June 2007 - Posts
Yesterday, Tim Heuer told me about a new proof of concept game that was created by a team in Phoenix. This is an addicting game - used with Silverlight 1.1 and the arrow keys.
Save the spaceman :)
I'm warning it's addicting, because the levels keep changing, and getting more difficult.
http://zerogravity.terralever.com
Last week I wrote about using Groove as a sync tool, similar to FolderShare. Both are Microsoft (through acquisition) but I've been reading more and more about Groove. It seems to be much more than just a folder share competitor.
What do you accomplish with Groove?
This is a great post to bookmark. I always use "s" as a starting point, and then need to go back on look up the rest.
http://www.geekzilla.co.uk/View00FF7904-B510-468C-A2C8-F859AA20581F.htm
If you're in Ohio, chances are very good that I'll be speaking this week in a city near you. I'm on the road for Ineta talking about the Model View Presenter (MVP) design pattern with regards to asp.net and windows forms. In the talk we write a code base for a very simple application. The we driver multiple UI front ends with the same code. Yes, you heard that right, one code base.
For the more advanced developers this may be nothing new, but my experience is that this concept is new to the majority of developers.
If you're within an hour driving distance from ...
- Dayton ( June 18, 6pm )
- Cincinnati( June 19, 6pm )
- Columbus( June 20, 6pm )
- Toledo( June 21, 6pm )
... It would be great for you to come out and enjoy the meetings.
Here is a link with all the meeting facilities and addresses of the user groups I'll be visiting on this trip.
A few weeks ago, we were given the release news of Microsoft/Surface. Shortly before that, we got the word about Silverlight. I wrote a blog post asking why the demo was done in flash instead of Silverlight. There were some sarcasm, along with a few very good answers. You can only adopt this new technology so fast. Even if it's your own new technology.
Today I'm happy to see the home page of Microsoft.com sporting some Silverlight. Getting the bits out there, slowly but surely. Very nice! Very nice!
I think we're going to start seeing Silverlight more and more. This is good for all of us. I think the number one question I hear about Silverlight deals with browser coverage. Something like "How long will it take before the mass public will have Silverlight?". If a few of the other top 100 sites get involved in Silverlight, I think the adpotion rate could see 50% in less than a year.
With Silverlight being used on the home page, MS is saying, this is it; it's easy to use, stable, and we believe in it. On a related note, I also read that Microsoft.com is currently being hosted on Windows server 2008. I love that these brand new technologies are stable enough to run Microsoft.com. After all (as of today) Microsoft.com has a 3 month Alexa average of being the 12 busiest site online. That's a lot of pages to serve.
Congratulations to the Microsoft.com team - good work!
I'm very happy right now. Target="_Blank" is one of my biggest enemies. The attribute has it's place, but it's far far far far far far far far far far far far (get my point?) over used. For the longest time, I've been wanting to open these items in a new tab in IE7, not a new window.
I've asked several people in casual conversation but never received a solution.
Low and behold, while snooping around Tools | Options | Tab Settings - I found this. I'm sure it's been there the whole time, but because the feature didn't say "Map _Blank to New Tab", my brain must not have processed the meaning of the label.
I've turned it on, and my pages are now opening as I'd like them to. Thanks IE7 :)
Crud. I'm on a flight from PHX to Columbus, and I have an hour to kill. Well I could lay down some code, but I've been doing that and need a little break. Blogging will have to do.
Before I left the office, I excitedly (is that a word) put my Google Reader in Offline Mode. It said It downloaded 2000 posts to read. NICE. Now I'll have some good offline reading material for my flight.
So I fire up my Google Reader while not connected on the plane. Right off the bat I get a JavaScript error. And then the page just sat there. BUMMER! BUMMER!
I'm not sure what I could have done wrong, or if something else went wrong while syncing. I'm sure this works, and I'm sure I'll be able to get it to work in the future, but for now, and for the next 2 hours, it sucks.
[UPDATE: 17 June 2007 5:02pm]
I'm at my travel destination (Miamisburg (AKA:Dayton), Ohio as it may be today) and I've tried this again. Fired up my connection. Logged into Google Reader, and it worked. Well this is weird. The "Offline" mode works when your online, but not when you're offline. Hmm. Let's try again. Go back online. Everything is peachy. Pull the 2000 feeds back into "Offline" mode. Disconnet. no Dice. Still the same error as above.
Also, I've noticed that since I instaled the offline "Gears" my keyboard shortcuts dont' work anymore.
[UPDATE: 18 June 2007 11:07pm]
[SOLVED]
With the help of Chris (below in the comments) I was able to figure this out. Well, we (or I should say I) didn't figure out what went wrong, but we did get it wroking. The solution was to delete the local files (on Vista c:\Users\{YourNameHere}\AppData\LocalLow\Google\Google Gears for Internet Explorer), and the newly created batch of files worked as planned. So now it's working. I'll plan on catching up on some random feeds on the plane ride home.
What do people use for spell checkers? For me personal spelling, I've used IESpell, the Gmail Spell checker, and even purchased a spelling cow server license. Spelling cow was a premature purchase. It shows promise and they've stated a new version is in the works, but so far our $500 purchase hasn't panned out.
A live search for Web Spell Checker shows a bunch of options.
What works for you? What has failed in the past?
Those of you posting to Community Server from Windows Live Writer (WLW) - how do you manage your tags? WLW has a nice categories drop down list, that shows my previously used "tags". This falls apart when a post needs a new tag. I thought I read somewhere about a [tag:newtag] syntax or something.
As it is now, I save the post, then run up to the site and add the tags there. It works, but kind of defeats the purpose.
Anyone know if it can be done, and if so, what the syntax is?
One of the guys in the office started using Groove to share stuff between his home computer, and the office computer this week. He said it was really easy to get started, and was working great.
I have a need for this as well, since I'm constantly switching between 3 or more machines at work, home, laptop, desktop, etc. There are certain small files that make sense to be everywhere. I use a little util called Password Safe. It's nice to have this in sync on all machines. I found a little check box today, that keeps your explorer favorites in sync as well.
In the past I have used Folder Share, but for some reason I stopped using it. Anyway - if you have office installed, Groove is probably there waiting for you to take advantage of it.
Do you use Folder Share, Groove, or something else? I'm interested to know what else is out there.
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