Although I didn’t receive an OTA notification that an update was available, I got home and plugged my phone in and the Zune software immediately came up with the Update screen.

Since I am in the developer program, my phone, a Samsung Focus, was registered and had the beta build (7712) of Mango installed on it.  Many wondered how this was going to work for developers running the beta code, and whether they would have to use their backups to return to “NoDo” before applying the the update.

The good news was the first update I received was the actual Mango update building the code to the RTM level of 7720.  I then received a second update which cleaned up “beta stuff”.  A third update then arrived which was a “Samsung Update” which I assume provided baseband and hardware firmware updates.  The final update switched the phone configuration to pull updates from the production Microsoft servers instead of those used for the ISV beta updates.

All said and done, the updates took about 15 minutes. 

Mango is a nice step up, and the RC bits of Mango ran very well.  Rarely had any issues.  It’s definitely worth the update if you’re still on original bits or even running “NoDo”.

No visual Voicemail…A disappointment.

It was a stretch for me to switch from iPhone to Windows Mobile, but I fell in love with the calendaring and email functionality, and I’ve been able to find equivalent apps on Mango that I regularly used on my iPhone.  I even went as far as to try a Zune Pass.

With the release of Mango, one of the additional features built into Windows Mobile is visual voicemail.  This became hugely popular with the release of iPhone, that its so strange to be without it.  It appears that visual voicemail isn’t quite enabled for Windows Phone 7 devices on the AT&T network, as confirmed in my conversation with AT&T tech support.  Trevor, an AT&T support representative told me:

“While the Mango update does support the functionality of visual voicemail for this phone, we do not yet have the feature available to support that phone.  I apologize, but I expect it in the near future”

I asked him if we’re talking “a couple of weeks”, or “a couple of months” and he responded with “Unfortunately I don’t have an ETA on when it may become available…Hopefully soon, but we do not yet know.”

I’ll stop short of saying that this ruined the celebration for me, but it’s close.  Having to call voicemail to get messages seems so archaic now, right?  I really hope they get it turned on soon.

If you’re looking for a list of enhancements included in Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango”, you can find those here.

I’ll preface this with Office and Internet Explorer both provide the capabilities to build extensions or add-ins that enhance the product experience or add functionality that might be missing from the product.  The process of creating these snap-ins can be extremely challenging since most require that they are coded in a language like C++.  Although it is possible to create them with managed code in C# or Visual Basic, they require a “wrapper” which provides the basis for the snap-in to interop with the application, a difficult and arduous process.

That’s where Add-in Express for Office and .NET comes in.

Whether your preferred language is C# or Visual Basic, Add-in Express enables a developer to waste less time on the wrapper and more time on the actual add-in.  Personally, if I had to figure out how the create the wrapper on my own, I’d never finish an add-in.

Introduction

Creating a new add-in is simple.  The wizard that I demonstrated in the Internet Explorer sample is very similar in the Add-in Express for Office and .NET, the exception being that you choose what Office application you are going to integrate with, and what programming language you wish to use.  Once you make your selections, the base application is created.

My Sample Project

I wanted to create a simple example of using an add-in for Outlook to downloads tweets from a timeline in Twitter.  This sample is by no means complete, but demonstrates the ease of use of Add-in Express in creating an Outlook extension.

You can see how I easily created a Office “ribbon” in Outlook called “Tweetlook”, and extended it by creating a couple of text buttons for the setup and to update the timeline.  You could extend these buttons very easily to include an image similar to what you would see in a regular Office ribbon button.

The objects of Outlook such as toolbars, buttons, links, frames, folders, and MAPI objects are all exposed through the interfaces making for easy access and again allowing the developer to focus on the core application, not necessarily the enormous amount of hooks required for integration.

Designer Implementation

One of my favorite features is the implementation of a very intuitive designer within Visual Studio.  This designer enables the drag-and-drop ability to create the different elements of the add-in such as the ribbon and buttons.

Deployment

Yet another challenge is how do you deploy these application add-ins once you create them.  When you are ready for deployment, you can use the Add-in Express Setup Wizard to help create the package you desire.

You have the option to create a Visual Studio project or InstallShield package.  Cool!

Overall Impressions

I’ll say that the best thing about about Add-in Express’s products are they are easy to use and definitely simplify the development process for those that are interested in creating solutions that integrate with products like Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office.  Using this type of product optimizes your development efforts and maximizes efficiency of the development process.

For anyone interested in this type of development, you can check out their products at http://www.add-in-express.com.

We began the voyage over two years ago in expanding the capabilities of automation with the Compellent Storage Center by creating the Compellent Storage Center Command Set for Windows PowerShell.  As the first storage vendor on the PowerShell scene, we offered over 60 cmdlets in our 1.0 release to handle anything from user management and alerting, to storage provisioning and volume management for the Windows platform.

In just a short time from now, Compellent will be releasing its new version of the Storage Center Command Set 6.0.  This new version includes a number of features including new cmdlets that support the configuration and management of a new Storage Center feature called Live Volume, as well as Remote Instant Replay.  Along with new features, the syntax of many of the existing cmdlets have changed to simplify their use, provide naming consistency across cmdlets, as well as increase the availability of pipelining results from one cmdlet to another.  Watch for future posts where we’re cover some of the newness in more detail.

How is PowerShell and the Compellent Command Set being used in your environment?  Leave me a note – I’d love to hear your story!

Watch for more updates on Compellent’s Blog: Around the Block.

For some time I have had a few ideas for Internet Explorer add-ons that I’d like to create.  One of the biggest challenges was with creating the wrapper that is required to encapsulate the executing code.  You could create context menu actions pretty easily through the registry, but you were limited to what you could do via JavaScript.

That being said, I was doing some research to see how I could accomplish this.  Almost immediately I came across Add-In Express which makes a product called Add-In Express for Internet Explorer.  They have a number of products available that help build add-ons around Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

I thought I’d give it a try, so I sent them an email to see about getting an evaluation copy.  Within a couple of days they provided me with an evaluation key good for 45 days. 

This would be enough time for me to kick around the product a bit and see how easy they made it to create a add-on for Internet Express.

Test Project: Instapaper Add-on for Internet Explorer

Have you heard of Instapaper?  Instapaper is this cool “project” founded by Marco Arment.  The idea behind Instapaper is that you are surfing the web, find a webpage that you like and you want to bookmark it for later review.  This is really handy if you’re catching up on your Twitter feed and come across a link you want to visit, you can “send it to Instapaper”, then use an Instapaper application (available for iPhone, Android, and other platforms) to go back and catch-up on the pages you wanted to revisit.  I use this a lot especially when traveling.  I’ll go back to my Instapaper list and read the articles that I didn’t previously have time for, but wanted to review otherwise.  Instapaper also has the option to export your “list” to your Kindle or other eReader device.

When I am on my desktop, and using Internet Explorer, how are you suppose to keep track of things you don’t have time for now, but want to go back and read?  You use Instapaper and my Instapaper Add-on for Internet Explorer!

Installation

A very straight-forward installation process.  Basically during the installer you specify which versions of Visual Studio you want to create add-ons for so it can register it’s templates appropriately.  In my development environment, I use Visual Studio 2010, so I checked that box and continued on allowing the product to finish it’s installation process.

Creating the New Project

Like any other new project in Visual Studio, you select the project type you want to create.  The templates for Add-in Express for Internet Explorer are located under “Other Project Types > Extensibility”.

Once you select that you want to create an Internet Explorer add-on, the Add-in Express Wizard kicks in and asks a few questions about the solution we’re building.  These answers help craft the project that it will create.

Once you clicked Finish, our new project is generated and we’re ready to start creating our add-in.

In addition to the creation of the add-on project, it is creates a customized installation project that you can use to distribute your add-on in all it’s glory.  This is cool and really makes the process that much more smoother.

Writing Code

Next, the majority of our action is going to take place in the IEModule.cs class file.  This is the “core” to our add-on and provides us the access to the objects that we’re going to need to draw information from within Internet Explorer.  The HTML document and all of it’s properties are exposed in the form of an HTMLDocument object which makes accessing the specifics of a webpage so easy!

You can see in my Instapaper project that I have created some additional classes that I am using to communicate with the Instapaper API in addition to a few dialogs in Win Forms.

Creating context menus and other options within the add-on are simplified through the properties dialog boxes.  By defining menus and their properties, events and methods are easily exposed ensuring that even the most novice of developers can create add-ons with little code!

Using the Add-on

Since the project creates the installer for me, the installation is easily executed in the form of an MSI package. 

When I launch Internet Explorer I can use the context menu to customize my options for the add-on.  In this case, in order to save it to my Instapaper account I have specify a username and password.  I also have the option to give me confirmation when the URL is successfully saved to my Instapaper account.  This form allows for the configuration of the Instapaper Add-on.

Once I have configured my settings, I can use the same context menu to capture a webpage to my Instapaper account.  There are two options for capturing.  First, you can send the URL of the current webpage that is being shown in the browser to Instapaper.  Secondly, you can also right-click on a link that exists in a particular webpage and send the link’s destination URL to Instapaper.  Swell!

Can I try the Instapaper Add-on?

I am working on making this add-on available to the general public, but need to add some additional features to the code and complete more testing.  Watch this post for more information on it’s availability.

Add-In Express for Internet Explorer Information

Add-In Express for Internet Explorer is a visual tool to create thread-safe, secure, isolated, deployable and context-sensitive add-ons for Internet Explorer, 6, 7 and 8 in VB.NET, C#, managed C++ and Delphi Prism.

The product current is supported in a number of IDEs including C#, VB.NET, C++ (Visual Studio 2005, 2008, 2010), Delphi Prism 2009/2010.  It current supports Internet Explorer 6,7,8, and soon to be IE9.

There are several different editions available starting at $249 per license.

Conclusion

Add-In Express has made the process of developing add-ons for Internet Explorer so simple.  A developer can create an add-on in little time with minimal development as it pertains to the wrapper.  As a point of reference, from start to functional, it took me about 2 hours to create my Instapaper add-on.  Put your time and thought into your applied code, let Add-In Express handle the integration.

This means when your server reboots or you switch around cables (in your lab environment of course), these alerts are triggered and show up in the system alerts as well as the GUI which presents a “stop light” that isn’t green.

You can control this connectivity per server in the Storage Center Manager, or perhaps you want to disable it for all of your lab servers.  Here’s a simple way to do so.  In this example I take the servers that are in my folder on the Storage Center and turn off their connectivity alerts.

Get-SCServer -ConnectionName SC5 | ?{ $_.ParentFolder -eq "Justin" } | { Set-SCServer -Index $ _.Index -EnableConnectivityAlert:$false -ConnectionName SC5 }

Beginner hints: The usage of “?” in PowerShell is synonymous with “where”.  We use this to filter the Get-SCServer cmdlet in the above example.  Additionally, “%” is synonymous with “for-each”, also used in the example.

By design, alerts in the Storage Center will change the “stop-light” status from green to red, especially critical alerts where, for example, a component is malfunctioning or a path between the controllers and disk are down.  It is also by design that these alerts have to be acknowledged one-by-one in the Storage Center interface.

That being said, there are times when you might be performing some configuration changes or maintenance that could trigger alerts.  Having to acknowledge 10 alerts is one thing, but lets say you replaced a switch, and lets say there are now 50 alerts.  How can I acknowledge those quickly and easily using the Compellent Storage Center PowerShell Command Set?

Like this:

Get-SCAlert -ConnectionName SC12 | foreach {Acknowledge-SCAlert -Index $_.Index -ConnectionName SC12}

This will get a list of alerts from the connection I have previously saved using the Get-SCConnection cmdlet.  We then pipe that to the Acknowledge-SCAlert cmdlet which then acknowledges the alert on the Storage Center.  I just cleared my 50 alerts in less than a minute!

NOTE: It really is important to review the alerts that your system might be generating.  Use all script examples with caution.

Initial reports indicate that Microsoft will delay the launch of an OS that will support CDMA technology in order to focus on GSM.  This is probably for good reason as CDMA is widely used in the United States, but not much at all beyond that.  GSM is the predominate technology overseas and in other foreign countries.

That being said, AT&T and T-Mobile would be the first to offer the devices, while Spring and Verizon customers will have to wait till sometime in 2011, when CDMA support is rumored to be made available.

"We had to make some trade-offs," senior product manager Greg Sullivan told CNET today. "Even Microsoft doesn’t have unlimited resources. We had to prioritize doing fewer things, really, really well." (Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20016752-56.html#ixzz102lPKtPl)

Back in the middle of July, Compellent had an opportunity to participate in Gestalt IT Tech Field Day.  As it says on their website, “This unique event brings together innovative IT product vendors and independent thought leaders, allowing them to get to know one another. It is a forum for engagement, education, hands-on experience, and feedback.”

Compellent was thrilled to be part of the experience as one of five sponsors for this event.  Others included F5, NEC, Veeam, and Nimble Storage, who used Tech Field Day as their official launch.

The event focused around these different vendors who had the opportunity to present their technologies to an esteemed panel of delegates.  The delegates, which comprised of technologists and bloggers, came from around the world.

The evening of July 15th included a reception and dinner at the Boeing Museum of Flight.  This was about the coolest thing I’ve seen.  I have a love for aviation, but to see where some of the first aircraft were built was simply amazing. 

The welcome reception was held in the “Red Barn”.  This is the original Boeing airplane factory.  The smell of the wood barn interior makes you feel like you were there.  Seeing the woodshop tools that were used to create the different components of the flying machine was pretty cool.

This was an opportunity for us to meet the other vendors in attendance, but more importantly to meet all of the delegates and learn more about them and what they do.  Liem Nguyen, the director of Corporate Communications for Compellent helped to coordinate Compellent’s sponsorship and involvement, and is seen below with Kirby Wadsworth, a marketing exec with F5 Networks.  You can’t tell from this picture, but Kirby was rockin’ some pretty sweet yellow slacks that night.

Most of the delegates in one form or another were involved in IT, but specifically this Tech Field Day was focused on virtualization.  So, the basis of what we talked about centered around our virtualized storage solution, but also the integration points with Hyper-V and VMware.

Bob Fine, Director of Product Marketing, Scott DesBles, Director of Technical Solutions, and myself tag-teamed to present the Compellent solution.  Bob and Scott provided the Compellent overview and a roadmap discussion which seemed to keep the panel engaged, and we also discussed Live Volume while demonstrating the Compellent Storage Center and its ease of use in addition to Enterprise Manager, the “single pane of glass” which can be used to manage multiple Storage Centers in your environment and the interface that enables the world-famous “6 clicks to replicate a volume’”. 

Check out Liem’s blog post about Tech Field Day with some exclusive interview footage of the delegates and shots from the Museum of Flight.

We had a blast meeting with the delegates and other vendors in Seattle.  We’d love the opportunity to do this again and continue to share the Compellent story.

Did I mention the view in Seattle?  For this last picture, I was amazed at how close the parking lot was to the runway at Boeing Field.  We were able to get some great photos and videos of the experience.  Here’s a nice shot of a cargo aircraft on approach with Mount Rainer in the distance.

Ellie took her first ride on the Giant Slide this year.  The picture above was from Saturday, September 4, which happened to be a record setting day with over 234,000 people visiting the Minnesota State Fair.  You can tell by the amount of people that it was indeed packed.  KISS was the Grandstand act that night.  Need I say more?

This panoramic was from Friday, September 3.  The weather was cloudy with chilly temperatures in the upper 50’s.  In addition to the chilly weather, winds were out of the north at about 20 MPH which made it barely tolerable.  Check back with me in January to validate that last statement.  I like this photo particularly because it captures the main gate to the Minnesota State Fair on Snelling Avenue.

Finally, I had to throw in a shot of the Midway from Saturday.  I shot this normally in pretty bright sunlight and used a preset in Aperture to add a high-dynamic range effect.  If you’re not familiar, you can learn more about HDR here.

Not a panoramic, but definitely a great memory from this year’s Fair.  Ellie experienced her first merry-go-round.  She was a little nervous at first, but once it got going she was laughing and waving at the on-lookers as she went by (over and over again). 

A lot has happened in those four months.  Ellie is now 16 months old and has turned into this fabulous little girl with quite the personality,  I’ve moved into a different role at Compellent, moved from an iPhone to Android, lost some weight, gained some back, and survived another Minnesota State Fair.  The last two might be linked in some fashion.

Nonetheless, I’m going to try to refocus and generate some regular content on my blog.  Apparently no guest bloggers stop by in my absence to maintain things, but it stayed up anyway.  Oh, I did change the theme.  Cause it seems like I needed to do something to make it feel new again.  Surprisingly enough for me, my blog is also a little over four years old now.  It’s fun to look back on some of things I’ve written back; interesting or otherwise.

So, to my few faithful followers, I’ll try harder.  Thanks for hanging around and be sure to leave your comments when you stop by.