Adam Kinney posts tagged with 'evnet'

TechNet EDGE goes live

Adam Kinney — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:43:00 GMT

TechNet EDGE is a new site developed by the EvNet team where the content is focused on ITPros.

I'm not a big IT guy in any sense, but I wanted to congratulate my past team on launching another site based on the EvNet code base. They are now supporting Channel 8, Channel 9, Channel 10, MIX Online and TechNet EDGE. Impressive, especially judging on the size of the team.

Congratulations go to the new TechNet content team, too. it looks like a fun project and I'm enjoying the graffiti artwork. The video posted here is the intro to EDGE, reminiscent of the MIX06 intro with Anthony Weeks.

Shiny new beta for Channel 9

Adam Kinney — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:25:00 GMT

The EvNet dev team has updated the Channel 9 beta and you can tell they've put in a lot of work and they're excited about their work. Duncan's post about the beta even includes a video which involves a homage to HALO 3 using 9 guys. Unfortunately here at the DevCamp the bandwidth is a bit slow, but what I've been able to see looks great.

And I was very happy to see that my small contribution went live as well. Below is the new image that shows when an error occurs.

I expect to see this on icanhasacheezburger any day now...

Channel 8 is live

Adam Kinney — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:59:00 GMT

This weekend the first signs of the new Channel 8 site become publicly visible as noticed by the Niners.

Channel 8 is the last project I had worked on the EvNet team. A little early to be talking about the site, they appear to still be pushing content, but I wanted to congratulate the team.

Now if we could just get a Silverlight player on there...

My new job

Adam Kinney — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:30:00 GMT

Two years ago on this very date of June 20th, I started my first day here at Microsoft. It was an exciting day, it was just new employee orientation, but it was my first job in a technical company with more than 20 employees. I was hired on to become the newest web developer on the coolest Microsoft site known as Channel 9. My manager was Jeff Sandquist and my teammates were Charles Torre and Robert Scoble.

A lot has happened since then.

In 2005:

Aug 25th - Ch9 welcomed a new design
Sep 13th - PDC2005 - debut of the inflatable 9 guy
Sep 13th - MicrosoftGadgets launches as a blog
Oct 13th - Clipster was launched on Ch9
Oct 26th - Erik Porter joins the Ch9 team
Nov 1st - MicrosoftGadgets gains forums and a gallery
Dec 2nd - Shows are added to Ch9
Dec 22nd - MicrosoftGadgets gains user tagging and Ajax interface

In 2006

Jan 18th - Duncan Mackenzie joins the team
Mar 13th - Channel 10 goes live
Mar 21st - MIX06 happens
Apr 20th - Channel 10 party in Second Life
May 4th - Channel 10 is redesigned and adds new features
Jun 1st - Starbucks Interactive Cup Brewer appears in the break room
Jun 10th - Scoble announces he's leaving Microsoft
Jun 19th - Sampy joins the team
July 19th - Channel 10 gets a major update
Sep 21st - Ch10 update and we prep the code for multiple site usage
Sep 25th - Rory joins Ch9
Nov 6th - VisitMIX goes live
Nov 13th - The great Flat vs threaded debate on Ch9 culminates
Dec 4th - 9 Guy first appears in Silverlight

In 2007

Jan 3rd - VisitMIX update
Feb - I drew a lot on the whiteboard
Mar 9th - REMIX contest goes live
Mar 19th - SCRUM happens
Apr 23rd - David Shadle joins the team
Apr 30th - MIX07 happens
Jun 7th - Ch9 v4 beta goes live
Jun 20th - I announce my job

Now that we've gone through that short highlight reel, let me continue with the news. First off, no I am not leaving Microsoft. I am actually not even going that far. Same building and most likely same office for awhile.

I will be joining the Client Platform Evangelism Team led by Tim Sneath and my focus will be Silverlight and WPF. If you know anything about me, you know that I will be in heaven spending my days engrossed in these two technologies.

I would like to thank Jeff, Tim, Steve and Ray for their help in making this move smooth and possible.

Woo hoo!

A new story and a new theme

Adam Kinney — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:14:00 GMT

Earlier this year, I made a conscious effort to give my blog an overall theme to base my posts on. The concept of the "Devigner" is what I was going to go after, but due to the lack posts about this concept, its obvious that didn't work out. I still believe the idea is interesting, how one who designs interfaces and develops code fits into software development, but I wasn't spending much time into exploring how other "devigners" worked. It would have been an extra-curricular activity compared to my main work and my main work currently consumes a large part of my focus and outside time now.

Which leads into what my new story will be, I plan to cover my experiences and work at Microsoft.

"Oh that's original", you may be thinking. Although, it may not be completely original, the main theme of what I plan to discuss is the development of Channel 9, Channel 10 and any other sites or project my team works on. A lot of the Niners on Channel 9 are always asking about our current progress and what we're doing next, so this should give them some information to chew on. The size of our team and our responsibilities has grown quickly which has resulted in some lessons about software development worth sharing. And we are lucky enough to be tasked with creating new innovations using new technologies, so there should be interesting stories to tell there as well.

Overall I'm looking forward to providing a better insight into what we are working on as a team and hopefully generating stories worth reading. Now I just need to make a new banner for my site...

"And Along Came 10..." article in MSDN

Adam Kinney — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 08:09:00 GMT

Duncan wrote an article entitled And Along Came 10...* that talks about at a high-level how we started the codebase behind on10.net and the next version of Channel 9 some of the architectural decisions behind the scenes. This project, which has encompassed this whole year, has been a very interesting and fun ride. Two years from now, I can imagine writing a book on the wild ride of what has become of Channel 9 and 10 and how it got there.

* The title plays off the Channel9 and on10.net (which we're now just calling Channel 10) relationship of which he is a big fan :)

MIX07 site goes live

Adam Kinney — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 05:34:00 GMT

We've released dates, prices and an rss feed for updates. And if you take a quick look you'll notice the site domain name is http://visitmix.com. So as you can now see, Haacked, we won't have to end MIX in 09 :)

Edit: This image is a reminder that I need to reskin my blog soon...

Our deployment video just went live on Channel9

Adam Kinney — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:02:00 GMT

Sampy just posted the video he took of our team while we were posting the last update to 10. We were a bit giddy at getting this update at the door and I think that comes through in the video :)

10 gets an update

Adam Kinney — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 04:32:00 GMT

Last week we updated the Microsoft 10 site. Jeff talks about it here, mainly covering the fact that the code update was written to prepare for the conversion of Channel 9 and reach the goal of one code base running on multiple sites. We've simplified the architecture down to four major constructs - entries, links, tags and users. Tags, which run the show, acting as modifiers for every entry (Is this a blog entry or a forum entry? What is about? What language is it in? etc...) I also took some time to beef up the design a bit and add some oomph, which was noted by Long Zheng here.

Now the cool thing is that during our actual deployment, Sampy has the camera running, in true Ch9/10 style, and interviewed us while we were deploying. You can tell we're pretty giddy after completing the update, but we try and add some value while looking like crazy people. I'm hoping we'll have the video up live tomorrow on Channel 9.

Sidebar gadget dev on Windows Vista RC1

Adam Kinney — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:17:00 GMT

I just noticed that the new documentation for developing Sidebar gadgets on Windows Vista RC1 is up and live on MSDN - Object Model Reference Dev Overview. I'm looking forward to working on some gadgets for Channel 9 and 10. A mini application using simple languages like JavaScript and HTML, and there are few limits to what the UI can look like (no browser chrome), should be fun.

Blog fortified, WordPress theme implemented

Adam Kinney — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 20:11:00 GMT

The last time I updated my blog's code base, I started from scratch (again) and my mindset was "keep it simple". And a very simple one-person blog appeared. Well it was a little too simple, no trackbacks, referrals and no automatic pinging of blog services like ping-o-matic. Now with Duncan's help (who was looking for a new blog engine as well) that has all been added and more.

I am authoring this post in Windows Live Writer (yay, MetaWeblog support!). So far I am pretty impressed. I like the simple and attractive UI, but the most interesting part is the extensibility model. Its very simple to write plug-ins and there are couple of cool ones available so far like the Live Local map and Flickr photo plug-ins. [Watch the video of Live Writer on 10]

If you are viewing this post on my website you'll notice that my blog is themed with a possibly familiar theme. The theme is entitled Subtle v0.32 and it was designed by Glued Ideas. Duncan first noticed a variation of the theme on Shooting the Kids, and it brought up the issue once again, how great Word Press themes are and how nice it would be to take advantage of them. So when updating the UI that's exactly what we did. Its a bit hardcoded now, but it sounds like an interesting issue to address. Multi-blog engine themes portability.

Anyways, now that the new engine is up, vacations are over and summer has passed, I'm going to challenege myself to blog everyday. I believe I have plenty of content, I was just ignoring or working on the tools. I'm also pledging to get better at email, regarding faster response times. So now would be the time to resend any emails that never received a response. :)

iCup the Movie

Adam Kinney — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 17:09:00 GMT

I posted about the Starbucks Interactive Cup Brewer when it first came, but Duncan took it a step further and created this short hidden video on 10.

A new update for 10

Adam Kinney — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 07:32:00 GMT

Check it out! Jeff has some more info and links here. Very excited to get this out there :)

Compiling Web Projects faster

Adam Kinney — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 05:00:00 GMT

We've been feverishly working on the new update to 10. No, its just an update its version 1.0. Its exciting, man, I go to the current site now and it just hurts my eyes, I can't wait to share the new site. BUT, its not ready yet, very close though (after I finish up the other half of the UI tonight!, it will be extremely close :p)

Up until recently though the process has been troublesome. Its been like this: code, code, code, code, compile ................., look at modifed results, test scripts. Ok, back to source, code, code, code, code, coffee sip, code, ignore phone, code, code, compile ............. close eyes .........

Compilation was taking forever! It was one of those ignoring problems that you want to take the time to fix, but instead you use the compile time to go to the bathroom (the one 5 feet away at home).

But praise the calendar! This week was Sampy's first week on the team. So we talked a bit, tried to find some tasks for him to do to get familiar with the 10 code base. We figured out a 1st level task (talking WoW or any RPG terms now, its like a quest you get in Anvilmar to go out and kill 4 bunnies with broken legs). His first mighty task was to get the solution to compile faster. Now remember Sampy comes from a team that developed parts of Visual Studio, so thus, it should be simple. And it was.

To compile solutions using project references with web projects (the new ASP.net 2.0 crazy kind), don't Build the Web Project when you build the solution. There's no need to anyways. My compile time went from around 90 to 240 seconds to around 20 seconds. That's very noticiable when you compile and view as much as I do when rendering HTML.

Thanks Sampy!