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May 19 Digging into this now. The download has a rich set of samples that demonstrate accessing the Windows 7 APIs from .NET applications very easily. Check out the blog entry for the details. You can get the samples and the source for the managed library here. I’m speaking at the Space Coast .NET User Group tomorrow and I’ll be going over these samples as part of my talk. Windows 7 Managed Code APIs - Windows 7 for Developers - The Windows Blog  The Windows SDK team built the Windows API Code Pack to provide easy access to Windows 7 features for .NET developers , lowering the bar for developers who want to target Windows 7 Client applications. Basically, it is the closest thing a .NET developer will have to managed code APIs for Windows 7.
The Windows API Code Pack (Code Pack) is much larger in terms of offered functionality and quality than its older brother, the Windows Vista Bridge. The Code Pack contains a wide variety of APIs, including very comprehensive Windows Shell namespace objects, Windows Taskbar, Libraries, and Windows 7 Extended Linguistic Services. The following is a short list of the APIs contained in the Windows API Code Pack: - Support for Windows Shell namespace objects, including:
- Windows 7 libraries
- Known Folders
- Non-file system containers
Windows Vista and Windows 7 Task Dialogs Support for Windows 7 Explorer Browser Control Support for Shell property system Windows 7 Taskbar Support for Windows Vista and Windows 7 common file dialogs, including custom file dialog controls Support for Direct3D 11.0 and DXGI 1.0/1.1 APIs Sensor Platform APIs Extended Linguistic Services APIs May 14  I don’t know too many people who are completely confident they’ll make it through the waves of layoffs that have hit the tech industry since last year. Like everybody else, I worry about this kind of thing, but I also think about what kind of opportunity a change like this could afford me and how I could best take advantage of it.
In my job as a developer evangelist, I’ve been able to talk to a diverse set of audiences about all sorts of topics. One of the things I’ve mentioned in talks I’ve done in the last few months is that, if I lost my job tomorrow, the first thing I would do is sign up for the BizSpark program. Coincidentally, I’ve been lucky enough to have landed a new role at Microsoft where my job is to promote programs like BizSpark to startups. With that in mind, I wanted to share with you my five step plan for starting a new software company, very inexpensively, built on the Microsoft stack. This plan is non-technical. I assume here that if you’re a dev, you have an idea of what you want to build, even if it’s a vague idea. (Picasso quote) That’s good. These are the steps that you can take to start turning that idea into a business. What you’ll need to begin is a computer capable of running the software you need to build your product. Usually that will mean a machine capable of running Windows Vista or Windows 7. I also recommend a copy of Office 2007 so that you can create business plans, build PowerPoint presentations, and manage your e-mail, along with other office functions. You can get almost everything else on the list below right now for free. - Download business templates from http://microsoft.com/office and use them to define your new business. Having a plan is important and you can learn a lot about creating a business plan just by looking at some of the templates that are available. Here are some suggested searches to find the documents you need:
- Get a free Office Live Small Business workspace so that you can collaborate, store your documents online, and build company web site. This step is pretty straightforward, but you’ll want to spend some time learning about the collaboration site you create. An Office Live Small Business workspace lets you do some pretty interesting things like manage contacts (some simple CRM), calendar management, newsletters, document sharing and storage, and more. To create this site, you’ll need to use your Windows Live ID. You can create a new Live ID here. Once you have that, go to this Office Live page and sign up to create a new web site. Choose the name of your company and the business that you are in carefully, as an Office Live URL will be created using the business name and the business type you chose.
- Set up a new domain and build your company web site. A domain from Office Live is free for the first year and it $14.95 annually after that. Once you decide on your domain, you have a number of options for creating and managing a company home page. You can use the built-in templates and tools to build your site, or you can set advanced options to delete the template content and upload a web site built using your own tools. (I have a page at http://brianjo.us you can visit to see what a customized, template-based site looks like.)
- Join the Microsoft BizSpark program to get access to professional development tools and other benefits. Check the MicrosoftStartupZone site for full details. BizSpark gives you access to an MSDN Premium Subscription, which includes Visual Studio Professional, Microsoft Expression Studio, and much more.
Joining BizSpark is easy, just go to this page, and follow the directions. They can have you set up in just a few hours. Alternatively, search the Network Partner directory for a network partner near you and they can have you set up very quickly.
- Find a host for your product application. You have a number of options here: You can set up your own servers, you can find a Microsoft Partner or another host for your application (many of our Network Partners are also web hosts), or you can build on Azure. There’s a full page of information about this on the MicrosoftStartupZone.
Really, that’s all there is to it (besides doing all the work and shipping a product). If you have an idea for a startup company, this is one way to pull it together. In addition to all that, you can get your company placed into the BizSparkDB directory where potential investors can review the work that you’re doing and contact you about possibly financing your company. As I said at the beginning of this post, this is what I would do if I wanted to start a new company tomorrow. (And I’ve always got at least 3-5 ideas in my head.) If you end up starting a new company with BizSpark, or if you have questions about the program, please drop me a note at brianjo@microsoft.com. Let me know how it goes. May 06 I also posted this to Facebook. Congrats to the team on 12K BizSpark startups! For information on the program check out Microsoftstartupzone.com. If you have questions, just drop me a note at brianjo@microsoft.com. I’m going to be doing some BizSpark events in the east soon. Stay tuned for details. Microsoft BizSpark: 12 000 software startups served! 
Six months ago, Microsoft announced the availability of a new global program for Startups called Microsoft BizSpark. Today, as we celebrate the program’s 6-months, we are pleased to announce that more than 12,000 Startups have already joined BizSpark. BizSpark is available in 82 countries around the world, and, interestingly enough, we’ve seen significant uptake in countries like Brazil, Russia, China and India (4 out of the top 6 countries in terms of enrollment). BizSpark is fulfilling unmet demand for tools and technologies and we are seeing an increasing number of startups in these markets with high potential software industries. May 05 Windows 7 RC available to all. Brandon has some good information here:  The Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) is here! - Windows 7 Team Blog - The Windows Blog
As we previously announced, today the Windows 7 RC is now available for anyone interested in giving it a spin! Typically, a release candidate is the last development milestone before release to manufacturing (RTM), signifying that engineering and development have made significant advancements and that the code is entering the final phases of testing. Essentially, the Windows 7 RC is the result of a lot of the great feedback we received during the Windows 7 Beta. That’s why I’m so excited to use it and excited for YOU to use it! April 29 It’s out and I’m hearing good things about it. Download details: The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) Overview The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) provides customers with the latest updates to the 2007 Office suite (the products that are affected by this update are listed below). This download includes two types of fixes: - Previously unreleased fixes that were made specifically for this service pack.
- In addition to general product fixes, this includes improvements in stability, performance, and security.
- You can find out more information in Knowledge Base Article 953195, where product-specific changes are described.
- All of the Public Updates, Security Updates, Cumulative Updates, and Hotfixes released through February 2009.
Before installing this service pack, you are strongly encouraged to read 953195, which describes some big improvements introduced by SP2, and also calls out some important information that you should be aware of before installing. April 27 I shot video this weekend at a little pool party we had. My mom and dad were visiting from Wisconsin and our niece Shannon had the baby swimming in the pool for the first time. Fun day.
Pool Party
Video: Pool Party April 26
RDS 2008 Standard Edition and CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 available on MSDN
Due to customer demand, both Robotics Developer Studio (RDS) 2008 Standard Edition and CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 Standard Edition are now available to all MSDN Professional and MSDN Premium subscribers, which includes BizSpark customers. This enables customers to acquire a simple, per-user license for all the software they need in their development projects, enhancing their investment in MSDN. March 11 These are quite cool. The links are included in the press release here on Microsoft.com. Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office 2007 v1.01 This add-in enables you to embed a Creative Commons license into a document that you create using Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office PowerPoint, or Microsoft Office Excel. With a Creative Commons license, authors can express their intentions regarding how their works may be used by others.
The add-in downloads the Creative Commons license you designate from the Creative Commons Web site and inserts it directly into your creative work. The add-in runs a little wizard that lets you choose your license options. 
When you complete the wizard you can insert your generated license into document: 
Pretty slick.
The second add-in “enables the annotation of Word documents based on terms that appear in Ontologies.”
I don’t need this, but I thought I would mention it. You can download the add-in here: Word Add-in For Ontology Recognition Microsoft External Research’s goal with this project is to enable communities who maintain ontologies to more easily experiment and to enhance the experience of authors who use Microsoft Word for content creation, incorporating semantic knowledge into the content. This add-in should simplify the development and validation of ontologies, by making ontologies more accessible to a wide audience of authors and by enabling semantic content to be integrated in the authoring experience, capturing the author’s intent and knowledge at the source, and facilitating downstream discoverability.
The goal of the add-in is to assist scientists in writing a manuscript that is easily integrated with existing and pending electronic resources. The major aims of this project are to add semantic information as XML mark-up to the manuscript using ontologies and controlled vocabularies (using OBO), and to integrate manuscript content with existing public data repositories. March 04 This is a cross post from my MSDN blog to do some testing, but the info is still good. :) Just wanted to mention a little show we do called geekSpeak, (And I knew mentioning Jeff would draw some attention.) It’s live on most Wednesdays, but you can see the previous shows on Channel 9 at http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/geekSpeak. For info about the upcoming geekSpeak episodes, be sure to check out the geekSpeak blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/geekSpeak. I was having trouble with the embedded code, so I’ve removed it on my Spaces blog. You can see the episode with Jeff here. March 03 Sara posted this item to Channel 10 and mentioned that Family.Show is now at V3. If you’ve never seen this before, it’s a WPF genealogy application that includes source. It’s really quite awesome. The Codeplex project is here, and the Vertigo project page is at the link below. Vertigo: Family.Show Are You a Programmer or Designer?  Our designers harnessed every trick in the WPF book– styles, resources, templates, data binding, animation, transforms– to present an innovative visualization of the classic family tree, freeing our developers to concentrate on behind-the-scenes features like XPS, P/Invoke wrapper for Windows Vista common dialogs, and ClickOnce for WPF. It’s a good example of what a small team of talented people can do with WPF.
If you’re a programmer and want to learn more, or you’re not a programmer and want something to help you sleep at night, pull down the source code at CodePlex. You’ll also find a really nifty document explaining how we glue all the wires together. Blain Barton dropped me a note to let me know that registration is open for his Microsoft TechNet Tiki Hut Tour here in the south. Here’s a bit from his blog. Visit there to find out the dates and to register.  IT Pro Tiki Hut Tour - Spring 2009 Registration Open!
Get ready for Spring and join our local TechNet Events team to discuss the Windows Client OS Roadmap - Why Windows Vista is an important foundation for Windows 7. We’ll discuss security and application compatibility, as well as look at the new features of the Windows 7 Beta, presentations and demos delivered live by experienced IT Pros. Session 1: Moving to the Modern OS Roadmap In this welcome session, we will review the event agenda and discuss some of the key challenges IT Pros face in today’s economy. We’ll discuss scenarios around Windows 2000, Windows XP, and the importance of moving to a modern OS. In addition, we will cover Windows Vista and improvements that have been made with SP2 as well as review guidance concerning Windows Vista deployments. Session 2: Windows Security and Application/Driver Compatibility This session discusses Vista security, data protection with the new Windows 7 “Bitlocker-To-Go”, rich support tools like Reliability Monitor, Resource Monitor, Windows Recovery Environment, the new System Restore and Problem Steps Recorder. We also cover application control using group policy and implement simple rule structures that include working with an application to Allow, Exception or Deny the installation. We’ll also discuss Group Policy Preferences and how a User can change their own policy settings! Session 3: Windows 7 Beta Sneak Peek The way Microsoft develops Windows has changed. We’ll discuss the changes we have made in Windows Vista that will affect Windows 7 such as hardware, search as well as discuss new features that work with Windows Server 2008 R2 like DirectAccess™, a new network paradigm enables same experience inside and outside the office and makes seamless access to network resources increasing productivity of mobile users. We also will discuss BranchCache ™, which caches content downloaded from file and web servers, users in the branch can quickly open files stored in the cache, which frees up network bandwidth for other uses. February 17 Check this out. It’s called Microsoft Recite. I just installed it on my WM6 phone. Basically, you enter a voice note into your phone and then later you can find the voice note you recorded by saying a word or two related to your voice note. It works great and it’s better than sending SMS messages to myself. (Which is what I really usually do.)
Check out the video:
Video: Microsoft Recite
You can see the full announcement on the Recite blog. January 29 I love this video. Multi-mon in 1969. Lot's of great ideas here that eventually came into being. via Althouse December 09 OK, now that the new Live Home thing is working well I'll probably go back to using this blog to post stuff I wouldn't necessarily post to MSDN. Mostly I'm going to post stuff on twitter though. December 03 Amazing student video on YouTube. October 20 Coming soon, to a city near you. I'll be speaking at the Orlando event. :) MSDN Developer Conference (MDC) Building on the buzz, excitement, and industry-changing announcements of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), the MSDN Developer Conference (MDC) will deliver the core message, content, and experience of the PDC in a one-day, multi-track event to multiple cities across the United States. The MDC will give you a glimpse into the future of the Microsoft Application Platform. You will experience Microsoft’s vision for Cloud Computing, our Internet services platform that will enable you to extend existing solutions, creating applications that seamlessly bridge the gaps between PC, Web, and phone. Be among the first to see the full range of advances in Windows 7, the next major version of the Windows client operating system. Sessions include the latest developments in .NET, Silverlight, Live Mesh, and more. Date City
12/9/08 Houston, TX
12/11/08 Orlando, FL
12/16/08 Atlanta, GA
1/13/09 Chicago, IL
1/13/09 Minneapolis, MN
1/16/09 Washington, DC
1/20/09 New York, NY
1/22/09 Boston, MA
1/22/09 Detroit, MI
1/26/09 Dallas, TX
TBD San Francisco, CA
TBD San Diego, CA
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