Website: http://codemag.com/codecast
Twitter: @CodeCast

CodeCast Episodes 1 – 102:

#	Episode
102	Surface 2.0 with Dr. Neil Roodyn
101	History of Microsoft with Stuart Johnston
100	2010 Year in Review
99	Workflow 4 and AppFabric with Maurice de Beijer
98	Technical Resources for .NET Developers
97	Microsoft Tag with Didier Caron
96	Cloud Computing with Remi Caron
95	LightSwitch Scenarios with Beth Massi
94	PDC 2010 Summary – Silverlight, Azure, Async for C#/VB
93	Xamalot.com – Free XAML Resources for WPF and Silverlight
92	Windows Live Essentials 2011 with Kip Kniskern of LiveSide.net
91	Servoy Development Suite with Sean Devlin
90	Surface and Multi-Touch UI with Dr. Neil Roodyn
89	Windows 7 Development with Ritscher and Wildermuth
88	LightSwitch for .NET Developers with Jay Schmelzer
87	PostSharp for VS with Gael Fraiteur
86	News on Mobile Devices, WebMatrix and Razor
85	Cool Apps, Utilities, and Tips for Windows, Mac, and iOS
84	IronPython 2.6.1 for VS 2010 with Jimmy Schementi
83	10 Years of CODE Magazine with Markus Egger and Rod Paddock
82	INETA.org with Mike Vincent
81	CodeRush for VS 2010 with Gary Short
80	VS 2010 and Office 2010 Development with Beth Massi
79	VS 2010 Shell Products with Nathan Halstead
78	iPad for Developers, iPhone OS 4
77	State of .NET – Spring 2010
76	PowerShell for Developers with Ed Wilson
75	Visual Studio Tips with Zain Naboulsi
74	MIX10 News on WinPhone7, Silverlight 4, and IE 9
73	F# with Michael Hale
72	VS 2010 Start Page Customization with Adrian Collier
71	Microsoft MVP Summit and Windows Phone 7 Series
70	Code Camp with Chris Kinsman and Walt Ritscher
69	Virtual Brown Bag Meetings with Claudio Lassala
68	Convention over Configuration, AOP with JB
67	VS 2010 IDE Shell with Weston Hutchins
66	SOLID with Claudio Lassala
65	iPad, Tablet/Slate/Netbook PCs, Kindle
64	MSBuild with Chuck England
63	2009 Year in Review
62	GiveCamp with Chris Koenig
61	RIA Services with Silverlight and more
60	Visual Studio 2010 editor with Chris Granger
59	VS 2010 SDK and Extension Manager with Quan To
58	msdn.com content and strategy with Kerby Kuykendall
57	Expression for WPF and Silverlight
56	Videos on msdn.com with Jeremy Kelley
55	TechEd Europe 2009 Review and Silverlight 4
54	PDC 2009 Review
53	UML, VS 2010, .NET 4.0 with Kevin McNeish
52	Windows 7 for Developers
51	Software Project Management with Mike Yeager
50	Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 with Doug Seven
49	Using Code Templates and Refactoring with Visual Studio
48	iPhone Development for .NET Developers
47	WPF and Silverlight with Walt Ritscher
46	Upcoming Microsoft PDC
45	Development Constraints with CSS, HTML, HTML 5
44	Virtualization with Brain Randell
43	Real-time vs. Cached Search, CODE in Kindle Format
42	Project Complexity, Snow Leopard, CODE Mag on Kindle
41	Windows Live and Live Services with James Senior
40	Developer Methodologies, Windows Live, and Tech News
39	CodePlex with Sara Ford
38	Windows 7 for Devs, Digital Software Purchases
37	ASP.NET MVC with guest Rick Strahl
36	Chrome OS, eBooks with guest Rick Strahl
35	TechEd Aus/NZ and Field Evangelists with Andrew Coates
34	Surface, Win7 Multi-Touch, iPhone SDK with Dr. Neil Roodyn
33	Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend
32	Roadmap for VB, C#, and F# with Luca Bolognese
31	Google Wave, Apple, Bing.com with Ken Levy and Gary Short
30	CodeRush Xpress with Gary Short
29	Dynamic Language Features in C# 4.0 with Alexandru Ghiondea
28	Adding Features to C# and VB Compilers with Sam Ng
27	Extensible Start Page in Visual Studio 2010 with Noah Coad
26	IronRuby with Jimmy Schementi
25	Advanced .NET Programming with Eric Lippert
24	MDSN Forums and msdn.com with Jeremy Kelley
23	VS 2010 Extension Manager and Visual Studio Gallery
22	F# with Chris Smith
21	.NET, Java, Oracle-Sun, New IT Cold War with Ted Neward
20	Biz Apps Team and VB with Beth Massi
19	Windows Mobile Dev Community with Constanze Roman
18	IronPython and Dynamic Languages with Harry Pierson
17	Visual Basic 2010 with Lisa Feigenbaum
16	MVPs and Connected Systems Community with Ed Hickey
15	Oslo and M with Paul Vick
14	Expression and MDSN Developer and Design Centers
13	IronPython and Dynamic Languages
12	Visual Basic and the VB Community
11	REST and jQuery
10	DevExpress – CodeRush, Refactor!, and DXCore
9	2008 Year in Review
8	Rod Paddock – Editor-In-Chief of CoDe Magazine
7	Twitter, F#, WPF, Surface
6	PEX, Twitter, AJAX
5	VSX, VSIP, Aggiorno, DBI-Tech Controls
4	State of .NET, IE8, ASP.NET MVC, and O’Reilly Media
3	PDC, C#, IE8, and Surface
2	Live from PDC 2008
1	The Pilot

]]> http://mashupx.com/blog/2011/02/12/codecast-episodes-1-102/feed/ 0 http://mashupx.com/blog/2008/10/27/visual-studio-tips-by-sara-ford/ http://mashupx.com/blog/2008/10/27/visual-studio-tips-by-sara-ford/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:27:52 +0000 Ken Levy http://mashupx.com/blog/2008/10/27/visual-studio-tips-by-sara-ford/ Sara Ford has her new Microsoft Visual Studio Tips book released this week. All of the proceeds for this book go to students at a school impacted by Hurricane Katrina.

I had pre-ordered by copy a while back and copies are arriving starting today, so I’ll get mine when I return home from PDC later this week. You can see from her PDC Day 0 blog post that they are selling the books starting.

Sara is a friend of mine who lives near me, and we meet for wing or burgers and beer at the Wing Dome in Kirkland about once a month.I met with her the night she completed writing her book, and last Friday night I met her just after she received the first copies. Here is a photo from that night, probably the first photo taken of her with the new book:

CodeCast tag line: The Late Night Show for .NET Developers

I’m the primary CodeCast host, with co-hosts Markus Egger and Gary Short.

Each CodeCast show episode should be about 30 minutes even though this first one is about 44 minutes. The file download will typically be just under 100MB since it is recorded and in MP3 format at 320K bit rate for maximum voice and music quality, so it could be called CodeCast HD.

Update: Based on feedback, we are going to make the default podcast 128K which will keep the file size down to about 25MB-40MB. The result is not that much different when listening, especially the vocal audio only.

This episode introduces the podcast, the hosts, CoDe Magazine, as well as previews the PDC 2008 (Microsoft Professional Developer Conference) this week and several of the technologies expected to make an appearance at the event.

I will be attending the event, hosted by the VSX Team, the great group of people I use to work with at Microsoft (see just a few of them on the VSX team profile page).

Here are 10 of many great reasons to attend the event if you can:

1. The cost of registration for both full days of the event is only $100.
2. Developers always like to hear two words: free food.  Registration includes two days of breakfast and lunch. There will also be food at the Monday evening event Ask the Experts & Partner / Publisher Fair social gathering (where there will be more free stuff and giveaways).
3. All attendees receive free stuff including a free copy of the Wrox book Professional Visual Studio Extensibility, a $49.99 retail value (currently $31.49 via Amazon.com).
4. Receive a copy (or a second copy) of the first edition of VSX CoDe Focus magazine, published late last year which is a full 76 page issue of CoDe magazine dedicated to the topic of VSX. While the contents of the magazine all are online in HTML and PDF download at http://www.code-magazine.com/focus/vsx/ and in WPF format in the free Xiine client application, it’s cool to get a printed copy if you don’t already have one.
5. There will be several hundred in attendance at the event from around the world including developers who are VSX experts, some new to VSX, VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partners) who create 3rd party products for Visual Studio, and many people from many Microsoft teams. Networking with others at the event will be worth the time aside from the great sessions, speakers, attendees, and Microsoft employees.
6. The event includes an excellent list of speakers including some of the key architects of Visual Studio, key members of teams who work on the VS platform and ecosystem, as well as some of the top experts from the VSX developer community. Refer to the Speakers page for a complete list of speakers and bios.
7. VSX DevCon 2008 also has amazing list of 24 VSX sessions of content over the two day event. See the detailed Sessions page for the specifics. The sessions are split into two tracks, intro and advanced. Refer to the Agenda page for the timeline details.
8. Not only can you learn about how to extend Visual Studio, but there will be lots of information about the cool Visual Studio Gallery website at http://visualstudiogallery.com. The site currently has over 700 listings including many free applications for Visual Studio as well as a many 3rd party VS products. For more information about the VS Gallery website, check out Mike Yeager’s CoDe magazine article Extending Your Development Experience with Visual Studio Gallery.
9. The keynote speaker is Rico Mariani who leads the team of architects in the VS division at Microsoft. Rico is an incredibly technical, educational, and entertaining presenter. Expect the keynote to include some information about the next version of Visual Studio (code named VS10, or Dev10 including other components like the .NET Framework) as a prelude to additional announcements at PDC next month. Important to VSX and the VS ecosystem is the future of extending Visual Studio within the VS roadmap plans at Microsoft.
10. VSX is a growing community with an increasing job market demand. This means that those VS/.NET developers who learn how to extend Visual Studio using the VS SDK will open the door to an increase of opportunity in their own development work/company, possibly get a better or expanded job that includes VSX development, or as a consultant find new clients and raise rates based in the increasingly high demand for VSX developer expertise. For more information about VSX in general, check out Istvan Novak’s CoDe magazine article Visual Studio Platform and Extensibility.

I’ve been using the Twitter.com web page for reading and posting on my Blackjack II Windows Mobile based phone, and I use the Twitterific Premium application on my iPhone. While I have the Windows based Twhirl application installed on my computer, I find I generally just use the Twitter.com home page signed in when reading and posting from my PC.

Stephen is the author of QuickBooks for Dummies, Quicken for Dummies, and Excel for Dummies, and has sold around a half a million books worldwide over the past years (just click on Books on his web site to see a list of some of his publications).

One of the great resources on his website is a Do-it-yourself LLC Formation for all Fifty States eBook offering. I ended up buying the eBook version for the state of Washington, the premium version (PDF and Word files) for $49. While I could have stepped through and eBook and created my own LLC online, I realized that Stephen’s office is in Redmond, WA and only about 4 miles from where I live in Kirkland. I had some questions about various company formation options as well as questions preparing general accounting and taxes, so I setup an hour with him a few days later. It cost $235 for the hour with him, and I not only left with every one of my questions answered with additional great advise, I also left with my application all filled in online for applying for the new LLC. The next afternoon, I received a confirmation email from the office of the Secretary of State in Washington approving and confirming the formation of my LLC. I then had to register my new business which was easy with the included document in the LLC formation kit.

I also bought Stephen’s book called QuickBooks 2008 for Dummies (rated with 5 full stars on Amazon) in the Kindle eBook format since I recently bought a copy of QuickBooks 2008 Pro.

Stephen is the type of CPA who helps people as much as he can with his website content and books, and tries to focus on having clients who he can help the most. For example, he encouraged me to do as much as I can myself and then just hire a tax accountant for tax purposes. He said he would be best used for taxes if I were to ever convert my LLC into an S Corporation which requires more complex tax consulting.

Even if you are not located in the Seattle area or in the state of Washington, Stephen’s website has a ton of great resources for businesses, accounting, and taxes including a great FAQ page. If there was some type of MVP program for CPAs for contribution to the self employed business community, Stephen would get my nomination.

In this video interview I did a few weeks ago (a few days before my last day at Microsoft), I talk to Toby Richards, General Manager for Community Support Services and the MVP Program at Microsoft. The interview includes discussions around the current state of the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professionals) community and the roadmap for the MVP program and the next MVP summit.

Toby took over this role in early 2008, and he is responsible for programs that identify, award and enable community influencers around the world, creating deeper relationships and richer feedback opportunities that improve Microsoft products and services. Also discussed in the interview is online support strategies and how MVPs help users and developers who are not MVPs.

This video is a kind of part 2 to the video interview I did last year with Sean O’Driscoll in the video Channel 9: Sean O’Driscoll, a General Manager for Community Support and the MVP Program. Sean, who will be leaving Microsoft later this year, was in the role Toby has now taken over. In that interview with Sean, we discussed  the history, current state, and future of Microsoft MVPs and the MVP Program. So the video interview with Sean is a good prequel to the Toby video sequel.

I was an MVP for much of the 1990s before joining Microsoft, and I was an MVP product group lead for both Visual FoxPro and Windows Live Developer groups, followed by mostly MVPs who made up the VSX Insider group. I’ve been involved with the MVP program and summits in some form since the mid 1990s, starting about a year or so after the MVP program started at Microsoft.I will be working with a variety of current MVPs in my new company (MashupX, LLC) ventures.

Thanks to Dan Fernandez for posting this video interview on Channel 9. For more information about the MVP Program, refer to http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/.

For a reference to the blog I posted to from 2004 to 2008 while working at Microsoft, refer to http://blogs.msdn.com/klevy.