Windows Vista released

Windows Vista RTM is finally here! Check out the official Vista blog for more info (link). You will love it - that's for sure! :)

Visual search engine - amazing!

Search is definitely a lucrative area, which is constantly evolving and looking for innovation. So today I ended up on this very cool search enginge like.com. Check it out! It is not rich of available items among which you can search of, but the idea behind it - to have visual search capabilities is really great. For instance, you can draw on a bag saying that you most like the shape of it and this guy will return you all the bags which have similar shape :) Cool, isn't it? Another thing is the ease of use - this engine is defintiely user-friendly and I am sure that even elderly people can deal with it - it is so easy and intuitive :) So be it - go to like.com and check it out.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements

Today I found these new add-ins for Visual Studio 2005. So basically what's included in the box, are the following add-ins:

• Source Code Outliner : The Source Outliner tool is a Visual Studio extension that provides a tree view of your source code's types and members and lets you quickly navigate to them inside the editor.
• Visual C++ Code Snippets:The Visual C++ Code Snippets tool lets you insert snippets in your code by using a pop-up menu that contains programming keywords. VB.NET and C# languages have this functionality in Visual Studio 2005.
• Indexed Find : The Indexed Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that uses the Microsoft Indexing Service to provide improved Search capabilities to the integrated development environment (IDE). It sends the results of a search to the Output Window.
• Super Diff Utility: The Super Diff Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that compares text files. It uses color coding and graphics to show the difference between the files in deleted text (red), changed text (blue), inserted text (green).
• Event Toaster Utility: The Event Toaster tool is a Visual Studio extension that notifies users about specific events within the Visual Studio IDE.

Among my most favorite are the Source Code Outliner and Super Diff Utility.

You can download all of these from the link below:

[Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements] (link)

Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework has been released!

Yes, it is here and waiting for us to start crunching up code that will spawn distributed systems, create more interactive user experiences and provide us with the ease of implementing business workflows. More about the relase and the latest bits can be found on the official Microsoft .NET 3.0 community site (link). Enjoy!

Ramping up with Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework - resources

Searching for some .NET 3.0 related courseware, I found these clinics and online events, which turned out to be very useful to me. For now, these are free, but I will say to take advantage of this offer, because these courses can soon become paid.

Collection 5134 : Developing Rich Experiences with Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.0 and Visual Studio® 2005 (link)

Another cool place where you can find more hands-on demos about .NET 3.0 is the MSDN Virtual Labs (link) and last but definitely not least important is the official .NET 3.0 community site (link).

Visual Studio development on Windows Vista

Today I was playing with WCF on the newly installed Windows Vista, but the Web projects don't seem to work. While trying to create a new WCF Service, I got the following error:

Unable to create the Web 'http://<>'. An error occurred accessing your Windows SharePoint Services site files. Authors - if authoring against a Web server, please contact the Webmaster for this server's Web site. WebMasters - please see the server's application event log for more details.

The Vista OS is kinda new to me and I am still learning it - it is definitely far away more secure and interactive. The UI is super sleek and overall the way you work with the OS is very different than any previous Windows OS. Probably the closest match is Windows 2003 Server. However, because I am Visual Studio developer myself, I am pretty glued to Visual 2005 Studio as my most used IDE. Now, it seems that there are some things that you should pay attention while developing on Windows Vista - check out the official page for Visual Studio support on Windows Vista for more details (link). Basically what can be infurred from there is that VS2002 and VS2003 will not be supported on Vista, but that again doesn't mean that your Microsoft .NET 1.x/2.0 apps won't work there - just the opposite. This restriction is all about development, not application compatibility. The bottom line is that you have to get the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 and the Vista Support update in order to develop on Vista.

Windows Live Q&A

Amazing! This is something I've been recently thinking about. Internet is so powerful because of the huge information and the large user base. There is nothing in the world which can even get closer to it in regards to these parameters - no TV, no radio, no media. I am personally a believer that if people share their experience, they all bring value to the public and after all everyone can help the other. So I was on my way these days to buy a car. But if you are new to the area, what would you do? You will hit the first dealership that pops up on the brand web site or after couple of searches and that's all. But most of the times this will not give you the best value - the best quote I mean. Moreover, sometimes you may end up in not very favorable salesman who is just thinking about his commission. Now I've been thinking this - if I was able to see what have been the experiences of let's say event 10 people buying the same car in the same area, I would get a pretty good overview of the problem area.

So why I am telling you this and meanwhile the title of this post is Windows Live Q&A? Well, this service is all this about - you asking questions to the community and eventually getting answers. Of course, the answers are pretty subjective and the content is not 100% guaranteed, but we are grown-ups, right? And still the interesting thing with this service is that the more you answer questions, the more points you get and hence better personal rating. This is mainly used to show users how reliable are your answers (to my knowledge). More about this here. And now I am thinking about ways to monetize this service and reward the active and honest participants ... (is that a new advertisement type? p.s. which I personally will love:0)