GMail Drive shell extension

viksoe.dk - GMail Drive shell extension

"GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium.

GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to. "

Interesting... I've seen the Linux GmailFS. Now there's a Windows utility/extension that lets you use your gmail account as a remote file system.

I'm thinking Google is going to squash this kind of usage of GMail accounts (it takes a bit to fill 1GB with emails, but as a remote FS I can fill it in minutes), but until then this is pretty cool.

(via WhoIsKB - Kevin Blakeley - Gmail Drive, How Cool! BTW 6 invites )

Creating a Simple Demo with Axiom - CodeCube.Net

Creating a Simple Demo with Axiom - CodeCube.Net

"The Axiom engine is an open source 3D graphics/game engine written in C#. It has bindings for rendering with OpenGL and Managed DirectX. This article takes you through the process of creating a simple demo. It should be enough to get you up and running and whet your appetite.

I kept trying to find some sort of business case to have an excuse to write something about Axiom, after all, it's a "game" engine. But you know what? screw it ... what ever happened to the days where I would code something just for fun? well, I gotta tell ya, they're coming back. I long to have fun programming again, and for anyone who has every looked at a video game and secretly wished they could do the same, this one's for you ;-)

The purpose of this isn't to show you how to make games, or even really anything about 3D ... I'll save that for another article. The purpose is to walk you through the process until you've got a development process going, and you are able to run your own code. As with many articles of this type, we're simply going to be taking some existing code, copying it, and modifying it. That will show you what you have to do, and what you have to hook into to get something going."

Cool... I actually have a good business case for 3D (well in my mind it's a good business case :)

Slovak Technical Services Attachment Options [Outlook Attachment Security Utility]

"Attachment Options is a COM add-in for Outlook 2000 SP3 or higher, Outlook 2002, and Outlook 2003 that provides a user interface for changing which file types are restricted as Level 1 attachments. Level 1 attachments are hidden by Outlook, and cannot be seen, saved or opened from Outlook items. Moving an attachment extension to Level 2 enables the user to see the attachment and to save it to the file system. The attachment saved to the file system can later be opened by the user."

Pretty cool. Installs as a COM addin to Outlook. On the Tools/Options menu, it adds a new tab to the dialog and allows you to change the security for given blocked/level 1 restricted extensions.

Doesn't totally open your system up. Just helps you "unhide" selected file extensions.

For example, if you receive Access databases, you will find that Outlook hides them from you. With this utility you can adjust Outlook so it will now show you the MDB attachment allowing you to now open or detach the MDB.

Beyond "From" and "Received": Social Sorting for Email Triage

Beyond "From" and "Received": Social Sorting for Email Triage

Interesting research I might be able to use...

Management Tip: Principals for Leadership

Management Tip: Principals for Leadership

"Have a vision for the future
Have a strategy for getting there
Have a process and a plan explaining how to make the strategy happen
Have a skilled team to achieve the plan according to the process
Have a devoted and motivated team (employees and partners)"

Architectural Overview of Windows SharePoint Services

Architectural Overview of Windows SharePoint Services

"Summary: Examine the architecture implemented in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. Learn what happens on the server when users issue page requests, and how Windows SharePoint Services responds. Understand the role of managed code in relation to unmanaged code in Windows SharePoint Services, and the Windows SharePoint Services database schema. (13 printed pages)

Contents
High-Level System View
Web Server Topology
How Requests are Handled in IIS and Through the ISAPI Filter
Web Part Infrastructure
Unmanaged Code in Windows SharePoint Services
Contents of the Configuration Database
Conclusion"

When/if I need to do SharePoint/WSS development this information might come in handy.

(via TheServerSide.net - Architectural Overview of SharePoint Services)

Washington Secretary of State - Digital Archives

Washington Secretary of State - Digital Archives

From SlashDot post:
"prostoalex writes "USA Today and dozens of others report that Washington state archives went online. Over the past two years project participants scanned 1 million documents issued by state and country authorities. The archive is located in my alma mater Eastern Washington University (go Eagles!) The 800 terabyte storage system was developed by Microsoft and EDS."

From the digitalarchives.wa.gov web site:
"The much-anticipated grand opening of America’s first state government digital archives occurred on October 4, 2004. The opening gala event hosted Washington State legislators, county officials, archivists from throughout the United States, as well as a delegation of regional archivists from as far away as China. Among the speakers at this prestigious event were Secretary of State Sam Reed and Lew Bellardo, Deputy Archivist of the United States"

Not sure how I feel about this.

On one side, it's very cool. Also interesting in the image format/viewer they selected (DjVu).

But on the other, there SURE is allot of information that's so easily accessible.

The historical records are cool and I don't see much of a problem having them open and online. But there are current records online too (here's a marriage cert from 1997 for example). I mean talk about fuel for identify theft or for social engineering!

I guess I'm more for "open is better" than not, but still...

(via Slashdot - Washington State Archives Go Digital)

Data Access and Storage Developer Center: Query Notifications in ADO.NET 2.0

Data Access and Storage Developer Center: Query Notifications in ADO.NET 2.0

"Summary: Learn how to use the new notification technologies in ADO.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 to handle ad-hoc data refreshes. (16 printed pages)"

I've been reading this article by Bob Beauchemin and really like it... So I don't lose it, I'm posting this to my remote memory storage (aka my blog :)

ACL UI Adapter [Access Control List User Interface Adapter]

AclUIAdapter

"I finally got around to finishing up my managed adapter for ISecurityInformation. Turns out the cleanest way was to write a custom CCW in MC++. For those of you who are wondering what the heck I'm talking about, this allows you to add that nifty ACL editor GUI to your managed applications:
...
To use this adapter, write a class that implements ISecurityInformationManaged and pass an instance to AclUIAdapter.EditSecurity(). All this stuff is in a namespace called Pluralsight.Security.Adapters. You can download the code and sample application here. This will be featured in an upcoming article for MSDN Magazine."

This looks very cool. A standard ACL dialog for .Net apps.

I want to code up something just so I can use this... ;)

Update #1
Updated the title to better reflect the post's contents [Thanks Corey] ;)

Add a document to the recent document list

Add a document to the recent document list

".NET Framework 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 do have a way to add a document to the recent document list. Having needed to do this a few times, I created a wrapper of the SHAddToRecentDocs method in Shell32.dll."

Nice piece of work. I can see this being very useful.

Looks like SpaceShipOne made it!

History was made today. Looks like SpaceShipOne made it. Just waiting on official confirmation.

As I sat their in front of the TV watching SpaceShipOne fly into space I could feel the current of history change.

The future is so bright I need... to drop the shade screen on my space helmet. :)

Now all I need to do is save $190K so I can go into space too. Taking donations... ;)

A General Stops In (funny)

A General Stops In (funny)

CLASSIC military moment...

Two simple file tricks [Path.InvalidPathChars]

Two simple file tricks

"1. How do I know if a file path string has valid characters without resorting to catching an exception?

bool IsFileNameValid(string fileName)
{
if(filename != null && fileName.IndexOfAny(Path.InvalidPathChars) != -1)
{ return false; }
else { return true; }
}
..."

Nice. Learn something new every day. Don't think I've seen Path.InvalidPathChars before. So much to learn.

sigh

Paint.NET v1.1 is now available!

Paint.NET v1.1 is now available!

The cool Paint.Net application has rev'ed to 1.1.

Free, with C# source, with a cool UI. What more could you want? :|

"Paint.NET v1.1 has been released-to-web (RTW)! It can be downloaded in 3 forms from the current Paint.NET page at: http://rbrewster.members.winisp.net/pdn.html. The 3 downloads are the normal installer (4.5mb msi), full installer (25mb that installs .NET 1.1 if necessary), and the source code (7mb zip, modified MIT license).

Paint.NET is meant to be a replacement for MS Paint and was written entirely in C#. It includes all the basic features that MS Paint includes as well as some of the advanced functionality only seen in expensive applications like Adobe Photoshop. It is also free and the complete source code is available.

Lots of credit go to Tom, Michael, and Craig who’re students at Washington State University that helped with the release and will be working on a version 2.0 release that should be available near Christmas.

Big new items for v1.1 include plugin support for filters (“Effects” in Paint.NET vernacular), some new effects and “Adjustments,” and a slew of performance optimizations and UI tweaks. There may be documentation released soon on how to implement an Effect. For now, either download the source code and dissect it, or look at the RotoZoomerSource.zip that is copied to the installation directory (usually "C:\Program Files\Paint.NET v1.1")."