Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio CTP3 Shipped

The Windows Live™ Tools for Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 are a set of control add-ins to make incorporating Windows Live services into your Web application easier with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express 2008.
What does this mean?
It means if you build websites with Visual Studio and you like to drag and drop controls on to your web form and then add some code behind you can now use a number of Windows Live services in a very simple way.
To demonstrate I have created a short video showing how simple it is to add the Silverlight Streaming Media Player control to your ASP.NET website.



As one of the developers working on the architecture and code behind these tools I would love to hear your feedback.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Already Hiring...

Many of you may have wondered why I have been so quite on my blog in the last few months. Along with all my usual travels and presentations I have been working with Nick Randolph and James McCutcheon on a new company enterprise called nsquared solutions. While we are not quite ready to tell you all about nsquared yet, you can probably guess it will involve some mobile development projects.
We already have a number of interesting projects on board and are working on our first range of products, and right now we need some help. We have a couple of opportunities for the right developers to come on board at this early stage and help us deliver projects and ship the first set of products.
We are looking for the following, if you are interested then please get directly in touch.

A WPF .NET Developer
The job will be developing a mixture of .NET business logic development with Windows Presentation Foundation UI development. The projects are for leading edge as yet unreleased products.

Required Skills:
At least three years of commercial experience in C#,.NET, XML
Some experience and understanding of WPF
Strong knowledge of Object Oriented methodologies.
Able to handle pressure and work with minimum supervision
Positive, pro-active and flexible attitude, keen to learn and grow
Strong interpersonal/communication skills.

Desirable skills:
Experience developing in the .NET 3.0 and 3.5 framework
Experience using SQL Server 2005
MCSD or MCAD certified.

An ASP.NET Developer
The job will be developing a mixture of webservices and ASP.NET and AJAX applications for a Web 2.0 project.

Required Skills:
At least three years of commercial experience in C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, XML
Strong knowledge of Object Oriented methodologies.
Able to handle pressure and work with minimum supervision
Positive, pro-active and flexible attitude, keen to learn and grow
Strong interpersonal/communication skills.

Desirable skills:
Experience developing in the .NET 2.0 framework
Experience using SQL Server 2005
MCSD or MCAD certified.


nsquared solutions provides a comfortable Sydney based work place, with the benefits of working with, and learning from, leaders in the field of software development. Founded by Microsoft Regional Director Dr. Neil Roodyn and Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals Nick Randolph and James McCutcheon, nsquared delivers high value leading edge solutions to global customers. Working with nsquared provides an opportunity to work overseas, if desired. Many of the nsquared clients are based in the USA and we have offices in the Seattle area.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Integrating Virtual Earth into Your Partner Solution Offerings

Do you have customers that rely on location based information? At the Australian Microsoft Partner Conference I will show you how your customers can track assets, find their customers more easily, manage mobile work forces and ensure their customers find them before heading to a competitor. Learn how to combine your expertise and Microsoft’s mapping technology to integrate location services into your customers’ business solutions and applications.

The event blurb...
At the Virtual Earth sessions at the Australia Partner Conference pre days Microsoft Regional Director Dr Neil will be demonstrating a Windows Mobile application that uses GPS to log tracks and plot them on Virtual Earth. By attending the session you will get a chance to win a Palm Treo SmartPhone enabling you to put into practice what you learn on the day!

If you cannot make it to the Partner Conference there are 3 events around Australia the week before the conference.
Sydney July 29th
Melbourne July 31st
Brisbane August 1st
You can register here

I will be at the Sydney and Melbourne events, come and meet me there.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

TechEd Panel: Windows Mobile Application Development

At TechEd in Orlando last month a few of the Windows Mobile presenters discussed development for mobile devices in a panel session. You can view the recorded session here.


The panel consists of Andy Wigley, myself, Maarten Struys, and Paul Yao.

You can also see other panel sessions and recordings from TechEd online