This cool JavaScript image cropper came through my inbox this week.

Check it out – easily integrated with MS AJAX and the ACT.

http://www.defusion.org.uk/code/javascript-image-cropper-ui-using-prototype-scriptaculous

My buddy Steve Simon has recently formed an official PASS (Professional Association for SQL  Server) Chapter in Providence RI.

They meet on the second Wednesday of every month at the New England Institute of Technology in Warwick, Rhode Island from 6:00PM to 9:00PM. Click here to become a member.

http://www.snessug.org/

Microsoft has released a Community Technology Preview of its new SQL 2005 driver for PHP.

Click HERE to get the bits.

Click HERE to leave comments for the team.

10/24 – Waltham, Mass Microsoft Office MPR, 6:30-8:30 pm (Pizza, Beverages & Giveaways.)

Topic: It’s All About The Tools – Episode 1

Organized by Ronald Thibeau, John Ross, Dan Stolts MVP and Microsoft's Neal Wadhwani

Registration Link:

http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=121516

Location: Microsoft

201 Jones Road, 6th floor

Waltham, MA 02451

Also, don't forget MSDN event (VS 2008, Silverlight/AJAX, Astoria) in Boston the next day on 10/25 http://www.msdnevents.com/russ

eWeek.com has publoished an article / slide show: 10 Things You Should Know About Open Source.

Especially check out slide 5 and 7 !!!!

This Strategy Manager will be part of a team driving high priority strategic initiatives, spanning growth and operations, directly contributing to significant positive changes for a HIGH PROFILE Technology Company.

The Corporate Strategy group strongly values teamwork, analytics, and executive-level engagement.

·         Deliver data-driven insights to support actionable strategic direction, corporate prioritization, and strategy communication (Board, investors, company)

·         Analyze industry trends, competitive threats, expansion opportunities and internal performance

·         Work in a team environment both within the Corporate Strategy team and with business unit partners/customers

·         Work collaboratively to help secure the commitment for cross-company efforts and fully leverage Microsoft's assets

·         2+ year's Post-Bachelor experience at a leading strategy consulting firm, investment bank, or the strategy and corporate development function within a Fortune 500 company.

·         Superior analytical skills and strong financial modeling capabilities

·         Demonstrated success in delivering results in a cross-functional team setting

·         Strong communications (written/verbal), presentation and facilitation skills

·         Results driven, flexible and agile

·         A team player

·         Ability to shape strategy and align the organization as an agent of change

·         Intuitive and analytical, while not sacrificing action

·         Genuine and credible, a strong communicator and a good listener

·         Ability to influence and negotiate

·         Able to influence key members of the organization

·         EE Education - Bachelor's degree in a related field required.        

A competitive compensation package will be offered to the final candidate and will include a base salary and potential bonus.

If you’re interested please DO NOT CONTACT ME

Contact Jodie  Perelmutter at Futurestep (Jodie.Perelmutter@futurestep.com)

This job is IN REDMOND WA !

I read today this alarming report on Yahoo News that Comcast admits to censoring and blocking Internet use of its subscribers.

(Story here.)

My specific complaint is that where I live, Comcast is the only broadband provider. If there were an option that would provide me with the same speed, I’d consider switching. They are expensive, and their support varies widely (sometimes super – sometimes not).

So since they have a local monopoly, should they be restricted from dictating my USE ?

Or, shouldn’t I get a discount for packets I request and they refuse to send?

I pay over $100 a month for Internet access from Comcast and that’s WITH the multi-service discount (they are also the only cable TV provider I have access to.)

As an interesting side note. Early this week I saw a Television news clip about this web site http://www.comcastmustdie.com/

I went to the local Comcast where Bob Garfield and his readers and poster express their frustrations with the customer service quality at Comcast.

A couple days ago I went to the local Comcast service office because (without telling me) Comcast changed their protocols so that the Cable receiver boxes they lease to me can no longer order pay-per-view events (Like the UFC).

I’ve order, been charged for, and NOT been able to watch several shows and been told by Comcast customer service on each occasion, “Sometimes there is a problem with the feed”.

It was ONLY when I searched the web for other people having problems ordering the UFC on Comcast and called Comcast service that they admitted, “oh yea, those boxes are like 10 years old, they don’t work with our PPV network any more” that I knew I needed new boxes.

Since I had to make the drive anyway, I thought I’d get new cable modems. One of my Broad Band Comcast Internet connections was needing to be reset (un-plug the Cable Modem) once or twice an hour.

So I showed up to the Concord, NH Comcast service office with all my hardware.

At first it seemed strange to me that the lines of people waiting for service stood in front of bullet-proof glass barriers that went all the way to the ceiling (and I flashed back to the TV story about bad Comcast customer service.)

The woman who was at the counter (when it was finally my turn) was rude-as-could-be. She was apparently mad that I came in with multiple tasks that needed to be solved. But, we got all the changes done.

When I got home and plugged it all in. NOTHING WORKED.

None o the cable boxes worked (I have 3). All channels on all three TVs showed a message “Service Not Authorized”.

When I tried to browse to ANY web page, all my computers redirect to a Comcast page that said either:

“Your operating system is not supported.” (Linux)

“Click here to download software.” (Windows)

The “software” was this huge .exe. No one can tell me why I need it, what it contains completely, and no one will PROMISE me that it does not contain software that does not compromise my privacy in any way.

So, I called Comcast tech support.

The guys I got were AWESOME! I wish I could remember their names. (One for TV and one for Internet)

They’re fixed ALL my problems quickly and politely.

My Internet problem seems GONE and this weekend I’ll have UFC on PPV !

Now – how do I find out if they are censoring my Internet without trying to download something illegal ?

I saw my first preview of .NET in 1999 and that means to me that the code base of the .NET development community includes code that is approaching a decade old (not considering code that was pulled forward from pre .NET code.)

In the post DOT COM era where fiscal responsibility continues to increase and the software development life-cycle continues to DECREASE, there is a growing focus on re-tooling our existing intellectual assets.

One way to do this includes code-refactoring. (See Wikipedia Explanation here.)

Visual Studio 2005 includes some code-refactoring features (start here) and Visual Studio 2008 / ORCAS takes it to the next level (read here). 

There are even some cool FREE refactoring tools available like the one that Brad writes about here.

But I think this is THE MONSTER REFACTORING TOOL !

It’s called NDepend (a commercial product.) http://www.ndepend.com/

You know that I’m a tools (really all software) junkie and I get lots of software to evaluate and provide feedback on.

I’ve been putting NDepend through its paces for a while and I think it ROCKS.

In addition to MASSIVE refactoring, it does things like Code Quality Audits, Build Comparisons, Naming Rules, Multi Thread rationalization (COOL !), and tons more.

One of my favorite features is Code Query Language (CQL).

CQL lets me use a SQL-Like vocabulary to ask semantically specific questions about my code base.

Things like “Tell me which public methods cold be private” or “Show me all the public methods with more than 30 lines of code.”

When I first started to use NDepend I approached it as a tool to understand and improve existing code (usually that someone else wrote), now that I’m learning more about what it can do I find myself using it to analyze and improve the new code that I’m writing.

You can even plug it into Visual Studio with Reflector.

You can download a trial or apply for Open Source use here.

Hope you’ll check it out.

I get asked this question ALLOT !

Actually, the question usually comes wrapped in explicatives, or phrased less as a question and more as a command.

We actually do the recordings in VB for a few reasons.

1.) There are more VB programmers than C# developers (though the gap is narrowing.)

If we did them all in C#, I’d get even more email !

2.) VB is easier to read and understand.

We always provide the source code in BOTH VB & C# for your convenience.

Visual Basic is more verbose, so, though it may make C# purists a bit queasy, it should be easily understood by than. C# is more terse, therefore, perhaps a bit more difficult to understand (especially by folks who don’t program in it.)

3.) If we took time to record each video twice (once in C# and once in VB) we could only do half as many.

I’ve received a great number of emails in response to my “Scoble Gap” post.

The first that has prompted me to white included this question.

“Can you separate M$ lip service from fact for us?  That has to be the toughest part of your future.”

By this I assume the poster is refereeing to Microsoft MARKETING.

I’m not a fan of most marketing, ours or anyone else’s. But, it’s a necessary part of business. Marketing’s role is to advise the consuming audience of the potential benefits and values of the product they represent or “market”.

As geeks, we often see most marketing “collateral” as too many words containing little or no information.

It’s a hard balance, at Microsoft we have marketing folks that are really non-technical, and then we have folks that work in marketing capacity that are very technically competent (Brian Goldfarb).

It’s not what our marketing says that worries me. It’s when our people, especially our executive management are fully buying our own “stuff”.

MS Haters probably see this as arrogance. I see it more like a parent as he/she looks at their own children and have to work to set aside personal bias and proactively look for “areas that could use improvement”.

I have “that type of discussion” frequently inside Microsoft, now I’m just committing to make most of those opinions public.

So, call us out on what you think is “lip service” by emailing me though my blog – I won’t shy away from topics. J

Over the next few weeks I’ll be heads down recording How-Do-I Videos to be released for the “ORCAS” Launch.

I’ll be primarly focusing on what’s new for Web Developers.

By now you’ve had a peek or seen some previews, maybe even installed it and gotten started yourself.

Since I mostly work for you folks – please tell me what VS2008 NEW features your interested in having me do videos on.

Fill in the blank……

How-Do-I [xxxxxxxxxxx] in Visual Studio 2008 ?

I just read “The Enterprise and Scrum” by Ken Schwaber and I’m left with a single burning question.

WHY WOULD ANYONE DO IT ?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about starting a new company or product unit and basing that new entity on Scrum practices. To the contrary, if I were starting a product development effort from scratch I WOULD.

I’m talking about re-factoring an existing software development organization who has historically used conventional Software Development Lifecycle practices (which means some variation of Waterfall methodology) to use Scrum.

Schwaber states in the first couple of chapters that you will loose a fifth of you staff, including a fifth of your management and your organization will be in turmoil for a year.

In this day and age, “Internet Time” where a year is three months long, what existing organization of any size could tolerate such an interruption to their business.

I’ve used what I’ll call “Scrum Like” process before on small teams over which I had complete control, which, I think from a Scrum purist perspective is an oxymoron. 

I’ve been taking some time to re-inform myself after the software development team Microsoft’s Developer Community Web Properties (www.asp.net, www.iis.net, www.windowsclient.net  , www.silverlight.net) suggested that they adopt a Scrum process. (That team is an independent third party.)

After reading the book I can’t figure out how we could do it and all keep our jobs.

One of the other fundamental tenants professed in Schawber’s book is “Never CHANGE Scrum”.  Don’t adopt it to your company’s process, don’t ease into it, don’t even change the vocabulary (role names, etc.) 

This all leaves me very conflicted ad Ken Schwaber is a very smart guy, a definitive voice on Agile Software Development Processes and one of the Developers of Scrum.

Joeological belief : Agile Software Development == GOOD

In this day and age for most software development purposes Agile is not only good, it’s necessary. We simply don’t have time to spec and test things in advance to the Nth degree the way we did in the 70s and 80s and I even believe that Agile architectures at both the Macro and Micro levels are an imperative in today’s successful software shops.

But Scrum ?

Not that it’s not a good idea, I’m just wondering if there is any evidence on the survivability of refactoring existing development organizations, especially those of any real size.

So subscribing gurus, what is YOUR experience on converting a development team to Scrum ?

My buddy Russ will be back in New England for a limmited tour of the laudable Russ’ Tooshed.

VIsit here http://www.ctdotnet.com/ for details on his 11/23 Event.

Robert Scoble and I have had agreements and disagreements. It’s not only one of the things that make me like him but one of the things that make him a “voice” in the industry.

Reflecting on Robert's time at Microsoft, he was famous for the opinions that he shared but also of primary value was his service as a conversation catalyst.

I think Microsoft has been missing and needing more of each since he left, so I’m going to try to change and increase they way I blog.

I am not suggesting that I will try to fill Roberts “Microsoft Blogger” shoes. Just that I will try to follow his lead and be a catalyst for discussion and HEALTHY controversy. This is harder than it probably seems to the average individual blogger. Blogging when you work for a large company, especially one that is in the news all the time, is a risky thing. Apple, for example, simply doesn’t let its employee’s blog at will. (I was told this at the On Line Community Summit in Sonoma CA last week.)

Microsoft encourages it. Robert Scoble paved the way and did it without really restricting the subject matter of his blog. He was heralded for doing what most other companies would have fired him for.

Heck, if Rory Blyth can’t get fired from Microsoft for his blog J then I’m guessing that I’ll probably be OK.

In the years that I’ve been blogging casually at Microsoft, I’ve been asked a number of times to remove a blog post, only once from my own management organization.

In all but one case I declined, prepared to take the consequences. The one time that I did remove it was when the request came from ScottGu. It was not censorship (if it was – I’d be working somewhere else today.) His was a sensible request as my post was a link to an article that I had posted without the appropriate accompanying opinion. I was assuming the idiocy of the article would be obvious to my readers, I was wrong about that and so the link was being interpreted as an endorsement which was NOT what I wanted.

So, what do I plan to blog about? Well, I’d like to do more technical blogging about Web Technology, but much of the new stuff will be opinion on technology and its use, the business of technology, Microsoft and other business entities.

Finding that fine line between humility and confidence can be difficult for Type “A” personalities. That said, I have clocked a lot of miles in the technology industry, and the popular opinion (at least in the sphere on my communication) is that this experience makes my opinions somewhat valuable and somewhat unique.

Where are a few biographical bullets:

·         I earned my first programming paycheck 33 years ago. (Programming an NC Machine by manually setting the operation instructions via a large mechanical switch collection.)

·         My last employment before joining Microsoft in the fall of 2001 was as the President and CEO of a publically traded (CNRS) technology firm in New York City.

·         I’ve a principal in several startup companies some I owned, others I served in various roles such as VP of Engineering, Director of Consulting Services, VP of Product Development, etc.

·         I have been involved in both sides of the venture capital process. Sometimes representing the organization requesting the capital, sometimes performing technical diligence for the organizations providing the funds.

·         Over the past 20 years about half the time I have served in roles that included business and people management and the other half I have serves as (primarily) an individual technical contributor.

·         I have worked in, shrink wrap product, services/consulting, and enterprise computing organizations.

·          My time has been fairly equally divided between Microsoft, Java, and Open Source development technologies.

I joined Microsoft in 2001 with a strong belief that I would stay for only one year.

After selling the company that I built during the .COM boom to USWeb/Cornerstone and completing the contractual obligation to stay with them for one year, I took a bit of time off and had planned to start another company. I have a commitment for venture capital to start a Web Services based company and had an appointment to finalize the first round of funding on September 13^th 2001. Two days after the terrorist attacks in New York City.

I had sort of ongoing conversations with IBM and Microsoft and Microsoft seemed more flexible in terms of my in-office time (the Boston commute is terrible) and seemed like a more fun place to work.

Also, IBM in 2001 was pretty much all Java and really hadn’t “seen” the non-Java, non-Microsoft development world yet.

What’s more, I had seen early private previews of .NET and its potential was clear to me even in those very early builds.

During the interview process at Microsoft, Rick Green, who headed up all of Microsoft’s Developer outreach efforts in New England at the time, asked me “Describe the perfect Microsoft job for you”.

In answer I said, “I just want to be a geek, I want to hang out with other geeks and I want no actual responsibility whatsoever”.

Eventually he phoned me and said, “Ok, I think I’ve got that job for you.”  I spent my first year and a half as a technology and business advisor to the ISV community. It was very interesting work and I focused on working with companies that did not primarily develop with Microsoft’s development stack.

Eventually Microsoft changed that role to focus on working with “named” ISVs like Peoplesoft, etc. and that wasn’t really my cup of tea. About the same time Microsoft decided to expand MSDN to include the MSDN Events team. So, I joined up and spend several years traveling around the USA and presenting to developers (Microsoft and non-MS). I loved the job, my management, and (most of) my peers.

But, no success goes un punished. Pat Hays, the brain trust behind Microsoft Across America was persuaded to join Microsoft Japan, and Mike O’Neal, my direct manager got promoted to a level where he had no direct reports. I loved working for “Mike O” as we called him and the new organization lacked the “juice” for me and stopped being fun. When Mike decided to take a break from managing “people”  (I guess we burned him out), I decided to leave and started to talk with various groups at Microsoft about what I might do.

I received a number of offers and really wanted to go to work for Bill Hilf (I really smart guy who leads much of Microsoft competitive platform strategy), but we couldn’t work out an arrangement that didn’t require me to move to Redmond.

I have little against the Seattle area. It’s beautiful on the eight days a year that it doesn’t rain. My reasons for not relocating are economic.  I was married and divorced as a young guy which made most of my early adult years a real economic struggle. I re-married in my late 30s and my wife Jill and I have two beautiful your children.

Since I built my house during the .COM boom (and before I joined Microsoft and shaved a couple hundred thousand dollars off my salary J ) he life in the kind of home we want to raise our children in.  We sit on a six acre lot on a dirt road and most of the house is paid for. As such, my wife doesn’t need to work (though she has recently joined DTSNH) and we can afford to send our kids to a very good private school without it severely compromising our lifestyle.

Being a great parent and husband is my 1^st priority, so multiplying my mortgage by 6 or 7 hundred percent and adding a third to my cost of living just to be where the action is at this stage of my career just doesn’t make sense.

So, I resigned from Microsoft. But….. Just when you think you’re out… They pull you back in!

The plan was to go to SPI Dynamics. We handle had formal discussions, but they were where I wanted to go and they wanted me. 

My buddy Brian Goldfarb mentioned to ScottGu that I was going to leave Microsoft and Scott rung me up and asked if we could spend some time together at Dev Connections the follow week. (We were both speaking there.)

I spent an afternoon talking with Scott and a number of his senior staff and a couple days later Scott phoned and said he wanted me to come to work for him. When I asked him what I would be doing his response (paraphrased) was “Just say yes and we’ll figure it out”.

You only have to meet Scott once to know he’s the kind of guy you would bet on, so I did. I accepted his offer with no job description, no manager, no team designation, no salary or other compensation discussion, and no real performance objectives other than the resonation of the conversations that we had had up to that point.

That was two years ago. I got a manager (Simon Muzio), he’s awesome and I got the better end of the deal since knew nothing about me when Scott plugged me into his organization. I even have a “loose” job description, though what I actually do doesn’t bear a great resemblance to what’s written in our HR system. In some ways I’m Scott’s (and Simon’s) mouse. I just do what they want me to do.

It works for me. There is GREAT stuff about the job and not-so-great stuff about the job.

It lets me influence Microsoft products and culture without having to manage a group of people, which I like.

My renewed blogging efforts will be an attempt to increase those influences.

I expect on occasion to come under fire by both Microsoft and the IT community at large. Hopefully, the product of that conflict will be good for everyone, and I will be able to stay at Microsoft until a time of MY OWN choosing J

During the week of October 1-5, the members of OpenAjax Alliance voted to fill three open slots in their seven-person Steering Committee. The members elected Microsoft, Nexaweb and TIBCO, who will serve two-year terms (from Oct 2007 to Oct 2009). Nexaweb and TIBCO were incumbents. Microsoft joins the Steering Committee for the first time. Many thanks to them for volunteering their services to the community. These three companies join Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation and IBM, whose terms last until Oct 2008.

http://www.openajax.org/blogs/?p=41

Check out ANOTHER cool ASP.NET InLineEdit AJAX Control.

http://encosia.com/index.php/2007/08/23/seamless-inline-text-editing-with-aspnet-ajax/

http://encosia.com/index.php/downloads/inline-edit-box-net/

Check out this cool ASP.NET InLineEdit AJAX Control that Bilal Haidar recently released.

http://bhaidar.net/cs/archive/2007/10/03/asp-net-2-0-ajax-inlineeditlabel-control.aspx

Special Focus issue on Visual Studio Extensibility

Features

• Welcome Letter from the VSX Team
• History of the VS IDE
• Introduction to the Visual Studio 2008 Shell
• How XML Tools Use the Visual Studio SDK
• Visual Studio SDK Tips and Tricks
• Creating and Distributing Packages with the Visual Studio SDK