This is a cool Surface demo build my a few colleagues which showcases a hospitality demo. We build this and got it up and running out of our Avanade London office. :)

I am using Community Server 2007 for my blog. I originally started in .Text (which some of you ‘old timers’ might remember as being open source) and had modified the code a fair amount to something I wanted. Over the years stuck with that and then CS 1.0, 2.0, etc as .Text was ‘morphed’ into Community Server (CS) from Telligent. While overall I have been happy with CS 2007 off late I have been quite put off with it due to a few reasons: ...

The BCC hosted a “secret” and surprise gig for U2 where they played on the roof of the BBC Broadcasting House on Regents Street in London. I heard about it in the news and then watched it via the Red Button . It was only a few songs but it was awesome. Of course, you can catch it again on iPlayer (for those of you in the UK). Those who cannot get to iPlayer can watch the whole thing on YouTube . ...

If for some reason you are curious to know which DC (Domain Controller) you logged on to then all you need to do is use the LOGONSERVER environment variable. Of course this means your machine is already part of a domain. The easiest way to see this will be to type the following in a cmd prompt: echo %logonserver%

I guess since we are all alive , it will be good to understand what that Cern thing really is (pdf). 😄

Been missing in action for a while – been extremely busy. Dropbox – store, sync and share your files online via Amazon’s S3. OAuth – open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a web/fat clients. About time we got the Facebooks and Twitters of the world start implementing this (more details on that another time). Scott’s ultimate developer and power user tools – the name says it all - very cool. Microsoft Tags - transform physical media (ads, billboards,product packages, information signs, in-store merchandising, video images, etc.) - into live links for accessing information and entertainment online. Cucku – another service which backs up your data to the cloud. I personally use WHS + Amazon’s S3 – got about 40 GB on it now. 😄 App Store – view Apple’s app store in your browser instead of iTunes. Quidco – an ad-free cash-back cooperative that passes on all referral commissions in exchange for keeping £5 a year as an admin fee. Seems to be quite cool. CloudBuddy – extend you desktop to the cloud (Amazon S3) – in addition to documents you can also use this for Outlook including your calendar, tasks, etc. Cool Machine Names – I will certainly be looking at this whenever I get my next machine. gScreen – dual screen laptops; it sure is cool, but is too heavy to be a “portable”. Maybe vaporware as well? If you are skeptical like I am, maybe MaxiVista is the way to go? ...

I love music – not only it enriches my life and helps me relax (especially when I am cooking), but I can think clearly and much quickly (for reasons I cannot frankly explain). So, finally I am scrobbling on last.fm – feel free to reach out to me there.

A Dal (Lentil) is quite a staple food at home – not only is it nutritious and health and full of protein, both I and Meenakshi love it. Now the way we usually make it at home is a little different that the version I came across from Yotam Ottolenghi . I tried it and was excellent – different from what I am use to cooking. ...

A good example of what not to do.

I was looking for something else and stumbled upon this post from Joe where he lists the qualities that makes up a “good architect” (despite the feelings that have been expressed to me in the past ). I have to agree with him and am quite pleased to see that a “typical” Avanade architect would fit the bill. 😄 ...

I am having issues with Win 7 – keeps hanging (will post that another time); but I like the irony of things causing this (see screen show below). BTW, if you can get to the Performance Information and Tools via Control Panel => All Control Panel Items =>Performance Information and Tools => Advanced Tools.

You should be using Bitlocker on your machine (which btw is faster on Win 7 compared to Vista). When I enabled this on my laptop running Win 7 – I did not get the option to also add a PIN – not sure if I did something wrong or by default it does not ask for it. In any case, if you also want to add the a PIN on boot up then you can use the following command in a command prompt or power shell (with admin privileges) to enable this. Of course replace the “c:” with the drive you want to do this for. ...

Microsoft has released a new Jan CTP of the Azure SDK and the Azure tools for VS.NET . You can get all the links from the Cloud Computing Tools and of course the Azure MSDN page . I would recommend you get the new SDK instead of using the one released earlier. ...

Gartner has published CIO’s top 10 Technology priorities for 2009, which are: Business intelligence Enterprise applications (ERP, CRM and others) Servers and storage technologies (virtualization) Legacy application modernization Collaboration technologies Networking, voice and data communications Technical infrastructure Security technologies Service-oriented applications and architecture Document management

{ via Phil Wheat }

Haven’t seen this one: clip_image002

I always have been a huge fan of Screamer Radio and still cannot recommend it enough! There are a couple of other ways as well if you prefer that. One is the new open source application called Songbird which is my choice for listening to Music. Songbird is from the same guys who wrote Firefox and the quality is pretty good. I particularly like the Lyrics add-on which displays lyrics of the song you are listening to. Another add-on can scrobble to Last.fm . ...

Hope the year is good to all of you!

I got this from a fellow Avanut, and I thought it was quite hilarious … however a few around me did not think so – they of course don’t have any taste. 😉 A byte walks into a bar and orders a drink. Bartender asks him “What’s wrong?” Byte says “Parity error.” Bartender nods and says “Yeah, I thought you looked a bit off.”

Live Writer’s new 2009 Release Candidate is available for download . I continue to be impressed by this editor and I cannot recommend it enough. 😄

Security is a Social Construction - Andrew Martin

Irrespective if you attended PDC or not and want to get your hands on the ppt’s and/or video of each of the sessions then Mike has a cool post listing each of the sessions including the friendly name instead of the non-helpful code.

Got all my tokens and got all the accounts up and running. Now need to write some code. image

Amazon’s EC2 is now available for Windows – squeaking in just before PDC was to kick off. This is quite exciting as it allows you to scale out and try something at a very low cost on Windows. If you want to manage your EC2 environment, you can use the Firefox add-in called Elasticfox ; there is also a C# library which wraps EC2’s web service API making them easier to consume from .NET. ...

I am going to be at PDC – anyone else I know going to be there? If you are reading this, and are going to be there then it is quite likely you know how to ping me and let me know you going. It also might be a good idea to check out the Devil’s field guide to the PDC . ...