Since yesterday (August 6th, 2009) 6PM GMT/10 AM , Windows 7 RTM is available for MSDN and Technet subscribers.

First I thought I wait till today because of the slow performance while everyone is downloading, but just couldn't wait and tried the download.  I took less than 1 hour to download Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit .  So I got no really download performance problem .

You can download it here :

• MSDN : http://msdn.microsoft.com/nl-be/subscriptions/default.aspx
• Technet : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/default.aspx

Already for the third time, the new community day in Belgium. Organized by all the usergroups for developers and IT Pro’s or anyone who is interested.

When? Thursday 25th June 2009

Where? Utopolis Mechelen

All info can be found here http://www.communityday.be.

Food, drink and knowledge are available. And yes, it’s still free .

So go the website and register fast as the seats are limited.

Microsoft belux creates a new free newsletter.  One specific for Enterprise Architects, Solution Architects and Infrastructure Architects.

Read more info at the blog of Philippe Destoop.

Together with my colleague Bart Wullems I wrote an article about eScrum in Team Foundation Server.  This article is published in the Dutch .Net Magazine.  This magazine is from Microsoft Netherlands for the Netherlands and Belgium Microsoft Developers.

This is the link directly to our article : http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/3/0/130ccf47-be89-48ee-829d-3a6568befbaa/114602.pdf (It's in Dutch)

You can read the magazine online here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/nl-nl/cc998678.aspx.

As I’m had done a bit with the new protecting tool of Microsoft (SLPS), the word Code Tampering comes up a lot.  Not a lot of people know what it exactly means.

So here a little explication about Code Tampering and Tamper-resistant software.

Tamper-resistant software is software that is difficult to change, tamper with, and/or attack. Code obfuscation is one technique for achieving tamper-resistant software. Generally, the goal of code obfuscation is to make it difficult for attackers to determine what is happening in a block of code. If attackers use debuggers or emulators to trace instructions, code obfuscation can make the code difficult to understand or change. Or an assembly can be given a unique name when the publisher can include a public cryptographic key. The key goes into the Manifest. If the assembly has a public key, it is said to have a Strong Name or shared name. In addition, the publisher can digitally sign the assembly, using a public and private key. This prevents tampering with the Assembly. Digitally signing an Assembly places a cryptographic hash of the contents of each file in the Assembly. This is verified at run-time to ensure that it has not been corrupted or tampered with.

Yesterday evening and today, I received a few mails with some sad news. David Boschmans passed away the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.

We all know David as an enthusiast man for the Belgium Development community as a developer evangelist.  He enjoyed live and after a few events we had a good pint and laugh.

David, We will miss you.  You will not be forgotten.  Rest in peace my friend...

My thoughts go out to his family.

Update :

Tom Mertens created a small place, where you can leave your message, so we will always remember David.  Go to http://david.vsdotnet.be.

You can also see pictures of David at Flickr : http://www.flickr.com/groups/davidboschmans/pool/

OK, I know we use Internet Explorer, but sometimes I need Firefox for my work, just to check how a website will look in Firefox.
There is a nice firefox add-on gadget when switching between the tabs.  The add-on will give you a nice 3D switching effect.

Download the add-on here.

Since June 13, the Microsoft Office Outlook team has started a blog. You can find it here. Although there are not that many posts yet, it seems that they have released an Outlook add-in that allows you to access your Windows Live Hotmail account from within Outlook 2003 or 2007.

After experimenting a while with Joost, it's time for a post about Microsoft and .Net.  Although it's more of a summary with a few links/tools I collected the last weeks .

The IE Developer toolbar.

I think every web developer knows this already from somewhere in (If I’m correct) 2005.  But it was still in beta.  Finally MS half of May has released the first final version.  You can download the toolbar here.
A fine overview is also available on this page

Interesting MSDN event in Belgium for web developers

On 6th of June: AJAX.  Info and registration can be found here.

Powershell

On the DEV & IT Pro days this year I had bought a book about Powershell.  Meanwhile I also found a digital copy of a powershell book.  You can download it here.

The book gives you a short but good starting overview about powershell.

Windows Blackcomb the next windows version after Windows Windows Vista, will get Windows Vienna as codename.  This doesn't indicate that there are big changes in this version, but just as before Microsoft likes to use names from cities or location with a beautiful view (vistas).

Names like Whistler were coming from a Canadian ski-place. Longhorn (codename of Windows Vista) comes from a certain saloon "Longhorn Saloon

(Info found on the Belgium newspaper "Het Laatste Nieuws")

The 7th and 8th march of this year, the Developer & IT Pro days 2006 are held in Ghent.  VS 2005, Team System 2005, SQL 2005, Biztalk 2006, WSS 3.0, Windows Vista and Office 12 and much more will be discussed during those two days.  Speakers like Peter Himschoot, Jan Tielens, Joris Poelmans, Hans Verbeeck and many more will be present.

More info about the agenda and speakers can be found here : http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/devitprodays/

Last Thursday (10 November 2005), I went to the Belgium Launch party of Visual Studio .Net 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006.  The place to be was Court-St-Etienne.

There where a few speakers :
· Keynote by S. Somasegar, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Corporation
· Session 1 : Clemens Vasters, Chief Technology Officer, Newtelligence AG
· Session 2 : Astrid Hackenberg Trainer and advisor SQL Server, Class-A

Mr Somasegar did the kick-off the Belux Launch of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006

Session 1 gives us an insight in the new capabilities of Visual Studio 2005.  Session 2 presents us the new world of SQL Server 2005.

In between the sessions there where some great shows, to keep everybody ready.  Afterwards we had a walking dinner party.  And we closed the day with a great dance event.  I left the party around 12 o’clock in the night.  And still a few people (10-20) where partying. 

On the Launch site of Microsoft, you can find some pictures.  Go and see them.

In the MSDN Belux Flash & Events - Volume 9, Number 22, I found following "nice to have" tools:

The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.  A must have for web developers.  This toolbar provides you several features like:

• Exploring the DOM
• Viewing HTML object details
• Validating HTML
• ....

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en

Snippy - Visual Studio Code Snippet Editor.  A code editor for Visual Studio 2005.  Snippy can be used to add new snippets or to modify previous created snippets.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/codegallery/codegallery.aspx?id=b0813ae7-466a-43c2-b2ad-f87e4ee6bc39

 

I just have bought en new gadget.  The XBeam.  This device is great to strengthen the muscles of the fingers, arms and shoulders.  It's great for people who are computer operators and much more.  For computer operators it's esxpecially to end the RSI.  The device does not use weights, but centrifugal force.  It can go to 15.000 revolutions per minute and generating a counterweight of 17 kilograms !.

I have bought the Ocean Blue with Power led's so in a darker room, this gives more fun.  The harder you go with the XBeam, the harder those leds are burning.  More info @ xbeam.be

I's like to welcome Bart Hanssen.  A collegue of me.  He has started with bloggin today.  He will blog about Sharepoint and .Net.  Find he's blog here : http://barthanssen.blogspot.com

Bart Welcome in this wonderfull world.

The mobile PC magazine published a top 100 gadgets of all time.

Don’t look.  First take a guess.  Any idea which gadget of all gadgets ever is on the first place ?  I thought it was the Rubiks Cube or the walkman.

But no, the walkman is on the third place and the Rubiks Cube is on the 89 place. 

Here you can find the full list :

• Place 100 till 81
• Place 80 till 61
• Place 60 till 41
• Place 40 till 21
• Place 20 till 1

Sources : mobile PC Magazine & nu.nl

Yep, I know.  It's already announced for a while and by several other bloggers.  But OK.  Here is my announcement.

Get a one day event of the latest version of ASP.Net.  More info can be found @ the MSDN Belux site.

A few days ago, the Tech.Ed 2005 Europe website went live.  Find it here.

I just have received a link from Yves Kerwyn's presentation about Integrated Innovation.  Yves is announced by Bill Gates himself.  The demo was given at the partner conference on the 1st of february 2005.

Today I'm for two days @ U2U.  I'm following the course MS2030A "Creating Reporting Solutions Using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services".  Our teacher is Nico Jacobs.

Dev & IT Pro days 2005 Day 1

After 2 days full of .Net 2.0, VS 2005 and SQL 2005, it was hard to work again with VS 2003 and Oracle :-( .  But we survive for the moment.

Well this year it were exiting days.  First of all, Bill Gates was coming for the opening speech.  Sleeping a bit, waking up on time, I drove to Brussels.  I was on time (7.15 hour).  A bit early, but there would be light breakfast.  Yep light (brownies,...).  Going on time to the keynote room to see Bill.  And what happened : The session starts with a delay (so it's not only with their software ).  Bill did first a little presentation about the importance of software, the future of it.  Then a few questions send in by the professionalls where answered.  The first one was from my collegue Marc Deraeve.

After the keynote, I followed the session "Closing The Gap Between Development And Operations: A Developer's Perspective".  This sessions handles about the developer and the operations perspective view on projects.  How it's done today and what it should be.  A little bit was said about the enterprise library.

After a short break, I followed "Sneak Preview Of The Future Of Web Development" (ASP.Net 2.0).  Wasn't really new for me.  Most of it I had already seen before.  But you can't have everything is it.

Lunchtime, just like all other years a rush to the sandwiches .

After lunch I followed "Accessing Your Business' Data Through Information Bridge Framework".  Very interesting, because I already have heard about IBF, but didn't know a lot of it.  The most exciting part was for Patrick, because he uses the newest version IBF 1.5 (Will come out within 2-3 weeks).  He received this version the day before at night (let say around 23 hour Patrick ?).

For the last session this day, I followed one IT Pro session "Interop & Integration: Avoiding The Spaghetti".  But before I had a little talk with Jelle Druyts and Rudi Larno.  The session itself I attended with Rudi.  I followed this session

because Eric did a talk on how Host Integration Server, BizTalk and webservices can be used to integrate your mainframe with the windows environment.

The community session I have missed, because I head a good talk with Eric Van Bever (The speaker of this IT-Pro session) about HIS.

Dev & IT PRo days 2005 Day 2

Again an early wake up (little later than yesterday).  Today I arrived in Brussels at 7.45 hour.  Again a light breakfast here . Then up to the keynote.  This time it was Kimberly Trip, who did a great session about "SQL Server 2005, Bridging the Gap between Development and Administration".  Man, was I impressed by the new features of SQL 2005 (Deep XML integration, possibility to add your database to SourceSafe, CLR integration and much more.

The rest of the sessions where in 2 parts so around 3 hours in total.

For the first sessions it was difficult.  Should I take VS 2005 or SQL 2005.  Finally I decided to go for VS 2005, because most of the clients for which I'm working are using a Oracle DB.  A lot of people did choose for the VS 2005, so the room was really, really full.  An interesting session.  Already known a few thing, I saw some nice new things.  A lot of nice, new enhancements where showed.  Time to install the beta under a VPC and check out them bymyself (I already have downloaded the CPT of December, now need some time to install it).  Also the new VSTO was a bit mentioned.

In the afternoon I followed the "Visual Studio 2005 Team System".  A shame I can't run it on my PC (even when using VPC).  Because I need 2 VPC's running, one as server and one as client.  But not to worry, I will check it out with a few collegues.  Team System was for me the most interesting session of the 2 days.  This new software combines VS 2005 with the developer, project leader, Operations, management on tight integration.  It keeps all the data in one place, you can still use excel,...  But now you always have the latest data.  We seen some interesting items about the SourceSafe control, the integration of test scenario's and the build system.  And the second speaker (Bart Vande Ghinste) didn't want to stop just to show us, some nice extra demo's. 

For me day 2 was the best and most productive day of the 2.  Thanks for Tom and his team to organizing everything.  The most negative point (and I'm sure I'm not the only one), was the sound during the sessions.  We had really some annoying voice-overs from the other sessions.  This was a little bit better during day 2, but not much.  Something that has to be changed for the next dev & IT Pro days.

It was a pity I forgot my camera.  But you can find a few pictures somewhere in the blogosphere (Jan Tielens).

During my christmas holiday, I got a mail that I can attend those days.  Now I'm going to see which tracks I will follow.

So maybe I will see some of you there.

Just came back from a few days of somewhere without internet, e-mail, computer, ... .  Had a great time.  And now I read that since today the site for the developer & IT Pro days here in Belgium is up and running.

Great

And Bill Gates will give the opening keynote.  Hope I can attend there.

Finally some time.  Well it was fun.  Although we were only with 4 people (Yves Hanoulle, Roy Dictus, Peter Himschoot and myself) we had a great talk and laugh.

The restaurant itself was nice, a must with a group.  You eat with your hands and a wooden spoon, drink out of jars.

It was a shame that the batteries of the camera were empty.  I have tried to take a few pictures with my mobile phone.  I will check later if they are OK to post and not to dark so you can't see anything.  So keep your eye here for info about the photos.  Otherwise we will see you at the next geek dinner.

Update : As I thought, the pictures where almost black with a few red pixels.  But no worry:  Next time I try to bring my camera with me.

Roy Dictus is organising the 2nd edition of the Belgian Geek Dinner.  Look here for more info.

Today is my last day @ U2U.  I'm following a course “Programming .Net Enterprise Applications with C#”.  We had following teachers :

• Gert Servranckx
• Peter Himschoot

I took a few pictures with my Mobile Phone (So sorry for the low quality).  More to follow

 

Thanks to Patrick Verbruggen, I came across software which can be used to control your Phone using Bluetooth.
So be sure to read the article at Patrick's site.

I just have tested it and it's great.

Update : New date because of TechEd

Finally, we will have in Belgium also a geek dinner.  Organised by Jelle Druyts (great man).  The Geek dinner will be held in Antwerp on friday the 2nd of July 25th of June at 20:00 hour, but only if there are enough people. 

More info can be found here. 

Just leave a comment when you want to come.  Jelle will release all the details a few days before the dinner.

I just came across a blog about Windows XP SP2.  The site is from Tony Goodhew.  A lot of useful information is available, including links to past webcasts.

Through the MSDN blogging feeds I stucked into an article about blogging and marketing.  It's a long article, but it seems very interesting in how bloggings can be used for your company marketing.

Yep, Microsoft Belux is finding it's way to the blog world.  After Yves Kerwyn, I want to welcome Rudi Larno.

Betaversion of Virtual Server 2004

Microsoft has released the betaversion of Virtual Server 2004 for a selected group of customers.  The full version will be availlable for the market somewhere in the middle of this year.  This VM is for Windows 2003 which can host development, test and production environment.  VM is bought by Microsoft from Connectix.
(Thanks to Datanews)

Infopath update 2

I'm not the first one, who mention this.  Some downloads for Infopath are availlable :

• Service Pack 1
• Toolkit for Visual Studio .Net

For more info, you can go to Patrick Tisseghem's Blog.

Today, my blog is active.  Have to change some parameters, but from now on you can find here my life with .Net and other Microsoft products.

This weekend I had bought a new mobile.  A Sony Ericsson T610 with Bluetooth on board.  This evening I will install a bluetooth adapter on my PC to see how this is working.

Also I will install Windows 2003 Enterprise edition and Windows XP on my laptop.  I will use Virtual PC for it.

In the company where I work, I'm in a group who are going to start with Host Integration Server Beta 2.  I will keep you up to date how it's going.

Cu