Win an Invite to the Microsoft HALO 3 Pre-Launch Party on September 24th!

by | Sep 11, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Can

you name every vehicle in HALO 2?

Do you know how many Flood must be killed to beat HALO 2 on Legendary?

And do you “know what ladies like”?

THEN THIS CONTEST IS FOR YOU!

Thanks to the incredibleevangelismteam here

in the South Central district, I’m pleased to bring you, dear reader, the chance to

go to the Microsoft Pre-Launch party for HALO 3. That’s right, you will be welcomed

into the Microsoft campus in Irving, TX on September 24th,

2007 between 6pm and Midnight and have a chance to play HALO 3 while

everyone else is still standing in line! You read that right, 6 hours

of HALO 3 while the rest of the peasants are sitting outside GameStop just so they

can rush home an play it. The event will feature food and drink and everything

you’d expect from such a prestigious frag-fest.

You can win this ticket to Master Chief Nirvana by doing two things!

Important, you must do both things to win.

  1. Leave a comment on this blog containing:

  1. Your Real Name

  2. Your Gamertag (No tag? Sorry, serious fans only)

  3. The reason you should win the ticket.

  • Be on XBOX LIVE this Saturday (9/15/07) night, between 8 PM and 9 PM Central.

    • I will review the entries, consult the mystic oracle, and pick from among the comments

    the very best response. On Saturday night between 8pm and 9pm Central I will

    logon to XBOX LIVE (Gamertag Gisben for those who are new here) and will see if that

    person is online. If not? On to the next best response of course!

    The

    lucky winner will be given all of the relevant details for the event.

    This event is being held in Irving, TX … If you can’t be in Irving, TX

    on September 24th of your own power, then do not enter. The contest is only

    for the ticket to enter the event, not for travel or anything else.

    And I remind you … may your reasons good, this isn’t a random drawing my

    friends, your reason has to be better than everyone else’s reason if you hope to walk

    away with the prize.

    Speaking at the Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference

    by | Sep 11, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

    I’ve just received word that one of the sessions I submitted has been accepted for

    the Microsoft SOA & Business Process

    Conference. This is year is bound to be interesting coming just after the

    release of BizTalk 2006 R2 (scheduled for late September) and just before Visual Studio

    2008 (scheduled for late November). I will be speaking on BizTalk 2006 R2 and

    HIPAA Transactions, a topic near and dear to my heart as I’ve done a great deal of

    work with both the HIPAA Accelerator and the Covast EDI Adapter for previous versions

    of BizTalk, and am currently working on a Proof-Of-Concept application for a claims

    clearinghouse using BizTalk 2006 R2. If you have a chance to get out to Redmond

    in late October, here are the details (hat

    tip to Mary Kay BizTalk Guru Zach Bonham)

    http://mssoaandbpconference.com/

    Who is invited to attend?

    Space will be limited, but anyone who is interested in SOA and Business Process should

    attend.
    Who should attend the conference?

    The conference is intended to educate and inform project managers, business managers,

    process owners/executives, IT/technical implementers, developers and business/technical

    consultants. Individuals from IT departments, development organizations, Project Management

    Offices (PMOs), and those business focused individuals who need to grasp a deeper

    understanding of how Project, Portfolio and EPM can empower their organization to

    do more will get great value from this conference.

    What is the charge to attend the conference?

    Registrationis $299.

    Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference 2007

    by | Sep 11, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

    The annual Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference has been scheduled for 2007. You can find the conference site here, where you’ll find a list of sessions along with registration information. Pluralsight is sponsoring the show so we’ll have a booth and several of us will be speaking during the week. I’m doing the session on the new BizTalk WCF adapters. Jon and Matt are also speaking on different topics.

     


     

    But the thing we’re probably most excited about is that Pluralsight is doing a preconference training seminar in conjunction with the conference. You can read more about it on the conference web site here — or just click on the “Discounted SOA Training” on the main page. We’re calling the seminar What’s New in Microsoft Connected Systems.  If you’re attending the conference or will be in the area during the end of Oct (10/28), check it out. We’ve designed this to be an advanced developer-oriented seminar to help ramp-up on the cool new technologies being developed by the Microsoft Connected Systems Division (CSD). Here are some of the highlights:

     


    • .NET 3.5 (Orcas) ramp-up
    • WCF Web API for REST/POX
    • WCF RSS/Ajax features
    • Workflow Services
    • WCF/WF/BTS integration
    • What’s new in BTS 2006 R2
    • WCF adapters for R2
    • BizTalk RFID
    • BizTalk Services (in the cloud)

     

    The sessions are designed for developers and technical decision makers and will be taught by Jon,  Matt, and myself. For more details, or to register online, check out the event description page here.

    Redmond this week (CSD SDR)

    by | Sep 11, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

    I leave for Redmond tonight and will be on the Microsoft campus through Friday attending some meetings with the Connected Systems Division (at the MS conference center). In fact, a bunch of us from Pluralsight will around campus this week including Keith, Fritz, Jon Flanders, Matt Milner, Brian Randall, Scott Allen, and Ted Neward. Some of us are attending the CSD SDR while Fritz and others will be teaching our new Applied Silverlight course. If you’re around too, drop me a line.

    BizTalk Server 2006 R2 – Available today!

    by | Sep 10, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

     

    I’m thrilled to announce that BizTalk Server 2006 R2 is available today!  This marks the 5th major release we’ve had in the last 7 years, which is a great testament to our product team’s ability to deliver value to customers as the market evolves. Just as folks in the US are sitting down to dinner tonight, we will be halfway around the world in Taipei, Taiwan celebrating the availability of BizTalk Sever 2006 R2 with our partners, Intel and HP.


     


    I bet you’re thinking “why Taiwan?”  As you may know, it is a primary hub for manufacturing.  The motivation for R2 was simple. Businesses need to CONNECT existing systems regardless of vendor, age or protocol and EXTEND business processes outside the organization- all with software that is ENTERPRISE CLASS. For years, customers have wanted a single platform for application integration, process automation and supply chain management in one box – simply put, customers need an easy way to connect across offices, organization and oceans. R2 delivers!


     


    Over the next few days, I’ll be doing several updates to my blog, but today, I’ll start by running through the basics. So, let’s talk more about the first two-extending and connecting.  


     


    We’ve made some big investments in R2 that will help organizations push process automation out the edge and beyond.


    %u00b7         Full RFID solution to manage device, capture events and invoke workflow.


    %u00b7         Hub & spoke enablement for branch connectivity with the new, very low cost BizTalk Server Branch edition


    %u00b7         New robust EDI capabilities- including commonly used EDI schemas and trading partner management tools


    %u00b7         We are also including four industry accelerators “out of the box”- RosettaNet, HL7, HIPPA, SWIFT


     


    In addition to the GA of R2 – we announced a new set of ESB Guidance and a CTP of the BizTalk Adapter pack.


     


    First-  “Microsoft’s ESB Guidance,” which provides architectural guidance, patterns, practices, and a set of BizTalk Server and .NET components to simplify the development of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) using Microsoft technology. We want to help customers with best practices to implement an ESB, with the technology they already have- in a way that is both easy and fiscally responsible. This helps remove the mystery and confusion around developing a ESB- and the best part it is free now on CodePlex!


     


    Secondly- Today we are delivering the first CTP of the BizTalk Adapter Pack.  Available in the first half of calendar Year 2008 – it will include adapters for SAP, Siebel, and Oracle DB, as well an ADO.NET Provider.  After it becomes available – the Adapter Pack will be included in BizTalk Server 2006 R2. Because these adapters do not specifically require BizTalk Server, many customers will find them to be a very useful alternative to hand coding point to point integration. Think about being able to pull customer information from Siebel into a SharePoint site or load order information from SAP into SQL for BI reporting and analysis. The best part is. these adapters grow with your business. So when you decide the application needs a middle tier you don’t have to rip and replace, rather just implement BizTalk Server.  Go download it, play with it and let us know what you think.


     


    With more than 7,000 customers globally, BizTalk is the most widely deployed business process server.  And we think we will continue to impress our customers with R2-that’s what it’s all about!


     

    Virgin Schmap

    by | Sep 10, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

    I was just reading Kordi’s post on Virgin Mobile, Creative Commons abuser?


    Also like John and Rowan I’ve been Schmap’d


    “I am delighted to let you know that your four submitted photos have been selected for inclusion in the newly released third edition of our Schmap Auckland Guide:



    Auckland Zoo
    www.schmap.com/auckland/sights_zoos/p=55926/i=55926_7.jpg


    Auckland Zoo
    www.schmap.com/auckland/sights_zoos/p=55926/i=55926_8.jpg


    One Tree Hill
    www.schmap.com/auckland/tours_tour1/p=38878/i=38878_1.jpg


    Takapuna Beach
    www.schmap.com/auckland/sights_panorama/p=40629/i=40629_3.jpg“


    This sort of thing always amused me as the photos that were picked, I didn’t submit and they are not my favourite photos on those topics and three of the four photos that they picked have annoying copyright watermarks!


    Another case of this was a designer in the US contacting me to use this photo in a fishing e-commerce site. I always tend to prefer right framing of images… it was interesting for me that the designer mirrored this photo so that the wharf was on the left… must be the sign of a creative rather than analytical mind. 


    What is the going rate for royalty free photos?

    Tool of the Day: WSPBuilder for SharePoint

    by | Sep 10, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

    What a coincidence: this week I’m in Aarhus, Denmark for a SharePoint 2007 Development Training, and I’ve stumbled upon a very nice SharePoint tool, created by a Danish guy: Carsten Keutmann. The tool is named WSPBuilder and can be downloaded from the CodePlex site. Basically this tool can build a SharePoint solution file (WSP) in minutes. You just have to copy the contents for the WSP to a corresponding structure (e.g. 12\template\layouts, 12\template\features\yourfeature), run the tool and you’ve got yourself a splendid SharePoint solution!

    Description from CodePlex:
    No more manually creating the manifest.xml file.
    No more manually specifying the DDF file.
    No more using the makecab.exe application.

    The WSPbuilder is a console application that creates SharePoint Solutions files based on a folder structure. WSPBuilder will automatically traverse a “12” folder structure and creates a SharePoint solution manifest.xml and the wsp file based on the files it finds. Therefore you do not need the knowledge of how to create a solution manifest.xml and wsp file any more. The folder structure that WSPBuilder uses to build the wsp file is actually the same folder stucture you will find in: “%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12”. So all that you have to do, is the create a \12 folder in your project and add your files to that folder matching the same structure as if you where to put them directly into the “%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12” folder manually.

    Thanks Carsten, if you happen to be in Aarhus this week, I’ll buy you a beer! 😉

    Technorati tags: sharepoint, sharepoint2007, wsp, solutions, wspbuilder