*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

 
http://deepfriedbytes.com/podcast/episode-43-talking-odata-and-sql-modeling-services-with-douglas-purdy/

In this episode, we sat down at PDC 2009 with Microsoft’s Douglas Purdy to discuss all things data. Do you remember Oslo from the previous PDC event? Well Oslo has been rebranded to SQL Server Modeling Services to help developers store and manage models for the enterprise. Modeling Services enables you to more productive when building and managing data-driven applications. We also get the low down from Douglas on a new web protocol for querying and updating data called OData.

 
http://deepfriedbytes.com/podcast/episode-42-how-to-get-more-business-from-microsoft-pinpoint/

In this episode, we sat down at PDC 2009 with Microsoft’s Pinpoint team members Chris Lange and Patrick Stirrat to discuss this new service.  What?  Never heard of Pinpoint? That’s what we thought and that’s why you’ll want to listen to this episode.  Pinpoint is the fast, easy way for business customers to find experts, applications, and professional services to meet their specific business needs.  At the same time, Pinpoint helps developers and technology service providers quickly and easily get software applications and professional services to market—and engage customers who need what they offer.

I’ve been getting about oh, 3-7 emails a day telling me I should use someone’s service to optimize my website so I can be on the first page of Google.  I mean seriously, how do you think they found me in the first place!?  After getting fed up deleting emails I decided to respond.  Here is my email to said random person.  I think I was a little too polite, but I think the anger comes across nicely even in text.

Codemash 2010 is officially over and we await with anticipation for another year to go by so we can walk into the winter paradise of the Kalahari. 

This year Codemash was both exhilarating and exhausting!  First thank you to those attendees who sat through a full day Pre-Compiler about .NET.  I had a blast doing it and I hope you went away seeing all the various pieces of the platform.  I’ll be posting the slides later on.

I had the pleasure of being this year’s Master of Ceremonies for Codemash, an absolute honor.  It isn’t everyday one gets to stand in front of 700+ people of various technical backgrounds all with a common goal of breaking outside of their comfort zone.  Codemash just makes this happen. 

One of the things I did as MC this year was try to have a little fun during the lunch announcements.  The first lunch day I put together what I called a “Smartphone Typing Throwdown”.  The idea was simple.  Get as many different types of Smartphones as I could on stage and then see who could type the fastest.  Hopefully this would solve the world’s most troubling question: “Can phones with virtual keyboards type faster than phones with real keyboards?”.

Now of course this doesn’t scientifically prove ANYTHING, but it was fun.  As you watch the video, take out your phone and type the following sentence (complete with spelling and punctuation) and see how you fair against the contestants. 

Codemash continues to kill the Kalahari network.

Enjoy the video, and I’ll see you next year.

Got back home from Codemash this evening and turned on the beast.  I had a Java installer staring me in the face so I said to go ahead and install it.  Then I got presented with this.

Yeah, I’m just as confused as you.