Windows Live Dev blog

Today I ended up on the Windows Live Dev blog (link) by chance. I read what these guys are publishing and I was amazed how many interesting things they got. The cool thing with this blog is that you receive very valuable information about different products part of the Windows Live group. For example the last post I see there is about how to do advanced searches with Live Search (check it out here). If you are a developer using or interested in some of the services out there, you will find posts about controls, SDKs, gadgets, Virtual Earth etc.

Some interesting features of Windows Live Search

Today I found this great feature available with Windows Live Search - that's the contextual suggestions that this search engine gives to you, when it finds something relevant to what you are looking for. For example, I was looking for "mazda3" and here is what I've got:

Now, as you see, on your right side there is a bunch of sites, among which are reviews and different trims of Mazda3.

But to go further more, I want to touch base here with another interesting and very cool service, part of the Windows Live - namely "Live Q&A". If you just switch real quick to it, you will se the following:

What this service brings to you is some user opinions and real-life experiences related to your search pattern. What this service brings to you is very obvious from this service motto: "Live QnA connects you to the best answers from the right people.". So what I've got here is a rated list of user reviews on the Mazda3, which may prove to be very useful to me.

Another very cool service part of Windows Live is Image. Besides its sleek way of doing previews while hovering a single image, it has many other useful gadgets such as the zoom-in/out panel at the top to control image sizes, the scratchpad (where you can drag & drop images). The search capabilities are fully integrated and are very sophisticated. For example, if you do a search on "John Kennedy", here is what you've got:

What's actually interesting here is the right side pane, which displays what? yeah, that's right - related people to John Kennedy. Sweet! Needless to say that the search is not just keyword based, but it does some relevancy checking and is contextual based.

Copy music from iPod to your PC

I've been recently trying to download some music off my iPod. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way using iTunes. And this was the moment I searched for some help in Internet. And I found a great article on this topic (link). It seems like iTunes has no longer this ability to drop off music from your iPod. And what is the solution then? Put simply, this is the EphPod program which you can take for free from here. It actually does far more than simply copying your music - it can sync up your contacts, blogs, videos. And besides it is free, other cool thing is that it is working, which does not apply for some commercial software for the same purpose! :)

XML Notepad 2006

Check out this tool - really good one for manipulating XML files. Here is a great article, which shows what this tool can do for you - XML Notepad 2006 Design (link). You can download the tool from this link. One of the features that I most like is that integrated IntelliSense, using the current document schema - really cool one.

Visual Studio default shortcuts

I am using keyboard extensively while programming in Visual Studio. It is a great way to boost your productivity. Today I found this article on MSDN which shows all keyboard shortcuts, set on default with Visual Studio. Use them wisely :)

General Development Settings Default Shortcut Keys (link)

Video Podcasts with Apple iPod

I recently downloaded the newest version of iTunes 7.0 and started exploring it. One of the most coolest feature I found is the ability to sync with video podcasts. So far I had some problems playing video on my iPod in general. Sometimes I just couldn't convert a movie to the iPod format, or sometimes the iPod just didn't play them at all. However, couple of days ago using this new feature about video podcasts, I managed to play video! So here is how you can access this new feature from iTunes. Just follow the steps shown on the following screenshot:

As a result, you will have to see this (or at lest this is what I get from iTunes):

From this point, just pick those you like and then sync up your iPod. From your iPod, just go to Videos -> Video Podcasts and enjoy the ride! :)

Just a quick note about iTunes 7.0. The current version is not very stable. It constantly crashes, while attempting to update my Outlook contacts and tasks if the connection to the mail server is not present. I am using Microsoft Exchange email account with cached mode enabled. Although Microsoft Outlook is working soundly in this case, every single time I start iTunes without having established connection to the Microsoft Exchange, this software just crashes with "Unhandled exception occurred". This drives me crazy and that's why I disabled contacts and tasks synchronization.

Windows Live Services - full list

Windows Live - the Microsoft rival of Google, has taken a very fast pace forward. Currently it includes a total of 56 different services available on the Web (check out this link to see this list). Google on the other way are trying to compete with Microsoft Office by providing a free-of-charge word processor and spreadsheet, but in my honest opinion they are decades behind Microsoft. On the other way, Microsoft is pulling away the Office Live initiative (link), which gives you at your ease email, collaboration, Web publishing, etc.

I personally use Microsoft Live Writer (link) for RSS content management. Although still in beta, this program is really great. As you can see, I am using the Blogger service for RSS, but its Web interface is very simple and by no means is user friendly. Besides, it is Web based. It has happened several times that when I am done with the blog entry and I try to publish it, if my Internet connection experience some problems by this time, the whole post is gone - so long 30 minutes or so writing. Would be far away better if there has been something like autosave on every N seconds, correct? Because Windows Live Writer is Desktop based, I don't have this problem. Nevertheless, it provides very useful tools to format the blog entry with whatever styles you want. And here comes the great news - you can insert pictures to your blog although the blogging service (Blogger in my case) does not support publishing pictures. What it does with them - you are just prompted to setup a folder on the FTP where this program will upload the pictures. That's really sweet!

Traffic condition on Virtual Earth

While checking something on VE, I suddenly saw a new tab on the screen - "Traffic".

For Americans, this service is the life saver and they are so used to it. On my last trip to Seattle, we were on the road with a friend of mine and he wanted to know which streets are blocked so that he can better plan his route. Well, couple of clicks on his Pocket PC and voila - you see full fledged map showing you which streets have heavy traffic, or incidents, etc. I really wish we have this service down here in Bulgaria - it is really very useful.

Web control library project in Visual Studio 2005

Today I wanted to create a custom ASP.NET 2.0 control (not to be mistaken with Web user controls a.k.a. ASCX controls). For this reason, in Visual Studio 2003 I used to create a stand-alone Web control library which actually contains the new custom control (s). Because the whole Web project base is changed in Visual Studio 2005, you won't find a "Web Control Library" project in New Web Site dialogue. Finally I made it through! This project type is now located in Windows section - point to File | New | Project ... and choose this project as shown on the screenshot below:

And now you can start add your custom controls to the Visual Studio 2005 Toolbox by right-clicking on the specific tab. Then select "Choose items.." from the context menu. In the ".NET Framework Components" tab, locate the assembly file of your Web control library and choose the controls you want to use. And that's it ..

Google Calculator

Today I had to convert quickly from pounds to kilograms. Hence, I hit the Internet to see what the aspect ratio is between those two measurement units. I was really nicely surprised by Google, which provides a service called "Google Calculator" (link). Using it, you just have to type "1 pound in kilo" in the search criteria and you are all set! It is really small things that make people happy :-)

CopySourceAsHtml add-in for Visual Studio 2005 / 2003

Yesterday I was writing a post and I wanted to send some sample code. However, it would have been great if the code keeps the formatting which it has in Visual Studio 2005. That said, I searched for an add-in and I found this one - CopySourceAsHtml (link). The most important one - it is free. So far it seems to be working nicely and integrates really seamlessly with VS2005. It also has version for VS2003 (for those of you who are still using it :) ).

ASP.NET 2.0 Tips, Tricks, Recipes and Gotchas (on ScottGu's Blog)

I found this very interesting post about ASP.NET 2.0 tips & tricks. Not surprisingly it is on ScottGu's blog - the ASP.NET 2.0 guy :). Really, lot's of valuable hints, resources, best practices and advanced topics can be found there. A must-read article for every ASP.NET 2.0 developer.

Review: Flock browser

Today I ended up on this cool piece of software. Its name is Flock and is currently in beta. Basically, it is a new generation Internet browser, which has very handy integration with many famous Web services. It is based on the Mozilla technology. Although it is still in beta, I find it pretty stable. What I most like with it is that it has seamless integration with some popular Web 2.0 services like Flickr, Blogger, del.icio.us, which I personally adore. Actually, right now I am writing this post from the Flock browser itself, which on the other side will communicate with Blogger to publish the post.

What gives me the integration with del.icio.us? Well, I have tons of bookmarks and I am working on 3 machines - one at home, one at the office and my personal notebook. So I am indulged to sync my links among all these machines, which is really very tedious and boring task. Flock solves this using the del.icio.us service, which among all provides bookmark management to its clients. And it is free :)

Another story is the heap of pictures I got. I am currently using Yahoo!Photos for this purpose so every time I want to publish new album and pictures, I have to login there, create a new album, drag & drop the new pictures, etc. Now, I can to this with couple of clicks and drag & drops :) That is because Flock uses Flickr for photo management, which collaborates with Yahoo!Photos. Simple as that.

Well, the history shows that each Internet browser has it own particularities in regards to page rendering. Because my experience so far with Flock is not that much, I can't say whether it working sound. I read that it is based on Mozilla technologies so provided that most pages try to be compatible with Mozilla I guess that there won't be any problems. But will see ..

If you want to try out this browser, just go to its page and download it [link].

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Oh my! Today I found something really useful, something that I've seen for FireFox, but never so far for Internet Explorer. We are currently creating AJAX applications and we usually need some tools in order to see how is a given page rendered, how it will look like on 800 x 600 resolution, validate CSS and HTML, etc. As I pointed out, so far only the FF developers could benefit of such toolbox, but not anymore!

I tried Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar which is all this about. Among its features you will find:
-- Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS Web feed links.
-- Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
-- Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
-- Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
-- Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.

Currently, it is in Beta 2 and is free. You can download it from here. Enjoy!

MSDN Webcast: What I Wish Developers Knew About Writing Queries in SQL Server 2005

MSDN Webcast: What I Wish Developers Knew About Writing Queries in SQL Server 2005 (Level 200) (link)

This webcast is really a masterpiece - that's all I can say about it. It really gives you a very good understanding how to diagnose and tune up your applications using SQL to manage their data. I also share the view of the author that there are many software developers that don't have this specific knowledge about writing effective SQL queries, probably because they haven't experienced performance hits. So far, I have projects behind my back where we had to squeeze out every possible second out, because of huge data load and requirement for good performance. I really know what SQL Server Profiler can do, and I really love it!

So this Web cast will give you a really very good idea and real demonstration how you should diagnose and tune your SQL queries so that you have optimal database performance. Highly recommend it!

SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 integration - good demos

Today I ended up on these very cool demos. I usually like a lot that kind of quick HOWTOs, which are straight to the point and give you a good overview of the possibilities that bring you a given technology piece. Well, the demos I found today are really like that - most of them are like 5 to 7 minutes long, but give you a clear view of how to do the things. Nevertheless, I bet that you won't become a MSSQL 2005 guru after going thru all of them, but they will give you a good foundation what to expect from the collaboration between Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (from developer's perspective).

Anyhow, here is a link where you can view or download the content for offline browsing - SQL Server 2005 Developer Productivity Guided Tour [link].

Here is a quick overview of what this tour includes:

1. Web Application and SQL Server Database Creation (4 min. 34 sec.)
- Creating a New Web Application
- Adding a SQL Server Database
- Inspecting the SQL Server Database
2. Database Schema Creation and Data Input (6 min. 52 sec.)
- Creating Tables With the Database Diagram Designer
- Modifying Tables with the Table Explorer
- Populating the Tables with Test Data
3. Data Access via Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions (7 min. 49 sec.)
- Creating a Stored Procedure
- Creating a User-Defined Function
4. Data Access and Data Binding in Web Applications (5 min. 41 sec.)
- Adding a New Form to a Web Application
5. Web Application Debugging (6 min. 23 sec.)

Mr. Eric Rudder live!

Eric Rudder - the VP of Development & Platform group from Microsoft is here in Sofia right now. I was lucky one to be able to participate in a live meeting with him in the office of Microsoft Bulgaria. We had a very open conversation and discussion over what's been around and what's hot in Microsoft world. We touched base on WCF, because one of its PM leads were there two - I was very nicely surprised to know that he is Bulgarian - I am so proud, because the guy really looked very knowledge :-). To me this was very interesting conversation, because as I already told you my master thesis was about distributed transactions and more specifically WS-AtomicTransaction and WS-Coordination, which are supported by WCF. I shoot couple of questions at the PM live and we decided to continue our conversation off-topic with the details I was particularly interested. I wanted to know more about the types of distributed transactions WCF supports. The theory defined many different types, but among them the most important ones are the flat and nested/hierachical transactions. Another one was about WS-BusinessActivity. It is interesting to know whether this specification will be implemented as part of WCF or will be in WF. I was told that WS-BA is not of topmost priority right now, because they are putting more effort into making WCF and WF collaborate together. Will see!
Eric Rudder is for sure a very versatile person. I personally like the fact that he has developer background but he also has very strong business feeling for sure. It was really great to see how passionate he is about software and technology! Obviously he has a very versatile knowledge and look in software industry. For example, we talked about SAP technology and how it compares to Microsoft technology stack. I actually pose him the question - "How would you convince me to use Microsoft technologies instead of SAP?". This was a tricky one :) . But he managed to explain us the pros and cons of both solutions and how Microsoft think can position itself thru the verticals as opposed to SAP. It is well-known that SAP has relatively high pricing especially for SMBs, where Microsoft is mainly targeted. However, I believe that with WF, WCF and the whole SOA paradigm in hands, Microsoft may provide to its clients very customizable and highly scalable business solutions based on Microsoft servers like BizTalk, SharePoint, SQL Server, etc. I believe that Microsoft .NET 3.0 could bring all that and thus be a potential rival to SAP.

Atlas June CTP released

Today I saw that there is a new release of the famous AJAX library for ASP.NET 2.0 - namely Microsoft Atlas. I've used it in 3 projects so far and I haven't been disappointed. Now, as I can see from the release notes (here) the UpdatePanels are now truly *dynamic* - that is they can be added dynamically to page at runtime. Another change is in the Drag & drop functionality. I will give it a try these days. You can download this release from the Atlas web site (link).

Another thing worth mentioning related to Microsoft Atlas is the Microsoft Atlas Control Toolkit (check it out here). It gives you a bunch of free Web controls and components, which seamlessly integrate with ASP.NET 2.0 page model and brings valuable add-ons to your web applications. There is a very good article about this toolkit at ScottGu's blog(link).

Tech-Ed 2006 is online

If you missed Tech-Ed 2006, or want to catch up on some of the concepts you learned in Boston, check out these webcasts covering Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, management and operations, security, server infrastructure, and more. Check it out here.

Master of Science - completed

Yeah, last week I defended my master thesis and hence I hold now a Master of Science degree in Computer Sciences from University Of Sofia "St. Kliment Ohridski". I specialized in Distributed Systems, although the official programme is announced as "Distributed Systems and Mobile Technologies". I want to thank my girlfriend Mira for all the careful reviews she has done during the course of the writing, and for supporting me by that time!

My master thesis was about "Distributed transactions in Service-Oriented Architecture". I personally adore the concepts that SOA proclaims. From scientific point of view, most business systems pose the requirement to guarantee to its clients atomicity and consistency of the operations carried out thru them. And here comes the need for transaction control. Fortunately, the guys from WS-TX group from OASIS (link) have done a great job so now we have a bunch of specifications aimed to provide a unified coordination framework for a set of Web services. Web services are actually one concrete programming interface that complies with the SOA concepts. They are very compelling with the fact that they rely on widely spread open standards like WSDL, SOAP and UDDI. I won't go into to many details here, but having all these things in mind I decided some time ago to implement the specifications, defined by WS-TX. Namely, I was interested at WS-Coordination and WS-AtomicTransaction.

The introduction of my master thesis reviews some of the most popular transaction processing systems realizing distributed transactions. We identify the common problems that they all have in regards to interoperability and platform independence. Nonetheless, one of the primary goals of SOA is to boost code reuse thru loosely coupled interfaces. And this may serve as a elegant solution in which we will be able to combine the existing business systems in a loosely-coupled manner and having transaction control over autonomous services. This was basically the goal of the practical part of my master thesis - to show a sample solution which will be based on the SOA principles, providing distributed transactions to its clients. As a result, I implemented WS-Coordination protocol so that the concrete transaction models have a unified framework for coordination. The concrete transaction model I used followed the principles of two-phase commit protocol (2PC), provided by WS-AtomicTransaction specification. However, I'd like to say that the other transaction protocol WS-BusinessActivity, defined by WS-TX, is really very interesting one. It is best suited for long-time business transactions, which consume lots of resources for a long period of time. It tries to "relax" some of the well-known transaction properties ACID such as atomicity and isolation. I highly recommend reading this standard as well as the following article (link), which will give you a very good perspective what all these standards are all about. Here is a good place to express my gratitude to Mr. Dan House from IBM, involved with WS-TX group, who has been very responsive to all the questions I got about these specifications!

My master thesis is in Bulgarian so far, but I am planning to translate it in English (if I have some spare time). However, if someone of you is interested, you can always drop me a line and I will do the best of me to reply you. Following up this link, you can see just a short annotation of my thesis, which I believe will throw you some hints what it is all about.