charles

Garrett Serack - Open Source on Windows and the CoApp Project

Charles — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:46:00 GMT

In this screencast, Garrett Serack from the Microsoft Open Source Technology Center talks about his new project, the Common Opensource Application Publishing Platform (CoApp). CoApp aims to create a vibrant Open Source ecosystem on Windows by providing the technologies needed to build a complete community-driven package management system, along with tools to enable developers to take advantage of features of the Windows platform. Discover the project wiki at http://coapp.org/, the Launchpad project site at https://launchpad.net/coapp, and the mailing list at https://launchpad.net/~coapp-developers.

ELC 2010: Rich Hickey and Joe Pamer - Perspectives on Clojure and F#

Charles — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:51:00 GMT

After a long day of sessions at Emerging Languages Camp 2010, I caught up with two of the day's presenters, Clojure creator Rich Hickey (you've met Rich before in an Expert to Expert episode with Brian Beckman) and F# compiler developer Joe Pamer. Clojure is a dynamic language that compiles to byte code/IL, targeting both the JVM and the CLR. Clojure is a Lisp. F# is a strongly-typed hybrid language that targets the CLR and employs a dual programming model—functional and object-oriented imperative.

Tune in.

Jonathan Edwards: Programming Futures and Declarative Objects

Charles — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:49:00 GMT

"The biggest problem with programming is that we don’t agree on what the problem is", says Jonathan Edwards, who is first and foremost a practicing programmer. Jonathan also spends a great deal of time thinking about how to evolve the languages and tools programmers use to solve increasingly complex problems in general purpose computing. He is currently a Research fellow at MIT, and I caught up with him at Emerging Languages Camp 2010 shortly after his talk on Declarative Objects (see the PPT or PDF slides). His thoughts on a potential future direction for general-purpose programming are quite compelling. In a nutshell, Jonathan is thinking about an object-oriented model-view declarative programming world. Discussing this idea, he states, "First, restrict pointers with a new object model that uses nesting and binding. Second, prevent cycles with a new form of dataflow based on the Model-View architecture."

Look through the PPT or PDF linked to above, press play, and open your mind a bit. See what you may see. The programming languages rabbit hole is deep. We seem to be hovering at a comfortable position, yet the problems we face will require us to move further down the tunnel to discover new means of algorithmic expression and code design. Jump in.

Enjoy.

ELC 2010: Standing Roundtable - AmbientTalk, BitC, Caja, Mirrors, Newspeak, Type Classes and More

Charles — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:49:00 GMT

A group of us gathered after a long day of language sessions at ELC 2010 and a conversation just happened. Sure, we talked about doing this before the camera started rolling, but I pressed record only when the time was right—when EROS creator and BitC designer Jonathan Shapiro asked Newspeak's Gilad Bracha about his stance on type classes. We then move around the standing circle of language designers and meet E/Caja's Mark S. Miller and one of the AmbientTalk designers, Tom Van Cutsem. It doesn't get any more impromptu than this and we geek out big time. Tune in.

A Conversation with Gilad Bracha

Charles — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:21:00 GMT

Recently, I got the chance to spend a few days at the Emerging Languages Camp at OSCON 2010 in Portland, Oregon. It was great to learn about so many new (and not-so-new) approaches to programming language design. The event was set up to ensure the maximum number of sessions in an 8-hour chunk of time, and you will soon be able to watch all the sessions on the Emerging Langs website (perhaps in a few weeks, so keep on checking!).

I caught up with a few folks after each long day of sessions, and over the coming days I'll be posting those conversations here. First up is one of my favorite language designers and personalities, Gilad Bracha. Gilad has no problem expressing his opinions and this is a great trait. He's also a great language designer and his Newspeak programming language is steadily maturing. In this conversation, we discuss a whole range of topics, from what's new in Newspeak to what's wrong with the web (from a languages and tools point of view). As always, this conversation just happened (C9 Classic, as it were...). We sat down, turned the camera on, and this is the rabbit hole we jumped down. It's always great to chat with Gilad.

Tune in.

Enjoy.

Bill Hill: One Ocean

Charles — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:07:00 GMT

Bill Hill has always been a fan favorite on Channel 9. In fact, his early interviews helped us crystallize the original (now referred to as OldSchool since we have other great methodologies in place on 9) Channel 9 Method of human-focused, unrehearsed real conversations with people. We haven't forgotten about you, Bill!

Bill left the company last year to pursue other interests, one of which being the making of music and music videos. Since Bill is a Niner, we decided to post one of his timely music videos, One Ocean, on Channel 9. With the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the overfishing of the oceans, the pollution of the seas, Bill has a message for us all and it comes in the form of original music plus live action video (also known as a Music Video...). Thanks for sharing, Bill. It's great to see (and hear) you again. You'll always be welcome on Channel 9. We miss you, man!

Enjoy! This is Bill Hill 5.0!! :)

The Archivist: Your friendly neighborhood tweet archiver

Charles — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:45:00 GMT

The Archivist is a new lab/website from Mix Online that lets people archive, analyze and export tweets. Here’s a little more about why we built The Archivist and who we built it for.

Sounds good, guys. Now, let's go learn about what this really means and how/why Karsten and Tim built this Twitter information analysis and archival service. Ready? Press play.

Learn more: http://visitmix.com/LabNotes/Intro-To-The-Archivist

A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

Charles — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:06:00 GMT

Jaron Lanier is an extraordinary individual. He is the father of virtual reality, a forceful pundit for "software humanism," an accomplished musician, a philosopher, and a Microsoft Partner Architect working on cloud computing problems in the Extreme Computing group. For three years, Jaron was a Scholar at Large, providing valuable technical input to the Live Labs folks. And he was also a technical consultant for the wildly popular science fiction film, Minority Report(which, of course, contained a heavy dose of virtual reality).

Jaron has strong opinions on a variety of topics related to software and its fundamental purpose of benefiting humanity (we often forget that software is for people, first and foremost). Also, he is probably one of the harshest critics of Web 2.0 and the current state of the Internet. One of the great things about Jaron is that he doesn't merely criticize and rant; rather, in his critiques he offers well-thought-out solutions to very complicated problems. This is a very admirable trait.

Jaron was in town a few days ago, and I had the privilege of chatting with him about a variety of interesting topics, including his interest in virtual reality, his ideas on "post symbolic communication," software development futures for large scale programming (Jaron's ideas on what he calls phenotropic programming are mind blowing), mathematics in the universe, lack of privacy on the Internet, the problem with Google and Facebook, music, his new book, You Are Not a Gadget, and more. This is a great conversation with a true iconoclast. We will have Jaron on C9 again. There is much more to talk about.

Enjoy.

Arvind Suthar: Listening to Customers

Charles — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:02:00 GMT

Arvind Suthar, Director of Service for Microsoft Online Services, is a key part of how Microsoft Online Services helps to make our customers and partners successful. Arvind runs the team in the middle between Engineering, Support, and Operations that defines and prioritizes customer issues for the engineering team and helps unblock customers with issues getting onboard with BPOS.

In this interview, you will hear what Arvind has learned about running an enterprise class cloud service, and how he drives the 6 to 8 week update cycles that are the Microsoft Online Services "rhythm of business."

For Arvind, it's all about earning the trust of our customers.

Second IE9 Platform Preview Available for Developers

Charles — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:32:00 GMT

The IE team has released the second IE9 Platform Preview build. From Dean's blog post:

Today’s release builds on the first Platform Preview, delivering improvements to IE9’s performance, support for standards, and hardware acceleration of HTML5. We’ve also updated the test drive site with a new set of developer samples to show what developers can do with GPU-powered HTML5. As part of our commitment to enabling developers to use the Same Markup – the same HTML, CSS, and script – on the web, we have contributed many new tests to the W3C for HTML5, as well as CSS3 Media Queries and DOM. The Developer Tools in this preview include some new features to make finding and fixing markup issues easier.

IE9 and same markup: A look at DOM events in IE9

Charles — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:14:00 GMT

In this presentation, Tony Ross, program manager for Internet Explorer looks at how developers can use DOM events in web sites with support in the IE9 Platform Preview, and explores challenges and best practices for writing same markup across browsers.

IE9 and same markup: A look at CSS3 borders and corners in IE9

Charles — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:14:00 GMT

In this presentation, Sharon Newman, program manager for Internet Explorer looks at how developers can use CSS3 borders and corners in web sites with support in the IE9 Platform Preview, and explores challenges and best practices for writing same markup across browsers.

IE9 and same markup: A look at SVG in IE9

Charles — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:14:00 GMT

In this presentation, Patrick Dengler, senior program manager for Internet Explorer looks at how developers can use SVG in web sites with support in the IE9 Platform Preview, and explores challenges and best practices for writing same markup across browsers.

E2E: Erik Meijer and Cormac Herley - Rational Rejection of Security Advice by Users

Charles — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:10:00 GMT

Dr. Cormac Herley spends most of his time thinking about why and how computer users reject security advice (from both fellow humans and software security warning prompts). Recently, his paper, "So Long, and No Thanks for the Externalities: the Rational Rejection of Security Advice by Users," received a fair amount of attention from the general media (Boston Globe, Tech Republic, NPR, etc). The paper also prompted our favorite software renegade, Dr. Erik Meijer, to send me an email, simply asking that I "please set up an E2E with Cormac Herley." I did just that and the following conversation is what happened...

Enjoy.

Engkoo: English Learning Vertical Search from Bing and MS Research in China

Charles — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 01:02:00 GMT

Matt Scott of Microsoft Research walks us through Engkoo: the new “dictionary” vertical search of Bing in China. What makes this English-Chinese assistance tool unique is that it unifies human translation mined from the web, machine translation, and a language learning experience, into one easy to use search and explore interface. By continuously discovering and processing high quality translation knowledge on the Internet, this technology can be used to close the ever expanding translation gap between English and Chinese.

Engkoo is a collaboration between Bing, MSN, and Microsoft Research – leveraging years of research in Natural Language Computing, Speech, Human Computer Interaction and Web Search & Mining. Because the technology is language independent, next steps include building on it for other language pairs in the future

Introducing Docs for Facebook: Making Your Documents Social

Charles — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:00:00 GMT

Microsoft FUSE Labs has created (and released to the web today) a new social experiment that aims to add some "friendliness" to your documents: Docs - a way for you to discover, create and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends. Built using Microsoft Office 2010 – Docs for Facebook provides the best possible document service for the Facebook environment. Seamless integration with Facebook means that the service is all about sharing your documents. Finally docs can be friendly too!

From Lili Cheng's blog post: The fact that we’ve been able to adapt the Office 2010 “Web Apps” technology to work directly with Facebook truly speaks to the flexibility and power not just of the Facebook platform, but also of the Office system’s rich “contextual collaboration” capabilities. And we’d never have been able to achieve our critical ‘simplicity’ goals had it not been for our ability to use a new test feature from Facebook that allows us to build an instantly personalized and seamless document authorization & sharing experience directly from our site.

Silverlight 4 is here!

Charles — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:12:00 GMT

Silverlight 4 is now available for download.

Silverlight 4 enhances the building of business applications, media applications, and applications that reach beyond the browser. New features include printing support, significant enhancements for using forms over data, support for several new languages, full support in the Google Chrome web browser, WCF RIA Services, modular development with MEF, full support in Visual Studio 2010, bi-directional text, web camera and microphone support, rich text editing, improved data binding features, HTML support, MVVM and commanding support, new capabilities for local desktop integration running in the new “Trusted Application” mode such as COM automation and local file access.

Go get it!

Learn what's new in SL4.

S. Somasegar (Soma): Introducing Visual Studio 2010 RTM

Charles — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Senior Vice President S. Somasegar (aka Soma) joins us for a chat about Visual Studio 2010 RTM, which is available today. Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 offer an unprecedented level of support for Microsoft’s platforms, including Windows, Windows Server, Office, SharePoint, Windows Phone, SQL, and Windows Azure. Here we get Soma's perspective on this release, Microsoft's broadest developer tooling offering ever, including several enhancements and new capabilities for both managed and native developers alike.

MSDN customers will be able to download VS 2010 and .NET Framework 4.

Tune in!

/* Life Runs on Code */

James Senior: Introducing Web Camps

Charles — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:17:00 GMT

function webCamps ()
{
day1.learn();
day2.build();
}

Interested in learning how new innovations in Microsoft's Web Platform and developer tools like ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 can make you a more productive web developer? If you're currently working with PHP, Ruby, ASP or older versions of ASP.NET and want to hear how you can create amazing websites more easily, then register for a Web Camp near you today!

Microsoft's Web Camps are free, two-day events that allow you to learn and build on the Microsoft Web Platform. At camp, you will hear from Microsoft experts on the latest components of the platform, including ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, Entity Framework, IIS, Visual Studio 2010 and much more.

Web Camps also provide the opportunity to get hands on with labs and get creative by building in teams. All this with Microsoft experts on hand to guide you through.

Here, we meet the mastermind behind Web Camps, James Senior, to get some details about these camps and to get some insights into the thinking behind this new form of in-person training for web developers. Please note that during the conversation James mentioned that Scott Hanselman will be presenting in Singapore. In fact, he meant to say Sydney.

We look forward to seeing you at camp soon! http://www.webcamps.ms/

Eron Kelly: Moving Microsoft to the Cloud - Past, Present and Future

Charles — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:26:00 GMT

Eron Kelly, Director of Microsoft's Business Online Services Product Management, discusses the key role that Microsoft Online Services plays in Microsoft's transformation from a software company to an online services company, and provides a sneak peek into the future of Microsoft Online Services.

You've heard about economy of scale. How about economy of skill? Learn how BPOS provides customers with both.

How can Microsoft make money selling services? What's the value for Microsoft? What's the value for our partners and customers? Learn about the new tools and features that will help partners work efficiently with more customers and help them develop customer solutions on the Microsoft Online Services platform.

Also, in this interview Eron finally answers the question you’ve all been asking: “What’s the distinction between Microsoft Online Services and the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)?”

Learn more in the Microsoft Online Services community:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/msonline
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MicrosoftOnlineServices
MOS Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/

Pro Scrum Developer Intro

Charles — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:44:00 GMT

The Professional Scrum Developer program is a uniquely valuable five-day experience for software developers. The course guides teams on how to turn product requirements into potentially shippable increments of software using Visual Studio 2010, the Scrum framework, and modern software engineering practices. In this video, Ken Schwaber of Scrum.org and Sam Guckenheimer of Microsoft give an overview of the course and guidelines to getting started.

Introducing RxJS - Reactive Extensions for JavaScript

Charles — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:11:00 GMT

Reactive Extensions for Javascript have arrived. Hello RxJS!!

You can now use Rx combinators in JavaScript. RxJS provides easy to use conversions from existing DOM, XmlHttpRequest and jQuery events to Rx push-collections, allowing users to seamlessly plug Rx into their existing JavaScript-based web sites. Great. What does this mean, exactly? As you know by now, Rx is a library for composing asynchronous and event-based programs using observable collections.

Here, Rx developer Jeffrey Van Gogh explains (and demonstrates) what you can do with RxJS, how he ported Rx to JavaScript and more.

Be sure to check out Erik's excellent session at MIX10

Tune in.

Introducing the IE9 Developer Platform Preview

Charles — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:18:00 GMT

Get your hands on the IE9 developer platform preview!

The IE team has been very busy working on the next version of Internet Explorer, aka IE 9. Today, you can get your hands on a developer preview and experience the joys surfing on metal with GPU powered HTML5. Yep, that's HTML5. Microsoft loves HTML5 and CSS 3.

Here, IE GM Dean Hachamovitch and Rob Mauceri discuss how they're taking IE to a new level with all graphic rendering taking place on the GPU via the DirectX technology D2D and a new JavaScript engine that compiles JavaScript to machine code and can do this in a way that takes advantage of multi-core architectures (you will learn much more about this in the coming weeks..).

Summary: IE9, which you can get in your hands now in the form of a developer preview, enables you to exploit the power of the GPU in ways you already understand (CSS, HTML, JavaScript).

Check out all of the IE9 content on C9.

Erik Porter and Nathan Heskew: Introducing Orchard

Charles — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:17:00 GMT

Orchard will create shared components for building ASP.NET applications and extensions, and specific applications that leverage these components to meet the needs of end-users, scripters, and developers. Additionally, we seek to create partnerships with existing application authors to help them achieve their goals. Orchard is delivered as part of the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery under the CodePlex Foundation. It is licensed under a New BSD license, which is approved by the OSI. The intended output of the Orchard project is three-fold:

Individual .NET-based applications that appeal to end-users , scripters, and developers

A set of re-usable components that makes it easy to build such applications

A vibrant community to help define these applications and extensions

In the near term, the Orchard project is focused on delivering a .NET-based CMS application that will allow users to rapidly create content-driven Websites, and an extensibility framework that will allow developers and customizers to provide additional functionality through extensions and themes.

Erik Porter and Nathan Heskew are two of the developers of Orchard. Do they look familiar? Sure they do. They used to be devs on the C9 team.

Ken Schwaber and and Sam Guckenheimer: Professional Scrum Development

Charles — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:34:00 GMT

Ken Schwaber, co-inventor of Scrum, and Sam Guckenheimer, Group Product Planner for Visual Studio discuss the Professional Scrum Developer (PSD) program around VS 2010. PSD includes a unique and intensive five-day experience for software developers. The course guides teams on how to turn product requirements into potentially shippable increments of software using Visual Studio 2010, the Scrum framework, and modern software engineering practices.

Ken and Sam talk about how Scrum.org and Microsoft collaborated on a new standard to make development teams more effective. Rather than treat process, tooling and engineering practices as separate topics and leaving their application as follow-up homework, both organizations saw the need to make teams effective in the application within a training setting. PSD classes are available worldwide at VS 2010 launch from certified trainers who are assessed, trained, mentored, and monitored by Scrum.org and Microsoft.