Jackie Goldstein's Weblog

The final bits of SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition 3.1 have been released and are available for download here. 

On January 31, Microsoft Israel is running its biggest event ever for developers and architects (and their managers).  Under the slogan of "Microsoft Developer Academy", there are 5 session slots over the course of the day, each with 5 sessions to choose from.   For various reasons, I had to bow out of my speaking at this event, but you should definitely register right away before registration is all filled up.  Register here (Hebrew)

Before you go out and buy that new laptop you promised yourself, be sure to first read this article by Kim Major.  It is actually a series of 3 blog posts, that run through his considerations and conclusions before replacing his existing Thinkpad.

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of being sponsored by INETA to speak at a VB User Group meeting in the Netherlands.  The meeting was for VBcentral, which has monthly meetings for VB developers in a city called Doorn, which is about a 45 drive (without traffic) from Amsterdam. 

If you've ever been frustrated by the process of trying to get access to an available MS hot fix (especially after being frustrated by those bugs/crashes/hangs in VS), join the club.  But before you spend too much time lamenting, note that MS has heard our cry and made many/most of the existing critical hotfixes available for simple downloading here.

I gave two presentations at this year's event:

At this month's monthly meeting on November 1, IVBUG, the Israel Visual Basic User Group, celebrated its 9th birthday !  It is hard to believe that it has been 9 years since I founded this group, the first Microsoft User Group in Israel.  Many of the faces have changed over the years, but we do still have a few member (besides me !) who were at those first meetings.

A nice new source of practical and advanced information on building Click Once deployments has been developed by Brian Noyes for the MS Patterns and Practices team.   Here is the description blurb: