Another year is coming to a close.  It's been an up and down year for myself and my family.  The best part of 2009 was the birth of our fourth child, Everett.  He's the best, youngest child anyone could ask for.  He is usually happy and ready to give you a great big smile.  My kids are definitely the best part of my life.  Now I'm ready for a new year and the challenges that await.  I thought I'd post my list of technologies that I will focus on in 2010.  There are so many interesting technologies and ideas out there to learn about and work on but there is only so much time in the day.  So I need to focus on the ones that interest me the most (right now).  I like the phrase "It's like drinking from a fire hose..." when it comes to learning about all the technologies that are out there.  So here's what I'm planning to work on in 2010.

Technologies I want to improve my skills in, develop with and write articles on during 2010

• Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2008
• Multi-touch interfaces
• WPF
• XNA
• Windows CE
• .NET Micro Framework
• Robotics

I should probably try to narrow the list down even further but I really want to do at least one article and/or project in each of these technologies. Happy New Year to everyone and I hope all your New Year goals are achieved.

I've loaded up VS2010 beta 2 and TFS2010 beta 2 onto my server.  First impressions, what an easy install for both apps.  I mean really easy.  TFS2010 installed in about 30 minutes and is fully operational.  Already connected and creating projects.   That was very cool.  The more I use VS2010, the more I'm getting hooked.  However, the biggest issue for me with VS2010 b2 is that there is currently NO support for smart devices.  I was told by Angela from Microsoft that the Win Mobile team is about two months behind on plug-in for VS2010 so don't expect something until February or later.

I was told yesterday at a Microsoft event in Waukesha that March 22, 2010 is the launch date of the new tools.  I watched presentations from on the new testing tools coming from Microsoft.  Looks interesting, if you are working in an dev environment that has dedicated testers.  The down side is that the tools will NOT be included in MSDN subscription which means that they probably won't be adopted by many companies any time soon.