I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I was so upset at the passing of Steve Jobs; I’ve never personally met him. Then I read Marco Ament’s post and then I understood.

I didn’t know Steve. I never met him. I never worked for him. I never even got one of his famous one-liner email responses.

But it feels like someone close to me has died. He was so intimately involved in his company and its products (which have become critical parts of my career and hobby life), and he has publicly injected so much vision, personality, and care into our entire industry for so long, that I do feel like I knew him, even though I really didn’t.

So thank you Steve. You made us imagine.

Sorting out “Saw it in the keynote, but it’s not in the product we have” fun right now. Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview apparently doesn’t have the nice new Blend style editing of XAML in it yet. Also Expression Blend 5 apparently only supports HTML5/JavaScript projects and not C#/XAML projects.

Small roadblock, but would have been nice to use Blend for the XAML; especially with how nice it looked in VS in yesterdays keynote. Good job blend team.

Completed Tasks Tasks

- Specify features for app.
- Sketch Application Layout

Current Tasks

- Edit Grid Template C#/XAML app to reflect our UI (Bryan)
- Replace sample data with our own data using roaming profile storage (Dan)

So we’ve setup TFS using the cool hosted TFS accounts they handed out. So we’re setup with source control. Very nice and easy to use. We’ve installed the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview from the thumb drives they gave us. We’ve found the appropriate documentation via Microsoft Connect, and the solution and project are created.

Time wise this took one Corona and a small latte to complete (yay for free drinks).

Now starts the fun part!

So I’m at Microsoft Build with a buddy of mine (Dan). We’ve had a day and a half of keynotes showing us how to make just one too many RSS readers; but overall we’re both pretty impressed with what we’re seeing in Windows 8. I’m actually writing this post on the Samsung Tablet’s that were handed out.

To really get to know the changes coming out we’ve decided to do a Hack-a-Thon and use these tablets with the new Visual Studio tools to create a “Metro Style” app (I’m already tired of that phrase). Our plan is to hit a session later this afternoon but to skip the party tonight and see just how far we can get with an app.

We’ve got a couple of ideas so far. But right now the only things we know for sure are we’re going to use the new hosted TFS account we were given, create an app that uses the new contracts for sharing and searching using C# w/ XAML.

Updates to come throughout the rest of the day/evening.

Let the Hack-a-Thon start!

The brands that curate their products well, with thoughtfulness and consideration for the customer, end up the winners.

In reference to the past success of Sony and the current success of Apple.

How Steve Jobs ‘out-Japanned’ Japan via Daring Fireball.

Happy New Years!

Now time for some fun on my new MacBook Pro.

http://bradcolbow.com/archive/view/the_brads_oil_spill/

Great presentation too.