If you were in the market for a new laptop especially a Tablet then Dell is coming ! Not only that - they have some awesome ultra-thin Monitors which are only 0.5 inch thick and will support HD resolutions and allow you to daisychain multiple monitors. These were originally showcased the concept at the CES earlier in January. Better start saving up!
After running Vista x64 (since RTM back in November) on my laptop I have finally rolled back to Vista x32. I did not have any driver issues for the most part it was more of incompatibility of some x64 bit app’s. Does remind me of this: <p> <figure> <img src="images/070502_vista_is_torture.gif" alt="Using Wndows Vista is Torture"/> <figcaption>Using Wndows Vista is Torture</figcaption> </figure> </p>
More details here and screen shots here .
After a few initial hiccups , I got Orcas installed and up and running but trying to do something simple with it has been challenging. For example if you create a new simple WinForm (I only tried this with c#) and open the default Form in the solution you get the following error: The service Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.ISelectionContainer already exists in the service container. Parameter name: serviceType Here is a screen shot of the same error:...
I was trying to install Orcas VSTS Beta 1 on a Vista x32 machine and the setup failed as shown in the screen shot below and the logs were not very helpful either. [05/16/07,06:13:16] Microsoft .NET Framework v3.5: [2] Error code 87 for this component means “The parameter is incorrect.” [05/16/07,06:13:16] Microsoft .NET Framework v3.5: [2] Setup Failed on component Microsoft .NET Framework v3.5 [05/16/07,06:13:18] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft ....
In addition to 3G speed results I had posted earlier, below are the HSDPA and 3.5G speed results from home. Click on the image below to see them in full size. Summary: <p> <img src="images/HSDPA_3.5_Summary.png" alt=""/> </p> Upload: <p> <img src="images/HSDPA_3.5G_Upload.jpg" alt=""/> </p> Download: <p> <img src="images/HSDPA_3.5G_Download.jpg" alt=""/> </p>
Over the weekend I got a HSDPA / 3.5G USB modem and here are the 3G speed results of that from home. Click on the images to see them in full size. I’ll post the 3.5G results soon as well. Summary: <p> <img src="images/12616841523.png" alt=""/> </p> Download Results: <p> <img src="images/3.5G_Download_Speed.jpg" alt=""/> </p> Upload Results: <p> <img src="images/3.5G_Upload_Speed.jpg" alt=""/> </p>
Don’t believe me? Then check this out.
What? Is that even English? I’ll get to answering it in a second. Not sure how many of you know, but for a very long time I have been wanting to do a Masters and also dabble in the world of Academia Research. I have done some commercial research in the past which I thoroughly enjoyed but never done any Academia research - well not yet anyway’s. <p> <img src="images/oxforduniversitynewcresttrans1.gif" alt=""/> </p> After procrastinating on this for a long time, and with many other factors which I’d rather not get into here, finally the time came and I just had to try and pick this up again....
Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s iPhone
Vertigo has a very cool WPF application called Family.Show which exploits many of the new WPF features (data binding, sexy visualization, styles, templates, animation, etc.) and is a good example of the new “Web + Desktop” app hybrids combining the advantages of both paradigms. Family.Show is a genealogy application that you can use to build your family tree. The timeline implementation is very cool and you can “speed or slow down” time and see how your family tree (or forest) grows....
Seems like Microsoft and Yahoo discussed a merger where Microsoft would have bought Yahoo; although the deal is off, if it had gone thru the deal would have been worth $50 billion!
Keeping up with their cool AJAX implementation (part of Yahoo Mail), Yahoo has now implemented a Web version of their Yahoo Messenger. I like the interface - fairly simple which makes it good. Now just waiting for the Vista version of Yahoo Messenger .
I love Outlook but in 2007 there are some irritating things. For example if I shutdown Windows with Outlook running, next time it will complain that Outlook was not closed properly and does a file check - so I close Outlook wait for the process to finish before starting to shutdown Windows. Also every now and then I get the reminders with no reminders as you can see below.
I stumbled across this BBC story quite by accident - a driver taking a disused Boeing 737 seemed to get lost at night when transporting the plane when he reached a road with not enough road clearance and abandoned the plane in the middle of the road! This is quite funny though the poor guys who are inconvenienced by this would beg to differ.
Google has a new service called Voice Local Search where you call a toll-free number (in the US) 800-GOOG-411 (for those not from America, 411 is the Information line, similar to 911 is the emergency line). You can use this by category or name of the business and other than the cost of your call it is free. It is handy if you don’t have access to a computer and has the same data as that is found on Google Maps....
Right, quick update on my previous post on Joost - I do have at the moment of writing this 998 Joost invitations; though still only 26 channels. And I don’t know what you guys are seeing, but the channels are not quite smooth and get quite jerky.
Now that CS 2007 has shipped, CS (a.k.a Community Server - the thing that this blog runs on), has announced their plans for the rest of this year and will have two releases in July and October codenamed Maui and Hawaii respectively. Seem to be interesting changes, enhancements, refactoring, etc that is going on. I have not had the time to dig too much under the covers of CS (not since it morphed from ....
“…I’ll design software that’ll run on an OS we’re not using, built on components that aren’t installed, and that require networking components that aren’t installed.” (c) Marc Jennings
One of my colleague, Brian, pointed out the Software Engineering Proverbs - which are quite priceless. It sure does remind me of the Top 10 replies from a developer (when code breaks).
First things first - no I am still alive just have been awfully busy and not had a chance to blog. A couple of guys have implemented two Captcha controls (I had first implemented this as part of upgrading to CS 2.1 Beta 2) for CS 2007. Brenda Tompkins’s Captcha control (which I am using here) - this in addition to the blog comments also supports contact, photos, file comments and registration - cool....
Contrary to some reports that Joost has gone live with unlimited invites and 150 channels - at least that is not what I am seeing. I don’t know if I need to do anything “special”, but here is what I have when I login to Joost. Number of Invites: Zero, yes that is a 0 as in nada, zip, zilch, etc. <p> <img src="images/image0_thumb4.png" alt=""/> </p> Number of Channels (so far): 26 - not 150, but 124 less....
Zeddy has released a plugin for VS 2005 (with a screen-shot on his blog) which allows you to copy and paste the code from VS.NET directly into a CS blog. It only supports C#, so if you are using VB.NET you are stuck with another method (such as copy’ing into Word and then using that - though as Zeddy also points out that has issues). See
Well I bit the bullet and upgraded the blog to run on CS 2007 RTM - yes contrary to what I had said earlier. Initial indications look good so far and I only had to make a couple of changes. There are still a few things which I have not tried like the Google CS plugin, and I suppose the CAPTCHA control will stop working. I would need to look at those over the next few days....
One of the MSDN Webcasts that I along with Shawn, Dennis, and Chris did on the following topics with some samples from the WCF Pro book. This is a Level 300 Webcast, and there is a lot of material to cover! If you would like us to do a Webcast on any specific topic from WCF let us know - we will see what we can do. Hosting Options COM+ Integration Peer to Peer Model If you are interested you can see the recording for this session....