Grokking – You Learn Something Every Day
I’ve only really noticed the use of “grok” in IT circles in recent years (maybe I’ve been under a rock but hey) – it always made me laugh and thought it was a geek neologism that stuck. But I’ve just started reading the 1961 classic Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein and noticed his frequent use of the term. And he obviously loved it… “There was so much to grok, so little to grok from.”

Out of the Yellow Into The Blue
After seven years proudly flying the Yellow flag I’m moving on from Intergen and am now officially unemployed! But not for long - next week, I’ll be taking over as Product Manager at Xero. After almost 14 years in the service industry I am really looking

RIA Services – ADO.NET Data Services and WCF
I’ve had a chance to look at RIA Services over the last few months and thought it would be good to clear up some of the confusion over where RIA Services stands in relation to other related technologies like ADO.NET Data Services and WCF. In some respects RIA Services are similar to WCF Services. You write the service code, host it on a server, create some proxy classes on your client and away you go. In fact, if you look at how you implement the same service in each technology it’s almost identical. In WCF, [ServiceContract] public class SpeechService : ISpeechService {

Learn About RIA Services
If you can make it to Wellington next Wednesday (6:00pm @ Xero) come  along and hear all about RIA Services at the next Silverlight User Group (SLUG). I’ll be covering some of the stuff I presented this year at TechEd but also adding a few new things. I’m also keen to hear what people think about RIA Services compared to alternative approaches – is it something you’ll use? If not, why not? If so, what’s so great about it?

Intergen at Tech.Ed 2009 – More Movies
Intergen were there in force this year and here’s the proof… Windows Azure for High Availability [TTK155] (Chris Auld) Windows Azure, the Microsoft Cloud Computing Platform with particular reference to high scalability and availability the platform offers and how this can benefit NZ businesses.