http://news.cassienet.com/source-110.htm Latest headlines from Dot Net Show Blog The .NET Show: WinFX SDK (Live! From PDC'05)(http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode054/manifest.xml) Yeah, it's been a while since the last episode was released, but hey! there's been a lot going on! (ok, probably an old excuse). To film this episode, we went "on location" to beautiful downtown Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This was the site of "PDC'05" (Microsoft Professional Developers Conference), and flimed it on a special set done up for us in the center of all of the activity. It was a lot of fun, and we enjoyed the chance to get out and chat with a bunch of our viewers. The PDC is all about development, and so it only made since to do an episode that was focused specifically on the development tools and documentation for the upcoming Windows Vista. So my guests for this episode were Steven Goulet, the Group Program Manager for the Windows SDK, as well as a couple of the folks who work for him, Christine Kleinke, and Brent Rector. Steven and Christine shared with us the varioius features and aspects of the SDK, and how to try to create great developer documentation to aid all of you in the development of your Windows applications. Then Brent joined us to show off some of the tools that are included as part of the SDK, there really are some handy utilities that they provide that when properly used can greatly aid your development tasks. For our next episode, we are working with the Visual Studio's team to provide some insights on the capabilities of the new "Team System" that is being rolled into Visual Studio 2005. Thanks-Robert Hess... http://news.cassienet.com/item-288471.htm Mon, 07 Nov 2005 19:00 Are YOU going to the PDC? WE ARE! No doubt you'll be seeing Erica, myself, and our camera crew all over the PDC where we will be filming various special segments for the PDC as well as filming our next episode. In our PDC episode, we'll be talking with Steven Goulet and some of the members of his team. They are the brains behind the "Windows Vista SDK", which represents the core of the API information and resources that you will use for developing applications for Windows Vista. Steve will share with us some of the insight about how the SDK comes together, how they try to organize and maintain the SDK, as well as some of the additional tools, sample applications, and resources that they've gathered together to make your development tasks as easy as possible. If you'd like to join us for the filming of this episode, here are the details: Date: Wednesday, September 14thTime: 12:30 - 1:30Place: Lunchroom Ok, so "Lunchroom" is a tad vague... This year the lunchroom is split in two. Tables on the left, tables on the right, and in the center is where the expo hall, hands on labs, store, etc are located. In the back left corner of this center section we'll have a small stage set up that faces out toward the lunch tables near it (or at least that's the plan!). Sit at those tables during lunch, and you'll be part of our audience. I guess this is what they call "dinner theater?" This same stage will be used by ".NET Rocks" for recording content for their show as well! Hope to see you all there! -Robert... http://news.cassienet.com/item-224003.htm Fri, 09 Sep 2005 15:20 The .NET Show: Windows XP Media Center Editionhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode053/manifest.xml) The computer is in the midst of an important transition. The time was, when it was  "just" a computer, that hunk of metal on your desk that you used for writing documents, playing games, or programming on (until the wee hours of the morning). Lately, we've seen the computer move off of the desktop and into your phones, cars, and even watches. They are doing more then just becoming an "appliance" like a toaster, but are showing how they can deeply integrate their services and capabilities into various parts of our lives. Windows XP Media Center Edition (or just MCE for short), is an illustration of one way that the rich feature set of the computer can almost invisibly provide us with a new level of data integration by turning itself into a rich media component of our A/V system. In this episode of The .NET Show, my guests discuss the role that MCE plays in the home, and how it can help change the way people interact with their various media services today. John Canning and Charlie Owen provide details about the broad range of potential customers for MCE, and how different partners can integrate specific experiences within the MCE environment. Then Michael Creasy joins Charlie Owen to show some actual coding, and illustrate how easy it is for an MCE application to re-purpose many of the media services within specialized applications. Sure, this isn't quite the same thing as running your toaster at 3ghz, but providing such a seamless experience for your home media usage is a pretty compelling illustration of where computers are going. Thanks-Robert Hess NOTE: At the end of this episode we mention that the next episode will be on IE7... timeing constraints are going to force us to push that episode off for a while. The next episode will be one that we film down at the PDC. See you there!... http://news.cassienet.com/item-199829.htm Tue, 16 Aug 2005 15:20 The .NET Show: Management Services(http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode052/manifest.xml) I think that the only time that I actually add "Event Logging" code to my applications, is when I'm doing it to demonstrate some feature or aspect of the event logging code. And the event logs themselves, I rarely look at them at all, except to delete them from one of the antiquated servers running in my office when their disk space gets low. Somebody was telling me the other day at how much better the eventing system is getting, and how much better application health and management will be, which will be great news for IT administrators... and while monitoring system events will be helpful, it will be even better if all of the applications being used in an enterprise environment utilzing the improved logging system as well. So it sounded like this would be a good topic to discuss on the show. I invited Alex Sutton and Marty Hough to explain some of the great work they've been doing with the Management Services of Windows, as well as show their new event viewer, codnamed "Crimson", which tries to address most of the needs and issues that have surrounded the original Event Viewer that hasn't really changed much since Windows NT was first released more than ten years ago. Do you think your usage of the Managment Services will change much after watching this episode? Let us know why, or why not, by dropping us a note in the "comments" section of this blog entry. Thanks-Robert Hess... http://news.cassienet.com/item-158191.htm Thu, 07 Jul 2005 08:20 The .NET Show: 64-Bit Windows (http://m sdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/episode051/manifest.xml) Don't you sometimes wish that system innovation would just slow down for a while? No? Me neither :-> It seems like only yesterday that we were focused on moving from the 16-bit world to the new and improved 32-bit one, and now I'm pleased to announce that the 64-bit world is not only looming on the horizon, but it is already here! In my current episode of The .NET Show, I talk with Larry Sullivan, Volker Will, and Kevin Frei to learn more about the move to 64-bit, and what it might mean to your development efforts.   Larry Sullivan and Volker Willexplain the benefits of moving to 64-bits. In the first segment, Larry Sullivan and Volker Will discuss with me not only the value of 64-bit windows, but the issues and needs facing developers who are moving their applications as well. The process is a lot easier than it was in the 16-to-32 days, this time around it will usually be just a recompile that is necessary in order to get your applications fully enabled for the new 64-bit processors.   Don't blink, or you'll miss Kevin Freishowing how quick and easy it is tomove your application to 64-bits! In our second segment, Kevin Frei illustrates how easy it can be to convert an existing 32-bit application over to 64-bit... it really can be just as easy as a re-compile. There can of course be other little issues that might make it a little more difficult than that, but most of this will be related to how properly you coded up your usage of ints and pointers, and if you are using any third 32-bit DLLs that won't be directly callable from a 64-bit applications (No "thunking" layer this time around!). So check out this episode, and let us know what you think by dropping us a note in the "comments" section of this blog entry. Thanks-Robert Hess ... http://news.cassienet.com/item-143089.htm Wed, 22 Jun 2005 12:40 Ok, so we are perhaps a little bit late with this episode, but at least we finally got it posted... http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode042/ In this episode I talk with David Ornstein, Pablo Fernicola, Rob Relyea, and Nathan Dunlap about “Avalon” which is the new graphical programming model for “Longhorn”. There are a lot of changes that are going to be coming into play with Avalon. Not only is it a “vector” based display model, but it also comes with a new programming approach that leverages “XAML” (zamel) as an XML based layout description that will allow designers to work with XAML editing tools so that they can play a more direct role in the development in application interfaces and graphics, while the programmer continues to work primarily in C, C++, VB, C#, or whatever other .NET programming language they choose. In this episode we are also using a new Multiple Bitrate Encoding for the streams, which will automatically detect the right stream to play back based on your connection bandwidth. So you'll see only a single “Watch It Now!” link on the page instead of the multiple 56k, 100k, 300k, buttons. Use the comments section of this blog entry to let us know if you have any problems with this. And this Friday Erica and I will be filming our next episode, which will be on Longhorn Fundamentals. This will be our final Longhorn focused episode for a while.... http://news.cassienet.com/item-131094.htm Thu, 19 May 2005 18:20 Last Friday we filmed our next episode of The .NET Show, this one was on the slightly more elusive topic of “Longhorn Fundamentals”. In the first half of the show we talk with Glenn Pittaway and Sanjay Shenoy about how various things like security, click-once, deployment, and management are features of Longhorn that bear important consideration for application developers. And while the Longhorn environment will provide a lot of specific features to these, there are many ways you can, and should, be thinking about this in the programs you are developing today. In the second half of the show we talked with Jeffrey Snover and Jim Truher about “Monad”, this is just a small component of the overall “Fundamentals” pillar for Longhorn, but it's far enough along to actually be something you can play around with today, and frankly I think it is amazingly cool as well. We also had a little bit of “excitement” in the studios during the filming of this episode... but you'll have to look at the slideshow I posted on Shutterfly to see what this was :-> Here is a link to the backstage pictures from this episode that I've uploaded to my account on Shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAtmrdw2asmJp   A slightly different look for the set of this episode... http://news.cassienet.com/item-131093.htm Thu, 19 May 2005 18:20 Just a little bit late, but we've just posted a new episode of “The .NET Show”. http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode043/default.asp In this episode, we close out the coverage of the “Pillars Of Longhorn” by covering the “Fundamentals”. As a specific topic, this might be a little on the vague side, but that doesn't in any way decrease the importance of dealing with application and system fundamentals as part of our overall Longhorn Objectives. It might be easy to list off and identify core technologies such as Avalon for Graphics, WinFS for Data Storage, and Indigo for Communications, but the fourth pillar of "Longhorn" is a little more elusive then that. Longhorn "Fundamentals" is an important part of what we feel is part of the core experience of Longhorn. It includes User Experience, System Security, Application Deployment, System Manageability, as well as many other features and capabilities. We start out with Sanjay Shenoy and Glenn Pittaway covering some of the core architectural concepts associated with several of the Fundamentals of Longhorn. Later, Jeffrey Snover and Jim Truher provide an exciting demo of "Monad" (aka. MSH), a new and highly programmable command shell that will be available in Longhorn. I for one, and quite interested in the features and capabilities that Monad/MSH represents. Just because graphical interfaces are “cool”, doesn't mean that there is significant value and functionality that can be provided through more of a command oriented interface. Hopefully you'll find this special demonstration to spark your interests as well.... http://news.cassienet.com/item-131092.htm Thu, 19 May 2005 18:20 A new episode of The .NET Show is now available: http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode046/default.asp In this episode we will be looking at the benefits and capabilities of "Connected Systems". While I suppose technically if you stick a network cable into the back of your laptop that could be called a connected system... that's not what we are talking about here :-> By "Connected System" we are referring to the use of and aggregation of potentially disseperate data/processing services that are capable of being connected together in ways in which the original developers may not have even imagined. The increased reliance on networking in general, and specifically the Internet, has brought about an infrastructure that allows and supports richly distributed information and processing. While this might commonly take the form of Web-based solutions and applications, it is becoming increasingly popular to be utilized by "Smart Client" applications (as we saw in our previous episode) through the utilization of "Connected Systems". In this episode, we talk with Don Box and Doug Purdy about how today's networking infrastructure can be utilized in order to create a Connected System environment, and why this is important. Later, Eric Schmidt and Richard Turner walk us through several coding demonstrations which illustrate how this can be implemented and utilized. And in the "Somebody@Microsoft.com" segment, Erica interviews Jennifer Ritzinger to discuss her role in the Platform Evangelism Group, and how she works with third party developers.... http://news.cassienet.com/item-131091.htm Thu, 19 May 2005 18:20 It's true, we've now hit the big Five-Oh in production of the .NET Show! Yesterday, we finished filming... er... taping this special episode, and needless to say we did something a little special this time. For one thing, we had a "live" studio audience that could sit in and watch the entire process, flubs, goofs, and waiting around for minor set changes, and for guests to arrive. We also streamed the filming to campus, so that Microsoft employees could watch it live from their offices. Haven't found how how many folks watched it yet, I -hope- it was a lot. The topic I chose for this episode was "The Future of the Platform". No, we aren't going to reveal any hidden secrets or specifics about "post-Longhorn" technologies, instead my guests and I discuss the overall concepts of where technology overall is heading, how the platform could, should, and must adapt to be able to provide developers and users with great applications and solutions, and also about the underlying basic concepts that many of our technologies are grounded in, and how we continue to evolve them in order to make the platform more robust, secure, efficient, and interconnected. My guests for the first segment were Brad Abrams, Michael Wallent, Steve Millet, and John Shewchuk. In the second segment, I talked with  Rick Rashid, the Senior VP in charge of Microsoft Research, and we discussed the role that MSR plays in examining and experimenting with various technlogies that can aid us in building a better platform. There is little in the way of direct and actionable develoment knowledge that we discuss in this episode, but frankly I found the overall discussion to be facinating, entertaining, as well as enlightening. I hope you will to. We will hopefully have this episode out in three to four weeks, but in the meantime here are some pictures that I took backstage during filming:   Here is a pre-show shot of the set we are using this time. Here is the director and producer of the show back in the production booth getting ready for the show. Here's Erica getting made up. Since it's my camera, there obviously are more pictures of her on it then there are of me! Once we finished with filming for the day, we all went next door for a party to celebrate with! That Channel 9 Guy sure likes to get around, doesn't he... Oh, and did I forget to mention that for Erica's Somebody@microsoft.com segment she got to interview Bill Gates? Here is a quick photo we took with Bill, Erica, myself, and the rest of the crew right after we finished:... http://news.cassienet.com/item-131089.htm Thu, 19 May 2005 18:20