Jemm's link blog

Should I use MEF with an IoC container? - Part 1

Glenn Block — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:31:00 +0000

40 Beautiful HDR Pictures You Would be Amazed [Pics] (637 diggs)

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:39:54 +0000

Many people are surprised by the stunning effect HDR images present. Today we are here to introduce you another talent in the making of HDR images: Frank Slack.

Linus Torvalds gives Windows 7 a big thumbs up (1513 diggs)

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:20:13 +0000

You know Microsoft, when you setup a big Windows 7 booth across the street from the Japan Linux Symposium you're just asking for trouble.

The World of Tomorrow (If The Internet Disappeared Today) (3488 diggs)

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:01:50 +0000

How would an internet-addicted world adjust to life without it?

10 More Stunning Images Of Space

jfrater — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:30:20 +0000

There has been much news of late about space – from NASA bombing the moon to discoveries on Mars. I am fascinating by outer space and the images we are receiving daily from our outer space vessels seems to be getting better and better. For that reason it seemed appropriate to create a second list of stunning images of space. Here is the original list for those interested. As usual, click the image for a larger view.

Saturn from Cassini

This stunning image of Saturn was captured by the incredible Cassini spacecraft in 2006 as it passed behind the ringed gas giant in the 9th year of its mission. Even more incredible it that the pale-blue dot of the Earth can be seen in this image just above and to the left of the bright, main rings. [Source]

Crab Pulsar

The Crab Pulsar, a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second, lies at the center of this remarkable image from the orbiting Chandra Observatory. The deep x-ray image gives the first clear view of the convoluted boundaries of the Crab’s pulsar wind nebula. Like a cosmic dynamo the pulsar powers the x-ray emission. With more mass than the Sun and the density of an atomic nucleus, the spinning pulsar itself is the collapsed core of a massive star. The stellar core collapse resulted in a supernova explosion that was witnessed in the year 1054. [Source]

Partial Eclipse

A partial solar eclipse is seen through clouds in Hyderabad, Pakistan on Wednesday, July 22, 2009. [Source]

Eta Carinae

Eta Carinae is a stellar system in the constellation Carina, about 7,500 to 8,000 light-years from the Sun. The system contains at least two stars, one of which is a luminous blue variable star. Its combined luminosity is about four million times that of the Sun and has an estimated system mass in excess of 100 solar masses.

Mercury Flyby

This dramatic NAC image was acquired about 56 minutes prior to MESSENGER’s closest approach during the mission’s October 6, 2008 Mercury flyby. You almost feel like you could reach out and touch it. [Source]

Just paying the bills...

Square Nebula

Evidence indicates that IC 4406 is likely a hollow cylinder, with its square appearance the result of our vantage point in viewing the cylinder from the side. Were IC 4406 viewed from the top, it would likely look similar to the Ring Nebula. This representative-color picture is a composite made by combining images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2001 and 2002. [Source]

Ionized Helium

NASA’s STEREO (Ahead) spacecraft observed this visually stunning prominence eruption on Sept. 29, 2008 in the 304 wavelength of extreme UV light. It rose up and cascaded to the right over several hours, appearing something like a flag unfurling, as it broke apart and headed into space. [Source]

Jewel Box in the Sky

NGC 290 is an open cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is located in the constellation Tucana.The photogenic cluster, pictured above, was captured recently by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Open clusters of stars are younger, contain few stars, and contain a much higher fraction of blue stars than do globular clusters of stars.

International Space Station

After undocking, the space shuttle Discovery crew got a memorable view of the developing International Space Station (ISS). Pictured orbiting high above Earth, numerous solar panels, trusses, and science modules of the ISS were visible. [Source]

Flowing Martian Sand Dunes

Although liquids freeze and evaporate quickly into the thin atmosphere of Mars, persistent winds may make large sand dunes appear to flow and even drip like a liquid. Visible on the above image right are two flat top mesas in southern Mars, where the season is changing from Spring to Summer. [Source]

Bonus

Saturn’s New Ring

This is a bonus item because it is an artist’s rendition; but it is the only available image so far. On 6 October 2009, the discovery of a tenuous ring of material in the plane of and just interior to the orbit of Phoebe (one of Saturn’s moons) was announced (it has been called the Phoebe ring). It is tilted 27 degrees from Saturn’s equatorial plane (and the other rings) and it is virtually invisible to the naked eye.

Latest sneak peek of Office Web Apps from TechEd AU

Long Zheng — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:35:25 +0000

At an overwhelmingly popular session during Microsoft TechEd Australia 2009 this week, Reed Shaffner from the Office team provided among other things a brief but satisfying peek at the latest Office Web Apps experience that has yet to be opened up for public beta testing. Here’s a couple photos and notes on what he showed off.

Bear in mind this demo was catered towards IT professionals so the Office Web Apps experience is sitting inside a Sharepoint portal, the actual Office Web Apps user interface should be very similar for the consumer version that sits within Windows Live too.

By default, clicking open a document from the archive opens the document for viewing. In this demo, Silverlight is installed and the enhanced viewer loads almost instantly. From what can be seen from the toolbar, simple functionality like “find” and “zoom” is provided. Conveniently the viewer can also be full-screened using a button on the top-right.

From this viewer, the user is provided two simple choices to edit the document – either to edit it online or download it do the desktop client. Although it was not demoed, one can only hope the “file” menu will include some printing or export functionality directly from the viewer.

Diving into the web editor, the loading experience was again near-instant. Although not much has changed since an update on Office Web Apps at the Microsoft Worldwide Partners Conference a couple months ago, the only visible difference is the addition of the “View” tab in the Word editor. It should also be noted the editor can be full screened too.

Switching between the Web App and the client is a simple click of a button in the Ribbon. The same functionality is present in all of the Office Web Apps.

Here is the Excel viewer with Silverlight too. Of particular note are the worksheet tabs. (I don’t recall if the viewer was bugged or he was able to resize the worksheet.

And the PowerPoint viewer with Silverlight.

The PowerPoint editor features some pretty simple slide manipulation as well as formatting controls.

Last but not least, it’s revealed Visio will be joining the suite of Office apps ported to the online experience. And yes, it’s just as exciting as the desktop client.

The latest word on when Office Web Apps will open to public beta testing is before the end of 2009. Moreover, enterprise customers hosting their own Sharepoint server will receive access to the beta first before peons like us can access it through Windows Live.

The Real Live Search – Bing API experiment

Long Zheng — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:47:59 +0000

Wouldn’t it be cool if search engines were as fast as you could type and actually showed you results as-you-type? As I found out this evening with jQuery in one hand and JSON in another, not only is it possible but turns out to be just as cool as I imagined.

Inspired by the realtime-ness of Google Wave, I wanted to build a prototype search engine that did away with a search button and page loads. Instead, search queries are sent character-by-character to the lightning fast Bing AJAX APIs which returned JSON results easily processed and formatted by Javascript on the page. The UI experience is driven solely by the browser.

The result is a truly “live” search experience which I’ve cunningly dubbed “The Real Live Search” as tribute to the former Microsoft search engine. I invite everyone to give it a quick whirl, but please bear in mind it’s only a couple hour’s work and may bite if prodded the wrong way.

Building Line of Business Applications with Silverlight 3 – Pros and Cons

dwahlin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:06:00 +0000

Windows Mobile takes shot at Apple App Store rejections

Long Zheng — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:21:54 +0000

The competition between the Windows Marketplace for Mobile and the Apple App Store is heating up as Microsoft appears to have pulled a small punch at Apple and the controversy surrounding the rejection of applications in the iPhone App Store.

During the second and latest video to be released for the Windows Mobile Race to Market Challenge dubbed “The Race”, a scene appears in which a stick-figure developer walks into what is clearly to be interpreted as an “application store” only to have the pretentious-looking store staff (standing infront of a shelf full of other applications) reject his shiny new application.

If that wasn’t obvious enough, on top of all this the voiceover can be heard saying “If you want your app to do well, you’ve got to set it up for success. That means learning from experience, knowing when you could do better.” (emphasis added).

Whilst competition is always a good thing, I do find it somewhat hypocritical of Microsoft to highlight this when they know very well they could face the same criticism for disproving applications in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

~~And if it’s any indication of what’s to come, I’ve come across internal Microsoft documents that shows an outright ban on turn-by-turn navigation applications in the Marketplace~~. (Of course Windows Mobile has the advantage of being able to load applications via other methods). Update: A Microsoft representative has assured me turn-by-turn GPS navigation applications are not prohibited, contrary to the internal documentation.

It would be all too ironic and not entirely inconceivable to see Microsoft falling down the same rabbit hole which they’ve so prominently pointed out.

The original video is embedded below for your convenience.

Hardware already exists for Windows Mobile 7?

Long Zheng — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:40:44 +0000

A tiny piece of silicon has caught the attention of my peripheral vision perhaps providing some clues to just how far Microsoft is in to the development of Windows Mobile 7, or from the glass is half full perspective – how close Windows Mobile 7 might be to market.

Cambridge Silicon Radio, a UK company that specializes in chips for mobile devices (who just merged with the world’s #1 supplier of GPS chips SiRF), announced mid-June the UniFi CSR6026/CSR6028 chip, a single-chip solution to deliver WiFi 802.11n support in mobile embedded devices such as smartphones. The most noteworthy of its specifications is a mention of “Windows Mobile 7″ in its list of supported operating systems, on top of “Windows Mobile 6.x, Windows CE 6.1 and 5, Linux v2.6, Android”.

Assuming the specification is accurate (and it’s hard to imagine it being a typo of Windows Mobile 6.5), it means either CSR engineers are in possession of an operational time machine or that the kernel or hardware interface layer of Windows Mobile 7 have already been finalized by Microsoft. I’ll let you decide which one is more plausible.

On a related note, a student newspaper at the University of Waterloo interviews student Naheed Hirji who worked at Microsoft during winter break on Windows Mobile 7. Whilst Naheed appears extremely well trained by the Microsoft public relations folks on disclosure, he confirms WM7 is to be released in 2010 and reveals “the aim of Windows Mobile 7 is to be a hybrid between business and consumer oriented phones”. Right, whatever that’s suppose to mean. You win this round ambiguous marketing speak!

Engineering Student vs Automatic Door

(author unknown) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:08:00 +0000

If you're an engineering student and can't figure out how an automatic sliding door works, then don't do this. Let's just say the door didn't make it out in one piece. Continue reading to watch.

According to the the description, the man in this video is an engineering student in Pakistan. Anyone remember that old Far Side comic?

[via Gizmodo]

Machinarium

Ozymandias — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:39:19 +0000

Paint.NET v3.5 Enhanced for Windows 7

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:54:27 +0000

A chart that justifies all the RIA hype (again)

Jouni Heikniemi — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:55:56 +0000

There are web enthusiasts that consider Flash, Silverlight and friends nothing but an accessibility problem. I think there is plenty of potential in RIA technologies that we still haven’t experienced. Data visualization is definitely one of the top fields, and NY Times just posted a Flash chart that reminds me why.

Check out the interactive chart that shows how Americans use their day. At a first look, it’s nothing but a stacked area chart with time of day as the category axis and population percentage as the value axis.

That itself isn’t such an impressive thing: You can render these things with Excel as well, and static images might work as a representation format on the web page. However, how many of those two kid family parents actually are eating at 7:00 am? Just hover over.

The tooltips are great. They show very meaningful additional details and work well (unlike tool tips in HTML image maps). Also, they highlight the segment of data the tooltip is describing, making it vastly easier to make sure you’re actually getting the data you want.

And one more thing. The segmenting tool allows you to pick a filter to apply for the data. Nothing particularly great there, but once you click a filter, the areas in the chart smoothly animate to show the new data set. Is that just eye candy?

In my opinion, no. The transition from one data set to another could be instantaneous, or it could cause another page load. One might think the animation will only slow you down, but I see another perspective: The animation helps you see the difference. You can’t take it all in at once, but by focusing on one single aspect (such as “how do the working hours differ between the white and hispanic population?”) the animation actually helps you grasp the differences far more effectively than two separate charts would.

So yes, while I do not want to encourage mindless RIA madness, I think excellent data deserves an excellent representation. There are plenty of things left to be done on this field. Almost all the business applications still look like crap. If you’re looking for a future specialization, I’d wager this one will keep you employed.

PS. Somewhat related is my post on YouTube’s view count analysis.

Top 10 Tips Working Developers Should Know about Windows 7

Scott Hanselman — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:45:39 +0000