Archives
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Future of Silverlight - Montreal Event
You can watch Scott Guthrie’s keynote live from the Microsoft Montreal office. It will be followed by a discussion period.
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Future of Silverlight
I told you to...
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Windows Phone 7 availability in Canada
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Silverlight Strategy Shift
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PDC and Silverlight
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VS 2010 crashes after unlocking PC - Win XP SP3
Each time I unlocked Win XP SP3 and Visual Studio 2010 was already running, VS would crash. A quick search lead me to this Connect page and a fix: simply disable hardware acceleration in VS (Tools\Options\General).
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Samedi .NET: La collaboration entre les développeurs et les testeurs avec Microsoft TFS 2010
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Crystal Reports 2010 Beta 2 for Visual Studio Runtime Error
I was doing a proof of concept with Crystal Reports 2010 Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2010 and got this error at runtime:
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Vibe, a Windows 7 Tablet
Looks like the Vibe could give the iPad some serious competition. The specs are fantastic except maybe for the 4 hours battery life.
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Windows Phone 7 – Montreal events (Sept 29-30 2010)
Here are a few Windows Phone 7 events that will take place in Montreal.
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Security Update for ASP.NET
Following the discovery of a security flaw in ASP.NET, Microsoft has been working day and night to release a security update thru Windows Update.
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XAML Clipart and Icons
Last week, I was doing a proof of concept Windows Forms screen and I wanted a little bit more punch so I went looking for some free icons. I found a great site called OpenClipArt.org that has a good set of good looking icons available in bitmap (PNG) and vector (SVG) formats.
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Seagate Momentus XT – SSD for the common man
I recently had a discussion with my good friend Eric Moreau about solid state drives (SSD). I was saying that although I’d love have the performance boost of a SSD drive, the thought of having a $500 SSD drive in a $800 laptop was simply not right for me. A few days later, he sent me a link to a blog post by Jeff Atwood where he writes about a new and affordable hybrid drive from Seagate, the Seagate Momentus XT.
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Serious ASP.NET Security Flaw
Looks like a serious ASP.NET security flaw was published yesterday (Friday Sept 17 2010).
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Samedi .NET - Introduction au B.I.
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Speaker Idol
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Windows Phone 7 – Montreal Events
For those looking at Windows Phone 7 development, Microsoft Canada will hold two events in Montreal next week (Sept 9 and 10, 2010) where you’ll be able to see a real Windows Phone 7 device. Well, it’s a pre production developer device so it’s the closest thing you’ll get to the real thing right now ;-)
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Today only: Julie Lerman’s Entity Framework eBook is $9.99
Today only (Monday August 30th 2010), you can get Julie Lerman’s Entity Framework Second Edition book that was just published for a mere $9.99 US (eBook version).
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The Telerik Eastern Canada User Group Tour
Hey! Telerik is coming to Canada. Evan Hutnick, Telerik evangelist, will speak at 6 Canadian user groups.
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Azure One Month Pass
Just saw this Azure offer. You can try Azure for free, no credit card required, for a full month.
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Azure – Security Resources
If your looking for security guidance for Windows or SQL Azure, this page lists a series of interesting resources:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff934690.aspx -
VB.NET and C# language syntactical comparison
Here’s a nice VB and C# reference page that does a syntactical comparison of both languages. Useful for someone fluent in one language but needs to understand or code in the other one.
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IE9 Preview hit 95/100 on the Acid3 test
IE9 Preview hit 95/100 on the Acid3 test!
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Expression Encoder US Price Jump
Dan posted a comment on my blog asking me about the Expression Encoder Pro price. Looks like the US price for Expression Encoder Pro on the MS US online store went from $50 to $199. Was $50 an intro/special price?
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Word – Save as PDF error
I recently started having an error message when saving Word documents as PDF files. The error states that “This file is in use by another application or user”. Yeah, sure!
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Visual Studio Talk Show #122 is now online - Les nouveautés du langage C++ (French)
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iOS 4 vs Exchange
If you’re experiencing problems with your iOS 4 device and your Exchange server, be advised that there’s a bug in iOS4. Here’s the email I received from my hosted Exchange provider:
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Expression Encoder 4 Great FAQ
Eric Juteau has published a great Expression Encoder 4 FAQ. A must read is you’re interested by this tool.
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Expression Encoder 4 Identity Crisis
I started to play around with Expression Encoder 4 Screen Capture doing some recordings when the software showed me this dialog:
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Microsoft ALM Summit
Just heard about this one from my good friend Mario Cardinal.
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PDC 2010 Announced
Microsoft has announced the date and location for it’s next PDC: October 28 and 29, 2010 in Redmond. Yep! Redmond, not L.A.!
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Windows Azure Platform Appliance – WPC Announcement
Microsoft announced at the Worldwide Partners Conference a new member in the Azure family: the Windows Azure Platform Appliance.
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Congrats to Vincent Grondin
Congrats to Vincent Grondin who was awarded MVP C# on July 1st. Vincent has been involved in the Montreal .NET Community for about a year now. He is also an excellent speaker.
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Are your hard drives healthy?
I’m an Acronis True Image user and yesterday, I received an email for a new Acronis product. It’s called Acronis Drive Monitor and its purpose is to monitor hard drive health. The good news is that it’s free so I gave it a shot and installed it on my desktop and my server (yep, it support desktop and server Windows OS).
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Visual Studio Talk Show #121 is now online - Silverlight dans la grande entreprise (French)
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Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp
If you’re interested in learning Windows Phone 7 development, check DevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp with superstar trainer Colin Melia.
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WPF performance for Remote Desktop
I was wondering how WPF would perform when running in Remote Desktop and found this great article from Jossef Goldberg.
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Office Pro Academic 2010 for $80 US
Students can get their hands on Office Pro Academic 2010 for a mere $80 in the US or $90 CDN in Canada. The offer is also available in more countries.
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Windows Azure ebook
I just found out about this community written free ebook about Windows Azure. It’s a series of articles edited by Eric Nelson and written by 15 authors.
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Windows Azure Platform Training Kit - June Update
Microsoft released an update to its Azure training kit.
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SQL Azure news at TechEd 2010
More Azure news from TechEd US 2010. This time, it’s from the SQL Azure team:
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Expression 4 ships
The Expression 4 suite of products shipped today. Good news, it’s a free upgrade for Expression 3 owners.
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Azure News at TechEd 2010
The Azure team did a few announcements today at TechED US 2010:
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Visual Studio Talk Show #120 is now online - Visualisation et analyse de code dans Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate (French)
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Developing and Deploying with SQL Azure
Microsoft published a short SQL Azure deployment document:
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Tales of a corrupt SQL log
Warning: I’m a simple dev, not an all powerful DBA with godly powers.
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Visual Studio Talk Show #119 is now online - Quand et dans quel contexte est-ce que adéquat est adéquat ? (French)
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Stardock Fences
I installed the free Fences utility program by Stardock today. What a cool way to group and organize your desktop icons.
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A message to Denis Pitcher
Denis Pitcher,
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Silverlight 4 Tools + WCF RIA Services Released
Microsoft has released the final versions of the Silverlight 4 Tools along with WCF RIA Services and the Silverlight Toolkit.
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SQL Azure vs. SQL Server
If you’d like to know the differences between SQL Server and SQL Azure, check this white paper.
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Offre d’emploi – Job Offer - Montreal
I’m currently helping a client plan its management systems re-architecture and they are looking to hire a full time .NET developer. It’s a small 70 people company located in the Old Montreal, you’ll be the sole dev there and you’ll use the latest technologies in re writing their core systems.
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Visual Studio Talk Show #118 is now online - Command-Query Responsibility Separation (French)
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Visual Studio Talk Show #117 is now online - Microsoft Surface (French)
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32 bit ODBC drivers on 64 bit Windows
It’s been a while since I had to use an ODBC driver. Today I learned…
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Upgrading a hard disk – To repave or to migrate, that is the question
I recently changed my laptop hard disk from the stock 250GB 5400 drive to a 320GB 7200 drive. And no, I didn’t bought a SSD drive because the cost is way too much right now. At $70, my upgrade was a lot cheaper than a SSD drive. Maybe next year.
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SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch Event - Montreal
If you’re into SQL Server, you may want to attend the free 2008 R2 launch event that will take place on May 26th, 2010 in Montreal.
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The Make Web Not War Train
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Silverlight 4 Training Course
A Silverlight 4 training course is now available on Channel 9. Here’s the course description:
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Thoughts on Apple
Was Jobs on crack when he wrote that?
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ -
Windows Phone 7 Tools - April Update
The Windows Phone 7 Tools April Update just came out and now works in VS 2010 RTM.
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Silverlight 4 – What to download and install?
Silverlight 4 was launched last week and in case your wondering what tools to download and install and more importantly, backward compatibility with your existing apps and tools, check this blog post by Tim Heuer.
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Ottawa Code Camp 2010 pictures
The Ottawa
Code CampIT Day 2010 took place over the weekend. With about 130 attendees, it was a great success according to Jean-René Roy, one of the organizers. -
CloudCamp Montreal
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Thoughts on iPhone, Flash, IE
It’s interesting to see the debate caused by the iPhone debate over Flash. In the new version of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, Apple bans Flash and Monotouch:
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Silverlight 4 Launch Event – Watch it live
The Silverlight 4 Launch Event will be available in streaming live from DevConnections on Tuesday April 13th 2010. Check www.silverlight.net for more info.
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Moving to Visual Studio 2010 free e-book
Moving to Visual Studio 2003/2005/2008 to Visual Studio 2010? You can download a free draft preview of Microsoft Press Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 book.
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Windows 7 – Fun with VHD
I’m teaching about TFS 2008 next week and I wanted to use TFS in a virtualized environment so I downloaded the TFS + Team Suite VPC image from Microsoft’s Website. Working with Windows 7, I opened the VM with the built-in Windows Virtual PC. The VM loads fine but the problems started when I tried to install the VM additions: I simply couldn’t get them to install properly.
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.NET Framework 4 on Windows Azure coming
The Azure Team blogged today about the upcoming .NET 4 support.
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The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs
A few years go, I got interested in presentation styles after reading Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points book. At that time, it was obvious that the Microsoft presentation culture was kind of missing the point by having far too many bullet points.
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Canada vs Norway
During the winter Olympics, I had a little bet with Sondre Bjellås. Sondre is the RD for Olso, Norway, a rising rock star in the .NET world and a very great guy. The bet was that if Canada would win Gold against Norway in the man curling final, I would wear something funny and Norwegian like a Viking hat at Mix while Sondre would wear a Canadian jersey.
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My Mix10 coup de coeur
If you ask me what was my Mix10 coup de coeur, I’d have to say Bill Buxton. I was privileged to spend an hour an a half in a small room with about twelve people and Bill Buxton. This man has such a incredible background and he is so inspiring. You could really tell that he is a researcher because as he was talking about something, you could see him thinking about something else and trying at the same time to cross reference that.
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Roger Jennings’ Cloud Computing with the Windows Azure Platform
Writing and publishing a book about a technology early in its infancy is cruel. Your subjected to many product changes and your book might be outdated the day it reaches the book stores. I bought Roger Jennings “Cloud Computing with the Windows Azure Platform” book knowing that it was published in October 2009 and that many changes occurred to the Azure platform in 2009.
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DevConnections VS 2010 Issue
The latest issue of DevConnections is focused around the Visual Studio 2010 launch.
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TechDays Canada 2010
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DevTeach/Microsoft Breakfast and User Group Tour: SharePoint 2010
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Azure containers
Here’s a cool video on how Microsoft builds its Azure containers.
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Visual Studio Talk Show #116 is now online - Les nouveautés de la conférence MIX 2010 (French)
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Christian Beauclair on Azure
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Visual Studio Talk Show #115 is now online - Entity Framework 4 (French)
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Visual Studio Talk Show #114 is now online - Le responsable de projet est-il mort? (French)
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Steve Ballmer on Cloud Computing
On March 4 2010, Steve Ballmer discussed Cloud Computing at the University of Washington.
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SQL Azure – is master billable?
In SQL Azure, when you create a “server”, a master database is automatically created and you’ll see it listed in the databases list. Here’s a screenshot after I created a new database called Test.
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Cloud Cover on Channel 9
The folks at Channel 9 has created a new Azure/Cloud Computing show called Cloud Cover. The first 2 episodes are available right now.
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They say that our code is sauerkraut
(Note: This video may be offensive to some people.)
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Still have Azure CTP running instances?
If you played with Azure CTP and left some VM running, know that they were transferred to a paid account starting Feb 1st and you are currently being billed for usage time. Yesterday, during an Azure workshop, one fellow found out that his Hello World app have cost him $45 so far ;-)
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Silverlight 4 Training
If you want to start looking at Silverlight 4, Microsoft has made available a training course with hands-on-labs on some of the new features like the Rich Text editor and the Webcam and microphone support.
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Visual Studio 2010 Licensing White Paper
This Visual Studio 2010 Licensing White Paper will likely be handy when talking with clients.
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Ignite your coding podcasts
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Windows Azure Tools compatibility with VS 2010 RC
The latest drop of the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio (February 2010) are compatible with Visual Studio 2010 RC.
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Sliverlight compatibility with VS 2010 RC
Tim Heuer has created a nice FAQ about Silverlight compatibility with Visual Studio 2010 RC.
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VS 2010 RC now available
From Jason Zanders’ Blog
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Visual Studio Talk Show #113 is now online - PHP et le Web Platform Installer (French)
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Still using Windows 7 RC?
If you’re still using Windows 7 RC, you might want to move sooner to RTM. Adam Bomb (!) has posted a reminder on how Win7 RC will nag you starting on Feb 15th and how it will bomb.
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Podcasting Recording Hardware
Mario Cardinal and I have been recording the Visual Studio Talk Show podcast for more then 5 years now. Many people ask me about the recording hardware and software we use so I though I’d post the info here.
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Cool Bing Maps Silverlight Apps
If your using the Silverlight version of Bing maps, additional apps are available when you click on the Map Apps button.
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Azure account creation walkthrough
David Baliles has created a short walkthrough (PDF and PPTX) describing all the steps required to create an Azure account for MSDN subscribers.
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Azure account creation confusion
I had an Azure CTP account and I received an email from Microsoft saying that my account was about to expire on January 31, 2010 and that I’ll need to “upgrade” my account. A link in the email pointed to this pricing page:
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What if Apple doesn’t release a tablet!
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Prairie Dev Con 2010
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MySQL to SQL Server migration tools
Microsoft has released CTPs of two MySQL to SQL Server migration tools. There’s one for SQL Server 2005 and one for SQL Server 2008.
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Intel new Core i3 and i5 processors
Intel has announced/released a series of new processors.
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Parsing IIS logs
I never really had to manually parse IIS logs to get some stats until now and I wanted to get some numbers that the installed stats engine didn’t provide. I did a little research and found a tool call LogParser.
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Visual Studio Talk Show #112 is now online - Team System est mort. Vive Visual Studio 2010! (French)
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MSDN subscribers - Azure benefits signup
MSDN subscribers can now sign up for their Azure benefits.
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Multi Monitor Tool
I recently bought a new desktop along with two 24” monitors. While the Windows 7 multi monitors experience is great, I still found that it’s missing a few things like a title bar button to quickly send a window between monitors. Sure, you can use the Windows Key + Shift + Right/Left Arrow to send the windows between monitors but why not a title bar button?