A software engineer's glory so often goes unnoticed. Attention seems to come either when there are bugs or when the final project ships. But rarely is a developer appreciated for all the nuances and subtleties of a piece of code--and all the heroics it took to write it.

Until now.

With the Visual Studio Achievements Extension, various achievements are unlocked based on your activity. When you unlock an achievement, Visual Studio lets you know visually with a pop-up. In addition, your Channel 9 profile is updated with any achievements you earn, recalculating your position on the leaderboard. Now, all that hard work won’t go unnoticed!Download it today!

There are six categories of achievements you can earn, including categories like Unleashing Visual Studio, Power Coder, Don't Try This At Home and more. Some examples of individual achievements include Regional Manager (have more than 10 regions in a single class), Close To The Metal (use 5 preprocessor directives), Stubby (generate method stubs 10 times) or Interrupting Cow (have 10 breakpoints in a file). All in all, there are 32 achievements awaiting to be unlocked.

To see a list of all the achievements, check out this page. You can also see where you and your fellow niners stand on the leaderboard. You can tweet and share your achievements on Facebook. Or, add your list of achievements to your blog. After all, those badges look so shiny and nice!

Note that the Visual Studio Achievements only works for C# and Visual Basic. Progress based achievements can only be incremented once a minute. Achievements marked with Uses FxCop only work on Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Ultimate unless FxCop is installed. Visual Studio Achievements has an API for those interested.

Download it today! Happy coding!

It’s just around the corner … As you might already know it was announced that ALL Microsoft employees will get a free Windows Phone 7 when it is released in each country. However since it’s not officially going to be released locally I have no clue when I will get it .

Simplicity is given a new meaning with this release of Windows Phone. Home page UI looks extremely simple and my grandmother should be able to use it.

As always it is way before anything we have enabled the developers to start developing applications way before the device comes out to the market. You can download the free developer tools from http://developer.windowsphone.com/. One thing really exciting here is that the UI is based on Silverlight. I cant even imagine the kind of possibilities this will enable for Windows Phone. Silverlight has done some wonders in the web since the first release. I was going to download the tools for a very long time, but never got the time to do that. Since tomorrow is a holiday I just started downloading (internet connection @ home is messed up these days) and going to develop a demo app tomorrow.

Despite my previous bad experiences of using several Windows Mobile devices I’m very much looking forward for this.

Couple of weeks back Madhuka pointed out that Sri Lanka is not listed in the country dropdown when entering comments.

I just checked the BlogEngine.Net Code and realized it's loading the coutry list from Cultures and for some reason Hosting Server didnt had Sri Lanka in the list. I have no way of fixing it in the server. So I added a customer culture in the code and fixed. Now you can select Sri Lanka in the list.

Apart from that I have done couple of enhancements to BlogEngine.NET, basically replaced the basic edior with the FreeTextBox and reformatted couple of options in the admin section ... bla bla bla. Still havent had a chance to test these fully and put live.

Sri Lanka is at a crucial juncture and we at Microsoft Sri Lanka firmly believe that IT is one of the most powerful forces which can be leveraged to contribute towards the enormous task of developing the country. But in order to make this a reality, we need to create strong alignment between our Industry and the direction of the Country.

We would like to start the new year by introducing a new exclusive forum, the Tech Colloquium, which we hope to hold at periodic intervals. This forum will bring together some of the thought leaders in the country and have them engage in dialogue with our IT Professionals. We want to use this forum to hear some thoughts from our Nation’s leaders and get exposed to their vision for the future, and also understand their expectations from young IT Professionals. We will also bring ICT related inputs to the same forum, and discuss different Technologies, and Technology related issues. The Colloquium promises to be an inspiring experience for future Leaders.

Speakers ...

• Mr. Gotayaba Rajapaksha
• Mr. Lalith Weeratunge
• Mr. Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne

Date : 4th January 2010
Time : 5.00 PM – 8.30 PM
Venue : Cinnamon Lakeside

REGISTER NOW! @ http://tech.dotnetforum.lk

Limited seats available, Please register now to reserve your seat. Only registered participants allowed.

"Oslo" is the code name for the Microsoft's next generation application development platform. The goal of "Oslo" is to provide a 10x productivity gain across the application lifecycle (design, development, and management). "Oslo" leverages domain-specific models, languages and tools to achieve this goal.

The SDK contains documentation, samples, copies of the “Oslo” models written in "M", and tools designed to help you write your own models in "M", including the code name “Intellipad” tool for code name “Oslo”.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f2f4544c-626c-44a3-8866-b2a9fe078956&displaylang=en

We all know that there is tons of video based training material available on www.asp.net, www.silverlight.net and www.windowsclient.net. If any of you have trouble downloading or watching these videos online ... let me know. I have downloaded all the videos in these sites and nicely arranged in folders so it is easier to refer.

If any of you want is you can take a copy from me ... it's only about 35 GB :) ... but the amount of knowledge and wealth in this collection is in peta bytes for any .net developer.

Announcing the New .NET Logo!

Microsoft .NET has become an incredible success in the years since it was first announced in June 2000. More than 4 million developers around the world are using .NET to build amazing software and rich, compelling Web experiences. And the momentum for .NET continues to grow with the release of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 last summer and the upcoming .NET Framework 4 release. Conservative estimates from internal research indicate that over 70% of PC’s have a version of .Net already installed!

Given the success of .NET in the marketplace it is kind of a 'right time to create a new loto to this amazing technology. This new logo was first announced in PDC last week.

Why the New Logo and Brand Identity Were Developed
Why change? The original .NET logo was designed just before Forum 2000. It was designed to be attached to other Microsoft brands as a suffix. The result was a logo that did not stand well on its own and lacked impact.

It needed a logo that was in sync with the key values of the technology: consistency, robustness and great user experiences. Also wanted a logo that conformed to the design principles that are driving Microsoft’s brand identity evolution and is reflected in newer brands such as Silverlight, Surface and ‘Strata.’ Finally, a logo that is more strongly aligned with the portfolio of brands that .NET is most strongly aligned with: Silverlight, Visual Studio and the AppPlat server products was needed.

The result is a design that is being referred to as the “wave.” The design is strong, simple and distinctive. The suggestion of the letter ‘N’ in the design will become instantly recognizable over time as shorthand for the .NET brand name.

Last Thursday (31st) we had the .NET Day [2008] @ SLIIT. It was great to see many new students and everything went well as planned.

We had 6 presentations ...

• Intro to C# & LINQ by Prasanna Amirthalingam
• Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008 by me
• Windows Presentation Foundation by Uditha Bandara
• Getting started with Silverlight by me
• SQL Server 2008 new features by Gogula Aryalingam
• Intro to Student Champs Program by Primal Wijesekera & Buddhika Kalupahana

If you are looking for the presentation slides used please Click Here. (Uditha's presentation slides are not in this zip)

btw: I have been to SLIIT auditorium couple of times but this is the first time got a chance to go to the balcony .. just to see ... It's a fantastic view :)

As most of ya'll already know at the last MVP open day we decided to bring all the user groups under one umbrella as Microsoft Sri Lanka Technical Communities. Currently we have 4 arms under it. Those are the .NET Forum, IT Pro Forum, SQL Server Forum and the Student Champ Community. With over a total of 5000 registered members these technical communities stand stronger than ever. Hats off to EdQuek for showing us the ways and hats off to all the members for contributing and adding value.

Wanted to write about this not to talk about the existing four. This is about the FIFTH arm which is going to come out in the very near future ... and it's going to be bigger than the current four. Yup! very soon registration counts will be bigger than even the .NET Forum user base. Right now i'm sure you are totally clueless about what this is and where can I find a bigger user base. Wait and see :)

Last Thursday (21st) 6 of our student champs headed to Uva Wellassa University for a 2 day Dev Camp. Despite the long exhausting journey all of them spent the evening setting up the labs till very late. When the event started on Friday morning everybody was surprised to see several lecturers and the vice chancellor Mr. Chandra Embuldeniya himself being present at the event. Event consisted of several technical presentations on Microsoft technologies, 4 hands-on lab sessions and a career guidance presentation by the vice chancellor.

This is one of the many events we are doing in universities throughout the year. Special thanks to Student Ambassadors Buddhika and Wajira for coordinating + organizing the whole event and the student champs Prasad, Suranga, Tishan and Kelum for the outstanding contribution.

Feedback from students proves that this has been a very successful event and the message is loud and clear, which is “please come more often to our university and share what you know”.

Not only students, lecturers were also present at the sessions	Message from the Vice Chancellor Mr. Chandra Embuldeniya	Portion of the crowd on the first day.
One of the hands-on lab sessions on ASP.NET	Heroes!	I guess they all are saying “THANK YOU” … it’s all over the feedback forms

As some of ya'll already know .NET Forum now has two new sections.

SMS Notifications
This was implemented as a response to a request came from few members to get a SMS notification about the Monthly User Group Meetings. So form members can register for this thorugh http://sms.dotnetforum.lk.

Link Partners
This is mainly focusing on driving more traffic to the website and also to the registered member's website. You can register thorugh http://linkpartners.dotnetforum.lk. If you still haven't ... hurry up, only a limited number of slots available.

What's Next?
Some more interesting tools and programs are in development and ya'll will see those in the near future.

Went through my photos collection to find some old photos to send to a friend. While doing that I selected the below photos which I think are ideal Vista wallpapers. Infact I used some of these as my wallpaper at the time it was taken. Click on the thumbnail to view the high-res.

in case if you haven't herd about this awesome news yet ...
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx

source: Scott Gu's Blog

Woo! Hoo!

Long awaited VS2008 is out :) well! at this moment only MSDN Subscribers can go and download from the website. It 3.9 GB. I have already started downloading and have to wait 6 more hours.

WOW!

Right at this moment if you check the .NET Forum (www.dotnetforum.lk) there are about 15 vacancies looking for .NET Developers. Also I have several requests in my inbox to find C#, VB.NET developers. I know for sure that most of those are with very high salary and benefit offers. But unfortunately most of the time it has become really difficult to find good .NET developers. Ultimately what companies are doing is hiring from other companies. This is nod good indeed. Unfortunately today we don't have enough developers in the market today. So the precious few who are out there are in a 'fun ride' jumping from company to another making salary hikes ... well! not everybody ... but I know a few.

If we look at of this problem in a big picture, our education system is NOT producing enough professionals ... instead it is creating more parrots. On the other hand building a career in software development is not a popular topic among our parents. We are in a world where humans do wonders like ... go to the moon, building space stations, but still our parents wants us to become doctors, lawyers, engineers ... the usual dream jargon. I think we need a nation wide awareness building campaign to create this momentum. So far I have met only very few kids who want to become something other than the usual. One kid ... when I asked said ... 'I want to drive racing cars' ... another one said 'I want create toys'. I wonder how they got those ideas, because the first one is only 8 years and the second is only 12 years old. But I think this is great. At least few are thinking in new directions. Because not only .NET developers are in demand. There are many other industries looking for skilled professionals.

It'll be great if Microsoft Training Partners can come up with a program to create the .NET developers the market required. By saying that I'm not mentioning to start another certificate or a diploma course which will run for about an year. I'm talking about a solid program which can create some real world software developer which this country needs.

Anyways very soon I'll be coming up with a program to cater at least some portion of this demand. I gotta do what I can do :)

Last Wednesday (2nd) we had the August User Group Meeting. This time it was a different location. Previous month we decided to have it at a different location just for a change. So August meeting was held @ Microsoft Sri Lanka office. Thanks to Alan for helping to set this up. Also for the next couple of months until we inform a change of the location we'll be having the meeting @ the Microsoft Sri Lanka office. Yeah! we are in the process of arranging a new venue for the user group meeting which can have a bigger crowd. More details will be provided later.

However enthusiasm was well demonstrated this month because we had a house full registration count even without sending the monthly newsletter. We planned the meeting only for 40, but within a day registrations went up to 54. Even though the confirmation mail was sent to all of them about 15 - 20 didn't show up for the meeting. Two of them were generous enough to inform me through an email about they wont be able to make it. A big thanks to you guys. Few who called me and requested for a seat also attended. So guys, next time if you register for any event we expect that you will attend or at least will inform us early so then we can allocate the slot to another .NETter.

Anyways for the next meeting there wont be any registration page. We really want more guys to attend, but if you come late you might have to stand :)    demand for the user group meeting grows every single day.

At this meeting Rajah and Dinesh did two presentations. Raja's presentation was on New Features in Windows Forms 2.0 and Dinesh's presentation was focused on SQL Server.

Also we (MVP Team) finally managed to have that meeting we have been planning for quite some time now. My self, Merill, Manoj, Jinath, and Dinesh from the MVP team and Alan from Microsoft participated the meeting. We discussed about the list of activities scheduled for the next couple of months. Guys! there are some cool stuff in the list for you. So stay tuned.

Also we finally selected the list of board members for the user group. List is as follows for the next year.

• President & Membership Director - Wela
• Vice President & Program Director - Manzi
• Secretary - Merill
• Director Online Services - Jinath
• Treasurer - Dinesh

Thanks for the team for selecting me as the head. I know it is a big responsibility. I'm ready for the challenges.

Last week our good old mentor Ed :) forwarded me a mail looking for some tech support to configure a Community Server. These days Community Server 2.0 is among my favoutites list. Checking all the different features and configuration options in that to upgrade Sri Lanka .NET Forum. So I took the challenge to do this. It took longer than expected with my busy schedule and also due to some issues in the hosting place. I spent most of my last weekend on this. Configuring the database manually was what took most of the time. Finally with some help from the technical support dudes in the hosting service I managed to hook it up. Site is on Community Server 2.0 and it looks great. Bangladesh Microsoft Technology Community is up and running now. It reminds me how our forum was a long time back.

Now! Sri Lanka .NET Forum dudes... don't be jealous. Our forum will also be upgraded to Community Server 2.0 very soon.

All the best to Hamid (the man in charge in blangladesh :) ). And if any support needed you know the number to call

Last Friday (7th) we had a .NET day @ Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT). Former students and lecturers at SLIIT organized the event and the list of speakers consisted of Merill, Raja, Fiqri, Dinesh and my self. Head count was close to 400 I guess.

• Merill - Introduction to .NET Framework 2.0
• Raja - ADO.NET 2.0
• Wela - Smart Client Development with VS 2005
• Fiqri - Mobile Development in VS 2005
• Dinesh - Introduction to SQL Server 2005
• Wela - ASP.NET 2.0 Tips and Tricks

Thanks for Malith (SLIIT x-student and event organizer) for taking us for a tour around the SLIIT campus during the lunch break. Dude, you got loads of facilities there.

Few snaps ...

Merill doing the intro to .NET 2.0 session	Me doing the ASP.NET 2.0 Tips & Tricks session	Dinesgh doing the intro to SQL Server 2005 session
Fiqri doing the Mobile Dev with VS 2005 session	Raja doing the ADO.NET 2.0 Session	Me and Dinesh having a small chat with a lecturer
Portion of the crowd	Portion of the crowd

Well! wishes are not for you or me, it for our .NET User Gruop. Yeah! guys it's beign 2 years. We started the whole thing in July 2004 with Merill leading the team and our good old mentor Ed Guiding us. We have continued the meeting every month expect last October where we had the TechEd and this February where we had the VS Launch.

Due to the busy schedule I actually forgot about this. Otherwise I would have atleast brought a cake to the Today's User Group Meeting. A Big thanks to Jinath for reminding this.

It really feels good to be a part of something important.

Well! first impression I got was 'It's just a font pack for Visual Studio 2005'. Even after installing felt the same way. But after using it for couple of hours, specially in the HTML view It's looks pretty cool.

Before the font pack, with the good old Courier Font

After installing the new Consolas Font Pack. Feels good, feels different.

Download the Consolas Font Pack for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005