Hilton Giesenow's Jumbled Mind

The MOSS Show Episode 15 – Unit Testing with Roy Osherove

hiltong — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:34:12 GMT

I just published an episode a few days ago for The MOSS Show podcast with Roy Osherove, noted unit testing expert, amongst other things.

In general, I’ve found experience with unit testing, amongst other ALM maturity practices, to be lower with SharePoint developers than with, for example, ‘standard’ asp.net developers (whatever that means). I can only surmise as to why this is so – perhaps it’s because they hang out in different circles, perhaps it’s because SharePoint itself is so vast they don’t get time to look outside. Whatever the reason, I wanted this episode to a lot more about foundational concepts, and really get into the core ideas of unit testing, TDD, mocking, and so on.

I’m hardly any kind of pro on this stuff myself, so I found it really useful to better understand the space, especially with Roy who really is an expert and who’s very easy to talk with. We only got to talking about SharePoint pretty close to the end of the show, so if you really want to learn more about all the concepts related to unit testing, give the show a listen. You can find it at Unit Testing with Roy Osherove.

To find out more about Roy’s excellent book, check out the Amazon link below.

Azure Videos Now Up

hiltong — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 04:25:13 GMT

I was busy playing with Azure a few months ago, putting together some videos for MSDN and I saw today that some of them are now live. The Azure offering looks really exciting, so it was great to play with the bits, even though they’re all still CTP / beta right now. If you haven’t heard too much about it, the check out Azure.com, and check out these videos.

How Do I: Get Started With the Azure Service Bus?
How Do I: Get Started With the Access Control Services?
How Do I: Create And Use an Azure Service Bus Message Buffer?
How Do I: Integrate An Existing Application With SQL Azure? – Part 1
How Do I: Integrate an Existing Application with SQL Azure? - Part 2

The Moss Show Episode 14

hiltong — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:56:24 GMT

I just published the latest episode of The MOSS Show. I decided to do some episodes now and then with some interesting ISVs in the SharePoint space, so this is the first episode in the series. It’s a discussion with BA Insight, who make some interesting add-ons for searching in MOSS, Search Server and FAST. Check it out at http://www.themossshow.com/

The MOSS Show Episode 12 - An Introduction to Unified Access Gateway with Meir Mendelovich

hiltong — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:39:25 GMT

Last week I published episode 12 of the The MOSS Show. It was an interview with Meir Mendelovich from the ForeFront UAG team, looking at the upcoming Unified Access Gateway release and what it can offer for SharePoint security. Check it out at An Introduction to Unified Access Gateway with Meir Mendelovich

SharePoint Saturday Talk on Enterprise Search

hiltong — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:22:16 GMT

This last Saturday we had another successful SharePoint Saturday event here in Cape Town. Although I wasn’t able to be there in person, I submitted my talk as a video and I’ve uploaded it as a show for the podcast. Check it out at SharePoint Search Challenges And Tips.

‘WHAT’ Is Google Wave

hiltong — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:18:46 GMT

So in case you’ve been wondering about what Google Wave is, this video demonstrates some of its capabilities and includes some fun nostalgia, too:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1923346

The MOSS Show – Episode 11 – The SharePoint Admin Toolkit

hiltong — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:07:45 GMT

A few days ago I posted Episode 11 of The Moss Show. It was an interview with Dan Winter and Luca Bandinelli on the SharePoint Administration Toolkit.

I’ve had a couple of guests cancel or postpone on me at once, so if any SharePoint experts want to be a guest, let me know. Otherwise, there might be a short gap till the next episode :-)

What Browser Version Did You Say?

hiltong — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:53:35 GMT

I was just reading Scott Hanselman’s blog post about cross-browser testing and it reminded me of something we found at a client earlier this week. They’re a well-known national company (so no names will be mentioned ;>), and we have a SharePoint system deployed on the intranet. We were looking at the usage stats, and in some remote sites they apparently still have machines running IE 4!

Social Networking - The MOSS Show Ep. 9 and The Conversation Prism

hiltong — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:24:08 GMT

I uploaded episode 9 of The MOSS Show recently, where we chat with Eric Harlan about Social Networking & SharePoint. It’s a discussion about social networking in general, especially in the business context, and we only dive into SharePoint about half way in, so even if you’re not using the platform, it still might be a worthwhile discussion.

On a related note, if you’re in to social networking, or trying to understand the space, check out this awesome composite image of how the different media relate:

It’s called “The Conversation Prism” and you can find more info here: http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism/
It’s also available for purchase as a poster, it seems: http://theconversationprism.com/

The MOSS Show Episode 8

hiltong — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:59:25 GMT

I just published episode 8 of The MOSS Show. It was the 2nd panel discussion we recorded at Tech Ed, with Zlatan Dzinic, Eric Harlan and Joel Oleson on SharePoint Architecture. The sound guys got the proper microphones working for this one, so the quality is better than the previous SharePoint User Adoption Panel episode.

I also recently started a twitter feed for the show, with updates on episode progress.

The MOSS Show Episode 7 – User Adoption Panel

hiltong — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:27:38 GMT

The first of the Tech Ed panel interview episodes is up. Check out User Adoption – Build It and They Will NOT Come!

The MOSS Show Episode 6

hiltong — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 09:18:54 GMT

Part 2 of the discussion with Sahil Malik is now live, so give it a listen. I recorded furiously at Tech Ed (and even afterwards – I managed to finally pin down Joel Oleson last night) so there are 4 episodes coming up soon, 2 panels and 2 one-on-ones. Watch this space!

Tech Ed Slides - 2009

hiltong — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:23:07 GMT

Whew, Tech Ed was a blast! It was a tricky one for me this year, with absolute chaos at the office and the new baby at home, too, but I think the sessions went ok. Aside from that, I had a chance to catch up with some old friends I hadn’t seen in years, and made lots of new ones, too!

Here are the slides, for those who want them. Just a reminder that I tried to include some extra detail in the notes sections, especially for the jQuery one.

1) DTL316 - jQuery - javascript the way it was meant to be!

2) OFC303 - Building a MOSS Publishing Site

3) OFC308 - SharePoint Search Challenges and Tricks

I also recorded a couple of episodes for The Moss Show, so keep an eye on the site for when they’re released.

New Podcast – Sahil Malik Developing With SharePoint

hiltong — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:58:43 GMT

I just put part 1 of a 2-part episode up this afternoon. It was an interview with Sahil Malik on development with SharePoint. We chatted about a bunch of different topics (including Michael Jackson and Madonna). I also mentioned the upcoming panel discussions at Tech Ed – there’s one on SharePoint architecture and one on user adoption, so come check them out if you’re around.

Check out the episode at Developing for SharePoint, With Sahil Malik (Part 1)

The MOSS Show – Episode 4

hiltong — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:09:52 GMT

After a loooong delay, I finally managed to finish editing episode 4 of The MOSS Show. In this episode, I interview our very own Zlatan Dzinic on Records Management in MOSS. It was an interesting editing job – we had some “technical” difficulties, so I had to basically rebuild Zlatan’s side of the conversation word by word, in a hour-long recording!!