A general update on stuff!
It has been a little while since my last post and there are a few reasons for that, most notably my pending move over to the US.
I will post some more details about that when I am settled and my new job is all cemented in place. Visas into the US are a nightmare to get at the best of times so I shall leave this point with the fact that I have become considerably greyer trying to secure one for myself and my family. All in good time I guess.
My new job in New York City J
My new job will have me working 100% on Microsoft Surface projects in New York so I am really looking forward to digging into it. I have had the SDK for a few months now and have really enjoyed it all so far, and as far as I know, the SDK will become public in a few weeks time which will be interesting to see. Some people may ask what happened to the unit I was building at home? Well I got it up and running to the point where I could calibrate it, when all the MS Surface stuff come along for me so I have had to put it on the back burner until I get some time to resume with it, even if it is just for fun.
A new book in the planning!
As an update, I have also begun to start piecing together the table of contents for a new book next year for Blend 3. I have been involved with the Blend team for quite a while now and I was lucky enough to start working around with some of the concepts for the next version. I can't reveal any of these features due to NDA, but let me say that I think it is shaping up staggeringly well, even at this early stage with a lot of new features that people are going to love.
The next book should also have some information on developing with Blend for Surface as well as Live Mesh, so some exciting new content to come.
What is happening with Learn Expression Studio?
Well it's been really hard to find good vendors for it. Steve Barker has been amazing with his contributions but unfortunately he has had to move on to other projects, which is a real shame for designers wanting to go deep on other XAML related products.The site has taught me a lot about running an online business which is more work then I thought possible, but in saying this, with all the mistakes and all the other hard lessons that I have learnt, I think I can deliver some much need content for new comers to Blend. More information to come about this shortly.
Expressionblend.com making a comeback!
I am planning to resurrect the expressionblend.com site a little later this year or early next year which should bring everything together for current subscribers and new ones as well as the community in general. Only this week have the designs been finalised whilst waiting for Silverlight 2.0 to go RTM. The site was planned to be re-launched this summer, but things got a little crazy on the job front, but rest assured it is ticking away. The site will be 100% Silverlight with a new concept as well in presentation for this sort of space, so stay tuned for information on that over the coming months.
Blend Training in beautiful Malta.
I wanted to mention that I was also out training a great group of guys in Malta last week at a company called UniBlue. These guys are now heavily invested in WPF and needed to get their top guys up to speed with working together with their designers and everyone understanding Blend. It was a very successful week and it was great to see some sunshine;-)
PDC should be big for WPF, XAML, Visual Studio and everything else..
The big news in the tech space for us all this month is PDC which should see some really exciting announcements around XAML 2, Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0. I have a version of VS2010 at the moment which I believe will also become a CTP at PDC and so far it is looking really nice.
Seek out the PDC information pages from Microsoft to stay abreast of all the best bits.
That's it for me for this month.