engineer, InterKnowlogy

Brad Cunningham is a senior software engineer at InterKnowlogy, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Carlsbad, CA. Brad has 10 years of industry experience developing a wide range of desktop and Web-based applications for many different industries. His work at InterKnowlogy focuses on bleeding-edge technologies such as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Microsoft Silverlight, and Microsoft Surface. Recently, InterKnowlogy has been breaking new ground in touch-based application development. As an early adopter of touch development, Brad has focused on the usability of touch applications and the challenges associated with transitioning from the desktop developer mindset to the touch developer mindset.

geekSpeak Recording - MVVM Patterns with Christopher Bennage and Rob Eisenberg

Brian Johnson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:20:00 GMT

In this episode of geekSpeak, we explore UI architectural patterns, such as the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern, with two Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, Christopher Bennage and Rob Eisenberg. Christopher and Rob share their experiences developing Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Microsoft Silverlight applications. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Brian Johnson.

Guest Presenters: Christopher Bennage, President, Blue Spire Consulting, Inc. and Rob Eisenberg, Partner, Blue Spire Consulting Inc.

Christopher Bennage is the president and cofounder of Blue Spire Consulting, Inc., a Florida-based software consulting firm specializing in Microsoft .NET technologies, user experience, and interface design. Christopher began programming on his Texas Instrument computer in elementary school, but fell in love with computers with the advent of the Commodore Amiga. His career has brought him through a number of various technologies before eventually landing him in the marvelous world of C# and the .NET Framework. His early interest in Flash, rich user experiences, and usability led him to be an early adopter of both Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Microsoft Silverlight.

More recently, he coauthored Sams Teach Yourself WPF in 24 Hours (Sams, 2008) with Rob Eisenberg. Christopher embraces the values of the Agile Software Manifesto and has been significantly influenced by Extreme Programming, Domain Driven Design, and other related practices. In his free time, Christopher is usually very distracted by a dozen different, competing creative ideas. His interests include liberal education, science, truth, beauty, video game development, and a number of deceased British authors. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife Sandra and their three children.

Rob Eisenberg is a Microsoft .NET architect and developer working out of Tallahassee, Florida. He is a partner with Christopher Bennage at Blue Spire Consulting, a software development firm specializing in .NET technologies, user experience, and interface design. Rob got his start with computer programming at the age of nine, when he thoroughly fell in love with his family's new Commodore 64. His fascination with programming started with the Commodore Basic language, then moved to Q and QuickBasic, quickly continued on to C, C++, and is presently C# and the .NET Framework. Rob publishes technical articles regularly at devlicio.us and has spoken at regional events and to companies concerning .NET technologies and Agile software practices. He is coauthor of Sams Teach Yourself WPF in 24 Hours (Sams, 2008) and is the architect and lead developer of the Caliburn Application Framework for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Microsoft Silverlight. Rob is happily married to his wife Anna, and he enjoys swing dancing, making artisan cheese, playing on his drum set, and teaching drums.

geekSpeak Recording - Parallel Computing APIs in .NET 4.0 with Mark Michaelis

Brian Johnson — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:42:00 GMT

We are approaching an asymptote for processor speeds using current technology. To overcome this, computer power is increasing by scaling the number of processors used within a system. This increase in multithreading capabilities, however, complicates development considerably. In this geekSpeak, we'll chat with Microsoft Regional Director Mark Michaelis about how .NET 4.0 simplifies this paradigm with new APIs that leverage the power of recent .NET language extensions and .NET 4.0 API enhancements - Task Parallel Library and ParallelLINQ. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Lynn Langit and Mithun Dhar.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Presenters: Mark Michaelis, Enterprise Software Architect, Itron, Inc.

Mark Michaelis is an Enterprise Software Architect at Itron Inc. Additionally, Mark recently started intelliTechture, a software engineering and consulting company with high end skills in Microsoft VSTS/TFS, BizTalk, SharePoint, and .NET 3.0. Mark also serves as a Chief Software Architect and Trainer for IDesign Inc. Mark holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Illinois and an MS in computer science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is also recognized by Microsoft as a Regional Directory. Starting in 1996, he has been a Microsoft MVP for C#, Visual Studio Team System, and the Windows SDK. He serves on several Microsoft software design review teams, including C#, the Connected Systems Division and VSTS/TFS. Mark speaks at developer conferences both nationally and internationally and has written several articles and books, in addition to maintaining a blog at http://mark.michaelis.net/Blog/. His most recent book is Essential C# 3.0 (Addison-Wesley, 2008). When not bonding with his computer, Mark is busy with his family or training for the Ironman.

geekSpeak Recording - What's New in Silverlight 3 with Shawn Wildermuth

Brian Johnson — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:44:00 GMT

In this episode of geekSpeak, we'll hear about some of the exciting new features of Microsoft Silverlight 3 from Microsoft MVP Shawn Wildermuth. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and G. Andrew Duthie.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Presenters: Shawn Wildermuth, President, Wildermuth Consulting; Glen Gordon, Senior Developer Evangelist, Microsoft and G. Andrew Duthie, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft

Shawn Wildermuth is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Microsoft Visual C# and an MCSD for Microsoft .NET. He is also a member of the International .NET Speakers Association (INETA) and has appeared at several national conferences to speak on a variety of subjects. Shawn is the author of dozens of articles and several books, including Pragmatic ADO.NET (Addison-Wesley Professional, 2002) and the upcoming book Prescriptive Data Architectures (Addison-Wesley Professional). Shawn is also the coauthor of four Microsoft Certification Training Kits for Microsoft Press. He is currently teaching Microsoft Silverlight across the country during his Silverlight Tour. Visit http://www.silverlight-tour.com/ for more information.

View other sessions from: geekSpeak: Join a Discussion Like No Other

geekSpeak Recording - WPF for the Business Programmer with Paul Sheriff

Brian Johnson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:40:00 GMT

Windows Presentation Foundation, is it really for business applications? Why would you choose this over Windows Forms? In this geekSpeak, we'll chat with industry guru and Microsoft Regional Director Paul Sheriff about the reasons why you would choose to use WPF over Windows Forms, and when you might not. Paul will show some concrete examples that illustrate how much easier it is to do certain tasks in WPF. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Lynn Langit.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

geekSpeak recording - The PowerThreading Library for Silverlight with Jeffrey Richter

Brian Johnson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:47:00 GMT

In this geekSpeak webcast, Jeffrey Richter talks about his AsyncEnumerator class that allows programmers to use a simple synchronous programming model to perform asynchronous operations, thereby writing highly scalable and responsive applications and components. The class is useful for console applications, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Web Forms, Web services, SQL, Microsoft Silverlight, and more.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and G. Andrew Duthie. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Guest Presenter: Jeffrey Richter, Cofounder, Wintellect

Jeffrey Richter is a cofounder of Wintellect, a training, debugging, and consulting firm dedicated to helping companies build better software, faster. He has written several best-selling programming books about Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Win32, including CLR via C# (Microsoft Press, 2006). Jeffrey is also a contributing editor to MSDN Magazine where he authors the "Concurrent Affairs" column.

geekSpeak recording - SQL Data Services with James Johnson

Brian Johnson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:46:00 GMT

Microsoft SQL Data Services (SDS) offers highly scalable and Internet-facing distributed database services in the cloud for storing and processing relational queries. In this geekSpeak webcast, James Johnson provides an overview of working with SQL Data Services—what it is, how it works, why you would want to use it, and why it is so cool. James highlights how to get started, shows to interact with the service, and steps through building an application.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Lynn Langit and Lindsay Rutter. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Guest Presenter: James Johnson, President, Inland Empire .NET User’s Group

James Johnson is the founder and president of the Inland Empire .NET User's Group. He has a great affinity for all things Web, data, user experience, and building community. James' passion is getting people access to experts, experiences, and technologies they never thought they would have access to or could achieve. James is a frequent blogger at www.duringlunch.com, and he is constantly working on the next big thing.

geekSpeak recording - What You May Not Know About the Visual Studio Team System 2008 with Mike Vincent

Brian Johnson — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:40:00 GMT

In this episode of geekSpeak, Mike Vincent shares some perspectives about how the Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 is a good investment in these tough economic times. Mike illustrates some of the ways the Visual Studio Team System 2008 can deliver value by getting your whole organization team involved to deliver successful projects. He touches on people, process, process templates, test-driven development (TDD), continuous integration, reports, and the value of good application life-cycle management. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Lynn Langit and Mithun Dhar.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Guest Presenter: Mike Vincent, Solutions Architect, MVA Software

Mike Vincent is a solutions architect based in Orange County, California. He provides clients with software architecture, application life-cycle management, and development services that primarily focus on Microsoft .NET technology. Mike has been in the software business for more than 20 years in engineering and marketing management positions. He founded both the Southern California Chapter of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) and the Orange County C# Developers group, and Mike is treasurer of INETA North America (NorAm). You can reach Mike through his blog at http://mvasoftware.com/blogs/mikev_weblog/default.aspx.

geekSpeak recording - Silverlight and ADO.NET Data Services with John Papa

Brian Johnson — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:57:00 GMT

In this geekSpeak, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) John Papa explores how to consume ADO.NET Data Services from a Microsoft Silverlight 2 application.

John Papa is a Microsoft Visual C# Most Valuable Professional (MVP), International .NET Association (INETA) speaker, member of the WPF and Silverlight Insiders, consultant, speaker, author, and trainer for ASPSOFT. He specializes in professional application development with Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual C#, Microsoft .NET, and Microsoft SQL Server. John has written over 60 articles and authored several books on data access technologies, including ASP.NET, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Microsoft Silverlight, ADO.NET, XML, and SQL Server. He can often be found speaking at industry conferences such as VSLive and DevConnections and viewed on MSDN webcasts. John is currently working on his upcoming book Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 (O'Reilly, 2009). You can always find John at http://johnpapa.net.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast.

Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Brian Johnson. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/geekSpeak.

geekSpeak recording - REST and the Windows Azure Services Platform with Adnan Masood

Brian Johnson — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:12:00 GMT

Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet.

In this geekSpeak webcast, Adnan Masood illustrates how to create and host services in the cloud. Adnan highlights key features of the platform software development kit (SDK), addresses how to implement RESTful interfaces (available remotely and from the data center), and describes how to run Microsoft ASP.NET Web applications or Microsoft .NET code in the cloud.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Lynn Langit and Lindsay Rutter. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

geekSpeak recording - Cloud Services 101 with Aaron Skonnard

Brian Johnson — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:48:00 GMT

A new platform is emerging—one that simplifies the process around deploying, hosting, and managing your applications, using low-cost shared infrastructure provided by a particular vendor. This type of platform is commonly referred to as "the cloud." This movement is producing a great deal of energy and excitement throughout the IT industry because of the business and technical benefits inherent in the model.

In this geekSpeak, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Aaron Skonnard explains what Microsoft is doing with cloud computing and how you can start taking advantage of "the cloud" in your applications.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast.

Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Lynn Langit and Lindsay Rutter. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

geekSpeak recording - SharePoint Wikis with David Mann

Brian Johnson — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:38:00 GMT

For this geekSpeak, David Mann, who was recently on geekSpeak in August 2008, returns for some more engaging discussion on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. This time, David enlightens us on best practices for implementing wiki sites using SharePoint Server.

You can find a list of resources for this talk here.

Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Dani Diaz.

Original Broadcast Date: October 8, 2008

To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

geekSpeak recording - ASP.NET Dynamic Data with Rachel Appel

Brian Johnson — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:59:00 GMT

In this geekSpeak, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Rachel Appel introduces you to the Microsoft ASP.NET Dynamic Data framework, discusses how it came to be, and shows how ASP.NET Dynamic Data makes it easy to maintain your Web sites. Rachel also covers creating customizations at the application, page, and field levels, so you can get the most out of this exciting technology.

This geekSpeak episode was recorded on October 1, 2008.

Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Lindsay Rutter.

To ask a question in advance of live webcasts, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

geekSpeak recording - Virtualization for Developers with Step

Brian Johnson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

In this geekSpeak, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Stephen Rose discusses why developers should look at using virtual environments for developing and the benefits of doing so. He addresses everything from the creation of a complete development environment's domain in a box to how to move these environments back and forth from virtual to physical and back again.

Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Mithun Dhar and Danilo Diaz.

Original Broadcast Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008

To ask a question in advance of a live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/geekSpeak.

geekSpeak recording - Dynamic Languages and the DLR with Mike Vincent

Brian Johnson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:59:00 GMT

In this geekSpeak, Mike Vincent explains how dynamic languages like Iron Python and Iron Ruby running on the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) give you new options when choosing the best tool for the job. Mike addresses the advantages you can gain from using dynamic languages, when and where you should consider dynamic languages, and what is important from the architect's view, the developer's view, and the business case view.

This episode of geekSpeak was recorded on September 10, 2008.

Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Peter Laudati.

To ask a question in advance of a live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

geekSpeak recording: The Mole Visualizer with Karl Shifflet

glengo — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:00:00 GMT

One of the things we like to do from time to time on geekSpeak is feature technology contributions that come out of the developer community. A very prominent contribution is the Mole project, a very popular and powerful visualizer for Visual Studio. Mole is a community project that’s been developed by several people, most notably Karl Shifflett, who is a Microsoft MVP for WPF .

In this geekSpeak, Karl runs through how to install Mole and gives some tips on how to use it with ASP.NET. Mole’s ability to drill down into your object trees and highlight what’s going on in there is indispensible when debugging your apps. I could list cool feature after cool feature of Mole, but it’s best to see them in action, so give this geekSpeak a viewing. Karl also gives some great tips for those of you who are feeling the urge to build your own visualizers. Karl totally deserves the Maverick reference we joke about during his introduction, he’s a top gun when it comes to Mole demos!

Since the time this geekSpeak was recorded, Karl has joined the team at Microsoft that builds the WPF designers (Cider) for Visual Studio. I’m sure we can look for continued WPF goodness from Karl in the future!

geekSpeak recording: Inside LINQ to XML with Paul Sheriff

glengo — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:07:26 GMT

In this geekSpeak, Paul Sheriff focuses on LINQ to XML and reveals lots of tips for getting up to speed with it. We loved seeing the new techniques for building XML documents using the XDocument type that are tremendous time savers. He helps us understand what is LINQ, what’s LINQ to XML, and what are the new XML handling capabilities of VB and C#. He shows a nice example of LINQ to SQL output with XML literals interleaved, as well as an actual LINQ to XML query that comes back with (surprise) XML.

Paul also addresses some of the why, where and when XML, which is something many of us face. He shows us how he uses XML for prototyping very quickly. Also Paul shares some simple yet great techniques he uses to keep his team members up to date on skills.

Other tips range from how to get Intellisense in XML in your project to working with aggregates to what the heck the SingleOrDefault method does. Are you an XPath guru? Watch Paul’s tips on incorporating XPath queries into LINQ to XML as a transitional approach.

Some fun moments on the show are Paul slipping in a COBOL .NET reference, and his explanation as to why he's glad he took an “anti-Glen” pill that morning. :)

Finally, Paul has a great freebie he’s making available for geekSpeak fans, so listen out for the URL he shares.

This geekSpeak was hosted by Glen Gordon and Lynn Langit.

About our guest: Paul Sheriff, President, PDSA, Inc.

Paul Sheriff is the president of PDSA, Inc., a Microsoft Certified Partner in Southern California. Paul acts as the Microsoft Regional Director for Southern California assisting the local Microsoft offices with several of their events each year and being an evangelist for them. He has authored several books, webcasts, videos, and articles on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft SQL Server, and Windows SharePoint Services. Paul can be reached via www.paulsheriffinnercircle.com.

geekSpeak recording: All About Team Build 2008 with Steven Borg

glengo — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:09:00 GMT

In this episode of geekSpeak, Steven Borg shares the merits of using Team Build 2008 to radically improve the quality of the code you write. Steven gives a great overview of how to set up automated builds and a build server, and the benefits of investing the time to do it right.

Steven also spends a bit of time talking about why he loves Test-Driven Development (TDD) - but pragmatically rather than zealously. Nonetheless, things like work items, build reports, logs and changesets available with Team Foundation Server can help developers zero in on bugs that "break the build". Breaking the build is bad, and we have a good chuckle about some of the stiff "penalties" that various development teams (even some within Microsoft) come up with for that infraction.

Also in this geekSpeak, get the scoop on what's on the horizon for setup and deployment projects, and hear about a great tool called WIX which makes building projects into MSI files super easy. Steven goes so far as to say that WIX actually changed the way he works, listen to him explain why.

Steven also gives tips on how many of you already have access to Team Foundation Server (and therefore, Team Build) and don't even know it. So it's easy to incorporate these tools into your software build process and, through the Continuous Integration they afford, drive up quality and enhance team involvement. As Steven says, it's like "a little bit of magic."

This geekSpeak was hosted by Lynn Langit and Mithun Dhar.

About our guest: Steven Borg

Steven Borg, a Northwest Cadence principal and the Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) practice lead, works with corporations to improve their automated build process and overall software development process. In addition, Steven assists the Team System community as a Team System Most Valuable Professional (MVP), and was a founding member of the Seattle-based VSTS User Group. Northwest Cadence is a Microsoft Certified Partner and VSTS Inner Circle partner that focuses exclusively on helping companies improve their Application Lifecycle Management using Visual Studio Team System.

geekSpeak recording: LINQ Migration Strategies with Jim Wooley

glengo — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:23:46 GMT

Here's a very practical geekSpeak that's loaded with tips on how to incorporate LINQ into existing architectures and applications. Our guest Jim Wooley has a longtime background with databases, coming out of the Access and Foxpro world. He shares his insights about how the advent of LINQ brings with it a new paradigm for working with data. This geekSpeak will get you thinking about data access in different ways - about a functional approach that's less about iterative manipulation - plus how this type of data access will find its home in future technologies like Silverlight.

As for thoughts of any actual "migrations" you might have been entertaining, give some thought to Jim's tips in here and consider the business justification and trade-offs. Listen to Jim's points about maintainability and how you can use LINQ to enhance what you're already doing. It's compelling to think about getting some slick benefits from LINQ to SQL like cached query plans and precompiled optimizations, as well as free concurrency checking without having to rewrite your whole application.

Conceptually, you'll get a better sense of what's in LINQ versus what's in LINQ to SQL by considering things like the fact that CRUD operations are a part of LINQ to SQL, not LINQ. And that the CRUD equivalent in LINQ to XML for example is a save/load of the whole document.

Architecturally, Jim explains why passing DataContext objects across tiers is a bad idea, and what parts of your LINQ objects you should and shouldn't pass. He also touches on how ADO.NET Data Services (Project Astoria) will be able to expose anything that implements IQueryably to the outside world, and how it will be extended to allow updates as well.

Practically, Jim runs through how he updated the data access layer of the Personal Website Starter Kit (an ASP.NET 2.0 sample). You can do this yourself, and it's a great chance to learn about applying LINQ to an existing architecture. He also illustrates how (forgetting data access for a moment) LINQ can help you write better loops and finds, and gets you ready for parallelism in LINQ.

Also, for no good reason, Jim also shows a neat trick for writing a single VB statement on multiple lines by using XML literals.

About our guest: Jim Wooley

Jim is a Microsoft MVP and has been working with .Net since the initial PDC bits in 2000, releasing his first application 1 week before the .Net 1.0 go-live. He has been active evangelizing LINQ since it's announcement in 2005. Jim is actively involved in the Atlanta developer community and is a frequent speaker. He is a co-author of the recently released “LINQ in Action” http://www.manning.com/marguerie/. Jim's blog is http://www.thinqlinq.com

geekSpeak recording: Tame Your Software Dependencies with James Kovacs

glengo — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:20:47 GMT

For your viewing enjoyment, here is a very thought provoking geekSpeak episode. James Kovacs is the guest, and he really shows us the the shortcomings of tightly coupled architectures from the perspective of testing and maintenance.

James gives lots of guidance on how to avoid introducing dependencies that result in too-tightly-coupled a design. The decoupled approach makes a lot of sense once you see it, and you've probably been doing it to a lesser degree without even being aware of it.

There's also a lot of good discussion in here about Test Driven Development, and how tight coupling impacts the ability to create effective tests that are poor at isolating the errors you need to fix. James shows how using unit testing frameworks can reveal this coupling nicely.

James also introduces the concept of mock objects, and compares them to fake objects. He also shows off a couple of interesting tools.

Watch this geekSpeak to learn more about how you can create more nimble code bases and avoid ripple effects when code is changed. Also, see if you can figure out where Glen's audio got disconnected! Be sure to read the article James wrote for MSDN magazine to extend your learning.

More resources related to this geekSpeak can be found on our geekSpeak blog.

About our guest: James Kovacs

James is an independent architect, developer, trainer, and jack-of-all-trades, specializing in agile development using the Microsoft .NET Framework. He is passionate about helping developers create flexible software using test-driven development (TDD), unit testing, object-relational mapping, dependency injection, refactoring, continuous integration, and related techniques. He is a founding member of the Plumbers @ Work podcast, which is syndicated by MSDN Canada Community Radio. James is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Solutions Architect and card-carrying member of ALT.NET, a group of software professionals continually looking for more effective ways to develop applications. He received his master's degree from Harvard University. James can be reached through his blog http://www.jameskovacs.com

geekSpeak recording: Advanced ASP.NET with Michele Leroux Bustamante

llangit — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:43:16 GMT

Michèle Leroux Bustamante is chief architect of IDesign Inc., Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Connected Systems. At IDesign, Michèle provides training, mentoring, and high-end architecture consulting services focusing on Web services, scalable and secure architecture design for Microsoft .NET, federated security scenarios, Web services, and interoperability and globalization architecture. Michele participates in software design reviews for products in the Microsoft road map, including Windows Communication Foundation, CardSpace, and other security-focused products. She is a member of the International .NET Speakers Association (INETA), a frequent conference presenter, conference chair for SD West, and is frequently published in several major technology journals. Michele is also on the board of directors for IASA (International Association of Software Architects), and a program advisor to University of California San Diego (UCSD) Extension. Her latest book is Learning WCF (O'Reilly, 2007)—see her book blog here: www.thatindigogirl.com. Reach her at www.idesign.net and her main blog at www.dasblonde.net.

In the geekSpeak, Michele discusses timely topics in ASP.NET such as extending the ASP.NET profile service by appropriately using custom HttpModules to support dynamic implementation of master pages, application localization and more. She goes on to discuss improvements to ASP.NET like the AJAX-programming paradigm with asynchronous access to data, and then the ASP.NET 3.5 extensions - new MVC, new ADO.NET data services libraries.

Michele gives her perspective on RIAs, including Flash, Silverlight, typical web applications and WPF (or rich client) - when to use which one from an architectural perspective.

She goes on to discuss SOAP vs. REST WCF services and the evolution of the programming model from raw SOAP message construction to REST-based calls which include wrappers and then onto JSON-based WCF services. Next she shows the the ServiceHostFactory, and the WebScriptServiceHostFactory. She then presents the ASP.NET extensions ADO.NET data services (formerly Astoria). She concludes with an interesting discussion of when to use which type of service - SOAP or REST.

geekSpeak recording: Building Animations in Silverlight with Cal Schrotenboer

glengo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:19:44 GMT

Recorded on March 12th, 2008.

In this installment of geekSpeak, Cal Schrotenboer walks us through various ways of creating animations in Silverlight. In addition to the raw XAML, Cal shows us some interesting tips inside of Visual Studion and Expression Blend. There are some very effective techniques illustrated here, and can be viewed live in action by visiting the site Cal uses in the demonstrations - http://www.drinkmate.com. This show was hosted by Glen Gordon and Mithun Dhar

Guest information: Cal Schrotenboer

Cal is a Microsoft Visual C# developer with experience building Windows Forms application front ends for Microsoft SQL Server databases. He also teaches several programming classes at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California, and Microsoft Network Administration (MCSE) classes at Mission College in Santa Clara. Recently Cal has been specializing in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). He has presented several MSDN webcasts on various WPF topics, and has spoken to user groups and code camps throughout California about WPF. Cal maintains a WPF blog at www.WPFLearningExperience.com. In his spare time, Cal enjoys travel and photography.

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