We use the SharePoint Visual Studio Project Template on CodePlex to create WSP deployment packages for our SharePoint features. I tend to think of this WSP creation project in the same way as a MSI installer; so we don’t put SharePoint components into the WSP solution itself, it is an extra project in the solution that …

Update – just needed to correct myself … it is a Kringle-O-Tron not a Robot Santa! D’oh! In case you missed it … we are providing cut out and keep Santa and Kringle-O-Tron with our online Xmas cards this year. They make up wonderful little models, with just folding and cutting! As we can testify to by the number dotted …

BizTalk 2009 CTP is now out along side ESB 2.0 CTP and RFID(Mobile) BizTalk 2009 supports visual studio 2008 , SQL Server 2008 AND TFS with some great new tooling for development and application lifecycle management. BizTalk RFID Mobile enhances BizTalk Server RFID by offering device management and offline processing …

Following the wonderfully successful Black Marble Brigade Xmas Card in 2007, we are back with a great set of designs this year too. Graphics Girl has produced a wonderful ‘traditional’ card (above) that will have landed on your desk this year … as well as a selection of others that didn’t quite make the cut … we had …

At Black Marble we try to always go one step further, one of the popular things we do is to get international varieties of coke and other pop/soda from Korean to American. This December, the Guest Cokes filling your fridge include the very exotic Irish variety of regular coke … and also a French Diet Coke! Enjoy.

At the last MVP Summit Steve Ballmer said “I’m going to ask you one week switch your default [search engine], one week. At the end of the week…I’ll want feedback, how was your week, what happened, what did you like, what didn’t you like … Can I make that deal with you? (Cheers and applause.) That’s the deal.” Well the …

Updated 3 Dec 2008 – I got an email from Artem Smirnov the author of Ivonna pointing out a couple of things, so I have updated this post Updated 3 May 2009 – I altered the code samples as the previous ones did not seem to work with Typemock Isolator 5.3.0 . I have previously written a post on using Isolator with …

Black Marble hosted the first Architecture Forum in the North today and despite the treacherous weather conditions, there was a great and enthusiastic turnout. The day opened with Matt Deacon, Chief Architectural Advisor from Microsoft espousing on Sustainable IT, followed up by Simon Thurman, a Microsoft Architecture …

I'm using the Mini9 quite a lot lately, at least in part to fiddle with Windows 7. I decided it would be nice to be able to access our Hyper-V servers so I went looking for the management tools... It turns out that Windows 7 ships with the Hyper-V management snap-ins. No real surprise there as my understanding is that …

Applications to attend Software Craftsmanship 2009 have opened, this is a free conference that aims to discuss ‘the "hard skills" that programmers and teams require to deliver high quality working software’. If you have not heard of Software Craftsmanship take a look at Peter McBreen’s book Software …