Here is another funny video from a New York Times Editor! Enjoy!

Ready for a New Day: Launch Tour 2007

January 18, 2007

Tampa, FL

Tampa Convention Center

333 S. Franklin Street
Tampa Florida 33602
United States

Registration: ... is now open. Click here -> Launch Event

Event Overview

Come experience how to simplify IT challenges and build stronger applications with the new software from Microsoft.

You are invited to participate in this unique experience featuring Windows Vista™, the 2007 Microsoft^® Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.
You’ll be able to:

• Attend breakout sessions for developers and IT professionals

• Test drive the products and evaluate their functionality

• Network with peers, Microsoft, and local technology partners

• Ask the experts

• Receive valuable resources to help you take full advantage of this new software

IT Professionals will learn how Microsoft software can help:

• Streamline deployment and management

• Increase security, control, and reliability

• Improve user experience and support

• Enable and support mobile users

Developers will evaluate new software solutions and see how to:

• Build secure applications and ensure reliability

• Create engaging, visually stunning, and highly differentiated user interfaces that make applications more usable and productive

• Build applications that connect users to each other and to their data, allowing them to visualize, share, and act on information

Agenda

• Registration and Breakfast: 7:45 - 9:00 AM

• Executive Keynote (see below for abstract): 9:00 - 10:30 AM

• Technical Sessions (see below for track abstracts): 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

• Lunch: 12:00 - 1:15 PM

• Technical Sessions (see below for track abstracts): 1:15 - 3:30 PM

Track Descriptions

Executive Keynote:

Top Microsoft executives will discuss important challenges impacting today's workplace and how Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 are helping customers meet these challenges. Learn how other companies have achieved success through collectively implementing these new releases. Experience how using these products can simplify how people work together; help protect and manage content; find information and improve business insight; and reduce IT costs and improve security.

IT Pro Track #1 – Desktop Support:

Join these exciting sessions that will explore the new tools to deploy Microsoft Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system client applications. Accelerate your migrations and execute deployments while simplifying the tasks associated with managing your organization's desktops. You will also experience how new capabilities in the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Windows Vista increase operational efficiency in your company. The new user interfaces minimize training and support demands by providing end-users with significantly improved help capabilities, self-service tools, and a highly intuitive experience. Finally, experience the data visualization capabilities in Visio 2007 and the Enterprise Project and Portfolio Management help keep your systems and your business running smoothly.

IT Pro Track #2 – IT Infrastructure:
Join these sessions to learn more about the capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007. The sessions first walk through deploying Exchange Server 2007, along with Live Communications Server, from installation through configuration and validation. Further you will experience how Exchange Server 2007 can help improve operational efficiency within your organization. Next you will experience how Office SharePoint Server 2007 is deployed and how the new three-tiered structure of management helps you control and govern the environment. The final component shows the different ways to search, including the improvements of Windows Vista, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Office, and Live.

IT Pro Track #3 – Solutions Capabilities:
Application Architects and Line of Business Specialists should join this session to learn more about how the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Windows Vista, and Exchange Server 2007 deliver new capabilities in for infrastructure and intellectual property protection, compliance and records management, secure mobile productivity, unified communications, and business intelligence.

Developer Track – Application Building:
The release of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System ushers in a new age of application development. Come join us as we explore the new development capabilities that allow you to build applications that discover, organize, and present information to users in new ways. You will experience how the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Windows Vista work better together for you, how to build differentiated user experiences and connected applications in Windows Vista, how to connect and extend Office client applications, and how to build key business applications on the Microsoft Office server platform.

Weird Al has done it again and brought us all a new theme song. This was so funny I had to go onto iTunes ( which I hate ) and buy the Album.  You can find the lyrics to the song at White & Nerdy.

Most people with a iPod don't know you can use it as a external hard drive, but you can. Windows sees the iPod as a USB mass storage device and mounts it with a drive letter. Your music file are in a hidden directory structure can easily be accessed.

The Microsoft Zune can't be accessed in the same way. It is it's own device and not accessible. Well, so we all thought.. Some industrial folks have found a way to enable pseudo hard drive support. It doesn't get assigned a drive letter, but does allow you to drag and drop files from it.

Turns out it's just a registry value to enable visibility in the shell. 

Here are the instructions:

1. Make sure your Zune is not plugged in and your Zune software isn't running
2. Open up regedit by going to the start menu and selecting "run". Type regedt32 and hit "OK"
3. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\
4. Search for "PortableDeviceNameSpace". This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above ...\USB\ The ##'s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune
5. Change the following values: * EnableLegacySupport to 1 * PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0 * ShowInShell to 1
6. Plug in your Zune, and make sure the Zune Software starts up.
7. Hopefully at this point you can open up "My Computer" and browse your device, though it does NOT show up as a drive letter.

We started a new agile methodology a few weeks back called Scrum. I have been hearing about it for some time on various podcasts that I  listen to, but haven't had a chance to use it.  We are now into our second two week sprint and it seems to be working out. The team will have a better handle of this process after a few more of these sprints.

What is Scrum? That is the question most programmers new to it ask. First of all , it is not an acronym, it is taken from a game similar to football where the players really do try and kill each other, Rugby.  Wikipeida says this about it.

Scrummage or scrum as a way of restarting the game, either after an accidental infringement or when the ball has gone out of play. The word "scrummage" is a modification of "scrimmage" (which form of the word was previously used in rugby and continues to be used in American and Canadian football), which in turn derives from or is cognate to "skirmish".  

In the software development world, Scrum is a form of agile development to manage and control development work. Most companies moving to this methodology will adjust it to fit their needs. You don't have to follow the standard Scrum process exactly to get benefits from this methodology, but you shouldn't stray too far off course.

Scrum is characterized by:

• Artifacts
  • Product Backlog
    • A list of requirements prioritized and broken down into small manageable chunks. This Backlog should include all features visible to the customer, as well as the technical requirements needed to build the product.
  • Sprint Backlog
    • This is a list of selected and committed features to deliver from the product backlog and should be created by the Team only. These tasks should be broken down into pieces that will require less than 16 hours of development time.
  • Burndown Chart
    • The Burndown Chart shows the cumulative work remaining in a Sprint. When tasks are completed, the ScrumMaster recalculates the remaining work to be done as the Sprint Backlog decreases, or burns down over time. If the cumulative Sprint Backlog is zero at the end of the Sprint, the Sprint is successful.
• Ceremonies
  • Sprint Planning Meeting
    • These meetings are held prior to the beginning of the Sprint and during this meeting the Sprint Backlog is created.
  • Sprint Review Meeting
    • At the end of a sprint, a timeboxed 4 hour meeting is held in two parts.
      • The First half is to demonstrate the results of the previous sprint to the product owners. The Product Owner determines which items on the Product Backlog have been completed in the Sprint
      • The second half of the Sprint Review Meeting is a retrospective for the Scrum team that is led by the ScrumMaster. At this time the Team evaluates what went right and what went wrong during the sprint.
  • Daily Scrum Meetings
    • Once the planning has been completed, the sprint begins a 30 day iteration. Each day the Scrum Master leads a short 15 minutes meetings. While anyone can attend this meeting, only team members who have committed to deliver work to the Scrum are allowed to speak.  Each person is asked three questions in order to get a global snapshot of the project.
      • What did you do yesterday?
      • What are you going to do today?
      • Do you have any roadblocks?
• Roles
  • Product Owner
    • The product owner is normally a business person and is the one that defines the features of the product.
    • This person is the person whom accepts the work presented during Sprint Review.
  • Scrum Master
    • Removes roadblocks so the team is productive.
    • Ensures that the process is followed including invitations to Sprint Planning Meetings, Daily Scrum and Sprint Reviews
  • Team
    • Cross Functional Team between 5 and 10 members.
    • Selects the Sprint Goal and Specifies work result.
    • Demonstrates work to Product Owner
    • Organizes itself and its work.

Here is a complete run down of the scrum methodology in more detail.

I'm still holding my opinion of this process until we finish a project and review what we did right and what we did wrong.

This has be the best offline blog writing tool I have seen to date, and it is free. Live Writer  lets you create and edit your weblog entries just like a word document, without the need to be constantly tweaking the html. It is compatible with DasBlog, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, and of course Windows Live Space as well as others. 

One of the problems I had with some of the other tools was a quick way to link my images to thumbnails. Live Writer has a very cool feature to help you do this. You simply "Insert Picture" and edit the properties to link to the original image at full size.

The WYSIWYG support is as good as anyone could want. You can switch between Normal, Web Layout, Web Preview, and of course HTML. It is smart enough to collect all relevant information such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, margins and block quotes and show you a true view of what to expect.

Another excellent feature is it's rich plugin support. It is still in beta, but already has a vast array of available plugins including Code Formatter, Inserting Maps from Windows Live, Inserting video, and pictures from Flickr.

Download Windows Live Writer.

It has been a couple weeks now, but Erin and I got to go to our first Buccaneer game since moving to Tampa. As an added bonus they beat the Eagles in the final seconds of the game with a 62 yard field goal. We loved it so much we attended a second game this last weekend. Unfortunately they didn't do so well this time around. Click on the photo to get a larger version. The rest of the photos are on flickr.com and can be found at here.

If you are a developer and live in the Tampa area, than you know Russ Fustino. He is our area MSDN presenter and local guru. He is having his 50th birthday party this weekend. See you all there.

Location: http://www.clubbourbonstreet.com
When: Sunday, Nov 12 5-8pm
Bands: Dem Applz (originals) and Night Flight (Classic rock)
Where:
Bourbon Street Night Club
4331 US Hwy 19 • New Port Richey Florida • 34652
Club Phone • 727-843-0686