Archives
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Top 5 Ways Microsoft Will Use Silverlight
With MIX08 less than a week away and, in turn, the expected arrival of the Silverlight 2.0 beta, I thought it would be fun to ponder how Microsoft is planning to use their new browser-based, cross-platform plug-in. After all, history reveals that many Microsoft platforms have their roots in satisfying internal Microsoft project needs (we owe the "X" in Ajax to the Outlook Web Access team), so it's only fair to assume that from the get-go Microsoft saw the opportunity to use Silverlight to build (or enhance) new products. The question is, which products will get the Silverlight treatment and when?
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North Houston DNUG meeting tonight
This is a bit of a late notice, but for any of you in the Houston area here's your official reminder that the newly founded North Houston .NET User Group will be meting tonight (Thursday) at 6:30 PM. This is the second official meeting on the new Houston-area DNUG, and if the turnout is anything like week one, we should have a full crowd and a good time. Tonight's speaker is Claudio Lassala who will be talking about test driven development (aka TDD). The subject of TDD is increasingly becoming more common in .NET conversations as Microsoft introduces technologies that make it easier to do (such as the forthcoming ASP.NET MVC and the inclusion of VS Test tools in all Pro SKUs), so this is a great opportunity to come learn more about an important .NET topic.
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The definitive UI component metaphor
One thing you learn quickly when you leave a Fortune 200, well recognized Enterprise and join a smaller, much more exciting software company is that it is a lot harder to answer the inevitable "what do you do?" question. That is no more true than during the holidays, when you're visiting with distant relatives, many of whom still think of AOL as the Internet and think software is written by geeks in basements. Plagued by this problem, I have constantly sought the "perfect" metaphor for "what I do" so that anyone can understand software UI components. And at last I have the answer.