Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day

Saturday, June 07, 2008

SQL Server 2008 Discontinued and Deprecated Feature Link List

Just The Facts - SQL Server 2008: Deprecated & Discontinued Features!

“With the impending arrival of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 come several new enhancements. These enhancements can be categorized as new capabilities, old constraints removed, and improvements in scalability. In the SQL Server community (including this blog) you can find numerous amounts of information on the new features found in SQL Server 2008…however you seldom see much on deprecated features. Deprecated features are abilities of the new release which are either being removed completely or are being replaced by a future build of the software product. Discontinued features on the other hand are software features removed in the new release of the product.

Before I dive into the ‘list’ I wanted to mention that SQL Server 2008 includes a performance counter which will increment each time you use a deprecated feature. The counter is called SQL Server:Deprecated Features. …

…

Here is the deprecated & discontinued list by component, MSDN URLs:

SQL Server 2008 Database Engine Deprecated Features

SQL Server 2008 Database Engine Discontinued Features

…”

Derek provides a nice link list of the discontinued and deprecated features in SQL Server 2008’s Database Engine, Reporting Services, Integration Services and Analysis Services. It’s pretty amazing the number of things in these lists.

The SQL Server team seems to have gotten real aggressive in their discontinue and deprecate drive. Hopefully setting the stage for more improvements, etc in future releases…

BTW, I dig the new Deprecates Features performance counter. I think that’s a cool way to help us look for things that may bite us in the butt in the future…

Friday, June 06, 2008

Scrum Day 0 – The Search for ScrumMaster

Monday I want to kick off my first Scrum Sprint Planning Meeting and I’m getting a little… um… well… a little concerned (cough… scared really… cough). I’ve been reading when I can and am about half way through the Agile Project Management with Scrum book and really want to make this work.

The more I learn, the more I dig Scrum. The self organizing and empowered teams, the transparency, the ability to adapt to changing realities, etc. All of it sounds like something that will not only help us provide better products but also strengthen my team.

But as I read, I’m wondering if we’re not setting ourselves up for failure. The last I heard, we’re not getting “professional” help in getting up to speed on Scrum. Each Dev Manager is going to be their own ScrumMaster, and we’re (again, last I heard) going to have to learn how as we go. We may get some training, but nothing has been said for sure. And I’m supposed to be Mr. Scrum by Monday? lol… Well heck, I’m sure as hell going to try anyway. Even though I know I’m going to screw this up a bit, I’m still going to do all that I can and hopefully, as we progress, we’ll get better at it together.

Another challenge is our Product Owners. We don’t have them (yet). Well actually we do have them. We have a ton of them as a matter of fact. We have User Groups and Steering Committees filled with them… The challenge is to get the Organization to empower one, one for our Scrum teams. Also for someone to stand up and accept being the Product Owner…

So who is likely going to be the “Product Owner” for many of our/my Scrum projects? I’ll give you three guesses… (Yes, that’s right the Dev Manager).

Now we’ve already been playing this role, so we’re used to it, but I’m worried about how it will affect our ability to succeed with Scrum. The Product Owner is a critical piece of the puzzle and without a “real” one, well…

Well I need to finish moving some work items (those with attachments… sigh).

Visual Studio Gallery gets some Social love… (which is only legal in a few states…)

Anthony @ MS - The Visual Studio Gallery gets a little more community friendly

“Over the last few months the Visual Studio Gallery has been growing as the one stop shop for Visual Studio Extensions. We launched the Visual Studio Gallery with the release of Visual Studio 2008 and in just three months we’ve gathered 600 extensions. It has been great to see just how well recieved this site has been.

Today we release a new set of needed features that will improve the appeal of the Visual studio Gallery.

Users can now contribute their own ratings on the quality extensions they’ve tried

Visitors can optionally provide a detailed review about the extensions.

We’ve added a Review Tab were visitors can sort through the various reviews on an extension

The “Was this review helpful” lets other browsers sort credible reviews from the rest

Authors of an extension now get aggregate information about the ratings of their extension

Last we jazzed up the category & search results page giving a better summary of the matching extensions

Sign in and start reviewing the extensions you've used so far. …

…”

Anthony gave me the heads up (because I’m way behind on my feeds… stupid work… ;) that the Visual Studio has gotten some community and social goodness added into the mix.

Plus, there looks like they have more stuff coming soon (like RSS feeds… Yea! )

I’ve already made my voice heard and have started rating some of my fav’s.

I’m now using John Papa’s Footer WLW (1.1 CTP) and Scott’s Profanity Checker Plugins…

JohnPapa.net - DZone PlugIn for Windows Live Writer

“I had a good response to my DotNetKicks plugin for Windows Live Writer. One of the requests that came along was to write a Live Writer plugin for DZone, too. DZone is another one of the aggregating sites … they state on their site “fresh links for developers”.

…

If you just want to use this plugin, simply download the dll and drop it in your Live Writer plugin folder.I only added a single option: the style of the link. The style can either be tall or wide.

This is Tall and this is Wide

…”

CodeProject - Windows Live Writer PlugIn for DotNetKicks

“Windows Live Writer PlugIn for DotNetKicks. Generates a KickIt image and link to embed in a post.

…”

InsertableContentSource - New Writer Plugins Using The New SDK

“…

This plugin was something I discussed with the Writer team as a good example of the PublishNotificationHook base class for checking the contents of a post and cancelling the publish if certain criteria are met. So this allows you to configure what words would cancel a blog post from being published, and just to make sure they can’t easily be changed (say by a child), you have to password protect them

…”

This is until I can get moving on my own plugins… ;)

The coolest things about these plugins? Their authors have released the source for them. Kudo's to them!

Remember, these require the new Windows Live Writer CTP…

Note to self:
Make a suggestion for a future improvement that lets the user turn on/off these kind of footer plugins per post, at post edit time. For example, if I'm writing a personal post, it seems silly to have the DNK's and DZone gadgets on it. Know what I mean? I'm thinking some way to opt-in or opt-out per post. (unless I'm confused as to how they work... this is my first post with these installed).

I wonder if you could hork in something to make this work? Say a ContentSource that you add to a post that creates design time only content? Then the Footer Plugin checks the post (since it can access the body) to see if that special data is there. And if so, THEN it adds the footer. So two plugins, one ContentSource and one HeaderFooter...

Or an opt-out ContentSource where if it exists the FooterPlugin deletes it (or hides it) and also doesn't add the footer stuff.

I think that would work... wouldn't it? That would give the user a design/edit time view and the coolness of the new Plugins.

Well it's an idea anyway...

Want some help getting started with Scrum for Team System 2? Well here you go…

blogs.conchango.com - Getting Started With Scrum for Team System Version 2

“Getting started with Scrum for Team System

I’ve written the below blog post to help people new to scrum get started with the Scrum for Team System process template. It will take you through setting up a simple project, creating user stories, creating tasks and working through a sprint.

Pre-requisites:

In order to continue with this guide you will need:

A Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008 environment (including WSS 3.0)

Installed the latest Scrum for Team System process template (at time of writing, the current version is 2.1).

Creating a new team project:

Open Team Explorer

…

Exploring the new team project:

…

Project initial set up:

…

Create the user stories:

…

Creating the Sprint Tasks:

…”

What I liked about this post was part on creating User Stories (Product Backlog Items) and turning them into Sprint Tasks (Sprint Backlog Items).

Coming Soon a free SilverLight 2 DataGrid WITH Full Source

DevExpress - Announcing the Upcoming AgDataGrid Suite for Silverlight

As the release of Silverlight draws near, DevExpress has invested the engineering resources needed to deliver a feature-rich grid control for Silverlight. Not just a "preview" of what is possible with Silverlight, the AgDataGrid Suite was developed to fully exploit the power and flexibility of the platform and will ship with the following features:

Data Grouping against multiple Silverlight Grid columns

Data Sorting against multiple Silverlight Grid columns

…

…

AgDataGrid Suite will be available to you for free with FULL SOURCE CODE. When released, you will be able to obtain your free license directly from this page...so stay tuned …”

Yes, not only a free DataGrid, but free WITH its full source code too! Nice…

(via Method ~ of ~ Failed - Free Silverlight DataGrid with source code!)

Google Chart API Fun - “50 Cool Things You Can Do with Google Charts API”

College@Home - 50 Cool Things You Can Do with Google Charts API

“Chartophiles, have you heard that Google has made it incredibly easy to generate your own slick-looking charts? It’s true, and all it takes to make one is the ability to read and edit a URL. This has made it possible for lots of people to get creative with charts. Read on to see what’s been done, and how you can do it yourself.

…

1. Create Pac-man Charts: Google’s own Matt Cutts describes how you can make a pie chart that looks like Pac-man.

…

7. Thematic Mapping with the Google Charts API-A Brief Tutorial: You can create your own red state/blue state style map using Google Charts.

…

24. Google Gadget to Keep Track of Your Feedburner Stats: Visually display your Feedburner subscriber count with Google Charts.

…

31. Excel and Google Charts: With Google Charts, you can easily and quickly make charts for Excel that would otherwise be difficult or impossible.

…

41. Docoloco: This tool has used Google Charts to find and recommend places to eat and drink.

…

49. Weight loss: This user has set up a chart to track his weight loss.

…”

Fiona sent me an email letting me know about this cool list… Any list that starts with creating Pac-man charts is a list for me! ;)

While you’re there, check out some of their other lists too. Like Virtual Learning: 25 Best Sims and Games For the Classroom, 100 Free Library 2.0 Webinars and Tutorials and 40+ Most Useful Mashups for College Students.

Related Past Post XRef:
Google Chart API Released

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Another’s journey down the TFS and Agile road…

Teams WIT Tools - Using TFS, Excel, and Agile to deliver on time and on budget

“We just finished our first real sprint using TFS, Excel, and the Agile process. One of the things that we had trouble doing in our last sprint, which wasn't really a sprint, but rather more of a marathon that seemed to never end, was shut down. We slipped our end date several times and each time was somewhat of a surprise for management, etc. This time around we decided to following a date driven Agile model and it worked out quite well. With TFS as the backbone of our project management and Excel (Iteration Backlog.xlsx that shipped with CTP12) as the front end, we were able to track daily/weekly progress easily. The Burndown chart and velocity chart helped us see if we were on track or not quickly and easily. We held daily stand ups to get face to face status and gut feel from everyone and then held weekly over view meetings to go over progress for the week. We were able to deliver what we said we would deliver when we said we were able to deliver and TFS, Excel and Agile were key in helping us do that.

…

In conclusion, I would highly recommend using TFS, Excel integration, and the Agile process to help you deliver on time and on budget.”

As I begin my own Agile/Scrum journey it’s nice to hear from others further along that same road…

Scrum Day -1 - Infrastructure Day

Today was infrastructure day… Moving from one TFS template to our Scrum template, while also moving from one server to another.

While I hate to whine (well in my blog posts at least... ;) can we all agree that moving Work Items and Source from one TFS server to another kind of bytes?

I tried the TFS To TFS Migration Tool but it didn't seem to want to move my work items. Source it seemed to do okay (for a very simple project at least), but it gacked on the work items. Likely due to the differences in the template types (I'm guessing... I'm firing up the source now to see if I can figure it out).

So it's back to the old Excel standby. Open the work items in Excel from the Source Team Project, paste them into another Excel spreadsheet for the new Project.

Now this works, and can be pretty fast, BUT it doesn't handle attachments, links, history, etc. And one of my remaining/to-do projects has a 100+ work items with attachments. Hence why I'm firing up the source to the TFS to TFS tool. I hoping I can hork it to make it work. Sounds like a mission for tomorrow...

TFS Noob Note: A Solution is NOT a TFS Team Project! (*.SLN != TeamProject) This is likely one of the most common mistakes TFS noob's make. We create a TFS Team Project for a given VS Solution. Sure we think we'll host all the future versions in the Team Project, so yeah, it needs its own Team Project. No, no, no! You have to think broader and wider...

Today I started with nine Team Projects, I'm moving to two (and in the end that might be one to many). These two Team Projects will host 14 products/exe's, tons of dll's, resources and such.

Just say no! Friends don't let friends create too many Team Projects...

As for my Scrum ed-u-ma-kat-tion, I've started my reading and by the first half of the first chapter realized I sure as heck didn't know Scrum like I thought I did. But then again, not a day goes by where I don't realize there's so much I don't know...

I want to be young again and know everything... :P

Related Past Post XRef:
Scrum Day -2 - The Decision is Made

NTFS Junction Points in C# & P/Invoke - Post Series

Brian - From The Inside Looking Out - Using NTFS Junctions in C#

“…

NTFS junction points are a type of reparse point where you can link to local directories. There are utilities out that allow you to create and delete junction points. You can find reference to them in this Microsoft Support Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/205524.

What I did was wrote C# code using Platform Invoke Support to call into NTFS to create, delete, and interrogate junction points. No rocket science but a challenge when you don't have access to the source code - that includes me.

In this post I will show you the layout of the reparse structures in C#.

…

In my next post I will show you some classes you need to create and the signatures for the PInvoke calls.
…”

NTFS Junction points are one of those OS things that really never had much tooling around, let alone managed code support. I’ll be follow Brian’s posts with interest…

The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) CTP Released (Not to be confused with the Managed Addin Framework [MAF] which became System.Addin)

Mircea Trofin's blog - The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) CTP is out!

“…

For those that are not familiar with the topic, MEF "provides developers with a tool to easily add extensibility to their applications and with minimal impact on existing code. The application developer can define extension points according to the functionality required of an extension, while the extension developer uses those points to interact with the application.

MEF enables this extensibility to take place without creating a hard dependency in either direction. Applications can be extended at run time without recompilation, and extensions can be used by multiple applications sharing the same extension requirements. MEF also allows an application to delay the loading of an extension while still examining its metadata, enabling efficient traversal of large catalogs of extensions”

Krzysztof Cwalina - Managed Extensibility Framework

“Several months ago we formed what we call Application Framework Core team. The charter of the team is to play the same role in the application frameworks space (WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF, Silverlight) as the Base Class Libraries (BCL) team plays at the bottom of the platform stack.

…

One of the first concrete projects that we are working on and are ready to slowly talk about is what we call the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF). We observed that there are more and more places in the .NET Framework itself and increasingly managed applications (like Visual Studio) where we want to provide, or already provide, hooks for 3^rd party extensions. Think about TraceListener plugins for the TraceSource APIs, pluggable rules for Visual Studio Code Analysis (and the standalone FxCop), etc. In the absence of a built-in extensibility framework (like MEF), our developers who want to enable such extensions often are forced to create custom mechanisms, thus duplication. We hope that MEF will both stop such duplication and encourage/enable more extensibility in the Framework and applications built on top of it.

We will blog more details about MEF in the upcoming months, but here are some early details (subject to changes, of course): MEF is a set of features referred in the academic community and in the industry as a Naming and Activation Service (returns an object given a “name”), Dependency Injection (DI) framework, and a Structural Type System (duck typing). These technologies (and other like System.AddIn) together are intended to enable the world of what we call Open and Dynamic Applications, i.e. make it easier and cheaper to build extensible applications and extensions.…”

I like System.Addin, and understand why it needs its complexity, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hope for something that’s easier… ;)

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Speaking of Scrum – “Scrum in Five Minutes”

Peter, one of my team members, found this last month and I’ve been meaning to blog out it… Guess now is as good a time as any.

Softhouse - Scrum in Five Minutes

This is a 16 page, with lots of pretty pictures (so is upper management safe… OH… Did I say that out loud?), easy to digest yet provides a nice introduction to Scrum. I found that it helped me get the gist of Scrum, to solidify some of my thinking around it and answered a few questions.

For a quick intro to Scrum I think this would be hard to beat.

Scrum Day -2 - The Decision is Made

Well we’ve done it. We’ve made the call. The decision is in… We’re going to Scrum!

We’re moving from an ad-hoc management style, where every product team did their own thing, to a common process and set of management procedures. We’re Scrum’ing baby!

Well okay, we’re going to be “Scrum’ish” (I’m not “standing” at our Daily Scrum’s, some roles may be shared, Sprints may not be exactly 30 days, etc). But as a whole, we are going to give Scrum the old college try.

We’ve decided on a six month trial by four (all) product teams and we’ll using the Scrum for Team System TFS Project Template to help keep us on track (which means I have to migrate my team and team projects from our MSF Agile projects… but that will be for another post).

So how much do I know about Scrum and managing Scrum based projects?

Um… yeah… err… um… Not much.

I’ve gone over my past Scrum posts, listened to some Scrum related podcasts and done a little online reading. So yeah, not so much. Considering I want to starting planing a Sprint on Monday morning I had better INSERT INTO Greg.Brain SELECT * FROM World.Scrum

To start with, to get the Zen of it, I picked up a couple books today which I’ll likely be reading this weekend (instead of coding up some new WLW SDK 1.1 plugins… stupid work! :p )

The Enterprise and Scrum
by Ken Schwaber

Read more about this book...

Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)
by Ken Schwaber

Read more about this book...

[BTW, books inserted via the Amazon Book Lookup Plugin]

Tomorrow I’ll get my “production” TFS Scrum Team Projects and will start working up my Areas and Integrations. Maybe I’ll also do some migrations too (which are not only moving from template to template, but server to server too).

More to come… (I hope)

Windows Search 4.0 Released – Faster, better and happier enterprise player…

LiveSide - News blog - Windows Search 4.0 released

“Having released a public beta of Windows Search 4.0 back at the end of March, a final version has now been released today (thanks Brandon!). As we’ve talked about previously, this update for Windows (XP, Vista, Server and WHS) upgrades the search technologies built in to the operating system. Specifically the new features include:

…

As we mentioned at the launch of the beta, while this is an update aimed at the enterprise market, there are still some significant benefits here for the home user. Notably much faster indexing with reduced resource usage, along with shorter loading times for search results.

…”

Description of Windows Search 4.0 and the Multilingual User Interface Pack for Windows Search 4.0

Windows Search 4.0 includes the following improvements:

Support for indexing encrypted documents of local file systems

Reduced affect on Microsoft Exchange when you index e-mail in online mode, and there is no local cache (.ost)

Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes

Support for client-to-client remote query to shared indexed locations

Improved indexing performance

Faster previewer updates for Windows XP

Per-user Group Policy settings

Windows software updates for Watson errors

Support for the following new enterprise Group Policy objects:

Computer policies

Prevent adding Universal Naming Convention (UNC) locations to index from Control Panel

Prevent customizing indexed locations in Control Panel

Prevent automatically adding shared folders to the index

Allow for indexing of encrypted files

Disable indexer back-off

Prevent clients from querying the index remotely

Allow for indexing of online delegate mailboxes

Prevent adding user

Specified locations to the All Locations menu

Enable throttling for online mail indexing

Per-user policies

Prevent adding UNC locations to the index from Control Panel

Prevent customizing indexed locations in Control Panel

Prevent indexing certain paths

Default indexed paths

Default excluded paths

Windows Search 4.0 packages include the following:

The Group Policy template (Search.adm or Search.admx /l) for managing Group Policy objects that span multiple versions of Windows Desktop Search and Windows Search

The Add-in for Files on Microsoft Networks for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 packages
This add-in is described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

918996 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918996/) Availability of the Windows Desktop Search add-in for Files on Microsoft Networks

This add-in lets Windows Search index redirected "My Documents" folders. This add-in also lets Windows Search index shared items on remote networks. By default, this add-in is included for supported 32-bit operating systems.

…

Windows Search 4.0 supports the following operating systems:

32-bit versions of Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1)

64-bit versions of Windows Vista with SP1

32-bit versions of Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or a later version

64-bit versions of Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or a later version

32-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 with SP2

64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Windows Server 2008

Windows Home Server

…”

I like better and faster…

Windows Server 2008 VHD’s Released (Core/Enterprise for Virtual Server/Virtual PC & Hyper-V)

Dugie’s Pensieve - Microsoft releases 2008 VHD images

“Microsoft have release Windows Server 2008 images for both Hyper-V and Virtual Server.

Each set of images come in two flavours, Full and Core. If you want to know more, go check out the Microsoft Website, and a snippet is below:

VHD Images for Microsoft Virtual Server:

WS08_RTM_x86_EnterpriseVHD.zip (single file)

WS08_ServerCorex86_EnterpriseVHD.zip (single file)

or download the multi-part image: 2008 VHD Images for VS2005

VHD Images for Microsoft Hyper-V:

WS08_RTM_x64_EnterpriseFULL.zip

ServerCorex64_Enterprise.zip

or download the multi-part image: 2008 VHD Images for Hyper-V

…” [Post leached level: 90%]

I’ve been really wanting to play with Windows Server 2008, but just to lazy to build a VM from scratch (and don’t have any hardware to put it on). Now I can continue to be lazy and just get these VHD’s. :)

It’s official, I’m registered for PDC 2008…

MicrosoftPDC

I’m in… Signed up… Registered… Good to go…

I’m not the most social guy (lol… to say the least) but I would like to connect with other bloggers, community members and any of you, my readers, while at PDC this year. I’m sure there will be a Bloggers Lounge, but what other ways can we connect? Being local to LA (and being “good” by taking the train to and from downtown) I don’t think I’ll be too available for dinners, parties and such, but I’d still like to touch base. Tell you what, lunch is on me… :p

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Scrum for Team System (SfTS) Work Item Migration Utility Released (SfTS 1.x/2.x to SfTS 2.1)

blogs.conchango.com - Scrum for Team System - Work Item Migration Utility

“Scrum for Team System – Work Item Migration Utility

During the creation of the Scrum for Team System (SfTS) version 2 template, the development team created several utility programs to help test and work with the new template. One of these utilities is the “Work Item Migration Utility”.

Work Item Migration

By default, the team foundation server does not provide the ability to migrate work item data from one project to another. Work item data can be exported by opening queries in Excel, saving and then publishing to an alternative target project. This is a time consuming process that doesn’t maintain the linkage between work items and attachments and does not include all the work item history. The excel solution is less than ideal.

Enter the “Work Item Migration Utility”. This utility enables you to export work item data from SfTS v1.x and SfTS v2.x projects into an xml formatted save files and then import them into another SfTS v2.1 project. This process not only maintains the work item linkage, but also includes all the work item historical data. Global lists (Teams and Environments) are included in the exported data and in addition, you can also export / import the contents of the team project portal.

…”

This could come in handy…

And you thought Windows Live Writer Development had stalled... NOPE! A new WLW CTP is now available, with some cool new features and plugin goodness

Writer Zone - Technical Preview: Now Available for Download

“…

New Features

You’ll also get an early look at some improvements and new features we’ve been working on:

Video and Image Publishing Enhancements

Upload videos to Soapbox

Image cropping and tilting

Additional border styles

Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)

Support for centering images

Editing Enhancements

Auto Linking

Smart quotes/typographic characters

Word count

UI Improvements

Revised main toolbar

Tabs for view switching

Improved category control with search/filtering

…”

Writer Dev Zone - Technical Preview: Now Available for Download

“…

The biggest changes are the additions of two new plugin types: publish notification hooks and header/footer content sources. Publish notification hook plugins allow you to execute code before and after Writer posts content to a weblog. They can examine the contents of the post and have the option to cancel the publish operation. Header/footer source plugins insert headers or footers during publishing. Headers and footers are not directly editable by Writer users and do not appear in Writer’s editing views, but are visible in the Preview view (and of course, on the published blog post).

In the SDK Technical Preview you’ll find the following:

New SDK Features.doc – Detailed descriptions of the new plugin types. (Start here!)

SDK Reference.chm – Reference documentation for the entire Windows Live Writer API.

Samples – Source and binaries for two sample plugins:

Twitter Notify – Prompts you to make a Twitter status update after publishing a post

DiggThis – Automatically adds a DiggThis button or badge to each post

…”

YEAH! My favorite blogging tool is still alive and well!

The install over my existing version was smooth and easy and all my settings, etc seemed to upgrade with no issues. (I’m writing this post in the new version ;)

While the new features are cool (the tabbed view switching being one of nicer ones IMHO), I’m most excited about the new plugin features. The Pre/Post publish notification is something I can see using in a number of ways… Since these provide access to the permalink to the post, you can now do some pretty cool stuff. For example, you can write a plugin that as soon as the post was successfully posted, poke that new post URL directly into your Twitter feed… And that’s just one thing that comes to mind.

Scott Lovegrove has had his hands on a private beta for a bit and has already written a number of cool WLW Plugins using the new features. Make sure you check out these posts, New Writer Plugins Using The New SDK and The New Live Writer SDK

Here are some quick screen shots…

Monday, June 02, 2008

Twittering via WCF 3.5

Dariusz quatscht - Programming Twitter with WCF 3.5

"Do you Twitter? If so, this could be of interest for you. If not, maybe you are interested in how to use the Twitter REST API to write own client applications.
Imagine you could just use Twitter from your code like this:
   1: TwitterStatusProxy proxy = new TwitterStatusProxy( "username", "password" );
   2:  
   3: // retrieve friends timeline
   4: XElement timeline = proxy.GetFriendsTimeline();
   5:  
   6: // do whatever you want to do with the data
I just wrote up a demo for a security talk I gave last friday, using the Twitter API from WCF 3.5. ...
Anyway, I want to show you how to use Twitter with WCF 3.5. Here we go. Twitters API is almost an authenticated one, this means for most calls you have to authenticate yourself before calling into the API. Therefore I have chosen to always provide a username and password in the constructor of the proxy class. I decided also to use for each category an own proxy implementation.
..."

I really want to start playing with WCF and thought this was a cool example of using it, it's 3.5 goodness and Twitter. He makes it looks easy, doesn't he? lol...

Now I want to build a Windows Live Writer plugin that posts a Shrinkster or TinyURL link to my Twitter when I publish a new post. ;)

Embedded images (aka Attachment.Type = olOLE) in Outlook messages and one way to get at them...

Jelle Druyts - Extracting OLE embedded images from emails in Outlook

"While it seemed a simple requirement, saving all attachments from emails in Outlook to disk proved to be challenging - to say the least. Using the Outlook Object Model, it's quite easy to enumerate all emails in a folder, look at their attachments and call the SaveAsFile method on them. However, for OLE-type attachments (typically images), this throws a COMException saying: "Outlook cannot do this action on this type of attachment". While looking for alternatives or workarounds, I found nothing but confirmation that this is indeed not an easy task - even from Dmitry Streblechenko, Outlook MVP and creator of the excellent and very affordable Outlook Redemption library: "If you mean embedded graphics objects in the RTF messages, there is not much you can do [...] You can look at the storage itself to figure that out, but I've never tried that".

Ultimately, after lots of trial and error, I did manage to find a fairly easy way to save these OLE embedded images by (mis)using the clipboard. Basically, I retrieve the attachment’s IStorage OLE interface (available through Redemption) and call OleLoad on it to have OLE load the contents and retrieve an IDataObject. The magic trick is to place that IDataObject on the clipboard and retrieve the actual image from the clipboard (so that the clipboard itself handles the nasty OLE details).

..."

Getting at olOLE attachments in Outlook can be a major pain. Jelle's method, while may seem "hacky", gets the job done and should be pretty reliable ("just barely good enough to get the job done" as I call it, is still getting the job done...).

On a related note, if you're doing Outlook development, you need to take a long hard look at Outlook Redemption. I've been using it for years and it makes the impossible by mortals, possible. It's also how some third party utilities do some of their magic (for instance Xobni uses it). And best of all, Dmitry provides outstanding and invaluable support...

Saturday, May 31, 2008

New Free (Regware) PowerShell 8 Page Reference Card

Windows PowerShell - New Free Windows PowerShell Quick Reference Card

I've been working with the folks over at Developer Zone on a quick reference card for PowerShell, based on my book. The card is now complete and is available as a free download. (PDF, registration required.)
This is an 8-page card that covers the PowerShell language, common commands and examples. The card was written primarily for developers (it is Developer Zone after all) and for people with existing scripting experience. Even so, if you're using PowerShell, it should be a handy reference to the environment.
..." [Post leached almost in full]

This is a pretty cool PowerShell 1 quick reference guide. Fairly well packed with info and with limited marketing stuff (the 1/4 column on the first page and a full 1/2 page on the last)...

Easier ClickOnce File Extension Associations (until VS2008 SP1 Ships)

Re-inventing The Wheel - Tool: Editing File Associations for ClickOnce Applications

"I apologize for taking so long between posts. I have an excuse: very busy working on Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (Beta). For those of you who have downloaded the beta, this post won't do you much good, as the ability to set file associations for ClickOnce applications is already built in there. But for the rest of you, I've built a Visual Studio package based on upon a prototype I worked on for the Beta.
About the package: The package exposes an editor to work with file associations in the app.manifest file, as I wrote about in an earlier post. The editor tries to provide some error and warning feedback to cover the cases I mentioned in that post.
...

..."

This post has a 2+ Coolness buff...

The news that this capability is baked into VS2008 SP1 and that, with the referenced package, we can use it today.

If you've ever tried to do hacks to get file extensions associations with older ClickOnce then you're really appreciate this..

Friday, May 30, 2008

Free Windows TCP/IP Fundamentals eBook (Because sometimes you just need 559 pages of TCP/IP...)

Microsoft Downloads - TCP/IP Fundamentals for Microsoft Windows

"This online book is a structured, introductory approach to the basic concepts and principles of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol suite, how the most important protocols function, and their basic configuration in the Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 families of operating systems. This book is primarily a discussion of concepts and principles to lay a conceptual foundation for the TCP/IP protocol suite and provides an integrated discussion of both Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
..."

I'm interested in the TCP/IP v6 info. I'm a old v4 guy, where my first usage was first getting TCP/IP running on Windows 3.1 with a third party stack (the definition of "fun" ;) and I just don't know much about v6... (except its address space is "big" and there's cool "stuff" in it ;)

Buzz kits... Get your buzz kits here... (SharePoint 2007 Internal Buzz Kit, that is)

Microsoft Downloads - SharePoint Server 2007 Internal Buzz Kit

"...

The SharePoint Server 2007 Internal Buzz Kit includes everything you need to run an internal communication campaign for your SharePoint Server 2007 launch. It includes a PowerPoint presentation, videos you can use in kiosks or embed in the presentation, training materials, posters, e-mail announcements, guidelines on building community, guidelines on how to use the buzz kit and more.
..."

Sometimes your toughest market is inside the building...

[Humor] The Cookie Monster's Nightmare...

Gizmodo - Sesame Street Isn't So Sure About the Internet

CookieMonster

I'm sure this has been around for forever, but it made me laugh when I really needed a laugh...

Mesh'ing Live.Sysinternals.com, using Vista Scheduling and Robocopy

Yesterday I blogged about the new live.sysinternals.com site and how it's not only available via URL but also UNC (The latest Sysinternals utilities are just a URL away, Live.Sysinternals.com). And I made a comment that now I wanted a Mesh folder too (some users are just never satisfied... give them an inch... yada, yada... ;)

Well lazy me, I just realized that I can do this myself very easily and simply.

What is the request/need?

I want auto-sync'ing of the sysinternal tools. This is so I can use them if I'm offline.
I want to use Mesh so the tools are also on my machines.
I want it to be easy, simple and automated.

Resolution (v1)

Use the very cool task scheduling in Vista to robocopy the files from \\live.sysinternals.com\tools to a local folder.
Mesh that local folder.

Done.

Robocopy comes with Vista and is "smart". It won't copy the files if that have not changed, thereby saving bandwidth. It can also be run in a restartable mode and can handle flaky networks well (with auto-retries, etc).

Creating a scheduled task on Vista is easy too... Go to Start, find Task Scheduler, click on Create Basic Task, fill in the when, what and etc.

Here's my task, and the action I used...

It has taken me longer to write this up than it did to have the task created, files copied and my Mesh sync'ed. :)

Thursday, May 29, 2008

The latest Sysinternals utilities are just a URL away, Live.Sysinternals.com

Live.Sysinternals.com

"What is this?

This is a file share allowing access to all Sysinternals utilities. We have developed this to test an alternate distribution mechanism for our utilities.

This will allow you to run these tools from any computer connected to the Internet without having to navigate to a webpage, download and extract the zip file.

If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft Windows Sysinternals, it is highly recommended that you visit the website at http://technet.microsoft.com/sysinternals before using these tools.

If you have any questions or comments on this file share, please email syssite@microsoft.com

Regards,

The Microsoft Windows Sysinternals Team" [About This Site.txt leached in full]

That rocks. This will make it SO much easier to get the latest and greatest Sysinternals tool of choice.

Now if only they were to Live Mesh this so I could get a locally sync'ed/offline'able version of the utilities that was always up to date... ;)

(via Ed Bott's Windows Expertise - Sysinternals Live goes live)

Update #1 5/29/2008 @ 11:10 AM (PDT):

Even cooler, you can access live.Sysinternals.com via UNC! (i.e. via webdav)

\\Live.sysinternals.com\tools

Now THAT's a nice touch!

(via Blog de David Sebban [MSFT] - \\Live.sysinternals.com\tools)

Windows Vista Demo Readiness Toolkit - The One Stop DVD Shop to repave a system for demo's, etc.

Microsoft Downloads - Windows Vista Demo Readiness Toolkit

"With a comprehensive demo script, sample content, and a preconfigured installation including user accounts and applications, you have everything you need to demo with Windows Vista with virtually no effort.
Burn your own bootable DRT DVD with this ISO file. NOTE: This ISO file will erase all data on your Hard Drive
...

NOTE: Installing the Demo Readiness Toolkit will completely erase all data on your hard drive and create a Windows Vista Demonstration PC. Be sure to use a machine that can be re-formatted. Do you demonstrate Windows Vista features? Or maybe you demo 3rd party applications, services, solutions and/or hardware with Windows Vista? With the Demo Readiness Toolkit, your workload just got a whole lot lighter! With a comprehensive demo script, sample content, and a preconfigured installation including user accounts and applications, you have everything you need to demo with Windows Vista with virtually no effort. No more searching for the right software, creating user accounts, tweaking settings, or writing product/feature messaging - now you can focus on your pitch, NOT on building a demo environment.

With the DRT, it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3…
1) Download and burn our ISO to a bootable DVD
2) Insert the DVD into your optical drive and boot from it
3) Relax while the demo environment is created for you

So the next time you have meetings, tradeshow booths, keynotes, or events with demos, use the DRT as your demo platform

..."

Rhis looks like a simple way to build out a demo machine or VM.

Please Note, this is NOT a repair or recovery DVD. This will repave, nuke, delete, make go away, etc all the data on the given machine...

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Brian the TFS Build Bunny - That's just wrong... but in all the right ways...

Martin Woodward - Brian the Build Bunny

"I'm always keen try new and novel ways to keep in touch with the status of my software projects. Fortunately, Team Foundation Server provides many ways to do this. While the Build Wallboard is fun if you have a spare monitor and machine lying around, I wanted to experiment with some inexpensive dedicated devices, and so Brian the Build Bunny was born.

Brian is a Nabaztag smart rabbit. He reads out details of check-ins and builds. If a build has failed then his ears go down to show how sad he feels, but if you fix the build his ears will soon pick up again.
..."

That is just too funny. I SO want a build bunny now! LOL

PDC 2008 registration open, with preconference and preliminary sessions highlighted and with Ray Ozzie Keynoting Day One

MDE-020_BlogBling_Brain_CR2_3

The MicrosoftPDC.com site has all the info, sessions, social and registration link.

Lots of Windows 7, cloud and Silverlight sessions listed so far...

As soon as my training request is approved, I'll be all signed up... :)

(via Alvin Ashcraft’s Morning Dew - Dew Drop - May 28, 2008)

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Windows SideShow Managed API and Runtime Released - A Managed SideShow...[Insert joke here]

Microsoft Downloads - Windows SideShow Managed API 1.0 SDK

"The Windows SideShow Managed API 1.0 SDK installs the runtime and development components that are required to build and run gadgets for Windows SideShow using the .NET Framework 2.0. This download facilitates gadget development and enables developers to build compelling applications to support Windows SideShow-compatible devices.
The SDK includes Windows SideShow project templates integrated with Visual Studio
..."

Microsoft Downloads - Windows SideShow Managed Runtime 1.0

"The Windows SideShow Managed Runtime 1.0 installs the runtime components that are required to run gadgets for Windows SideShow using the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.
..."

I don't have the mental cycles to get into another project... WELL, okay, just one more.

Downloading the API now. ;)

DimeCasts.Net - Everyday coding issues covered in 10 minutes or less

Derik Whittaker - [ANN] Dimecasts.net is Alive and Kicking

"A few weeks ago while putting together a screencast series on how to use NUnit (and a basic intro to testing) I got the bright idea to launch a new site. I wanted to create a site that allows myself (and others in the future) to create, host and share short (about 10 minutes -- hence the name dimecasts.net) screencast's (I call them episodes) on how to do various different things.
...

So, who is my target audience with these episodes....everyone. My thoughts are to create episodes that tackle everyday coding issues as well as show how to use various tools (NUnit, Mocking tools, IoC, etc). I want the episodes to range from 100 level (Intro to XYZ) all the way to 400 level (mastering XYZ) and I want them to be short and to the point.
I am launching DimeCasts.Net with 4 episodes, but have 10 more in post production ready to roll. I plan on rolling 1-2 a week (depending on my and others schedules) till we run out of ideas.
Here are the 4 initial episodes

..."

Interesting. Worth keeping an eye on at least... :p

(via Kyle Baley - The Coding Hillbilly - DimeCasts.NET)

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Lisa Braithwaite (my favorite Speaking and Presentation Coach) YouPublishing...

Speak Schmeak - "101 Tips to Improve Your Public Speaking" e-book

"I've just discovered a new self-publishing platform for digital downloads call YouPublish.com (that's my referral link, so please use it if you decide to sign up), and it's so super easy that I've already uploaded some stuff!

You'll find all of my free handouts listed there eventually, but today I went crazy and uploaded an e-book called "101 Tips to Improve Your Public Speaking." How's that for straightforward?

This e-book has been a bonus item that comes with my e-course, but I've added some more stuff and I'm selling it by itself. For just a couple of bucks you can get (what I'm calling) the ultimate public speaking "cheat-sheet!" ...

..."

Lisa, my favorite speaking and presentation coach, is taking to the self-publishing sky's and posting her work to YouPublish with the listing of two titles (one pay and one free, with more to follow).

[In the interest of full disclosure, Lisa is the only speaking and presentation coach I know... LOL... But she worked with me to resolve some bugs in my Blogger Backup utility, thereby instantly making her my fav.. ;) ]

Her "Presentation Readiness Checklist" (free) made me laugh when I hit the "Sing in the car on the way to the venue; it’s a great way to warm up your voice and make you feel more relaxed" item.

This is the first I've seen YouPublish (which is understandable I guess since it launched May 7, 2008) but it looks interesting. A cool service to help the small guy self-publish...

Friday, May 23, 2008

WPF Fun for WinForm'ers - How to host a WPF User Control in your WinForm (and how to interact with it)

CodeProject - Integrate WPF UserControls in WinForms

"

Introduction

In one of our last articles the author described how to embed WinForms-Controls into WPF. This one explains the other way around: how can one integrate a WPF-UserControl into WinForms. In the example, a scaleable WPF-image is hosted in a WinForms-Dialog.
..."

A simple, enough information to get you going on your own, project which shows WinForm'ers how to get some WPF goodness onto their forms.

300 tips toward being a better People Manager...

Slacker Manager - 300 Free Employee Engagement Ideas E-Book

"Are you looking for ideas to create, build, foster, and sustain employee engagement? In conjunction with 11 other authors from the EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT NETWORK we created a 39 page free e-book to enrich your employee engagement knowledge and efforts.

...
Here are 7 suggestions on how you can apply the concepts from the book:

Scan the authors to find ideas.
Read the book as a primer to create your own alphabet.
Launch a team or project group exercise on engagement based on the book.
Choose a letter each day and focus on that letter to enhance your own engagement or the engagement of others.
Share the alphabets with others at work.
Offer the book as a free resource during employee engagement workshops.
Develop your own applications based on your interest and focus on employee engagement.

..."

How did you learn to manage people? On the job, on the fly, as you go, right? From how you were/are managed? By seeing and remembering what you liked and didn't (i.e. management patterns and anti-patterns)? Try this, try that and try again?

Yeah, me too.

So I try to keep an open mind and eye out for ways to be a better manager, boss, and best of all, leader. When I saw this, and given it's pretty short and free, I thought it well worth a quick post...

This not a long drawn out "How to manage people and get them to pretend they are engaged" ebook filled with pages of theory and methodologies, instead a list of short and simple suggestions from a number of experienced people. It's easily digestible and can be used right away. And did I say it was free?

If nothing else, it can be a reminder to you, the manager, to lift your head up out of the day to day madness and see beyond the door toward making your workplace just a tiny bit better. Do this enough and it should add up to a win for everyone...

Pex 0.5 Released - Your Parameterized Unit Test Buddy

Nikolai Tillmann's Blog - Pex 0.5 Released

Today we released the first version of Pex under a Microsoft Research License. Ideally you have Visual Studio 2008 Professional to get the full experience, but all you really need is .NET 2.0.

We even wrote a tutorial. While it's quite long, exercise 3 helps you to get started with Visual Studio 2008 Professional, and exercise 4 shows you how to use the command-line.
What is Pex?
Pex generates test inputs that cover all, or at least many of the corner cases in your .NET code. These test inputs are plugged into parameterized unit test that you write. The result is a small unit test suite, where each unit test calls the parameterized unit test with particular test inputs. There is a great picture on our main Pex page that illustrates this process.
Pex supports other unit test frameworks since the unit tests that Pex generates can be executed by other unit test frameworks without Pex. Pex comes with support for MSTest, the unit test framework of Visual Studio, out of the box. For support for other unit test frameworks, please look at the Pex Extensions project.
..."

I dig that logo... ;)

I also dig the idea behind Pex. Unit Testing can only take you so far. You can only write so many tests to cover so many things before your head explodes. Yet you want well tested code, right? You want to try to feed it as much "stuff" as you can, because you KNOW as soon as you give your app to your users (or your assembly to its consumers, etc) that they are going to do "silly user stuff." They are going to feed it data that you just never expected... and break your app in very spectacular ways.

Just because you have 70-80%, or even 100%, code coverage doesn't mean you're done and the app is perfectly tested. It just means that the tests envisioned provide a little cover and exercise the code in expected ways. Better than nothing that is for sure, but you've only tested what you've decided to test with. (GIGO and all that...)

As I understand Pex, it's meant to examine your code and automate the feeding in of "stuff" you didn't think about or have time to consider (along with the normal "stuff" in between). It's a tool to help you, the coder and test writer, add one more level of assurance that your code is "good" and the edges are tested. An additional sanity check, without you going insane in doing it...

(via Peli's Farm - Download Pex 0.5 NOW!)

Update #1 5/23/2008 @ 10:15am PDT:

Ben Hall(Ben Hall's Blog) has a very nice Pex post, Microsoft Pex - 0.5 Released, covering download/install all the way through viewing the testing results... If you're interested in Pex and want to see it "in action" you should check out his post...

.Net Client Profile - The .Net Framework on SlimFast (aka a slimmed down version of the Framework with JUST the client stuff in it - A .Net Framework in a 27MB install...)

Troy Martez's Weblog - Introducing the .NET Framework Client Profile

"...

The .NET Framework 3.5 Client Profile (Client Profile) was created to answer the feedback from many customers that a smaller framework was needed specifically for Client Applications. The Client Profile is a subset of assemblies already contained within .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. The Client Profile subset is focused on fulfilling the needs of Client applications.
The Client Profile contains the following features:

Smaller framework deployment - ~27 MB client deployment package
Smaller, faster client deployment boot strapper
Client Application focused feature set:

Common Language Runtime (CLR)
ClickOnce
Windows Forms
Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Communication Foundation

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Integration – Applications can be targeted specifically for the Client Profile subset.

..."

BCL Team Blog - .NET Framework Client Profile [Justin Van Patten]

"Last week Soma and Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Beta. As part of this release, we’re introducing the .NET Framework Client Profile, a smaller .NET Framework redist optimized for .NET client applications. The new redist weighs in at around 26.5 MB, enabling a smaller, faster, more reliable installation experience for .NET client applications on machines that do not already have the .NET Framework installed.

.NET Framework Client Profile Assemblies

Here's the list of assemblies that are included in the.NET Framework Client Profile. Please note that this is actually the list of assemblies that will be included in the RTM release of the Client Profile; the beta version released last week includes some assemblies that will not be included in the RTM release (more details below).
..."

I'm pretty excited about this... Deployment, while easier in .Net than in the past, still can be a pain. A pain in getting that initial .Net Framework deployed. I feel that the .Net Framework Client Profile will go a good way in helping with that pain (27MB is SURE a lot better than the 250MB+ full on framework).

While this is kind of a stop gap, it's a very nice one. The bin's are the same, between the full Framework and the Client Profile, the same zero's and one's. The Client Profile is just lighter and doesn't have the server side baggage. And the Profile can easily be "upgraded" to the Full if needed (since they are the same bin's... etc, etc).

Now a perfect world would let us deploy the app with only its required framework components statically linked into it, and would not require any prerequisite admin rights required framework install. But we don't live in a perfect world...

What could get us close is if SoftGrid (now known as Microsoft Application Virtualization) were baked into Windows and VS. That from within VS we could build virtualized applications, which would then include said framework embedded into the virtualized app space... And if SoftGrid were baked into Windows we'd finally have a real xcopy deployment story.

Maybe one day...

Here's a Hand Gesture for you... Um... I mean Hand Gesture Recognition via Cam and C#

CodeProject - Hands Gestures Recognition

Introduction

Since the time I’ve wrote my first article about motion detection, I’ve got a lot of e-mails from different people around the world, which found the article quite useful and found a lot of applications of the code in many different areas. Those areas were including from simple video surveillance topics to quite impressing applications, like laser gestures recognition, detecting comets with telescope, detecting humming-birds and making camera shots of them, controlling water cannon and many other applications.
In this article I would like to discuss one more application, which uses motion detection as its first step and then does some interesting routines with the detected object – hands gesture recognition. Let’s suppose we have a camera, which monitors some area. When somebody gets into the area and makes some hands gestures in front of the camera, application should detect type of the gesture and raise an event, for example. When the hands gesture recognition is detected, the application may perform different actions depending on the type of gesture. For example, gestures recognition application may control some sort of device or another application sending different commands to it depending on the recognized gesture. What type of hands gestures are talking about? This particular application, which is discussed in the article, may recognize up to 12 gestures, which are combination of 4 different positions of 2 hands – hand is not raised, raised diagonally down, diagonally up or raised straight.
All the algorithms described in the article are based on the AForge.NET framework, which provides different image processing routines used by the application. The application also uses some motion detection routines, which are inspired by the framework and another article dedicated to motion detection.
..."

I thought this was pretty interesting. Got me thinking that who needs a touch screen when you could use a built in webcam to control your apps via gestures. Think iPhone without the smudges...

Wouldn't that would be cool?. Can we get that in Windows 7? ;)

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Your Application Suite To Go - Portable App Suite v1.1 Released

PortableApps.com - PortableApps.com Releases 1.1 Update to the PortableApps.com Platform and Suite

"PortableApps.com is proud to announce the 1.1 release of the PortableApps.com Platform and the PortableApps.com Suite, making it easier than ever to carry your favorite software with you. This new update makes the most popular portable software platform even better than before. Now you can take your digital life with you on your USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, memory card or other portable device. Browse the web, check your email, chat online, listen to music, keep your passwords secure, work on documents, check your datebook and even play a few games... all on the go. And, as always, it's all open source and completely free.
The PortableApps.com Platform 1.1 and the PortableApps.com Suite (Standard and Light Edition) are available for immediate download from PortableApps.com.
...

All versions of the PortableApps.com Suite include the integrated PortableApps.com Menu (pictured at right) and the PortableApps.com Backup utility along with a set of custom icons, an autoplay configuration, folders and a quick start shortcut. In addition, the packages include:

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition (web browser)
Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition (email)
Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition (calendar/tasks)
ClamWin Portable (antivirus)
Pidgin Portable (instant messaging)
Sumatra PDF Portable (PDF reader)
KeePass Password Safe Portable (passwords)
Sudoku Portable (game)
Mines-Perfect Portable (game)
CoolPlayer+ Portable (audio player)
OpenOffice.org Portable* (office suite)
...

*Note: The Light Suite includes AbiWord Portable (word processor) instead of OpenOffice.org Portable.
...

First time installers can download their choice of the PortableApps.com Platform weighing in at only 1MB, the full PortableApps.com Suite at 113MB or the PortableApps.com Suite Light Edition at 35MB. Just run the installer and choose your drive. When done, the Platform will start automatically.
..."

An entire OSS suite of applications, all setup and configured for portable (i.e. USB, key, thumb drive) usage.

I wonder if I could Live Mesh this? So I wouldn't even need a thumb drive, just an internet connection, Mesh and pow, I have all these app's AND my personal settings for them on any of my PC's... That's worth a try a least... :)

Related Past Post XRef:
PortableApps Suite

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Universal Driver for Windows SideShow Updated to v1.5 - Transports now include USB, Bluetooth and TCP/IP...

Windows SideShow Team Blog - Announcing the Universal Driver for Windows SideShow 1.5!

"Last week, we quietly released to Windows Update a new version of the Universal Driver for Windows SideShow! This new release includes support for additional transports, bringing the complete list to:
USB
Bluetooth
TCP/IP
TCP/IP with SSL
In addition to powering devices built using the Windows SideShow Device SDK for .NET Micro Framework v1.4 (and later), and perhaps the most exciting part of this release, is the protocol documentation which explains how you (yes, you) can implement your very own Windows SideShow-compatible device without having to write any PC code at all. That's right, no more writing a PC driver when you build a SideShow-compatible device; we've done that work for you. And did I mention it's free? Yes, that's right: there's no royalty, license, or any other legal documents you need to sign in order to get access to, and use, the documentation and driver for your device.
..."

I hate you Microsoft. After seeing this my mental gears are a-turning and a-churning (you can smell the burning... really... ;)

It's the TCP/IP transport that started it. If I understand the protocol doc's correctly (having spent an entire five minutes reading them), I should be able to use TCP/IP socket communications from a device (on the same network, yada, yada) to display SideShow information?

So I could create a utility that I can run on a PC to display the SideShow information from another PC? Say a small window on a living room PC to display SideShow info from the work PC in the home office?

Hum....

TeamBuild and Integration Testing

Grant Holliday - TFS Build: Running Integration Unit Tests

"If you’re doing a deployment out to a test server as part of your Continuous Integration build process, you may have some unit tests (or web/load tests) to run after the deployment. Since these tests are testing more than just an assembly, they can be considered integration tests.

This can easily be accomplished by modifying your TFSBuild.proj script. Start by overriding the AfterDropBuild or similar MSBuild target and calling the <TestToolsTask> with the correct parameters.

First of all, you’ll need to define the tests that you want to run. The simplest way is to create a Test List called “Integration Tests” that gets saved in your test metadata file (*.vsmdi).

..."

Grant provides some nice tips for adding integration testing as part of your TeamBuild process

PowerGUI 1.5 RTM is now available

Dmitry’s PowerBlog: PowerShell and beyond - PowerGUI 1.5 RTMs

"We have just shipped PowerGUI 1.5.0 - which is a very important upgrade for us with a lot of new and exciting features.

Right now I am overexcited to provide a detailed what’s new list so I will just give you the ones off the top of my head and will hope that others (or myself later this week) will provide a more detailed overview.

PowerGUI Administrative Console:

New filters: we have completely revamped the set of filter operations to make them much more user-friendly so you get “starts with”, “ends with” and so one instead of “like”

Totally revamped code generation for the PowerShell Code tab. We got rid of scriptblocks and made the code much more readable.

PowerGUI Script Editor:

Output window now has a live PowerShell prompt built into it!

Multitab UI.

Edit menu has options to copy code as HTML or RTF – for all bloggers out there.

Errors are written to the output window (obviously in red).

..."