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