Ramp up- a free, online, community-based program

Recently i have got a chance to got a visit a wonderful site called Ramp Up program (http://www.myrampup.com/) . Ramp Up is a free, online, community-based program that can help users save time in learning Microsoft technology. The easy-to-access content (provided by subject-matter gurus) is specifically tailored to the Ramp Up program, and offered in a variety of forms (whitepaper, v-lab, codecast and slidecast). There are lot of tracks in it SharePoint track, along with the other currently offered tracks (eg, Visual Studio 2008), teaches the important skills in a guided path, making the learning process easier and more efficient. Currently, there are no assessments in the program, so it's quicker than ever to graduate and receive the reward (25% off on certification and 50% off on e-Learning - only for graduates of Ramp Up).

Enterprise Library 4.1 Just Released

Quick Links:
– MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/entlib
– Community Forum: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=119312
– Community Extensions: http://codeplex.com/entlibcontrib
What’s New?
This release of Enterprise Library is a service release that includes the following:
– Unity interception mechanism and integration of the Policy Injection Application Block with the Unity Application Block
– Added support for generics in the Unity Application Block
– Added support for arrays in the Unity Application Block
– Performance improvements
– Usability improvements to the configuration tool
– Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 support
– Bug fixes
For the detailed list of all changes, see About This Release of Enterprise Library.

Eclipse tool for silverlight

The Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight Project will integrate advancedSilverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE and Eclipse RichClient Platform (RCP). Have a look on http://www.eclipse4sl.org/

Silverlight 2 Released

Silverlight is out now.
Click Here to get Started and Install Silverlight2
Click here for Videos of Silverlight 2

Microsoft Connected Technology Advisors group

So, its been quiet few weeks that i was a dead blogger and there were lots of work happening on my front behind the scene. so let me share some good news. Now , I am also in Microsoft Connected Technology Advisors group. so People who are hearing this word would have brought a "wow" factor but let me tell you who are advisors are Influencers who want to be actively *involved* in Microsoft product planning and validation efforts. I have been in for 'Oslo' and beyond and includes BizTalk Server ‘6’ and updates to the .NET Framework ‘4’ (WF, WCF) amongst other investments. if you have some queries/questions and would like some of your feature to be available in next upcoming versions, pls do share with me and i would take in person with the Product teams in Microsoft

Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint Released to CodePlex

Today Microsoft released the source code for the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint—based on the Silverlight Beta 2 release. The Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint provide a way for developers to better understand how to integrate Silverlight applications with SharePoint
In this release, you’ll find five blueprint samples:

1. Hello World
2. Media Player
3. Slider Control
4. Custom Navigation
5. Colleague Viewer

The links to get to the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint are:

1. http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/ --or direct at the CodePlex site
2. http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP

Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint Released to CodePlex

Today Microsoft released the source code for the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint—based on the Silverlight Beta 2 release. The Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint provide a way for developers to better understand how to integrate Silverlight applications with SharePoint
In this release, you’ll find five blueprint samples:

1. Hello World
2. Media Player
3. Slider Control
4. Custom Navigation
5. Colleague Viewer

The links to get to the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint are:

1. http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/ --or direct at the CodePlex site
2. http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP

SharePoint Certifications

When we Say SharePoint, we refer to two product of Microsoft (WSS and MOSS). On certifications front also, Microsoft has released 2 certifications each on SharePoint and WSS. One of the certification deals with the application development and others deal with the administration.
Below are the certification details

MOSS certification

1. SharePoint Server 2007 ― Application Development certificationhttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-542.mspx
2. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Configuration credentialhttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-630.mspx

WSS certification
1. Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Application Development certificationhttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-541.mspx
2. MCTS: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Configuration certificationhttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-631.mspx

Silverlight Beta 2

Silverlight Beta 2 is been released last week. if you would like to download silverlight, click here. If you would like to explore more on Silverlight Beta 2 and some of the new features, please go ahead and visit the blog of very famous scott guthie by clicking here. Also i would recommend you to go ahead and view this video from tim heuer by clicking here

Web Page Error Toolkit

Anyone who has developed couple of web applications , they are very much aware of what 404 error page is .. well this error page is from IIS that comes when we type incorrect URL. well, this might happen due to variety of reasons like Pages deleted/moved or even the links in other pages have not been updated. well , this error page always look very strange to the end user who got no clue as to why and what was the mistake. Perhaps, even the developers were not having any way to handle this situation. This is where "web Page error toolkit" comes into the picture. This toolkit helps you customize 400 error page by giving good search results, relevant links or even helping to correct your spelling and many more. This sounds really an effective medium for any web applications running on top of .NET 2.0 or above. To download, click here.

StyleCop : Source Analysis Tool for C#

Every solution based and product driven companies requires some set of best practices for coding guidelines and also for layout, readability and documentation. Developers have their own style of writing and since most of us as a developer used to write code as a part of team creates a sort of inconsistencies. if you have gone to MSDN or technet, you would observed a clearly readibility and consistency in the code. well, the reason behind is a Source analysis tool called StyleCop which is been matured within microsoft from over few years. Good thing is that it is now freely available. Source analysis tools are often get compared with code analysis tool. for e.g. obvious thing that would have came in your mind is FxCop. well, yes there are few similarities and few differences. Code analysis tool like fxCop work on binary files like assemblies while source analysis tool like StyleCop work with the code. StyleCop is well integrated with VS 2005/2008 and can be downloaded from here. It can also be integrated with MSBuilds based command line builds

IE 8 Betas

Gone are those days where browser just recognizes plain HTML. Browsers are getting intelligent day by day. IE 8 Beta 1 is already released and have some of the good features like Activities, web slices etc to name a few. Also, this beta version also supports 5 languages and have full support of CSS 2.1 . To know more about the feature, click here.

To download , IE 8 Beta 1 , click here.

Going forward, IE 8 Beta 2 , expected to be released in coming months (Probably August) will support atleast 18-20 languages.

Sharepoint Web 2.0 Starter

Microsoft is coming up with great speaker on sharepoint on "Sharepoint web 2.0 starter". Though this event will happen on June 11th event at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, WA. If you happen to be in Redmond, get registered by clicking here. The whole event is also getting simulcasted via Live Meeting. You can join online at this full-day event and learn more about customizing and building Web pages, Web Parts, Silverlight, and more from a SharePoint context. if you want to join via live meeting, register by clicking here.