A full cumulative update for .NET 3.5 in a form of a service pack. But be carefull – it may break all your bases belongs to us like .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2, .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 2 or .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1. The problem resides in the fact, that it no only contains many new features building incrementally upon .NET Framework 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, but also includes cumulative servicing updates to the .NET Framework 2.0 and .NET Framework 3.0 subcomponents, which lead to these problems. So this is -1 for installing it. But… not only performance improvements are inside, but service release flavor ones as well, like opting out of strong-name verification for fully trusted assemblies, ClickOnce opt out of signing and hashing, filestream and date support for SQL2k8 in LINQ to SQL, etc., this would be a ++1. So – test your applications throughfully, it worths upgrading, but may hide many obstacles…

Here are a list of useful links to start with:

Silverlight

·        To learn more about Silverlight visit the Silverlight Community site. This site includes tons of tutorials, videos, getting started information, samples and a showcase where you can see the latest sites created with Silverlight

·        One of the best online resources is the library of videos from the latest MIX event in Las Vegas. These are many dozens of hours of videos that talk about Silverlight and User Experience – http://sessions.visitmix.com/

·        The Silverlight Reference includes the nitty gritty of Silverlight. Covering both versions of Silverlight you will find detailed information on all functions, events, properties and objects as well as useful examples – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb404708.aspx

·        Microsoft Learning has also created some fun Silverlight Snacks that provide you with high level information on Silverlight

·        Mike and Mike’s Silverlight Webcast series is great (mainly aimed at developers but also useful for you as a designer) – http://www.miketaulty.com/SLVideos.html

·        Tim Sneath is one of the most popular bloggers in Microsoft. He is a developer but his posts will be very useful for you too: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/

·        Lynda.com has produced a free Silverlight series. Please note this is Silverlight 1 but might still be useful for you in order to understand some basic concepts of Silverlight – http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=473

·        Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 Feature Matrix. Learn more about the differences between Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 – http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/overview.aspx

Expression

·        Visit the Microsoft Expression site for more information about the Expression tools, video tours, feature lists, trials, preview versions and to purchase the products.

·        Visit the Expression Community site for more learning and technical resources for designers. Visit the forums, download the samples and check out the blogs from some Expression product team members.

·        The XAML-Ready agency session at MIX will help you speed up in understanding Silverlight and Expression concepts from a Flash designer point of view – http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=C01

·        To learn more about DeepZoom check out this post which talks about the latest version of DeepZoom Composer.

Microsoft UX and Design    

·        Microsoft Design site. Learn more about different designers who work for Microsoft in different areas.

Community

·        Kirupa is a Program Manager in the Blend team. You will enjoy his blog and will found lots of great tricks in there: http://blog.kirupa.com/?cat=13

·        Arturo is a Product Manager for Expression. You can also get news and announcements in his blog: http://ux.artu.tv

·        All the Expression product teams also own and post news and tips & tricks in their blogs:

o   Expression Blend and Expression Design

o   Expression Web

o   Expression Encoder

o   Expression Media

(src: http://ux.artu.tv/?page_id=70)

 Anyone ever designing, architecting or understand a project (whether it's .NET or not) should check out these guidelines. And you should never ever hire anyone without knowledge of this 🙂

 I don't want to repeat a press release, but quite a lot of interesting things happened to Silverlight today:

• H.264 support announced
• AAC support announced
• MP4 container support announced

As Scott Guthrie has written – this doesn't mean Microsoft is getting further from WMV. It just means – we give you the choice.

And a lot of interesting website starts SL based video delivery (sports fan are especially welcomed):

• French national public broadcaster – Catchup TV service
• Leading UK commercial TV network – Preview of SL-based “Catch up TV” service
• New Silverlight homepage “Viewer” – Includes new MSN Network SL video player
• Largest entertainment network in Europe – New Sl-based VoD Service
• Major Dutch broadcaster – SL Wimbledon coverage
• Leading French VoD service – Launching new Silverlight VoD service with DZ content navigation and playback
• L’EquipeTV (SI of France) sports service, powered by YaCast – Live and On-Demand Silverlight DRM

And a few words about our spons… sorry, about the NBC Olympics website, which in 17 days scored:

• 1.3 billion page views
• 50+ million unique visitors
• 70 million streams
• 10 million hours of video watched
• 35 million mobile page views
• Hundreds of highlights produced every day, which were delivered to every possible platform

We are just a few weeks away from announcing the Windows HPC Server 2008. For developers and architects this will be an opportunity to think different – think in High Performance. Therefore I list here three webcasts that should enable you full power by the time you put your hands on the disks:

Windows HPC Server Development, the MPI Application Model

September 11, 2008, at 8:00am PDT and 7:00pm PDT

Windows HPC Server Development, the WCF Application Model 

October 2, 2008 at 8:00am PDT and 7:00pm PDT

Performance and Networking Gains with Windows HPC Server 2008

October 15, 2008, 8:00am PDT and October 16, 2008, 7:00pm PDT

This is a bit (?) Hungarian specific thing. I believe in that a small country like Hungary will never able to compete in quantity with countries like India or China. I believe we have to compete on quality, and in the continious innovation that happens daily. Therefore I announce the '2008 Most Innovative Hungarian Partner Solution award'. Feel free to participate – it doesn't hurt that much 🙂

Already in available in 4 languages – the brand new beta 2 version for IE8 is out in the wild. Some of the newly announced features (inprivacy browsing, smartscreen, etc) are quite compelling – worths to check out. Some of the favourite things among them in details:

• Accelerators – Highlight an address, click the blue button and hover over “Map” or try Right Clicking a Page and Choosing Translate with Windows Live. Check out the new IE Gallery that has cool accelerators and slices from Digg to FaceBook to Ebay
• Web Slices – Visit Live Search, search for “Seattle Weather” (or major city relevant to your region), hover over the rich search result and click the green button.  Click it to add a Weather Web Slice to your Favorites Bar. Or do the same with Ebay
• Search Suggestions – Go to your Instant Search Box (top right) and type a search to see search suggestions in action
• Navigation – Use the new Smart Address Bar to quickly find sites you’ve visited before.  The Smart Address Bar searches your history, favorites AND feeds for pages that match what you’re typing
• Security – from updated Smartscreen phishing and malware filter to domain highlighting to the industry leading cross-site scripting filter so I feel my machines, my identity and my family will be safer on the Internet

Some of the videos *not* showing the features can be found here. The list of features can be found here. And – if you like it you may become a fan on facebook! 🙂

News of yesterday – "Red Gate has recently acquired .NET Reflector. We will continue to maintain a free version for the benefit of the community." – you remember my post about open source? All open source projects have or may have this problem now or in the future – may collide with someone who sees enough profitability in the tool and offers a deal. Btw – Lutz is working for Microsoft. He is a Senior Software Design Engineer in the Expression Blend team. And the company Red Gate is the same that bought SQL Central community site – and from the experiences with that one I think that was a good deal for both the community and the companies involved. So – I'm looking forward how will Reflector 6.0 look like both from features and pricing point of view – meanwhile looking for alternatives as well 😉 (like DILE).

I'd like to draw the attention to a whitepaper by David Chappell – not a long one, being comprehensive, can be easily cited (like cloud platform is "kind of platform lets developers write applications that run in the cloud, or use services provided from the cloud, or both" ) – so good for enterprise consumption as well 🙂 It provides context for Microsoft Software Plus Sevices (S+S) strategy by explaining the rationale for what an operating system provides: a foundation, infrastructure services, and application services. And how a cloud platform applications compare with on-premises applications. He explains how the two application types work together. In addition, he breaks down each of the pieces that are needed for a complete cloud platform, including storage, identity, search, mapping, and integration.

The Windows Server Division has named the next server Windows Server 2008 R2. The release would be 'just' a "minor" or Update release. In a blog posting, Windows Server '7' aka "Windows Server 2008 R2", the team announced that the plan is to keep up with a two-year minor release, four-year major release cycle for servers. The current version of the Windows Server 2008 Product Roadmap shows that R2 will release in 2010. It explains that an update release "integrate[s] the previous major release with the latest service pack, selected feature packs, and new functionality." About the client release Ward Ralston (Group Program Manager) stated, that "The client will be a major release, but, as we’ve said before, compatibility with previous versions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 is a design goal."