January 2008 - Posts

• Community Launch Registration Closed!!

  We've had to close registration for the Community Launch this Thursday because we've hit the limit on the number of attendees. Well actually, due to a small issue with the code in our events module, we've gone over it, :S. We're having to email those people who registered last that they are actually on a waiting list and might not be able to get into the event.  We're also sending out an email to those people who will be able to get in asking them, if they are not able to make it, then please can they un-register themselves so we can free up some space for people who can. The Launch kit will only be available to those people who actually turn up for the event. Remember those who can't make it that we will be holding more detailed events later in the year. Microsoft are also holding the Official launch event in Dublin on the 11th March and we're hoping that they will also be coming to Belfast sometime in April, though this has yet to be confirmed. Posted Jan 30 2008, 05:35 by Simon Phillips with 2 comment(s)

• Update - Community Launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008

  We'll like to confirm some of the details about this Thursdays event. Schedule The schedule will be as follows: 1:30 – 2:00 Registration 2:00 – 2:05 Intro 2:05 – 3:05 Windows Server 2008 Highlights (Part 1) – Dave Northey 3.15 – 4:00 Windows Server 2008 Highlights (Part 2) – Dave Northey 4:00 – 4:15 Coffee Break 4:15 – 5:30 Business Intelligence Highlights of SQL Server 2008 – Bob Duffy 5:30 – 6:15 Coffee Break 6:15 – 7:30 Visual Studio 2008 Highlights – Ronan Geraghty 7:30 – 8:00 Highlights of SQL Server 2008 for developers – Ronan Geraghty From 8:00  Reception Launch Kit The following products will be made available to all Community Launch attendees. Vista Ultimate Edition with SP1 + subscription to OneCare. Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition. SQL Server 2008 CTP 5.0 plus a voucher for the full release of SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition when available later in the year. Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (64 + 32bit) for internal testing & evaluation only. Unfortunately, the kits won’t be available on the day of the community launch – however, they will be posted out as soon as they become available. We’ll be mailing attendees in order to get postal addresses after the event. So please be sure to use an email address that you check frequently! Links 2008 is going to be a busy year! - Events Community Launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 Posted Jan 28 2008, 09:07 by Simon Phillips with 7 comment(s) Filed under: NIMTUG, Microsoft, Developer, IT Pro, Events

• Windows Mobile Briefing 2008

  When: 21 February 2008 Welcome Time: 10:00am Microsoft EPDC2 Auditorium South County Business Park Leopardstown Dublin D18 Ireland Microsoft invites you to join them for the Windows Mobile Developer Briefing 2008 “A day of Windows Mobile Discovery” The Microsoft Mobility Communication Business group is pleased to invite you to a day of Windows Mobile discovery! Attend this event to accelerate your ability to develop applications for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. Learn about the platform and tools that enable you to build powerful and rich applications - rapidly and effectively. Prior experience is not necessary as we will take you from step 1 and explore the many technologies you can leverage to make the next killer mobile solution! Last year’s event was a huge success, visiting 13 countries around Europe including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Poland, Portugal and Spain to an audience of 2,400 people. Thanks to the success of the 2007 events, this year the tour will run again to visit 15 countries across EMEA. Added to this, an impressive line-up of speakers has already been confirmed. As a valued Microsoft developer, the Microsoft Mobility Communication Business Group is pleased to invite you to attend this exclusive event. OVERVIEW: The appetite for information anywhere, at any time, and on any device is growing. Consumers are increasingly relying on their devices for information, entertainment and keeping in touch. Enterprises are mobilizing solutions to increase productivity, cut costs and enable new capabilities. If you are interested to learn how the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform helps developers deliver effective solutions fast, this unique demo-packed technology day will show you how. You will also see many code samples, tips and tricks! Why you should come to this exclusive event… This is a completely FREE full-day event to answer your questions and help you improve the way you work with your Microsoft software. Join us for insights, tips, and real-world examples of what Windows Mobile solutions can do for you. At this event there will be many opportunities for you to network with your peers and to have your technology and business questions answered by the Microsoft team. We hope to see you there! Agenda: 10:00 – 10:30           Registration 10:30 – 12:00    Session 1 – Windows Mobile in Practice This first session sets the scene for the day and kicks off with a  look at and demos of the brand new Visual Studio 2008 development environment which promises even better integration and powerful new features for device developers. The session then takes a realistic scenario and shows how Windows Mobile 6 and the upcoming .NET Compact Framework 3.5 can be leveraged to provide a compelling Proof-of-Concept in very few lines of code. See a wide variety of features being demonstrated, from location awareness to making phone calls programmatically. The session will provide an understanding of how everything can be tied together in an end-to-end solution. 12:00 – 13:00    Networking Lunch 13:00 – 14:15           Session 2 - It's the Business Enterprise solutions are increasingly being mobilized for the new technically-savvy workforce. However, these solutions need industry-strength quality and features that will support the complex requirements these organizations have. This session will begin by looking at SQL Server Compact Edition, the sophisticated data storage solution that allows data synchronization with back-end databases. We then show how you can leverage industry design patterns and application blocks to provide a lower-risk, tested approach to solve common problems. Finally, a quick review of the Microsoft Dynamics mobile offerings will round off the options available for enterprise use. 14:15 – 14:30    Summary, Q&A, close Click here to register or find out more! Posted Jan 14 2008, 09:05 by Simon Phillips with no comments Filed under: Microsoft, Developer, Events, mobile

• 2008 is going to be a busy year!

  With the holidays quickly becoming a dim and distance memory and all we're left with is our belts being having to be fastened on the next notch up, it's time to get down to the technology. As I am sure you all know that this year around March / April Microsoft will be running official launch events for this years 3 big new releases; Visual Studio 2008 along with .NET Framework 3.5, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 (codename Longhorn).    Belfast should be chuffed because on the 8th April Microsoft will be bringing the launch machine to Belfast. Keep an eye here at NIMTUG and we'll keep you posted with all the details as soon as we get them. In the mean time to get you're all in the mood we're running with Microsoft Ireland a Community Launch Event on the 31st Jan 2008 at the Radisson SAS Hotel Belfast in the Gasworks site. We're planning on started at 2pm and running it through to about 8:30pm, this we hope will mean that we can get a larger audience as you will not have to take the whole day off. The event will be targeting both IT Professional and Developers, though we will be running the content focused on IT Pros with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence from 2-5pm and then for the evening sessions will be more developer orientated. Though if you are like me then you will probably get a lot out of  all the sessions. I'm not promising that these sessions will be deep and technical, I am sure that we will be covering these of the new products and features in more details later in the year in 'normal' NIMTUG talks, but the launch will give you all a chance to at least get a understanding on all the new features. You can register for the event on the NIMTUG site here. Here are a list of the top 5 features in each product as listed in the January Edition of the TechNet UK magazine. Visual Studio 2008 Multi-targeting - using Visual Studio 2008 you can create applications that will target .NET versions 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 so no more switch between different versions of Visual Studio for support and development of older applications. Language Integrated Query (LINQ) - LINQ simplifies the way that you connect and query to data sources, enabling you to use the same syntax to query any data source. Office Development - New improved Visual Studio Tools for Office, providing support to create Office 2003 and Office 2007 applications and add-ins. Also improved experience in created applications which use SharePoint technology Web development - Improved AJAX support, New data controls and improved WSIWG editor and CSS support within the IDE. .NET 3.0 / 3.5 development. Better support in the IDE for developing application using WPF and WCF framework. SQL Server 2008 Reporting - New Reporting designer as well as improved reporting visualisations. Location intelligence - In built logic to ask questions such as 'Show me customers more than 50 miles from my warehouse'. Unstructured Data - SQL Server is now able to store any type of instructed data above the previous file size limit of 2Gb. Performance - New performance governor, allows a more granular control on how much resources a specific application uses. Auditing - New inbuilt audit abilities enabled at the server or database, allows logs to be written to either a log file or application log. Windows Server 2008 Read-only Domain Controllers (RODC) - Useful for branch offices, where you are wanting a local DC that branch office users can authenticate quickly against. Without having a full DC, which might be a security risk. Network Access Protection (NAP) - Prevents clients that do not meet a level of security features (Firewall, Anti Virus etc) from accessing the network. Terminal Services - The ability for Terminal Services to present a specific application rather than the whole desktop as well as the ability to tunnel RDP traffic over HTTP. Task automation - The inclusion of PowerShell and a new scheduling engine. Virtualisation - Windows Server 2008 contains Hyper-V, Hypervisor-based virtualisation with full 64-bit support for the host and guests.   Also Microsoft TechNet Ireland are bringing a "Deploying Windows Vista and Office 2007" event to Belfast on the 22nd January 2008. For organisations considering the deployment of either Windows Vista or the 2007 Office system - or both, this interactive training session has been specially designed for Technical decision makers, IT implementers and Infrastructure architects, to show how straight-forward deploying these technologies can be. The session will update participants on the proven business, management and technical benefits provided by both technologies, will address the issue of application compatibility with Windows Vista, and demonstrate how best to deploy in organisations of all sizes. More details and registration information can be found on the Microsoft Event site at  http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032364100&Culture=en-IE Posted Jan 11 2008, 09:09 by Simon Phillips with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Microsoft, Developer, IT Pro, Events