Patrick Smacchia's advices on starting your ISV

Patrick Smacchia is a the lead developer of the tool NDepend for code analysis and metrics. See his advices to developers on starting their own Independent Software Vendor business.

PDC 2008 Session Videos in Channel 9

Check it out the PDC session videos at http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/.

Installing VMware Player in Ubuntu

A while ago I posted how to install VMware player in Ubuntu 7.10. Today, I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 and needed to reinstall the latest VMware, version 2.5.

Things are now way easier, since VMware player is available as a bundle file. After you download the bundle file from VMware, then you can just run the following command in the terminal window:

sudo sh VMware-Player-2.5.0-118166.x86_64.bundle

It is pretty simple, eh? No need to extract the tar file and answer all those questions. Enjoy it!

Ubuntu 8.10 released today!

Canonical Ltd. released today Ubuntu 8.10 which comes with new cool features such as the 3G network support. You will be able to use your 3G cellphone network to connect your laptop to the Internet. The new features include:

• 3G Network support.
  
• Write Ubuntu to and Install from a USB Drive: Ubuntu will allow users to write Ubuntu to a USB drive, even a modified version of Ubuntu with their data on it, so it can be carried everywhere to plug in and use on any machine.
• Guest Sessions: guest sessions allow users to lock down a session easily so a guest can use the full system without interference with programs or data.
• BBC Content available through Ubuntu default media players.
  

If you are installing it on a new machine, then you can download it from here. Or if you are upgrading from 8.04, then you can just upgrade through the network, by following the instructions from here.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP Feedback

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio Team System 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP) are available to download and install from here.

Using TortoiseSVN with CodePlex

This is not new but I just realized today that CodePlex supports TortoiseSVN. I've been using Subversion for my home projects with TortoiseSVN and VisualSVN (a plug-in for Visual Studio).
This does not mean that Codeplex is using Subvesion as repository. They are still using Team Foundation Server as repository, but they added support for SvnBrigde, a tool that allows Subersion clients to connect to Team Foundation Server.

So far, I've been using Visual Studio Team Explorer with Codeplex projects. Team Explorer is an open source client for Team Foundation Server. It works fine, but I rather using TortoiseSVN/VisualSVN.

TechDays Canada 2008

Unfortunately I will not be attending PDC this year, but Microsoft is organizing TechDays Canada 2008. Of course it is not the same thing, but it is still an interesting event for Canadian developers. It is a 2 day event with tracks for developers and IT folks, see the sessions info here.

They will have in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax. Too bad they do not have in my hometown Edmonton, but I can just drive south to Calgary.

The early bird registration, until October 29th, is $249.99 for the two days event. It is pretty cheap and you will still get free Visual Studio 2008 Professional, MS Expression Web 2, TechEd 2008 DVD Set, and 30% off Certification voucher.

If you are a .NET developer living in Canada, do not miss this.

I hope to see you there in Calgary on December 10 & 11.