Blogs|Nov 12, 2012

IntelliTrace: Making On Time Shipping Possible

Last week the Microsoft Central District asked me to come down and do a road show through Texas and Arkansas. What a road show it was; seven flights, six different hotels, and 20+ hours driving between places in six days. But it was all worth it because I got to talk about my favorite feature…
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wintellect-blogs|Nov 11, 2012

Answering your Windows 8 Questions

I’m extremely excited to be a part of an event this coming Tuesday, November 13th, geared towards answering your questions about Windows 8. An estimated 4 million PC users upgraded to Windows 8 during the first weekend of its release. I’m assuming several of you reading this blog were a part of that wave. While…
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Blogs|Nov 9, 2012

A CoverFlow Control for Windows 8 and Your Surface RT

A few years ago, I needed a CoverFlow control for a Silverlight project I was working on. Since Silverlight didn’t include a CoverFlow control, I did a little searching and found an open-source XAML CoverFlow control on CodePlex. So I downloaded the code, tweaked it a bit, and quickly had a control with the basic…
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Blogs|Nov 9, 2012

Building Location-Aware Apps for Your Surface RT

Microsoft’s Surface RT lacks a GPS receiver (bummer!), but you can still use WinRT’s location API to build location-aware apps for it. As long as you have a WiFi connection, the location API can determine where you are with a reasonable degree of accuracy – sometimes with astonishing accuracy – using WiFi positioning. Furthermore, you…
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Blogs|Nov 5, 2012

Fun with the Accelerometer on Your Surface RT

One of the cool things about Microsoft’s Surface RT is that it comes with a rather complete array of sensors. Among those sensors are an accelerometer, which allows software running on the device to sense the acceleration along the X, Y, and Z axes in real time. As a practical matter, that means software can…
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wintellect-blogs|Nov 5, 2012

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Windows 8 is out, ads are flooding the airwaves (bravo, Microsoft!), and the punditshpere is teeming with articles generally praising the platform but decrying the lack of apps. As Reuters recently put it, “A lack of apps is Microsoft’s Achilles heel as it attempts to catch Apple Inc and Google Inc in the rush toward…
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visual-studio-alm-tfs-and-scrum|Nov 4, 2012

Wintellect TFS Build Number Task for VS/TFS 2012

Looks like I forgot to post the updated version of my TFS Build Number Task for VS/TFS 2012. Let me rectify that by pointing you to the updated version here: https://training.atmosera.com/cs/files/folders/21032/download.aspx. If you’re wondering what this is about, here’s the history of how I created the task and how to integrated it into your build:…
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xaml|Oct 30, 2012

Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML is Here!

“Jeremy builds real apps for real customers. That’s why I can heartily recommend this book. Go out and write some great apps … and keep this book handy.” – from the forward by Jeff Prosise. When my wife stuck her head in the office and said, “Honey, there’s a UPS truck in front of the…
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wintellect-blogs|Oct 24, 2012

Windows 8 Hands-On Videos from Engadget Round-Up

With the launch of Windows 8 right around the corner, OEMs are releasing a ton of exciting hardware. In fact, there are so many options for Windows 8 machines that it is causing information overload. I thought I’d help simplify things by pulling together some of the hands-on videos I’ve watched over the past few…
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wintellect-blogs|Oct 17, 2012

The Microsoft Surface and Apple iPad 3 Head to Head

I was in a recent discussion about the Microsoft Surface and how it will be received by the consumer market. Obviously there are a lot of emotional reactions. Everyone is speculating about the price points, comparing features, and wondering if average consumers will even care. I would argue that there is a technical aspect to…
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wintellect-blogs|Oct 15, 2012

Updated WintellectPowerShell for October 14, 2012

Recently I had to compare a bunch of directory pairs and while PowerShell offers the Compare-Object, I needed something more that would not only look at filenames but compare binary files as well. Figuring some nice person on the Internet had already implemented this, I thought I’d just borrow and go about my business. Turns…
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