Thanks to everyone who attended my two sessions at this weekend's Code Camp7: Deer In The Headlights event. I really enjoyed the interaction, questions and comments during both sessions! As promised, my two presentations are now available for download. The ZIP files contain both the Powerpoint slides and any sample code shown during the session. Windows Mobile Application Performance Best Practices (592 KB) Leveraging Speech in .NET Applications and Windows Vista (211 KB) As an "added bonus", I have

I've been asked on a couple of occasions whether or not it is possible to determine if the Tablet PC OS is installed on a system running a .NET application. Typically, this would be beneficial if you were writing an application that wanted to support both ink and non-ink user input. While the InkEdit control included in the Tablet PC SDK does provide a simple way of supporting ink and non-ink input "out-of-the-box", more complex solutions might wish to dynamically load different types of UI objects

I happened to read Chris Bowen's latest blog post today. He has accepted the position as Developer Evangelist for Microsoft in the New England district. While Chris follows a legacy of two fantaatic predecessors in Russ Fustino and Thom Robbins, he brings what I feel are the right "ingredients" for success - A deep understanding of Microsoft platforms, tools and technologies; A wealth of experience with the .NET platform; Strong ties to the Microsoft developer community in New England. I have had

Gee - I almost forgot to mention... I have started using the Windows Live Writer Beta . The posts made over the last several days use it. Having used w.bloggar and BlogJet in the past, I have found Windows Live Writer to be similar in functionality. Considering that it is free, it's a pretty nice little offline blogging tool.

FYI - The next meeting of Club Pocket PC - Boston will be held on Wednesday, October 18th at 6:30 PM at the Microsoft office in Waltham, MA. Presentations include: FIRST LOOK: Windows Mobile Device Center for Windows Vista . If you are wondering about how your Windows Mobile device will work with the upcoming Windows Vista operating system, this presentaton will give you insight to the successor to ActiveSync. Microsoft SLAM for Windows Mobile Smartphones. Microsoft Research recently launched SLAM

To do this, you will need: 1) Windows Vista (prefereably, RC2 or higher). This ships with the .NET Framework 3.0 included. Perform the following steps in Visual Studio 2005 (C# shown): Create a new Windows Application project. Under the project, add a new reference. Select System.Speech from the .NET tab. Create a Windows Form, and add a button to it. Name the button btnSpeak . [Code Line 1] Add a reference to the System.Speech.Systhesis namespace using the using keyword. using System.Speech.Synthesis;

I recently spoke at the Software Association of New Hampshire's annual InfoXchange event on the .NET Framework 3.0. I had approximately 30 minutes to address the topic "What Is the .NET Framework 3.0, and Why Should I Care?". It reminded me of those essay questions that went something like this - Describe the American Revolution and it's impact on geopolitics in 200 words or less. :-) I found myself facing a really serious challenge here. As I started to think about how much is really in the .NET

I have had the opportunity to work with the new Microsoft.Speech namespace in the .NET Framework 3.0. The short of it - it rocks! Very easy to get started, but a wealth of sophisticated functionality for developers. Of course, you need to be running Vista in order to make this happen. One thing I really liked is the bringing forward of some of the concepts of Microsoft Speech Server and the Speech Application SDK ("SASDK") into the client-side API. Most notable is the whole prompt database

Just a heads up to all of you Windows Mobile application developers - If you build an installer for your application, be sure that you do *not* hard code your path to ceappmgr.exe in order to copy and install your CAB files. Instead, you should be looking at the registry for the location of ceappmgr.exe first. The registry key is the same as it has been in the past - HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\CEAPPMGR.EXE The location of ceappmgr.exe has changed, and (always a possibility

The next meeting of the Windows Mobile Developer Virtual User Group (”WMDVUG”) will be held on Wednesday, September 20th from 12 Noon - 2 PM EDT. You can register for this Live Meeting event at the Microsoft Events web site . AGENDA * Welcome * Announcements This month’s presentation: Sharing assets between the .NET Compact Framework and the .NET Framework (Presenter - Daniel Moth ) Whether you were first introduced to .NET via the Compact Framework / Windows Mobile or via the full .NET Framework