In this episode we sit down for a rambling chat with Mike Benkovich about everything from Phil’s stolen laptops to detecting plagiarism on the internet to Mike’s mother learning Twitter Bootstrap.

We also explore passwords and security on the internet (and the inanity of “secret questions” like “what was the name of your dog growing up?”) and discuss some of the trade-offs between secure practices and customer convenience.  As if that wasn’t enough, we also explore the reasons that the financial industry isn’t properly incentivized to combat credit card fraud and data breaches.

Just to prove that this episode is really all over the map, we also explore the factors that play into why women’s pants so rarely include functional pockets — and the implications of that for the mobile phone industry’s preferences for ever-larger cell phones!

Mike Benkovich is a former Microsoft evangelist who has spent his career helping developers explore and apply new technologies to solving information challenges. His website www.benkotips.com provides developers with resources to get started and work with technologies including cloud, data and devices. Follow him on twitter @mbenko.

In this episode, Phil, James and Lee speak with Nik Molnar and Anthony van der Hoorn, the creators of Glimpse (http://getglimpse.com). Glimpse is a real-time, diagnostics plugin for ASP.NET websites. We talk about the use-cases for Glimpse, getting started and the future of Glimpse as it pertains to the future of the ASP.NET vNext. We also discuss ways user can contribute the the Glimpse project, either by developing plugins, or by contributing directly to the open-source project.

Nik Molnar is a New Yorker, Microsoft MVP, ASP & Azure Insider and co-founder of Glimpse, an open source diagnostics and debugging tool. Originally from Homestead Florida, Nik specializes in web development, web performance, web API’s and community management. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences and on technical podcasts. In his spare time, Nik can be found cooking up a storm in the kitchen, hanging with his wife and working on other open source projects.

Anthony van der Hoorn is a co-founder of Glimpse, and a regular speaker on such topics as Open Source, Web Practices and Diagnostics for the Web.

Anthony has specializing in web and front end development with technologies such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. He has bounced between living and working New York City and his home town of Brisbane, Australia – he’s back in the USA at the moment.

Anthony previously worked in the Financial Services sector developing high frequency trading systems and, in his spare time, he can be found out and about taking photos, speaking at conferences, and working on other Open Source projects.

In this episode the Hallway Conversations team explores several thorny legal issues facing both developers individually and the practice of software development in general with John Petersen, who is both a software developer and a lawyer. We explore everything from the Oracle v Google API copyright case that will be before the Supreme Court later this year to the issues around Net-Neutrality to SOPA.

The issues being debated and decided in legal venues today can have potential significant impact on the ways we practice our profession tomorrow — don’t miss this informative episode about the decisions being considered in the courts that may impact us all!

Product Solutions Architect, Neuron ESB. 12 time MVP. CODE Magazine Columnist. WintellectNOW Course Author. Attorney.

In this episode we chat at length with Rodney Guzman from Interknowlogy about the concepts, practice, and value of Interaction Design. Rodney explains the process of Interaction Design, how it differs from traditional approaches to UI/UX design processes, and offers some concrete examples of how Interaction Design has enabled him to solve real-world problems for a myriad of Interknowlogy’s customers. We also dig into understanding the core value proposition for Interaction Design as well as exploring the various ways to best position that value proposition to your own customers to get them similarly excited about the possibilities.

Show Notes

• Microsoft Hololens
• BusinessWeek – The future of Human Device Interaction

Rodney Guzman is the CTO and co-founder of InterKnowlogy. He is responsible for vetting out and integrating emerging technologies into InterKnowlogy’s business and solution offerings. As a technologist, Rodney leads the largest InterKnowlogy projects as an architect. He works directly with InterKnowlogy clients to understand their business needs and turn them into technology solutions. Rodney’s project work has been awarded by numerous industry awards. He started working on software systems for submarine sonar during college, and graduated from UCSD in 1991. During 7 years at SAIC, he worked for the Healthcare Technology sector and was the architect and developer lead for multi-million dollar projects including a large Java SOA HTTP/XML based web portal on military hospitals throughout the country. In 1998 Rodney moved to Stellcom where he delivered eCommerce and Portal solutions to the Fortune 500. From there Rodney co-founded InterKnowlogy and has been in the CTO file since company inception.

In this final episode of the year, we take a look back at the significant trends and events that shaped 2014, and then offer a peek at our collective predictions and hopes for the practice of software development in 2015.

In addition we explore what surprised us the most (both positively and negatively) about Microsoft and Apple in 2014.

We also take a look back at the predictions we all made for 2014 in our inaugural episode to see how we did.  Spoiler alert: we didn’t actually do all that bad!

HOW TO MAKE MONEY PLAYING VIDEO GAMES! (no, this episode isn’t SPAM, we actually do discuss this in some detail in this episode).

We also discuss how copyright violations are analyzed in YouTube videos, what Napster did to the recording industry, and the takedown of Windows 8 tutorial videos on YouTube channels using indiscriminate DMCA take-down notices.

This episode is about all this and more as it rambles around from one topic to the next during this fun-filled 30-minute exploration into nothing in particular.

Hope you have fun listening (and can find value in this!); we certainly had fun recording it!

Eric D. Boyd is the Founder and CEO of responsiveX, a Microsoft Azure MVP, and a regular speaker at national conferences, regional code camps and local user groups. He is so passionate about apps and cloud services that he founded responsiveX, a management and technology consultancy that helps customers create great web, mobile and client experiences, and these apps are often powered by cloud services. Eric launched his technology career almost two decades ago with a web development startup and has served in multiple roles since including developer, consultant, technology executive and business owner. You can find Eric blogging at http://www.EricDBoyd.com and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EricDBoyd.

In this episode, we’re joined by Walt Ritscher to explore the past, present, and bright new future of Windows Presentation Framework.  We explore the origins of WPF, some of its storied history, the rumors of its impending demise (completely untrue!) and its new future as the centerpiece of interface display technology for the Windows platform.

Walt shares his experiences with WPF, some common best-practices, and some of his future wants and hopes for the technology.

Along the way we manage to discuss the peculiar nature of the Microsoft technology stack that often leads developers to prematurely declare dead any technology not actively at the forefront of a constant drum-beat of promotion among developers 🙂

Walt’s enthusiasm for crafting software interfaces blossomed early. Just a few days after discovering how to make pixels move around the screen of a borrowed computer he was devouring books on the topic of computer graphics and UI design. Now he travels the world speaking at software conferences and teaching a diverse portfolio of programming topics for corporate clients. On the consulting side he continues to work with customers like Microsoft, HP, Intel, and Intuit and enjoys being part of the Wintellect consultant group.
He has over fifty hours of video training courses available in the WintellectNow, Lynda and Udemy catalogs.
He writes for several publications including Code Magazine and has a new “HLSL and Pixel Shaders for XAML Developer” book available from O’Reilly Media. His current UI obsession revolves around the Windows 8 Metro, Mobile, ASP.NET MVC and WPF APIs. This year he is learning as much as he can about Xamarin. You can find his blog at xamlwonderland.com. Walt is also a Microsoft MVP and author of the free Shazzam Shader Editor (shazzam-tool.com).

In this episode, we sit down with our own James Bender to explore the benefits and values that can come from adding Test-Driven Development to your software development practices. James shares with us some of his own experiences in getting started with using tests to drive his software evolution wherein he learned many lessons about both some of the benefits of this approach as well as some of the pitfalls teams should try to avoid.

We discuss getting started, introducing the concept to your team, and how to best approach the process so as to maximize its benefit to the project stakeholders. If you’ve always wanted to understand what all this test-driven development stuff was about, then this is the episode for you!

James has been involved in software development and architecture for 18 years. He has worked as a developer and architect on everything from small, single-user applications to Enterprise-scale, multi-user systems. His specialties are .NET development and architecture, TDD, Web Development and cloud computing. He is an experienced mentor and author. James is a Microsoft MVP, Co-Founder of the Midwest Techfest and former President of the Central Ohio .NET Developers Group. James’s book “Professional Test Driven Development with C#: Developing Real World Applications with TDD” makes a great gift and you should go buy seven or eight copies right now. James’s Twitter ID is @JamesBender

In this episode we explore the power-productivity world of Chocolatey NuGet with its author, Rob Reynolds. Rob explains to us how the Chocolately NuGet inspiration came from the Apt-Get experience in Linux and how his vision to leverage the power of the NuGet packaging concepts to install full-fledged software rather than just developer-centric DLLs eventually came to life.

We explore the ease with which its possible to both install Chocolately NuGet packages created by others as well as create your own, either from scratch or by aggregating other existing packages together into one or more meta-packages that can be installed all at once. If you’ve ever dreamed of setting up a new Windows developer system for yourself by just installing the OS and then invoking a single command-line to install everyything you’d want/need on your newly-provisioned system then Chocolatey NuGet is for you and this episode is a great way to become familiar with its powerful capabilities!

Show Notes

• Chocolatey NuGet Website
• About Rob Reynolds

Rob is a developer who has a passion for developing low maintenance solutions. He has been programming in .NET since the early days of 1.0. In his day job he works on the awesome Puppet, but his opinions expressed in many locations are his own. Rob is a C# MVP, ASPInsider, C# Insider, an MCSD for .NET, holds a bachelor’s degree in MIS from Kansas State University, is active in his local .Net User Group, a regional INETA speaker, an eagle scout, and a veteran officer of the US Army Reserve. He also presents on topics he finds interesting a few times a year.

His goal in life is to make things easier/better for those around him. His goals in development are to bring low maintenance solutions (using SOLID where applicable) that solve the problem at hand and are not necessarily focused on the shiniest new tool/framework.

He works on several frameworks that people like. He invented yet another apt-get framework for Windows, named chocolatey, hoping this time it would stick. Rob is very active in OSS and manages several OSS projects. Some of those projects include UppercuT, RoundhousE, chocolatey and NuGet.

He started out in life going down the path of artist and converted to developer when he realized it could make a bigger impact on folks and realized he could work with computers. Rob got his first lessons in Microsoft Windows at age 18 when he purchased a Gateway PC that needed a lot of love and attention. That’s when he first fell in love with computers, both fixing them and creating things. It wasn’t until a couple of years into college before he realized he could make a career of computers and helping people solve problems.

In his spare time he spends time with his wife and two kids who keep him busy during the daylight hours.

Rob is the FerventCoder because he is very passionate about his craft.

In this episode the Hallway Conversations team chats with Eric Boyd about the myriad ways that the lines between what can/should be done on-premsis vs. in-the-cloud are being steadily blurred. Together we explore the world of cloud-based developer tooling that runs the gamut from simple syntax editors to full-fledged IDE and debugger experiences. We also spend time exploring the factors that impact a choice to use these kinds of tools as well as many of the pros and cons of these decisions.

We also explore the benefits of using cloud-based infrastructure, whether its simple hosted e-mail services like Exchange Server, Office365, or GMail, entire IT infrastructure like SQL Azure, Azure Active Directory or hosted source-control repositories like Visual Studio Online, Github, or Bitbucket. The world of technology offers an ever-expanding myriad of choices for the services and capabilities that developers and IT professionals need to get their jobs done and this episode explores some of the options available to you today!

Show Notes

• Boxstarter
• Ansible
• Saltstack
• YouTube pays out $1B in ContentID payouts
• The Million Dollar Homepage
• Hotdog Stand Color Scheme
• Floobits
• CodeEnvy
• Neutron Drive

Eric D. Boyd is the Founder and CEO of responsiveX, a Microsoft Azure MVP, and a regular speaker at national conferences, regional code camps and local user groups. He is so passionate about apps and cloud services that he founded responsiveX, a management and technology consultancy that helps customers create great web, mobile and client experiences, and these apps are often powered by cloud services. Eric launched his technology career almost two decades ago with a web development startup and has served in multiple roles since including developer, consultant, technology executive and business owner. You can find Eric blogging at http://www.EricDBoyd.com and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EricDBoyd.