I'll be leaving for a much needed "break" to head out to the MVP Summit (Wednesday morning). Should be a lot of fun (as always). This will be my 3rd MVP Summit. Sunday, the wife and I will be touring around Seattle (this is her first time being out there). We'll probably go check out the Seattle Opera since she hopes to be there someday. ;) Then, Monday through Wednesday is the ASPInsiders Summit. This will be my first and I am sooo looking forward to it! If any of you will be there, look me up. I'll be the outgoing, obnoxious, mean VB MVP.
For those of you that don't know me, that was sarcasm, but that is a real picture of me. :P
HTT-Penis! Definitely the funniest thing I heard from Don Box during his presentation! :P
LINQ is really darn cool. Definitely changes data work as we see it today. Integrating data into languages (hence the name). Boundaries have been broken. I'm impressed!
Atlas is VERY cool. According to Scott Guthrie Atlas is up to download. Fun! One thing I wish Atlas would do is wrap js objects to all controls in the hierarchy of the page so you don't have to do your own document.getElementById all the time, but any, it's still really great and will help us to build AJAX apps out of the box. The built-in list controls, etc are very cool as well. Good to see stuff like that. Virtual Earth control...yummy! Drag drop atlas controls onto Vista Sidebar, OMG!
Avalon is looking good. More controls, databinding looks really easy, etc
One of the demos at the end of the presentation was very cool as well. If I can make a list of stuff move around like their demo, I'd be overjoyed. Actually, I see now you can get the app. The e-commerce demo at the end showed some really neat ways to present video and products together. It's interesting they mention how they used to do web apps and now they do smart clients with xaml. Interesting.
Jim Allchen (sp?) mentioned there would be a whitepaper on msdn shortly explaining how the last demo app was written. Jim also mentioned a list of all the big opportunities that Windows Vista will give us as developers and I can definitely see them. In fact, Project Fazr is working on a few interesting things related to Vista integration.
Sorry about the crappiness of this post. I just added things to it as I was watching the video at PDC. Overall I'm quite impressed. Wish I could be there, but I"ll be out at Microsoft in two weeks for a week to geek out with them over this stuff and more, so it's all good! :)
I'm watching the Bill Gates Keynote at PDC right now (I'm not actually there) and it is VERY cool. Office 12 is lookin' really good. I can see the people lining up to write their own custom controls to mimic the new menus in the office line. Windows Vista is looking hot too. Not too much has changed since Beta 1, but definitely a bunch of little improvements.
Fazr is looking for a well rounded individual who has artistic abilities and is also interested in the business and marketing side of pushing a great product out the door.
Jon Galloway posts about GroupBar out of Microsoft Research. I have complained for many years now that the Windows taskbar is crap without the ability to move applications around. I've always given the example that when you lay a piece of paper with some notes on it down on your desk that's just where it is. The next time you want to read something off of that paper you reach for where you know it is. It doesn't move somewhere else when you pick it up, it's in your hands. People that use computers every day, typically have the same types of things open. For me, it's E-Mail, IM, Media Player, Visual Studio and some IE windows. I purposely open them up in the exact same order every morning before starting anything. This helps with muscle memory when navigating with the mouse. I can pretty much navigate between them without thinking or even looking. I'm not sure I explained very well how this relates to a piece of paper on your desk, but hopefully you see the connection there. When I want my e-mail, it should be in the same place it always is, not in the order I opened it. Now if GroupBar started to remember my groups and set things up for me, I would crap my pants. Good job, MS Research and I hope to see some of this in Vista or later versions of Windows!