Well this is a little bit of a late notice but the details are now posted on my next talk.  On Wednesday the 25th I'll be in Grand Rapids, Michigan, talking about WinRT and the Windows 8 development ecosystem.

http://wmdotnet.org/Meetings/tabid/61/Default.aspx

Microsoft shook up the .NET development community at the Build conference last year. What''s happening with Silverlight, C#, and C++? Do I have to build applications in JavaScript and HTML5 from now on? Will I be able to use familiar frameworks for Windows 8 development? Where does WinRT fit into the ecosystem? We will navigate these questions by writing code in several different languages and discussing the unique strengths of the different target platforms available to us.

If you're nearby I hope to see you there!

This week Wednesday, November 2nd, I'll be in Madison, WI with my //Build conference recap and intro to WinRT programming talk.  If you were at the Milwaukee talk, I have some more WinJS goodies and more realistic example applications.  If you plan on attending please register at the Mad .NET web site:

http://www.maddotnet.com/

I hope to see some of you there.

Here are the slides and sample apps from the //Build Conference and WinRT intro

Slides

Code

This coming Tuesday, October 11th I will be speaking at the Milwaukee .NET User's Group on the topic of the recent Microsoft //Build conference. 

Microsoft has shown us a glimpse of the Windows 8 platform and the future of application development. What does that mean for us as .NET developers: are Silverlight and WPF dead? What is WinRT? Do I have to learn HTML 5 and C++? Please join us for a discussion of these topics and a healthy amount of Windows 8 development examples.

You can find registration details here: http://www.wi-ineta.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=23

There will be a little bit of "Here look at how cool Windows 8 is" but that type of presentation is only fun in large scale keynotes in my opinion.  We'll be going over some WinRT applications and hopefully answering a lot of your questions about the future directions for development on Windows platforms.  I'll be presenting from a Windows 8 laptop and will be able to show anything you'd like to see of the OS itself or the developer preview tooling.

Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO of Apple.

I’m not a fan of most of the popular Apple products.  That being said, the impact of Apple on the world is undeniable.  I may not like the iPhone, but Apple made user experience matter with it.  I may not like MacOS, but it taught everyone else a lot about a seamless personal computer experience.  The iPad may go down in history as the start of the post-PC era.  Yes, every industry that competes with Apple products has been forced to adapt, to be better because of Apple, and to many Steve Jobs is Apple.   Steve Jobs is unquestionably one of the great innovators of our time.

What I admire most about Steve Jobs, as I understand him from years of interviews, is his ability to form a meaningful vision and his subsequent dedication to that vision.  He never thought Macs would outsell PCs, he made a specific boutique appliance for a specific kind of customer.  In my opinion today’s marketplace in all industries gives us far too many offerings that have been watered down to be appealing to as many people as possible.  Meanwhile, if you want a certain kind of product and are willing to pay more for it, you may often just be out of luck.  Even more important, you likely never knew you wanted something like an iPhone.  However, the iPhone was developed along the lines of a very specific vision and quite a few people had to have it as soon as they saw it.  I wish there were options for more expensive but oh-so-worth-it in more areas.

Another thing that I must note about this announcement is how this feels compared to Bill Gates' retirement.  Bill Gates quit to go be a full time philanthropist/altruist.  That’s his right of course however I know I’m not alone in thinking that Bill quit during his prime when he surely had a lot more to give.  Bill Gates was also one of the great innovators of our time.  I’m left thinking that Bill Gates decided enough was enough, while Steve Jobs seemed to intend to keep going until he couldn’t do it anymore.  If the rumors about his health have any truth, it sounds like he can’t go anymore.

As I write this post on the PC running Windows 7 that you’ll pry from my cold, dead hands, I can’t help but feel a little sense of loss as a True Giant bows out.

{Edit: due to personal illness this talk is cancelled/postponed.  Indy NDA will still be meeting!}

This week Thursday I'll be speaking at Indy NDA!  http://www.indynda.org/

I'll be talking about Silverlight 5 this time, and taking things in some different directions than I have in the past.

Silverlight is not dead! Contrary to what you might be hearing Microsoft is still making big investments across the XAML development stack and that includes Silverlight. Come check out a survey of what's new in Silverlight 5. Examples from real-world Silverlight 5 business applications will be included, going far beyond the usual demos. We will also discuss silverlight's place in the developer ecosystem.

I hope to see some familiar faces there.

I love it when news like this comes out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14370878

This is isntantly jumped on by the anti-Microsoft crowd to indicate you'd have to be stupid to use Internet Explorer, scientific proof that Micro$oft sucks and everything that does not come from Redmond is superior like you've been told all along.

I'm not a statistician, but let me attempt to refute this.

1. Last I heard, Windows still has over 90% of the desktop OS market. 
2. Windows users overwhelmingly stick with IE because they are not tech geeks and IE is already there.
3. People who go out of their way to install Chrome/Opera/Firefox tend to be tech geeks of some sort who think those browsers are better (they may very well be better but my Mom has no reason to think so), or are doing software development themselves, or have ideological issues with Microsoft.
4. Tech geeks tend to be far above average intelligence.

The overwhelming majority of users, who don't know and don't care, skew the results.  I don't think I'm the only one to come to this conclusion but I've seen just enough people actually take this study to seriously mean "If you don't install Chrome your very intelligence is suspect" that I needed to go on record.

Peace.

{Edit: the study was later revealed to be a hoax anyway! http://www.winrumors.com/internet-explorer-users-arent-dumb-study-was-a-hoax }

I have once again been awarded the Microsoft MVP Award in the Client App Dev category for 2011!  It was a pretty busy year of traveling and speaking from July 2010 to July 2011, although the blogging has suffered of late.  This will be fixed shortly.

I've got some big things cooking for this year and I'm looking forward to working with my fellow MVPs and of course Microsoft.

Several times since last summer, I have written about my massive data collection projects at Edgenet/BigHammer.  This has been a long time in coming, but product data is now live on Microsoft Bing!  We have partnered with Microsoft Bing to get the best product data in the business to be factored into Bing Shopping search results.  The user facing portions of our data collection efforts amount to what I assume is one of the largest production Silverlight 4 applications out there.

Here are some bing shopping search results:

http://www.bing.com/shopping/radiator/specs/A06F16EAAD0436415011?q=radiator

http://www.bing.com/shopping/control-arm-bushing/p/F7AE8AE1EFFB4F7D5011?q=control+arm+bushing

http://www.bing.com/shopping/fx-extruded-aluminum-running-boards-in-chrome/specs/B05C7327DC76E4465011?q=FX+Extruded+Aluminum+Running+Boards+in+Chrome&FORM=CMSMSP

If you scroll down to each page below the images and specifications you'll see the Data from edgenet logo.

Read more at: http://bing.edgenet.com/

Long ago, when Silverlight 2 was new, we had a Silverlight User Group in Milwaukee.

Tuesday, June 7th we are re-launching the Milwaukee Silverlight Special Interested Group.  I will be presenting on the topic "What's new in Silverlight 5".  I would highly suggest attending this meeting if you are a Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 developer or at all interested in these topics.  We will be looking to talk to local developers about what Silverlight topics interest them and will also be recruiting presenters for future meetings.

A location map and registration can be found here:  http://www.wi-ineta.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=192 .  I hope to see you there!