Tag Archives: microsoft

Help bring Tech Days Canada to Edmonton!

By Mack D. Male ·

Microsoft is planning the 2010 edition of Tech Days Canada, and they’re considering a stop here in Edmonton. In previous years, local developers have had to make the trip down to Calgary. If you’ve never heard of Tech Days, here’s what it’s all about:

With forty 200+ level sessions, Tech Days is the learning conference on both current technologies and new products like Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and much more.

The idea is to bring technical training content from TechEd, Mix, PDC, and other Microsoft conferences to Canadian developers and IT pros. There are sessions on Silverlight, test driven development, virtualization, IIS7, SharePoint, refactoring, Visual Studio, and more. I have led three sessions at Tech Days Calgary in past years, on ADO.NET Data Services, Internet Explorer 8, and REST Services with WCF.

When Microsoft was planning Tech Days 2009, they considered stopping here, but we lost out to Halifax. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to see that happen again.

I think there are definitely enough local developers and IT professionals to host Tech Days here, so let’s make the decision for Microsoft an easy one! If you want to see Tech Days come to Edmonton this year, email damirb@microsoft.com, or tweet your interest!

Windows 7 Feature Request: Unified Application Updates

By Mack D. Male ·

I’m sick of the way software updates are handled in Windows, and I want a new unified application update center in Windows 7 to solve the problem. Apparently Microsoft is asking Windows 7 beta participants questions related to “a single place for finding and managing updates on my PC.” The survey seems to go beyond updating however, and covers installing, uninstalling, configuring, and even discovering new applications. I think they should keep it simple – make updating applications easy.

The problem today is that every new application ships with its own update mechanism, if it has the ability at all. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told the Adobe Updater to screw off because it has started automatically downloading 500 MBs worth of updates in the background. At least Logitech asks me before it starts using my bandwidth. Why is it bad for each application to have its own updater?

  • Instead of one OS component running to perform updates, dozens of little apps or background processes may be running to support the various applications you have installed. Each one takes resources.
  • Every time I want to configure an updater, I have to start from scratch because they all have different interfaces and options. This wastes my time.
  • Related to the previous point, if I want to see if my applications are up-to-date, I have to check each one individually! Again, this wastes my time.

I’m not sure exactly how Microsoft would go about implementing this (do Adobe servers push notifications to Microsoft servers?) but I think it should be like Windows Update on steroids. Here’s what I want:

  • The ability to see all of my applications and whether or not they are up-to-date.
  • The ability to define a schedule for downloading and installing updates, preferably on a per-application basis.
  • The ability to see a complete history of application updates.
  • The ability to easily suspend all updating temporarily.
  • Options for notifications. I want to be notified about some application updates, and others I never want to hear about.
  • The ability to have a restore point set before each update.

I think having unified application updates would drastically improve the user experience on Windows. It would reduce user frustration and improve system performance and security. The survey is definitely encouraging – I hope this becomes a reality!

Thoughts on the updated Windows Live Essentials Beta

By Mack D. Male ·

Like many of you, I’ve been using the various Windows Live desktop applications for a long time now. Until fairly recently however, they all looked and felt different from one another. There wasn’t much cohesion. That changed when Microsoft began to make the UIs similar and launched the Windows Live Installer which integrated all the apps. Recently, they gave the suite a better name (Windows Live Essentials) and did even more work to achieve a consistent look and feel. On Monday, they released the latest beta refresh.

windows live

I have most of the apps installed – Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, and Toolbar. The only one I don’t have is Family Safety. I use Messenger, Photo Gallery, and Writer every day, and the others I use less. The install also includes the Office Outlook Connector, Office Live Add-In, Silverlight, and the Microsoft Sync framework.

I’m fairly impressed with the suite so far, but I still think it’s far from perfect. Here are a few of the things I really like:

  • The new icons look great and are consistent.
  • I love the simplified presence indicators in Messenger (these were in the previous beta too – now there’s just Available, Busy, Away, and Appear Offline).
  • In the old beta, Messenger would always sign out if I switched from Appear Offline to something else. That has been fixed, thankfully. Seems faster too.
  • Writer is easily the best blog publishing tool I’ve ever used. It just works the way I want it to. I don’t know what to say specifically, but it’s awesome.
  • Person recognition and tagging in Photo Gallery absolutely rocks! Very cool feature, useful too.

And here are a few things I really dislike:

  • Photo Gallery is ridiculously slow to load. Once it’s open it seems fine, but from launching the app to being ready to use takes forever. I’ve only got about 36 GB of photos on this machine, so I’m sure there are users with far more.
  • In Messenger, you can no longer control the color of your chat windows. It’s based on the theme/color of the person you’re chatting with. Not sure I like that…it’s a window on MY computer, after all.
  • Speaking of colors, I still don’t like that the apps are inconsistent. I can set Messenger to look black, but Writer looks grey (even though I’ve set the color to be the same as Messenger), and Photo Gallery looks light blue and lacks a color setting button. Why there isn’t a color setting like the one in Office 2007 is beyond me. It can’t be that hard!

In general, I like Windows Live Essentials. It’s definitely something I’d install when setting up a new computer. I look forward to the final release!

All browsers have security issues

By Mack D. Male ·

ielogo You may have heard in the last day or so about a critical flaw found in Internet Explorer. Microsoft says that “the vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer.” The risk is mitigated if you run an account with fewer privileges or if you run IE in the High security mode. As always, you should ensure your machine is up-to-date with all of the latest patches at Microsoft Update (you can also find downloads at the Microsoft Download Center).

Unlike most zero day exploits, this one is actually infecting systems fairly quickly. That’s probably why Microsoft decided to take immediate action. As the Zero Day blog points out:

Researching, fixing, testing, and releasing a security patch within an eight day window is an incredible feat — especially given the need to support all versions of IE across all platforms and languages.  This is an ‘all hands on deck’ response from Microsoft – I don’t think we’ll see this as the norm for less critical patches in the future as it is quite disruptive to their own processes.

Make sure you update soon! Like right now!

When a vulnerability like this is disclosed, a common suggestion is to install and use a different browser, such as Firefox. That’s not a bad idea, but don’t think that will solve all of your problems! All browsers have security issues. Yesterday, for instance, Opera released an update to address at least seven security vulnerabilities. And today, Firefox released updates to both versions 2 and 3 to patch roughly a dozen security holes. And no, Chrome and Safari are not off the hook – just two days ago, they tied for last place in a test of password security.

Always make sure you’re running the latest version with all patches installed, no matter which browser you’re using. On top of that, be careful, pay attention, and use common sense when clicking links and opening files.

Great Marketing: Techie Crunch

By Mack D. Male ·

For the most part, I’d say that Tech Days 08 went as expected this week (in Calgary). Lots of people showed up, some were more interested and enthusiastic than others, and there was a mix of great content and average content. Another thing you can typically count on at a Microsoft event is a bag full of swag. Tech Days attendees did in fact receive swag, but it didn’t come in a bag!

I can’t tell you how many bags I’ve collected at Microsoft events over the years. It’s the same thing, over and over – a bag (sometimes paper, sometimes fabric) filled with marketing materials, a pen, trial software, and sometimes a book or full version of an application. The contents were similar at Tech Days, but the packaging was quite unique:

Techie Crunch Tech Days 2008

Maybe a little over-the-top, but I love it!

Techie Crunch is “Brain Food for a Healthy Mind” and comes complete with a “Free Brain Warming Toque”. It looks just like a cereal box, with all the graphics and marketing you’d expect, a fake UPC code, and my favorite – Nutrition Facts and Ingredients! As you can see they did some work with the contents too, including the toque and a plastic spoon (actually a pen).

This must have a been a fun project for the marketing team to work on. It might seem like a small thing, but it’s details like this that turn an average experience into something more memorable. Well done!

You can see a few more photos of the box with my other Tech Days photos here.

Tech Days Canada 2008 Instructors on Twitter

By Mack D. Male ·

tech days My list of CanUX 2008 Attendees on Twitter was well-received (and I found it useful myself), so I thought I’d do something similar for Tech Days. Instead of attendees however (not possible given that thousands of people across the country have attended), I’ve started a list of instructors on Twitter (there are about 70 instructors listed at the official site). The people on this list are leaders in the Developer and IT Pro communities in Canada, so follow them and I’m sure you’ll learn something new!

Here is everyone I’ve found so far:

Christian Beauclair – http://twitter.com/cbeauclair
Damir Bersinic – http://twitter.com/damirb
John Bristowe – http://twitter.com/jbristowe
Rodney Buike – http://www.twitter.com/rbuike
Miguel Carrasco – http://twitter.com/miguelcarrasco
Kelly Cassidy – http://twitter.com/k_cassidy
Rick Claus – http://twitter.com/rickster_cdn
Joey deVilla – http://twitter.com/accordionguy
Stephen Giles – http://twitter.com/stephengiles
Barnaby Jeans – http://twitter.com/bjeans
Adam Kahtava – http://twitter.com/adamdotcom
James Kovacs – http://twitter.com/jameskovacs
Paul Laberge – http://twitter.com/plaberge
Mack Male – http://twitter.com/mastermaq
Jason Miller – http://twitter.com/jason_miller
Daniel Nerenberg – http://twitter.com/danieldcn
John Oxley – http://www.twitter.com/joxley
Steve Porter – http://twitter.com/stevevrporter
Pierre Roman – http://twitter.com/pierreroman
Bil Simser – http://twitter.com/bsimser

If you should be on the list or know of someone else who should be, please let me know and I’ll update it!

You might want to follow the official Tech Days Canada account too!

My Tech Days Sessions: ADO.NET Data Services and Internet Explorer 8

By Mack D. Male ·

I’m in Calgary right now at Microsoft’s new paid conference, Tech Days. Despite being a little critical of the event when I first heard about it, I was asked to speak in Calgary. I figured it would be a great opportunity to get a first-hand look at the event so that I can offer more constructive feedback for future editions of Tech Days, and besides, I love sharing what I know with others!

I did the first two presentations in the Web Developer track – a session on ADO.NET Data Services followed by an introduction to Internet Explorer 8 for developers. I think my presentations went well for the most part, despite a few glitches with the demos. Initial feedback from people in the audience was positive anyway! Here are a few resources.

Goin’ Up to the Data in the Sky: ADO.NET Data Services for Web Developers

Internet Explorer 8 for Developers: What You Need to Know

Thanks to everyone who came to the sessions – feel free to contact me if you have additional questions.

Also, thanks to John Bristowe and the team at Microsoft for the opportunity to be involved with Tech Days. I’m looking forward to the rest of the sessions!

WebKit inside Internet Explorer? No thanks

By Mack D. Male ·

webkit Inside every web browser is something called a rendering engine. The browsers get most of the glory, but it’s actually the rendering engines that do the heavy lifting. Firefox uses Gecko, Opera uses Presto, Chrome and Safari use WebKit, and Internet Explorer uses Trident. There are a few others as well, but those are the main ones. Gecko and WebKit are open source, Presto and Trident are proprietary.

Much was made of the fact that Google decided to use WebKit inside Chrome instead of building yet another rendering engine. I agree that it was the right move. Should Microsoft follow suit and replace Trident with WebKit? Steve Ballmer made some interesting comments today on the topic:

"There will still be a lot of proprietary innovation in the browser itself so we may need to have a rendering service," Ballmer said, adding, "Open source is interesting. Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8."

That prompted more than a few people to wish for Ballmer’s comments to come true, including Steve Hodson who said:

This idea of IE switching over to using the WebKit engine is interesting on a couple levels. First this would put two main browsers on an equal footing as far as rendering ability which would make for a much easier development cycle. It would also make for a better browsing experience for the users as developers would no longer be forced to program against the vagaries of IE.

I hear that last point all the time and it drives me nuts. Yes, Internet Explorer 6 was a nightmare to code for. But that’s simply not the case for Internet Explorer 7 or the recent Internet Explorer 8 beta. At least not in my experience.

I’d hate to see Microsoft adopt WebKit, for a few reasons:

  • Competition is good, and WebKit needs worthy competitors to continue to push the boundaries.
  • There’s nothing wrong with Trident. Why throw away something that works well and is continually improving? And I’m not just talking about the version of Trident in IE8. Microsoft has had full support for things like contentEditable since IE6, something Mozilla/Gecko still hasn’t gotten right.
  • It’s not like the existing versions of Internet Explorer would magically disappear! This would be yet another browser/rendering engine combo that developers would need to test against.

And there are good reasons that Microsoft won’t adopt WebKit too, not the least of which is licensing. Backwards compatibility is a concern also.

It might sound appealing at first, but I don’t think it would be a good thing if all the major browsers used the same rendering engine.

Windows 7 Revealed

By Mack D. Male ·

Today at PDC, Microsoft gave the first public demonstration of Windows 7. They’ve been pretty tight-lipped about the new OS until now (with the one exception being the Engineering 7 blog), in stark contrast to the way Vista was announced. I read some of today’s reaction, and I’ve been reading the news over the last couple of weeks too. Here are a few of the things we know about Windows 7:

  • The final name will be simply Windows 7.
  • The version number will be 6.1, which indicates that the codebase is based on Vista.
  • There won’t be a major interface overhaul – just refinements and improvements to Vista’s attractive UI.
  • User Account Control (UAC) isn’t going away, but it has been refined.
  • The sidebar has been killed – gadgets now live on the desktop.
  • Windows 7 will run on netbooks on the small end, and will support up to 256 CPUs on the large end.
  • Built-in apps like Mail and Calendar are gone, with Windows Live Essentials left to fill the void.
  • The final release will likely come in the latter half of 2009.

For a simple overview of what was demonstrated today, check out The Windows Blog. If you want something a little more in-depth, check out Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite or ActiveWin. If you’re just looking for screenshots, see this post.

As you can see, it looks a lot like Vista! I’m definitely looking forward to playing with the revamped taskbar. Even ignoring the new functionality, the clear look is a welcome improvement.

Looking good so far Microsoft!

Microsoft Announcement Day 2008

By Mack D. Male ·

windows logo Today was the first day of Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference, but they may as well have called it official announcement day! For anyone who uses Microsoft technologies on a day-to-day basis, today is a day to remember. Definitely one for the history books of technology.

The big announcement was Windows Azure:

Today, during a keynote speech at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008 (PDC2008), Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Corp.’s chief software architect, announced Windows Azure, the cloud-based service foundation underlying its Azure Services Platform, and highlighted this platform’s role in delivering a software plus services approach to computing.

That’s a lot of marketing speak, but as usual Mary Jo Foley has a great post breaking Azure down. I’d suggest you read that to get a better idea of what exactly Azure is all about.

A few other interesting announcements:

That’s a lot of stuff for one day! As a developer, I’m a bit overwhelmed with the Azure announcement. It’s going to take a while to process. Very exciting though!

UPDATE: Colinizer has another great summary of today’s announcements on his blog. Check it out!