December 2003 - Posts
I use notes alot with my Pocket PC, and sync them back into Outlook 2003 throughout the day. They generally contain various text, doodles, and a few voice-recordings. Recently, the auto-archive feature in MS Outlook 2003 kicked-in and moved them to an archive folder. Not a big deal, until you try and restore them.
With everything else in MS Outlook, you can just open the Folder View, and locate the items in the PST folders and drag/drop them back into the non-archived area. However, with Notes, this feature works only with Text-only notes, but not with Recordings or what I call "Doodle-Notes" (notes containing drawings). Instead of allowing copy/paste, it only allows copying of the meta-data about the recording or note-drawing.
Here is an example of a doodle restored from archive:
------------
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 9:55 AM
Subject: Personal\Pierce drawing
Follow Up Flag: To view/edit your notes, see the Notes
section of the ReadCE file, located on the ActiveSync CD.
Flag Status: Flagged
Very Annoying!
In all the documentation from PDC2003, I havent seen any mention of project "Orcacoke". This project is the upcoming replacement for Application Center Test(ACT) and is due to be shipped with VisualStudio.NET 2004 "Whidbey". Due to the excessive cost of LoadRunner and comparable products, I am very interested in this release.
Since it was missing from the PDC Whidbey bits, I assume it isnt ready yet, but have been unable to find any more information.
Does anyone know the status of this project?
Ever since I got my new Dell laptop, I have had problems connecting to my Dell Axim X5 Pocket PC.
Equipment: Dell Axim X5-400 running PocketPC 2003 and connecting via USB docking cradle. Dell Latitude D600 with Port Replicator.
Problem:
1) Boot-up laptop and sync Dell Axim X5 via cradle attached to USB port in Dell Port Replicator. Everything works fine.
2) Remove Axim from cradle (or turn off device), then re-dock Axim in cradle.
3) Receive error balloon-popup saying "USB Device Not Recognized"
I have tried replacing drivers, upgrading to the latest version of ActiveSync, and many other things, but nothing works! :(
Work-Around: The only way to get it working again is to plug the USB Cradle to a different USB port on the port-replicator. This works only 2 times, since I have only 3 USB ports. Afterwards, I must reboot the laptop to get it working again! :(
Solution: So far, I havent found one. However, a few messageboard and newsgroup posts have shown this to be a common problem with Dell laptops and Dell Axim X5's.
The only thing I havent tried yet is to use a powered USB hub. This has worked for some users, and may be my only solution. However, I would be much happier with a fix from/by Dell since I am using 100% Dell hardware!
Dave Molta gives us a detailed view of Mobile and Wireless technology in his article "The Survivor's Guide to 2004: Mobile and Wireless".
As a Mobile computing enthusiast, I really enjoyed this article and saw little to disagree with in his predictions on VoIP, Wireless Networking, and Wireless Phone technologies.
Microsoft has finally re-released SP2 for .NET CF!
Both the
Developer Redistributable and the
End-User Redistributable are now available.
Just noticed this article on N/Direct.... "What's new for Interop in .NET Framework v2.0"
Pretty interesting read...
Problem: Downloaded the new January 2004 MSDN library from MSDN Subscriber Downloads using the full DVD version (4.3gb ISO). I burned this to a DVD and installed without incident, but when I load-up VS.NET or even the Help viewer, I see no topics, no info, nothing. I checked to see if the files were installed, and that the registry settings were correct, and everything looked fine.
Solution: After doing some research via Google - here, here, here, and here, I tried several things, and ended up with the following solution:
I uninstalled MSDN and made sure everything was back to "normal" before trying again. This time, instead of installing from DVD, I Mounted the ISO using Alcohol 120% (there are many other utilities to mount ISO's, this is just the one I had installed) and installed it from the local ISO file. Two things happened; 1) It installed 100 times faster since it was HD to HD, 2) it fixed the VS.NET Integration with Help and everything started working again.
Cause: ???
I'm guessing that it has something to do with encoding the files onto the DVD. However, I tried this with several DVD burns and they all had the same result. Also, note that I have seen posts about it working fine with the CD version ISOs(3) after they are burned to a CD-R. Very strange!
I am not as well-read of a developer as I would like, but I consider myself to be very intuitive at discovering and defining best practices in programming. I don't mean this as a boast, there is just a part of my personality that drives me to constantly seek-out and create templates and patterns to simplify and standardize any code I write. I am constantly trying to identify and improve my development philosophy and methodology to create applications better, quicker, and more innovatively every day.
Therefore, it was a bit of a shock, when I discovered a viewpoint of software development that had escaped me:
Code is an Asset!
I'm not referring to the software produced via code, instead I'm suggesting that each piece of code itself is an asset. More specifically, any encapsulated piece of UI or functionality should be treated as an asset to an organization, not just as a piece of the greater asset of the Application that uses the code.
Each unit of encapsulated code has a cost to create, and therefore has value. But, how often is this cost and value tracked and monitored? Who makes sure that code-assets do not get misplaced, thrown away, or lay unused? Undoubtedly the programmer's supervisor or organization sees the expense of the payroll associated with each developer, but have you ever seen a company try to assign that cost to individual pieces of code in order to establish its value? Have you seen a manager ask why we arent getting more reuse of a component in which they invested? With the exception of companies whose main function is software-development, I suggest that the majority of companies only consider the products and services rendered by a developer as an asset, and ignore the value of the underlying code.
On the other hand, for many years developers have instinctively labored to achieve encapsulation and code reuse. However, the value of this has mostly been lost on management, unless it added benefit to the project or to the productivity of the developer. In fact, I suggest that most IT management would overwhelmingly favor an application quickly delivered, yet poorly encapsulated, over one well-encapsulated at the expense of a small delay in the project. Obviously we always must try to balance the cost of time vs. reuseability in every project, but in many organizations management has been excessively focussed on delivery-date, while developers tried to squeeze every bit of time in to enhance reuseability and encapsulation within their codebase. It is this constant struggle between developers and management to achieve their opposing goals that undermines achievements of most IT organizations. In the end, both are usually left with ill feelings and an adversarial attitude due to the compromizes they each had to make.
If IT organizations restructured their methodology to recognize cost and value (or valuelessness) of every ounce of code produced, it would go a long way towards remedying many of these conflicts and promote a proactive approach to optimizing the ROI of every project. Indeed, by tracking code as an asset, it could streamline the development process and reduce overall IT costs for the organization. Together, management and IT staff would focus their attention on identifying the best use of existing code assets and time, and how best to invest towards in-house, contract, and even open-source development to enable the company to gain even greater productivity while delivering more timely, robust, and well-balanced products and services.
Developers could be involved in decisions of how to reduce development costs by outsourcing, or buying prebuilt libraries for the homogenous code, and spending more time on the proprietary or company-specific implementations that take advantage of your company's expertise. Also, management would start seeing the payroll expenses translated into assets they can promote as capital investments for the organization. This will lead inevitably to an incentive to invest in improving methodology for identifying and designing reuseable components, promoting sharing of intellectual property within the organization, and a focus on rewarding developers who excel at delivering innovative reuseable components that provide the organization with more assets with which to speed delivery of increased profits to the bottom line.
This is such a simple and obvious idea, yet as an industry we are stuck in our traditional and out-moded approaches to IT management that it could actually be considered revolutionary if not rebellious in many organizations.
What do you think? Is this much ado about nothing, or am I on to something? Does anyone out there know of books on the topic that exist? Tell me if I'm just a silly newbie developer who has too tight a hold on the elephant's leg to see it standing right in the middle of the living room....
A few fun links...
And here are the results for my name: (from links above)
- Fëanáro Cúthalion (Elf)
- Dimple Bolger of Newbury (Hobbit)
- Búrzrót the Wretched (Middle-earth - Orkish)
- L.A.N.C.E.: Lifeform Assembled for Nocturnal Calculation and Exploration (Cyborg)
- Mad Enchanter (Wu)
- Groupie Smurf (Smurf)
Name generators are so fun... :)
One of my infinitely slow progressing side projects is to one-day produce a worthwhile game. (as opposed to the cheap pieces of eye-candy we see so much today) I hope to do this using .NET and C#, but that decision is still up in the air.
So, appropriately, I decided to share what I learn, by posting another one of my “link-o-rama” articles...this time called “Essential Game Dev”. (see sidebar for perma link)
I will continue to update this article as I find useful code-examples, books, portals, and other reference material.
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