Jan Tielens' Bloggings

A lot of people are wondering if they still should invest in web part development. ASP.NET 2.0 is comming and will have something called "web parts" as well. Will they fit in the current version of SharePoint? Will the "old" web parts fit in the new version? Finally there are some answers, Mike Fitzmaurice has written a good post about what you should take into account when you will be developing web parts. A must-read if you're into web part development!

Some time ago Maurice did a little poll about the favorite web part of 2004, all the votes are counted and the winner is the SmartPart! First of all I would like to thank the Academy, the members of the jury and of course all my fans. :-)

That's not all, Tom notified me that there is a webcasts where the SmartPart is mentioned: cool! How about a webcast all about the SmartPart? Can we do that Patrick?

• Best Practices for Developing and Deploying Web Parts for SharePoint Sites (Level 300)Get on the fast track. This webcast will outline lessons learned and advocate best practices for coding, testing, deploying, and managing Web Parts, fetching data asynchronously, managing state, and much more. This session assumes that attendees are already familiar with building basic Web parts, as well as accessing Web services and database content from Microsoft ASP.NET. Presenter: Mike Ammerlaan, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
  
  

A few weeks ago I subscribed to the SkypeOut service of Skype and I have to admit: I'm impressed. Now I can make phone calls to my mom (and other people as well of course) by using Skype! The rates are low, even lower than the local telco's. Everything works like a charm, the sound quality is ok, I'm becomming a real Skype fan!

Starting from today, you can download a new beta version (1.2) which adds a new service: SkypeIn:

With SkypeIn, you can get your own, regular phone number. So if your friends who aren’t using Skype want to call you by dialing a regular number, you can still receive the call in Skype. No matter where you are.

At this time you can get a phone number in a few countries (Belgium is not included yet) for 30 euros a year (or 10 for 3 months). Just think about it a few seconds ... this service could change a lot ... My guess: this will be big!