26 May 2013

Surface Pro as My Main Computer/Tablet

General News
I have been developing on a Dell XPS M1530 laptop for nearly 5 years now.  It has been nothing short of a great laptop.  However, as you can guess based on its age, it is a bit dated by today’s standards.  A couple of months ago, I acquired a Microsoft Surface Pro (128BG version) and had been wondering if it might be beefy enough to replace my Dell. Last week I had the opportunity to try my Surface Pro out in a development scenario so I thought I’d give it a try.  I installed Visual Studio 2012 w/Update 2, ReSharper…
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08 May 2013

WP7.x or WP8?

Windows Phone
I am designing a new Windows Phone app and I can't decide if I should target Windows Phone 7.x (which would also run on 8) or Windows Phone 8 only.  I can see pros and cons to both: Windows Phone 8 Only Pros: I can take advantage of some of the new features in WP8 (although I am not sure which ones, specifically, I would take advantage of at this time) I can develop in Visual Studio 2012 I can use my Lumia 920 to test on It's the "latest and greatest" Cons: I exclude the Windows Phone 7.x community…
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07 May 2013

ALM Readiness Treasure Map Update–Tracking Progress

ALM, ALM Rangers, Pirates
If you don’t follow the various ALM Rangers Solutions, you should!  If you do, then you already realize there is a lot of content put out by the various ALM Rangers project teams. In fact, there is so much information provided by the ALM Rangers that they have provided a Windows 8 app to help navigate the ever-changing waters of available content – the ALM Readiness Treasure Map. [If you’re running Windows 8, click the above image to install the app now] Coming Enhancements Although version 1 of the app has seen a lot of use, there is much room…
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02 May 2013

TFS Live app for Windows Phone

Team Foundation Service, TFS, Windows Phone
If you happen to 1) work with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Service (TFService) or another publically accessible TFS server and 2) own a Windows 8 Phone, then you will want to check out the tfs live app for Windows Phone. The tfs live app provides quick, at-a-glance totals for the various types of work items you’re most interested in. When you install the app and run it for the first time, you will have to configure the app to connect to your TFS server: Although a template has been provided for the server URL (as shown in the above image), it…
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05 Apr 2013

Visual Studio/TFS Update 2 Released

TFS 2012, Visual Studio 2012
The latest update for Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012, Update 2, has been released.  There is a lot of new functionality included in this release and rather than duplicate all the details here, I’ll simply refer you to this post on the Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server Blog as well as this link. I would like to point out the download links: Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 with Update 2 Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012 with Update 2 IntelliTrace Collector for Visual Studio Remote Tools for…
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27 Mar 2013

//Build/ 2013 Announced

Conferences
Yesterday, Steve Guggenheimer announced //Build/ 2013.  Here are the details known so far: Date and Location San Francisco, CAJune 26th (09:00 PDT) – June 28th (14:30 PDT)The Moscone Center – Game Developers Conference 2013 is being held there as I write this. Registration opens at 09:00am PDT, April 2, 2013Early bird (first 500): $1,595 // Full: $2,095 If you happened to attend //Build/ 2012 (last November) then you no doubt recall the endless joy of being bussed from one side of the campus to the other (depending on which sessions you wanted to attend).  You might also fondly recall the…
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06 Mar 2013

Tracking Home Inventory

OneDrive, Tips
About a month ago, I received a message from my sister informing me that her house had been robbed and that pretty much everything of value had been stolen.  Luckily, she wasn’t home when the robbery took place so she wasn’t in any danger of being harmed.  Not everything that was taken can be replaced (e.g. family heirlooms, jewelry, etc.) so we are hopeful that at least some of her valuables will be located.  However, if they are located, she will still have to prove they are hers.  Luckily, she had recorded the serial numbers of the items (e.g. camera,…
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17 Jan 2013

.NET Mocking Framework Survey Results

OneDrive, Surveys, Testing
Two weeks ago, I posted a survey (using Excel Surveys available in SkyDrive) asking you what your preferred/primary .NET mocking framework was. We plan to use this data to help drive out which frameworks we want to evaluate further. The survey closed yesterday and, out of 147 responses, here is how everything shook out: 147 responses may not seem like a lot and, in the grand scheme of all .NET developers across the world, it’s not.  There are several ways you can look at this number:  Out of everyone that viewed the survey request, the majority of them didn’t want…
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15 Jan 2013

Omaha ALM User Group–Inaugural Meeting

User Group
The Omaha ALM User Group, formerly known as the Omaha Team System User Group, is having its inaugural meeting tomorrow night, Tuesday, January 15th, 2013.  The Omaha ALM User Group is a technology agnostic group focused on utilizing tools and automation to support the people and processes across the complete application lifecycle.  The group is co-lead by Jeff Bramwell and Mike Douglas. Our first talk is Creating a deployment framework with TFS and custom PowerShell Cmdlets by Andy Bayer: As testing and release cycles continue to shorten for developers, automating application deployments becomes almost a necessity.  TFS and WebDeploy provide…
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