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Be sure to join us on April 13, 2010 for the John and Jeremy show. John Oswalt and Jeremy Sharp will be taking us on a awesome ride through some of the most talked about content that was presented recently at the Microsoft Mix conference in Las Vegas, NV.

Mark your calendars and get ready for the Microsoft Mix Download!

Title: The Microsoft Mix Download

Come hear a download of the latest Microsoft technology news that was announced at the Microsoft Mix 2010 Conference. Topics will include the latest updates on ASP.NET MVC 2, Open Data Protocol (OData), Visual Studio 2010, ASP.NET 4, Silverlight 4, and the new Windows Phone 7 Development.

Presenters:

John Oswalt is a Lead Developer/Analyst for Tyson Foods, Inc. based in Springdale, AR and a Microsoft Certified Professional in ASP.NET. He is currently the President of the Northwest Arkansas .NET User Group (@nwadnug). He has over 10 years experience in developing websites and applications. His passions for programming languages include ASP.NET, C#, HTML, CSS, VB.NET, SQL, JavaScript, and many others. He is the owner of a few different types of blogs on the internet (Technology – letsblogabout.net) and (Sports – www.callthehogs.com). You can also follow him on Twitter (@joswalt).

Jeremy Sharp is a graduate of the University of Arkansas in computer science, Jeremy has devoted his entire career to the development of Intranet, Internet and Extranet enterprise business applications for both large and small corporations. Over the last ten years he has worked in a variety of industries, including consumer products, health care, education and transportation. Jeremy's client list comprises many well-known local and national names, including Tyson Foods, Arkansas Occupational Health Care, North West Technical Institute and J.B. Hunt.

When:

5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764

Room: Kansas Room (226)



Northwest Arkansas Code Camp

As Jay Smith mentioned, if you haven’t already registered for the Nwa Code Camp you need to get with it.  The event is schedule for April 25 and space is limited.

To register please visit http://codecamp.nwadnug.org and click on the register link at the top of the screen.

This is the first attempt to have a regional event in Northwest Arkansas and we will be closely monitoring attendance to determine if we should continue to create events of this nature in this area.

There will be 3 tracks with 12 sessions on various topics, everything from SharePoint, Windows Communication all the way to iPhone development. This event is being sponsored by the local Northwest Arkansas .NET Users Group.

Please forward this information on to everyone you know that would be interested and encourage them to attend. Think of this as free training in a time where training and travel budgets are being cut daily.

We need your help making this an event a huge success in our area.



Microsoft released SP1 for the Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office for Visual Studio 2008. The Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system (version 3.0) can help you extend applications in Microsoft Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system by using Visual Basic and Visual C#. The tools include Visual Studio projects to help you start to create an Office Business Application (OBA).

For the latest information about Visual Studio Tools for Office and Office development, see the following development centers on MSDN:

  • The Visual Studio Tools for Office Developer Portal contains links to product information, code samples, videos, and community resources about using Visual Studio to customize Office applications as part of your solutions.
     
  • The Microsoft Office Developer Center contains links to technical articles, code samples, downloads, community information, support, and other documentation about Office customizations and OBAs.

SP1 Overview:
You must install this update on your development computer, and also on client computers, if you use Visual Studio 2008 SP1 to develop Microsoft Office solutions.

This update provides bug fixes and new features, including .NET Framework Client Profile compatibility and the ability to add host controls and smart tags to documents from application-level add-ins.

When you install the Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime on a non-English version of the operating system, you should also install the appropriate language pack service pack to see the text of the messages from the runtime in that language, rather than English.

Download SP1 by clicking here.
 



Microsoft released the final version of the Open XML SDK the other day. The SDK makes coding against the Office Open XML a lot easier by wrapping calls to the System.IO.Packaging class with much easier API to use.

Overview

The 2007 Microsoft® Office system introduces a new file format that is based on XML called Open XML Formats. Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007 all use these formats as the default file format.

Open XML formats are useful for developers because they are an open standard and are based on well-known technologies: ZIP and XML. Microsoft provides a library for accessing these files as part of the WinFX technologies in the System.IO.Packaging namespace.

The Open XML Format SDK is built on top of the System.IO.Packaging API and provides strongly typed part classes to manipulate Open XML documents.

 
Downloads:
  • Open XML SDK: click here
  • Online Version of Open XML SDK: click here



About the author

John Oswalt is a Lead Programmer / Analyst for Tyson Foods, Inc. where he works on the Productivity Management Group which allows him to work with latest Microsoft technologies such as ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, SharePoint, and many others.

He is the current chairman of the Tyson Developer Conference committee which puts on an internal conference with average attendance of about 200 developers.

John is also the President of the Northwest Arkansas .NET Users' Group which helps evangelize Microsoft .NET technologies and better coding practices.

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