The Progression team has been hard at work getting the final touches on the Beta2 release of VS 2010. It’ll be out in a couple of months.
If you have Beta1, Beta2 will be a significant improvement in performance and reliability. Great stuff coming online.
ScottGu has already started a blogging series about changes that are coming with the next beta.
Stay tuned.
There is an additional Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview program which is focused on consumers, students (teachers too!) and home users.
If you’re reading this blog, you probably fall into one of those categories If you are one of these people and would like to try out the Office 2010 Technical Preview please go here: http://connect.microsoft.com/office/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=3304&InvitationID=C2R-HKRJ-CMDH.
Announced at TechEd this morning; Office 2010 Technical Preview for Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Communicator 2010, Access 2010, InfoPath 2010 and Publisher 2010.
Jacob Sebastian, a SQL Server MVP from Ahmedabad, India has just got his book published – The Art of XSD – SQL Server XML Schema Collections. What’s remarkable is that he’s managed to make the eBook available as a free download for all. A print and Kindle edition is coming up shortly.
The Art of XSD – SQL Server XML Schema Collections is a 485 page book that takes the readers step by step from the basics to advanced topics on XSD and SQL Server XML Schema Collections. Prior knowledge of XSD is not required to start with this book, although any experience with XSD will make your learning process easier.
Jacob has also implemented a group, a forum, and a blog to support the book which would allow him to discuss, answer reader questions, listen to feedback, and provide the readers latest information on the topics discussed in this book.
Today the availability of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office system was announced. The service pack includes major performance enhancements for Office applications, most notably Microsoft Office Outlook, as well as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. One big benefit is SP2’s boost to interoperability — with this release, Office supports additional built-in file formats such as PDF and ODF. Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b444bf18-79ea-46c6-8a81-9db49b4ab6e5&displaylang=en.
Rob Miles, professor on the University of Hull, is one of the presenters on the GeekNight 2009 event in The Netherlands. He’ll be reveiling how to take over the world with embedded devices, your C# and Visual Studio skills and even has an special surprise in store, it involves a mysterious button! See the video here for more madness.
On a side note: I have to say that it all sounds a bit like:
* Pinky and the brain… 
The 2009 Lang.NET Symposium was held last week in Redmond, WA and is a chance to hear about the latest in languages, IDE’s, compilers, and more. Here’s part of the description from the site:
Lang.NET is a forum for discussion of programming languages, managed execution environments, compilers, multi-language libraries, and integrated development environments. It provides an excellent opportunity for programming language implementers and researchers from both industry and academia to meet and share their knowledge, experience, and suggestions for future research and development in the area of programming languages.
So, why do I mention this? Because the session recordings are free (and don’t even need a login).
Head over to the recordings or to the speaker/sessions page and check out talks on:
The recordings from 2008 are available as well (and still very relevant).
As you probably will notice if you have visited this site before, it has gotten a new look and feel to it. I personally like it very much since it gives a nicer overview from the home page, where you can more easily follow what’s happening with me (which is always a good thing 
). Furthermore you can now see my status updates on the interwebz like twitter, youtube favs, stumbleupon and flickr in sidebar ‘Find me Elsewhere’.
Also I rebranded the site from my (previously) main domain shifd.net to havingfunwith.net. Which I think will better resemble the content that I want to start sharing from now on (more code). The old URL however will still remain to work, so no need to update your favorites (except if you want to ofcourse).
I would very much like to know what you think of the new design. You can use the ‘Get in Touch’ box below to contact me directly. There will probably still be some bugs in the beginning so please bear with me as I keep on training the monkeys.
That’s it for now! See you soon…
Take a trip over to http://sessions.visitmix.com/MIX09 and you can watch and download the sessions from Day 1:
Quite an extensive list so pick wisely which ones you’re going to watch
Together with Devnology (Pieter Joost van de Sande and Freek Leemhuis) Michel van den Berg is organizing a day on software testing. As the event is for Dutch people, so is the following text:
Voor dit gastcollege hebben we een aantal experts uit de software industrie bereid gevonden om hun expertise te delen met de derdejaars studenten Software Engineering. Het curriculum van het huidige trimester behandelt het onderwerp Software Testen en wordt verzorgd door Prof. Dr. Arie van Deursen.
Voor meer info check de blog post van Michel hier.
