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April 2006 Entries.
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i should have known that hanselman was right. i use a lot of tools he has on the ultimate tools list (slickrun and cropper being my favorites). i recently paved a machine and decided not to get the adobe products.
instead of pdf writer from adobe, i’m using www.primopdf.com (free)
and instead of adobe reader, i’m using foxit. it is awesome and lean. starts up in a jiffy. yes, i said jiffy. easy to use and serves its purpose well. just another plug for it. i’m adobe pdf free (for now) although i can say if i see the need to create...
bgold announced: release of css control adapters beta 1
again, what continues to impress me is the transparency — along with a whitepaper, samples, etc. — the full source code is available for the control adapters — under the MS-PL.
woodyp just announced the socalcodecamp is taking session submissions…
i love their twist on it that it’s rock-n-roll style…
the official beta 2 build of internet explorer is now available.
download ie7 beta2
wow: McNealy steps down at Sun
this weekend i decided to go shopping with my wife…well, okay, she shopped, i waited in chairs most of the time outside of dressing rooms.
during one store visit, there was a t-mobile store next to it, so i decided to just wander and check out the devices (which i already knew which ones they had).
the conversation went something like this:
employee: how can i help you tonight?me: ah, just killing time while my wife is shopping…employee: i see, so are you already with t-mobile?me: actually, i just switchedemployee: really, may i ask why?me: sure, i switched to verizon for the faster...
this was pretty funny, felt like passing it along:
air force one gets tagged (hoax) — visit www.stillfree.com to see how/why they did it.
still funny.
i couldn’t help but chuckle after reading this and staring at the irony smack in the middle of the article (source: msnbc):
In a rare occurrence, the CIA fired an officer who acknowledged giving classified information to a reporter, NBC News learned Friday.
and where’s the irony you ask…well if you read further…
Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the firing.
yep, that’s right, notice the bold part…lmao.
i’ve noticed a design trend along “web 2.0” sites…
verbdate.com
37signals.com
rubyonrails.com
ning.com
edgeio.com
framework.zend.com
notice all the ‘choices’ in-your-face design. not that there’s anything wrong with that. just an observation. i think like anything in the world, people see good things and they emulate them. this is no different when people see good, simple, ui designs and emulate them as well.
.net compact framework released an sp1 for v2: NETCFv2SP1
ever wonder what microsoft does to manage sharepoint disaster recovery?
podcast: How Microsoft IT Manages SharePoint Disaster and Recovery
tags: sharepoint, microsoft
also updated/released/refreshed today (don’t know which one since i didn’t know about it before) are a bunch of feature packs for sql 2005.
download the feature packs to get
Microsoft ADOMD.NET
Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0
Microsoft OLEDB Provider for DB2
Microsoft SQL Server Management Pack for MOM 2005
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 PivotTable Services
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 DTS Designer Components
Microsoft SQL Server Native Client
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services 9.0 OLE DB Provider
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Command Line Query Utility
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Datamining Viewer Controls
Microsoft SQL...
finally! verizon/palm released the MSFP update for the treo 700w
the palm site has the updater software required.
i got a kick out of unpacking the files and saw this:
and thought to myself: drteeth — awesome. i just thought it was funny.
anyhow, i ran the update successfully — and so far nothing looks different ;-) — but i’m hoping the push technology will make things better for me.
check out a new search ui for msdn searching:
http://search.msdn.microsoft.com/search
contains other tabs for other areas of searching all in one place.
and if you are using IE7 there is an OpenSearch provider as well to integrate with the browser.
tags: msdn
in response to keeping the products better and building upon feedback of our customers, we’ve released sql server 2005 service pack 1.
here’s the links:
sql 2005 sp 1 (for enterprise, developer, standard, workgroup)
sql 2005 express editions
wow, it’s been hard to keep this one under my breath for the time that we’ve know about it.
announced today (press link) is that the visual studio express editions that were initially offered “free for the first year” are now free without time limitations. yep, just like sql server express, you will be able to get these free without any limitation of when the free will end.
this is a great thing to have for the broader community.
from dan fernandez’s blog:
We are incredibly excited to announce that effective April 19th, 2006, all Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions including Visual Basic, Visual...
i may have mentioned this before, but i absolutely love transferbigfiles.com
recently i’ve had to send some large files to people and really didn’t feel like serving as an ftp proxy for the data, nor did they really have a great way to get it (files > 85MB).
transferbigfiles.com to the rescue!
if you haven’t seen it, check it out. use it. love it. and tell axosoft how much you like it.
tags: axosoft, transferbigfiles, aspnet
so i, along with probably others ;-), took a look at google calendar. why? it’s hard to argue they’ve come out with some cool stuff. one thing that my wife and i struggle with is maintaining a calendar we can see for each other.
yeah, i know about all the other sites, etc. — why haven’t i used them? who knows…just haven’t. i looked at hotmail, and while i think the Windows Live team is making great improvements (Windows Live Mail is great), i’m still frustrated with the passport authentication model. with everything i do in software, i try (not...
MSDN and TechNet are coming to a city near you (hopefully).
Here’s the MSDN topics in May:
Customizing web parts in ASP.NET 2.0
Language Enhancements for .NET 2.0
Enterprise Library for .NET
Here’s the TechNet topics in May
Security for Wireless Networks
Responding to computer attacks
What’s next for Microsoft security?
Phoenix event is May 23, for location details click the registration link(s)
MSDN Registration: register here
TechNet Registration: register here
Las Vegas event is May 25
MSDN Registration: register here
TechNet Registration: register here
ani is hosting a pretty cool event in denver:
Next Generation -- MAY 12, 2006 9am – 5pm
What is Next Generation? Microsoft has been working hard on the next generation of development tools and Operating System. WinFX, Office 2007 and Vista are some of the most anticipated technologies to be released by Microsoft this year. There are many changes in Office 2007, Vista and there is something new brewing WinFX. This day long developer focused event will drill down into: The Big Picture -- Vista 9:00 am– 10:30amWinFX, the set of next-generation managed APIs provided by Microsoft, InfoCard wraps up the...
the final day of mts started with some discussion around infocard which is an identity system…but that was actually one of the points up to debate…and hearing the debate, i agree — we usually don’t provide our credit card as an identity, but rather as a set of trusted ‘tokens’ for a specific reason — i can’t remember the actual terms used, but it made more sense than an identity. it was a good discussion around the technology, what standards are going to be put in place and the direction moving forward.
the mobility team came in to show some devices...
so, one of the guys i’ve been talking to at mts is from zigtag. he’s got some clever marketing going on — here’s the most unique business card we saw this week. since ‘it’s all about tagging’, his card (name/number/email blurred because to protect his spam v-mail/email) is a tag ;-)
tags: mts06, zigtag
yeah, i know this is weird, so random i had to snap a video.
the restaurant we went to tonight had only one stall in the bathroom…but no worries in the stall were two waiting chairs.
welcome to mts part 8 :-)
well, day 2 was filled with a bunch of stuff. here’s some highlights…
wpf-wpf/e
what is wpf? it’s the uncool name for avalon. there are reasons behind the naming that don box explained to us and it actually made me appreciate it a little bit more…but let’s be real — it still doesn’t zing.
the wpf team showed some really cool stuff with wpf and various aspects of the model, etc. to me, i’m still struggling finding the core ROI business value behind bubbly buttons, gradients, etc. i certainly can appreciate the technology being a geek, but the business...
so i was using firefox and just noticed that a popup had occurred in the background saying that it automatically upgraded. no option. and i don’t recall that i ever said i wanted auto update — in fact even on windows update i say only download and then i’ll decide if/when i want to update. this was a bit troubling.
even when i clicked the details link to see the update, it wasn’t updated with the version it just provided?!?!!?!
see:
ai pointed me to this video today, which is quite hilarious…video:
tags: firefox
wow, jump on the shared source train!!! choo choo…
another permissive license release of some code.
scottgu announced today the release of the source code for the provider framework!
VERY cool! way to go aspnet team!!!!!
tags: aspnet, asp.net, asp.net 2.0, ms-pl
i was writing a blog post on qumana — a blog tool i saw while looking on technorati.
well, when i tried to publish from it, this screen stayed up for about 10 minutes before i gave up
i canceled — and uninstalled qumana…no errors (likely it was my proxy config) or anything alerting me that there was a problem…among other things that frustrated me.
tags: qumana
catching up on the mts experience. i noticed brian pontarelli is blogging pretty real-time as well on the event (from an attendee perspective).
ie7
this morning we started with a session about ie7. true to the request, chris wilson came with 3 slides (one of which was a title slide) and opened up for discussion. there was some good improvements demonstrated in tabbed browsing, rss integration, streamlined ui (msft’s opinion of course), zooming, scaled printing (yeah! no right cut-offs), etc.
chris also articulated about ie7 security being a big focus — information bar warning of weak settings, phishing filtering, etc. — as well as...
ai’s started a blog war — tag, you’re it — ha ha — i’m better than you.
and i’ll add some substance…
atlas released the atlas control toolkit today — WITH SOURCE CODE. what? microsoft releasing some source code with some binaries…are you kidding me? are pigs flying?
anand just reminded me of what we saw last night…check out what he wrote about meebo
ai blog
conference food breakfasts usually don’t intrigue me. i’m not even a breakfast person — i hate it (yeah, most important meal of the day, blah, blah — leave me alone — i’m fat and getting fatter, so what.)
but this morning was different…
i sat down and was listening to brian behlendorf and others chat about source control and collaboration. it was very intriguing to hear…some felt that source control isn’t necessary for even smaller samples sets due to the effort to even set it up.
i won’t iterate through the entire conversation, but one comment i felt was interesting was about how...
the evening event was a trip to the company store (read: buy stuff for cheap) and then an evening at the microsoft visitor center/museum. almost immediately upon arriving…the fire alarm went off. imagine about 80 people with handfuls of keyboards, xbox games and perihperals, etc…and then being asked to leave the building — quite a sight.
here’s the scene outside:
it was quite funny actually — and oddly enough was the caterers for our event that had something smoke-up and caused the alarm to sound.
the museum is a good place to hang out for a while…a little disappointing they took out the...
what’s better than seeing wicked cool stuff from research groups?
don box of course.
in classic don box style, he came to talk with our group and opened with the “where do we suck” type mentality — which is quite refreshing and IMO we need more of it.
the discussion varied on a few things, but here was the list of items covered…don box style of course (frank and in scheme)
it was a great and entertaining discussion…thanks to don for attending
update: here's don's take: http://pluralsight.com/blogs/dbox/archive/2006/04/12/21612.aspx
tags: mts06
rick rashid from the microsoft research group just came to speak to the group. this wasn’t the typical technology presentation you are used to and there really wasn’t any intention to have “open source” discussions around research ;-), but to show what microsoft does to invest in technology in an altruistic manner and publish work we are doing.
rick’s history comes from MOC among other things and if you are using a mac, you are using code he wrote 23 years ago as he says.
probably the coolest things that rick showed was the research they did in image rendering/editing/whatever. rick showed...
sitting in a room with people from technorati, apache, open source lab, etc. — this is a great experience. and guess what — it’s on the microsoft campus!
we just got done listening to bill hilf, who leads open source initiatives/learnings at microsoft — what a great exchange of questions comments. seriously, the questions asked were raw, and the answers given were equally raw. i loved bill’s style of not evading any question — he genuinely didn’t know some answers, but also didn’t hide some reasons around why we do things we do.
next up — microsoft research head, rick rashid
tags: mts06
today is the start of the first day of the second microsoft technology summit (mts06).
what is mts? well it’s an opportunity we (msft) take to invite the more broader audiences outside of microsoft (read: generally the ‘anything but microsoft’ crowd) to redmond to have a 2–day conversation with key technologists within microsoft.
is the goal to convert the attendees? no. although admittedly that would be a great byproduct for us…but NOT the goal at all. the goal is to help change perception of what we are doing, and to mainly listen. we are listening to the feedback from this crowd. will...
i’m in bellevue, wa and while walking down the street i noticed little weird boxes on the streets near the trees:
as i looked closer i noticed they were electrical boxes:
this is a city prepared for (presumably) holiday lights — each tree planter had it’s own box…interesting.
while waiting for my plane today, miguel ferrer was waiting too (for a different flight right next to us). i saw a few people look at him with curiousity as i was, trying to place the face. i didn’t know his name, but only knew him as the guy who was snorting cocaine on some woman’s bosom in robocop…but i knew he was on some nbc show i don’t watch.
it was funny to watch people try to figure out where they know someone.
i use gmail as a shell for a free spam filter basically. (why don't you use hotmail tim?) well, if passport wasn't in the way and i didn't feel like i was logging in to 3 different sites because i got bounced around to 4 different pages, then i might use it more (the new hotmail UI is nice).
i digress...
gmail spam filter is pretty good. it catches most everything. the weird thing is i'm curious why it catches everything but RUSSIAN email. seriously...it figures out when some is trying to send me some funky ad for male enlargements with mis-spelled...
the web application project release candidate is available now!
download link: wap rc1
a colleague of mine was just chatting w/me about feedreader. i thought i’d check the download counts and was amazed at the number…holy cow — talk about an ego boost!
yes, i know there are still problems with some features of feedreader. i’ve been holding off on the source code because the place where i want the source to live isn’t ready yet…more on that later.
On Wednesday, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 AM, the time and date will be:
01:02:03 04/05/06.
unless of course you aren't in the US, then it will be 01:02:03 05/04/06, but that isn't so much fun is it.