Microsoft PDC '07 Postponed

Microsoft has postponed PDC '07 that was originally scheduled for this Fall in Los Angeles.  The reason is basically that they don't have any new stuff to announce since they did all that stuff at Mix07 and in announcements during the year. 

You would think that the folks running the conference would have some idea of what they were going to present and had it "locked in" when they originally announced the conference at the end of last year.

If you don't feel like clicking through, here's the excuse posting from the PDC site.

"We are currently in the process of rescheduling this fall’s Professional Developer Conference. As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones. By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server codenamed “Katmai,” Visual Studio codenamed “Orcas” and Silverlight will already be in developers’ hands and approaching launch, which is where we’ll focus our developer engagement in the near term. We will update this site when we have a new date for the PDC that is better timed with the next wave of platform technologies.

Microsoft will have a presence at several developer events this fall to provide deep technical training on the latest wave of software technologies, including at:

• VSLive! in New York – September 16-19, 2007
• VSLive! in Las Vegas – October 16-19, 2007
• DevConnections in Las Vegas – November 5-8, 2007
• TechEd Developer in Barcelona, Spain – November 5-9, 2007"

That kinda sucks, I was really looking forward to attending my first PDC.  Magenic gives us two weeks of training a year and I was planning on "burning" a week on this.  I guess I'll have to find something else to attend. 

I wonder if Google has a developer's conference?

UPDATE:  IT Channel News article: http://www.crn.com/software/199702224

TFS Tools: If you like Tortoise, you'll love Dubblebock!!

It looks like Ben Day has gone and officially released "Dubblebock TFS", a shell add-in for quick access to TFS Version control.  In his own words:

"Want to access TFS source control from Explorer.exe? Announcing "Dubbelbock TFS"!

Ever heard of Tortoise SVN?  It's a great tool that lets you control Subversion source control from Windows Explorer.  Right-click on a file or folder and you can do operations like check-in, check-out, add, etc.

I use Team Foundation Server for my source control and have missed the convenience of being able to access source like that.  So, I wrote it. 

This is the official announcement of “Dubbelbock TFS“.  With Dubbelbock you can select a directory or file and do “Get Latest“, “Check in“, “Check out“, “Lock“, “Add“, “Undo“, “View Status“, “Compare to Server Version (diff)“, and “View History“  - Ben Day

I've been lucky enough to be able to work with it a bit and think you'll like it. 

New Toy: MSBuildShellExtension

I just came across a posting by Thomas Ardal on the MSDN Forums. He has create a new CodePlex project called "MSBuildShellExtension". It is a Windows shell add-in that allows you to build without opening up Visual Studio 2005. Here's the project description from CodePlex:

"MSBuild shell extension gives you what you've always wanted: A way of cleaning, building and rebuilding your .net projects from the explorer without needing to open Visual Studio 2005 or the Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt. "

It looks pretty good. I'm going to download it now and check it out.

- Steve

Update: I fat-fingered Thomas' name, sorry about that :)

Just a little more Joost

Ok folks, it seems that Joost is allowing the beta testers to give out an unlimited number of invitations to friends, colleagues, relatives and total strangers. So I'm opening up the floodgates... If you want one, leave a comment or drop me an email. - Steve Update: Joost needs me to give them an email address so they can mail you a spiffy invitation and link for access, sorry for not mentioning that sooner...