Now you can directly provide feedback on TFS to the team in terms of new features which you want to see in next version. You can also vote on existing new features requested.
Reach to this site for providing feedback
http://visualstudioalm.uservoice.com/forums/100197-visual-studio-alm
A new whitepaper has been recently published which discusses about various exploit mitigation technologies and how to use them. Release by Microsoft Security Engineering Center.
A must for every person on software development team. Covers following:
Download the whitepaper from here http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26788
P&P team has announced the release of version 5.0. Though no new block has been added, there are considerable amount of improvements in all blocks. It supports .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010.
Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 contains the following application blocks:
A big reason for developer community to smile and celebrate. Dev tools team at Microsoft has again done a great job. 
Here are few important links :
MSDN team has launched the preview of Code Search.
The target sites are MSDN Library, MSDN Code Gallery, and CodePlex.
Some of the search attributes :
o Design Tools
o Development Tools and Languages
o Mobile and Embedded Development
o .NET Development
o Office Development
o Server and Enterprise Development
o Web Development
o Win 32 and COM Development
MSDN team has added low bandwidth version also to various view options available for MSDN library pages.
Standard View
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode.aspx
Low Bandwidth View
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode(loband).aspx
PDA
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode(pda).aspx
Robots
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode(robot).aspx
Printer-friendly
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode(printer).aspx
MSDN Inside the (IDE)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode(ide).aspx
MSDN for Visual Studio 2010
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlnode(dev10ide).aspx
Complete details can be read @ following post http://www.hanselman.com/blog/LowBandwidthViewAndOtherHiddenAndFutureFeaturesOfMSDN.aspx
Microsoft BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage Startups by providing these resources:
| Software | Development Tools, Platform Technologies and Production Licenses • All the software included in the Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN® Premium subscription • Expression® Studio Version 2 • VSTS Team Foundation Server (standard edition) • Production use rights to host a “software as a service” solution (developed during participation in the BizSpark Program, on any platform) over the Internet, with regard to products including: – Microsoft Windows Server® (all versions up to and including Enterprise) – Microsoft SQL Server® (all versions) – Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server – Microsoft System Center – Microsoft BizTalk® Server This information is representative and not comprehensive. Products, versions, availability and additional benefits are subject to change. |
| Support | Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) The Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) is a set of online services designed to help developers write applications using Microsoft products and technologies, including Web developers, hardware developers interested in the operating system, developers standing on the various operating system platforms, and developers leveraging the API and scripting languages of Microsoft’s many applications. The information is presented through assorted media: Web sites, newsletters, developer conferences, trade media, blogs and software distribution. MSDN Library A library of official technical documentation content intended for developers developing for Microsoft Windows®. MSDN Premium Each of your registered developers will get access to a MSDN Premium subscription. Technical Support Support for two incidents per Startup. This doesn’t literally mean just two phone calls: Your two incidents are attended to by Microsoft until they are fixed, no matter how many calls it takes. Customer Support Unlimited program support for non-technical issues to ensure your startup never misses a beat. Global Community Enrollment in Microsoft BizSpark connects you to a global community of peers, the Microsoft BizSpark Network Partners; they will provide you with an exclusive array of world-class legal and financial services, catered to Startups, to help guide you through all the dilemmas that entrepreneurial ventures face. And you’ll get priceless visibility with potential customers, partners and investors. Expect to network and mingle with some of the hottest contacts in the industry. |
| Visibility | Raising Your Profile You have the opportunity to profile your company in the online Startup directory, BizSparkDB.com, on the Microsoft Startup Zone, giving you exposure to potential investors, partners and customers. Every day, Microsoft features Microsoft BizSpark Startups on the Microsoft Startup Zone Web site — just let us know about your innovation and you could be featured. |
Catch all the details @ http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/default.aspx
Bill Gates recently launched the DreamSpark initiative which provides free Microsoft software to students in India.
It can be downloaded from Internet or DVD can be collected from partners after verifying the student status.
Following products are available :
Microsoft has launched an exclusive site to showcase the research projects focused on developers @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/devlabs
Currently its showcasing the following projects. They are ready to be tried and so can be downloaded.
Microsoft Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, games, Web pages, and applications.
Small Basic is a simple and easy programming language with a friendly environment that provides a cool and fun way of learning programming. From making turtles animations to running a slide show on the desktop, Small Basic makes programming natural and effortless.
Pex (Program EXploration) is an intelligent assistant to the programmer. From a parameterized unit test, it automatically produces a traditional unit test suite with high code coverage. In addition, it suggests to the programmer how to fix the bugs.
CHESS is a concurrency testing tool for finding and reproducing concurrency Heisenbugs in your code. CHESS can find assertion violations, deadlocks, livelocks, data-races, and memory-model errors. CHESS works both for managed and for unmanaged code.
CHESS is an automated tool from Microsoft Research for finding errors in multithreaded software by systematic exploration of thread schedules. It not only finds errors but also provides a fully repeatable execution of the program leading to the error, thus helping in debugging process.
While it is already used by lot of internal groups, it will be showcased to outer world at this year’s PDC. 
Currently its available for only Win32 platform and will be available for .NET platform soon.
MSDN just got better with the release of V1 of social bookmarking on MSDN social, TechNet Social and Expression Social.
Now even the content outside of msdn can be aggregated and discovered on MSDN which will remove the need & dependency on external search engines altogether to find content on Microsoft Technologies.
List of available features in this release :
Read the complete details on Chris’ blog.
Microsoft has launched an exclusive site for hosting Visio related content.
Contains lots of free resources and information on partner products.
Microsoft Visio Toolbox . Good for Architects.
Microsoft has recently launched MSDN Code Gallery open to community as a repository for code snippets. Anyone can upload and download the code available on MSDN Code Gallery.
So how it is different from Codeplex ? Another code hosting site sponsored by Microsoft.
While MSDN Code gallery is a simple repository of code, Codeplex is more of a collaborative development platform over web supported by VSTS. It supports source code control and is very useful for live projects where developed teams need to collaborate over internet.
Beta version of new Microsoft Download center is Live.
Its UI is almost fully developed using Silverlight for better experience which includes navigation and search.
.NET framework provides opportunity to set two different types of version numbers to each assembly.
Assembly Version : This is the version number used by framework during build and at runtime to locate,link and load the assemblies. When you add reference to any assembly in your project, it is this version number which gets embedded. At runtime, CLR looks for assembly with this version number to load. But remember this version is used along with name, public key token and culture information only if the assemblies are strong-named signed. If assemblies are not strong-named signed, only file names are used for loading.
Assembly File Version : This is the version number given to file as in file system. It is displayed by Windows Explorer. Its never used by .NET framework or runtime for referencing.
So, how do you best make use of these file numbers available. This is one way of using it, if you guys know a better way .. let me know.
Attributes in AssemblyInfo.cs
// Version information for an assembly consists of the following four values:
//
// Major Version
// Minor Version
// Build Number
// Revision
//
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.0.0")]
[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.0.0.0")]
Providing a (*) in place of absolute number makes compiler increase the number by one every time you build.
Suppose you are building a framework assembly for your project which is used by lot of developers while building the application assemblies. If you release new version of assembly very frequently, say once every day, and if assemblies are strong named, Developers will have to change the reference every time you release new assembly. This can be quite cumbersome and may lead to wrong references also. A better option in such closed group and volatile scenarios would be to fix he 'Assembly Version' and change only the 'Assembly File Version'. Use the assembly file version number to communicate the latest release of assembly. In this case, developers will not have to change the references and they can simply overwrite the assembly in reference path. In central/final release builds in make more sense to change the 'Assembly Version' and most keep the 'Assembly File Version' same as assembly version.
Over next few days, I will be discussing the implementation of GOF design patterns in CSharp.
I wont be discussing the benefits of Design Patterns here ... you can read about them here : Design Patterns.
In one line : "They bring best practice for solving common design problems to software development which helps in ensuring success of design and increase in productivity."
Here is a quick reference card of GOF patterns.
