Visual Studio Orcas March CTP Released#

The March CTP for Visual Studio Orcas has been realised. This was supposed to be a "Feb CTP" but I guess it was pushed to today. This CTP has the full sapphire designer for ASP.NET. You can download it here from MS. If you haven't got the base image it is a good 6 gig download!

So the designer in this CTP has the following features:

  1. New designer based on the same technology as Expression Web.
  2. Extensive CSS tools.
  3. Support for nested master pages.
  4. Split view.
  5. Ability to access all tools that ASP.NET controls provide in Source view. 
  6. Intellisense and validation in <style> blocks.
  7. Support for master pages in web.config.
  8. Significantly improved performance of view switching.
  9. Unified undo/redo stack that remembers operation is all views.

The following things are not in the designer in the CTP:

  1. Image tracing
  2. Picture editing tools
  3. Ability to draw tables
  4. Layout table tools and task panes
  5. Advanced, HTML-oriented Find and Replace
  6. Spell checker
  7. Quick Tag Editor
  8. Behaviors
  9. Frameset editing
  10. Image map tools
  11. Previewing pages in predefined fixed sizes

Source: Mikhail Arkhipov's (MSFT) Web Log

3/1/2007 10:32:45 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Vista Media Center extenders - The future#

A glimpse on Chris Lainer's blog on the future of remote control based vista media center extenders. I love the whole idea of making the concept in-wall. i.e. a wall panel to control vista media center. I think a hardware snappable version would be perfect. I.e. it's a remote and it could snap into a wall panel to become a fixed item. You could have several around your house and mount it where ever you thought it was best or needed at the time... IP royalty payments to me :)

2/26/2007 4:18:32 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Free Microsoft Accounting Software#

Maybe I keep my head in enterprise tech too much, but did you know that Microsoft has free accounting software available? You can view details and download from the IdeaWins website. I don't know a lot about it, but I sure will be reading up on it now!

Update: it's focused on home and small business, however the features are quite intensive. Worth a look if you are a small business and need something quick!!!

2/23/2007 12:24:38 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [1]  | 

 

Virtual PC 2007 Released and is now free#

Microsoft have released Virtual PC 2007 for free. You can get more info and download it from here. Some commentary on it's release from Microsoft-Watch.com, news.com, lifehacker.

Microsoft are also releasing quite a few Virtual Hard Disks for testing and evaluation purposes. Go here to get Virtual Hard Disks of Exchange 2007, SQL Server 2005 and Windows Server 2003 R2.

2/23/2007 9:21:17 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

HTPC Cases and Recent Round-ups#

mce03.jpgHit Tip to Engadget for most of these leads, but some great stuff happaning with Home Threatre PC's these days:

Ablatron releases the most powerful Mini-ITX mainboard called the Nano Abox and supports a niffty 155 x 87 mm screen.

mce04.jpgThe FLeX 4.2 home theater PC from Italy's P.Guerra is a beautiful looking box which folds out and has Bose speakers built in!

mce02.jpgAn MCE based jukebox from CEPro with all the wonderful jukebox stylings is also equied with a beer cooler.

mce01.jpgOrigin AE Release a LCD equipped HTPC enclosure.

 

 

 

2/22/2007 10:52:35 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [3]  | 

 

ARCast NZ is Live, hosted by yours truly.#

My new pet project has gone live tonight: ARCast NZ. Check it out at the following address:  http://www.arcast.co.nz/

ARCast NZ is an official offshoot of Ron Jacobs' International ARCast. Since 2005, Ron Jacobs has been interviewing architects all around the globe and giving insight into the world of architecture. ARCast NZ is hosted by yours truly and is focused on the software and infrastructure architecture community in New Zealand. I intend to do at least one cast a month looking at relevant issues in the local NZ architecture community.

2/21/2007 6:11:19 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

RSA Encryption for Live/MSN Messenger - SimpLite#

I found this free for personal use RSA encryption utility for Live/MSN Messenger called SimpLite. I'm just testing it out now and it seems to work really well. And it supports the latests version of Live Messenger even though it doesn't say "Live Messenger". It will automatically make conversations red that are unencrtyped and make conversations that are encrypted green. Both ends need to install the utility but its a very quick download and a simple install if you follow and read the wizard. It uses 2048 Bit RSA keys so I figure it's pretty secure.

2/21/2007 11:14:54 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Asus getting in on Windows Mobile 6#

It's good to see another asian manufacturer developing Windows Mobile phones, especially Windows Mobile 6 ones. Asus are traditional mobo manufactor but are now branching into phones with Windows Mobile 6. Definitely one to watch in this area!

2/13/2007 4:04:36 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

First Look at Windows Mobile 6#

Blink.nu has some screenshots and info on Windows Mobile 6. I've been reading about this for a bit on leaked sites and my MVP information. Looks very interesting indeed. Good to see CF and SQL Mobile will now be bundled.

2/12/2007 1:16:32 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

The future of user interfaces#

Okay, so this is not strickly Microsoft, but this YouTube video on multi-touch sensing screens is amazing. I could imagine some amazing interfaces with the combination of WPF and a intractive screen like this. The mind just completely boggles. I just wanna know how I can get one now!!! Nice work Jeff, can you send one to New Zealand? We'll do some cool shit stuff with it!!!!

1/23/2007 12:19:15 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Microsoft eToliet#

eToilet.jpgThe Microsoft eToilet - the integration of the Zune and your fecal waste... Coming to a bathroom near you!

 

 

 

1/17/2007 1:01:43 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Next Gen Yahoo messenger built with WPF#

From Scott Gu's Blog, the next generation Yahoo messenger is being built with Windows Presentation Foundation and.NET. Article is here. Interesting indeed. I"m sure Windows Live Messegner will follow suit soon enough!

1/11/2007 12:08:27 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Featured on Ron Jacob's Arcast - The SOA Radical#

Recently Ron Jacobs, (Blog is here) toured New Zealand to give a couple of talks to usergroups on Service Orientation and a few other interesting topics. Ron as part of his job at Microsoft runs Arcast - a community podcast for Architecture and Architects in the Microsoft space. While he was NZ, we caught up and he interviewed me for Arcast. It all came about from a conversation I had with him after one of his talks - that basically I said SOA needs to become more radical and more pervasive as a design and technology philosophy. The overview of the talk is:

"When web services first came about, most people wondered if they were really the right way to go. After all performance wasn't great for some things and the wire format of text/xml was rather large and bulky. Over time we came to think of SOA and web services as the same and developed ways of thinking about architecture that worked in this model. With the release of WCF however, this point of view is changing. Now it is possible to think of your applications as a collection of services both internally and externally. A radical concept you say? Why yes, it most definitely is and that is why today we bring you an SOA Radical - Lukas Svoboda. "

The Arcast post and topic overview is here, and you can download the podcast directly from here. Also currently listed at the top of the Microsoft Resource Architecture Centre

1/10/2007 3:39:58 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [1]  | 

 

Architect MVP for 2007#

Hero_EN-US_1.jpgThank you to the fine people at Microsoft Community Support - I've been confirmed as an Architect Microsoft MVP again for 2007. For information on what an MVP see the Wikipedia listing, the Microsoft MVP faq and my MVP profile. My profile is a *little* out of date.

1/10/2007 2:40:56 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Exchange 2007 Thoughts#

From what I can see Microsoft will release Exchange 2007 before Christmas this year - good news as the new version is very revolutionary. Currently I'm researching Exchange 2007 for my personal knowledge and also in order to start advising customers. Despite requiring new 64 bit hardware I can see some major benefits to the new version of Exchange. Rather than prattle on my blog here are a few links for reading and research that I've found useful:

11/28/2006 2:13:51 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

While we are on Sharepoint....#

Wellingtonian Ian Morrish (and an old friend of mine from Advantage Group days) has been posting loads of information on WSS v3 and Sharepoint 2007 on his updated www.wssdemo.com website. Follow the link for tons of new sharepoint information.

Also congrats to Ian on his move to consulting services :)

11/28/2006 2:05:43 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Getting Performance out of Sharepoint Doc Lib#

I've got a customer who is having problems with a sharepoint installation where there are more than 4000 documents in a doc lib. In general this is not an issue for sharepoint but it seems to cause issues with their backup software. So I did a bit of research and found some interesting guidance on stopping performance issues with sharepoint doc libs. Resources and reading:

11/28/2006 2:03:13 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

ASP.NET Ajax (Codenamed: Atlas) beta 2 release#

ASP.NET Ajax (Codenamed: Atlas) beta 2 has been released. New version, tons of changes and a new official name. Found the download and information here

For those of you non-ms people out there ATLAS (or ASP.NET AJAX for the new official name) is Microsoft's implementation of Ajax.

11/21/2006 9:18:28 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

.NET 3.0 Released#

dotnetfx.gifIf Office 2007, Vista 2007 (with Windows Media Centre) wasn't enough - .NET 3.0 has also RTM'd. You can download .NET 3.0 directly from this link. A busy few weeks for Microsoft!!!

11/20/2006 5:18:14 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Windows Vista - Media Centre Bundled#

Windows Media Centre was always a specific version of Windows XP that end-users could not get. It was only open to OEMs who built and sold machines. That all changes with Windows Vista, now there is versions of vista that come with Windows Media Centre built in.

Windows Media Centre comes in the the home premium and ultimate versions of Vista.

More MS info at this link.

11/20/2006 5:11:26 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Vista RTM and Office RTM#

vistalogo.jpgProbably old news to most, but Windows Vista and Office RTM versions are released on MSDN. More at this link

11/20/2006 4:30:19 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

More useful Visio Shapes - Web Services#

Mai-lan's Visio Blog on MSDN blogs has an excellent stencil for basic web service design including the famous "Microsoft" Web Services icon. I use it a lot personally in my diagrams as an image and it's good to finally find it as a vector based visio icon. Find it on this blog post

10/26/2006 1:13:24 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Vista Boot Information#

vistalogo.jpgI've been playing around with a couple of vista versions on my dual opteron and have am now needing to figure out how to edit the new boot loader in Vista. This link on Wikipedia is a good explaination of what's going in the new Vista Bootloader. Very useful reference so I thought I would share it!

10/23/2006 4:08:55 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

Some comments and humour on Microsoft vs Google#
Article by Mary J Foley on what makes Google tick (She is a well known MS commentator, so there is plenty of contrast againest Microsoft).

One of the fourm replies, which is just hilarious!!! 

10/20/2006 10:37:15 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

TFS Source Control Overview for Visual Source Safe users#

VSTS_Logo.gifA good overview from MSDN focused particularly on the differneces between TFS Source Control and Visual Source Safe. Click here for the article

 

10/20/2006 10:29:01 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00) #    Comments [0]  | 

 

All content © 2010, Lukas Svoboda
On this page
This site
Calendar
<March 2007>
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
25262728123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
1234567
Archives
Sitemap
Blogroll OPML
Disclaimer

The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

Send mail to the author(s) E-mail