Archives
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Linker missing in .Net ?
I think this is a great rant against the .Net runtime, so I like to post Joel's note as it is, because I share the same feeling. It's true that for Web applications, we have no problem.
But why we can't build ourselves a light embedded version of the runtime in our Windows projects, having only the libraries we need ? Joel give a good 'real world' example. I still have users with Windows 98, and I still have the pain to check that they have the right framework. -
Internet Explorer File Download Extension Spoofing
http-equiv has identified a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, allowing malicious web sites to spoof the file extension of downloadable files.
The problem is that Internet Explorer can be tricked into opening a file, with a different application than indicated by the file extension. This can be done by embedding a CLSID in the file name. This could be exploited to trick users into opening "trusted" file types which are in fact malicious files.
Secunia has created an online test:
http://secunia.com/Internet_Explorer_File_Download_Extension_Spoofing_Test/
This has been reported to affect Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.
NOTE: Prior versions may also be affected.
Source: Secunia -
Free Search Engine Optimization Center
Very handy online tools !
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Blogjet new version
BlogJet 1.0.0.13 Release Notes January 27, 2004 FEATURES * Added plain Blogger and MetaWeblog APIs. BUG FIXES * Proxy error fixed. * Inserting lj-cut on image error message removed. * F1 shortcut now works properly. --- BlogJet 1.0.0.12 Release Notes January 27, 2004 FEATURES * Voice attachments. Wow! * Blogware weblogs support. * lj-cut tags for LiveJournal/DeadJournal. * Custom path for image uploading. * Paste Special: normal, plain text or HTML code. * Shortcuts for Save, Open, View Blog Page, etc. * ESC key closes Recent Posts window. CHANGES * Menu: Post renamed to Post As Draft. * Menu: View Blog Page, Change Account, and Preferences moved to Tools menu. BUG FIXES * Fixed minimizing to notification area on startup. * Fixed various issues with categories in .Text accounts. * Receiving of MovableType/TypePad categories corrected. * MetaWeblog API (and .Text) problems fixed. * Fixed lots of bugs with Account Wizard. * Fixed problems with connection when using "http://" in host name. * New Post button now sets focus to Title. * Other fixes. KNOWN ISSUES * Progress indicator for history is temporarily disabled. * There is no help available.
Download BlogJet 1.0.0.13 BETA
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CAPTCHA - completely automated public Turing test
Via Scott Galloway:
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.Net known bugs list
An interesting idea via Stefano Demiliano. A list of .Net bugs.
I post it back here for the Microsoft crowd in case they want to comment ;-) -
ISA Server 2004 Beta
ISA Server 2004 is Microsoft's next-generation application-layer firewall, virtual private network, and Web cache solution, delivering new levels of security, simplified management, and performance.
See what's ahead in ISA Server 2004 -
Rich Custom Error Handling with ASP.NET
Eli Robillard has a great article on MSDN about Error Handling.
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IT guy for sale on Ebay ;-)
LOL, some folk put himself on auction on Ebay !
Roy maybe you should try this way ;-) -
Caching, why it have to be so complicated ?
Well I have a subject where I have a lot to learn, and it's caching. For the moment I don't really get it. I tried to use some cache functions in some of my projects, but I failed almost all the time.
I can't really find a clever article on all the different options, and it seems that the Cache class in .Net is overcomplicated. I discovered that for example timespan is more important than I could imagine, and it's really hard to tune up precisely the different parameters to have something really working and universal. I mean working well with the different browsers, different platforms, etc...
Last time I used the server cache, it was working well for a week, and suddenly I had to deal with a lot of Internal errors, you know the so infamous error you can't catch.
I removed the cache and now it's working very well. Of course the performances are surely not the same, but I can't afford any crash on a live website.
Unless somebody has a great web link on the subject, I give up on this for the moment. -
XY coordinates after clicking a button
Just in case someone interested by this tip.
I have on a page a server image button linked to a click event. This button has indeed two different functions, one to go back to the homepage, the other to go to another page.
For different reasons, I didn't want to use an image map to make the distinction between my two embedded actions.
The trick I used is quite simple but works well, and should work also with more than 2 buttons.
In the server click event I just test the coordinates using Request.Form("Nameofmybutton.x") for the horizontal position and Request.Form("Nameofmybutton.y") for the vertical position -
ASP.NET configuration files
Very good article to keep in your favorites about web.config and machine.config details.
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MSN Toolbar
In case you still don't know, Microsoft has just launched the first weapon on the search engines with MSN toolbar. Sure Google seems to be the target, and it sounds like history repeat itself. Remember Netscape ?
The thing I can say is that it seems for me more like a marketing tool to attract new MSN customers( fair enough, after all MS is not really a charity organisation) but it's really too much compare to Google. -
Secure an ASP 3.0 page with .Net, yes you can !
I was looking last week for a solution to secure ASP 3 pages using .Net forms authentication.
The reason can be simply because you don't want or can't change your existing code.
So Andrew Seven provided a great solution to bridge ASP 3 with .Net authentication and it works very well !
Thanks a lot Andrew for the great help.
Follow the story here.
Download the zip solution here -
New Visual Basic homepage
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Mozie
Looking to compare a web page in Internet Explorer and Mozilla.
Well now you have Mozie ! -
.Text search
Thanks to Scott to provide this very useful blog search engine.
Really cool ;-) -
Is it true
LOL ;-)
Via Stefano -
Soft launch today
I finally have a soft launch for different projects today. Interesting period of time now where I am going to chase the bug, and check the browser compatibilities of my new babies ;-)
And all in .Net !
Apart a bad DNS issue this morning everything is going well and smoothly. The three first site are part of a common project with RTE (Irish television) and are launched as a pilot.
The idea is to implement learning videos and in the future some form of digital tv and interactivity. -
Another rich text editor
The list of rich text editor start now to be long.
And now you have this commercial product CuteEditor 2.1 (done with .Net).
Some interesting ideas in thisroduct like: -
OS bootable from CD: a Windows solution
From Stefano Demiliani :
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Authentication question
I'm stuck with an old project where I want to implement a login page using authentication from a web config.
The problem I can't solve is the fact that the pages are ASP 3 pages and not ASPX.
Obviously my form authentication works well with a .aspx page, no problem.
I can't unfortunatly cut and paste my ASP code in a new webform, too many pages and use of some objects.
Somebody has an idea how to implement easily form authentication with .ASP pages ? -
Use your PocketPC as a desktop PC
Synosphere is currently developing the Blue Dock, a docking station to allow a handheld to function as a desktop computer.
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X# Is Alive and Kicking
Mary Jo Foley confirmed what I (and others) suspected last week:
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[dScribe] Project status
I am late on publishing something about dScribe, but I still work on the next release.
Stay tuned ! -
Another web project
How can I say thanks to .Net to make me more productive ? ;-)
With ASP, maybe one or two sites per year, not more, and surely with less functions.
I just released another website SAFT. It's part of a European project about Internet Safety, and it's the Ireland version.
So now in less than one year, I published 7 websites, small or big, using .Net and a good amount of SQL databases.
5 more are on their way, so the next couple of months will surely be a very busy period.
SAFT is built using my own ContentManagement System, dScribe. The idea is that I am going to implement dScribe as much as possible in every project I have.
So if I add some new features to dScribe, all projects will have them. -
Interesting shortcut
From Stefano Demiliani
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Microsoft Linux champion ??
LOL ;-)))
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A lot of new MVPs around the place today
It seems today that a good bunch of good guys have been awarded MVP by Microsoft.
Only one word Coool ;-) -
How to Use a GDI+ Application in NetCOBOL for .NET
If someone told me few years ago I could done this with Cobol, I will have a laugh ;-)
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ASP.Net Client Side Focus Helper
Helper class that generates and registers a client side script which sets focus to a control during the loading of the page.
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FlashMovie WebControl
RonVecchi posted on CodeProject a nice control to add a flash movie.
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Chocolate mobile for Valentine's day
Like me you don't know what to offer to your beloved wife for Valentine's day.
This is an idea, and yes you surely be able to eat the chocolates not the mobile ;-) -
Events + Web = hell
This title is there to reflect the hell I live when you push the boundaries of event management, web and a little bit of client-side scripting.
I will launch in few days a new website about science in Irish schools for Secondary pupils, ScienceUnleashed.
Check yourself if you want to have a look, but be aware the site is still in debugging mode, and I can say it's hard, very hard to debug a web application with so many things happening on a screen.
I curse actually the Postback system, and I wish Whidbey improve the system.
An example. I build a dynamic Quiz working well alone. But I also have a popup control triggering a Postback, so I have to redraw the Quiz after the window show up, otherwise my Quiz controls will be empty.
But I have 4 different states for the Quiz, so every time a postback happen, I have to test which state I am before redrawing the Quiz. Pain in the ass!
Also reading the values from a form is basic stuff, but because you can have another event somewhere on the page I have to store (State bag) each value of my form. Pain in the ass!
And I have at least 10 cases happening like that !
I don't want to be too negative, the overall .Net experience is good for me, but I dream about some future improvements in a .Net web application like:
- Truly multithread events including Postback. Doing so, each event will have his own execution without the necessity to worry about refreshing the page.
- Better implementation (well surely in VB) of the events themselves. I would like to see something like a button click from my code. Maybe I am wrong but I couldn't find something simple to fire a button through my code.
- Less bloated viewstate. The source of the default page on my site look like the Champollion tablet, overloaded with strange hieroglyphs. -
Blogjet works now with .Text
Dmitry Chestnykh after I asked him for some modifications has finally be able to make Blogjet working with .Text.
So now you can use it for your .Text blog and the categories have also been fixed. -
MyIE2 update
Just be notified by MyIE that a new update is ready 0.9.13.
If you don't know what is MyIE, well it's Internet Explorer boosted ! -
Google conspiracy
I like all the conspiracy stories. It's usually good fun.
Now Jim is coming up with his explanation on the recent algorithms changes Google made on their search engine.
A combination of patent issues IPO and shareholders.
Good theory, well documented, surely could be a great plot for a movie (well not so sure about this one ;-). -
About Windows Services for Unix and .Net Web Services
Christophe Lauer asked me more details about the web services access for any Unix application using WSFU 3.5.
I still can't find any other info than the one published by MS Pass. -
Xen is it the new name for X# ?
Many times in 2003 we heard about X# the next generation language combining XML and OOP.
We heard also that Microsoft abandoned the project. A internal video showing a presentation of X# has been released on a weblog and promptly the blogger was asked by MS to delete it.
Now Microsoft Watch come with some news about Xen a new language MS Research works on.
Reading the news (see below) it's looks for me that XEN is a perfect match with X#.
So what's up with Microsoft ? After all maybe it's just another project but the idea of combining XML, OOP and relational database model is very interesting.
IMHO, it must be a serious project regarding the number of documents you can find on Xen, mostly university articles. Just click on this Google link and you can see that the number of documents is quite impressive.
So vapor language or not ? Maybe just a nother C# Api ? -
Use HTC within Mozilla!
This comment to my moan about this is VERY cool:
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Website Watcher
We have now a good bunch of aggregators to monitor our favourites feeds.
But what's about websites. I tested this afternoon an excellent shareware call Website Watcher.
And it does exactly what it say on the tin.
You can bookmark all your websites urls, news sites, blogs, etc... You click the update button one time.
After that you can specify an autowatch, sort of update timer, and this tool will monitor for you any changes in the fifferent sites you have bookmarked.
Cool! And I like the highlight feature they include in the software to show you in yellow background on the page where the changes happened.
If I continue like that, I am going to ask to my wife a budget for buying sharewares. -
Computer nostalgia
OK it's not .Net but just a bit of blues to see all this old machines on the web.
Fun also to see that you can still find bits and parts for almost any kind of computer ancestor.
I got the blues to see this picture. Surely a collector now. It was my first attemopt at computing.
Remember the Kim ;-) -
Windows nostalgia ;-)
For nostalgic only Windows 1.03 installation pictures.
I forgot that you need 10 floppies. Ah the good ol' 5" 1/4 ! -
No new build for Longhorn developer previews seminars in Europe
The Longhorn developer previews seminars to be held in Europe coming months will be based on the PDC build 4051.
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Post with Blogjet
For the folks blogging in weblogs.asp.net (surely the same for all .Text bloggers), now it's working well with Blogjet.
I post this using this tool, and it's really good.
I still like using the .Text web editor, but this is cool.
To have this working, in the config screen in Blogjet you must chose: -
Blogjet
UPDATE: Scott Watermasysk and Dmitry Chestnykh from Blogjet contacted me and they work on making this tool compatible with .Text and obviously our favourite .Net blog. Cool ;-)
I was able to login using metablogapi but no succes on posting. Always an error about an unrecognized method blogger2.newpost. -
Windows Services for Unix 3.5 are for free now
Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 (SFU 3.5), formerly retailing for $99.95 US, is now a free download.
Version 3.5 of the software promises greatly improved cross-platform interoperability, as well as beefed up administrative and managerial functionality.
On top of the cross-platform bells and whistles, SFU 3.5 also allows UNIX applications to be made accessible through .NET Web services. -
IIS 5 Isolation mode
A couple of weeks ago I had some trouble with windows 2003/IIS 6. Finally I got my asp.net application which uses a COM component to work under windows 2003. I tried everything, I even gave my Network Service account administrator rights and even that didn't work. Until I found the IIS 5 Isolation mode option in the IIS manager. So if you're having problems getting a asp.net application to work under IIS 6 and getting desperate, try the IIS 5 Isolation mode. You can find it this way: Right click on Websites in the IIS Manager, choose Service and check the IIS 5 Isolation mode checkbox.
From: Jonne Kats
Via: Tech Guru -
Google more and more features...
Google has added more search by number features:
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Sandbar
SandBar is a powerful toolbar and menu library for Windows Forms on the .NET framework. It boasts a comprehensive range of features that you would come to expect from a modern UI library and is designed to make your application look and feel like either Office XP or Office 2003 without writing a single line of code.
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Some scripts
Paul Whitrow has an interesting blog where he share some cool javascript scripts and others functions.
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Bindows
Bindows™ is a Graphical User Interface Toolkit for writing rich client side web applications with the look, feel and behavior of modern Windows™ applications. Bindows applications are lightweight applications with zero footprint which means no installation required.
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Widgets
Stedy is a site to visit if you search for some DHTML code.
They almost simulate a full window application in a web browser -
Sticky draggable windows
Brendan Tompkins come with a cool idea. He has a nice code to create some kind of popup windows with <DIV> tags and draggable.
In the comments somebody mention also Stedy which is also good. -
My 6th PC
I just installed my last PC (number 6) in my office and well it's an Apple G5 dual processor with 1 GB Ram.
My office looks like a kind of mad laboratory with such so many screens ;-)
But hey it's cool to be a geek. I am going to use the new G5 as a design machine but also to maintain a good bunch of small webistes we have here running on a Solaris server.
I made the decision few weeks ago when I had to chose something running Unix, well Apache to be exact to test some new projects.
Between a PC/Linux box and an Apple you know now what I chose.
So far the G5 is a winner regarding the design, the flat screen (look like a frame you want to have on your wall to replace the huge TV box sitting at home) -
Your Webness
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), will be made a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth. This was announced earlier today by Buckingham Palace as part of the 2004 New Year's Honours list.
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Weblogs Awards
I found this funny link where you can nominate a weblog in different categories.
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Web Design References
Only a university can have the time to do such a job !
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Database Cache Invalidation in ASP.NET "Whidbey"
Excellent article on MSDN Belgium
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Mounting ISO images in a virtual CD-ROM drive
A few days ago I needed to install software from ISO images. There were two possibilies: burning the ISO images to a CD-ROM or using a virtual CD-ROM drive that can mount ISO images. My preference went out to the latter, so I decided to Google for it. And apparently Microsoft has an unsupported "Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP". The reason why it's unsupported became clear after downloading the product. It contains no setup (only instructions) and the interface is quite basic. But the software did its job very well.
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Microsoft Download Music Service for 2004 ?
In an interview with Betanews, Lisa Gurry, MSN Group Product Manager, mention the idea that Microsoft will launch a music service this year:
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MSN will roll out a music download service in 2004. We have no further details to share at this time on our download music service; however, MSN Music currently enables people to discover their own world of music online.
MSN Music currently employs unique SoundsLike technology and expertise from the MSN Music groups, so people can find and listen to their favorite music, discover and purchase music all online with complete artist biographies, discographies, music recommendations, promotional downloads, album previews, Billboard Charts and news all at their fingertips.
MSN Music delivers the best way to discover new music through its impressive breadth and depth of music content. The service offers more than 20 music styles, each with a variety of subcategories, resulting in a broad range of music content and preprogrammed listening stations for all tastes. Using this unique music-matching technology, MSN Music provides a huge variety of music and delivers the following key benefits and features.
MSN also offers MSN Radio Plus; this $29.99 per year subscription service allows unlimited access to 250 commercial free streaming radio stations with improved audio quality and utilizes the "SoundsLike" technology. -
Google Web APIs Beta 2
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Scoble meet the IE team
Robert Scoble wants to be the relay between users/developers and the IE team.
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Internet Explorer 6.05
In Longhorn Internet Explorer is looking good. Unfortunatly it's not available yet for Windows XP/2003.
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ASP.Net 1.1 Update
Dino talk about a nice fix to have <TH> instead of <TD> in the header of a Datagrid.
Well done, but this is already in a rollup package announced in June. The difficulty is the fact that you can have the update only by calling the technical support.
Scott Galloway relay this too. "Incidentally, the hotfix package can only be obtained by calling support...why they can't just make the thing downloadable from ASP.NET is beyond me...Rob Howard - any particular reason? " -
Domain name issue with .Net
In a project I need to know the name of the machine where the code run.
Everything ok on different servers (MyServerName for example) , exception of a new one I just finished to setup (Windows 2003). -
Kodak abandoning film cameras
Well, you knew this was going to happen sooner or later: Except for disposable cameras, Kodak is going to stop selling traditional film cameras in Western Europe and North America. They're going to focus instead on digital cameras. They will keep making 35mm film, and they're going to continue selling reloadable film cameras in the rest of the world.
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EmptyDatagrid control
Matt Hawley has been nice (and surely busy !) to send me his nice control EmptyDatagrid. I tested it and so far it works well and solve the problem.
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How to be a geek without showing it ?
Simple. Get one of these incredible vests.
You can have all your favourite digital devices with you all the time, and now they just announced a new version with solar panels embedded in the shoulders.
So now you can charge your devices when you move. cool ;-) -
XBox 2 gets a codename
Well If this article is right, the new Xbox 2 is code name Xenon and should be there in 2006.
Seems that it will be a BIG year for Microsoft with Longhorn and others ;-) -
Strings Undocumented
This is an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at strings in the Common Language Runtime and the .NET Framework. This study provides detailed information of the implementation of strings, describes efficient and inefficient ways of using strings.
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ASP Migration Assistant
The ASP to .Net migration tools seems to have been updated to a Beta status.
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Empty Datagrid
I received an interesting comment from Jan Tielens about how to display an empty datagrid:
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Empty Datagrid...
What to display if a Datagrid is empty ?
The question sounds obvious, nothing, but if your Datagrid has a fixed size, I think it's a bad idea to have a nice page with an empty space in the middle.
What are your favorite option?
- Display a fake grey or pale dtagrid to simulate a disabled datagrid ?
- Just a message to say that no data are present at the moment ?
- Something else ?
The first choice seems for me the one to go, but the difficulty come when you don't know the column details. -
Breakout game
It's so rare to see some .Net game articles and this one is a pearl, well no, a breakout
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ASP.Net 2 Themes
Thiru Thangarathinam shows how easy it is to customize a .NET Web application's visual appearance at the site, page, or control level using ASP.NET 2.0 Themes
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An improvement to RegisterClientScriptBlock
Chris Maunder on CodeProject found a new way to register your Javascript blocks, using a base class page.
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Yet another forum
Well indeed it's the name of a new forum software open source and written in C#.
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Handwriting
If like me you don't have a Tablet PC but you like to use your own handwriting, Fontifier is a new easy to use service to transform your own writing into fonts.
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Interesting controls
I found this website with a good bunch of free controls via David and I think the list speak for itself.
I like also the mixed use between client side and server side.
The proof that you don't have to be a commercial company to provide an excellent job ;-)
Check Excentricsworld for more info. -
Comics and CSS
Check this new comics site PV Comics. They make a good use of advanced CSS techniques.
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Windows Media Extender
Bill Gates announced at the CES the Windows Media Extender with some prototypes.
But something I am not sure if it's a good news is that you can only connect your extender to a Windows Media Center box.
Does it means you can't have access to your media stored on a Windows XP edition ?
If yes, no advantage, very disappointing because some products exists already like Homepod for example which let me have access to my PC (Windows XP). -
What programmer are you ;-))
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For Dubliners and Irish Longhorn Preview
Just funny that this happens the same day as my birthday (40 !)
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Future iPod ?
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Aggregator
Robert **strongly** suggest that I use an aggregator to read only the posts I want.
The problem is that I like using a browser because I can find one in any computer I use (thankfully I don't have to work only on Windows;-))
I don't have to install any software and I am perfectly happy with this solution.
Anyway I tried few aggregators to use on one machine, but I still can't make my mind on a good one.
Anybody knows about some review or some kind of tests (like SharpReader, RSS Bandit, NewsGator) -
Make it short please ;-)
Please Sara and others from MS, can I suggest that you use the Article features of .Text ?
We lost so much from the main feed ! -
Blogging and mobility
Finally I can blog from my XDA ! Very cool, thanks Frank for the links and the application.
Now I wish I could have access to my .Text admin tool from the browser. I really missed this feature.
I like the idea to blog on the move, so geeky
First issue, the login button is not clickable on a Pocket PC. I think because the button is a link with a CSS on top. Not sure that IE Pocket PC like CSS.
So if Scott or someone can have the fantastic idea to propose a Pocket PC version of weblogs.asp.net, it could be so damn cool ;-) -
Apple 2004 start like a very bad souffle :-(
Not really impressed by the Apple CEO keynote.
OK the new Ipod mini is cool, but I was expecting something better this year.
And a VERY loooong and booooring demo of GarageBand, something so NOT new !
I was connecting a midi keyboard to an Apple II and a C64 so long time ago.
Does it means that Apple has less and less interest in computers ? -
Microsoft and Apple: strange relationships like cat and ... mouse ?
I am watching actually the live broadcast of Jobs keynote, and some surprises already.
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Window XP Service Pack 2 review
Via Scoble, if you want to know what's up in the next Service Pack.
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Understanding Open Source
Everything you need to know about Open Source, the myths, the financial spects, etc...
Very interesting and complete lawyer view on the subject. -
The Apple of the year
I know we are talking about .Net here, but I am always excited every year at the same date awaiting like many the annual Steve Jobs keynote.
Yes I am still an Apple big fan, since ... 1978 (Apple II) !
And yes I believe this kind of excitment and madness surrounding the San Francisco MacWorld Expo is good for our business.
I would like to see Bill Gates doing the same. You should have a look at the number of mac rumors sites, it's really good fun.
And as usual, Steve will surprise everybody by something totally unexpected, last big one was the Ipod. Today everybody talk about a mini Ipod, others about a kind of Apple Tivo box.
I also like the fact that Apple is still there (Macintosh is now almost 20 years old), still shaking the industry by an innovative approach. Sure they don't create a mass market all the time but the Ipod is surely a success.
So now only few hours to wait and see what Steve Jobs has in his hat this year ;-)
