Windows Live Gallery

Probably you know that if you have a Windows Live ID you can log in and personalize your home page there. There is a huge set of gadgets available. Today I found the official gallery, where you can pick up and install those gadgets that your really like. Just hit this page (link) and see what's there. Some of my favorite are: Live Clock (link), Radio Live Space (link), ToDo (link) and Favorites (link).

You will find gadgets that you can use with your Windows Vista. These gadgets can be installed on your desktop so that you make use of the online connectivity of your machine.

Microsoft Office 2007 for a trial spin by the end of February

Microsoft has made the Enterprise version of Office 2007 for trial up until the end of February. This includes all Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc. At the end of the trial run, Office 2007 Enterprise will downgrade to a crippled edition that bars users from creating, changing, or saving documents and files. Users will still be able to view and print documents, however.

Download the free trial from here (~502.1 MB) (link) or check out the official trial site (link) for more information. You will need a trial licence key, which you can obtain from here.

"What the C or C++ Programmer Needs toKnow About C# and the .NET Framework" book by Charles Petzold

As I am coming from C++ background, long time ago while I was trying to catch up with .NET and C#, I would have died for a book like this:

"What the C or C++ Programmer Needs toKnow About C# and the .NET Framework" by Charles Petzold (link)

First thing you should note is the author - not everyone, but the famous Charles Petzold. Then you should notice that this book is completely free right now, so I really don't know what you are waiting for - just go there and download it :)

Service Unavailable error and IIS 6.0

Today I experienced very strange behavior from my local IIS 6.0. Everythime I accessed some web site previously working sound, I kept on getting this empty page saying "Service Unavailable". When I saw that all of my Web sites part of my current project are showing this same message, I tried to open a stand-alone and completely different Web app, but again the same message. Ok, that's was a clear indication that there was something wrong with the IIS6 installed on my local box. I hit the Internet and found the following KB article on MSDN site (link). This just rang up a bell that the problem can be rooted in the app pools I've been using. And it was a true suggestion - I had to change the identity under which my default ASP.NET 2.0 app pools were using (since the old one was not valid anymore). And now I have one greatly working IIS 6.0 up and running...

Exposing a MEX Endpoint

Today I found out the following. Let's say you have an Indigo service using the basic profile binding (BasicProfile) or any of the WS-* profiles. Then, you need a way to expose the metadata of your service to clients. Normally, you will define a new WS-MetatadataExchange (MEX) endpoint. But here is the trick. If your service is self-hosted, then if you specify a base address while opening the service, then you have this MEX endpoint created for you. Just point to the base address in your Web browser, and you will get the service description file or if you want the WSDL - just type the "?wsd" in the address bar. Here is a sample code that demonstrates this:

Uri baseAddress = new Uri( "http://localhost:8080/MEXAutoMetadataSvc" );

// NOTE: by specifying a base address, the MEX endpoint should be automatically populated especially for HTTP based profiles
myServiceHost = new ServiceHost( typeof( .. MEXAutoMetadataSvc ),
new Uri [] { baseAddress } );

//Open myServiceHost
myServiceHost.Open();

Now with this code running, if you go to http://localhost:8080/MEXAutoMetadataSvc you will see the description for this service.

Windows Vista and Office 2007 webcasts

If you want to ramp up with the cool and fascinating features that Vista and Office 2007 provide to us (developers), you may want to check out this site:

http://www.powertogether.com/

There, you will find a realm of online virtual labs and web casts, bundled up to give you one-stop-and-shop place to speed up with that technology, which IMO is really revolutionary. And don't get me wrong - I don't think of Windows Vista as of the new Microsoft OS with the very sleek UI, but also with all of its major improvements in security, connected systems development (and Microsoft .NET framework 3.0) and totally revamped way of interacting with your PC. I can tell you that having Vista on my desktop, I will never think of moving back to any previous OS.

As far as Microsoft Office 2007 is concerned, I will really recommend you just playing with it for couple of hours. Then send me back your comments. However, back on the link I gave you here, there is a good overview of what's into the developers toolbox for Office 2007 so it's worth to go there and master these.

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)

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!