Archives
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GotoMyPC 5.0
GotoMyPC 5.0 just released, the coolest new feature is DUAL MONITOR support (had a feeling this was coming since GotoMeeting got it a couple months back). Finally I won't have to disable that second video card when working remote.
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Microsoft Insider on the XBOX360 Shortage
Rory Blyth explains the truth behind the XBOX360 shortage:
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PDC 05 Sessions Live!
I'm not the first to link this, but it is definately worth reposting:
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More Articulate Presenter Awards!
The reader's votes for Elearning Magazine's best of 2005 awards have been tallied, and Presenter is a finalist. Keep an eye on Articulate in the coming months, we have lots of great stuff coming down the pipes and a bunch of hot talent joining the team lately. I'm keeping myself pretty busy readying Articulate Online for release, but I have touched portions of a few different projects over the past few months. I can say without a doubt that there is definately some stuff in the wings that will knock your socks off if you are involved in the eLearning space.
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Bill Hill: Why Windows Fonts > Mac Fonts
Great channel9 video about the font rendering system in Windows Vista, with some comparisons to the Mac font rendering system.
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Vista Can't Cut It?
Apparently, MS had to move the graphics system for Vista out of the kernel because it's too buggy and causes too many lock-ups.
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Big Nuts = Small Brains?
Something completely off topic, but you may get a kick out of it:
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Pile > SQL
Wow. Talk about interesting stuff. This would be amazing to see in action.
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Another Reason Microsoft > Google
The new Virtual Earth makes Google Maps look like child's play.
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Remote Work
So, I work from a home office 99% of the year. I have a desktop PC where I do most of my work, but every once and a while, I want to go to Starbucks or somewhere else and get outside. Today just happened to be one of those days. Usually, I will take my Tablet PC along with me, copy whatever files I need to work on over, and get to work. However, I didn't feel like doing that today. For one, I don't yet have VS 2005 installed, so I would have had to download the installer to the machine, install, etc. which I don't have time for today. So, I got to thinking, well, I can probably just remote desktop to my PC from the outside... well, turns out that this is not going to happen with my current ISP. Just is not an option due to the network config. So, I started searching for some solutions, and I came across something that is pretty slick and works like a charm: GotoMyPC. It is made by the guys who brought you GotoMeeting (which is a really slick tool that I use quite a bit) and basically allows you to access any of your PCs from anywhere. Its very slick and runs a cool $19 a month (not including Starbucks drink charges). Definately worth it for the extra freedom and the reduced file copying / app install hassle.
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Text-to-Speech is so 1980s
Coming to a device near you Speech-to-Speech:
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NeoSwf.NET Released
GlobFX's C#->SWF compiler has been released. Very cool little product that is worth checking out.
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MySQL .NET Connector Connection Pooling Bug
If you are using the MySQL .NET connectors and run across the message "Stream does not support writing" like I did, you will probably have a few unpleasant days ahead. Have no fear though, the solution isn't too hard to implement. The problem is that the connection pooling mechanism in the drivers is broken. If an error occurs at the packet level, the underlying streams to the connection are closed, but the connection is not removed from the connection pool. As a result, the connection (which is permanently broken when the underlying streams are closed) gets returned to subsequent connection calls and results in your server crashing for all calls made on that pooled connection. I've reported the bug to the MySQL team, so hopefully it will be officially fixed--but, in the mean time, you can simply add a property to the PacketReader and PacketWriter that ensures that the stream can be read from / written to and then a property on the NativeDriver / Driver class that ensures that this value is true. Then, from the connection pool manager, in the loop that searches idle connections, do a sanity check on the connection before returning it to the app. If the connection's streams have been broken, remove it from the idle pool instead of continuing.
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What stops me from Implementing Visual Studio Team System
Ohad explains the reasons he isn't switching to team system.
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Fixing XmlDataSourceView
I know Scott posted a "fix" for the XmlDataSourceView that simply strips all the namespaces out of the document with a transform. That seems pretty lame IMO, because if you are actually using the namespaces, this isn't really a fix and could lead to lots of bad side effects. So, I figured, there has to be a way to fix this. And here it is. It's not really all that tested, but it should do the trick. Feel free to use it and/or make it better or prettier (for example, you could implement all the members of XmlDataSource view--with the exception of the GetView ones of course--and have them wrap the provider's ones):
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VS 2005 IDE Quirks
Looks like Roy is running into some trouble with the new IDE already. I've noticed a few quirks here and there so far, but nothing too major. Pretty huge overhaul on the IDE though, so not suprising that some bugs made it in to RTM. Personally, I would rather have the IDE with a few bugs and have a VS 2005 with 2.0 framework RTM, than no bugs and a VS 2006/2007. I'm just glad that I can finally use generics and the 2.0 framework. As long as I only get one crash or quirk for every collection class I didn't have to define, it will all even out in the end.
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MS Retards
Looks like some of the geniuses that brought us Microsoft Bob are at work on the .NET framework 2.0. I love how the XmlDataSource control doesn't let you use xml namespaces in the RTM version. How the hell does anyone that doesn't understand the importance of Xml namespaces get a job creating the primary Xml databinding feature of .NET 2.0? Maybe I am missing something, but I know this was a problem that was brought up numerous times during beta, and it doesn't look like it was addressed in RTM.
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MySQL 5.0 Released
MySQL 5.0 was just released for production use. I've been using MySQL for a recent project, and I must say that I have been pretty impressed. The latest version adds support for triggers, views, cursors, stored procs, etc., reducing the number of "big" missing features from MySQL by a bit. The thing that has most impressed me about MySQL so far is the tool support. Usually, when you work with OpenSource products, you get some inferior, thrown together piece of crap or some command line only admin option. However, in the case of MySQL, you have a ton of great tools with UIs that are much better than the current generation of MS SQL tools IMO. There is also a tool that I had a chance to use that is far superior to anything Microsoft offers when converting databases (MySQL Migration Toolkit). It takes existing SQL Server, Oracle, Access, etc. databases and will not only construct the matching schema and create the tables in MySQL, but will also import your existing data. I used this to transfer an existing SQL Server DB and it worked insanely well.
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OpenOffice = Bloatware?
Interesting comparison of CPU/Memory usage of OpenOffice and MS Office:
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Articulate Presenter Wins Again
Articulate Presenter took the gold for the "Most Innovative" E-Learning technology of 2005 at the Brandon Hall Excellence in E-Learning awards, beating out its main competitor Macromedia Breeze once again (Breeze ended up taking home the bronze). Last month, Presenter took home the "Best of Show" award at TechLearn. I've hand a hand in the product's code since the first release, so it is nice to see Articulate really taking off lately, racking up some big awards, and smashing the competition. It's definately a pleasure to have the opportunity to work on such a great product for a company full of such awesome people.
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Exorcism
I haven't seen The Exorcism of Emily Rose quite yet. From what I had heard, it seemed like just another failed attempt to top the all time scariest movie ever in many people's minds, The Exorcist. However, the story of Emily Rose is apparently quite different than the story of the little boy that The Exorcist was based off of. Apparently, the story comes from the events in the life of Anneliese Michel, a woman who died during what many believe was a misdiagnosis of epilepsy/schizophrenia as demonic possession. In any case, after reading this article from Newsweek, I am tempted to see the movie, which is based on a story that illustrates a point that is quite the opposite of the one in The Exorcist. Either Hollywood really jazzed up the story and cut out the main point, or everyone I have talked to that has seen the movie seems to have missed it
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Speaking of IM
If you needed one more reason not to use Google Talk...looks like Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to play together.
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Google Talk Not Talking
So it's been a month or so since I said Google talk was a bit too crappy to get people to switch over. I've had it running in my toolbar since the day it was released. Since day two: I have received zero IMs, I have received zero invitations, I have heard nothing about it.
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VPC / Virtual Server About to Get a Lot Cheaper
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The Making of Flash 8
This "The Making of Flash 8" video reminds me of what Microsoft is doing with Channel9... quite a bit more commercialized (like the kind of thing you would expect to see playing during a Macromedia conference), but pretty of cool nontheless.
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Sexiest Woman Alive?
Ok, this might be a little off topic, but it definately deserves some mention...
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Flash Player 8.5 / Flex 2: Targetting Developers
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex2_intro.html
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Sold For Millions?
"Activehead sold for millions after reposting my stuff for months!"
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Palm Gives In
Looks like Palm is going to be shipping Windows.
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Ebay Buys Skype
The rumors are true. eBay will buy Skype for $2.6 billion. Anyone else feel like we are back in the .com days? How does a company with relatively few assets and only $10 million in revenue get a 2.6 billion dollar acquisition? Sign me up for the next one.
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Always Use Protection
A friend pointed me to this article in the LA Times about an interesting technology being introduced in Africa:
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MS vs. Google Talk
"Microsoft moved to build its presence in the booming Internet telephony market on Wednesday, purchasing Teleo Inc., a Californian company that lets users make calls from their computers to regular phones." [1]
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Halo The Movie: Microsoft > Hollywood
"However, negotiating a movie deal proved as challenging as taking down a Covenant dropship, as several studios surprisingly passed on producing a Halo movie. The reason: Film studios may be used to kowtowing to A-list actors' demands, but they don't typically cave in to requests from non-Hollywood players. Initial reports saw the software giant asking for $10 million against 15 percent of the gross (whichever is higher), a below-the-line budget of $75 million (budget before hiring actors and crew), near-immediate production of the movie, and a large say in the creative development of the movie.
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Screenweaver
The popular Screenweaver tool that gives Flash applications native API support is now open source.
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Google Talk Review
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BitTorrent.net
If you need to implement bittorrent functionality in your .NET application, you will most likely come across btsharp in your initial googling. However, if you do manage to get the site to load and download the source/dlls you will notice that they are all designed to work with VS.NET 2005. After much frustration and many google queries, I now present you with an alternative that works fine with Visual Studio 2003: BitTorrent.net. Initial tests show the torrent files downloading perfectly.
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Xamlon vs. NeoSwf: Initial Impressions
So, I've had a chance to play with both the Xamlon and GlobFX (NeoSwf) C#->SWF compilers. Here are my thoughts:
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Another C#->SWF Tool
I just ran across this tool from GlobFX:
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You Snooze You Lose
PDC is sold out.
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David Mendels Needs a Blog
David Mendels is one of those guys at Macromedia who I really would like to see get a blog. He is active in the online community and sure does a lot of blog reading and commenting. I'm sure he has plenty of interesting things to say. So, all you MM folks like JD, you need to start bugging him about getting one.
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Another One Bites the Dust. Palm + Windows = Love?
"In an interview, Palm Chief Financial Officer Andrew Brown said that building a Treo that runs on the mobile version of Windows might help the company woo corporate customers who have been reticent to buy its Palm OS-based gadgets. " [1]
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Goodbye RISC. OS-X runs faster on Intel
Wired has an interesting tidbit about a group of hackers that have managed to get OSX running on the PC.
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America's Top Model + Survivor + HTTP = beautifulpeople.net
Maybe this is off-topic, but it is amusing as hell that this exists:
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Mark Anders On The Zorn Team
David Mendels gave some great feedback:
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Macromedia Zorn: The Answer I've Been Looking For?
Thanks to Mike Chambers for pointing me to this:
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Flash 8 Revolutionary?
There is a ton of hype going around about how Flash 8 is really going to revolutionize the web. This is just nonsense. Don't get me wrong, the new version of Flash is extremely cool and exciting when it comes to visual effects. The new version of Flash has some really amazing things--like support for real-time filters and VP6 video--but, once again, Macromedia has almost completely ignored developers with the latest Flash release. As I have said in the past, Macromedia is a very designer centric company. They have a great tool with a ton of potential; however, until they realize that developers make the applications people use, not designers, Flash is going to continue to be used soley for banner ads and frilly web sites. It really amazes me that after the big push with Central to get Flash on the desktop and the big push with Flex to get developers using Flash, Macromedia is still failing to give developers what they need to be successful. Here are some questions I have for Macromedia:
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WSE 2.0 Progress Bars That Work
Ite's been a while since I posted some amazingly useful, but insanely impossible to find code for you. But, I am still alive and kicking and working on all sorts of interesting projects, so it was only a matter of time until I ran into another Microsoft oversight that needed a workaround. If you have ever tried to implement a progress bar with WSE 2.0 in your application, it probably wasn't a fun experience. In fact, if you were using something like DIME, you probably gave up. Yes, theoretically, there are ways to use the DimeReader / DimeWriter to do the task, but that requires a lot of extra work and doesn't fit nearly as nice and neat into the framework as the auto-generated WSE classes that you are used to. Personally, I like using the WSE auto-generated code, but I was amazed to discover that there is absolutely no way built-in for you to obtain progress information while a large DIME message is being streamed to the server. What is worse is that due to the way that WSE was built, you cannot even plug into WSE to provide this functionality yourself... well, at least that is what everyone was saying. But, as is often said, "Where there is a will, there is a way." Today, ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the way.
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Apple Goes Intel
First Microsoft decides to use PowerPC chips, then Apple decides to use Intel. These are definately strange times.
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Ventuz Beta Up
You don't want to miss this one, its definately one of the coolest apps coming out in the near future.
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My Thoughts on the Adobe-Macromedia Deal
It is pretty clear from the acquisition that Adobe is going to be making a major push into web media. They have tried a few times with tools like InDesign and LiveMotion to make some progress, but Macromedia has been extremely successful at fending off their attacks with Dreamweaver and Flash. As a result, Adobe has been able to rule the desktop publishing market and Macromedia has been able to rule the web content market. The mix of the two companies is going to make one hell of a powerful media creation beast. Ok, but that is the obvious stuff. Obviously anyone who buys out Macromedia wants Flash, because Flash is what Macromedia is all about. What else might this mean?
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Adobe to Aquire Macromedia
Very interesting news:
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Cool SOA Job Openings
I attended a monthly local IT organization meeting where some of the new guys in town from Gestalt LLC gave a presentation on what their company is all about. Gestalt is a company focused on high end iteroperability and does a ton of DoD work that is suprisingly interesting. If you are looking for a job doing bleeding edge SOA/Webservice work, they have two positions to fill in their new Joplin, Missouri offices right down the street. I highly recommend heading over to http://www.gestalt-llc.com/ and sending in a resume. They are a solid company that does millions of dollars worth of SOA work every year and are looking for top notch people. Joplin is a great place to live by the way. It is definately the most affordable area I have ever been in. You can build or buy a nice 3 bedroom house for under or around 100k or rent a nice 3 bedroom house for around $600-800/mo. Can't beat that.
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CNET on Xamlon
CNET has a nice write-up on the upcoming Xamlon .NET->SWF compiler. CNET sees Xamlon being good for all parties (Macromedia, Microsoft, etc.). I agree to some degree, after all the more killer apps that are written on top of Flash the more legitimized the SWF approach becomes. However, unless the Flex team gets its act together, this could throw a significantly large wrench in their plans to integrate with VS.NET / .NET at some point. So good for Macromedia? Yes. Good for the Flex team or the Laszlo guys? We'll just have to wait and see.
http://news.com.com/Software+turns+.Net+to+Flash/2100-1032_3-5647420.html -
Macromedia Redesigns Flash Download Page
I don't know if you caught wind of this, but Macromedia caused quite an uproar recently by bundling the Y! Toolbar with the Flash Player download. Macromedia did offer Y! free Flash player downloads, but they were opt-out, meaning that users could potentially just click the download button and unintentionally install the Y! toolbar inside their browser. Burak's blog has a good summary as well as links to the old and new designs.
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Update on Why You Shouldn't By Flex or Lazslo
Robin gives an update on the state of their XAML/C# to Flash compiler. IMO, with something like this out on the market, buying Flex or Lazslo would be such a lame decision.
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Microsoft Will Buy Groove
Cool stuff. Not only is Microsoft is going to buy Groove, but they are going to make Ray Ozzie their CTO.
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Apple
Remember this:
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Going to work for Google? Be Careful of Google Dumbass Syndrome
Has anyone else noticed that people tend to turn into dumbasses after being hired by google.
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Brightcove: Son of Allaire
If you haven't heard the news, Jeremy Allaire has started up a new company:
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The Flex Killer
Jason Clark relates his recent Flex experience: