If you are frequently working with Microsoft SharePoint and Visual Studio 2005/2008, then you may know some difficulties that we are facing like deploying web parts, configuring workflows, etc. But Visual Studio team came up with new tool set to overcome those issues. Jason Zander (GM for Visual Studio) announced the Visual Studio 2010 tools for SharePoint @ TechEd EMEA 2008 - Barcelona.

• Server Explorer for SharePoint viewing Lists and other artifacts in SharePoint directly inside of Visual Studio.
• Windows SharePoint Services Project (WSP file) Import to create a new solution.
• Added a new web part project item and showed the Visual web part designer which loads a user control as a web part for SharePoint.
• Showed adding an event receiver for SharePoint and using the wizard to choose the event receiver and to just create a source file with that event receiver.
• Added an ASPX workflow initiation form to a workflow project and showed how this workflow initiation form has designer capability.
• Showed the packaging explorer and the packaging editor which lets you structure the SharePoint features and WSP file that is created.

Courtesy :http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/

Ramp Up…! (Wow, Great :)). It is a free online community based project. Simply, we can access the latest Microsoft technologies which prepared by industry experts. Ramp Up gives the very nice step by step learning guide for preferred technology. Then we can move from basic to advance without having many troubles. Guys don’t escape this opportunity. Coz, we can lean the stuff in well polished way and there are some cool offers also available. Try it now… Hurry… I am just about to start New SharePoint for Developers Track – Part 1.

Microsoft has announced the new .NET logo by replacing the current logo that came to the world with Microsoft .NET 1.0 in January 2002. But still I am looking for the official statement about this logo. Anyway, in coming week you will get more interesting and hot news from PDC. Guys and Gals... Keep your eyes on PDC 2008 to get more info.

PS: I found another two links about this info.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PDC2008NewNETLogo.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog/archive/2008/10/25/embrace-the-new-net-logo.aspx

DevLabs is fully committed to Microsoft developer community. Actually, it let us touch most of CTPs, Beta Programs, etc… perhaps; you will be able to handle few open source projects also…

You can check the full result and upload stats through blow link.
http://www.speedtest.net/global.php?continent=4&country=74

If you are living with a Microsoft SharePoint platform, then you may remember this tool.  And also if you want to have solid Microsoft SharePoint development environment, then BDC Meta Man is a one of the great tool you must have. 

BDC Meta Man came to the ground without any noise, but it’s all about productivity.  In early days of Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 BDC, you had to write Application Definition file by manually. Extremely, it was very tedious task.  Even Microsoft didn’t offer any tool to generate BDC Application Definition file for given scenario. Luckily, with BDC Meta Man, we can generate the Application Definition file without writing any single line of code. What a relief…! 

Basically, we can have BDC Meta Man in two flavors. First one is Developer Edition that we can use without paying any bucks (All the credit should go to Nick Swan* & Dimitry Kaloshin). Second one is Professional Edition. But you have to pay $ 1,200 (With Professional Edition you will have specialize technical support). 

* Nick Swan is playing big role in UK SharePoint User Group (SUGUK) and it's the world largest SharePoint user group.  

BDC Meta Man supports five types of data sources including:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 / 2005
• Oracle
• Web Services
• MS Access
• DB2 – ODBC
• MySQL - ODBC 

I forgot tell you one thing. Actually BDC Meta Man is a very very simple tool. Anyone can use it without knowing any nuts and bolts of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 / Business Data Catalog (BDC). 

"Microsoft® Phone Data Manager Beta is an application that is designed to take away the worry of losing data on your phone - specifically contacts, music, pictures and videos. It does that by synchronizing your phone contacts with Microsoft's Windows Live Contacts store in the cloud, or by helping you download files from the phone to your local computer"

Guys just check the supporting phone model list and try the Phone Data Manager....! Download Now

http://specials.msn.co.in/sp08/msphonedatamanager/whatis_it.asp

Shocked by the news… He was a legend in a SharePoint world. Unfortunately I was not in a position to meet him before leaving this world. Although I am a frequent follower of his blog, books (2), screen cast and many more articles. Even, I got to know more about him when I was in Brussels. Coz, he was a very famous SharePointer and co-founder of U2U - Belgium. 

Thx for everything that you have done for the community.  Personally, I know how much of knowledge I have absorbed from your articles, books, etc. My thoughts are with Patrick's family and you will be missed…