The July Community Technical Preview (CTP) of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 is now available for download. This is the 2nd CTP and like the first this one has a lot of new features and improvements. In addition to the list below you can see some of the features in the Welcome Letter and a complete list in the

Whats New?

document.

1. New samples and tutorials: This CTP has many new samples and tutorials including:

1. DSS Node Discovery using UPnP: A new UPnP sample illustrates how to use UPnP for discovering DSS nodes across a UPnP network.

2. Transport Extensibility: PipeTransport and PipeTransportHost are two new tutorials on how to write your own transport and load it in your custom host. In addition you will also find the UdpTransport and UdpTransport as additional transport samples.

3. LINQ: Service Tutorial 12 shows how to subscribe to the Directory Service using a LINQ Filter and how to receive filtered notifications.

4. Silverlight: The XBox Controller Viewer sample shows support for use of interactive Silverlight-based UI

5. Embedded Simulation Environment: The sample EmbeddedSim sample shows how to embed the Visual Simulation Environment in a custom Windows Forms user interface.

6. Simulated Pursuit Camera: The PursuitCamera sample shows how to implement a camera entity that follows behind a target and avoids obstacles.

7. Simulated 4x4-drive: The SimulatedFourByFourDrive sample shows how to implement an entity that behaves like a 4x4 off-road car.

2. Global Assembly Cache: Core CCR and DSS assemblies are put into the Global Assembly Cache. means that they are a shared resource for all installations on a single machine.

3. Simulation on 64-bit machines: Simulation now runs on 64-bit systems using the Microsoft Windows-32-on-Windows-64 (WOW64) subsystem. To use simulation on 64-bit machines, make sure you use dsshost32.exe which forces the WOW64 mode.

4. Visual Studio Project Wizards: The Visual Studio Project Wizards have been rewritten to make it much simpler to create new service projects directly from Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. Project wizards are provided for VB.Net and C# targeting .NET Framework.

5. Much Faster DSS Proxy Generation: The DssProxy tool has been completely rewritten to simplify the generation of service proxy assemblies and to make it much faster to compile services. In addition, the tool chain for writing services for .NET Compact Framework has been simplified to no longer need a companion service project targeting the desktop version of .NET Framework. This makes development for .NET Compact Framework much easier.

6. DSS Log Analyzer: The DSS Log Analyzer is a preview of a powerful new debugging and monitoring tool that can visualize and analyze message exchanges between services sent within a DSS node or across nodes. In addition to showing the actual messages that have been sent it also provides message correlations, time lines, and illustrates how multiple message interactions are causally linked over time.

7. Embedded Visual Simulation Environment: In addition to having a stand-alone UI, the Visual Simulation Environment can now be embedded in other applications. This enables other applications to show the Visual Simulation Environment as part of their application.

Please help us making this release better by trying it out and send your comments, suggestions, and bug reports to our MSDN forums.

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=57CE326B-2125-4163-A33F-ED2F69E03B56&displaylang=en

WHAT’S NEW:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/robotics/cc470040.aspx

WELCOME LETTER:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/robotics/cc470038.aspx

The Professional Developers Conference is Microsoft's largest shindig for developer's in the world.  I've attended this twice in my life and... well... it's really something else.  Everyone there is a seriously hardcore developer of some sort - as in, this is their livelyhood. 

Occasionally, you'll see execs or marketing folks from companies trying to court Microsoft or trying to sell to the developers there, and of course you'll also see recruiters galore hunting down good talent, but by far and large, most everyone's a Visual Studio trained developer.

Usually over 10,000 developers show up for the week to hear over 160 different presentations and sessions on developing for Microsoft's platform.  And it's not cheap - it's basically the same cost to register as TechEd so if you don't speak C# or Visual Basic or at least Java, this probably isn't for you.

The registration site just went live at http://www.microsoftpdc.com/.  Why do you care?  Well, for one you can get $200 off by registering early... and Ray Ozzie is going to be keynoting the event.  Additionally, they've provided a number of interesting resources for people considering going, including:

Pre-conference sessions including:

For those employees of my customers that are interested in Sharepoint technology development, Visual Studio 2005, and integrating Microsoft technologies with Lotus Notes/Domino environments, this is the class for you.

We are sponsoring the private class below entitled, “Microsoft Applications Development and Notes Domino integration for Lotus Notes Developers and Admins” so that select customers may attend free-of-charge. If you or any of your co-workers would like to attend and you are employed by one of my customers (and you know who you are), please let me know so that we can make sure we have manuals, handout

materials, DVDs, hands-on computers, and other things available for you upon your arrival.

This course will not be available again this year, so if you or your coworkers are interested, please make every effort to attend. Class will fill on a first-come-first-served basis so let others in your organization know.

-----------------------------

Microsoft Applications Development and Notes Domino integration for Lotus Notes Developers and Admins

INSTRUCTOR:
Gary Devendorf (see Bio below)
LOCATION:
Microsoft’s Los Angeles Office/Training Room - 333 S. Grand Ave Suite 3300, Los Angeles
REGISTRATION:
This is a private event.  If you are interested in participating and are a customer of mine,

please email me.

This is basically a comprehensive, specialized instructor-led Hands On Lab.

This one day technical workshop provides demos, hands on labs, a Virtual PC, Notes databases and more. We will focus on integrating Lotus Notes/Domino applications with various Microsoft products by using LotusScript, VB.NET, XML, COM, HTTP, web services, wizards and so on. Along the way, we learn how to create .NET applications. Many demos require no code. All the demo solve real end user problems. Nothing is difficult if you can write LotusScript. So come learn how to extend your existing Notes applications while picking up new skills to increase your value to your organization.

Agenda for the day is as follows:

• 8:45–9:00 Welcome overview
• 9:00–9:30 Integration demo
• 9:30–9:45 Overview of Microsoft products
• 9:45–10:30 Using XML over HTTP as a Domino Service
• 10:30–10:45 Break
• 10:45–11:15 Introduction to Visual Studio 2005
• 11:15–11:45 Domino and Visual Studio .NET Web Services
• 11:45–12:15 Using InfoPath with Lotus Notes and Domino
• 12:15–1:00 Lunch
• 1:00–1:30 Integration using COM
• 1:30–2:15 SharePoint Designer and the Windows Workflow Foundation
• 2:15–2:30 Break
• 2:30–3:00 Using Access
• 3:00–3:30 Understanding the Office Open XML Formats
• 3:30–4:00 Building Solutions with Excel
• 4:00–4:15 Creating Dashboards in SharePoint
• 4:15–4:30 Working with Content Types
• 4:30–5:00 Questions / Resources

Gary Devendorf’s Bio:
Gary Devendorf has

been at Microsoft for over 4 years and is a subject matter expert on Lotus Notes. His main focus has been on integrating Lotus Notes/Domino applications with Microsoft products. He is a Lotus Notes developer and a .NET developer. In fact for over 7 years he was the IBM Lotus Product Manager responsible for LotusScript, Domino Designer, Domino Objects, COM, Java, and more. If Gary can add .NET skills to his Note developer’s skills, you can too.