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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 .NET Framework v3.5 is not installed. ...

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: Upload: Download: ...

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: Download Results: Upload Results: ...

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. ...

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) ...

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. While you can use this with a mobile, Google is recommending to use Google SMS instead from a Mobile. ...

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 .Text) so I cannot articulate some of the under-the-cover fixes. Read up all the details here . ...

“…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. Steps to install this is fairly straight forward and you don’t need to modify any of the skin files - which makes life quite easy! Jose Fco Bonnin also has released a Captcha control which I have not tried out so cannot comment first hand. ...

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. ...

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.

In case you have not been following the news lately, NASA and Stanford University’s joint effort - Gravity Probe B after 17-odd months of launch and collecting data has proved one of the two not-as-yet-proven aspect’s of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Simply put (and it will be simple as I only have a fairly basic grasp on Physics - it was one of my favorite subjects in School, but that was many moons ago 😄, Isaac Newton believed (as shown by NASA’s image below) that both time and space were fixed entities and gravity was the force which acted between the object. So, in Newton’s world a perfect gyroscope orbiting the Earth would remain forever fixed to relative space. ...

Don’t get me wrong - I love Italy - the country (whatever little I have seen), the food, the language, the people but all this is also true for India

RC1 for Community Server 2007 (the thing that runs this blog) is available now and you can get it from here . If all goes well then the RTM version is supposed to come out on the 16th of this month - in other words in four days. I will wait for the RTM before I try and update the blog to the new bits. ...

Cross posting from Karan - click on the image below to see it in full size.