You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 2:17 PM in The Spout
Your Should Be Using an RSS Reader for Everything!
Ryan Farley posted today that he agreed with Josh Ledgard who said that you should use an RSS Reader for readings blogs instead of surfing to web pages. Josh finds that when he does this, it focuses him on the interesting posts and doesn't waste his time reading stuff just 'cuz it comes from someone that interests you sometimes.
So, RSS Reader: good. Surfing to blogs via a web browser: bad. Duh! : )
Ryan goes on to say that my blog should be the expectation, i.e. that you should surf to http://sellsbrothers.com every day for my blog entries even if you use RSS for everyone else. While I appreciate the complement, Ryan, I can't think of *anyone* that deserves that kind of treatment. If my entries aren't interesting to you, then don't slow yourself down to read them just 'cuz it's me.
Now, having said that, I sort my unread blog entries in #R by Author so that I can see all of Craig's posts at once and pay special attention to them (along with several others). Does that mean they don't need to be interesting? No. But, I do have that extra visual speed bump to slow me down a tad to double-check for interesting.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 2:05 PM
MSDNers Storming the 5/18 Portland Nerd Dinner
An undisclosed number of MSDNers are going to be attending Jim's Portland Nerd Dinner on May 18th. If you've got an ask of MSDN or content to pitch or just want to hang with folks that really know their stuff, you should show up.
Plus, my boss has one of those nifty MS American Express cards, so we should be able to overpower him and use it to pay for our crappy food court dinners. And as if that weren't enough, my boss will also be packing some MS "crap" (his words : ), so if you only come to one PND, make it this one!
Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 1:26 PM in .NET
WinFS: Where Do The Attributes Come From?
Sam Druker, Development Team Lead on the WinFS team, has a series of videos on Channel9 talking about a variety of WinFS topics:
- Where do the attributes/metadata come from that WinFS exposes to the shell and to custom applications?
- How pictures could be tagged based on calendar appointments and picture timestamps.
- What kind of search experience will WinFS enable in Longhorn?
- How an existing application, like Outlook Express, could be updated to take advantage of WinFS.
- And most importantly: how developers should prepare today for WinFS tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004, 4:09 PM in .NET
What Happens When You Surf to WinFX.com?
The right thing happens, imo, but I'm hardly unbiased. : )
Saturday, May 8, 2004, 10:40 AM in The Spout
"Down-to-Earth Marketing"
In a recent post, Brendan Tompkins describes one of my recent Channel9 videos as "down-to-earth marketing." On the one hand, I find that ironic, as that particular video is me talking about the chaos that is MS culture and wondering how we get anything done at all, so if that makes you want to come then you belong here, Brendan. : )
On the other hand, at MSDN we realize that we're all in marketing. In fact, any individial or organization whose job it is to talk with customers is in marketing. The particular brand of marketing we use at MSDN is "not marketing," i.e. we package up the most technical, straight-forward information we can and get it into the hands of developers so that they can be successful using our platforms. Of course, the desired result is that more developers build most stuff on our platforms that causes more folks to purchase our platforms, which is why it's a marketing function.
Thinking of it as marketing is helpful, as it focuses me on what I've determined as job #1 in marketing: never say anything bad about your products that doesn't have a solution. For example, recently I was giving a talk at Corillian (Scott Hanselman's day job) and I was very free with the problems in Windows XP (which is really just a keep trick to get the audience to like me), but only because I was pitching Longhorn as the solution to all of those problems (and, of course, the cause of no new problems : ). On the other hand, if I had focused on the problems of Windows XP without being right there with a proposed solution to this problems, not only would my talk have tanked (who likes to hear problems w/ no solutions?), but it would have been counter to the purpose of my job: driving customers to our products.
So, am I a technologist? I like to think so. Am I engaged in the down-to-earth marketing that Brendan prefers? Absolutely. And good eye, Brandan!
Friday, May 7, 2004, 8:47 PM in .NET
The WinFS Team on the Status of WinFS
Here.
After Business Week reported the death of WinFS, some folks have been justifiably worried that such a cool feature would, in fact, be missing when their copy of Longhorn showed up at their door. Today Toby Whitney, the Group Program Manager of the WinFS team, stepped in to report that WinFS was alive and well:
"WinFS is in good shape and hasn't been cut from Longhorn. We're going to ship it :-). What we need is your feedback on whether we're building the right thing. It'd be great if you went to MSDN and downloaded the newest bits. They're much more stable and represent a big evolution of what we're doing."
To provide the feedback that Toby is looking for, download Longhorn and the Longhorn SDK from the MSDN Subscriber Downloads section and post your feedback on the WinFS newsgroup, where Toby posted his response and the WinFS team is hangs out waiting for you.
Friday, May 7, 2004, 6:03 PM in .NET
I'm loving the WinHEC build of Longhorn
The WinHEC build of Longhorn just seems so much more stable than the PDC build of Longhorn, that I find it a pleasure to use. If you're an MSDN subscriber into Longhorn, I recommend it.
Friday, May 7, 2004, 5:40 PM in .NET
What's New in Avalon 4074
Nathan Dunlap takes us on a tour of his favorite new things in Avalon in the WinHEC build of Longhorn (4074), including a sneak peak an updated GelButton, his love affair with the new Grid panel, his lust for real 3D and more. You gotta love that enthusiasm. : )
Friday, May 7, 2004, 7:26 AM in Tools
More Free WIndows Forms Controls:vbAccelerator
After posting a few sets of free Windows Forms controls, now I'm a magnet for the "but you forgot my favorite free controls site" emails, which I feel compelled to share with you. This time, it's the vbAccelerator site, which is a mix of VB6 and .NET controls, code and tools. The .NET stuff is here. Enjoy.
Friday, May 7, 2004, 7:05 AM in .NET
A Huge Variety of Declarative UIs
I had no idea that there were so many declarative platforms for UI. The XUL Grand Coding Challenge 2004 shows off 10 and the XAML app ain't even posted yet (but it's coming).
Thursday, May 6, 2004, 8:43 PM in Tools
Kent Sums Sums Up the P/Invoke Add-In Nicely: Whoa
Adam Nathan has taken the information from his extremely popular P/Invoke Wiki site and built an add-in to pull and drop P/Invoke signatures directly into VS.NET. Whoa, indeed.
Thursday, May 6, 2004, 11:14 AM in .NET
Conference In A Box: WinHEC Longhorn Materials
Dave Massy has amassed some information about the new WinHEC Longhorn build (4074) and it's available on the Longhorn Developer Center in the "Conference In A Box." The idea is to bundle the set of conference-related materials together into a kind of "virtual event" so that even folks that didn't get to go to WinHEC can get the Longhorn information that was provided there. The plan is to gather this same kind of material for future Longhorn community technology preview drops.
Wednesday, May 5, 2004, 3:19 PM in .NET
The Virtual WinHEC
If you can't be at WinHEC to check out the latest Longhorn information, Paul Thurott's got you covered with his WinHEC 2004 Show Report and Photo Gallery.
Wednesday, May 5, 2004, 9:49 AM in Fun
Sells Brothers T-Shirts confer special powers
I got this email from Brian Jepson, one of my favorite DevCon speakers (he ran his PowerPoint slides by clicking on his cell phone!), and I just had to share it:
"My stepson got a 99 on his driving test today--I think the blue Sells Brothers t-shirt that he's so fond of (the one I got at the XML SellsCon that he immediately swiped from me) gave him that extra boost of skillz and confidence..."
The conference t-shirt should also help him on his SATs and with his college entrance essay, but the downside is that it repels women. Sorry! : )
Wednesday, May 5, 2004, 9:44 AM in .NET
Transcript of Jim Allchin's WinHEC Keynote
Jim Allchin's WinHEC keynote was entitled, "Beyond Better, Stronger, Faster: Innovating around Experiences," and in it, he talks about the experience that Longhorn is going to enable and how the technology supports that experience.