January 2008 - Posts
Over the last week or so, my hosting provider has been suffering with a lot of problems on their mail servers. When it comes to my virtual private server, it has been a smooth ride for the last two years. However, it seems like they have mail server issues on a monthly basis. So, I finally decided to pull the plug and use a different solution for email.
Recently, Scott Hanselman described the process of moving his family to Google Apps. After reading how well it worked for him and some of the benefits, I was already leaning that direction. However, I wanted to see what Microsoft Live Custom Domains had to offer. In case you aren't familiar with either of these, they offer the ability to use a custom domain as an email address, but it is actually serviced by the Google or Microsoft Live email infrastructure. For example, Google Apps allows me to create email addresses for jeffbarnes.net, but they are actually facilitated by the GMail system. Live Custom Domains does the same thing, but it uses the Windows Live Mail system.
It turns out that Custom Domains has recently been renamed to Windows Live Admin Center. From what I can tell, the features are relatively comparable to those of Google Apps, but it was really difficult to find a page with consolidated information about exactly what their service provides. Instead, it requires quite a bit of searching and digging through their Help Center to try and find answers to what I would consider to be common questions. They really are doing themselves a disservice in that regard (IMHO).
The real showstopper for me was that you essentially have to purchase an MSN account in order to check your email from Outlook. Of course, it is free to check the accounts from the web interface, but I demand the ability to use Outlook as well. In order to use Outlook, an MSN premium account is required, which costs $9.95 per month. I was really disappointed with Microsoft's decision to go that route. It seems to be justified by the fact that you can get desktop client access to your email, but you have to use the Windows Live Mail client, which is basically a new edition of Outlook Express with advertisements. I can appreciate the fact that advertising is a means for recouping the costs associated with the free email accounts, but I'm not paying $9.95 per month to get Outlook access.
Ultimately, I decided to go with Google Apps. Not only is access to Outlook provided for free, but I also get slightly higher storage space as well. I'm currently using the standard edition because it is 100% free and satisfies all of my needs. However, there is a premiere edition also available for $50 per user per year. This gives you a considerably higher amount of storage space, access to the APIs for programmatically integrating with Google Apps, and it enables various 3rd party tools. For now, I'm content with the standard edition. The setup process was incredibly easy. If you are comfortable working with the DNS editor of your hosting provider, there shouldn't be any problems. Google Apps also provides clear instructions to help you along the way. When you get ready to migrate over existing email, I highly recommend Scott's post as he goes into detail about several of the possible methods for getting the job done.
So far, I'm quite pleased with the service and would quickly recommend it to anyone looking for a custom domain for your email without the hassle of hosting it yourself.
It's official. Registration has opened for the Alabama Code Camp in Huntsville on Saturday, February 23, 2008. Visit the web site for complete information or you can shortcut to the registration site: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=124330. If you have never attended code camp, don't miss out on this opportunity to have a lot of fun and learn a lot in the process.
Below, I have included the abstracts for the two presentations that I have submitted:
Introduction to Parallel Programming
As processors have shifted from an increase in speed to an increase in the number of cores, it is becoming necessary to leverage the power of parallel execution in order to maximize the capabilities of the hardware. Historically, this has been a difficult area for many developers to grasp due to the complexities of concurrency. Fortunately, Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) and the Task Parallel Library (TPL) show a lot of promise for simplifying the effort involved with parallel programming. Come and join us for an interactive discussion regarding why parallel programming is important as well as how these upcoming technologies can be applied to improve the efficiency of our applications.
REST vs SOAP: Is There Really A Winner? (From a WCF Perspective)
If you have done much work in the world of web services, you have likely heard the words REST and SOAP. For years, there has been a raging battle between the proponents of these two technologies as to which one is better. Ultimately, they really solve the same problem, but they accomplish their goal with very different approaches. In this session, we will cut through the hype and religious banter to take an honest look at what SOAP and REST have to offer as well as some of the situations in which one may be more appropriate than the other. During the course of this comparison and contrast, we will take a close look at how WCF offers considerably flexibility regardless of the path you choose.
The benevolent Keith Elder has asked me to help publicize an upcoming Geek Dinner in his town of Hattiesburg, MS. He has managed to setup a dinner with Sara Ford of the CodePlex team as the speaker. Other local Microsoft celebrities in attendance will include Doug Turnure and Chad Brooks. The dinner will be held on Monday, February 4th at 7PM.
If you have any friends in Mississippi or if you will happen to be in the area on Feb 4th, I would strongly encourage you to attend. This will be a great opportunity to meet some folks and have some fun conversations. To RSVP, leave a comment on Keith's blog or send him an email. Complete details can be found in this post on his blog.
For those of you that live in the Birmingham area, you are probably thinking that's a long way to go for a geek dinner. But, you obviously have never dined with the distinguished Elder. :) I'm seriously considering taking a mini road trip down there for the event.
Lately, it seems like my blog is 90% event announcements, which is probably because there are so many events lined up over the next month. We really are fortunate to have such activity in the technical market across the Birmingham area. At any rate, I will have some posts later this week that have some actual substance.
Back to the point of my post...
The details are forthcoming, but the next Alabama Code Camp has been scheduled for Saturday, February 23rd in Huntsville, AL. The venue has not been officially announced, but you should go ahead and save the date on your calendar. If you have any interest in speaking (or know of someone that would be), you should also start thinking about what to present. The call for speakers will probably go out within the coming week. I intend to submit a couple of presentations, but I'm still debating on the topics. Most likely, I will have a WCF presentation and one other subject.
Stay tuned to the code camp website or my blog for additional information as it becomes available.
It's that time again. The next Birmingham TechMixer is scheduled for Tuesday, February 12th. If you aren't familiar with TechMixer, it is a huge networking event for Birmingham and the surrounding areas. Most of the area user groups will have representatives to provide information about what they have to offer. It is also a great opportunity to meet other professionals in the area and have some great conversations.
For detailed information, visit their website at http://www.techmixer.org.
There is a new group in the Birmingham area that has been formed to promote a better understanding of SOA. The next meeting will be on Tuesday, January 22nd. Here is the invitation message about the event:
You are invited to the SOA Society meeting next week……
http://soasociety.com
“Introduction to Domain-Specific Modeling” presented by Jeff Gray from UAB.
Domain specific modeling is a technique for creating model driven service-oriented architectures. It is the next step in the evolution of object-oriented paradigm. Domain specific modeling enables programmers and other professionals to collaborate on implementing the advanced capabilities that drive continuous process improvement.
Meeting Date: January 22, 2008
Meeting Time: Gather at 6:00 PM, Presentation @ 7:00 P.M.
Place: Intermark Group, 1800 International Park Drive, Suite 500 (off Acton Road, near the Acton Road Exit off I-459); Birmingham, AL 35243 [Directions 1800 International Park Drive)
Host: Scott Pierce [pierce@intermarkgroup.com]
Coordinator: Margaret Marston [mmarston@windstream.net]
Refreshments: Pizza
Meeting Fee: FREE
RSVP: Margaret Marston [mmarston@windstream.net]
Jeff Gray [http://www.cis.uab.edu/gray] is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He received the Ph.D. in 2002 from Vanderbilt University. Jeff was a research assistant at Vanderbilt 1999-2002 where he worked on a variety of projects that involved domain specific modeling. His research was supported by DARPA and also an IBM Eclipse Innovation grant.
Jeff’s current research interests include model-driven engineering, aspect-oriented software development, and generative programming. He currently is supported by three NSF grants, including a recent CAREER award. He currently serves as the chair of the Alabama IEEE Computer Society. Over the past three years, he has been active in organizing programming contests and summer camps throughout the state of Alabama for middle/high school students, in order to raise awareness of computing.
There are quite a few events coming up in the next few weeks. So, I thought I would consolidate all of them in a post. I would encourage you to take advantage of as many of these as possible.
UPDATE 1/22: The InstallFest/LoadFest/whatever you want to call it Fest has been rescheduled for Thursday, January 24th. It will be across the street from New Horizons. Here is the link for registration and directions: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=124185.
Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest (Huntsville)
HUNTUG will be hosting a Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest on Monday, January 14th from 6PM to 8PM. Doug Turnure will be there to hand out free copies of Visual Studio.
Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest (Birmingham)
I don't think the venue has been officially announced, but the event is scheduled for Monday, January 21st. Doug will also be here for the Birmingham event. I'm sure there will be plenty of food to be eaten as well. It should be a good time. Even if you have already installed VS2008, drop by and hang out for a while. See the update at top of post!
IPSA Meeting (Birmingham)
Speaking of Doug, he will also be presenting for the January meeting of the IPSA. The meeting will be held at the St. Vincent's Bruno Conference Center on Thursday, January 17th. As usual, networking time is from 11:30AM to 12PM and the presentation will run from 12PM to 1PM. Doug will be talking about many of the new enhancements in Visual Studio 2008. If you are curious about learning some of the reasons to justify an upgrade, this will be a great opportunity to find out.
MSDN Event (Birmingham)
There will be an MSDN Event coming to Birmingham on Thursday, February 7th. It will be focused on IIS7 and Extending ASP.NET 2.0 Application Services. The event will run from 1PM to 5PM and will be held at the Carmike Theatre at The Summit. I always stress that it is particularly important to register and take advantage of these local MSDN events. A strong attendance is vital for drawing more events to the area. You can register here.
The beginning of a new year is always a time that seems to compel us to reflect about where we have been and where we are going. At least, I seem to find myself in that position every time January rolls around. So, I have been giving considerable thought about my successes and shortcomings during the previous year in order to plan my goals for the months ahead. As such, I decided to post my "resolutions". It seems like a great way to motivate myself on following through after confessing them to the web.
1) Managing My TimeEveryone is busy to some degree. So, I'm not going to arrogantly presume to be busier than anyone else. However, I certainly stay preoccupied with a lot of different things between work, going back to school, keeping up with the rate of technology changes, and trying to remain involved within the developer community...not to mention still make time to be a good husband and father. Ideally, I should let one or two of the options things go, but I'm just not willing to do it. So, I am going to make an effort to be exceedingly better with efficiently managing my time. I already feel like I do a relatively good job of managing my time, but I could get much more accomplished in a shorter amount of time by being better at prioritizing and planning.
2) Blogging
It's no secret that my blogging has been dramatically reduced over the last few months. This is partially due to the time of year. I started this blog a little over three years ago. During that time, my blogging has always slacked off during the October to December timeframe. Regardless, this is an area where I want to start focusing more attention. Given my ridiculous schedule, I am going to remain realistic and say that I want to write two posts per week. It is important for me to focus on quality rather than quantity.
3) Personal Health
About 5 or 6 years ago, I was in the greatest shape of my life. Between the gym and running, I was doing some form of exercise almost every day of the week. Between getting married and having our first son, my weight has fluctuated a lot during the last few years. I don't consider myself to be heavily overweight, but I am certainly not as "fit" as I used to be. At any rate, I would like to drop about 15 to 20 pounds to peel back the blubber and start showing a hint of my abs again.
So, what is your resolution?
Disclaimer:The opinions and views expressed within this blog are solely my own and do not represent those of my employer or anyone else.