As many of you know, the Microsoft PDC (Public Deveopers Conference) 2008 took place last week. Lots of new announcements, and in a class move Microsoft has made all of the sessions available for download from their site.
However, navigating the site, as pretty as it is, and downloading all of the sessions can be a bit time consuming. One of my twitter friends, Luciano Guerche (@guercheLE ) has posted a series of blog posts for each day with quick hyperlinks to everything for faster download. He’s even done a post on how to bulk download using Firefox and DownThemAll.
PDC 2008 – Day 1 (46 matching sessions)
PDC 2008 – Day 2 (50 matching sessions)
PDC 2008 – Day 3 (60 matching sessions)
PDC 2008 – Day 4 (49 matching sessions)
How to download PDC Sessions using DownThemAll! Firefox addon
While this makes it much easer to download, my one complaint, regardless of where you download from, is knowing what you have. Microsoft simply named each file for it’s session number, leaving you with files such as PC47.wmv or BB08.wmv. Come on folks, what’s the point of having long file names if we’re not going to use them?
So I wrote a series of batch files that will rename each file, adding the name of the session after the session number. This will make it much easier to determine what you have when browsing with explorer or when watching on your Zune. Simply copy the text below into your favorite text editor and save them as one or more .bat files.
RenamePDC2008Day1.bat
rename TL02.wmv "TL02 Under the Hood- Advances in the .NET Type System.wmv"
rename TL47.wmv "TL47 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System- A Lap Around VSTS 2010.wmv"
rename BB08.wmv "BB08 Microsoft Dynamics CRM- The Appealing Business Application.wmv"
rename TL29.wmv "TL29 Live Labs Web Sandbox- Securing Mash-ups, Site Extensibility, and Gadgets.wmv"
rename BB53.wmv "BB53 SharePoint Online- Extending Your Service.wmv"
rename BB48.wmv "BB48 Microsoft Advertising Platform- A Lap Around.wmv"
rename BB11.wmv "BB11 Identity Roadmap for Software plus Services.wmv"
rename PC12.wmv "PC12 Deep Dive- The New Rendering Engine in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.wmv"
rename ES16.wmv "ES16 A Lap Around Windows Azure.wmv"
rename TL46.wmv "TL46 Microsoft Visual C Sharp IDE- Tips and Tricks.wmv"
rename BB58.wmv "BB58 Case Study- Bridging On-Premises with the Cloud.wmv"
rename ES30.wmv "ES30 Datacenters and Resilient Services.wmv"
rename PC47.wmv "PC47 Microsoft Expression Blend- Tips and Tricks.wmv"
rename BB56.wmv "BB56 Showcase- Industry Leaders Moving to the Cloud.wmv"
rename BB49.wmv "BB49 Microsoft Advertising Platform- A Day in the Life of a Click.wmv"
rename TL40.wmv "TL40 Dublin and .NET Services- Extending On-Premises Applications to the Cloud.wmv"
rename PC53.wmv "PC53 Building High Performance JScript Applications.wmv"
rename PC17.wmv "PC17 Developing for Microsoft Surface.wmv"
rename PC20.wmv "PC20 ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap.wmv"
rename BB42.wmv "BB42 Identity- Geneva Server and Framework Overview.wmv"
rename BB09.wmv "BB09 Microsoft Office Communications Server and Exchange- Platform Futures.wmv"
rename TL33.wmv "TL33 Managed Extensibility Framework- Overview.wmv"
rename TL19.wmv "TL19 Microsoft Visual Studio- Bringing out the Best in Multicore Systems.wmv"
rename TL30.wmv "TL30 Microsoft Sync Framework Advances.wmv"
rename TL16.wmv "TL16 The Future of C Sharp.wmv"
rename TL52.wmv "TL52 Team Foundation Server 2010- Cool New Features.wmv"
rename PC21.wmv "PC21 ASP.NET MVC- A New Framework for Building Web Applications.wmv"
rename PC27.wmv "PC27 Microsoft Silverlight, WPF and the Microsoft .NET Framework- Sharing Skills and Code.wmv"
rename PC59.wmv "PC59 Commerce Server Mojave- Overview.wmv"
rename TL25.wmv "TL25 Parallel Programming for Cplusplus Developers in the Next Version of Microsoft Visual Studio.wmv"
rename TL10.wmv "TL10 Deep Dive- Dynamic Languages in Microsoft .NET.wmv"
rename TL03.wmv "TL03 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System- Software Diagnostics and Quality for Services.wmv"
rename BB29.wmv "BB29 Identity- Connecting Active Directory to Microsoft Services.wmv"
rename BB01.wmv "BB01 A Lap Around the Azure Services Platform.wmv"
rename TL17.wmv "TL17 WF 4.0- A First Look.wmv"
rename TL48.wmv "TL48 Microsoft Visual Studio- Web Development Futures.wmv"
rename PC58.wmv "PC58 Framework Design Guidelines.wmv"
rename BB45.wmv "BB45 Office Communications Server 2007 R2- Enabling Unified Communications.wmv"
rename TL13.wmv "TL13 Microsoft Visual Cplusplus- 10 Is the New 6.wmv"
rename BB15.wmv "BB15 SQL Server- Database to Data Platform - Road from Server to Devices to the Cloud.wmv"
rename TL49.wmv "TL49 Microsoft .NET Framework- Overview and Applications for Babies.wmv"
rename TL45.wmv "TL45 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Database Edition- Overview.wmv"
rename TL09.wmv "TL09 Agile Development with Microsoft Visual Studio.wmv"
rename ES32.wmv "ES32 Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5.wmv"
rename TL44.wmv "TL44 IronRuby- The Right Language for the Right Job.wmv"
rename ES01.wmv "ES01 Developing and Deploying Your First Windows Azure Service.wmv"
RenamePDC2008Day2.bat
rename BB36.wmv "BB36 FAST- Building Search-Driven Portals with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Silverlight.wmv"
rename TL39.wmv "TL39 Coding4Fun- Windows Presentation Foundation Animation, YouTube, iTunes, Twitter, and Nintendo's Wiimote.wmv"
rename TL54.wmv "TL54 Natural Interop with Silverlight, Office, and Python in Microsoft Visual C Sharp and Microsoft Visual Basic.wmv"
rename BB57.wmv "BB57 Microsoft Dynamics AX- Building Business Process into Your Application.wmv"
rename ES29.wmv "ES29 Showcase- Windows Azure Enables - Nsoftware and Full Armor.wmv"
rename PC44.wmv "PC44 Windows 7- Programming Sync Providers That Work Great with Windows.wmv"
rename TL59.wmv "TL59 Visual Studio Debugger Tips and Tricks.wmv"
rename BB52.wmv "BB52 SQL Services- Tips and Tricks for High-Throughput Data-Driven Applications.wmv"
rename BB41.wmv "BB41 Live Services- What I Learned Building My First Mesh Application.wmv"
rename TL38.wmv "TL38 WCF- Zen of Performance and Scale.wmv"
rename PC24.wmv "PC24 Windows 7- Welcome to the Windows 7 Desktop.wmv"
rename TL07.wmv "TL07 Developing Applications Using Data Services.wmv"
rename BB04.wmv "BB04 Live Services- A Lap around the Live Framework and Mesh Services.wmv"
rename TL14.wmv "TL14 Project Velocity- A First Look.wmv"
rename BB16.wmv "BB16 SQL Server 2008- Beyond Relational.wmv"
rename ES13.wmv "ES13 How to Develop Supercomputer Applications.wmv"
rename TL55.wmv "TL55 The Concurrency and Coordination Runtime and Decentralized Software Services Toolkit.wmv"
rename PC52.wmv "PC52 Windows 7- Writing World-Ready Applications.wmv"
rename BB07.wmv "BB07 SQL Server 2008- Developing Large Scale Web Applications and Services.wmv"
rename PC51.wmv "PC51 Windows 7- Best Practices for Developing for Windows Standard User.wmv"
rename ES04.wmv "ES04 Windows Azure- Essential Cloud Storage Services.wmv"
rename BB26.wmv "BB26 SQL Server 2008- Business Intelligence and Data Visualization.wmv"
rename PC46.wmv "PC46 WPF Roadmap.wmv"
rename TL23.wmv "TL23 A Lap around Oslo.wmv"
rename TL27.wmv "TL27 Oslo- The Language.wmv"
rename PC11.wmv "PC11 Microsoft Silverlight Futures- Building Business Focused Applications.wmv"
rename TL56.wmv "TL56 Project Velocity- Under the Hood.wmv"
rename PC50.wmv "PC50 Windows 7- Using Instrumentation and Diagnostics to Develop High Quality Software.wmv"
rename PC33.wmv "PC33 Microsoft Visual Studio- Easing ASP.NET Web Deployment.wmv"
rename PC10.wmv "PC10 Microsoft Silverlight 2 for Mobile- Developing for Mobile Devices.wmv"
rename BB43.wmv "BB43 Identity- Geneva Deep Dive.wmv"
rename BB20.wmv "BB20 Live Services- Making your Application More Social.wmv"
rename BB23.wmv "BB23 A Lap around SQL Services.wmv"
rename PC23.wmv "PC23 Windows 7- Integrate with the Windows 7 Desktop.wmv"
rename BB02.wmv "BB02 Architecture of the .NET Services.wmv"
rename TL20.wmv "TL20 Entity Framework Futures.wmv"
rename PC06.wmv "PC06 Deep Dive- Building an Optimized, Graphics-Intensive Application in Microsoft Silverlight.wmv"
rename ES10.wmv "ES10 Developing Solutions for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Using WMI.wmv"
rename PC31.wmv "PC31 ASP.NET and JQuery.wmv"
rename BB22.wmv "BB22 Identity- Live Identity Services Drilldown.wmv"
rename TL12.wmv "TL12 Future Directions for Microsoft Visual Basic.wmv"
rename BB40.wmv "BB40 Sync Framework- Enterprise Data in the Cloud and on Devices.wmv"
rename PC04.wmv "PC04 Windows 7- Writing Your Application to Shine on Modern Graphics Hardware.wmv"
rename ES11.wmv "ES11 Developing Connected Home Applications and Services for Windows Home Server.wmv"
rename TL50.wmv "TL50 Research- BAM, AjaxScope, and Doloto.wmv"
rename BB05.wmv "BB05 Live Services- Building Applications with the Live Framework.wmv"
rename ES20.wmv "ES20 Developing Applications for More Than 64 Logical Processors in Windows Server 2008 R2.wmv"
rename PC16.wmv "PC16 Windows 7- Empower users to find, visualize and organize their data with Libraries and the Explorer.wmv"
rename ES02.wmv "ES02 Windows Azure- Architecting and Managing Cloud Services.wmv"
RenamePDC2008Day3.bat
rename TL06.wmv "TL06 WCF 4.0- Building WCF Services with WF in Microsoft .NET 4.0.wmv"
rename BB19.wmv "BB19 Live Services- Live Framework Programming Model Architecture and Insights.wmv"
rename TL57.wmv "TL57 Panel- The Future of Programming Languages.wmv"
rename BB38.wmv "BB38 .NET Services- Connectivity, Messaging, Events, and Discovery with the Service Bus.wmv"
rename ES14.wmv "ES14 IIS 7.0 and Beyond- The Microsoft Web Platform Roadmap.wmv"
rename BB14.wmv "BB14 SQL Services- Futures.wmv"
rename ES12.wmv "ES12 Exposing Connected Home Services to the Internet via Windows Home Server.wmv"
rename ES31.wmv "ES31 Showcase- How HP Built their Magcloud Service on Windows Azure.wmv"
rename TL58.wmv "TL58 Research- Concurrency Analysis Platform and Tools for Finding Concurrency Bugs.wmv"
rename PC27.wmv "PC27-R Microsoft Silverlight, WPF and the Microsoft .NET Framework- Sharing Skills and Code [REPEAT].wmv"
rename PC25.wmv "PC25 Windows 7- The Sensor and Location Platform- Building Context-Aware Applications.wmv"
rename TL26.wmv "TL26 Parallel Programming for Managed Developers with the Next Version of Microsoft Visual Studio.wmv"
rename TL42.wmv "TL42 Microsoft SQL Server 2008- Powering MSDN.wmv"
rename PC48.wmv "PC48 Research- Designing the World Wide Telescope.wmv"
rename PC35.wmv "PC35 Silverlight Controls Roadmap.wmv"
rename TL61.wmv "TL61 Panel- The Future of Unit Testing.wmv"
rename ES25.wmv "ES25 Showcase- Windows Azure Enables Live Meeting.wmv"
rename TL37.wmv "TL37 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System- Leveraging Virtualization to Improve Code Quality with Team Lab.wmv"
rename TL60.wmv "TL60 Improving Code Quality with Code Analysis.wmv"
rename TL43.wmv "TL43 Microsoft XNA Game Studio- An Overview.wmv"
rename TL46-R.wmv "TL46-R Microsoft Visual C Sharp IDE- Tips and Tricks [REPEAT].wmv"
rename BB37.wmv "BB37 SQL Server 2008- Developing Secure Applications.wmv"
rename BB59.wmv "BB59 Behind the Scenes- How We Built a Multi-Enterprise Supply Chain Application.wmv"
rename PC22.wmv "PC22 Windows 7- Design Principles for Windows 7.wmv"
rename TL18.wmv "TL18 Oslo- Customizing and Extending the Visual Design Experience.wmv"
rename TL24.wmv "TL24 Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability.wmv"
rename ES07.wmv "ES07 Windows Azure- Modeling Data for Efficient Access at Scale.wmv"
rename ES22.wmv "ES22 Extending Terminal Services and Hyper-V VDI in Windows 7.wmv"
rename PC18.wmv "PC18 Windows 7- Introducing Direct2D and DirectWrite.wmv"
rename TL22.wmv "TL22 Concurrency Runtime Deep Dive- How to Harvest Multicore Computing Resources.wmv"
rename PC39.wmv "PC39 Inside the Olympics- An Architecture and Development Review.wmv"
rename BB51.wmv "BB51 Live Services- Programming Live Services Using Non-Microsoft Technologies.wmv"
rename PC03.wmv "PC03 Windows 7- Developing Multi-touch Applications.wmv"
rename BB25.wmv "BB25 SQL Server 2008- New and Future T-SQL Programmability.wmv"
rename BB39.wmv "BB39 .NET Services- Logging, Diagnosing, and Troubleshooting Applications Running Live in the Cloud.wmv"
rename TL28.wmv "TL28 Oslo- Repository and Models.wmv"
rename BB06.wmv "BB06 Live Services- Mesh Services Architecture and Concepts.wmv"
rename PC40.wmv "PC40 SQL Server Compact- Embedding in Desktop and Device Applications.wmv"
rename BB18.wmv "BB18 Dublin- Hosting and Managing Workflows and Services in Windows Application Server.wmv"
rename BB24.wmv "BB24 SQL Server 2008- Deep Dive into Spatial Data.wmv"
rename PC43.wmv "PC43 Deep Dive- What's New with user32 and comctl32 in Win32.wmv"
rename TL08.wmv "TL08 Offline-Enabled Data Services and Desktop Applications.wmv"
rename BB55.wmv "BB55 .NET Services- Access Control In Microsoft .NET Services.wmv"
rename ES23.wmv "ES23 Windows 7- Optimizing Applications for Remote File Services over the WAN.wmv"
rename PC30.wmv "PC30 ASP.NET Dynamic Data.wmv"
rename PC55.wmv "PC55 Oomph- A Microformat Toolkit.wmv"
rename TL16.wmv "TL16-R The Future of C Sharp [REPEAT].wmv"
rename ES06.wmv "ES06 Developing with Microsoft .NET and ASP.NET for Server Core.wmv"
rename ES03.wmv "ES03 Windows Azure- Cloud Service Development Best Practices.wmv"
rename PC14.wmv "PC14 Windows 7- New Shell User Experience APIs.wmv"
rename BB30.wmv "BB30 Live Services- Building Mesh-Enabled Web Applications Using the Live Framework.wmv"
rename TL15.wmv "TL15 Architecture without Big Design Up Front.wmv"
rename BB32.wmv "BB32 Microsoft Dynamics CRM- Building Line-of-Business Applications.wmv"
rename ES15.wmv "ES15 Web Application Packaging and Deployment.wmv"
rename TL21.wmv "TL21 WF 4.0- Extending with Custom Activities.wmv"
rename TL33.wmv "TL33-R Managed Extensibility Framework- Overview [REPEAT].wmv"
rename PC56.wmv "PC56 Windows Embedded Quebec- Developing for Devices.wmv"
rename TL23.wmv "TL23-R A Lap around Oslo [REPEAT].wmv"
rename BB28.wmv "BB28 .NET Services- Access Control Service Drilldown.wmv"
rename PC54.wmv "PC54 Mono and .NET.wmv"
RenamePDC2008Day4.bat
rename TL04.wmv "TL04 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server- How We Use It at Microsoft.wmv"
rename BB31.wmv "BB31 Live Services- FeedSync and Mesh Synchronization Services.wmv"
rename BB09-R.wmv "BB09-R Microsoft Office Communications Server and Exchange- Platform Futures [REPEAT].wmv"
rename TL51.wmv "TL51 Research- Contract Checking and Automated Test Generation with Pex.wmv"
rename BB03.wmv "BB03 SQL Services - Under the Hood.wmv"
rename ES24.wmv "ES24 PowerShell- Creating Manageable Web Services.wmv"
rename PC02.wmv "PC02 Windows 7- Extending Battery Life with Energy Efficient Applications.wmv"
rename BB46.wmv "BB46 Exchange Web Services Managed API- Unified Communications Development for Exchange.wmv"
rename BB33.wmv "BB33 Dynamics Online- Building Business Applications with Commerce and Payment APIs.wmv"
rename BB13.wmv "BB13 SharePoint 2007- Creating SharePoint Applications with Visual Studio 2008.wmv"
rename PC01.wmv "PC01 Windows 7- Web Services in Native Code.wmv"
rename TL35.wmv "TL35 WCF- Developing RESTful Services.wmv"
rename SYMP01.wmv "SYMP01 Parallel Symposium- Addressing the Hard Problems with Concurrency.wmv"
rename SYMP04.wmv "SYMP04 Services Symposium- Expanding Applications to the Cloud.wmv"
rename TL36.wmv "TL36 Microsoft .NET Framework- Declarative Programming Using XAML.wmv"
rename ES19.wmv "ES19 Under the Hood- Inside the Windows Azure Hosting Environment.wmv"
rename PC49.wmv "PC49 Microsoft .NET Framework- CLR Futures.wmv"
rename PC34.wmv "PC34 Open XML Format SDK- Developing Open XML Solutions.wmv"
rename PC41.wmv "PC41 ASP.NET- Cache Extensibility.wmv"
rename TL32.wmv "TL32 Microsoft Visual Studio- Customizing and Extending the Development Environment.wmv"
rename PC42.wmv "PC42 Windows 7- Deploying Your Application with Windows Installer (MSI) and ClickOnce.wmv"
rename BB12.wmv "BB12 .NET Services- Messaging Services - Protocols, Protection, and How We Scale.wmv"
rename ES21.wmv "ES21 Windows 7 Presentation Virtualization- Graphics Remoting ( RDP) Today and Tomorrow.wmv"
rename BB35.wmv "BB35 Live Services- The Future of the Device Mesh.wmv"
rename PC26.wmv "PC26 Microsoft Visual Studio- Building Applications with MFC.wmv"
rename SYMP02.wmv "SYMP02 Parallel Symposium- Application Opportunities and Architectures.wmv"
rename SYMP05.wmv "SYMP05 Services Symposium- Enterprise Grade Cloud Applications.wmv"
rename PC29.wmv "PC29 Microsoft Silverlight 2- Control Model.wmv"
rename PC13.wmv "PC13 Windows 7- Building Great Audio Communications Applications.wmv"
rename BB34.wmv "BB34 Live Services- Notifications, Awareness, and Communications.wmv"
rename ES09.wmv "ES09 Enabling Test Automation Using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.wmv"
rename BB47.wmv "BB47 SharePoint 2007- Advanced Asynchronous Workflow Messaging.wmv"
rename TL34.wmv "TL34 Managed and Native Code Interoperability- Best Practices.wmv"
rename PC45.wmv "PC45 WPF- Data-centric Applications Using the DataGrid and Ribbon Controls.wmv"
rename PC05.wmv "PC05 Windows 7- Unlocking the GPU with Direct3D.wmv"
rename TL01.wmv "TL01 Office Business Applications- Enhanced Deployment.wmv"
rename BB54.wmv "BB54 Designing Your Application to Scale.wmv"
rename TL31.wmv "TL31 Oslo- Building Textual DSLs.wmv"
rename SYMP03.wmv "SYMP03 Parallel Symposium- Future of Parallel Computing.wmv"
rename SYMP06.wmv "SYMP06 Services Symposium- Cloud or No Cloud, the Laws of Physics Still Apply.wmv"
rename ES17.wmv "ES17 Windows Azure- Programming in the Cloud.wmv"
rename BB27.wmv "BB27 .NET Services- Orchestrating Services and Business Processes Using Cloud-Based Workflow.wmv"
rename PC07.wmv "PC07 WPF- Extensible BitmapEffects, Pixel Shaders, and WPF Graphics Futures.wmv"
rename BB10.wmv "BB10 Live Services- Deep Dive on Microsoft Virtual Earth.wmv"
rename PC19.wmv "PC19 Windows 7- Designing Efficient Background Processes.wmv"
rename BB44.wmv "BB44 Identity- Windows CardSpace Geneva Under the Hood.wmv"
rename PC15.wmv "PC15 Windows 7- Benefiting from Documents and Printing Convergence.wmv"
rename TL11.wmv "TL11 An Introduction to Microsoft F Sharp.wmv"
rename PC32.wmv "PC32 ASP.NET AJAX Futures.wmv"
Update – After I wrote this, I found @Jorriss (another twitter friend) post which essentially does the same thing as what I do above, only he uses some cool C# and reading the sessions names from the web, rather than the simple batch file approach I took above. Read his post then choose which solution best fits your needs.
Arcane Code 
I just used wget to fetch all the files and JPEG thumbnails (less clicking), and formatted them up in a little html file for easy viewing.
Dear,
Thank you and Joriss for referral, but I believe you both didn´t note step #4 of my blog post “How to download PDC Sessions using DownThemAll! Firefox addon” (http://weblogs.asp.net/guerchele/archive/2008/10/29/how-to-download-pdc-sessions-using-downthemall-firefox-addon.aspx) which explains how to give saved files a more descriptive name. Check it again just to see how it works.
Thanks and regards.
Actually I did see that, but by that point I had already downloaded days 1 to 3 from the PDC site, so had 3 days worth of files with short names to fix. I thought others may have as well, thus I went ahead and created the batch files for all four days as a simple alternative.
If I was downloading them to start with, then yes your method on your posts would likely be the better way to go.
Again, for anyone who hasn’t downloaded look at all three sites then determine what the best way for your own needs are.
All the files have their ‘Title’ property filled out with the session title, just add that column to your windows exporer and you’re good.
Very well written post however, I would recommend that you turn the No Follow off in your comment section.
Keep up the good work.
Gotta love those flashgames. I’ve wasted way too much time of my life on them ^^