I just got done with a good WCF talk given by Steve Maine. My note taking these days is more used as a way of reminding myself later what to look at, or what I think others might find interesting. So....here are a couple points anyone should take with them:

1. .Net Remoting is not dead: in fact, it's quite alive some of WCF actually utilizes it,
2. Make sure you understand the basics behind Encoders, Channels, Operation Selectors and Operation Formatters.
3. Pay special attention to the powerful extensibility tools called Behaviors.
4. Check out the new site (published less than 24 hours ago): http://wcf.netfx3.com.

 

Dude, the link I sent out about the TechEd bags was TOTALLY NOT what the bags turned out to be like....*rolls eyes*. Totally gay.

I just got out of a talk concerning another topic about which I know very little, but I tried to understand the most I could: wireless networking and the advances being made in VISTA for it.

Altogether a great talk, the guy clearly knew what he was saying. One of the biggest advances I pulled away from the talk was that the diagnostics, configuration and deploymenting of configurations capabilities have increased ten-fold. Group policies are big and these policies as well as other wireless profiles can be managed, diagnosed and deployed through a new, scriptable, commandline tool called NETSH. You can script this tool to do anything from dump a list of errors a user on your network has experienced to settnig up a profile for securing a computer or group of computers.

Another interesting thing I took from this talk was that the user interface for novice users has been greatly increased for diagnosing errors..."hopefully" most problems will be diagnosed with a bit more information than simply "Could not Connect" - and attempting to fix the problem will bring up relevant dialogs than can be used to actually fix the issues. Exciting stuff...I wish I knew more. I *do* have the new release of VISTA, perhaps I can start playing with the wireless capabilities now.

I landed safely in Boston as of last night and the conference is now in full swing. My first session was on developing and, mostly, deploying VSTO-based products. I haven't done much VSTO stuff personally, but I have an interest in the topic and thought I might attend. So notable points from the talk:

1. Take a look at the VSTO Client Troubleshooter for analyzing your clients' machines when something goes bad,
2. PIA (primary interop assemblies) now can be deployed as a redistributable for the Office system,
3. Take note of the Publish Wizard, and also note that it does nothing for setting permission settings (full trust permission is required for both the document and the application),
4. There is something called the VSTO Application Manifest Editor that can be used to analyze (and edit?) the application manifests for your apps,
5. Use the .Net security tool if you wish to manually set the permission settings for the app,
6. When the deployment wizard creates a new module "out there", it'll copy off a backup of your application manifest in the old app's directory.
7. For advanced deployment scenarios, use an MSI Installer (and there are inherit difficutlies that you must surmount).
   1. Take a look at this blog here (and take special note of any references to white papers, as he elluded to the fact that these white papers are a must read for deployment): http://blogs.msdn.com/pstubbs (more specifically http://blogs.msdn.com/pstubbs/archive/2006/06/12/628068.aspx).

I'm not a VSTO expert, so some of this information is kind of picked up "off the cuff" so if you happen to be one and you note something wrong, please feel free to leave a note for others. I'm just passing along what I tried to understand amidst falling back into a sleepy state....*yawn*

I'm bringing my camera with me to Boston for this year's TechEd conference, I'll be posting pictures whenever I can (taking into consideration the possibility of flaky network connections out there) at this web address: http://www.ben-rush.net/public/pictures/Boston%5FTechEd2006/

Check this link: http://www.ben-rush.net/public/teched2006/schedule.htm if you are interested in my TechEd schedule this next week; here you'll see the sessions I'm going to (from what I can tell right now). Steve and I are bringing wireless cards with us to connect to the sprint and/or verizon networks in the area so, hopefully, I'll be able to post back information on sessions, interesting tidbits, etc. (in the past the poor wireless network connections at the conferences and expensive hotel connections have precluded this).

In either case, I'll try to keep everyone posted.....

I just got a snapshot of the new bags they'll be handing out at TechED, they really look cool....

Mine is Consolas so far....it's new and you can get it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/powertoys/archive/2006/05/09/593766.aspx.

If anyone has any other good recommendations, fill me in....