Laurent Duveau : Microsoft

Microsoft TechDays Canada 2009

pluginbaby — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:14:28 GMT

Save the date: Microsoft TechDays Canada will have its second edition in 2009 and is coming back to Montreal on December 2, 3.

For others cities/dates go to: www.techdays.ca

Bing.com – new “decision engine” by Microsoft

pluginbaby — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:28:23 GMT

I had the chance to try Bing already, and I must say I am very surprised!!

Bing is the rebranding of Live Search, but it is far from just a facelift. It is a whole new concept. Microsoft introduce Bing not as another search engine (Bing Is Not Google, BING!) but as a decision engine, and it is exactly that!

If you think about it, when you do a search on Google, it does a very powerful search on its index to gives you… links, and anything but links sorted by a robot, nothing contextual or organized, no more help, just raw links.

Is it helpful? Yes in many case. Google has realized an awesome job to index the whole Internet in a single textbox. This is the most incredible job that has ever been done on the Internet!! But at the end of the day all you get is… a list of links, with multipage, but nobody crawl more than the first page so what you get is… 10 links, no grouping, no organization, links.

The first time I used Bing, it took me 1 min to be convinced that this IS what I needed. This is my way to search and find information on the web. Bing shows links and related information. When you search “zune” you get results categorized by “Buying Guide”, “Reviews”, “Accessories”, “Shopping”. Typically I do my search on Google, then open results in reference website like TripAdvisor, Wikipedia, Farecast, Live Maps, ... Now I get all this in Bing. I think Microsoft just get it right! This was the thing to do, and to me Bing seems much more efficient than Google.

Sample searches: “Montreal Canadiens”

First link with latest games!
Sub-queries on the left bar. Note these categories are contextual, sometimes you get “Downloads”, “Reviews”, “Maps”, “Shopping”, etc..

Mouse hover the thumbnails, videos plays inside the thumbnail!

Great news Live Farecast is now part of Bing!! (name: Bing Travel)

Bing Travel uses a predictive algorithm to recommend when you should purchase your airline ticket.

Also integrated in Bing: Live Maps and Live Shopping, with the latter you get products detailed reports (so much more than just links), with images, pricing information and user reviews from various Web sites.

As Google, Bing has these kind of quick answers (use it all the time) :

Technorati Tags: Bing

MIX10 announced - save the date

pluginbaby — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:51:13 GMT

MIX will come back in 2010, same city but different venue…

MIX10:
Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, 15-17 March 2010.

Microsoft MVP Summit 2009

pluginbaby — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:43:41 GMT

This year again, I took part in the Microsoft MVP Summit in Seattle. Got some great information on Silverlight, nice contact with the products team. Some really cool stuff I will talk later in march.

Part of the Canadian delegation (quieter this year):

But the MVP Summit is more a social than technical event (let’s say the technical part is too short). I had lots of fun talking with Canadian MVPs as well as buddies like Shawn Wildermuth, Jean-Luc David, Andy Beaulieu, Chris Sutton, Daniel Crenna, Grégory Renard, Frédéric Colin, Thomas Lebrun, seing ScottGu and others Microsoft Gurus… It was a blast and I can’t wait for next year!

Next… MIX Las Vegas!

I’M A PC video during MVP Summit

pluginbaby — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:06:39 GMT

I’M A PC video with MVPs from all around the world… done.

MVP "I'm a PC" Video

Expression training in the new Microsoft videos portal

pluginbaby — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 06:12:58 GMT

Microsoft has launched a new videos portal in Silverlight.

> www.microsoft.com/videos

Good news, there is an Expression Studio category with already more than 140 videos!!

You shape it – a new Microsoft tech portal

pluginbaby — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:23:01 GMT

Microsoft has a new web site to start the excitement on his new dev technologies: IE8, WPF, Silverlight and Windows Mobile. It is called {You shape} it and focus on Design, Development and IT Management in a nice claymotion Silverlight UI.

http://www.microsoft.com/youshapeit/

MSDN is part of this portal (www.microsoft.com/youshapeit/msdn) and I am a contributor as I wrote the article on IE8 development “IE8: Improve the Browsing Experience” that shows how to build Accelerators and Web Slice, check it out!

My Silverlight presentations at TechDays 2008 Canada

pluginbaby — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:33:00 GMT

Here is the Silverlight 2 project I build for my “Mastering your Silverlight Samurai Skills” 2 parts talk I did at TechDays Canada 2008.

Powerpoint material will come later.

Usefull links

Silverlight controls:

Deep Zoom demos:

My company RunAtServer Consulting is doing Silverlight development, we already have some clients and realizations, don’t hesitate to contact us!

We also have a 3 days Silverlight 2 training in french!
>> More information (fr)

Technorati Tags: TechDays_ca

Microsoft TechDays Canada 2008

pluginbaby — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:11:25 GMT

TechDays Canada website is now online!

Learn all about this new Canadian event at www.techdays.ca (cities, dates, sessions, …).

You can register online, note that this is a paid event: the early bird special is $249.99 (for the 2 day cities), so this is not very expensive and the benefits are huge: just look at the software you’ll get (VS 2008 Professional, Expression Web 2, …) and the TechEd 2008 DVD Set, Wow!!!

See you there if you come to Montréal!

Technorati Tags: TechDays_ca

RunAtServer Consulting Montreal is now a Microsoft Certified Partner!

pluginbaby — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:31:35 GMT

My company RunAtServer Consulting has just become Microsoft Certified Partner.

I was deeply involved in that goal so I am very proud as the company has less than 1 year.

Getting certified is very important for small businesses to get more exposure to Microsoft.

RunAtServer Consulting is specialized in web development and training with Microsoft technologies like ASP.NET, AJAX and Silverlight.

We love to share and interact with the local .NET community, we sponsor the Montreal User Group and CodeCamp, and the major event in Canada: DevTeach.

As .NET enthusiasts we hope to get more and more involved in Microsoft Canada events and with the DPE team!

One sure thing: we are over-motivated and our next target is Microsoft Gold Partner!

Microsoft TechEd 2008 pictures

pluginbaby — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:38:00 GMT

Some pictures from Microsoft TechEd 2008 Developers in Orlando:

(Some credit go to Rodrigo Diaz)
Mashup powered by Microsoft PopFly, check it out! www.popfly.com

Technorati Tags: teched 2008,popfly

Steve Ballmer apparition at TechEd 2008 Dev keynote!

pluginbaby — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:33:46 GMT

The best part of Bill Gates's Keynote at TechEd Developers 2008 was the Steve Ballmer apparition:

Notice the eggs reference at the end... can't figure out? see below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtBQ4UCXQeo

My Silverlight talk at Microsoft Innovation Briefing

pluginbaby — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:54:00 GMT

This morning I did a Silverlight 2 talk at Microsoft Montreal, during a half-day briefing called Building Compelling Websites on the Microsoft Platform.

That was a 1 hour talk to present Silverlight 2, DeepZoom, Expression Blend and create from scratch a Silverlight 2 application which consume LINQ To SQL data exposed by a WCF service with VS2008.

I would like to thank Paul Laberge for offering me the opportunity to do my very first presentation in english...

Here are the links to the online demos I showed:

DeepZoom:
http://memorabilia.hardrock.com

Performances comparison with DHTML/Flex/SL1.0/SL2:
http://www.bubblemark.com

Free charts controls:
http://www.visifire.com

Medical sample (amazing) application:
http://www.mscui.net/PatientJourneyDemonstrator/

Here is a link to the powerpoint slides I used:

Here is a zip file with the DeepZoom "Bill Gates" demo (hope you liked it!) and the Silverlight 2 + WCF + LINQ app I built live.

You'll appreciate my funky UI.

For the gentleman who asked the question I couldn't answer:

Question: "Can you customize the default Loading animation the user get while waiting for a Silverlight application to start ?"

Answer: "Yes! you can find a tutorial in the Quickstarts: http://silverlight.net/QuickStarts/BuildUi/SplashScreen.aspx"

EnergizeIT 2008 (Toronto)

pluginbaby — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:09:43 GMT

EnergizeIT is a free 1 day Microsoft event designed for IT professionals, developers, designers, and students passionate about technology. This day is dedicated to helping you realize your potential through the use of technology.

The event includes 9 tracks on topics such as Green IT, Career, Security, rich user experience with Silverlight 2 Beta and designer-developer workflow in the Developer Track, and much more.

There will be hands on labs and other activities so be sure to bring your laptops!

I will be around the developer track, participating in the "grok talk" and "tips and tricks" sessions.

>> www.energizeit.ca

When: Saturday May 24, 2008, 9:30 am – 4:30pm. Registration starts at 9:00am

Where: Toronto Congress Centre - Toronto, Ontario MAP IT

Technorati Tags: EnergizeIT

Heroes happen {here} 2008 Launch event in Montreal

pluginbaby — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:26:16 GMT

Earlier this week I participate in the Ask The Expert booth with other Montreal MVPs at the Heroes happen here Microsoft show.

I was a bit ill but that was pretty fun and I got lots of questions on:

Visual Studio 2008
Expression
Silverlight
LINQ
AJAX

And I learnt about the poor support of classic ASP in VS2008 and Expression...

Montreal's crew:

Bertrand, me, Etienne Tremblay and Mario Cardinal

Thanks to Guy Barrette and Jean-Luc David for the pictures.