Unlike me if you didn’t get a chance to attend to Tech-Ed 2005 at Orlando - USA, nothing is lost. You can view almost all the sessions as web casts and even download the Powerpoints from here. Best of all, there is no 24 hour air travel, jet lags or even the registration fees .

Unfortunately just after I wrote this blog, I realised that the site requires your Tech Ed 2005 Attendee username and password :-(

I am here in Mumbai for the 3rd leg of Tech Ed 2005 India. Earlier this month we have done it in Bangalore and Chennai. In this time Tech Ed, I am taking it easy, just doing one session and that too a light content one – on “Avalon”.

Following are useful links for my session on Avalon.

• MSDN Mini Magazine on Longhorn (including on Avalon by Charles Petzold). Though this is outdated, it is a good introduction to Avalon.
• To know about the good looking Playing Cards demo, read the blog entry by Adam Nathan. Download the binaries of this for WinFX Beta1RC here.
• Designer for XAML - MobiForm Aurora
• Version of SVG to XAML converter from this GotDotnet project

How to install Avalon:
1) Download and install Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 from MSDN Labs.
2) Download and install WinFX SDK Beta1RC from here.
3) Download and install WinFX Runtime Beta1 RC from here.

XAML Examples:

<StackPanel xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005" > 
   <Label FontFamily="times new roman">  Hello World  </Label>
   <TextBox FontFamily ="verdana" AcceptsReturn ="True">  Hello World </TextBox>
</StackPanel>
Code 1 - Simple hello world example with XAML (WinFX Beta1RC version)

<Grid     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005">
  <Button Width="200" Height="200" >
  <TextBlock><Image Width="100" Height="100" Source="C:\Samples\Venkat.Gif" /> <LineBreak /> HelloWorld</TextBlock>
  </Button>
</Grid>
Code 2 - Hello world example and an image inside a button with XAML (WinFX Beta1RC version)

Microsoft India conducts periodically a day of intensive technology onsite seminars for India’s Software biggies. MSDN calls these engagements with SI (System Integrators, as they are known in the Industry) as “MSDN Day”. I have known for years “Jonah Stephen” who is currently the MSDN Enterprise SI Manager in India. In the last few months for Jonah, I have presented in many MSDN Days in Chennai on “ASP.NET 2.0 & Visual Studio 2005”. This included MSDN Day for CTS, Satyam & TCS in Chennai.

After the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) program, I was given a very thoughtful gift that I have received for a presentation. It was a book titled “The Creation of Wealth” – The Tatas from the 19th to the 21st Century, by R.M.Lala. As with many books that many of us have, this too lied along with many of the other books in my bookshelf. This was until I took it along with me in my recent trip to USA. I was very apprehensive whether I will read even few chapters of this book in my flights. But the book was so interesting, I finished the entire book before I landed in Los Angeles. Thanks to TCS Chennai for presenting me with this book.

The book is an enjoyable light-reading material of how the Tatas build their empire. Though the book is a chronology of Tata's history, Lala has brilliantly camouflaged it in an interesting novel format.  Only after reading it, I realized how ignorant I am about Industries and Business Houses in India. We seem to be more informed about American companies like – Walmart, Microsoft, GM, GE, etc. May be this is because of excellent reading materials available about them. I am sure management books on how Indian Industry has performed Post Liberalization – Their Right & Wrong moves, will make interesting reading. I hope some writer is reading this blog!.

But for many of us, we should take a leaf from this incident and start giving Books as gifts to our friends and business acquaintance. Coming from a Publishing House myself, what else you expect from me to end this with?

விஷ்வக்கில் மாதம் ஓரு சினிமா போவது வழக்கம். இதில் போனவாரம் சனிக்கிழமை சங்கரின் அந்நியன் பார்த்தோம். படத்தில் நம்மை கவர்வது

• விக்ரமின் அருமையான நடிப்பு - அந்த Multiple Personalityஐ மிக யதார்தமாக செய்துள்ளார்,
• Harris Jayarajன் இசை - சுருக்கமாக சொன்னால் பின்னி விட்டார்,
• சங்கரின் பிரமாண்டம் - அவரின் முந்திய படங்களை அவரே மிஞசுவது கடினம் இருந்தாலும் முயன்றுயிருக்கிறார் பாராட்டுகள்.

எல்லாம் சரி, படம் பார்க்கும் நமக்கு அம்மினிஷ்யா (Amnesia) வந்து "Gentleman", "இந்தியன்" படங்களை மறந்து பார்த்தால் அந்நியன் அருமை, இல்லையென்றால் தங்க பெயிண்டடித்த எருமை!!!

MSN Toolbar Suite containing Windows Desktop Search is gaining momentum. Late last week they have introduced in the suite a  New! Tabbed Browsing capability to IE. Interesting stuff. Currently I use Avant Browser (based on IE Engine) as my browser. I am going to use MSN Toolbar for some time and if its Tabs feature is fast, stable and convenient, I will certainly switch to it. 

Post your experiences on tabbed browsing in IE here. You can read my earlier blog on Desktop Search posted here.

Yesterday (June 9th) evening all of us at Tech Ed 2005, had a blast. The park was open only for Tech Ed Attendees from 7PM to 11PM (infact as the photo below shows we were inside even at 11:15PM). We didn't have to pay for anything, everything was free - entry to the park, entry to all the rides, foods at all restaurants, special buffetts at many places of the park and more. The wait time at each ride was less than 10-15 minutes.

This was by far the best session in Tech Ed 2005

Myself at the entrace of Universal Studios, Florida

Overall We all had a VIP treatment.

From Vishwak, we had exhibited in this year Tech Ed 2005 at Orlando, FL. This is our third big Microsoft US Event participation after Tech Ed 2002 in New Orleans and PDC 2001 in LA.

At Tech Ed 2005, we launched our new focus area of vortals as well.

View of Vishwak - Booth #925, Tech Ed 2005, Orlando, FL

Finally after 5 days of hectic schedule, Teched 2005 in USA is getting over this hour. It has been an exciting week with in-depth technical presentations, larger than ever Expo Hall, labs and more.

Orange County Convention Center (South/North), Orlando, FL

Since the event is covered in detail all over the Internet Media, I have instead listed below the top few items that I can remember after 5 days.

1. Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 is getting released in the week of Nov 4th 2005
2. BillG and SteveB have come up with a new slogan “a new way of work” that is aimed at making information more accessible
3. Almost the majority ASP.NET 2.0 cool features like Master Pages and Themes are finally seeing the light of the day
4. Windows server 2003 R2 is around the corner and it has features that will help in Branch offices setup or with File Replication scenerios
5. BizTalk Server 2006 is coming up with enhanced Workflow and BAM features
6. SQL Server Reporting Services is now available with all SKUs of SQL Server 2005
7. Longhorn has some cool Imaging (Windows Imaging and Ximage.exe) functionalities. It also has Registry and File Redirection facility to run legacy apps that require admin rights to run as low priveleged users. I guess this is taking a leaf from the books of Antivirus that do port redirection and Virtual Machines technology. Anyways, this is a much neded feature in OS and I look forward to it eagerly.

You can view many of the popular presentation online as a webcast from this site. You can also watch a video on Behind the Scenes at the TechEd 2005 Ballmer Keynote from here or Mikehalls blog 

Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

The second leg of my trip from Singapore to Tokyo, then to Los Angeles was better than I anticipated. It was an 18 hour journey, the trip to Tokyo taking 7 hours followed by a break for an hour and a 10 hour journey to LA. As usual, the in flight service at SA was excellent - good meals, snacks, comfortable seats and great movie selections - though I wish the tamil movie could have been anything but Satyaraj's .

The immigration and customs at LA was breeze, I landed at 12:30PM and was out by 1:10PM. Straight I went to the domestic United gates for my domestic flight to San Jose via Santa Barbara - before this I thought Santa Barbara to be only a popular TV Serial. This was a Skywest Airlines' Brazilia Plane. Santa Barbara should be the smallest airport that I have been to, it was surprising to see an US Airport with only one flight and no big airstrip for landing. The airport was nothing but a small stretch of land for landing and talkoff and a small waiting room. That's it. From Santa Barabara I reached San Jose and stayed for couple of days with my cousin in Milpitas. Milpitas is a nice residential township.