I've spent the good part of this lovely spring Sunday trying going around in circles with this problem. At least I have a workable solution for now.

[A new DevLife post]

We are a small design & development studio in Burlington, Vermont seeking a part time contract .NET mobile application developer (~20 hours/month on average). You would be responsible for helping to develop and maintain a mobile application using the .NET Compact Framework 2.0. Specific skill we are looking for include:

• C#
• .NET Compact Framework 2.0
• Mobile Client Software Factory
• Object-oriented analysis and design (OAD)
• Test-Driven Development (TDD)
• SQL Server 2005 Mobile
• Subversion/Trac

If you are a .NET developer interested in learning mobile application development, we may be willing to spend time training you on the specific skills above. Please email your resume and hourly contract rate to jobs@foundline.com.

MyWebGrocer seeks bright, motivated, energetic and inquisitive software developers. Projects vary from E-Commerce and Social Networks to Website development. We are a small dedicated team that is looking for both entry level and experienced developers which share our enthusiasm and dedication to developing market leading solutions. Areas in which we work involve ASP.NET, C#, SQL and scripting. Exposure to Web Services, SQL DTS, Flash and/or C++ considered a plus. Salary commensurate with experience.
 
Please send your resume and salary requirement to careers@mywebgrocer.com
 
MyWebGrocer, a privately held LLC, is the leading independent E-Commerce service provider to the American Grocery marketplace serving hundreds of retailers nationwide.

I've been heads down since MIX07 playing with the new ink object in silverlight. I have posted a sample with my tests and some of the code. Read more here.

[A New DevLife Post]

Inntopia is the leading provider of central reservation software solutions for the mountain travel market. Our rapidly growing client list includes the leading central reservation services in Telluride, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Winter Park, Crested Butte, Stowe, Lake Tahoe and many more.

Inntopia team members share a passion for their work, a love of outdoor adventures and a sense of humor.   We are experiencing explosive growth, and are looking to grow the team.

Inntopia offers a great benefits package, flex-time scheduling and highly competitive wages in our Stowe, Vermont office.

If you enjoy a fast-paced, fun work environment and think you are a good fit for our team, email a cover letter and resume to lisa@inntopia.com.

APPLICATION DEVELOPERS

REQUIRED TECHNOLOGY EXPERTISE

4+ years experience in a majority of the following technologies:

• ASP.NET/C#
• SQL/T-SQL
• XML
• XSL/XPath
• AJAX / JavaScript
• XHTML/DHTML
• COM/DCOM
• SOAP/Web Services

SOFTWARE TOOLS

Familiarity with the at least 2 of the following development applications:

• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003/2005
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005
• XMLSpy
• Visio

REQUIRED SKILLS

• Ability to design, develop and maintain software on Microsoft .NET platform.
• Ability to design and develop software in a group or independently.
• Comfort with direct communication with all levels of technical and business resources.
• Self-managing, self-motivated learner with good written and oral communication skills.

ADDITIONAL BENEFICIAL SKILLS

• Travel/hospitality industry experience

• Experience with high-volume transactional accounting systems (accounts receivable and accounts payable)
• Experience with complex pricing and commission structures
• Experience with security protocols (i.e. PCI Compliance and data encryption standards)
• Experience with software development process management.
• Experience developing multi-lingual web applications.

SENIOR SYSTEMS AND NETWORK ENGINEER

Inntopia is taking its infrastructure to the next level by implementing clustering technologies and moving to a multi-homed environment.  We are seeking an individual to help us design, implement and support this new infrastructure. 

REQUIRED TECHNOLOGY EXPERTISE

4+ years experience in most of the following technologies:

·         Microsoft server operating systems and application servers (Windows 2003 Server, IIS 6.0, SQL Server 2000/2005, Exchange 2003)

·         Microsoft infrastructure support applications such as ADS, DNS, FRS

·         Microsoft clustering technologies

·         Microsoft .NET web application configuration and deployment

·         Layer-3 switched networking technologies and other related technologies (VLAN, HSRP, spanning tree, etc)

·         Firewall and other network security technologies

·         Routing technologies including WAN Routing Protocols such as BGP, OSPF and EIGRP

·         Hardware and software load balancing

·         Common network-based services such as LDAP, DNS, SNMP, SMTP, etc.

·         Linux operating system

·         Storage Area Networking (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS)

·         Application and SLA monitoring and reporting

·         SourceSafe

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

·         Serve as the lead technical role in the design, implementation, and maintenance of network hardware and related software and services

·         Participate in a team responsible for the design, implementation, and maintenance of network hardware and related software and services

·         Act as a subject matter expert on all networking-related technologies used in the Inntopia systems infrastructure, as well as a broad knowledge of applications and server-related technologies in place.

·         Contribute to the infrastructure design and planning process by delivering technical requirements and capacity analysis.

·         Coordinate with Software Development, Release Management teams and others to draft & approve detailed work plans and deployment schedules.

·         Work with vendors to help Inntopia.com maintain supported configurations for key platforms.

·         Provide technical advice and support for integrated third-party services such as credit card and payment processing and business partner data exchange.

·         Serve a significant hands-on role in implementation and ongoing support activities, including highly technical problem solving and/or performing technical direction for work done by Inntopia.com staff and vendors.

REQUIRED SKILLS

• Ability to negotiate with customers and business partners
• Ability to perform a combination of lead and supporting technical roles in multiple simultaneous projects
• Microsoft certifications (MCSE, etc) and Cisco certifications (CCNA, CCNP, etc) preferred

USER SUPPORT SPECIALIST

User Support Specialists are available to provide phone and email support to Lodging Companies, Activity Providers and Central Reservation Agents.

REQUIRED TECHNOLOGY EXPERTISE

General familiarity with Internet Applications (Explorer, Outlook, etc)

SOFTWARE TOOLS

• Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, etc)

REQUIRED GENERAL SKILLS

• Certain degree of technical savvy.
• Great interpersonal and communication skills.
• Attention to detail.

ADDITIONAL BENEFICIAL SKILLS

• Travel/hospitality industry experience.
• Experience as a user of the Inntopia system.
• HTML or graphic design skills.

Esther Schindler sent me this link since she saw it came from a library in a small town in Vermont.

I never even heard of this linux based o/s (only because I really don't pay much attention... there's already too much for me to learn.). But the video says it all. Happy happy librarian.

IronPython, IronRuby, VBx.. what? "I-can't-get-no-respect"-VB is one of the cool new languages? Read more

[A New DevLife Post]

The Silverlight Beta 1.0 (golive) has a problem wtih Firefox and apparently it's a FF bug that creates the problem. It completely prevents the embedded Silverlight app from being displayed on a web page.

Eric Sowell has a post explaining the problem and points to this MSDN forum thread which suggests a workaround which is a temporary hack.

Yet another beatiful vermont photo for my desktop. This is Mt. Mansfield. The profile of Mt. Mansfield is a person's face. You can get the properly sized desktop here at Green Mountain Club. The photos are from local professional photographer, Paul Hansen, of Ecopixel. He prepares them each month with the calendar image.

When I lived North of Burlington, Mt. Mansfield was nearby for loads of hiking and back country skiing. There are so many trails.

Towards the left is the chin. In about the middle of the photo is the nose and then the right part of the mountain is the forehead. The chin is the highest point in Vermont. Next highest after that is Camel's Hump which is now our nearby mountain. We can see the peak of Camel's Hump from our house, but only under very specific circumstances. "Mountain views!"

It must have been the Bove's Pasta Sauce that keeps them coming back. Microsoft New England's Bob Familiar and Chris Bowen are back this week for another full day of fabulous and FREE .NET training.

REGISTER HERE!

Sheraton: 8:30am to 4:30 pm

Bob Dylan is my hubbie's A#1 favorite musician so I was very happy to get tickets online just as they went on sale this morning for his July 1st concert at the Champlain Valley Expo (aka the fairgrounds) outside of Burlington Vermont.

I can't wait until Rich gets home so I can tell him my big surprise! (Since he doesn't read my blog, I know the surprise is safe here...)

[originally posted March 16th. Reposted May 4th]

www.kdpyield.com

Web Developer - Montpelier, VT

Seeking an experienced Web developer. Most be proactive and detail-oriented, with strong QA and troubleshooting skills.

This is a full-time, permanent, on-site position, to be filled ASAP. Only serious candidates should apply. No contractors or recruiters, please.

Primarily responsibilities include:

- Coding new features for existing Web sites

- Troubleshooting existing Web sites for data and functionality issues

- Contributing to in-house tech support efforts

- Helping devise new technological strategies to improve company operations

Employer is a dynamic, medium-sized company with opportunities for learning and advancement. Position requires flexibility, a friendly attitude, and a willingness to contribute ideas. This is an environment where you can get substantive work done and be appreciated for it. New requirements and priorities come in all the time, so you should be able to shift gears as needed.

Necessary skills:

- Substantial experience in development of server-side Web applications

- HTML

- SQL (any flavor, e.g., MySQL, SQL Server/ISQL, Jet SQL, PL/SQL)

- Ability to work constructively as part of a team on multiple projects at once

- Good communication skills

Desirable skills (not strictly required):

- ColdFusion

- JavaScript

- .NET

- SQL Server development

- Visual SourceSafe

Experience in quality assurance, systems administration, or technical support is helpful.

Salary dependent on experience. Full benefits. Pleasant location in central Vermont, near State House.

Please send resume, cover letter, and (if available) links to sites on which you have worked to kdpjobs@kdpyield.com

These two incubator projects build on top of the Entity Framework. It's a very early look at what the data access team is working on. READ MORE HERE

[A New DevLife Post]

At MIX, attendees received a copy of Expression Studio, but rather than in it's standard pacakaging show here:

we received a commemorative edition which is pretty cool...

Now the challenge is to figure out how to use it!

I was happy today to bump into a few people I haven't seen in a while. Don Box is at MIX to give a talk tomorrow with Steve Maine on "Navigating the Programmable Web" .

Danny Thorpe blogs about a MIX session about a windows Live technology that is SO secret that the sesison title and abstract are not in the MIX session list.

the buzz is building about the "secret session" that isn't listed on any of the printed schedules, nor on the billboard at the room entrance.  We unequivocally cannot confirm or deny that it may or may not be scheduled at 11:45 in room Lando 4204, entitled "Windows Live Data services" and presented by the devlive team's king of privacy paranoia, Yaron Goland.  We deny any involvement in annotating the room signage with a sharpie of unknown origin. 

The session is real, but it was withheld from the printed matter to avoid showing our hand too early.  It is actually listed in the online schedule.  I can't tell you about it (yet), but it should be a knockout session.  Maybe not quite as sexy as spinning video cube Silverlight eye candy, but I'm sure it'll get a rise out of the true data diehards who manage to actually find this session.

his post is also a fun read on hanging out in the speaker lounge with Anders Hejlsberg, and chatting with folks like John Lam and Miguel de Icaza. He refers to them as power hitters. Perhaps he doesn't realize that he's considered one of them!

Silverlight does INK! Yay. I've been asking about it for a while thinking it was the next natural step. I actually have played with it a bit and have a little app that I wrote that I need to deploy with the GoLive license. This is with the 1.0 version of Silverlight so it is all javascript against the InkPresenter XAML object. This also means that it is very different than coding against the Tablet PC API. However with the .NET runtime support for Silverlight that will change.

The InkPresenter has a StrokeCollection, just like we are familiar with in the Ink API. And then you drill into each individual stroke and even stylus points. With the stylus point data not only can you redisplay the ink in XAML, but you can redraw it and you can do so in real time (eg at the same speed that it was originally drawn in.

The way you interact with the user drawing ink via the javascript is by responding to mousedown, mousemove and mouseup events. Billy Hollis recognized this as how he worked with ink before we had the Ink APIs. It's a little frustrating to have to work at this low level but it's very interesting and i have a lot of flexibility. However, I do look forward to the .NET runtime implementation!

As always, my key interest is in persisting the ink. This can be done in XAML (you have to iterate through the ink structure and create the XAML, a function which can be encapsulated of course) and the CreateFromXAML javascript function will deserialize the XAML back into the inkdata that can be fed into the InkPresenter.

This is a pretty high level description and I'll explain more of the guts of what I have done in a later post as well as have a screencast available while I deal with getting the golive version on the web.

In the meantime, check out Gavin Gear's blog - he is a Program Manager on the tablet team and has done some amazing work with ink in Silverlight. Along with Sam George, he gets to show off a very cool demo tomorrow that they wrote. There are some live examples in the Silverlight gallery as well.

From Gavin's blog

Want to check out a Silverlight Ink sample? Check out “Ink Tattoo Studio” and “Page Turn” here:
http://silverlight.net/community/communitygallery.aspx

Also, I know that Loren Heiny , who has always been a great innovator with tablet pc development, is playing with this stuff too. So keep an eye on his blog as well.

In Pablo Castro's session today, I noticed a link on the resource page to his own blog. I have never known that Pablo (tech lead on the ADO.NET team) had a blog and couldn't believe that I could have missed such a thing. Luckily there is wireless available at the conference so I immediately browsed to the blog and lo and behold, he had made his first post just today! It is on the Astoria Web Data Services.

http://blogs.msdn.com/pablo/

I was wondering what "data services in the cloud" ... Pablo Castro's Mix Session, was going to be about.

Project Astoria exposes data that is exposed through the Entity Framework. So you build your EDM and then the service sits on top of htat.

It is two way... you can use HTTP PUT, POST and DELETE.

Here is a post on the ADO.NET team blog about the project Astoria, that is the web data services.

I'm in Pablo's talk right now, but you can check out the project here  and the blog post here.

The second one is called Jasper which is for purely data driven apps. I'm looking forward to Sam Druker's talk on this on Wednesday. Read the blog post here.

Next announcement from Scott Guthrie in the MIX keynote is that Microsoft has created a Ruby implementation for .NET called IronRuby.

I'm looking at another SilverLight demo wiht xaml file that has a IronRuby code file as it's app source.