This little interview I had done with INETA APAC just got published here.

Up Close with .Net Leaders

In this issue, we get up close and personal with William Tay (Microsoft Regional Director based in Singapore) to understand what makes him tick and his passions.

Check out his blog at http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog

William Tay Microsoft Regional Director MVP (Solutions Architect)

1. What are your visions for INETA APAC? My vision for INETA APAC is simple. I would like it to be the de-factor facilitator for the birth and co-ordination of usergroups in this region. In addition, I would love for it to add value to the younger usergroups by providing mentorship and guidance to their leaders as well as providing the in-between services to help usergroups grow to reach their potential. 2. What does being a MSRD mean to you? It means being part of a closely-knitted group of independent Microsoft experts and professionals around the world and being that bridge between the product groups in Redmond and the read world. 3. What do you think will be the next killer application? Great question. Surprisingly, I think a non-new application will be the next killer application. With the proliferation of the internet as a platform today, it is key that the mass-consumed killer application must be of a non-intrusive technology and instead work on top of the Internet to bring out its best. Any application/technology that re-invents itself by plugging the current holes as-is today deserves a shot to be the killer application, and it must not be limited to platform of choice. I think Cardspace and the propogation of the Federated Identities and the Metasystem on ALL platforms is my next killer application. If I have my way today - I will kill off all disparate identity systems, especially passwords and all those password minder / digital wallet systems that prey on top of the fact that security and human convenience is, most often, oxymoron to each other. What they are doing is essentially breeding more chaos into a system that wasnt designed for it in the first place. As an analogy, I tend to view it as "Re-arranging the furniture on board an already-doomed Titanic" Just like the above, any kind of distributed technology will always catch my attention. Once we get the intrinsics of the plumbings out-of-the-way (which I think may take some more years), I would love to see personal-portable computing. The ideal would be the concept of portable codes embedded in a chip that makes full use of the entire meshgrid infrastructure (again, a few more years to hit mainstream use once the vendors get their act together). With that, you can download your entire desktop workstation to wherever you are by carrying a small chip. There are pieces of it available today - but the entire picture would take some years to piece together. 4. If you are trapped on an island without network connectivity, what would you like to bring? Who would you like to be on the same island? All the books I couldnt read because I have network connectivity ;) And on an deserted island where all dimensions of stimulation is key, there is no one else I would like to bring with except my wife and kid :) 5. What words of wisdom would you give to fellow user group leaders? Stay with that burning passion that brought you there in the first place. If you stay true to that void of any distractions, only good things can result. The journey itself and the people you meet along the way is, most of the time, the ultimate reward itself. That said, do remember that great leaders look ahead of their time and one of the key things they do is to prepare, mentor and groom the next generation.

As mentioned here, here is the another article on TheServerSide.NET that I wrote.

After mcdst, professionals who are interested in comptia certification or another ccda and mcts usually have one goal in mind, to become an mcitp and in this context testking helps them.

The security features and options mentioned in the above piece are not exhaustive. In fact, it is far from being exhaustive. I will be writing more on those other features and options, either through this blog channel or one of those sites I mentioned.

Stay tuned for it. Enjoy.

TheServerSide.NET, which serves the Enterprise .NET Community, has picked up on a previous piece I wrote earlier here with regards to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, previously - Indigo).

Expect more Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, previously - Indigo) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) articles to come from me on the TheServerSide.NET as well as MSDN online.

I was approached to write about Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, previously - Indigo) a while back for SearchVB.com, a member of TechTarget.com.

Between a few new transitional CTP drops and major Microsoft events, I managed to hack out a simple piece here targetted at entry WCF-VB developers. There is another intermediate one (that deals with security) which will appear slightly later on TechTarget.com. Stay tuned to this space for further updates.

Do take note that this piece is currently one of the very few out there that is written against one of the latest WCF versions (The Sept-CTP WinFX drop).

Enjoy and send those comments over.

I was recently quoted in the press talking about OSS vs. proprietary platforms and solutions. It appeared in the IT Lifestyle Section (Digital Life) of our national newspaper --- The Straits Times 03 May 2005

I had said, and I quote:

... mutivendor expertise and support may be hard to come by for Linux and OSS. And these can add up to a higher total cost of ownership compared to pre-packaged Windows ...

Please click here to see the exact article in pdf form.

Ian Yates interviewed me for what turns me on for MSDN Magazine SEA Edition. Read about it here.
© MSDN Magazine SEA Edition

I know I have not been posting some real technical stuff on my blog for the last few months...and this is the reason why.

It started off with a Proof-of-Concept I was working on and some thoughts on WS-Security Headers here. Finally, after months of hard work and long review and edit cycles, one of my 'masterpiece' articles has made it to MSDN Web Services Center. From what I understand from MSFT-Singapore, it is the first time a Singapore Flag is flown on MSDN. Gotta like that. Cool...

Do check it out here and let me know what you think.

While this architectural setup may come across as 'complicated' and slightly 'unorthodox' in the real world today, I believe we will see more and more setups of this model as we go along with the wide-acceptance of (standards-based) messaging-based systems in the enterprise mainstream. Key-word here is standards-based. Another thing that I believe will happen with Service-Orientation is that this routing/gateway style approach will become the primary extensibility model.

Indigo will go a long way in making this happen and I am very excited with the impending launch of it this year. Incidentally, the March CTP Bits of Indigo and Avalon is available to MSDN Subscribers and I believe to the general public soon. Keep your eyes out for it.

What's next ? I will be crossing over to do more Indigo stuff and there are work assignments for me that is revolved around Indigo-WSE-SOAP. I will update here as we (me, Indigo-bits, WSE*-bits) go along.

Thanks a million to MattP, MarkF and HerveyW for helping me out with this write-up ... and Sorry, Matt for the constant bombardment of emails and queries.

If you are reading this, I am already successfully migrated to dasBlog1.7.5016.0. There are so many wonderful enhancements to this version. I especially love the Anti-Spam features of it via the Captcha image Comment Post and the ReferralSpam blacklist.

Incidentally, I had written up an article on DevX before on "Spoof-Proofing your Logins" here. Do check it out.

Thanks Mr Computer Zen, Scott Hanselman for the excellent contributions to this project.

Trust me, I wasted no time in drawing up the referral blacklist. The much-desired feature of allowing the author to draft up a blog post first before publishing it (IsPublic = true) is also here now.