Martin Kulov's Blog

Today are the Imagine Cup 2009 finals at Cairo. I have the honor to be selected as member of the jury for Software Design category.

Imagine Cup is the world’s largest student competition for Microsoft technologies. Bulgaria is also represented by the MindPoint team from Technical University of Sofia. Members of the team are Kiril Rusev, Nikola Kosev, Dilyan Rusev and Raya Yunakova mentored by Milena Lazarova.

We are all excited to be here and looking forward for the final rounds starting in less than 6 hours. Big thanks to Microsoft Bulgaria for their continuous commitment to make Bulgarian students part of this amazing experience.

You can vote for your favorite team and application at the following address:

http://peopleschoice.imaginecup.com

Go and vote now! The teams need your vote.

Labels: ImagineCup

I will be speaking at Macedonian .NET UG’s CodeCamp at Skopje this Saturday, 13th of June.

I am going to present a session on Building Highly Scalable Web Sites using Microsoft “Velocity” (Level 300).

If you happen to be in the same area, drop me a message and we can get in touch.

Labels: Events

If try to connect to TFS 2010 instance from Visual Studio 2008 you will probably experience the following error message:

Possible reasons for failure include:

• The Team Foundation Server name, port number or protocol is incorrect.
  
• The Team Foundation Server is offline.
  
• Password is expired or incorrect.

The trick is that due to changes in TFS 2010 architecture, you now have to enter a full URL to connect to the server. This URL have to include a TFS virtual directory in it. So at the end the URL will something like this:

http://tfs2010:8080/tfs

This will connect you to the default collection of the TFS 2010 server.

Labels: Tools and Tips, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010

Ever wanted to know how Alternate Access Mappings (AMM) work in SharePoint. Do you need to add host header to your web site or you wonder what the heck is internal and public URLs in SharePoint?

The following three articles will help you understand everything I think you need to know about Alternate Access Mappings in MOSS and WSS.

Just to give a fresh start – Internal URL is just a 302 redirect to the Public URL. It is this so simple.

Also make sure to test with FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Names).

What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings (Part 1 of 3)
(talks about Internal and Public URLs)

What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings (Part 2 of 3)
(talks about the 6^th most common mistakes you will ever make in setting up AMM)

What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings (Part 3 of 3)
(talks about Authentication Providers, Web Application Polices, External Resource Mappings)

Labels: SharePoint

Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 has the possibility to boot from VHD. Ideally this will make your VM run with the smallest overhead possible from the host system. It should be interesting to try out Windows Server 2008 Server Core and see how much is the memory footprint. Actually this article "Deploying and Maintaining Server Core" claims that the actual footprint they have is 1.6GB HDD and 180MB RAM.

Find out how to make Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 boot from VHD file in this step by step guide "Windows 7 - Natively Booting from a .VHD file (Virtual PC image)" and in the video Windows 7 VHD Boot Demonstration.

There are some restrictions though. Watch out for the following:

as stated in the article "Windows 7 Boot From VHD".

Labels: Tools and Tips

I have put a page with all Bulgarian User Groups that I know and that are active (at least almost all :)). Of course Microsoft related only :).

If you feel that I missed something or you just have some feedback, just comment on this post. I would love to get your opinion.

In addition, I have set up a Facebook group called IT Events in Bulgaria. I try to post there for all the events in Bulgaria and close region that I know of but it is sometimes hard to put all of them. So if you want your event to be added there, the easiest way is to send me a link to Facebook event that you have created and I will add it to that group. I have made the group moderated, because I would like to keep it low noise and out of marketing or low value events. Other than that I would love to post your event in there.

And last – I am happy to be awarded again as Most Valuable Professional for 2009 in Team System category. Team System product group totally rocks! I am happy to be part of this group.

Labels: Events

In less than 12 hours is starting TechDays Developer 2009 – Defy All Challenges – 24-Hour virtual event!  For the first time, it is gathering developers from all over the world in one continuous 24 hours of learning around the clock on April 1, 2009. 

Through the TechDays virtual event portal, attendees will be able to access more than 95 sessions in person or on-demand later at their convenience with renowned technology experts.  TechDays Virtual 24-Hour event provides an online environment for developers to learn to be more productive and increase their skills during these changing times. 

Register and go to Session Builder to select your list of sessions.

Labels: Events

There are known problems in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 related to breakpoints and debugging experience with multithreaded applications. Since these days almost everything that you write is multithreaded app, I would recommend you to install the hotfix from MSDN Code Gallery.

Here are the possible symptoms:

• Breakpoints in parallelized loops are eventually ignored after multiple hits
• Stopping and starting threads causes breakpoints to be missed
• Visual Studio may crash when you debug multiple processes at the same time
• Stepping over a disabled breakpoint when you debug a native application turns into a "go"
• Stepping when you debug a managed multithreaded application can randomly turn into a "go"
• Visual Studio crashes when you use the "Step Into" command to start an MPI program
• Running the "Step Over" command while you are debugging multiple processes causes a deadlock
• Disabled breakpoints are not visible after you install Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1

Labels: Debugging, Tools and Tips

Today at MIX09 ScottGu announced the availability of Silverlight 3 Beta. I am very excited about the new databinding capabilities and the HD streaming support. Microsoft definitely put a lot of efforts in this release. Check out the Silverlight 3 Beta release page.

Interesting fact – although all the new features that are added, the download distributive of Silverlight 3 Beta is 4.4MB, with 40Kb less than Silverlight 2.0 – says ScottGu.

Check out Silverlight 3 Beta Development Center.

Here are some of my highlights in this release:

• Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming
• IIS Media Services
• Native support for MPEG-4-based H.264/AAC Audio
• True HD playback in full-screen
• Bitmap Caching
• New Bitmap API
• 60+ controls with source code
• Element to Element binding
• Data Forms
• New features for data validation
• Support for business objects
• Enhanced Deep Zoom
• Internet connectivity detection
• Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator import
• Team Foundation Server support allows easier integration of the Blend user into Team System

Labels: Events

Check out MIX09 keynotes and live sessions as they become available. Video on demand will be provided also soon.

Labels: Events