DonXML Blog

NJ Finally Has Our Very Own Microsoft Regional Director

Congrats to Scott Watermasysk!  He was recently awarded the Microsoft Regional Director designation for New Jersey (the first for NJ).  

Avalon Not Ensured To Be Included In Longhorn?

eWeek Senior Writer, Darryl Taft contacted me last week and asked about how I’d feel if Microsoft dropped Avalon from the Longhorn release, and then put some of my comments in this article.  He mentioned that he had a quote from a Microsoft exec inferring that it may happen, but I didn’t realize that it was a quote from Soma Somasegar.  My full comment was:

“In my opinion, it would be a total disaster. The high coming out of PDC ’03 was incredible, and they would lose a lot of respect with the developers out there. We all knew WinFS was a bit aggressive, so it didn’t surprise us that it was removed. But Avalon is a totally different thing. It was the most complete of the triads of Longhorn (at the time), so I don’t know why they would pull it. The IDE for the Avalon stuff is a whole different issue. Without an editor Avalon will not be good to any of the developers. Since I have not seen an IDE, only rumors, that is the one thing that concerns me.”

I understand that there needs to be a balance between feature, quality, and time to market, but if you remove the 2 major reasons to upgrade from WinXP to Longhorn (WinFS and Avalon) then you better replace them with something just as good.  Otherwise no one will upgrade, especially if you are going to be able to get Avalon on WinXP.  That is basically what happened (IMHO) with WinME.  There was no valid reason to upgrade from Win98se (some will say that is was just Win98 3rd edition).  In the WinME to WinXP migration there were very valid reasons to upgrade (a very stable, enterprise ready OS the home users could also use).  Besides Avalon, I can’t find a reason to upgrade to the next OS.  If there is one, Microsoft is sure doing a poor job getting the word out.

NJ Dev Dinner 9/14/2004 – Special Edition

Right after the N3UG meeting (with Dave Douglass’ presentation on Generics), we will have a special edition of the NJ Dev Dinner.  What’s the occasion?  Microsoft Developer Evangelist Kirk Allen Evans is coming up from Atlanta, GA, and will be in the area.  After the meeting we will move on over to Chevy’s for some fun, food, and drink.

Code Camp II Blogger Dinner

Jason Haley was gracious enough to help setup a Blogger Dinner that will be held right after the Saturday activities at Code Camp II. 

Date:  Saturday, October 16, 2004
Time:  9:00pm - 11:00pm (or whenever they throw us out)
Place: Lobby Bar in Westin, Waltham, MA (its the big hotel you see on the highway exit 27 on 128)

I’ll be there, along with Scott Watermasysk, Kent Tegels and Jason Bock (and we are all coming in from out of town).  Some of the locals that will be at Code Camp II include Sam Gentile, Robert Hurlbut, Chris Bowen, Thom Robbins, and Chris Pels.  Everyone is welcome to come hang out.

Any Wilmington NC .Net Developers Looking For A Nerd Dinner?

I’ve got to travel down to Wilmington, NC for a client (from NJ), and was wondering if anyone down there wants to get together for a Nerd Dinner sometime between Sept. 20 & 23.  I know it is a sleepy coastal town, but you can find nerds just about anywhere.  I tried to find a .Net User Group down there, thru INETA, but had no luck.

Microsoft Is Looking For A Few Smart Watch Developers

Microsoft has recently announced that they are looking to contract with a number of developers to create new channels for the Microsoft Smart Watch (aka SPOT Watch).  Microsoft will compensate the developer and supply the necessary tools and documentation.  The official announcement will not be posted on the web until September 13th, but I asked permission to blog this and received it.  The application can be found here and the program details here.  They are on my website until the official Microsoft announcement goes live. The info is now on the MSNDirect site. The deadline to apply is September 27th.

Here are some of the details from the program details document:

Channels can be divided up into 2 categories. PC Channel applications (the application and data is loaded via PC to the Watch with data upload via USB.) or over-the-air (OTA) non data channels where the application does not have data sent over the DirectBand Network on a continuous basis. The application would be a stand alone application that runs on the watch and is downloaded to the watch via the network. An example would be a game or a watch face – it doesn’t require any additional data to render as a valuable channel.

Based on the submissions received, Microsoft will select up to ten proposals to be developed as “work for hire”, and accepted applicants will be presented with the opportunity to receive up to $10,000, based on milestone completion, and be required to sign an Independent Contractor or Development Agreement.

Responses to this RFP will be in the format described below. Development will require unreleased, Microsoft proprietary development tools and information, which will be provided only under NDA to accepted proposals. Chosen participants will be given a set of fixed-date milestones to develop and test their application to be submitted to Microsoft for final testing and certification.

Each final application would then be distributed free of charge, via web and in retail with attributions to each developer.

Suggested categories for applications include the following:

• Information Managers
• Personal
• Arts, Games and Entertainment
• Text and Reference
• Travel & Leisure
• Sports

All the info is in the two documents, including how to submit proposals.

A Suggestion for the Microsoft Careers Site

I was on the Microsoft Technical Recruiting Chat last night (I’m not really looking, just snooping around), when I remembered a comment made by either Zoë or Gretchen (I can’t remember who, or even find it) about making sure that your resume looked good in plain text when submitting it via their site.  They don’t take resumes in Word format (or even HTML), and you can either paste vanilla text into a free form input box, or use the resume builder.  They mentioned that as an applicant, you should make sure the plain text version of your resume is easy to read, and not just a Word doc saved as text (which would be very hard on the eyes).   At the time I read that, I thought it was a good tidbit, so I filed it away for future reference.  During the chat something clicked, and I remembered that Microsoft had released an Office Solution Accelerator for Recruiting, which includes a nice resume builder section.  The resume builder includes an InfoPath Resume Form (which uses the HR-XML schema for resumes), and a complementing resume submittal web service.  Shouldn’t Microsoft recruiting IT department do a little dogfooding, and be using this?  It is definitely better than submitting a text version of a resume, and trying to shred the document.  Plus, since it is an XML document, they could easily apply an XSL (either XSLT to WordML or XSL-FO to PDF) and transform the resume into an easy to read format for the recruiters.  I know that everyone does not have InfoPath (but it is an excellent tool), so they would have to create an alternate means to creating an XML version of the resume (can we say open source project?), and still maintain the good old text box input method for the less technical folks applying to Microsoft.  It sounds to me like there would be a decent return on investment for this type of thing, with Microsoft hiring some 7000 people this year.