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

Humor: “It Depends”

2009-07-10T13:45:00.001-07:00

Jason Massie's Blog - Capt. Varchar & the Pagelatch Posse Vol. 26

This made the wanna-be DBA, Dev (i.e. looking for more context), Science Channel watcher and the “can almost spell physics guy” in me laugh…

“Developers Developers Developers Developers” – The free eBook. 17 articles AND comics by dev’s for dev’s

2009-07-10T11:50:00.001-07:00

<ardent:Dev/> - Free Ebook Developers Developers Developers Developers

“Content from Microsoft’s {You Shape} It campaign has been rolled up into the ebook Developers Developers Developers Developers. Many of the contributors are Microsoft MVPs and/ Microsoft Regional Directors.

It’s a free download and released under a Creative Commons license so share share share!

…”

dev{shaped} - Developers Developers Developers Developers

“17 useful articles by developers for developers and comics? And available as a free download? And released under a Creative Commons license? And it’s from Microsoft?

Yup.

…

In the book:

Working with Brownfield Code by Donald Belcham (Microsoft MVP)

Beyond C# and VB by Ted Neward (Microsoft MVP)

Remaining Valuable to Employers featuring Barry Gervin, Billy Hollis, Bruce Johnson, Scott Howlett, Adam Cogan, and Jonathan Zuck

All I Wanted Was My Data by Barry Gervin (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)

Efficiency Upgrade by Derek Hatchard (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)

Getting Started with Continuous Integration by Sondre Bjellås (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)

On Strike at the Software Factory by Daniel Crenna (Microsoft MVP)

C# Features You Should Be Using by Ted Neward (Microsoft MVP)

Accelerate Your Coding with Code Snippets by Brian Noyes (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)

Is Silverlight 2 Ready for Business Applications? by Jonas Follesø (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)

Innovate with Silverlight 2 by Daniel Crenna (Microsoft MVP)

Real World WPF: Rich UI + HD by Gill Cleeren (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)

Hidden Talents by Peter Jones

Creating Useful Installers with Custom Actions by Christian Jacob

Banking with XML by Peter Jones

Sending Email by Derek Hatchard (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)

…”

132 pages of articles from some of the top people in the MS dev sphere. Nice depth and very little marketing-ware.

I thought it cool that they are self-publishing it via LuLu (in both B&W and Color)

Where to go to scratch your OpenXML dev info itch…

2009-07-10T09:48:00.001-07:00

Doug Mahugh - Open XML developers: where to get answers

“I recently returned from a long business trip, and while working through my email backlog I’ve come across several questions from developers who are working with the Open XML formats. I’ve responded to each of them with some tips on how to best get such questions answered, and I thought I’d summarize that information here for others who may find it useful.

Your first stop for most Open XML development questions should be the forums section of the Open XML Developer web site. …

Another great one-stop shop for Open XML development topics is the Open XML Developer Portal. There you can find a huge number of code samples, articles, whitepapers, how-to videos, and free downloads, as well as …

…”

If you’re just getting started with OpenXML, interested in learning more or have been in this space for while, Doug’s post is a “must bookmark.”

Treemap’ing in Silverlight – Treemap control added to the Silverlight Toolkit (available in Experimental Quality Band)

2009-07-10T09:28:00.001-07:00

marlat's blog - TreeMap control comes to Silverlight Toolkit

“Since this is my first post after over one month break I own an explanation. I have two excuses: one is of course vacations and the other one is really nice. Together with the colleagues of mine, I had the pleasure to work on a new control – TreeMap - that is included in the next release of Silverlight Toolkit.

I perceive the introduction of this control as especially important because it enables you to easily visualize more than one dimensional, correlated data in a way that is attractive and understandable to a user without any statistician or mathematical background.

…”

CodePlex – Silverlight Toolkit

I’ve been a fan of using treemaps to help visualize data for years. Since I first saw it used in WinDirStat years ago and then in NDepend, treemaps just click for me. The way they provide so much information in a compact yet easy to understand form hooked me.

The problem has been that there have been few implementations to date (or few free/cheap/reasonably priced ones). Luckily for me that tide seems to be changing. In the past few months I’ve seen a marked uptick in the number of treemap controls coming online, from commercial third parties, like Infragistics, to a number of OSS projects, like Pixel in Gene - A SilverLight TreeMap control & GPDE Team Blog - Silverlight Treemap Control.

With the inclusion of a treemap control in the Silverlight Toolkit, is 2009 the year treemaps go mainstream?

SilverLight 3 has RTW’ed (aka. It’s done, released, baked, RTM, gold, what are you waiting for go get it, etc, etc)

2009-07-09T11:37:00.001-07:00

All About Microsoft(Mary-Jo Foley) - Microsoft Silverlight 3 available for download

“Microsoft officials wouldn’t say a month ago whether the actual Silverlight 3 bits would be available by the day of the official launch, which is July 10. But it turns out they are available a day earlier.
Those interested in the latest version of Microsoft’s Flash competitor can download it from Microsoft’s Web site. Here’s where to get the Silverlight 3 bits.
(Gotta love the note on the download site: “Don’t Worry! We won’t install a bunch of additional stuff on your computer or try to sign you up for unwanted email.” Wonder who they’re talking about?)
…”

SilverLight - SilverLight Install

Man, that was a fast release cycle… Congrats to the SilverLight team! (Now what are we getting in SL4? lol ;)

Update #1 7/9/2009 @ 11:50AM PDT:
Please note that the "official" date is still tomorrow, July 10th. The RTW is in the process of being rolled out. So you may, or mat not, see it, depending on your location, etc, etc.

Making Task Manager (or any app) just a “right-click on your Desktop” away

2009-07-09T11:13:00.001-07:00

Thoughts about IIS (and now SharePoint!) - Launch Task Manager (or any other program) from Desktop Context Menu

“I use task manager a LOT in my job. I also almost always have a ton of programs running, therefore, do not have much space on my taskbar and get tired of finding “just the right spot” to right click in on to get to Task Manager. Saving the following as a .REG file and importing it now allows me to right click anywhere on my entire desktop and launch Task Manager from there:

…” [GD: Click through for the to easily copy & paste the Registry entries]

Five seconds, no reboot needed, and you can add Task Manager to your Desktop context (i.e. right-click) menu.

Usual “Don’t mess with the registry unless you know what you’re doing as you can totally jack up your machine if you’re not careful, yada, yada” warnings apply.

yum… snacks… (well brain snacks anyway) - Microsoft Learning presents the Microsoft Learning SnackBox (Beta)

2009-07-09T10:34:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Learning Snack Box (Beta)

“Welcome to SnackBox

Learning Snacks are short, interactive learning presentations about Microsoft technologies and include various media, such as animations and recorded demos. Are you an expert? Be part of this growing and vibrant community - create your own Learning Snack and share it with the world here!

…

”

A couple things about the Snack Box stood out for me;

The promise of amount of content. It seems that there’s going to be content for the consumer, IT and developer.
The content presentation is not just video dime-casts (aka 10 minute’ish videos) but instead takes advantage of Silverlight to provide a more interactive experience
And last, but coolest, the opportunity for the communicate to provide additional content. One problem with these kinds of sites is that the content can get stale quickly (or become Marketing-ware, etc). By allowing us to submit content, we can help drive the content and direction.

(via The blog of Rob Margel - Windows Help - Microsoft Learning Snack Box (beta))

Need a new résumé look? Graphic’ize it…

2009-07-08T12:39:00.001-07:00

The Portfolio.of Michael Anderson - Résumé / Infographics

“

…

There are many ways of displaying information, as the info aesthetics blog shows, some are just lovely. Well, in that spirit, I decided to update my résumé with a different perspective on the typical time-line theme. This is just concept art, as there are almost no real metrics represented except for time. There is no energy expenditure unit of measure, nor tics to delineate percentage or otherwise. In the fun multi-variable intake / output chart, there should be unique units per each (and a few are almost unquantifiable).

…”

What a cool way to jazz up a résumé. While I’d not replace my entire résumé with this, using this on the top half of the first page seems viable. As a hiring manager I know if I saw something like this it would draw me into spending more time reviewing the résumé (getting that eyeball-time can be 9/10’ths of the battle).

(via Robert's space - Using an infographic for your resume!?)

Need an ad-hoc query tool for your Azure data tables? LINQPad to the rescue…

2009-07-08T11:39:00.001-07:00

SSIS Junkie - LINQPad and Azure

“Since I started dealing with Azure tables I’ve become frustrated that there is no ad-hoc query tool, nothing equivalent to SQL Server Management Studio. Then I heard about LINQPad and figured there must be a way to use it to query Azure tables using LINQ and indeed there is as I’ll explain here (this post assumes that you have a working knowledge of LINQPad and Azure storage).

…

…”

Why roll your own Azure data store query tool/utility/thing when you can just use the uber-cool LINQPad? (aka LINQPad rocks… ;)

Related Past Post XRef:
Windows into Azure, the Azure Storage Viewer

This post title made me laugh, “I've Left Query Analyzer Hell For LINQPad Heaven”
LINQPad and the Entity Framework
Getting External with LINQPad – Advanced LINQPad Dimecast (aka part 3 of 3)
Fun with .Dump() in LINQPad – An intermediate level Dimecast for LINQPad
Link to LINQPad – A Dimecast LINQPad Walkthrough
LINQPad - A Free Interactive LINQ to SQL (and others) Utility (Think "SQL Query Analyzer for LINQ")

Help managing your home energy usage - Microsoft Holm

2009-07-08T07:08:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Holm

Microsoft Holm Community Blog - Introduction to Microsoft Hohm

“What is Microsoft Hohm?

Microsoft Hohm is a free online beta application that helps you save energy and money. With Microsoft Hohm you can better understand your home energy usage, get recommendations to conserve energy and start saving. As with any recommendation engine, Hohm will provide increasingly more accurate and relevant suggestions for energy conservation as its users contribute home energy input and feedback. One of the objectives during our beta period is to refine our tool and further increase the value our product can offer to you.

…

Microsoft Hohm uses advanced analytics licensed from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy to give you personalized energy saving recommendations. These recommendations are tailored based on your specific household circumstances including home attributes and use of appliances and systems…

…

How does Microsoft Hohm work?

After signing up for Microsoft Hohm with your Windows Live ID and postal code, you simply enter some information about your home (e.g., occupants, appliances and systems) and receive your energy report with personalized recommendations. The more information you provide, the more accurate and relevant the recommendations will be. As a default, Hohm will base its recommendations on local and national averages.

Alternatively, if you are a customer of a Hohm-partnered utility company you can choose to automatically upload your energy usage data into the application in the near future.

…”

I don’t know about you, but every time I look at my energy bills I think that I have to start working on getting them lower. One way that should work well for us is solar panels (with a South facing house/roof with little tree coverage in Sothern California solar panels are almost a no brainer). But before solar I need to first seal the house better, replace appliances, etc (in order to “right provide” my solar panels).

Anyway, having just paid my electric bill last night when I saw this site I felt a call to action and a need to share…

Thrive for Developers (and IT) – Some career, training and job help for Developers (and IT’ers too)

2009-07-08T06:41:00.001-07:00

Thrive for Dev

“We’ve heard from lots of developers that times are tough. You’re doing more with less, applying your skills more broadly, and maybe even learning new tools. That’s why we created Thrive – a one-stop community hub that offers job postings, technical content, and community resources. So whether you’re seeking new ways to differentiate yourself on the job, or you need to re-tool your skills for that next big role, Thrive has the resources to help you get there faster.

…

…”

While this site feels a little “marketing’ish” that doesn’t mean there are not some good links and resources available. Heck every little bit helps…

There’s also a Thrive for IT too. The IT Thrive site seems to have more information, links, videos, career tips, etc.

Thrive

Stick a fork in it, WiX (Windows Installer XML) 3.0 is done…

2009-07-08T06:27:00.001-07:00

Aaron Stebner's WebLog - Final version of WiX v3.0 now available for download

“Over this past weekend, the 3.0.5419 build of WiX v3.0 was declared the final production build. If you are using any builds of WiX v3.0 for your projects, I strongly encourage you to update to the 3.0.5419 build at this time.

Here is some additional information about WiX v3.0 and the final 3.0.5419 build:

WiX 3.0.5419 build download locations - http://wix.sourceforge.net/releases/3.0.5419.0/ or https://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/files/

WiX v3.0 online documentation - http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/main.htm

…”

Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset

“WiX v3.0 released.

July 4th, 2009

The final build of WiX v3.0 has been released. You can download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/files/. Read more about the release by Rob and Bob.

…”

SourceForge – WiX Files

WiX is one of of my favorite Windows Installer projects. Why? I dig how it’s XML driven. There’s no hidden magic, munging or mumbo-jumbo. It’s all there, in the XML. Meaning it can be easily tweaked with any tool or means/method that can tweak XML, from Notepad to MSBuild.

I did think it was a shame that it was pulled from VS2010. We really need a professional means to create MSI’s baked into Visual Studio and I thought this would be it. The existing Visual Studio Setup Projects are okay and great for simple stuff, but when you need to programmatically modify the setup or go beyond what’s there, then it’s kind of a brick wall.

Anyway, if you’re building setup packages, need to move beyond what comes with Visual Studio and don’t want to pay for a third-party product then you need to check out WiX.

(via Jason Haley - Interesting Finds: July 7, 2009)

You too can learn Physics with “The Manga Guide to Physics”

2009-07-07T11:45:00.001-07:00

FrazzledDad - Book Review: The Manga Guide to Physics

“The Manga Guide to Physicsby Hideo Nitta and Keita Takatsu. Published by No Starch Press, ISBN-10: 1593271964.
…
All the concepts are laid out in very clear fashion, and the examples are really spot on and understandable. There’s math involved, but it’s kept at an understandable level and is presented in very short, progressive steps.
This was a really enjoyable read – and it was even educational. I loved the format and I really appreciated the effort and thought that went into laying out the material in such a clear fashion.
…”

This made me chuckle and since everyone wants to learn Physics… ;)

The Manga Guide to Physics: Hideo Nitta, Keita Takatsu, TREND-PRO-pro Ltd.: Books

ISBN: 1593271964
ISBN-13: 9781593271961

BTW, If you liked this, there are other Manga Guides too…

Interested in about “a billion” (approximately) Spatial Data elements for SQL Server 2008? A step by step getting U.S. Census TIGER/Line Shapefiles into SQL Server on the cheap (i.e. free)

2009-07-07T09:29:00.001-07:00

Adventures in .NET - SQL Server 2008: Importing TIGER/Line Spatial GIS Data

“If you’ve been itching to use the spatial data and query features of SQL Server 2008 but haven’t figured out a way to get data to use, you’re in the same boat I was. Until today.

I have a whole slew of address information, but no way to convert that into latitude/longitude values to do any meaningful spatial querying – I was pretty much limited to Zip Code statistics only. Then I remembered that the US Census Bureau puts out a freely available database of everything from roads to highways to railways to geological and political borders with their coordinates called TIGER/Line. …

It would be quite a bit of effort to try and parse the TIGER/Line data yourself, so the use of a utility greatly helps here. Download SQL Server 2008 Spatial Tools to follow along with this blog post, although Microsoft has a sponsored project on Codeplex which I haven’t used called SQL Server Spatial Tools as well.

…

Finally we can see what we’re working with! It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it helps you quickly visualize the spatial results of your query.

Using functions like STDistance, you could do things such as finding all customers within a range of a certain latitude/longitude point, which I hope to explore in a future blog post. But once you overcome getting data into your system, it’s just SQL queries from here on out.

Oh, and did I mention that this is all free? :-)

”

SharpGIS - SQL Server 2008 Spatial Tools

“The SQL Spatial Tools consists of two tools to make it easy to get experience with the new spatial capabilities of SQL Server 2008 (click for more info) :

Shape2SQL : Uploads ESRI Shapefiles to Microsoft SQL Server Spatial.

SqlSpatial Query Tool : Queries MSSQL Server 2008 and displays geometry output on a WPF-based interactive map.

Requirements:

A SQL Server 2008 to connect to (DUH!)

Microsoft .NET 3.5

Either "SQL Server 2008" or "Microsoft SQL Server System CLR Types" installed on client machine.

”

U.S. Census Bureau - 2008 TIGER/Line® Shapefiles

“The TIGER/Line Shapefiles are extracts containing selected geographic and cartographic information from the Census Bureau's MAF/TIGER^®(Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) database. The MAF/TIGER database was developed at the Census Bureau to support a variety of geographic programs and operations including functions such as mapping, geocoding, and geographic reference files that are used in decennial and economic censuses and sample survey programs. Spatial data for geographic features such as roads, railroads, rivers, and lakes, as well as legal and statistical geographic areas are included in the product. Other information about these features, such as the name, the type of feature, address ranges, and the geographic relationship to other features, also are included. The TIGER/Line Shapefiles are made available to the public for no charge and are typically used to provide the digital map base for a Geographic Information System or for mapping software.

The 2008 TIGER/Line Shapefiles contain current geographic areas (boundaries of governmental units as of January 1, 2008), Census 2000 vintage geography, and Economic Census geography. The shapefiles also contain some additional feature updates reported in the Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS). All counties have now been realigned as a result of the MAF/TIGER Accuracy Improvement Project (MTAIP) and are included in the 2008 TIGER/Line Shapefiles. For more information about the MTAIP please refer to the 2008 TIGER/Line Shapefile Technical Documentation available in [PDF] or TEXT.

The TIGER/Line Shapefiles contain attribute data only and do not include mapping software. They are designed for use with geographic information system (GIS) software. The TIGER/Line Shapefiles do not contain demographic data from any census or survey, but do include the geographic entity codes, which provide a link between the Census Bureau’s demographic data and the TIGER/Line Shapefiles.

…”

The data available is simply staggering and all just a download and conversion away from your SQL Server 2008 Spatial Data usage…

Windows 7 is less than a week away for TechNet/MSDN Subscribers – July 13th seems to be the “crush MSDN/Technet” download date

2009-07-07T09:00:00.001-07:00

*Words of Wisdom From The Elder - MSDN / Technet Subscribers Get Windows 7 July 13th

“It is official, it is Christmas in July for many MSDN / Technet subscribers. The official RTM version of Windows 7 will be available for download on MSDN / Technet on July 13th.

Wait… I thought it was supposed to be released on October 22nd?

The October 22nd date is the date it will be available in stores. The July 13th release is the same version that will be cut to the manufacturers. …”

Neowin - Confirmed: Windows 7 set to RTM on July 13

“Earlier today the guys over at GeekSmack.net "confirmed" that Windows 7 was set to RTM (release to manufacturing) on July 13, which also coincides with Wzor's unconfirmed rumor last month. A few minutes ago sources close to the company, who wish to remain anonymous, have confirmed to Neowin that Windows 7 is indeed set to RTM on July 13.

…

So with that said TechNet, MSDN, and a few other partner connections will also be getting the RTM build on July 13. So let the countdown begin!”

I can’t wait!

XSS, SQL Injection, Process Command Injection, File Canonicalization, LDAP Injection, XPATH Injection and more static analysis tool/Add-in for Visual Studio - CAT.Net (CTP)

2009-07-07T06:35:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Code Analysis Tool .NET (CAT.NET) v1 CTP - 32 bit

“CAT.NET is a binary code analysis tool that helps identify common variants of certain prevailing vulnerabilities that can give rise to common attack vectors such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL Injection and XPath Injection.

File Name: CATNETx32.msi

Version: 1.1.1.9

Date Published: 6/26/2009

Language: English

Download Size: 4.1 MB

CAT.NET is a snap-in to the Visual Studio IDE that helps you identify security flaws within a managed code (C#, Visual Basic .NET, J#) application you are developing. It does so by scanning the binary and/or assembly of the application, and tracing the data flow among its statements, methods, and assemblies. This includes indirect data types such as property assignments and instance tainting operations. The engine works by reading the target assembly and all reference assemblies used in the application -- module-by-module -- and then analyzing all of the methods contained within each. It finally displays the issues its finds in a list that you can use to jump directly to the places in your application's source code where those issues were found. The following rules are currently support by this version of the tool. - Cross Site Scripting - SQL Injection - Process Command Injection - File Canonicalization - Exception Information - LDAP Injection - XPATH Injection - Redirection to User Controlled Site [GD: Emphasis added. Description Leached in Full]”

Also available on Visual Studio Gallery - CAT.NET

“CAT.NET is a static analysis tool to analyze software security issues. It uses a tainted variable algorithm based on work from Microsoft research. It is free to download and is being actively developed by the Information Security Tools team. http://blogs.msdn.com/securitytools [GD: Description Leached in Full]”

Security help is good help… Also check out the CAT.NET posts on the Security Tools blog for some more information, MSBuild integration tips and more.

PS. Brian K, Look some J# love! ;)

Things will be quite here for a bit…

2009-06-23T13:08:00.001-07:00

It’s that time of year, time to pack up the family and head out for a vacation. Prince Edward Island (PEI), watch out, here we come again!

I don’t know what kind of wireless access I will have there, so blog posts may be pretty sparse (cough… as I should be vacationing and not blogging anyway… cough… :) for the next couple weeks.

Everyone take notes for me and let me know what I missed. ;)

Entity Framework 4 Feature CTP 1 for .Net 4 Beta 1 now available

2009-06-23T07:10:00.001-07:00

ADO.NET team blog - Announcing: Entity Framework Feature CTP 1

“Today we are announcing the availability of the Microsoft Entity Framework Feature CTP 1 for the .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1. You can download the Feature CTP 1 from here. This Feature CTP enables a number of scenarios that we've mentioned on the blog previously and now have a set of walk throughs for everybody to start playing with the features:

1) Better N-Tier Support with Self Tracking Entities

2) POCO (Plain Old CLR Objects) entity code generation via the POCO Template

3) Writing only code and having it work with the Entity Framework via Code Only.

We weren’t able to ship these capabilities in the .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 so we’ve decided to release them alongside the Beta. …”

Some EF4 goodness that couldn’t make .Net 4 Beta 1 is now available for us to play with…

(via Don't Be Iffy - The Rest of EF4 - Feature CTP1 Released today)

Improve your User Stories, INVESTing in them…

2009-06-23T06:25:00.001-07:00

Steven Smith - INVESTing in User Stories

“User Stories describe features from the standpoint of the user, and should identify small units of work that can reasonably achieved within a short (1 or 2 week) iteration by a programming pair. A useful acronym for remembering how to write good user stories is INVEST (more elsewhere and here). A “good” user story is one that serves the needs of all of the stakeholders in the software development project, including the customer, the team lead (or PM), and the developer(s). Ideally the story is recorded in short form on an index card (or electronic equivalent) and is a placeholder for a longer conversation that has taken place between the customer and the developer team. Also ideally, it includes Acceptance Test criteria, which developers must ensure have been met before they consider the story complete.

The INVEST acronym for User Stories

User stories should be…

Independent – …

Negotiable – …

Valuable – …

Estimable – …

Small – …

Testable – …

…”

User Stories are an area I really need to work on. We just don’t do them well and we pay the price for it.

Some of the above items we’ve found through trial an error and some are common sense (which sometimes seems isn’t that common ;). Yet having having them together with a “business friendly” acronym is great.

I’ll be sharing this as the first part of our next Backlog Grooming session…

Easily add files to Vista’s and Win7’s Preview pane with the free PreviewConfig utility

2009-06-22T07:44:00.001-07:00

Development in a Blink - How can I get the Window 7 Explorer Preview Pane to work with my PowerShell scripts?

“Thanks to Oising at Nivot Ink for replying to my tweet. The easy way, download the PreviewConfig Tool HERE.

Couple clicks…

…

”

The Winhelponline Blog - PreviewConfig Tool Registers File Types for the Preview Pane in Windows Vista

“Windows Vista introduces the Preview pane in Explorer, which shows the contents of the currently chosen file. You can also play multimedia files from the Preview pane, without opening Windows Media Player. This article explains how to use the PreviewConfig utility to register a custom file type for the Preview pane in Windows Vista Explorer.

Registering file types for the Preview pane

If you have a custom file type and wish to register a plain text or a multimedia Preview handler for the custom file type, you can do so using this utility.

…”

With this free, simple and easy to use utility you can tweak how files are handled by the Preview pane in Vista/Win7. It would be hard to make this any easier… ;)

And it doesn’t even need an install. Download it, unzip and run it (with admin priv’s) and you’re good to go.

Setting up Visual Studio to debug a Visual Studio Addin

2009-06-22T07:06:00.001-07:00

My learnings - Debugging an Addin in visual studio

“Most of us would have done debugging at some point in time. But debugging a Addin in visual studio is a different thing all together.

Here am going to explain how we can debug an Addin in visual studio 2008 step by step:

…

I was just thinking about looking for this information, how to setup Visual Studio to debug a VS Addin, the other day… ;)

Reusing the PowerShell PowerTools for Open XML in your C# or VB.Net world

2009-06-21T14:55:00.001-07:00

OpenXML Developer.org - Accessing the C# code from PowerTools for Open XML in a .NET application

“PowerTools, at http://www.codeplex.com/PowerTools makes server-side document assembly of Open XML documents very easy in a PowerShell script. It does this by providing a rich set of PowerShell cmdlets. Interestingly, the smarts developed in PowerTools are also applicable to an integrated .NET business application - typically written instead in c# or VB.NET. It is simple to tap into this functionality because the PowerTools download includes source code, and within the source code, the implementation of the cmdlets already sits over a clean set of reusable classes.

This article demonstrates how to tap into this goodness. To prove the approach, an earlier sample written in PowerShell using PowerTools at http://openxmldeveloper.org/archive/2009/04/06/4418.aspx is redeveloped in c# as a windows application, and could also equally have been a web application.

My approach includes a wrapper around the PowerTools base classes. The wrapper provides .NET methods that match the PowerShell cmdlets. My wrapper is not complete in that it mostly has methods matching the cmdlets I wanted to use - but you will see that very little code is required to extend the wrapper to access any functionality in PowerTools. For example, if you wanted to use the logic provided by the cmdlet for setting the footer Set-OpenXmlContentFormat you can add that yourself with just a few lines of glue code.

The sample mentioned above uses a few methods which grabs parts from several documents and merges them in to one document. It builds a report document dynamically based on some current environment properties (processor and disk load).

…”

When I first saw the article I thought it was going to talk about calling PS cmdlets from within the C# code. Nope! Instead if talks about reusing the actual source, modifying it to fit better and directly into your C#/VB.Net application.

You’ve just got to love code reuse! (And open source/source available projects with permissive licenses that allow this kind of re-use… :)

(via OpenXML Developer.org - New library article: Use PowerTools for Open XML to view C# code in a .NET application)

MSDN Community CD, June 09 Release - .Net 4, VS2020, IIS SEO, Win 7 and ASP AJAX videos and more

2009-06-21T09:40:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Downloads - MSDN Community Distribution CD June 2009

“…

File Name: 2_Download_May_09.iso

Version: 1.0

Date Published: 6/19/2009

Language: English

Download Size: 611.3 MB

…”

From the Start.htm on the ISO:

“…

Introduction to .NET 4.0

This course provides an overview of new features include the Managed Extension Framework (MEF), theading, and design by contract. Also includes a discussion of the various types of managed languages including the object-oriented languages (C#, C++, VB), the new Dynamic Languages (Iron Python and Iron Ruby), and the Functional Language F#.

New Features in Visual Studio 2010

This course demonstrates some of the new features in the Visual Studio IDE, including the new start page, the code editor, the XML schema editor, and new tools for web development and deployment

ASP.NET AJAX 4.0

This course provides an introduction to ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, focusing on the new client-side controls and templating capabilities, including the dataview control

SQL Server 2008 Developer Fundamentals Part 1

This Web seminar will give an introduction of how to use T-SQL with SQL Server 2008. It will start with covering the basics and then move on to high-lighting some of the new syntax introduced with SQL Server 2008.

Developers look at Windows 7

This is a high-level overview of what's new in the Windows 7 user interface. New features including the new Taskbar, Ribbon, Jump Lists, and Multitouch are demonstrated, so that developers know the new functionality they can leverage, but no code is shown.

Introduction to SQL Server Integration Services 2008 (SSIS)

This course will cover how to use SQL Server Integration Services 2008 (SSIS) to manage an Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process. We will start by looking at the fundamental components that make up SSIS and then move onto designing packages using Business Intelligence Development Studio

…”

I thought it very nice of Microsoft to provide me more video’s to stuff my Zune with prior to my leaving on vacation… :p

I do wish the download pages for these MSDN Community CD’s included more information about the contents. It would be much easier to determine if a given CD was worth the download if the same information provided on the ISO in the start.htm was also available on the download page. Or at least a link to it… It’s kind of a pain having to download the ISO just to see what’s on it…

LiberKey – 264, and counting, portable applications for your thumb drive are just a download away

2009-06-20T14:17:00.001-07:00

Lifehacker - LiberKey Installs 200+ Portable Applications

“If you read over our guide on turning spare thumb drives into feature packed giveaway drives and you wished there was a huge pack of portable software you could just download, this is it.

While we didn't put this package together—you can check out our favorite software picks in the thumb drive guide mentioned above or check out the Lifehacker Pack 2009—but it serves the same purpose and has many of the applications we recommended and then some. LiberKey is a portable software package with an accompanying menu that includes not just dozens of portable apps, but hundreds. The installation is completely automated and the LiberKey menu, as seen here, is extremely user friendly.

…

In addition to all the software included in the three versions of Liberkey they maintain a huge list of portable software available here. The software on the list is flagged to indicate if it is included in the Basic, Standard, or Ultimate package but there are many portable applications that aren't included in the installation but are included in their master list for you to download. The list is an excellent resource for finding additional portable software….

…”

LiberKey

“…

LiberKey groups 264 portable software and some compilations :

LiberKey Ultimate (202 packages)

LiberKey Standard (106 packages)

LiberKey Basic (28 packages).

…”

LiberKey - Main assets of LiberKey

“All softwares were made portable, this means 100% mobility. For example, LiberKey installed on your USB key (or mini external hard drive, a music player such as iPod...) can be connected on any PC. Immediately you have under hand all your familiar tools, without any installation on the host PC.

More than 1800 softwares have been tested to come to the present selection. It was then classified by fields of application (audio, Internet…). LiberKey selection covers most of common needs

Updates are made regulary (History). Starting from version 2.6, updates of the main LiberKey softwares can be downloaded directly via Internet.

You can temporarily associate files extensions (.avi, .jpg, doc.,…) with LiberKey softwares (thanks to the LiberKey tool, "Enable files associations"). Wherever you are, with LiberKey, you may launch any file whether from your desktop or from a directory or an email attachment.

Thanks to compression techniques, the launching of the applications on slow peripherals (such as USB key) was accelerated. It also allowed to optimize the installed size.

Last but not least, it is free, without virus, spyware, adware, popup, etc.” [GD: Page Leached in Full]

LiberKey - Software List

Now that’s allot of portable apps! With this and PortableApps.Com you should a pretty complete portable app story…

Update #1 6/23/2009 @ 7:00AM PDT:

I forgot to also mention another favorite portable app site which I’ve been following for years, The Portable Freeware Collection

Rawr! Traffic Barrel Monster says…

2009-06-20T09:41:00.001-07:00

Make: - Traffic barrel monster

Every time I see this I laugh. Too bad the guy got in trouble over it (news). Then again he also got a little famous over it too… Silver lining and all that?

One of his other art projects…

File Name:	CATNETx32.msi
Version:	1.1.1.9
Date Published:	6/26/2009
Language:	English
Download Size:	4.1 MB

File Name:	2_Download_May_09.iso
Version:	1.0
Date Published:	6/19/2009
Language:	English
Download Size:	611.3 MB