Because of what's possible to do with Infocard in the Feb CTP bits, I know that only a subset of my readers have used InfoCard up to this point, but as the folks who got an interim build of Infocard at the Mix06 conference can tell you, Infocard = goodness.

I expect people will start experimenting with Infocard with the next community release of WinFX.  In anticipation of that release becoming available, I wanted to make sure people had a single place to find the content currently available, such that you can be ready to hit the bits running.

Until my book comes out later in the year, this should help you get going.  Trust me when I tell you that this stuff is going to be the way we handle identity on the web. The Windows guys love it, the Linux guys love it, the Identity guys love it, and most importantly the Business folks love it. 

So, without further ado, this is my recommended syllabus to get prepped for Infocard:

First, get up to speed on the Laws of Identity and the Identity Metasystem.

From there, read David Chappell's whitepaper “Introducing Infocard“ which can be found here

If you want a little more background, you can read this other intro article or this article that goes a bit deeper.

Now if you're a visual person, and would like to see some videos, I'd recommend checking out my colleague Nigel Watling and Andy Harjanto's Channel 9 video here

Now you're ready to kick the tires and actually see this thing in action on your own machine.

You'll need the WinFX bits, which can be found here. Follow the directions in the section for developing WinFX applications.

NOTE: You'll need the post-February CTP bits to use Infocard in scenarios that involve a web browser (vs. services)

Check out Mike Jones article on using Infocard in a Web Browser, which can be found here. You can also check out Kim Camerons simple tutorial which you can find here.

Maybe now that you've used it, you're curious as to how the implementation of Infocard came to be. Check out Kim Cameron and Mike Jones' paper on Design Decisions here.

The folks at Ping Identity have put together a good whitepaper called “Integrating with Infocard“, which you can find here.

What about blogs for ongoing education? The two I read regularly are  Kim Cameron's identity blog which is here and Andy Harjanto's blog which is here.

I was in London earlier this week, and ended up having to come back the US a bit earlier than planned. As a consequence, I didn't have a chance to work with one of my customers on tracing, and committed to following up when I got back to the US.

If you know me, you know I hate re-creating the wheel, so I did a quick search to see if this information was already documented. As fate would have it, Madhu Ponduru literally just put together a good post on the subject.

If you haven't tried tracing yet, you definately should.

Check it out here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/madhuponduru/archive/2006/05/18/601458.aspx

If you're not familair with Juval Lowy, he's one of our Regional Directors and writes some great content that you can find in a number of areas (including MSDN online and in print).

He's just released an article on WCF instance management techniques - check it out here.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/default.aspx?pull=http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/06/WCFEssentials/default.aspx

I'm delivering a webcast next Monday, on WCF and WF in Retail and Hospitality. Details are listed below.  Also listed below is a link to Vittorio's webcast that covers Infocard for this vertical.

 Vittorio's got a session entitled Using Infocard to Safely Manage Customer Identity

Check it out here

http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=%7eCMTYDataSvcParams%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ID%22+Value%3d%221032296340%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ProviderID%22+Value%3d%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22lang%22+Value%3d%22en%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22cr%22+Value%3d%22US%22%2f%5e%7esParams%5e%7e%2fsParams%5e%7e%2fCMTYDataSvcParams%5e

Vittorio also recently did a session focused on the manufacturing vertical. You can check that out here.

http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=%7eCMTYDataSvcParams%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ID%22+Value%3d%221032295605%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ProviderID%22+Value%3d%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22lang%22+Value%3d%22en%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22cr%22+Value%3d%22US%22%2f%5e%7esParams%5e%7e%2fsParams%5e%7e%2fCMTYDataSvcParams%5e

Happy viewing.

Podcasts. I'd been interested in them before, but because my old mp3 player was a bit dodgy, I'd really only listened in on my desktop. As a result I'd stuck mostly to screencasts, and largely bypassed podcasts altogether.

Knowing I had alot of traveling coming up, I recently upgraded to a new portable music device. I loaded it up before I left, downloaded some technology content, some news podcasts(Meet the Press, and Wall St Journal Tech Week), as well as some comedy (Ricky Gervais - the guy who created The Office - is hiliarious) 

Loaded up, I listened to podcasts as I went from Seattle->Denmark->London and back again.  Annoying lines at customs that were 4 rows deep didn't seem so bad. The 2 block line to get through security in Denmark, no worries - I was being entertained and educated with an interview of a tech legend. Podcasts are a beautiful thing.

I was looking forward to this before, but even more so now - I'm sitting don with Ron Jacobs next week to record a few ARCast sessions. Ron is part of our Architecture Strategy Team and does some great podcast work that's posted up on Channel 9. 

If you've not come across the ARCasts yet, I'd definately recommend checking them out.  You can find them here: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/ARCast_with_Ron_Jacobs

Ingo Rammer just posted an article on migrating Remoting to WCF. It's good stuff - if you're doing remoting today, you should read this.

Find it here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/NETremoteWCF.asp

Keith Brown has just published a good article on Infocard over at MSDN.  I'd definately recommend checking it out.

Find it here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/05/SecurityBriefs/default.aspx

you end up finding stuff that you've done in surprising places. Today I was pleasantly surprised to find out one of my webcasts is on the main page of Microsoft Germany's architecture site.

Coincidentally, I'm heading off to Germany (Munich) and London next week to work with customers on some architectural reviews. If you're in either city and would like to sync up while I'm there, send me an email - mmercuri@microsoft.com.

NOTE: There is a political refernece below, as it is a topical situation that got me thinking about trust communities in search.  This blog is a-political, and the scenario is used as it is the one that sparked the idea. I take no stance on whether the claims made by Mr. Snow are valid/invalid.

I was reading some news sites this week, and was reminded that this was the first week of US President George Bush's new press secretary, Tony Snow. 

Before he gave his first press conference, he did something interesting.  He sent out press releases questioning the validity of comments made by the New York Times, USA Today, and other publications.

So this got me thinking.  Playing devils advocate, suppose that he's right. If I trust Tony Snow (based on his historical record of trust worthiness), I may now discount results from these media outlets in favor of others.  But for me to discount these sources when searching, I can't. Even if I cease to trust them (or trust them less), they show up in the the rankings per Google or Microsofts opinion of their relevance.

The search engines from Google, MSN, and Yahoo have their own algorithms to consider relevancy. One of the things these search engines do provide is a level of filitering for “safe content“, blocking out material that may be considered objectional (i.e. these block pornography results). 

What they don't do is consider in the rankings is the levels of trust of an individual or of community. What I want to see is something that goes to the next level, don't just block what's objectionable, show me the results that are relevant to me based on trust.

Perhaps one of the media outlets Mr. Snow referenced, let's pick a fictional name, say MakeBelieveReporting, Inc., is regularly mis-reporting information or is slanting stories towards a particular political viewpoint.  I may cease to trust that organization to provide news to me, and would like to rank them lower in my personal results when searching for news, if not remove them altogether.

When I search for news, perhaps there are certain stations / periodicals I trust - for example the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, CNBC, and my friends John Smiths blog. These are entities - regardless of web site traffic or the opinion of the search engine I'm using -that *I* trust to be accurate and provide me information.  I do not, however, want results from news outlets that are part of MakeBelieveReporting, Inc. as I have ceased to trust them.

What I'm thinking of isn't based on assumed trustworthiness based on click traffic, this is based on trust relationships.  Even if I visit a site twice per year, it could be far more relevant to me than a site that is viewed more regularly by others.

And my community of trustworthy providers could be extended based on the feedback of those people I trust. 

There's the concept that if person A trusts person B, and person B trusts third party C, that person A shoud likely trust Corporation C based on the fact that he trusted person B's judgement.

In the previous example, I trust my friend John Smith who writes a blog.  If John trusts the Crosby Herald, and I trust John, then I too could trust the Crosby Herald and have it included in my community of trust that is reflected in my search results.

Think about the days before Axciom, TRW, and credit reports. People vouched for other people to get jobs, apartments, loans, etc.

When you sign for a loan and you are not a known entity, you need a co-signer or guarantor. The bank says, I don't know if I can trust this person, but I trust the co-signer.  The co-signer also trusts the loan recipient to pay the money back.

If someone co-signs for a loan for me and I decide not to pay it, there are financial responsibilities that are then taken on by the co-signer. The co-signer will trust the recipient less, as a result of mis-placed trust, the bank may stop trusting the co-signer's ability to identify a trustworthy loan recipient.

In another example, suppose you make plans to go out to dinner with your spouse on Friday night, and when you ask her where they'd like to go, she says “you pick - I trust you.“  If you're new to the area, you may ask a colleague - whom you trust - for a recommendation of a local restaurant. If you go to the recommended restuarant and you end up getting food poisoning from the meal, you probably will not look to your colleague for advice on restaurants in the future - and you - who vouched for the restaurant -will likely end up at a restaurant of your spouse's choosing next time around.

Your spouse trusted you, you trusted the colleague and when the information relayed turned out to be bad, two things happen. You cease to trust the advice of the colleague (atleast in the context of cousine), and your spouse trusts you less as the broker of the information.

Once you start adding in trust, you also need to be able to trust in context.  That same colleague from work may not be someone I trust on picking restaurants, but may be someone I look to as a source on technology subjects.

What we need is search that includes both consideration of these communities of trust, where we as participants in the web determine who is trusted and who is not, and provide the ability to apply trust in context.

By introducing contextual trust as a first-class citizen in search, it has the opportunity to both provide results more relevant *to me*, and as trust=traffic=revenue, provides a financial incentive for providers to be trustworthy.

That's my two cents  - what do you think?

I'm happy to report that the Windows Communication Foundation: Hands On book will be out in just a couple of weeks, and that I've just signed on to do another one.  This next book is tentatively titled “Understanding Infocard“ and will be written for APress. This will hit bookstores in Q1 of next year, most likely in January.

If you want more info on Windows Communication Foundation: Hands On, it is now available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes&Nobles, and others.

If you're like me and wanted to go but missed it - good news.  The sessions have just been posted online for free view/download.

Sessions here: http://sessions.mix06.com/

NGW034 - From "Username and Password" to InfoCard

DIS003 - Today's Identity Crisis, and the Identity Metasystem

For those unfamiliar with MIX, here's the pitch -

“

Have you seen this error:

System.ServiceModel.ProtocolException: The remote server returned an unexpected response: (502) ProxyError (The URL is invalid. The request was not entered correctly. Enter the correct URL and try again.) -> System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (502) bad gateway.

?

If you're using Http and getting this error or “(504) Gateway Timeout“ errors, there's a good chance it's tied to your proxy configuration.

For those unfamiliar with the binding elements specific to proxies, Kennyw covered this recently, I'd recommend checking it out.

Get the scoop here - http://kennyw.com/indigo/106

Working with Enterprise customers, I know alot of you had scenarios where you wanted to use Plain Old Xml (POX). I'm happy to report that it's official - support for POX messages to TexEncoder is in and will ship in v1.0 of WCF.

Steve Maine posted the good word here:

http://hyperthink.net/blog/2006/04/12/Checkin+1383521.aspx

As long as I'm blogging about cool stuff, have you seen RoboCast yet?

http://www.francisshanahan.com/robocast/

Francis Shanahan has put something together that's pretty cool.  It will take your blog entries, “read them” using the Speech APIs, and record the audio as MP3s. Effectively taking written content and making it a podcast, no human voice work required.

When I first saw it, I thought - pretty cool. When I thought about it a bit more, I realized it opened up the option of podcasting to individuals who may not have the opportunity otherwise due to certain disabilities. That takes it from pretty cool to very cool for me.

Ok - this has nothing to do with WCF or WF, but I've got tell you about this great piece of software I'm using called Orb.  As you may have gathered from my blog, I travel.  Alot.

Even though I have a MediaCenter PC, a TiVo, and a ComCast DVR, up until recently I haven't had remote access to my recorded content.

While on my last trip (Las Vegas, Notes2.NET Conference), I picked up a Slingbox for use on this conference (FinServDevCon) While the slingbox is cool, there was more that I was looking for. Orb gave it to me - and it was free and installed in <5 minutes.  I'm currently working on this entry while watching a recorded show on my home machine from Comedy Central streaming to my laptop over the hotel internet connection. Now I work at Microsoft, and I've had friends who had streaming video to their phones 2 years ago - but this is something anyone can set up and get going in minutes.

If you travel alot and you've got a media center, you should definately check out Orb (www.orb.com). 

I had the opportunity to present a session “WCF and WF in Financial Services: Notes from the Field” yesterday to a great crowd at the Financial Services Dev Con in New York.

For those who have seen my sessions on MSDN, those have focused on getting people up to speed on the two technologies. This session presented very brief overviews of the technologies (3 slides for each) and then delved into real-world scenarios where people were using them, complete with demos.

This session focused primarily on scenarios where Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation could provide the ability to enhance what was already in place, enable new scenarios around connectivity and workflow, and overall take advantage of the features of WCF and WF regardless of where they're at today.

I've uploaded the deck and the presentations here http://www.marcmercuri.com/Downloads/FinServDevCon.zip, and the good news is that other than the one COM interop demo for Lotus, every demo here can be run on your own machine. In cases where there's a use of Domino server - you get to take advantage of the domino services set up on the public web by my colleague, Gary Devendorf.  For the Java examples, I used the basic samples that came with Java Enterprise Studio 8 which is now a free download.  A note for VS developers - the Java environment may look similiar to VS, but it's different. To make it easy to run, the only thing you need to do is install, load the sun blueprint sample, and change the URL to point to the WCF service.

The demos posted include:

• Taking an existing, unsecure web service (in this case using Lotus Notes Domino as a source), placing a WCF front end on it, and exposing a WS-* service beyond the firewall.  The benefit here is obviously security, and the ability to extend what you may have in place already to accomodate external customers.
• Taking a Windows Workflow Foundation, exposing it as a web service, and consuming it via an existing java application.
• An example of using a UI driven by workflow
• Using the workflow engine provided as part of workflow foundation inside of Excel.
• Using WF to coordinate multiple services. This includes a standard ASMX service, as well as Domino web service located remotely.
• An example of the flexibility provided by data contracts. The demo consisted of a service and client based on version one of a data contract, and the data contract is then modified to support a new data element (a URL for an RSS Feed). Even though the data contract has changed, the client continues to work.

I know I focus on WCF, WF, and Infocard, but for demos I also use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

I'm guessing some of you may do this as well (WPF rocks!), and maybe had some challenges migrating older XAML files to the FebCTP build.

If this is you, you're going to like this. I just ran across a utility that Rob Relyea built to help with the migration to FebCTP.

You can be find it here:

http://www.longhornblogs.com/rrelyea/archive/2006/02/14/XamlMigrator.aspx

Anyone going to the Advisor Media conference at the JW Marriot in Vegas (April 9 - 13th)?

My teammate and Notes guy extroardinaire, Gary Devendorf, has invited me to participate in a number of sessions in the Notes2.NET track. I'll be bringing with me some interesting demos and presentations on how to utilize two of the great technologies inside of WinFX - WCF and WF - with Lotus Notes and Domino.

I'll be involed in the following sessions -

Schedule: 04/10/2006 11:15 AM
What is .NET?
Marc Mercuri & Gary Devendorf
Explore the parallels and similarities between .NET technology and Lotus Notes/Domino -- you may be surprised. In this session, you'll learn the fundamentals of .NET, presented in Notes/Domino terms. You'll look at .NET's vocabulary and workings. Finally, a .NET session aimed at the Notes/Domino developer. You don't want to miss this one.

Schedule: 04/10/2006 04:45 PM
Integrating Lotus Domino and Visual Studio .NET Web Services
Gary Devendorf & Marc Mercuri
You can host Web services on a Domino 7 server. But did you know you can also host them on Domino 6 or 5? Also, hosting Web services is only half the story. You must have a Web service client to make a Web service useful. In this session, you'll see how to create and host a Domino Web service. And you'll learn how to create a VS.NET Web service client to use your Web service. You won't believe how easy this is!

Schedule: 04/11/2006 11:15 AM
Integrate Domino Objects and Managed .NET Code Using COM
Gary Devendorf & Marc Mercuri
The Domino objects expose functionality of Lotus Notes/Domino applications to LotusScript, Java, COM, and more. In this session you'll see how you can call the Domino objects from .NET applications using Visual Studio.NET. Also, you'll see examples of LotusScript calling Managed code

Schedule: 04/12/2006 08:00 AM
Microsoft Workflow Linked to Lotus Notes
Marc Mercuri
You know about Lotus Notes workflow, but did you know that Microsoft has a new technology for workflow called Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)? See how WF works and how you can use it from Lotus Notes. You'll even see how to link a Notes workflow to a Windows workflow -- this is all new! You'll see VB.NET and LotusScript in the examples.

For those that know me, I come from an Enterprise background, and know there's a big need out there for info on how to do interop.  With Notes and Domino in particular there are some great opportunities to leverage .NET, Windows Communication Foundation, and Windows Workflow Foundation to provide great functionality and new opportunities to your existing applications.

I'll be in town the whole week, if you want to talk about how to leverage WCF, WF, or InfoCard in your projects, I'm happy to chat with folks 1:1 - just contact me via email to set something up (mmercuri@microsoft.com)

One of the questions today was about WCF vs. RPC.  Richard Turner covered this rather well last year, so to avoid churn, I'll provide the link here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/richardt/archive/2005/09/08/462484.aspx

The other question was around performance. While I have no numbers I can share externally, I did want to re-iterate that the intent is to be as good as, if not better than the existing stacks.

A non-blue badge, Guarav Khanna, did some independent tests that he posted, those can be seen here: http://geekswithblogs.net/khanna/archive/2006/01/06/65067.aspx

One of the things I've been working on is a WCF book, called Windows Communication Foundation: Hands On Programming.  The book was developed by Craig McMurtry and myself, with Nigel Watling contributing a great chapter on using WCF w/ Infocard.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672328771/103-1535986-0211043?v=glance&n=283155

MSDN TV has a new episode focusing on the hosting model in WF.  The episode features the WF team's Israel Hilerio.

Check it out here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20060323WWFIH/manifest.xml

Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Identity in Financial Services (Level 200)

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
11:00 AM - 12:00 pm Pacific Time
Presenters: Marc Mercuri & Vittorio Bertocci

Financial service companies face market pressures to lower information technology (IT) costs and retain existing customers while growing their businesses. Complicating these business goals are complex IT challenges that result in costly system maintenance and integration. As a result, companies are looking to service-oriented design as a means to leverage their IT assets to meet their business goals, focusing on lowering integration costs within and beyond their corporate boundaries. Microsoft is providing the tools to build connected systems based on service-oriented design principles. In this webcast, we specifically discuss Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and the Microsoft WinFX application programming interface (API) component code named “InfoCard.”

Have you checked out the Advanced Workflow Blog yet?  I've run across this a couple of times while on the road, and wanted to make sure you had visibility of it.

I know parallelism in WF is something people are a bit fuzzy on, here's a link to an entry that I think provides a very accessible overview of how parallelism works in the technology.

http://blogs.msdn.com/advancedworkflow/archive/2006/02/23/538160.aspx