Wednesday, February 27, 2008
For those of use using Trac for online projects and wiki-type functionality, and live in a visual studio world, you've got to check out Devja Vu's Visual Studio plug in.
http://vstrac.devjavu.com/
Its only in a Beta 1 state, but looks good enough to try out! You can too, grab it here on the SourceForge site:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=214927&package_id=259175
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
What do Ike Turner and my Grandmother have in common?
They both passed away today. God speed nanny! You will not be forgotten.
~the Family.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Rob Conery, the author of the coolest DAL utility known to man (AKA SubSonic) has joined the ranks of ASP.NET gurus at Microsoft.
He now may be getting paid by Microsoft, but his work is still the same. Can you beleive it? They are paying Rob to continue his efforts on Subsonic, and even integrate it with the ASP.NET Teams MVC framework!
Very cool news... Lets see, Scott Gu, working together with Shawn Burke, has brought in Phil Haack, Scott Hanselman, and now Rob Conery. Who's next? I would be putting my money on Mads Kristensen, but he's not American. Huh.
::: now back to our scheduled program :::
Friday, October 19, 2007
Expander World has come and gone. Wow, what a couple interesting days they were!
I simply relish in mingling with the SuperOffice development community. There is such a wide range of very interesting professionals, there is never a dull moment among them. With so many different projects going on around a single software platform, I get to glimse many fantasic solutions to everyday problems. I truly do consider myself blessed for being able to know and work around so many brilliant men and women.
Here is a screenshot of my first presentation of the seminar, "DevNet News and Roadmap".
There was almost 100 people at this years event. Getting bigger? You Bet! Not as big as I had hoped, but I beleive next year we'll do things better, such as including more partner and customer content, which hopefully will attract a bigger crowd. To me, a bigger crowd equals more cooperation, feedback, interest, and demonstrates what I advocate all the time, the sense of community! Up and up!
It was great putting some new faces to old names. Some of the guys i've conversed with on the forums for months, yet never had the opportunity to meet face to face before. This event I got to do just that and it was truly great. Nice meeting you finally!
Now its time to sit back, worry what everyone thought, and collect as much feedback as possible to improve Expander World next year. Looking forward to hear what everyone thought about this years event!
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Simply Wow! Taking the open source initiative to new heights, Microsoft decides to open up access to the source of .net framework libraries. Someone is definately shaking things up inside the box! Of course its a little (*alot) restrictive with what you can do with it, but hey, its out there!
Read all about it on Scotts blog:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx
Where to next?
Heres a little more by Shawn Burke, one of the pushers to get it out there.:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sburke/archive/2007/10/03/making-net-framework-source-available-to-developers.aspx
Nice...
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
You may never had associated the title words with the Internet or web-based applications, but I predict that within 15 years thats exaclty the type of experience we will be getting used to on a day to day, site-to-site, basis. Web developers today can either get relevant or get lost.
With applications and technologies like Photosynth, Seadragon, Popfly, and Silverlight, that's exaclty where Microsoft is headed.
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/ : "Newest and most exciting way to view photos on a computer. Takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next."
http://www.popfly.ms/Overview/ : "Popfly Creator is a set of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups."
http://labs.live.com/Seadragon.aspx : "Aimed to change the way we use screens, from wall-sized displays to mobile devices, so that visual information can be smoothly browsed regardless of the amount of data involved or the bandwidth of the network."
http://silverlight.net/Default.aspx & http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/ : "Enables rich interactive applications for the Web that incorporate video, animation, interactivity, and stunning user interfaces. Create richer, more compelling Web experiences that take greater advantage of the client for increased performance. Stunning vector-based graphics, media, text, animation, and overlays that enable seamless integration of graphics and effects into any existing Web application. Enhance existing standards/AJAX-based applications with richer graphics and media, and improve their performance and capabilities by using Silverlight."
Although king in its time, Flash has been around for '-ever', but has change very little. I can still remember learning the ins and outs of keyframe development, but it has never caught on because for many reasons; cost of the designer, limited scripting capabilities, and only web-bound support - just to name a few. Thats too bad in may respects, but like Netscape, they can only blame theirselves for growing complacent and stale.
Microsoft has, love em' or hate em', learned from many technologies mistakes (and made many of their own) in recent history. Picking up where Flash and similar techlogies have left off, Microsoft is again leading the pack into the next era of presence. Having the power of a first class programming language and world-class framework library is exactly where the Redmond camp is headed with Silverlight. Combined with the extraordinary capabilities of photosynth and seadragon, its only a matter of time before we start to be able navigate sites that way. And along comes Popfly - oh my-my see how far Frontpage has come (hehe)! Ok, its like apples and oranges, but still, Redmond has come along way with so much weight to carry.
Here's to the future of the Microsoft web, Cheers!
...now back to our scheduled broadcast...
Thursday, June 21, 2007
As some of you that know me know, I'm an avid blog reader. I like to read about all the different 'stuff' thats going on in the minds and lives of thoses that inspire, educate, and humor me. Its a hobby. Instead of the latest book on my night stand, as me about my latest favorite blogs and blog writers. There are quite a few.
For someone like me though, who loves to keep up on the latest and greatest code corners, subscribing to the msdn blogs rss feed is just too much information. Its truly information overflow.
BEWARE of this RSS feed! http://blogs.msdn.com/MainFeed.aspx?Type=AllBlogs
Sure you can subscribe to just a few that interest your tastes, but what it those tastes are dozens and you like to be in the 'know'?
With new entries popping in every few seconds, its truly perpetual motion.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Ok, so I broke down and enlisted in Facebook. There is a catch though! Actually two! First and foremost, I just had to let my wife link to who she is married to, and second, I\m thinking up ideas how to work Facebook into a SuperOffice DevNet article. There are a dozen ideas, and when I get a few minutes I'll write and code it out to share with the community.
I'm sure there are others that are thinking the same thing, so if so, give me a poke and we can build it together!
For those interested in the Facebook Developers Toolkit, you can find it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CCD46762-45EC-4FBE-AD91-FC916671E734&displaylang=en&clcid=0x409
See you online, friends!
Sunday, May 27, 2007
I came across kris' blog entry about installing the asp.net Membership tables in a database you define. This is not about creating the standard ASPNETDB database, but creating a sql script that installs the Membership tables, triggers, stored procedures, the whole lot, into a database you define! This is a great tip that certainly alleviates me from having to deploy a completely seperate database just to manange users information.
Essentially it breaks down to this line:
aspnet_regsql.exe -E -S localhost -d MyPersonalDatabase -A all -sqlexportonly c:\membership.sql
As most probably already know, aspnet_regsql.exe is found in (C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\)
Kris has more about setting up the connection strings on his blog, so check it out at:
http://blog.krisvandermast.com/CreateMembershipTablesInAnotherDatabaseThanTheStandardAspnetdbmdf.aspx
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
DevNet is currently looking at implementing a blog. The blog will mostly cover announcements, interesting SDK tidbits, and whatever else the DevNet team can share. The idea of having one is a little overdue, but hey, better late than never! Well actually, it will probably be online later rather than sooner, but when it does come online, it will be for the communities benefit and thats always a good thing. Look for it in the hopefully not too distant future on DevNet.