The Raleigh Code Camp is coming this weekend and you don’t want to miss out.

Details:

ECPI College of Technology
4101 Doie Cope Rd.
Raleigh, NC 27613-7387

Directions:

Http://maps.google.com/....

Information Link:

http://www.ecpi.edu/

Location: ECPI

Here are just some of the great sessions you can see there:

Session Titles

• Ocean
• Introduction to Entity Framework
• Wildcard Searches in SharePoint
• SSIS
• Much Ado About the DLR
• Essential Web Services
• LINQ to SQL
• Getting Down and Dirty with SharePoint Branding
• Building Reports in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008
• An Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, or Stop Writing CRUD
• Design Principles
• Something Silverlight
• Automation with MSBuild 3.5 and Team Build 2008
• Spice Up User Experience With Silverlight 2.0
• HttpRuntime.Cache Management and Thread Safety
• Back to the Basics: Developing SharePoint Features
• Care and Feeding of TempDB
• Bending the Asp.Net MVC to do Your Bidding, the Virtues of Extensibility 
• Creating Custom Templatable Controls in Silverlight
• 0wn Your Phone
• Integration SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services with SharePoint
• Turning the Ship: Getting a Traditional Organization to Adopt Agile Practices
• SOA: Building the Arch
• Introduction to the Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET
• Extending the mobile experience for your existing website
• Integrating ASP.NET Dynamic Data into Existing Web Applications & Websites
• Using WaTiN for GUI based testing in Visual Studio
• Implementing Microsoft Virtual Earth in Your ASP.NET Applications
• Mixing Static and Dynamic .NET Languages
• XNA Game Studio 3.0
• Microsoft and Ruby Sittin' In a Tree
• Integrate ASP.NET 2.0 application (FBA Management) with SharePoint 2007

You’ve probably figured out by now that I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts. And you probably know that I present at a lot of user groups and code camp, sometimes I even present on keyboard shortcuts. Recently I learned about some PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts that I didn’t already know and I decided to share them with my readers, since many of you also use PowerPoint to do your presentations.

Here are what I consider the “Top 10 PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts”:

Built-in PowerPoint Slide Show Cheat Sheet (Press F1 during Slide Show)

Pretty cool tip I learned about today on Digital Inspiration.

Vista SP1 is a BIG update, and it does not remove any of the files it replaces. This is because Vista SP1 allows you to uninstall Vista SP1, and rollback to your previous version of Vista. Unless you are Chuck Norris, I have a feeling you aren’t going to even consider this. So why not reclaim this 800+ megabytes worth of hard drive space?

Windows Vista SP1 Clean Up Tool

Go to the command prompt, and simply enter the following: vsp1cln.exe. It is fast, and I’ve tried it on several machines so far.

Here’s the official Microsoft TechNet documentation

Windows Vista SP1 File Removal tool (Vsp1cln.exe). Vsp1cln.exe is an optional tool that you can run after you install SP1. This tool removes older versions of components that have been updated in SP1, which are stored during the installation in case you need to uninstall SP1 later. Saving these older components increases the amount of disk space that is used. Typically, you should run Vsp1cln.exe if you want to reclaim this disk space after applying SP1 and if you will not need to uninstall SP1. Note, however, that you cannot uninstall SP1 after you run this tool. You can use this tool both online and offline, but you must have SP1 installed and you must use the correct version of the tool. If you are running this file on an offline image, you should use the Vsp1cln.exe included in the Windows OPK or AIK. However, if you are running this file online (on a computer that you are booted into), you should use the Vsp1cln.exe file located at %windir%\system32\vsp1cln.exe.

Hope it helps!

One of the things I really like about working for ACS Technologies is we create software solutions for almost every OS platform out there. We are mostly a Microsoft shop, which is a perfect fit for me, but because we write solutions for churches and schools many of our products also work with other OS platforms. Really puts me in a great position to see the good and the bad for various solution platforms whether it is Windows Mobile, the iPhone, OS X, ASP .NET, and so on. I love it.

I while back I could resist picking up a used Apple PowerBook off eBay for a deal. I’ve been playing with it off an on since then and it's not all bad. One thing I have been disappointed with is until recently I haven’t been able to figure out how to connect to my laptop remotely from one of my other PC’s. Today I decided I would solve this problem.

Here’s the way I found to allow Remote Desktop Administration of an Apple from a PC:

Apple PC

Go to System Preferences, then open Sharing, in the Internet & Network section.

Enable Screen Sharing, and click Computer Settings…, make sure to enable “VNC viewers may control screen with password: ********”, and to assign a strong password. This is what will actually allow you to connect to your Apple PC.

Go to System Preferences, then open Network, in the Internet & Network section.

Locate your IP Address, probably want to either the Ethernet one or the AirPort one. You’ll use this to find your Apple PC.

Windows PC

You’ll need to download a VNC client, I recommend TightVNC, it is free, proven, and I like how it works. After that just run your VNC client, use your Apple PC IP address from above, along with your password from above and your golden.

If you have used many Microsoft Office products you are probably familiar with the Clipboard Ring concept. Basically it allows the clipboard to contain multiple items, and when you use the keyboard shortcut you cycle back through previous items.

The Clipboard Ring is to a developer’s code what a Painter’s Palette is to the painter’s paint. It is a any easy way to access recently used items. This is a common need when writing code for any application. There are lots of times you are juggling two or three key pieces of code, and it is very nice to have quick access to them. It’s almost like having real-time IntelliSense.

Cycle Clipboard Ring

Cltr – Shift - V

Note: The image to the right will take you to a full size image if you want to see this in more detail.

Feedback:

Alright, we’ve a lot of new reader submitted tips! Thanks guys. I quite a bit behind in score now. I’ll have to come up with a way to weight the scores to give me a chance now.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

It is Independence Day today in the US, and we’re in Washington, D.C. to see us some awesome fireworks!

Since today is July, 4th, and we are on Day 4 I figured it would be good to do a VSTT that dealt with numbers. The best one I know is how to display line numbers in Visual Studio:

Display Line Numbers:

Go to the Tools menu, then click on the Options… menu item. Find the Text Editor item in the list on the left. Then I recommend choosing All Languages. Next find and check the Line Numbers checkbox in the Display section on the right.

The image to the right will take you to a full size image if you want to see this in more detail.

Feedback:

Alright, we’ve more reader submitted tips.  Thanks guys. Yeah, we are now tied. score: Me 4 / Readers 4.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

Oh, the humanity! How I hate it when I get “The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections.”

Page Brooks and I were just talking about how it only happens to you when you are in a bit of a hurry, and need to get something done ASAP. You are allowed two remote terminal sessions.

The problem usually isn’t that there are too many people logged in. The problem is almost always that people disconnected from their without ending their session or logging out. So terminal services thinks the connection is still active, but just idle.

One option is to use the Computer Management Console, and choose Action, Connect to another computer…, Services and Applications, and then go to Terminal Services Manager and log off or disconnect the sessions.

I found out about a more powerful command line version that was able to work for me. I think the above didn’t work because our servers are virtualized.

1. run the following from a command prompt: query session /server:servername
2. Next run the following: reset session [ID] /server:servername

Ah, it just works. So much better now. Me and our servers are friends again.

We only have one more day left in our 30 days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications]. Where do we go from here?

I’m really happy with the 30 Days of .NET so I do think I will continue that in one format or another for some time. It’s been a blast. And everyone knows my passion for Windows Mobile programming so we keep finding way to work that in there as well.

I haven’t quite decided what I’ll do for next month but I’m sure it’ll only get better as we move forward.

There have been a lot of request for applications that haven’t made it on deck yet, and obviously they aren’t all going to get done tomorrow. But I think I’ll be able to throw in some Bonus Day of .NET or Return of Day of .NET and knock some of them out over time.

My goal is to take all the existing content and clean it up some and make more through and detailed learning materials to really help beginners take off with Windows Mobile.

Hope you’ll join me on the road ahead…

You know sometime someone tells you about something, and you can tell there is a whole lot more to it than they are telling you about. Well, signature capture for Windows Mobile is one of those things. It’s really not bad today and you can do it in one sitting easily now. But there was a time, when if your life depending on it you might be able to get it right. At least we have managed code now. A few of us attempted to do this feat in embedded Visual Basic years ago and I’m surprised it didn’t cost us our sanity. Oh the humanity…

You could do it you just had to copy each color pixel by pixel and save it into a bitmap, and that was a challenge too. And GetPixel() had to be the slowest function call ever. It took at least a second. No way, you were going to give someone a full screen to put there signature.

That was then, this is now…

Mobile Signature

Office 2007 might have 2007 features in it. And it works for Office 2007, well to a point. But with Windows Mobile applications less is more. Don’t get me wrong I really do think Mobile Signature would make a great feature in a more complete application. But as far as the feature of taking a signature on a mobile device this is a great approach.

Also note that Mobile Signature could be easily adapted into a drawing application, and so on, especially for kids.

Let’s talk about UI first. Notice how much space is dedicated to taking the user’s signature. This is important; I’ve seen almost the reverse before and that just isn’t very usable. I took a little extra time and care to make sure all control had a black border around them,expect the black color square. It has a gray border.

One thing to note is a wanted the user to be able to tell what color they would be writing in without having to draw on the screen. This is accomplished by having the borders around the active color flash on and off. This is a great visual effect that was easy to implement with a timer. We track the currently active color in a form level variable, and on the timer tick event, which happens every 500 ms, we toggle the visibility of the border around the active color. Works great! Check it out!

The menu is another area that is simple but you can learn from it. Save is very important to us, so it is prominent and has it own hardware button that can cause it to occur. On the menu we have an option for clearing the screen, showing the about form, and exiting the application. But we also have a menu option to change the size of the line we are drawing with. It can be set from any of the following: 1 pixel, 3 pixels, 5 pixels.

The core of the application is the code that actually draws the lines on the screen. Here it is:

   1: private void pictureBox_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:     if (pen.Color != signatureColor)

   4:         pen = new Pen(signatureColor);

   5:  

   6:     if (pen.Width != width)

   7:         pen.Width = width;

   8:  

   9:     x1 = x2;

  10:     y1 = y2;

  11:     x2 = e.X;

  12:     y2 = e.Y;

  13:  

  14:     if (x1 == -1 && y1 == -1)

  15:         return;

  16:  

  17:     pictureBoxSignature.CreateGraphics().DrawLine(pen, x1, y1, x2, y2);

  18: }

One area of code that is worth checking out is the code to save the bitmap of the signature. It’s pretty advanced and powerful.

   1: // P/Invoke declaration

   2: [DllImport("coredll.dll")]

   3: public static extern int BitBlt(IntPtr hdcDest, int nXDest, int nYDest, int nWidth, int nHeight, IntPtr hdcSrc, int nXSrc, int nYSrc, uint dwRop);

   4:  

   5: const int SRCCOPY = 0x00CC0020;

   6:  

   7: private void Save(string filename, Graphics gx, Rectangle rect)

   8: {

   9:     Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(rect.Width, rect.Height);

  10:     // Create compatible graphics

  11:     Graphics gxComp = Graphics.FromImage(bmp);

  12:     // Blit the image data

  13:     BitBlt(gxComp.GetHdc(), 0, 0, rect.Width, rect.Height, gx.GetHdc(), rect.Left, rect.Top, SRCCOPY);

  14:     bmp.Save(filename, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Bmp);

  15:     // Cleanup

  16:     bmp.Dispose();

  17:     gxComp.Dispose();

  18: }

Everything else is pretty straight forward, but check it out and see what you think!

Download executable: mobileSignature.cab

Download Source Code: mobileSignature.zip

Feedback

So, how do you guys feel about line of business applications? Do you want more days that focus on line of business application topics? or less? Let me know! :D Tomorrow will be here before you know it.

We have discussed the ability to assign an Windows Mobile application we have created to a device's hardware button. Once with our day two application, Bluetooth Manager, and once again with our day eight application, Rotate Me.

By default my device's buttons are configured as follows: "Button 1" starts "Internet Explorer", "Button 2" starts "Messaging", "Button 3" starts the "<Start Menu>", "Button 4" starts "<OK/Close>", and finally "Button 5" starts the "<Camera>". If you look at the screenshots below, you'll noticed I changed "Button 2" to start the "Rotate Me" application instead. This is the "as good as it gets" way to start an application; doesn't get better than one button press access.

Just in case everyone isn't aware of the feature in Windows Mobile, I've posted the steps here:

First click the "<Start Menu>", now click on "Settings" menu item, next click on the "Buttons" icon under the "Personal" tab, finally select a button and assign it a program. It's that easy.

This is my favorite application so far. The concept is awesome. It takes the idea of a "sound effect keychain", and make it into a fully open and extensible mobile application.

Mobile FX

So if you are following me, then you know that if you press the birds button you'll hear a birds sound effect, and if you press the bomb button your hear a bomb sound effect, and son on down the list.

This application tries to be as much about form as it is function. All of the icon graphics are created with Axialis IconWorkshop. (Thanks for the heads up, Jamey!) It makes making really great icons a snap using its Image Object Packs. (See the image to the right for a small sample.)

What I really like about this application is there is the possibility of creating add-in sound packages. I'll discuss this more in a follow up blog posting to come soon. [If there is interest? Let me know.]

The way the application works is it looks for an XML file that tells it where each of its possible icons are and where the sound files for each icon are located as well. If you want to change the order of the icons on the screen just change the order of the "buttons" in the XML configuration file.

I haven't completed the extensibility point for others to add there own icons and sounds but that is a small enhancement which I'll do shortly.

Download executable: mobileFX.cab

Download Source Code: passwordGen.zip

Feedback:

How interested are you guys in the follow up article? Is this something you would enjoy? Would you like a second pack of sounds? Is this application something you would use? Would you create a sound pack of your own?

I had a couple submissions for ideas to use in today's application, but decided I would use one of my own. Friday night and all: girlfriends like to go out on Friday evenings, we need to go shopping, and later we want to watch a little TV together, so I didn't feel tonight was the best night for a big project.

My idea is a simple yet very useful application for generating random passwords.

Pocket PasswordGen

Nothing too fancy here. It's a good looking application, but it didn't take much to make it so. Just clean layout and simple design. I did add a horizontal ruler line between the inputs and the outputs. It is actually two panels set to 1 pixel high each with ones back color set to light blue and the other pure white. The form's background is just a little off-white to add some warmth, but it is hard to tell directly.

The application engine is also clean and simple. There is a password class that has properties for each of the options, and there are two methods: Generate, and ConvertToPhonetic.

I have four character groups:

     static string  lowerCase = @"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwyxz";
     static string upperCase = @"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWYXZ";
     static string numbers = @"0123456789";
     static string punctuation = @"~!@#$%^&*()-+='"",.?";

Based on options the user chooses a character list is created with all possible characters for the user's password.

Next I Generate PasswordLength worth's of characters for the password.

This is very important. I use RNGCryptoServiceProvider to generate a random seed number for the random number generator. We want real random numbers, not wishy-washy random numbers. This is a good source for how to use Crypto providers to make a password generator.

Pretty cool code, so check it out if you haven't ever generated random numbers before.

I pulled the Phonetic Alphabet off Wikipedia and made it into a generic dictionary object.

Lastly, I added a menu item that allow users to copy the password to their clipboard. I had to write some code to copy text into the clipboard. This is the best code I could find for doing so.

BTW, there is a bug in the above screenshot. Fixed in the current release. Can you see it? It's subtle. It has to do with the handle the last character. Good luck finding it.

Download executable: passwordGen.cab

Download Source Code: passwordGen.zip

Feedback

Nothing but positive feedback so far. I really appreciate. It seems we are off to a good start. Still I have another 24 days left, and only a handful of ideas I really like. So don't keep that good idea to yourself. One comment on the blog and you might have yourself your first Windows Mobile custom application.

http://www.tcspromo.com/developercontest/

You could WIN $25,000 and a Mobile Game Developer Contract.

The AT&T Developer Program, devCentral, has partnered with Windows Mobile, HTC and mobile game distributor, I-play, to bring you the AT&T Game Development Contest for Windows Mobile. Show us what you've got and have the chance to win $25,000 cash and a distribution contract. Other prizes include $5,000 cash for runners-up.

Key Dates

• Deadline for submission: July 31st, 2008, 12 am (EST)
• Winner announcement at CTIA in San Francisco: September 10-12, 2008

PRIZES:

ONE (1) GRAND PRIZE: The Grand Prize Winner will receive:

a. the opportunity for a mobile game distribution contract with I-play on I-play's standard terms (subject to the game meeting I-play's quality assurance requirements; any distribution is subject to the conclusion of a standard publishing and distribution agreement between I-play and grand prize winner);

b. the opportunity for placement (as determined by Sponsor) of game on the games portal on AT&T Media Mall, subject to Sponsor's determination of appropriateness in its discretion;

c. $25,000 (US);

d. a trip for winner and guest to the CTIA conference in San Francisco (September 10-12, 2008);

e. the announcement and recognition of Grand Prize Winner at the CTIA conference;

f. passes for winner and guest to PDC;

g. security and certification signing waivers;

h. an HTC Mobile Phone

The total approximate retail value ("ARV") of Grand Prize is $30,000, depending on location of winner's residence, departure times and any airfare fluctuations.

TWO (2) FINALIST PRIZES: The remaining two (2) finalists will each receive:

a. $5,000 (US);

b. a trip for runner-up and guest to the CTIA in San Francisco (September 10-12, 2008);

c. passes for runner-up and guest to PDC;

d. security and certification signing waivers;

e. an HTC Mobile Phone

The ARV of each Finalist Prize is $10,000, depending on location of winner's residence, departure times and any airfare fluctuations.

Trip for Grand Prize Winner and each Finalist Prize consists of: round-trip, economy-class air transportation for two (2) between the major airport with regularly scheduled flights closest to the winner's permanent residence (as determined by Sponsor in its sole discretion) and San Francisco, CA; (b) two (2) nights standard hotel accommodations (one double occupancy room and room tax only) in San Francisco area; (c) ground transportation to/from hotel and airport. Ground transportation may be provided in lieu of air travel if winner resides within 100 miles of San Francisco, CA. If winner is a resident of a jurisdiction that deems him/her to be a minor, parent/legal guardian must travel as the allotted guest. If guest is a resident of a jurisdiction that deems him/her to be a minor, he/she must be accompanied by his/her parent/legal guardian, and such person must pay his/her own expenses unless he or she is the winner. Winner and guest must travel on same itinerary on dates to be designated by Sponsor. All incidental expenses and taxes not specified herein will be the sole responsibility of the winner and his/her travel companion, including without limitation other ground transportation, food, and beverages. Winner and guest will be responsible for all applicable travel and other insurance, all applicable airport charges including without limitation, any excess baggage charges, airport taxes, and tickets are not transferable, refundable or redeemable. Sponsor will not replace any lost or stolen tickets, travel vouchers or certificates. Once booked, no change, extension, or substitution of trip dates is permitted, except by Sponsor at its sole discretion. If the CTIA conference is postponed or canceled, remainder of prize will be awarded as total prize.

Ten (10) SEMI-FINALIST PRIZES:

a. Entry into Microsoft WM Beta Developer Program;

b. WM Certification Waivers

The ARV of each Semi-Finalist Prize is $500.

It's almost that time. What time is it you ask? Well, it's only 4 days, 02 hours, 20 minutes, and 22 seconds left until this year's Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Global Summit.

And the best part, at least for me :D, is that'll I'll be going this year. I can't wait to meet all the other MVP's, and to get to hang out with some of my developer friends that I don't get to see nearly enough.

This year's conference looks to be really exciting. I'm expecting some big news to come out of Redmond next week.

And I was able to find a great "utility" to help me keep track of when the conference starts: :D

Windows Vista "MVP Global Summit Countdown" Sidebar Gadget

About a dozen of us are getting up early tomorrow, leaving at 4:30am, to ride up to Charlotte, NC to attend the Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008 launch event there.

Not only do you get to attend a great event hosted by Microsoft for free. But you'll also get to take home a promotional kit with versions of all three products.

You should definitely make a point of attending one of the launch events in your area!

http://www.heroeshappenhere.com/

I'll try and twitter updates from the event live tomorrow: http://twitter.com/CJCraft

Due to the scheduling conflict with the Heroes Happen Here Event in Charlotte, the April PDANUG Event has been moved to April 29th, 2008.  More details to follow.  See you all in Charlotte tomorrow!

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
Chris Reeder, Chris Craft, and Page Brooks
Topic: SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 (Respectively)

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group.

Chris Reeder, Chris Craft, and Page Brooks will be presenting on the latest exciting new products from Microsoft.  First, Chris Reeder will give us a run down on a few cool features in SQL Server 2008.  Next, Chris Craft will take us on a tour of some excellent new features in Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7).  Page Brooks will finish off the presentation with a few cool tips and tricks in Visual Studio 2008.

Please click the link below to register.  We use this information to determine how much food to buy!

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Free Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Presentations

"The  Census Bureau will tell a House panel today that it will drop plans to use handheld computers to help count Americans for the 2010 census, increasing the cost for the decennial census by as much as $3 billion, according to testimony the Commerce Department secretary plans to give this afternoon."

[That means the cost increased by around $8/person to count, and classify, each of us with a paper-based census.]

HTC Census Phone Specifications:

• Dual-band CDMA/EV-DO device
• WiFi; Phone Connector; miniUSB; Bluetooth
• No microphone or speakerphone built-in
• 6.1 x 3.1 x 1.4 inches (154 x 79 x 29 mm); 12.3 oz (350 g)
• QVGA touch display (240x320); 3.5 Inches
• Windows Mobile 5 OS for PPC
• Intel Bulverde 416MHz processor
• GPS with Sirf Star III chip [neat to way to verify and monitor census enumerators, mashups possibilities would have been awesome]
• SD slot for memory
• Fingerprint reader [I'm guessing this is for data security?]
• Data connection only device [device does not allow voice calls, only data transmissions]

How Much is a Billion? [from about.com]

• If we wanted to pay down a billion dollars of the US debt, paying one dollar a second, it would take 31 years, 259 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds.
• A tightly-packed stack of new $1,000 bills totaling $1 billion would be 63 miles high. In comparison, jet planes fly at 30,000 - 40,000 feet (5.7 - 7.7 miles high).
• About a billion minutes ago, the Roman Empire was in full swing. (One billion minutes is about 1,900 years.)
• About a billion hours ago, we were living in the Stone Age. (One billion hours is about 114,000 years.)
• About a billion months ago, dinosaurs walked the earth. (One billion months is about 82 million years.)
• A billion inches is 15,783 miles, more than halfway around the earth (circumference).
• The earth is about 8,000 miles wide (diameter), and the sun is about 800,000 miles wide, not quite a million.

Total cost of the 2010 census to between $13.7 billion and $14.5 billion [from nextgen.com]

"Gutierrez said reverting to a paper-based census, in addition to other costs not associated with the handhelds, is expected to increase the cost of the 2010 census to between $2.2 billion and $3 billion through fiscal year 2013. That would bring the total cost of the 2010 census to between $13.7 billion and $14.5 billion. He said the bureau would need an increase of $160 million to $230 million for fiscal 2008 to cover costs associated with returning to paper, with an additional $600 million to $700 million for fiscal 2009. Gutierrez added that the majority of the cost increases would occur in 2010."

[So it actually costs somewhere around $37/person to count and classify each of us, or around 7 hours of minimum-wage labor.]

[It looks like the made the right choices: they tested years in advance, and when they knew they couldn't add the new 400 requirements, and meet their deadline. So they decided stopped the project. There are worse endings a project can have.]

[I wonder if the "Real ID Act" is meant to handle the Census as well.]

[I was pretty excited when I first heard about this projects goal of mobilizing the US Census, especially when I learned it would be done using Windows Mobile devices. I'm not surprised the project was ended considering the development team was faced with 400 new requirements this late in the game, with an already booked schedule. The US Census is used for many, many demographic and statistical tasks. We do a lot more than simple count the number of Americans. And I think that is the challenge, that stopped the project from making it to the finish line. Big government, requires big software, which is hard to do on small devices.]

Growing up I always loved Mad Magazine, and one of my favorite parts were all the Mad Fold-Ins, in the back of the magazine, that Al Jaffee created.

The New York Times has a special online article that has many interactive Mad Magazine Fold-Ins on topics ranging from Presidents, War and the Military, Pop Culture,  to Sports.

Fold-Ins, Past and Present - The New York Times

During my "Welcome to the World of Windows Mobile" presentation at the Atlanta Code Camp 2008 I used Remote Display for Windows CE to allow the attendees to see my device, on my desktop, on the presentation screen. After my talk was over, a few people from the audience approached me, and asked me how I was able to run Remote Display on Vista, and connect with it to my Windows Mobile 6 device.

They told me they had tried to do the same thing, but all they ever got was a "the OS or CPU of this device is unknown to this application" error. I explained that this wasn't due to Vista, but actually was caused by a missing file on most newer Windows Mobile devices.

In order to use Remote Display the first thing you will need to do is download the Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys, and install the ActiveSync Remote Display application.

Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys

ActiveSync Remote Display - Display Pocket PC applications on your desktop or laptop without needing any device side configuration.

Work Around:

Copy the cerdisp2.exe file from the desktop's "\Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys\ActiveSync_Remote_Display\Devices\wce400\armv4\" folder, and paste it into the device's "\windows" folder of your Windows Mobile device.

By default, Outlook does not show holidays on the calendar. If you would like to have holidays show in Outlook 2007, you can do the following quick steps:

1. Open Outlook 2007.
2. From the tools menu, click Options.
3. Click the Calendar Options... button.
4. Click the Add Holidays... button.
5. Place a check beside any appropriate locations.
6. Click OK.
7. Click OK to close the Calendar Options dialog box.
8. Click OK to close the Options dialog box.

Ars Technica has a great article on something new developing at Yahoo.

From the sound of it, Yahoo Mobile Developer Platform may be a lot like what many are expecting from Apple's iPhone SDK. Developers will be able to write a single mini-application that will be made available through Yahoo's Widget Gallery, where users can cherry-pick their favorite widgets to use on their phones. There are already a handful of widgets available from big names like MySpace, MTV, and eBay, and Yahoo said that a full SDK with guidelines would be available "soon."

Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform

Yahoo! Mobile Developer Home

Yahoo! Mobile Developer Blog

Hopefully this will encourage Microsoft to release SideShow for Windows Mobile, before someone else does it first.

What a cool idea. I remember before built in GPS were common in devices, you could pick up a Bluetooth GPS device and use it just the same.

Technically with WiFi and high-speed cellular connections you could still do this sort of thing with drives on remote machines, but sometimes you really need additional "local" hardware storage.

msmobiles.com has a good write up of the device here.

The Seagate® D.A.V.E.™ (Digital Audio Video Experience) platform delivers the best way to move, store and connect your digital life, wirelessly connecting mobile devices with up to 60 GB of extra storage. It’s the best way for mobile entertainment device manufacturers and mobile network providers to help their consumers unify content management.

You know the more I think about it, the Seagate D.A.V.E. is missing something... I'm just not sure what... Maybe this technology is just too good, maybe it is too much...

"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two."

If you want a solid Windows Mobile RSS application, NewsGator Go! is one of the best, and now it is FREE!

NewsGator Go! gives you the ability to track and manage all your RSS content on your mobile device. Get news, sports, entertainment and other information delivered to your Blackberry, Java Mobile Smartphone or PDA, and Windows Mobile Smartphone or PDA.

Windows Mobile: Free Download

Whether you are standing in line at a coffee shop or taking a stroll around the park, with NewsGator Go! you don't need to feel left out when the latest news breaks!

• Get your news and information while on the go
• Keep your mobile in sync with all NewsGator products
• Email interesting articles to friends or co-workers
• (Windows Mobile only) Play streaming video and audio

NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile works on Windows Mobile version 5 or 6.

90 Artists Remix Stan Lee's Best Characters

That stained glass Spiderman is totally sweet! And magneto with duckies. That would be a good "Come up with the best story for this 'situation' contest".

"Magneto vs. The Duckies" or "No More Spandex"

Oh no! The evil Magneto has kidnapped the President's...   daughters'...   three little duckies: Huey, Dewey and Louie and has forced them to fight him to the death!

The duckies only chance was if someone could raise the $3,014,170,389,176,410 ransom Magneto demanded for their safe return. Unfortunately for the triplets, the president was a little short after spending over $611.5 billion.

Desperate Huey decided to contact their great uncle, who even though a bit of a Scrooge, surely wouldn't want to see his three grand-nephews end up on Magneto's dinner table. Their uncle was quite shocked, and embarrassed after having told most of the world that he was worth, "one multiplujillion, nine obsquatumatillion, six hundred twenty-three dollars and sixty-two cents", and telling his nephews that it was more like "five multiplujillion, nine impossibidillion, seven fantasticatrillion dollars and sixteen cents", he didn't have the heart to tell Huey now that it was really more like $137 billion.

Instead he chooses to tell them about how when he was their age he had to defeat villains far worse than Magento... every day... on the way to school... and uphill both ways... [Click! Huey hangs up]

Louie the youngest of the twins, decides to use a trick that their brother Phooey would always use when he got in trouble: cuteness...

Immediately Louie falls back into the curl of Magneto's right arm and stares back up at his "favorite person in the whole wide world". At first, Huey and Dewey think Louie must have lost his friggin' mind, but then they too remember their forgotten brother, and join Louie in his mastermind scheme. Dewey decides the only thing cuter than a little yellow fluffy duckie, is a sleeping little yellow fluffy duckie. He then hops up on Magneto's shoulder and begins to purr. Why? Because it is extra cute!

Huey, determined not to be outdone by his younger brothers, recognizes that Magneto has some kind of helmet fetish, and decides that certainly Magneto would appreciate him being his own personal hood ornament.

Right then, Magneto's heart grew three sizes larger, and he thought to himself, "How Cute!" He then proceeded to explode causing reality to turn purple, and time to stop.

[The End]

 

Your Turn

Don't worry your safe from my humor, with the entire Internet between you and me, you shouldn't suffer any long term effects. But if you liked, or didn't like, or think you can do better I'd love to hear your version. Feel free to post as a comment or link back from your blog. You could pick another picture as well, if you like.

Users

Web Sites

Microsoft Windows Mobile Home

Windows Mobile Owners Circle

Windows Mobile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows Mobile Community Sites

PDAdb.net - Comprehensive Database of PDA, PDA Phone, PNA & Smartphone Specifications

Pocket PC Thoughts

msmobiles.com - All about Windows Mobile phones  Microsoft Smartphone , Pocket PC and more

Best Sites for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs, Handheld PCs, and Smartphones

Newsgroup: microsoft.public.pocketpc

Handango Mobile Software

PocketGamer

PocketGear

Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine

Pocket PC FAQ - Pocket PC, Handheld PC and Windows CE FAQs, Reviews, Commentary, etc!

Pocket PC Addict - Pocket PC Forum, Accessories, News, Hacks

Windows Mobile News, Reviews, and Opinion

Developers

Web Sites

.NET Compact Framework Developer Center

"How Do I?" Videos for Devices

Pocket PC Developer Network

OpenNETCF Community

Channel9 - Windows Mobile Developers Wiki

Newsgroup: microsoft.public.pocketpc.developer

Newsgroup: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.compactframework

Blogs

Compact Framework Team Blog

Mike Zintel

David Kline

Roman Batoukov

Steven Pratschner

Nazim Lala

Anthony Wong

Sandeep Prabhakar

Mark Ihimoyan

Scott Holden

Ryan Chapman

Richard Greenberg

Mark Prentice

Neil Cowburn

Alex Feinman

Chris Tacke

Peter Foot

Daniel Moth

Maarten Struys

Pete Vickers

Jim Wilson

Alex Yakhnin

Chris Craft

Jason Langridge

Jon Box

Jonathan Wells

Nino Benvenuti

Don Sorcinelli

If you have ever used Total Commander for Windows then you know how fast it is. It gives the command prompt a run for its money.

I was looking around the other day, and notice there is a version for Windows Mobile and it is FREE. Grab it here.

Main features:

• Copy, Move whole subdirectories
• In place rename, create directories
• Delete (no recycle bin)
• Zip and unzip
• Properties dialog, change attributes
• Built-in text editor
• Search function (also for text)
• Select/unselect groups of files
• Select with [Sel] button
• FTP client
• Registry editor
• LAN access
• Send/Receive via Infrared (OBEX)
• Brief, full and large icons mode
• Single or two file window mode
• Option to hide all files in ROM
• Directory hot list as in Total Commander
• Directory history through drop down list
• Tree view
• Configurable button bar
• Simple help function
• Supported languages: English, German, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Swedish

Today a friend of mine called me, and asked me to help him with a problem he was having.

I soon learned that he has an ASP.NET application set up on Windows Server 2003, but he couldn't get the application to load in the browser. Anytime he tried it would always give him a "404 File Not Found" error.

We checked all the usual suspects: IIS running, ASP.NET installed, Web site and virtual directory set up and configured correctly, permissions, checked for a App_Offline.htm file, and so on.

Everything looked good, and we still couldn't see the page. I thought this was odd, we should be seeing something. I then decided to try viewing some static items like images, and some html pages that we in the Web site as well. Wow, these would actually come through fine every time. For some reason, ASP.NET just didn't like us.

I have to admit, I didn't see the answer at this point and I turned to the Web. It took some considerable search-fu, but after a little while I was able to find the source of our troubles.

By default Windows Server 2003 has a security policy enabled that prevents Active Server Pages from running.

Here's all you need to do if you ever run into this:

Open IIS manager, and check Web Service Extension folder, make sure ASP.NET extension is listed and marked as "Allowed".

I couldn't believe it, on Christmas Eve 2007 my XBox 360 came down with the "Red Ring of Death". I was a little worried at first, because I have had my XBox 360 for well over a year now and I didn't think it was still covered under warranty. I checked and repairs would cost around $150, but then I found out that I wouldn't be charged anything since Microsoft has extended the warranty for up to three years.

What was really cool is the return process can all be done online: http://www.xbox.com/support/contact.

I choose this option and received my free return shipping box today, in about a week even with the holidays, and the weekend. All in all, so far, it hasn't been a bad experience at all.

So tomorrow I'll mail my XBox 360 back to Microsoft and hopefully soon I shall see her again, safe and sound and ready for me to unlock the Dead Rising Zombie Genocider Achievement.

Zombie Genocider (20)- TYPE: 1 Play REQ: Defeat at least 53,594 zombies. [NOTE: The population of Willamette, Colorado before the zombie outbreak was 53,594.]

Another year and another 365 days, actually another 366 days since 2008 is a leap year.

Cool Fact:

February 2008 has five Fridays - it starts and ends on a Friday. Between 1904 and 2096, leap years with same day of week for each date repeat every 28 years which means that the last time February had 5 Fridays was in 1980 and next time will be in 2036.

Hehe, for a moment there, I thought I might actually get the scoop on this one. Right up until I read Neil Cowburn's blog.

Anyway, The Architecture Journal has put out a special edition on Mobile Architecture.

There's one article in particular that stands out as a definite must read:

Test-Driven Development and Continuous Integration for Mobile Applications

Learn how test-driven development and continuous integration can help increase the reliability of applications, and how both approaches work for mobile applications

Daniel Moth mentioned Chris William's post "my 21 thoughts on starting a user group".

Chris did an excellent job listing what it takes to start a user group.

I wish Page Brooks, Chris Reeder, and I had this list when we decided to start PDANUG. Fortunately, I think we were able to learn the ropes quickly.

Here are a few tips and tricks we have learned over the years that I think have made all the difference:

1. Check Lists:
   • There are a ton of things to track, remember, and jungle to make each and every user group event a success.
   • It's a good idea to have a To Bring Check List and a To Do Check List.
   • To Bring Check List covers things like plates, napkins, ice, cups, sign in sheets, evaluations, related SWAG, and so on...
   • To Do Check List handles the details like reminders, announcements, notifications, Web site updates, and so on...
   • Without the check list, inevitably when the user group event rolls around everyone will be busy and someone will forget something.
2. Online Community:
   • Have a Web site for the user group. I recommend keeping it simple and using something like DotNetNuke here. Sure, you could code it yourself, or you could "stand on the shoulders of giants".
   • Have a Blog for the user group, and take advantage of RSS feeds for group notification of events. We like DasBlog.
   • Send Email Notifications and Reminders. It is easy for members to lose track of when events are happening. We try to remind a week in advance and either the day before of the day of the event.
   • Event Registration. There are a lot of great sites that both promote local events and help manage them. We are big fans of Eventbrite.
3. Local Community:
   • Recruit: Get together with all your friends and invite them to your user group. Also make sure they invite all their friends as well.
   • Geek Lunches: Low commitment opportunities for people to have a "taste" of what the user group meetings will be like.
   • Colleges and Universities: Tons of possible members, but if events are held off campus it will really effect student turnout.
     • Build relationships with the professors and the university itself. Great opportunity for everyone to work together.
   • Local Media. Sometimes local newspapers will list events for non-profits, and local public access stations may as well.
   • Speakers Wanted: Make sure to encourage members to present. Also, consider having "Open Mic Nights" where anyone can speak on anything for 5-15 minutes. Lots of fun and low commitment.
4. Local User Groups:
   • Build relationships with all the local user groups and user group leaders in your area. We have bunch in our area and you probably do as well. They can help you, and I'm sure they will.
   • Inform local user groups of your user group's events and activities. If your user group is have the right event or a special speaker there is a good chance people want mind making a trip out to see you.
   • Also educate your members about local events from other user groups, but also include any MSDN events, developer conferences, and related opportunities to your group.
   • If you are creating flyers for your user group consider sharing them with other groups to help busy user group leaders to promote your group's events.
   • Speaker Exchange: Instead of speaking at your user group for the Nth time consider agreeing to speak at another user group's event in exchange for someone coming and speaking at your next event.
   • Code Camps: Attend code camps and present if possible great opportunity to spread the word and recruit speakers as well.
   • Speaker Awareness: We learned there were people traveling from south of us to present in user groups north of us, and vice versa. Once we knew this we knew we had found some potential speakers.
5. Sponsorship:
   • User groups do take some small amount of money to keep going. This is just a fact of life, and at least for a while there will be the times when you just have to "eat" the costs of the pizza and soda.
   • Contact local developer shops and companies and ask them to sponsor meetings. Pizza and soda are not expensive and it is a great way for companies to get their names in front of passionate developers.
   • Donation Jar: Donations will never cover all the costs of user group events, but they can help.
   • Paid Membership: Some groups have optional paid membership that includes extra benefits.
   • Book publishers, magazine publishers, and many software companies will donate books, magazines, and software to user groups. You just have to take a few minutes and let them know you exist.

At first starting a user group may appear a little intimidating but really it is a lot more fun than work. You get to meet a ton of great people and learn so much more than you would on your own.

What do you think? Did I leave anything off? Do you have an idea that might help someone start a user group? Please share it with us all. Feel free to post a comment or even better blog about it yourself.

If you have Windows Vista Ultimate, then maybe you have experienced Windows DreamScene.

If you want to learn more about Windows DreamScenes check out my earlier article, What is a Dream? Or watch the video I made below for a taste of the feature.

Many newer Windows Mobile devices have powerful graphics capabilities. Most now have some support for Mobile DirectX.

I think the Windows Mobile user interface and user experience would be greatly enhanced by the addition of a DreamScene for Windows Mobile feature.

Right now UI and UX is one of the key purchase decisions points. The hardware is there, the software is ready, and the market is here.

This is a great feature for Windows Mobile 7, or Windows Mobile 8.

If you agree you can vote or replay on my post on the Windows Mobile Owners Circle Suggestion Box.

I couldn't resist making the trip down to Columbia, SC to experience the Columbia Enterprise Developers Guild's Visual Studio 2008 Install Fest.

Glen Gordon and Chris Eargle did a great job hosting this event.

There were a little over 25 attend, and everyone walked away with a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

During the event everyone had an opportunity to experience Halo 3 and Rock Band for the XBox 360.

And there was a special appearance by Halo's Master Chief himself. I don't have any actual pictures, but the image below is close to the experience.

Microsoft has created another awesome resource for Windows Mobile developers!

INNOVATE ON Windows Mobile located at http://www.innovateonwindowsmobile.com/.

Scott Hanselman posted an awesome music video a friend of his, Matt Hempey, did with his band, The Richter Scales. It's really, really good.

"Get the new Microsoft Office Mobile and you’ll have Office 2007 file compatibility in hand."

Pretty cool free offer from Microsoft. If you have a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone or Windows Mobile 5.0 touch screen device that came with an earlier version of Office Mobile you can upgrade to Office Mobile 6.1 for free.

Get the new Office Mobile

Ars Technica has a good write up of Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta.

Windows Live Messenger 9 Features

• Multiple Points of Presence Support: Ever been annoyed by the fact that logging onto Messenger from another computer logs you out of the first one? If so, you'll be glad to be able to log on from multiple locations at once. And so will you.
• Signature sounds: Find new and creative ways to annoy your coworkers with personalized sound signatures.
• Per-contact sounds: That one friend who keeps annoying you with constant IM's? Give them a rude sound.
• Animated .GIF display pictures: Now your friends can be forced to look at your baby while he's making silly faces.
• Links in status messages: As if there wasn't enough to click on, now URLs in the status bar can be clicked.
• Anti-spam filter: You can now report users who spam you via IM, which should do absolutely nothing to stop them in future.

Get the new Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta

If you have an XBox 360 and you have Guitar Hero 3, you can now download the Halo Theme as a playable track!

Download the "Halo Theme Mjolnir Mix" mp3 here.

Source: Rock the Halo theme free for Guitar Hero III tomorrow - Joystiq

Chris Williams has a post on his blog listing some of his best Halloween movie picks.

Here are mine:

IMDB: Army of Darkness	IMDB: Hannibal	IMDB: Shaun of the Dead

Yesterday, Saturday, October 20, 2007, I did a presentation at the Fall 2007 Charlotte Code Camp. I actually ended up doing an encore presentation due to the overwhelming number of people who showed up. My presentation was titled "Visual Studio 2005 Tips & Tricks".

Presentation Highlights:

• Tons and tons of Visual Studio 2005 keyboard shortcuts
• Windows keyboard shortcuts
• Internet Web browser shortcuts
• Many developer utilities and tools for Visual Studio 2005
• and more..

If you attended the event, or are just curious, and would like to have the slide deck I presented just use the link below:

Visual Studio 2005 Tips & Tricks Presentation PowerPoint

I really like Windows Mobile Live Search. It's a great example of how to make a truly standout application for Windows Mobile.

It looks great and it works great. And now it even has speech recognition.

The only Live Search for Windows Mobile needs now to really give TomTom a run for its money is text-to-speech support for reading out direction that need to be taken in order to reach given destination.

Maps and Navigation	Quick and Natural Interaction	Theater Show Times
Gas Prices	Traffic Conditions	Turn-by-Turn Directions

Right now you can get a free USB 2.0 2GB Flash Drive when you buy CA Internet Security Suite 2007, which includes Anti-Virus, Personal Firewall, Anti-Spyware, Anti-Spam, and more.

It comes with three licenses, and it is Vista compatible. The Flash Drive is tiny, and can be snapped into a credit card size carry case if desired. Also the flash drive is ReadyBoost capable.

It is a free after rebate deal, $59.99 before rebate at CircuitCity.com, or you can buy it off eBay for around $20-$25 after shipping.

What do you get when you combine Star Wars and the Family Guy?

Family Guy: Blue Harvest - Sunday, September 23 9/8c

Family Guy Star Wars Special Preview

Need more? How about what do you get when you combine Star Wars and the Simpsons?

Simpsons Star Wars Parody

I own quite a few of the APC UPS backup power products. And usually after two or three years, the UPS no longer work under load when the power goes out.

I tried buying replacements on eBay, but I wasn't happy with the quality of the third party products. They just didn't last as long. And I tired ordering replacements from APC, but I wasn't happy with the price. Seemed better to wait for a sale or deal to come around and just by a new UPS altogether.

Well not sure what changed but now you can find APC UPS replacement batteries on Buy.com for a fair price, IMHO.

Most desktop APC UPS solutions use the APC Replacement Battery Cartridge #2. Last I had checked, the price was $29.99 with free shipping. The price is only $19.99, if you qualify for $10 off for being a new Google checkout customer. You can search for other models too.

A nice bonus included in the price is that you get a box, and a prepaid return label so you can send your near-dead battery back to the recycling plant. So you can help protect the environment, while helping to protect your PC's.

If you are like me and have your machine set up to dual boot between multiple OS's then you are probably familiar with the following screen:

I installed Windows XP Professional, followed by Vista Ultimate 32-bit Edition. So I have the following choices:

Earlier Version of Windows

Microsoft Windows Vista

In Windows XP, if you had a dual boot set up you can rename boot items simply by modifying your boot.ini file. You'd see something like the following. And it was a simple matter to rename "Windows XP Professional" or "Windows 2000 Professional" as you saw fit.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

In Vista, the boot.ini has been deprecated and is no longer used. So how does one rename the vaguely named "Earlier Version of Windows"?

Just recently, I was exploring the PAE, or Physical Address Extension, feature in Vista and something caught my eye.

The command I used to enable my PAE was: BCDEdit /set PAE forceenable

The command I used to make sure the setting changed was: BCDEdit /enum

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier              {ntldr}
device                  partition=D:
path                    \ntldr
description             Earlier Version of Windows

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Microsoft Windows Vista
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {24f09df2-46fc-11dc-bcba-e9d5c4ed2e43}
nx                      OptIn
pae                     Default

Opportunity was knocking, and I wasn't going to miss the chance to take advantage of it.

A little deductive reasoning and I had the following command: BCDEdit /set {ntldr} description "Microsoft Windows XP"

And then I received a "The operation completed successfully." message for my effort. And after a quick reboot, all is well.

A while back I bought a new desktop. One of the things I decided to do was go with 4GB's of RAM.

It was a no brainer. Newegg.com has a great deal on RAM. You can get 2 sticks of 1GB RAM, the good stuff, here for $88.99, or $53.99 after rebate. At that price I figured it made sense to go ahead and purchase 4GB's worth.

So I installed XP Professional 32-bit, and then I installed Vista 32-bit on my new machine so could dual boot as needed.

Hmm, not quite 4GB I was hoping for. Maybe I have a bad chip? We test all chips in all slots, everything looks good. BIOS and boot screen both report 4096 MB of RAM.

Windows Vista or Windows Server 2003 may report less memory than you expect
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929580/en-us

This problem occurs because the address space is limited to 4 GB in a 32-bit hardware environment. Memory may be relocated to make room for addresses that the basic input/output system (BIOS) reserves for hardware. However, because of this limitation, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista cannot access memory that is relocated above the 4 GB boundary.

Here are a few more sources of information if you'd like to learn more:

Coding Horror: Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM [You can really learn something here.]

AddressOf.com:  Windows Vista supports 4GB of memory. Sure it does...

Chris Pirillo: 32-Bit Windows and 4GB of RAM

RunQA.com: Windows Vista 4GB RAM shows up as 3.2GB why?

It doesn't look like I have a chance, but maybe I can squeeze out a few more megabytes than 3007 if I can change some related settings.

I little research, and I learned how to enable PAE, or Physical Address Extension, on Vista here.

Alright, now BIOS says I have 3007 MB of RAM, so I've made the situation even worse.

I try setting my BIOS, called Memory Remap Feature, to move PCI memory addresses above the 4GB space, and see if that helps.

Hmm, well I have 4 GB of RAM in my BIOS now, but Vista says I only have 2047 MB of RAM so that's not what I want.

I even disabled PAE and left the Memory Remap Feature enabled just to in case, and still only gave me 2047 MB of RAM in Vista.

Before Memory (RAM): 3007 MB

After Memory (RAM): 3007 MB

That only leaves one thing to do if you want 4GB, or more RAM in Vista, or really much more than 3GB. Install Vista 64-bit Edition.

Much better, much better. (Ha, Just so you know Windows Live Writer will not install on Vista 64-Bit Edition.)

I was reading Casey Chestnut's Blog post, "Silverlight isnt everywhere", and once again I agree with Casey.

It wasn't too long ago that Casey and I were both hoping Microsoft would take advantage of the Compact Framework and move it onto the XBox 360. In this case, Microsoft recognized the same possibilities as us, and the XNA platform was created.

Microsoft Silverlight is a web-based subset of WPF. During development it was named WPF/E, which stood for "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere".

It reminds me of the joke, "Friendly fire isn't." And now we have, "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere" isn't.

Casey's right: It would be a brilliant move on Microsoft's part to port Silverlight to every platform they can including Windows Mobile, XBox 360, and MCE.

• Windows Mobile has a tough fight on its hands with the iPhone. And it does look like Silverlight will be coming to Windows Mobile in some format or another.

Silverlight for Windows Mobile YouTube video

• XBox 360 has a tough fight on its hands with the Wii. The XBox 360 does not even have a Web browse r. What gives? Wii can play Flash games. Now imagine if the XBox 360 could play Silverlight games!

Now Microsoft will use Silverlight to advertise the XBox 360 on Microsoft.com, and that is great and all, but it is so short sighted. We can do better. We are so close.

Heck, I even think Silverlight is a great opportunity for Microsoft to bring back the AutoPC platform.

I've been with Bank of America for at least a decade, quite possibly a dozen years now. Well, I've been with the same bank that whole time, just now it's name is Bank of America, previously know as NationsBank. And while sometimes I think I'm getting the shorter end of the stick, overall I've been very happy with my choice.

But lately I've been having second thoughts...

Recently, Bank of America updated that ATM in the area where I live. They can now scan deposits, whether they be checks or cash.

Here are some more details: Bank of America to Improve ATM Deposits.

To be honest, at first I was really excited as I always found it to be a chore to have to fill out a deposit slip and everything else. This new method would be more efficient, cheaper, quicker, and less error prone. Sign me up!

There's only one problem. It doesn't work. It never works for any of the checks I have. And on all the ATM's I've tried if the machine can't OCR the check's information then it doesn't give me the opportunity to tell the ATM the amounts. I basically get to try a few times, and then the machine rejects the transaction.

Please, Bank of America, pretty please, let's be friends, and let me give you my money. Oh well, hopefully soon they work out the kinks and this will be the awesome system it is capable of being.

So do you have a computer? Then you probably have your own Niagara Falls of computer cables pouring off at least one edge of your computer desk.

Is there anything we can do to solve this problem?

Most of us have seen those fancy Velcro ties that companies like APC make. They generally sell in packs of six, with an average cost of one or two dollars per Velcro tie.

The best deal I have seen so far is for a 50 pack of 8" Velcro Reusable Ties for 5$. You can find them in either black or gray. Sometimes I can find them in the stores but most times I have to order then online here.

They aren't as nice as the high end APC manufactured ones, but they are usually more than strong enough.

I think you'll find that you and your army of fifty of your new friends have a much better chance of surviving the battle against the probably fifty evil cable overlords that take over your computer desk.

A while back, I came across 20 Tips to Improve ASP.net Application Performance.

It's a great list of tips and tricks you can take advantage of increase ASP.net performance.

One little gem I discovered in the list is the App_Offline.htm file.

It's a cool feature of ASP.NET 2.0 that allows you to quickly and easily take a site down for maintenance while sending users a friendly message. Just drop a file called app_offline.htm in the root of your site.

NOTE: There is one caveat that you should be aware of if you App_Offline.htm is less than 512 bytes, and Internet Explorer's "Show Friendly Http Errors" is enabled those users will see the generic status code message. See Scott Guthrie's post here to learn more about this, and a quick and easy workaround here.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Topic: Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks - Part II

Tuesday, September 11, 2007, is our next meeting of  Pee Dee Area .NET User's Group.

Chris Craft, from ACS Technologies, will be presenting Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks - Part II.

Material from Part I will be recovered for any of those who may have missed it, and new tips and tricks will be presented.

Visual Studio .NET is filled with thousands of features and capabilities that make our lives as developers more efficient. The number of features that Visual Studio .NET contains is immense. The Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks presentation is a compilation of my favorite, and most popular, tips and tricks for this great IDE. Developers who are unaware of these timesaving features miss out on opportunities to increase their programming productivity and effectiveness. This Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks presentation is meant to explain how to use Visual Studio .NET more effectively.

See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 7:45 PM Presentation
7:45 PM - 8:00 PM Drawing and Wrap Up
Please subscribe to the PDANUG Upcoming Events and News Feed here.

Good News : Free Games . Bad News : Ad Supported. They just show up in menus and load screens, not during actual game play, so I think it will be okay.

More Bad News : You will have to get an account to FilePlanet.com, but it can be the free one. Just create an account don't choose a membership.

Far Cry Full Game [Free Game - Ad Supported] Details

Step into the role of John Carver as he escapes a brutal kidnapping and finds himself on a tropical island full of mercenaries. Rely on firepower, strategy, and stealth as you assault each open-ended area on your own terms!

This free game is supported by in-game advertising.

Download Here

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Full Game [Free Game - Ad Supported] Details

The Prince returns in this stunning action adventure game with a unique time-manipulation mechanic and intense combat.

This free game is supported by in-game advertising.

Download Here

Rayman Raving Rabbids [Free Game - Ad Supported] Details

Rayman Raving Rabbids marks the return of the iconic video-game hero, Rayman, in his funniest and zaniest adventure ever. When the world of Rayman is threatened by a devastating invasion of crazed, out-of-control bunnies Rayman must rise up against his furry foes to foil their wicked plans.

This free game is supported by in-game advertising.

Download Here

Sometimes, I've found it advantageous to run Vista with User Account Control off. I'm not sure if it is the right choice, actually for most users, in most situations it's a big mistake, kind of like driving without your headlights on.

For better or worse here's how to do it.

Enter "User Accounts" in the Vista search / launch prompt.

Now choose "User Accounts" at the top of the Vista launch menu.

You can also get there by opening the Control Panel and searching for "User Accounts".

Now you'll need to find the Turn User Account Control on or off option.

Simply enable or disable the checkbox to match your preference and your are set.

By the way, you can enable and disable the User Account Control from a command prompt if you so desire:

Disable User Account Control

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Enable User Account Control

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Now you have done it. You've gone and upset the Windows Security Center.

Here's how to appease it, and grant yourself a reprieve.

You could disable ALL Security Center notifications, but I think that is a bad idea, by following this guide.

Or you could modify your registry and just disable the User Account Control warning message, by following these instructions.

Today I was greeted by the following dialog box:

I immediately thought, "Hmm, that's strange. Why is my C:\ drive not trusted all of a sudden? It's works fine for all my other existing projects. What's special about this new one?"

I had the answer, but I didn't realize it at the time. After reading Scott Hanselman's Sharpen the Saw for Developers article, I had wanted to check out the source code for DotNetKicks. So I had downloaded the source code, and extracted it to my C:\Projects\ folder.

I started to search for more information about this "The project location is not trusted" error message I was getting, and I found out the following:

First, I found this on MSDN

The Project Location is Not Trusted Dialog Box

This dialog box appears if you attempt to open or create a client project on a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path. By default, a UNC path is not a trusted location for a project. Your project might not run correctly when you attempt to debug or run from this location.

 That is definitely the dialog box I was getting. Now I was concerned. One thing I am sure of, is that if my computer thinks my C:\ driver is an untrusted UNC path, I was going to be in a world of hurt, if I didn't find and fix the fundamental issue.

This information also concerned me because I was using a Virtual PC to try and open this project with. And I started to wondering if this was somehow playing a part in the issue.

Next, I found the same issue on Dave's Tech Shop

Dave didn't have the answer to my problem, but he did discuss how to give FullTrust permission to a UNC path.

Finally, I discovered Stephen Cawood's Geek Literature blog, and his article .Net project location is not trusted.

Stephen explains that there is a new security feature that applies to downloaded zip files. What I learned completely surprised me, since I've downloaded countless projects before and had never seen nor heard of this before.

Here's what I had to do to unblock the project I had extracted from a zip I had downloaded off the Internet.

 

Right-click the Zip file, choose Properties, click Unblock, click Apply and then unzip.

Why does it have to be so hard to simply install SQL Server 2005? Why can't I simply load a DVD into my computer, see a well designed and thought out install dashboard, make a few choices and click install?

The installation adventure for SQL Server 2005 is some kind of man versus machine epic battle. In one corner you have some poor soul who would like to get some work done today, in the other corner you have Legion. Legion is comprised of many souls including but most certainly not limited to the following: SQL Server Itanium, SQL Server x64, SQL Server x86, 32 bit, 64 bit, Developer Edition, SP1, and so on. Individually all of these things are great. Once you manage to extract the piece you are seeking all is good in the world.  But as long as they are combined into one mindless mob and you have trouble.

Why did the SQL Server 2005 setup application have to be written as a Web application? Was this the best choice for a setup application that runs off of a DVD? Were there any pros to a pseudo Web deployment package? Well, here are some cons:

Scary dialog, that warns me about potential security and privacy issues I should be aware of and avoid.

See, if this wasn't a Web page it could probably detect what Platform I was on and everything.

I'll go ahead and help it out, and choose SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition (English). Too bad I can't give any extra point for getting language right, since English was the only language on the DVD.

Now what should I do? Hmm, autorun.inf says run the HTML application "splash.hta", but this is Web application isn't it? so shouldn't I choose the HTML Document "default.htm"?
Is this background information I know fair to expect of all users? What about new developers? Does this create an artificial learning curve up front? Nobody can use it, until they figure out how to install it.

If you choose default.htm, which I still maintain is a reasonable choice, you will see the above, which reminds me of seeing "You Have Died of Dysentery" message in the old Oregon Trail game you may have played as a kid. At this point you can once again click and "Allow Blocked Content...". Well forcing me to confirm twice is okay because it is just Microsoft left hand watching out for Microsoft's right hand. I can understand that.

Hey where do you think you are going? Don't you know about allowing active content? Are you sure you want to let this file run active content?

Oh, you are. Well, too bad because you have an "Error on page." and nothing is going to happen. So ha. See what I mean about dying of dysentery? Sucks doesn't it?

Alright, some how or another you manage to recover from your dysentery, and make it back to the earlier step and choose "splash.hta". After realizing, that it followed that something named splash must be the installation executable.
Oh look, it needs us to tell it what Platform we are using, AGAIN. Not only can it not determine this on it own, which I'll admit maybe I do want to install the 32-bit (x86) version on my 64-bit OS, but at least remember once I tell you.

Oh boy, looks like we are getting close now. One problem I have with this screen is that nothing is selected by default. I would have one option, probably the "Install Server components, tools, Books Online, and samples" already selected in some manner, even if the text were only marked as bold.
Keep in mind all of the dialogs and forms are building up on our desktop. We now have at least three or four different active dialogs open right now.
If we were to choose an item in the above dialog it would open yet another dialog. One final usability treat is that once you pick a main option of this dialog, it will close itself and only itself. So if you wanted to do more than one thing it has listed, which it looks like it is encouraging then you can either sort through all the open dialogs you have already, or even more fun if you closed any of them, start all over again.
One more thing to note is this screen is labeled as SQL Server 2005 (Disc 1 of 2) is there another dialog for SQL Server (Disc 2 of 2)? One can only wonder considering this DVD is Disc 1 of 1.

Oh yeah! We are about half way through our adventure at this point, but the worst is behind us. From here most hardy adventurers make it to the promised land of our forefathers, and I have confidence you will too.

Take note, that it is after this point that Microsoft ask for your permission to log errors and issues, and track usage to help them improve Microsoft SQL Server, maybe it should be at the beginning of the setup application and not the end?

Gordon: And what about escalation?
Batman: Escalation?
Gordon: We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar...they buy armor-piercing rounds.
Batman: And?
Gordon: And you're wearing a mask… and jumping off rooftops. Now, take this new guy. Armed robbery, double homicide.
Got a taste for the theatrical. Like you. Leaves a calling card. [hands Batman a Joker playing card]

BioShock uses the latest version of SecureROM technology which includes an authentication technology similar to the activation process that is used in Windows XP and Windows Vista, with a very strict limitation. You may only install the software twice ever. It does appear they do allow you to install the game twice on two machines if you'd like. And I think you can play simultaneously.

I did find out that if you uninstall BioShock, then you are credited back for the installation. That means as long as your hardware doesn't crash, you don't replace any hard drives with out first uninstalling BioShock while connected to the Internet, then you will be able to continue using BioShock.

You are allowed to contact SecureROM in the event you were unlucky and explain to the powers that be why you deserve another chance.

I believe Office 2007 has this "feature" as well, when it comes to handling volume licence users. If you had 10 licenses, as long as you remembered to uninstall before you formatted, and as long as you knew you needed to, you weren't using up licenses. When did we find out, on our eleventh install, after we called Microsoft up to explain there were only like 8 of us using the software.

My biggest complaint is, it takes a long time to install and setup up a machine, soon it will take just as long to uninstall and clean a machine just to be able to safely format it and start over and keep your software.

Over all it's not a real issue that I think will hinder me, but I don't feel that it helps me either. In the past I've waited until a PC was on its last leg before formatting it, now I may be taking a risk on losing my software long term. And I'm not sure one Mulligan is enough.

It's seems like everyone is in love with this game. If you can get it to run on your system it's a good bet you will be too.

Source: GameStats.com

BioShock is one of the very few Direct X 10 Games that are available now, or anytime soon.

Think you got what it takes to play BioShock? Read 'em and weep.

Operating Systems: Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista

Minimum System Requirements:
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
System RAM: 1GB
Video Card: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550).
Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
Hard disk space: 8GB free space

Recommended System Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
System RAM: 2GB
Video card:
DX9: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better)
DX10: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better
Sound Card: Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ series (Optimized for use with Creative Labs EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 or EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 compatible sound cards)

Vista Experience Score:
Processor: 5.0
Memory (RAM): 5.2
Aero Graphics: 5.3
Gaming Graphics: 5.4
Primary Hard Disk: 5.4

Important Note: Game requires Internet connection for activation

The demo for BioShock is 1888 MB alone! So right there you have a hurdle to overcome. You can try downloading it from one of the gaming sites, but most are overwhelmed right now. It is available on Bittorrent from what I read. I wanted to download it from Steam, but even they were maxed out. I ended up using GW Channel's PowerGrid application to stream it down at speeds averaging 3,912 Kbps. Whoo, hoo!

Scott Hanselman's blog, at ComputerZen.com, is one of my favorites. He seems to always have the best answers to the worst problems.

Recently I had purchased a Western Digital MyBook 500GB External Hard Drive. (I managed to find them at a local Sam's Club for only $120, which was a steal at the time.)

I installed and setup the external hard drive and collected at least 200GB worth of data on it before I noticed something. "This hard drive came formatted as FAT32, which doesn't support files larger than 4 gigs."

This was a problem for me for two reasons. I wanted to use the external hard drive for both Virtual PC images and PC backup images, both of which can be larger than 4 gigs.

I knew I could copy off all my data and then format the drive as NTFS, but this meant finding over 200GB of free space on my network, which I could do but would be a hassle to do and the undo again.

Fortunately for me I remembered an article I had read on Scott's blog: "The Duh Files - The file is too large for the destination file system".

C:\Users\CJCraft>convert /?
Converts a FAT volume to NTFS.

CONVERT volume /FS:NTFS [/V] [/CvtArea:filename] [/NoSecurity] [/X]

  volume      Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
              mount point, or volume name.
  /FS:NTFS    Specifies that the volume will be converted to NTFS.
  /V          Specifies that Convert will be run in verbose mode.
  /CvtArea:filename
              Specifies a contiguous file in the root directory
              that will be the place holder for NTFS system files.
  /NoSecurity Specifies that the security settings on the converted
              files and directories allow access by all users.
  /X          Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
              All open handles to the volume will not be valid.

Brilliant, simply brilliant. Thanks again, Scott.

What is the PopSci Predictions Exchange?

It's The Hollywood Stock Exchange for science and technology.

You get $250,000 in virtual PopSci dollars. Then you can expand your portfolio with bets on energy, space, consumer technology and extreme science, and compete against other players for prizes and bragging rights (So far I'm up $20,994).

So far here's my portfolio:

Overall Rank: 369 of 2465 (percentile: 85%)

• iPhone Hack in First Two Months (IPHACK) 5.36%
  • Will the iPhone be hacked to run third-party applications within two months of its U.S. release?
  • If nothing else it'll run DOOM. It's already on almost the entire Apple iPod line. I've made 5.36% on this one so far.
    
• PlayStation 3 Wins Console Wars (PS3WINS) 12.36%
  • Will the PlayStation 3 outsell both the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii by the end of 2009?
  • I can't see the Playstation 3 making this kind of come back. So I'm shorting selling this one. I'll make money if the price goes down, which it will , -12.36% already.
    
• Skydiving Altitude Record Broken (SKYDV) 9.55%
  • Will a human successfully break the world record for skydiving of 102,800 feet by the end of 2009?
  • So let's see. There is a world record of 102,800 feet. Alright well then someone can do 102,801. Easy money.
    
• Major U.S. Hurricane in 2007 (HURICAN) 13.87%
  • Will a Category 3, 4 or 5 hurricane make landfall within the U.S. this year?
  • Weather seems a little volatile lately, and fairly good odds to me on this one. 13.87% and counting.
    
• Google Overtakes Yahoo (GOOGL) 17.07%
  • Will Google.com overtake Yahoo.com as the world's most trafficked Web site by the end of 2007?
  • To me Yahoo seems more like a portal site to me than Google, but I couldn't resist the easy profit due to market popularity. This one might max out the way it is going.

This is a long video, a little over eight minutes, but it is so worth seeing. It has several plot twists in it, worthy of M. Night Shyamalan himself. Just wait, Disney will make a movie out of this yet.

Corporate Comedy by Corporate Comedian Don McMillan.

This is a great PowerPoint presentation on how NOT to do PowerPoint presentations . It's about 4 minutes of pure PowerPoint wisdom, plus its hilarious.

How NOT to user PowerPoint by comedian Don McMillian

I've post an article about Microsoft Popfly on CodeProject.com.

CodeProject.com: Meet Microsoft Popfly: Part I - Mashup App Creator Built On Silverlight

It covers the following areas:

Popfly Space	Popfly Web Page Creator
Popfly Mashup Creator	Popfly Block Creator

If there is enough interest, then I'll do a part two on building mashups, and a part three on creating Popfly blocks.

I just saw on Robert Scoble's Blog that Microsoft has released a new version of Windows Live Writer. And I thought the previous version was good.

Since I both use and really like Windows Liver Writer, and its Free, I figured I give my endorsement and big thanks to the team for great job.

"Writer is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog."

Highlights of New or Improved Features

• Inline spell checking
• Table editing
• Ability to add categories
• New look and feel

Key Features

• Compatible with your blog service
• WYSIWYG editing
• Rich media publishing
• Powerful editing features
• Offline editing

Developer Community

• Blog
• Community Plugins - here are three I'm trying out.
• Insert Spaces Emoticon
• Allows you to insert a Live Spaces Emoticon into your blog entry
• Paste from Visual Studio
• Easily transfer syntax highlighted source code from Visual Studio to elegant HTML in Windows Live Writer.
• XFN Link Editor
• This plugin enables Windows Live Writer to insert XFN (XHTML Friends Network) aware links.
• Forum
• Developers
• Provider Customization API

[Download]

---

There are new versions of Windows Live Messenger 8.5 Beta and Windows Live Mail as well.

I've put together a beginner's introduction into Silverlight on CodeProject.com. The article covers how to use Silverlight to create the famous Sierpinki Triangle fractal. It's really meant to help someone who wants to create their first Silverlight experience, but then again maybe that's you?

Sierpinski Triangle - An Introduction into Silverlight by Example

There's a whole set of "Hi, I'm a Marvel... and I'm a DC." parodies on YouTube. They are terrific, made my day. There are nine of them in total, and they crack me up. I think I'll watch them again.

Yeah, I was tempted to name it, Chris Craft's Custom Clock Block officially, and then I decided to just name it Clock.

There didn't appear to be an easy way to get access to Date and Time information in Popfly, so I figured it would make for a good test case for my first custom Popfly block.

Clock Block

• displayMilitaryTime
• displayTime
• getSeconds
• getMinutes
• getHours
• getDay
• getDate
• getMonth
• getFullYear
• getTime
• about

Clock Block Popfly Example Application: Clockr

 I made a quick application to see Clock Block in action. It takes the current military time and grabs images off of flickr for each digit and makes a Ransom Note clock out of it.

As you can see in the screenshot it was 15:08:46, a little after 3pm, when I took the screenshot.

I've been using Popfly for just a short while now, and while I do enjoy the drag and drop visual design surface, it doesn't lend itself to text lists very well. Sometimes I just want a text list of all my possibilities in one place.

This "Cheat Sheet" covers the top 50 official Popfly blocks, and not any end user created blocks. There's almost another 50 of those as well.

I figured I'm probably not the only one so here's my list. I created the list using the Block Inspector Block's getOperations method.

Overtime I'll probably spruce this up some and add more detailed information. Hope it helps!

  BLaugh Block

• getRandomComics
• getComic

 Block Inspector Block

• getOperations
• getAllowedValues

 Calculator Block

• getRandomWholeNumber
• getRandomNumber
• getMaximum
• getMinimum
• round
• add
• subtract
• multiply
• divide

 Carousel Block

• addImage
• setFrameColor
• setAttribution

 Combine Block

• combineTwoLists
• combineThreeLists

 Conversation Block

• addMessage

 Digg Block

• GetStories
• GetPopularStories
• GetUpcomingStories
• GetStoriesByContainer
• GetPopularStoriesByContainer
• GetUpcomingStoriesByContainer
• GetStoriesByTopic
• GetPopularStoriesByTopic
• GetUpcomingStoriesByTopic
• GetStoryByStoryId
• GetStoriesByUser
• GetTopics
• GetTopicByName
• GetUsers
• GetUser
• GetUserFriends
• GetUserFans

 Digital Podcast Block

• Search

 Facebook Block

• getFriends
• getUserInfo
• getPhotosOfMe
• getPhotos
• getPhotoAlbums
• getGroups

 Filter Block

• filter
• truncate

 flickr Block

• getGeotaggedPhotos
• getPhotos
• getTags
• getUserPhotos
• getPhotoset

 Gauge Block

• setValue
• increaseValue

 GameTrailers Block

• getFeeds
• getTrailers

 GeoNames Block

• getLatitudeAndLongitude
• lookupOnPlaceName
• lookupOnLatitudeLongitude
• lookupOnZipCode
• lookupOnCityState

 Image Scaper Block

• getImages
• getUniqueImages

 Image Comment Block

• comment

 Indeed Jobs Block

• search

 Live Spaces Block

• getPhotos
• getFriends
• getLists

 MSN Horoscopes

• getMonthlyHoroscope
• getWeeklyHoroscope
• getDailyHoroscope

 MSN News Feeds

• TopBoxOffice
• JimJubekMoneyCentralColumn
• LizPulliamMoneyCentralColumn
• InCarNation
• TopCelebrities
• TopMovieRentals
• InTheaters
• ComingSoon
• TopStories

 My Live Contacts Block

• getContacts

 News Reader Block

• addNewsItem

 Page Turner Block

• addNewsItem

 PhotoFlip Block

• addImage

 PhotoSphere Block

• addImage

 PhotoStack Block

• addImage

PhotoTiles Block

• addImage

RegExp Block

• getMatches
• isMatch
• isWholeNumber

 RSS Block

• getItems
• getFeed

 SeattlePublicLibrary Block

• getBooks

 Slideshow Block

• addImage

 Snipshot Block

• editImage

 SoapBox Block

• search
• getFeaturedVideos

 Sort Block

• sort

 Stock Quotes

• getStockGraph
• getQuote

 Text Helper Block

• getSubstring
• append
• skipFirstCharacters
• split

 Timer Block

• tick

 Trynt Block

• calculateLoveFactor

 Twitter Block

• getLatestPosts
• getFriendsPosts

 Upcoming Block

• findEvents

 User Input Block

• getText
• getTwoTextValues
• getThreeTextValues
• getChoiceFromDropdown
• getTwoChoicesFromDropdowns
• getThreeChoicesFromDropdowns
• getTextAndChoice

 Video Player Block

• findEvents

 Virtual Earth Block

• addPushpin
• setMapView
• drawLine
• deleteAllPushpins

 Whack-A-Mole Block

• addImage

 Yahoo! Answers Block

• getAnswers

 Yahoo! Images Block

• search

 Yahoo! News Block

• search

 Yahoo! Term Extraction Block

• getTerm

 Yahoo! Traffic Block

• getTrafficForAddress
• getTrafficForZipCode
• getTrafficForCoordinates

 Yahoo! Video Block

• search

 XBox Live Block

• getGamerCard
• getLastPlayedGames
• getPlayerPresence

"Moonlight is sculpture."

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Microsoft Top Banana Silverlight Application: watch Video Interview, watch Video Presentation

Adventures In SoftwareLand: Silverlight is going to be huge for MicroISVs

Hannes Preishuber: Silverlight Slot Machine

Ozzie Rules Blogging: Writing a Windows Sidebar Gadget in Silverlight-dead simple!

Ozzie Rules Blogging: Easily create cool XAML objects from the WMF files/Clipart collection

"The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it."

— Augustus Hare

Ezequiel Jadib - Silverlight: Where to start?: excellent collection of Silverlight resources

The Code Project - Sierpinski Triangle - An Introduction into Silverlight by Example

ScottGu's Blog - Tip/Trick: Supporting Full Screen Mode with Silverlight

Silverlight first steps: Getting started with simple analog clock - Build Silverlight in Notepad

Free: Clinic 5135: Introduction to Developing with Windows® Presentation Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005

"All I know to do is to light the candle that has been given to me."

— Fred Rogers a.k.a. "Mister Rogers"

Web.Next - Silverlight Book: looks like someone is working on a book for Silverlight for MS Press.

Doug Turnure - Silverlight Resources: Doug has a great collection of Silverlight resources.

Page Brooks - Silverlight Isolated Storage: Page discusses how to use Isolated Storage in Silverlight, and how it works, view demo, view source.

Silverlight City - Silverlight News: good site for Silverlight news. It has lots of information without overwhelming you with details.

Microsoft Popfly: "Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications." view the 15 minute screencast.

"I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars."

— Og Mandino

Jeff Prosise's Blog - A Touch of Silverlight: has a really cool Silverlight Web comic book catalog viewer, MyComix.

Bryant Likes's Blog - Silverlight Examples: Hong Button, Matrix Digital Rain, iPhone, Rolling Gear, WPF/E Reflection.

Dave Relyea's Blog - Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Layout System and Controls Framework: view demo, view source.

Andy Beaulieu's Blog - Silverlight Rocks!: has created an Asteroids clone, Silverlight Rocks!, view demo, view source.

Mark Heath's Blog - Silver Nibbles: has made a Nibbles clone, Silver Nibbles, view demo, view source.

MSDN Forums: Silverlight General Discussion, Silverlight Designer Issues, Silverlight Developer Issues.

The Sierpinski triangle, also called the Sierpinski gasket, is a fractal named after Wacław Sierpiński who described it in 1915. Originally constructed as a curve, this is one of the basic examples of self-similar sets.

View Silverlight Sierpinski Triangle demo

Download Silverlight Sierpinski Triangle source code

Note: The background stripes are from Stripe Generator - ajax diagonal stripes background designer, very cool Web 2.0 stripe generator.

As promised, I have updated the Silverlights Out game. Really all I did was give it a new paint job, so it looks as cool as it really is. :) Animated scrolling starfield background, transparency, and those cool glass icons everyone likes to use these days.

Silverlights Out 2.0

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Topic: Real-World Windows Communication Foundation
Our next event will be held on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007. Thad Smith, from ACS Technologies will be presenting real-world development with Windows Communication Foundation. This presentation will include pragmatic approaches to utilizing the Windows Communication Foundation in your solutions.  See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:

6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 7:45 PM Presentation
7:45 PM - 8:00 PM Drawing and Wrap Up

PDANUG serves the Pee Dee Area of South Carolina. Our group focuses on the .NET Framework and related technologies. We cordially invite anyone that is interested to join us at our monthly gatherings. You can find more information on our meeting location and topcis below. You may also contact us by emailing admin@pdanug.net for more information.

If you are interested in our group, please register! This helps us gain an understanding for who is interested in attending our events.

Click Here for detailed driving directions

So you're downloading the eight 743.9 MB files needed to install Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas", and you're thinking to yourself, "Self, there HAS to be a better way."

Well, there is. Two simple registry changes and you can go from 2 maximum downloads to 10!

Oh BTW, we're working with the Registry so you know the drill. Be careful. Enter at your own risk.

Increasing IE's Maximum Concurrent Downloads Setting

1. Click on the Start button and select Run.
   
2. On the Run line type Regedt32.exe and hit Enter.
   This will launch the Registry Editor.
   
3. Locate the following key in the registry:
   

   
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

4. Click on the Internet Settings Key. Now go to the Edit menu, point to NEW, and click DWORD Value.
   
5. Type MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server for the name of this DWORD Value.
   
6. Double-click on the MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server key you just created and enter the following information:
   
   • Value data: 10
   • Base: Decimal
     
7. When finished press OK.
   
8. Click on the Internet Settings Key. Now go to the Edit menu, point to NEW, and click DWORD Value.
   
9. Type MaxConnectionsPerServer for the name of this DWORD Value.
   
10. Double-click on the MaxConnectionsPerServer key you just created and enter the following information:
    
    • Value data: 10
    • Base: Decimal
      
11. When finished press OK.
    
12. Close the Registry Editor.

It was really hard for me to find the settings needed to configure a server to "serve" Silverlight applications. So I've posted them here. Hopefully it will help someone.

These are really for WPF, but they worked fine for me with deploying Silverlight applications. The key ones are highlighted in a bold green.

Register MIME Types and File Extensions

You must register several MIME types and file extensions so that the browser on the client's system can load the correct handler. You need to add the following types:

I couldn't resist jumping on the Silverlight bandwagon. So I created a Silverlights Out game. Just something quick and dirty to get a feel for the technology.

I had to try and improve on the orginal so I'd made the game toggle lights across borders. So if you click on a light on the left, it will effect the light on the other side and vice versa. Enjoy. :)

I've got some plans for some nice improvements, so stayed tuned.

Silverlights Out

See it!
http://www.cjcraft.com/Blog/content/binary/silverlightsout.gif

Use It!
http://cjcraft.com/silverlight/silverlightsout/silverlightsout.html

Download It! (source code and all) [quick and dirty garage project, that's why it is so CHEAP]
http://cjcraft.com/silverlight/silverlightsout/silverlightsout.zip

Umm, Describe It!

Lights out is a one player puzzle that is played on a 5 by 5 grid of squares in which every square has two states: on and off. The game starts off with all squares off, where the goal is to turn on every square. By selecting a square, all the surrounding squares' (up, down, left, right) state is turned toggled. For example, on a 3 by 3 grid of squares with all squares off, if the center one is selected, it will turn "on" the 4 up, down, left, right squares from it.

We all went to see Spider-Man 3 last night and had a blast, lots of fun.
Very ambitious movie, almost tries to cover too much material.

"Next summer, the greatest battle lies... within."

"A strange black entity from another world bonds with Peter Parker and causes inner turmoil as he contends with new villains, temptations, and revenge."

Pretty cool looking at the statistical ratings for Spider-Man 3 at IMDB.com.

Interesting trivia:

• This film is reportedly the most expensive film ever made in U.S. dollars, with a budget of $250 million. This breaks King Kong (2005)’s record of $207 million, and in terms of adjusted dollars, would be third to Voyna i mir (1968)’s budget of $560 million.
• The over 600 latex "web" balloons in the celebration scene had to be hand-painted with a Sharpie marker.
• Thomas Haden Church worked out for 16 months to build up his physique to portray Sandman.
• Kirsten Dunst dyed her natural blond hair red for the role of Mary Jane Watson. Bryce Dallas Howard dyed her natural red hair blond for the role of Gwen Stacy.
• The film's translation in Russia is "Spider-Man 3: Enemy in the Reflection"

Joel Spolsky has an excellent article on office design, especially manufactured walls. It's really insightful.

Joel takes you through how FogCreek, paid for expensive office renovation, with their first office. All of which wasn't really tax deductible.

But with their new office they are going to use manufactured walls. Since manufactured walls are a real asset, not only can they write off the office expense, they even get to lease the purchase.

This explains why so many tech companies prefer cubicle farms over having real walls. But I think Joel's right, with manufactured walls you get the best of both worlds.

We're starting to outgrow our current office at Taylor Data Systems. I'm glad there are other options for us besides cube farms.

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

Presentation Guru Guy Kawasaki discusses a rule called 10/20/30 PowerPoint rule in one of his recent blog posts. What is the 10/20/30 PowerPoint rule? He states, “a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.”

Guy argues this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.

1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action

Like they say in the Guinness commercials, "Brilliant!" I'm sold, and the fences this creates really helps keep things simple and easy for everyone presenters and listeners both.

I've started loking for good SilverLight / Windows Presentation Foundation examples.

Here are some I've found so far:

DENOUNCE
Podcast Listener and Blog Reader

NOSTALGIA 
Yahoo! Flickr Browser and Photo Manager

DA.CODE 
Interactive Trivia Game

CINE.VIEW 
Netflix for Your Desktop

Harmony: visualize your music library

One impressive feature of Windows Vista is its support for 3D. This proof-of-concept is a knock-off of Coverflow (recently integrated into iTunes) with a few extra "twists".

de.collage: 13 painters with a view

In French, "décollage", roughly translates to "take off" or "to become unstuck". This application queries the internet to bring famous paintings to your desktop.

Module: the right hand for your desktop

Can't wait for Microsoft Vista's Sidebar? Why not try ours? Simply launch the application, type in your zip code, and away you go.

Echobox: adding voice to design

Design is hard to manage by email. This proof-of-concept facilitates basic design collaboration via FTP.

fp.hue: color conversion for Sparkle

Sometimes you have to make your own tools. This widget converts HEX color values into Sparkle's floating point RGB values.

Windows Vista RTM - Demonstation of Windows ReadyBoost - Google Video

Last week Page Brooks, Chris Reeder, and I were discussing the benifits of Vista's ReadyBoost, especially for laptops. Here's a video that should help demonstrate the power of ReadyBoost.

I've embedded the video below, so if you rss reader supports it you're all set.

The code camp is Saturday, May 12, all day, at the Central Piedmont Community College.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.developersguild.org/codecamp/2007/.

The 2007 Charlotte Code Camp will be held on Saturday, May 12th with CPCC and Microsoft to bring another Code Camp to Charlotte! A full Saturday of "primo" hands-on labs and tech presentations covered up with code, code, and more code.

I'd love to attend the XNA Simulation Labs, but I think I'll attend the Presentations track.

.NET University Labs

This track is designed to give you a good technical introduction to the four new technologies that ship with .NET 3.0: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and Windows CardSpace.

XNA Simulation Labs

XNA is Microsoft's new game development platform for Windows and the XBOX 360. This track is designed to give you a good technical introduction to how to develop a game on these platforms.

Presentations

This non-lab track will present upcoming technologies including Orcas (VS 2007) and LINQ as well as solutions to everyday developer issues like the Building Blocks of a production ASP.NET application and building custom webparts for WSS V3.

Sign up now!

Tim Sneath's post Our First WPF End-To-End Reference Sample: Family.Show caught my eye today, and boy am I glad it did.

I have to admit from what I've seen Microsoft and Vertifo Software have done an outstanding job on Family.Show. It is definitely more than a demo, I'm not sure reference application does it justice.

You can install and run it using ClickOnce, btw. :) Source code is available. Be sure to check out the lab to see more projects.

"Microsoft and Vertigo Software launched of a brand new end-to-end reference sample for WPF."

"Available for download immediately, Family.Show is a genealogy explorer that allows you to create or import a family tree and explore, annotate or save it to XPS."

"Our designers employed every trick in the WPF book– styles, resources, templates, data binding, animation, transforms– to present an innovative visualization of the classic family tree, freeing our developers to concentrate on behind-the-scenes features like XPS, P/Invoke wrapper for Windows Vista common dialogs, and ClickOnce for WPF."

If you are into data models or databases be sure to check out the following:

Library of Free Data Models from DatabaseAnswers.org

Highlights:

1. Here are about 450 very useful 'Kick-Start' Data Models.
2. Ten of the Data Models are featured in the Express Edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
3. Here are the Top 20 Data Models.
4. The site also has a Data Model Search facility.
5. A new Tutorial on Understanding a Database Schema.
6. Awesome FAQ, you will find something cool here.

This site is kind of like the Super DBA's scratch pad. If you look around and you'll find some gems.

Get accepted into Windows Home Server Beta 2.

Windows Home Server
https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer

Install TVersity on WHS.

TVersity is Release 0.9.9.1 (November 26, 2006)
http://www.tversity.com/download.html

TVersity QuickStart Guide
http://tversity.com/support/quickstart/

DivX - XBox 360 Guide
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1002/2

Install DivX Windows Media CoDec on WHS

DivX Windows Media CoDec
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/ACE_Mega_CoDecS_Pack.htm

Since Windows Home Server runs on a modified version Windows 2003 Small Business Server, you can install the Windows Media related codecs from the Ace codec pack instead (this is because WMP 11 is not currently available on this systems).

Connect to WHS from XBox 360

Enjoy the show!

The Technology Specialist (TS) Exam 70-540: TS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 - Application Development is in development.

Exam Topics Covered

The following list includes the topic areas covered on this exam. The percentage indicates the portion of the exam that addresses a particular skill.

You probably already know that Daylight Saving Time has been extended by 4 weeks. This is a result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It will begin 3 weeks earlier in the spring, and end 1 week later in the fall.

If you have a Windows Mobile device you should know that your devices are probably not ready for this decision. Just in time, Microsoft has released a series of updates that should correct for this.

Windows Mobile Updates for Daylight Saving Time (PocketPC)

Windows Mobile Updates for Daylight Saving Time (Desktop Tool)

Windows Mobile Updates for Daylight Saving Time (Smartphone)

Windows Mobile Updates for Daylight Saving Time (Windows CE)

So now the question is does it support cold-boot recovery or does the device forget about DST everytime the battery dies etc? Hmm... ;) [Windows Mobile & DST: It's like nailing jelly to a wall.]

The Making of the Windows Mobile Updates for Daylight Saving Time

In the begining Microsoft had a knowledgebase article that simply listed the registry changes that needed to be made and left it up to the poor reader to implement the modifications.

I couldn't help but thinking isn't that like Microsoft saying you need to chop down this tree and here's an axehead. Huh? I hate to think it is really all that difficult to create an Windows Mobile cab file. ;)

Fortunately, edgeblog took the requirements and released the results as a cab file.

It's even worse for Windows CE device users. (BTW did you notice any update links missing up above!) Here's an article that gives their options:

Method 1 (for end users): Manually adjust the clock for daylight saving time
You can manually adjust the clock for daylight saving time. To do this, follow these steps:

1. In Control Panel, open Date/Time.
2. In the Date/Time Properties dialog box, make sure that the time zone is set to the correct time zone for your area.
3. Click to clear the Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving check box.
4. Click OK.
5. Manually adjust the clock at the start of daylight saving time and at the end of daylight saving time.

Ha, I love it! That's funny! There's a method 2, and it basically says contact the OEM. Ha! Stop! Your killing me! No seriously, I really laughed out loud when I read that.

Can't you see the new advertising campaign: Windows CE now with Manual Clock 2.0!

So I've been using Windows DreamScenes for a little bit now and decided to give DeskScapes a try.

Here's a good background information site: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070108/windows-dreamscene/

Here are the key differences:

Windows DreamScene at a glance:

Windows DreamScene is an animated wallpaper technology that plays high-definition video content as your wallpaper. The key ability of it is that it can do so without using significant amounts of CPU (basically the decoding of the video is the only real CPU use involved).  The animation itself is run through the hardware accelerated DWM.

• A Windows Vista Ultimate Extra
• Run High-Definition Video as a Wallppaer
• Uses .MPEG/.WMV as content

Windows DreamScene Potential Content:

NASA - Multimedia - High Definition Video Gallery

Stardock DeskScapes at a glance:

The first enhancement is a new program called DeskScapes.  DeskScapes extends DreamScenes to support dynamic content (i.e. videos are pre-rendered).  With dynamic content, you could have your wallpaper change based on weather, time of day, or news.  Or you could just have some cool Direct3D "stuff" that runs (like one of those fish aquariums running as your wallpaper). 

• Extends Windows DreamScene to support Dynamic/Live content
• Adds support for the .Dream format
• Displays author info/URL in the desktop background dialog
• Supports triggers (change videos based on time, weather, etc.)
• Is only available for Windows Vista Ultimate Users
• Is free

Stardock DeskScapes Content:

http://dream.wincustomize.com/index.aspx

http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?libid=50

The Windows DreamScene Preview for Windows Vista Ultimate is now available.

Windows DreamScene Preview

Update type: Optional

When you install this Windows Ultimate Extra, you can select a video for your desktop background in the same way that you select a stationary picture, and you can choose new positioning options for static and moving backgrounds. Windows DreamScene video support requires a graphics card that supports Windows Aero. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

More information:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=80872

More information:
http://support.microsoft.com/

DreamScene Videos:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=windows+vista+dreamscene

Look Ma! No CPU! [Yes, it is running in the background :p]

Well, gee isn't that spiffy? There are two things I don't like about this picture. One, what is "Windows Mobile 2003-based device connectivity" exactly? Two, why can't I just end pid 2812 directly from this screen? Are Exit, Ignore, Retry really the only options a person has?

Once more I'm thrust upon the hours of dilemma, should I just use the Windows Task Manager to find out about this process or should I bring out the big guns from the get go and use Sysinternals' PsKill?

"PsKill is a kill utility that not only does what the Resource Kit's version does, but can also kill processes on remote systems."

Ah, makes you nervous doesn't it? I bet someone is checking their firewall status right now. ;)

Let's see how Windows Task Manager fairs. Well I browse through my running processes and I don't see anything that could be 2812. Hmm, I'm running on Windows Vista and I do have a services tab on my Windows Task Manager. Let's check here next...

There it is! A quick internet search and we find out what WcesComm and RapiMgr is.

wcescomm.exe is not a Windows system file. The process listens for or sends data on open ports to LAN or Internet. The process starts when Windows starts (see Registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run). The program is not visible. Therefore the technical security rating is 44% dangerous.

The program is not visible. File rapimgr.exe is not a Windows system file. The application listens for or sends data on open ports to LAN or Internet. The program can be removed using the control panel Add\Remove programs applet. Therefore the technical security rating is 43% dangerous.

ActiveSync reincarnated! Vista! Say it ain't so! See combined ActiveSync is at least 87% dangerous. I bet when it is all said and done, ActiveSync is 17437% dangerous.

Oh well, we stop the services and try again.

Success!

Microsoft releases Windows Mobile 6 Software Development Kit

Windows Mobile 6.0 SDK - Professional

Windows Mobile 6.0 Software Development Kit

The Windows Mobile 6 SDK adds documentation, sample code, header and library files, emulator images and tools to Visual Studio that let you build applications for Windows Mobile 6.

Windows Mobile 6.0 SDK - Standard

Windows Mobile 6.0 Software Development Kit

The Windows Mobile 6 SDK adds documentation, sample code, header and library files, emulator images and tools to Visual Studio that let you build applications for Windows Mobile 6.

My new favorite expression is "It's like nailing jelly to a wall". I find it to be a very useful expression in software development and IT, especially in the write anything, for anyone, at anytime, for any price world of mobile enterprise application development.

I've found a valuable scientific resource which probes this very important topic:

"We've all heard the old saying "it's like nailing jelly to a wall" to describe a task that is very difficult or impossible. But is our view of the difficulty of this task justified? Has anybody actually tried nailing jelly to a wall? In this experiment I attempt to establish, one way or the other, the validity of the old proverb."

http://graeme.woaf.net/otherbits/jelly.html

If you're like me and have a Tablet PC with Vista then you need to grab the free Microsoft Experience Pack for Windows Vista.

Overview

Computer Associates is offering a FREE one year trial of their CA Internet Security Suite 2007 product.

All the Computer Security You Need
• Prevent Theft of Personal Data
• Stops Viruses, Worms, Trojans, Spyware & more
• Prevents Hacker Attacks
• Blocks Pop-ups

I've been using it a while and have been very pleased with it, plus its FREE!

I think I now know how badly Ralphie Parker wanted an "Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle" in A Christmas Story.

Coding4Fun's 2006 Holiday Gift Guide

Coding4Fun's 2005 Holiday Gift Guide

Maybe if every day was Christmas then I'd be set with my list of what to ask for. Right now it's hard for me to find things to mark off. Pretty good list, most things on there I have seen before but there were some items that were new to me.

Mark you calendars! The .NET University is coming to Florence, SC! Are YOU ready for Vista? Don't miss this BIG event.

.NET University in Florence, SC

Event ID: 1032315697

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 6:00 PM - Tuesday, November 14, 2006 8:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

McLeod Medical

800 Cheves St.
Florence South Carolina 29506
United States

Event Overview

This class will take place over four consecutive user group meetings: 

11/14/2006 – Windows Cardspace – taught by Page Brooks
12/12/2006 - Windows Communication Foundation – taught by Glen Gordon
01/09/2007 - Windows Presentation Foundation – taught by Chris Craft
02/13/2007 - Windows Workflow Foundation – taught by Brian Hitney

The Pee Dee .NET User Group is proud to present .NET University as a 4-part series during this winter’s meetings!  Join us to get an overview of the next version of the .NET Framework (.NET 3.0), including Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace. All topics are covered at a 100-level, and labs will be included with the courseware. Upon completion, registered attendees will receive their official .NET University alumni T-Shirt and a Certificate of completion.

The Remote Desktop Connection (Terminal Services Client 6.0) for Windows XP update allows Windows XP machines to connect to Windows Vista with Network Level Authentication enabled. Plus it has some other nice enhancements.

· Network Level Authentication
· Server Authentication
· Plug and Play redirection
· TS Gateway support
· Monitor Spanning
· 32-bit color and font smoothing

What is everyone using for antivirus protection on Windows Vista?

Right now I am using the Windows Live OneCare Beta for Vista.

What it is

An automatically self-updating PC care service that’s always on, helping provide persistent protection against viruses, hackers, and other threats, and helping keep your PC tuned up and your important documents backed up.
 
What it does for you

• Runs quietly in the background, providing anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall protection
• Updates itself to help you keep ahead of the latest threats
• Runs regular PC tune-ups
• Provides one-click solutions to most problems
• Makes backups a breeze
• Lets you see the status of your system at a glance

Internet Explorer Developers Toolbar

With the IE Dev Toolbar you have several features at your fingertips to go deep into existing pages or pages that you are currently creating. You will be able to explore the DOM tree and find elements on the page, disable IE settings, view information, outline elements, control images, resize pages to common screen resolutions and have a powerful ruler that lets you measure pixel perfect content on your page.

The toolbar can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en

Support can be found here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.InternetExplorerDevToolbar

Here is the official list of features.

Overview

The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides several features for exploring and understanding Web pages. These features enable you to:

-- Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
-- Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
-- Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
-- View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
-- Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
-- Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS Web feed links.
-- Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
-- Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.
-- Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
-- Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
-- Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align objects on your pages.


The Developer Toolbar can be pinned to the Internet Explorer browser window or floated separately.

This version of the Developer Toolbar is an updated version of Beta 1; it was updated on October 31, 2005. Several issues are resolved and some feedback has been incorporated.

-- Element bounding box calculations are more accurate.
-- Outlining of elements is now significantly faster.
-- The image report no longer crashes.
-- Installation no longer requires a reboot. (Beta 1 users will still be prompted to reboot because the current installer invokes the original uninstaller).
-- The minimize and maximize buttons now refresh after the "Resize" command.
-- The "Select element by click" bounding box is now more visible on pages with blue backgrounds.
-- The attributes editor (middle pane) now has variable width fields (for example, you can type beyond the width of the box).
-- Fixes for some pages that do not trigger OnDocumentComplete events.
-- Fixed the continuity of using "element" rather than "tag" in the menus.
-- The ruler is easier to use and to scroll.
-- Enabling/disabling images no longer restarts Internet Explorer.
-- The Resize menu now contains more resolutions.
-- Editing a property is now much less likely to let keystrokes "leak" back to IE and navigate without the user expecting it.
-- Trying to use the ruler while IE is in "folder mode" should no longer crash the browser.

New features and functionality have also been added.

-- Default styles (in the third pane) now appear in gray, separating them from explicit styles.
-- The ruler dialog is always populated with the ruler information if there is just one ruler.
-- The ruler dialog now describes advanced features.
-- "Undo all" reverts the page to the initial state.
-- You can now remove all outlines.

Mark you calendars! The .NET University is coming to Florence, SC! Are YOU ready for Vista? Don't miss this BIG event.

.NET University in Florence, SC

Event ID: 1032315697

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 6:00 PM - Tuesday, November 14, 2006 8:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

McLeod Medical

800 Cheves St.
Florence South Carolina 29506
United States

Event Overview

This class will take place over four consecutive user group meetings: 

11/14/2006 – Windows Cardspace – taught by Page Brooks
12/12/2006 - Windows Communication Foundation – taught by Glen Gordon
01/09/2007 - Windows Presentation Foundation – taught by Chris Craft (That's me! You don't want to miss this one! <wink>)
02/13/2007 - Windows Workflow Foundation – taught by Brian Hitney

The Pee Dee .NET User Group is proud to present .NET University as a 4-part series during this winter’s meetings!  Join us to get an overview of the next version of the .NET Framework (.NET 3.0), including Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace. All topics are covered at a 100-level, and labs will be included with the courseware. Upon completion, registered attendees will receive their official .NET University alumni T-Shirt and a Certificate of completion. Space is limited, so register early to get your seat at .NET University!

http://mapit.ebay.com/home

This is a real neat Web utility eBay has to allow you search a radius in miles around a city, state or Zip Code, for what ever your heart desires.

Considering the time of year, I decided to search for "Frankenstein" in all categories in the city of Florence, SC 29501 with a radius of 25 miles.

Apparently one of my close neighbors or not so close neighbors has a "Halloween Battery Operated Noise activated Frankenstein". Now how cool is that. You know you want it! Go ahead, nobody's looking make your bid!

I could imagine a neat Windows Mobile utility that uses "Map It" and a GPS unit to let users see what people are selling right where they are - complete novelty item of course.

[He looks like some of the guys I work with with! Ha, ha, you know who you are!]

The Sect of Homokaasu - The Kill Everyone Project

The world is overpopulated. The people that overpopulate it are stupid. They should be killed.

http://homokaasu.org/killeveryone/

Genocide has never been this easy!

As of June 17, 2006, 12:22 UTC, the total number of kills amounted to 5,879,052,873, and the project been running for 1866 days. There are 73,622 registered participants, averaging 79,854 kills each. As of August 17, 2006, the estimated date of the world population coming to an end is November 23, 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kill_Everyone_Project

You can always count on The Daily WTF to put a smile on your face:

[I wish someone had told me this is okay before.]

You could set me on fire (please don't) and I would still think some of these are funny.

Pop-up Potpourri: Givin' It 120%

Pop-up Potpourri: Announced By God

Pop-up Potpourri: Julialicious

Pop-up Potpourri: June Bugs

Pop-up Potpourri: Tax Time Edition

Pop-up Potpourri: Octopurri

Pop-up Potpourri: Se7en Deadly Messages

Pop-up Potpourri: Sixth Time is the Charm

I needed a little eye-candy this morning, and this looked like a good possibility.

It's your standard Web bandwidth speed tester, except it has a Web 2.0 interface. Well, almost it is flash based and not AJAX, but close enough I think.

I think I did well. How'd you do?

http://www.speedtest.net/

http://gallery2.mastermaq.ca/albums/1.aspx

This collection contains miscellaneous pictures, and the sub galleries are organized by
subject. All pictures are 288 pixels by 288 pixels, which sizes down correctly to the 96x96 size of a display picture.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is simply a great product, but is does have at least one shortcoming: IntelliSense. I know a massive percentage of my time spent working with SQL is spent working with SQL queries, and even with a table alias there is a lot of typing involved in any non-trival query.

What's a developer to do?

Use Red-Gate's SQL Prompt

Intellisense for SQL Server, plus other features

• Code completion for fast, accurate script building
• Discoverability in SQL Server query creation
• Keyword formatting, code snippet integration other extended features
• FREE until 1st September 2006
• No time-bombs, no restrictions

If the Send-To-X Power Toy is not one of my favorite power toys, it is definitely one of the most useful I have found.

Here's the 50,000 foot overview:

*** SEND TO X

Adds the following new commands to your "Send To" menu:

  - Send To Any Folder
  - Send To Clipboard as Contents
  - Send To Clipboard as Name
  - Send To Command Line

Even though it is a Windows 95 Power Toy, I've used it on Windows XP, etc. with no problems. [Read: You should set a system restore point because you know better. You were warned.]

Page Brooks has made a shell extension that does the key parts. The Send-To-X can work on multiple files, not sure if his can.

Here's the full read me text for the Send-To-X power toy.

    Send To Extensions
 
    Microsoft Windows 95 PowerToys
 
    Copyright 1995-1996 Microsoft Corporation
 
    * Send To... Any Folder
 
  Send a file or files to Any Folder, and you will be shown
  a dialog box that lets you choose where the files should
  be copied or moved.
 
    * Send To... Clipboard as Name
 
  Send a file or files to the Clipboard as Name, and the names
  of the files are placed on the clipboard.
 
    * Send To... Clipboard as Contents
 
  Send a file to the Clipboard as Contents, and the contents
  of the file are placed on the clipboard.
 
    * Send To... Command Line
 
  Send a file to the Command Line, and the "Run" dialog appears,
  with name of the file already typed in for you.
 
    * Send To... Mail Recipient
 
  Send a file or files to a Mail Recipient, and a mail message
  will be created with the file(s) already attached.
 
  There are three types of mail recipients.  You probably will
  need only one of them. In the "Add/Remove Programs" section
  of the Control Panel, double-click "Send To Extensions" to
  remove the ones you don't need.
 
  "Mail Recipient MAPI" sends the message via the Microsoft MAPI
  protocol.  MAPI is supported by Microsoft Mail 3.x and Microsoft
  Exchange.
 
  "Mail Recipient CMC" sends the message via the Common
  Messaging Calls protocol, a protocol defined by the X.400 API
  association.  CMC is supported by Microsoft Exchange, and
  possibly other mail programs.
 
  "Internet Mail Recipient" sends the message via Microsoft Internet
  Mail and News.  It doesn't really work yet, but at least you know
  that I'm thinking about it.
 
    Tips and tricks:
 
    * To add/remove selected extensions, double-click "Send To
  Extensions PowerToy" in Control Panel: Add/Remove Programs.
 
    * To change the name of an item in your Send To menu, click
  the Start button, select "Run", then type "sendto".  This
  will open a folder view on your Send To menu, at which point
  you can create, rename or remove items.
 
    * When the Send To menu is open, if you hold down the Control
  key while you click on the extension you want to send the
  file to, the behavior will change slightly.
 
  *   Send To... Any Folder will copy the files with their
      short names.  (Normally, it copies the long names.)
 
  *   Send To... Clipboard as Name will copy the short file
      names to the clipboard.  (Normally, it copies the long
      file name.)
 
  *   Send To... Clipboard as Contents will display a dialog
      box allowing you to override its choice of file content
      type.  Note that if you pick a type that does not match
      the actual type of the file, the data won't quite appear
      the way you intended, if it appears at all.
 
  *   Send To... Command Line will put the short file name
      on the command line.  (Normally, it puts the long file
      name on the command line.)
 
  *   Send To... Mail Recipient will attach the files with
      their short names.  (Normally, the long file name is used.)
 
    Limitations:
 
    * Send To... Clipboard as Contents
 
  If the file does not contain a recognized format, the
  clipboard won't contain anything terribly interesting.
 
  You cannot send folders or multiple files to the clipboard
  as contents.
 
    * Send To... Command Line
 
  You cannot send multiple items to the command line.
 
  To add more than one item to the command line, you can
  drag them onto the "Run" dialog box, and they will be
  added.
 
    * Send To... Mail Recipient
 
  You cannot send folders to mail recipients.

Not too long ago, Casey Chesnut, and I both were dreaming of the day when we could create our own Xbox 360 games.

It looks like that day may be fast approaching:

Microsoft Takes Hobbyist Programming Tools to Gamers
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,2003102,00.asp

A chance to create your own Xbox game
Microsoft's new kit will allow users to make games for console as well as Windows.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/14/news/companies/microsoft.reut/index.htm

Xbox Live on Windows Vista Has a Name: Panorama
http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2006/08/11/16579.aspx

Looks like someone already told Casey. I like to think we did our part. ;)

Everybody has one, an old computer, maybe even an old server, that they have no idea what kind of memory it takes, how much it can hold, or how much it would cost to upgrade the beast. Sure you could lookup motherboard, and memory module part numbers and find out yourself. But now there's an easier way:

The Crucial System Scanner automatically detects your computer's information and gives you the details you need to purchase a compatible upgrade. To run the Crucial System Scanner, you need Microsoft Windows 95 or higher.

http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/

Try it, you'll like it!

I almost missed this myself. I knew MapPoint 2006 was due to come out in May, but it appears as if it has been available since "4/27/2006 8:54:04 PM". It has really been needing an update. I'll have to try and find time to install it. I've been using Streets & Trips 2006 for travel and its a great product.

A useful tool for keeping on on what and when Webcasts are happening.

Interactive Microsoft Webcast Calendar

This interactive calendar will quickly help you find live webcasts that fit your schedule as well as on-demand webcasts to view at your convenience. You can choose your time zone and filter this list by intended audience, webcast series, product or topic, and presenter. Select "Filter Webcast Listings" below to access the filters.

Download or Order Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition for Free Published:
April 3, 2006

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/software/default.mspx

The following full versions of Virtual Server 2005 R2 are available for download or to pre-order on CD:

• Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition (32-bit)
• Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition (64-bit)

[A very competitive and wise move on Microsoft's part I would say.]

I am a cofounder, along with Page Brooks, for the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group located in South Carolina, which has just recently been accepted into the International .NET Association (INETA).

The International .NET Association (INETA) provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoft® .NET user groups. Our mission is to offer assistance and resources to community groups that promote and educate their membership in Microsoft's .NET technologies. INETA welcomes all facets of the .NET user community, from developers and architects to project managers and IT professionals.

I thought it might be helpful if I shared what I've learned about INETA for anyone else that might be interested.

INETA Speaker Bureau - listing of individuals who speak for INETA.

INETA Speaker Bureau FAQ - good FAQ on requesting speakers, etc.

INETA Newsletters - large listing of newsletters that will bring anyone up to speed on INETA.

INETA Live! So You Want to Hold a Code Camp? - Web cast, but I am not sure there will be a recording.

Northeast Regional User Group Leadership Summit - maybe Page or I can make this.

INETA Birds of a Feather - think of these as mini-presentations during the TechEd 2006.

[I've added some more information in the comments to keep this topic up to date as I've learned more about INETA.]

Award for Customer Excellence

Now this is a classy idea, for a company to reward its customers that help it help its customers.

I like to think my suggestions and comments really made a difference to the Compact Framework 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition.

I found this the other day on digg.com. It's almost a screensaver for your desktop.

"Desktop Earth is a wallpaper generator for Windows. It runs whenever you're logged on and updates your wallpaper with an accurate representation of the Earth as it would be seen from space at that precise moment."

CodeFromThe70s.org

"Images are created from high-resolution textures (2560x1280) so it's perfect for that QSXGA display - but they work on anything, even on SVGA.

There is an image for every month to accurately depict snow and foliage changes, and the night view is simply stunning.

The imagery is based on NASA's Blue Marble Next and Earth's City Lights."

One of my favorite tv shows was Firefly. I would absolutely love to see the Browncoats rise again.

"We plan on raising enough money to fund 24 new episodes of Firefly – a whole new season of shows. Every cent of this money (minus credit card fees) will go directly to Joss Whedon to use as he sees fit to continue the trailblazing story of Firefly."

Click HERE to donate!

I think a lot of tv shows are written for the "lowest common denominator" and to appeal to the masses. Firefly had depth and quality that was uncommon to say the least for network television. If Firefly could make the jump from network-supported to fan-supported we'd really have some must-see tv.

Firefly:

Five hundred years in the future, a renegade crew aboard a small, mobile, spacecraft tries to survive as they travel the unknown parts of the galaxy and evade warring factions as well as authority agents out to get them.

Serenity:

Captain Malcom Reynolds finds himself running from a skilled Alliance operative who wants River Tam, and who will stop at nothing to get her; meanwhile, River's capabilities become more clear to the crew of Serenity.

January 2006
Topic: Our First Meeting / Web Security

We are proud to announce the details for the first Pee Dee Area .NET User Group meeting. The meeting will be held on January 10, 2006 at the McLeod Plaza Classroom in McLeod Medical Plaza. We will kick things off at 6:00 PM.

            The big prize for the night will be a brand new copy of Halo 2 for the Microsoft XBox!

Here is the tentative schedule:

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM Socializing / Dinner
7:00 PM - 7:10 PM Introduction and Sponsor Time
7:10 PM - 7:15 PM News Items & 1st Drawing
7:15 PM - 7:55 PM Presentation
7:55 PM - 8:00 PM 2nd Drawing and Wrap Up

Click Here for Driving Directions

Directions to the Classroom
Enter the McLeod Medical Plaza using the 800 Cheves St. entrance (Bottom Right-Hand Corner of Map)
Take a left and look for room (PC - Plaza Classroom) it’s on the first floor.

Contact Information:

Chris Craft
843.230.4620 [cell phone]

Thanks,
The PDANUG Team

I have been using Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 since its release. Overall it is a great new version with many enhancements at a great value. I picked up my copy for less than $30 new.

For some reason the Pocket Streets and Trips has not been updated and there was real opportunity for improvement and value here.

My favorite new features is the night map mode, driving guidance with voice prompts, and rotate map to follow travel direction.

Microsoft has a good overview here.

One question I have is how the heck do you label stops in the route planner. I like the number system, but I would at least like tool tips or something other than a number and an address to identify a stop. I'm hoping I'm missing something...

The company I work for Taylor Data Systems has just recently become a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner.

Gold Certified Partners represent the highest level of competence and expertise with Microsoft technologies, and have the closest working relationship with Microsoft.

We specialize in Windows Mobile solutions for enterprise level applications. We've worked very hard to make it to where we are and it is nice to have a little lime light now.

This free service that Google is offering really impresses me. I see how it benifits Google, but it is a real service that many folk pay premium dollar for. And it appears that Google isn't holding anything back with quality either.

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You'll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors.

http://www.google.com/analytics/

Of course they are still not available to purchase yet. But you can take the system for a spin.

They have the Call of Duty 2 game playing in the kiosk. Seriously considering preordering a system after only playing for a short while.

Florence, SC too far to travel? Then take a look here:

http://www.frappr.com/xbox360kiosks

Frappr has a map with listings of XBox 360 Kiosks all over the country.