Boston.com is reporting today that Microsoft will open a research lab in Boston (Just down the road from me.)

"Microsoft Corp., building up its long-term research capability at a time when other corporate research powerhouses have scaled back, is set to disclose today that it will open a laboratory at its new offices in Cambridge this summer.

The Microsoft Research New England lab, to be led by veteran Microsoft researcher Jennifer Chayes, will focus on the intersection of computer science and social science, and seek to tap into the expertise of academic researchers in the Boston area and worldwide. It will be the company's sixth research center and its first on the East Coast."

Click HERE to read the whole article.

The Developer Community Team at Microsoft is looking for a Senior Program Manager to own one of our community web sites.

Each of our community web sites is the top resource for information about its respective technology. (Silverlight, ASP.NET, Windows Client, IIS) . We are looking for someone who is passionate about building great web sites for developers, has an eye for how to create communities, and can drive new innovations in this space.

In this position, you would work with many teams across the developer division and the company (including Channel9, MSDN, Marketing, Customer Support, the product teams, Developer Evangelism, the field, and so forth). You will also partner with external companies who develop, design, and create features for the site. The ideal candidate will have the standard Program Management skills and the ability to work in a fast paced, always-changing environment.

Come change how we build online developer communities for the future.

This position is full time employment in Redmond WA.

Principals ONLY (no agencies) may use the contact link on my blog to send me their resume.

I'll be joining the fine folks at AJAX World again this year and giving the following talks.

ASP.NET AJAX Design & Development Patterns

AJAX is not about Eye Candy. AJAX is about building functionality that is difficult or impossible with conventional web development technology. Done right your web applications ROCK, but it it’s done wrong and your infrastructure pays the price. This session will expose a collection of design and usage patterns that will help you understand ASP.NET AJAX under the covers and design efficient, interactive AJAX Applications using Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Technologies.

http://ajax.sys-con.com/read/483595.htm

The Digital Black Belt's Guide to Building Secure ASP.NET AJAX Applications

You think your ASP.NET AJAX application is secure, but how do you know? Are you SURE? Would you bet your career on it?

Secure application design is 1/3 Architecture, 1/3 Code, and 1/3 Operations. You can’t retro-fit a secure architecture. In this Digital Black Belt crash session you’ll get a whirlwind tour of how to write secure web applications with ASP.NET AJAX. You can’t learn it all in a day, but you can get started with secure development techniques and learn what questions you need to be asking each day in your development process.

Speaker Bio: Joe Stagner is a senior program manager in Microsoft Corporation’s Developer Tools and Platform Group and has been with Microsoft since 2001 focusing on highly scalable and performant Web application architectures, multiplatform interoperability and software security. Stagner brings 30 years technical and business strategy experience to Microsoft which affords him a unique experiential perspective.

http://ajax.sys-con.com/read/483596.htm

I Love NY !!!

Hope you will come say hello !

I started with .Text and it served me well.

When .Text was folded into CommunityServer, it was time for a change.  I considered community server. You have to know it's a great product (and I'm using it elsewhere) but it was too much for my meager single blogging needs. (Note: The Telligent guys are working on a more "personal" product called Graffiti - Click Here to Sign Up to be Notified about the Private Beta)

While I use DasBlog on a couple of other projects (and I LOVE it), I wanted a database backend. I chose Subtext. And it has also served me well. But alas, my needs have outgrown SubText and I've been pestering SubText's principal (Phil Haack) too much. Especially since Phil now works at Microsoft.

Subtext has an active community, a good themes selection etc. but it lacked some features that I was needing and I couldn't get the BlogML export to work.

Meanwhile Mads Kristensen has been emailing me about the progress of the BlogEngine.NET team.

It's a young project, but looks very well thought out, so after some research I thought I'd give it a try.

BUT, I had a big problem. Subtext kept crashing when I tried to export the data and I really could NOT lose all my posts and start over. I did that when I switched from .Text and my readers were not happy.

I emailed Mads to see if maybe there was a tool or he had some code I could start with. He pointed me to Al Nyveldt who he called THE Import/Export Guy.

Al is my new Hero !!!!

He offered to do the conversion for me. He did in a day what it would have taken me ages to do. And my new boog is up and running on BlogEngine.NET - THANKS AL and MADS !

A few observations.

• SPEED - It's FAST FAST FAST !
• Features - lots of cool stuff.
• Pages - I can now ad static pages easily in the context of my blog.
• Good code !  I've started to look at the code as I want to write some additions. It's well written and easy to understand.
• Themes - too few!.

So .......

If you read me with an RSS Client, please change the feed : Subscribe to JoeOn.net

Build some dark colored full width themes for BE.NET.

I'd do it myself but I have no artistic ability at all.

Here a nice bit to "understanding" from eWeek.

Click HERE for the article.