Yes we now have some releases of the Patterns & Practices for VS 2005 way cool stuff that now takes advantage of the new APIs in .NET 2.0.

I have been quite busy of late with lot’s of little trips a tone of local community events customer meetings and the normal never ending email but it’s all good! There is a ton of great people out there really interested in .NET and that is what I am all about. I recently got to do a presentation on Team Systems to the new group Santa Barbara . NET User Group, it was a good interactive group and it looks to be a great group. I have also been doing a bunch of work for the upcoming SoCal Code Camp where we are now taking requests to speak so if you want to talk to geeks go sing-up!

The biggest surprise was that I was contact by a guy up close to Fresno about starting a .NET user group up there he has a web site up at centralcaldotnet.com so if you know anyone in the central vally let them know and look back for details here and on there site.

The patterns & practices group has some Visual Studio 2005 content available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/vs2005/ most of the content is still in the early stages but VB6 migration stuff is slid.

Yep if you have not head yet the Express products are FREE for down-load see the Express FAQ on pricing for all the good news. If you want to down load any of the Express products go to the main Express page and pick your flavor.

If you don’t know what the Express products are then read on… Microsoft has traditionally made developer tools quite easy (read affordable) in the past but in my opinion since .NET came out Visual Studio has not be quite as easy to get but now that all has changed! The Express editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server are additions that even after the 1 year of free downloding will be less then $50 this is quite affordable and will make it quite east for anyone who wants to start working with .NET to use a first class tool.

Enjoy!

This is a hilarious video produced in Europe http://www.microsoft.com/emea/itsshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=9999

Microsoft has released new details on the changes to there Certification programs to find-out how this will impact you check out the new site or the faq on the site.

 

Found a nice article that explains the details of Code Snippets quite nicely: Introducing Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense Code Snippets by Patrick Gallucci

For more info go to .NET Rocks! VS 2005 Road Trip be there!

I was just shown this article about the compare and contrast the differences and benefits.

Visual Studio Home: Choosing Between Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Microsoft Visual SourceSafe

I am on the plane back from Hawaii. It was the a great trip I Got to do a presentation to about 65 customers about . Net 2.0 I an told it went well but I can't judge that until/ I seethe evaluations come.

while I was there I got to have dinner with some great user group supporters and it looks like there will be a Hawaii users group starting in November!

I will post details as they get set all I know for sure now is that we have the date of Nov 9th set as the date. I hope to have some one from corporate come to do a presentation About a Launch Related topic.

The deck I used on Wednesday the 27th is here and a short demo on VSTS I have on Thursday the 28th is here.