February 2007 Entries
I was asked today if there's a metric for determining whether an business application should use Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) or roll its own workflow plumbing. Here's my extended answer... As far as a metric of qualification, I can't say there is one (or that I have found one). Besides deciding whether or not to use a technology (or any type of plumbing) as an aide for development can't be (and shouldn't be meausered) by a number. It's not the number of lines of code, methods, classes, assemblies, etc. that decide whether or not you should use workflow. It all comes down to...
I've decided to give Soapbox on MSN a try to host some of the videos of Dominic. Check out the first video of many to come on my soapbox: Video: Dominic First Snow Experience The video was taken using our Sony DCR-HC48 MiniDV Camcorder and re-rendered from AVI to MPG-2 using Vegas Movie Studio+DVD. Reason for the re-rendering? Well, the AVI file as 587 MB and Soapbox has a limit of 100MB for uploads, so the file format had to change to accomodate this requirement.
When I first read Scott's post on it, I decided to give ISAPI_Rewrite a try. I've been thinking for a while to re-direct the end-point of my blog from http://lozanotek.com http://www.lozanotek.com to http://blog.lozanotek.com Why? Well, I've always been a fan of subdomains that define a purpose rather than the typical /InsertYourAppNameHere. Technically they're the same, but it's just nice to "package" your web application under it's own subdomain. I mean, come'on, you spent the time working it, why shouldn't it have it's own spot? Remember, when you buy a domain name, you buy *.mydomainnamehere.com not just the www subdomain. I agree...
That's right! It's hard to believe that such an awesome tool it's on version 5.0! Scott has a pretty awesome blog post talking about the new/existing features of Reflector. I'm totally hooked into the .NET protocol handler feature! This is reminiscence of what MSDN has done with the .NET 2.0 documentation through the VirtualPathProvider class. Lutz Roeder, you're the man!
I saw this video last week and it gave me chills...
All I have to say is that I love the time we live in... and better yet, it gets more interested and connected by the second.
Last night's ASP.NET MVP Live Chat was awesome! Thanks to all you that attended. Currently, Microsoft is working on posting the full transcript and answers to their sites. But for the mean time, Ryan Olshan is hosting it over at StrongCoders (Please note this requires registration). Thanks for doing this Ryan! If you have the time, check it out!
By the way, I posted about this chat a while back....
but if you don't recall and are free tonight from 7-8 PM CST (8-9 PM EST, 5-6 PM West Coast Time), come check out our ASP.NET MVP Public Chat! Check out the line-up of MVPs that are ready to answer your ASP.NET questions!
You can join the chat by going to the MSDN Chat Center.
So, I decided to install the Spanish language pack for Vista to see the OS from a different point of view. All I have to say is that definitely different. The thing that first took me by surprized is the Recycle Bin (ó en Español Papelera de reciclaje): Also, check out the Windows Start Menu: Notice in the start menu how some programs are configured for internationalization while others are not.Yeah, I know, I'm too much of a geek... ;-)
PluralSight's own Fritz Onion will hosting 8 ASP.NET webcasts next week. If you're interested in checkin them out, you can register here.
So, I was playing around with Outlook 2007 last night and noticed that the calendar feature of program supported the publishing of calendars to My Office Online. Pretty interesting feature, I must say.
Currently, I'm using Google Calendar for keeping track of my scheduled events (private & personal) and I have publushed it for people to see. It works pretty good and I've been happy with thus far. The thing that got me interested with Office Online is the fact that it offers a web interface and that I can use Outlook as a Windows client (that's one feature that I would like...
I really like Vista, but I have to admit that this new Mac commercial is pretty funny. Those of you that have experienced the User Account Control (UAC) feature of Vista will appreciate it. Don't get me wrong, the UAC is a great way to protect your PC and the apps you build, but when you're doing development on Vista, it gets a little annoying.
ScottGu has blogged about the new features of the next version of Visual Studio (codename Orcas). Right now if you can get access to the bits (they're available through MSDN) you can start playing with it. I'm looking forward to see what kind of bult-in support they have for LINQ (released with .NET Framework v3.5). The web (CSS, Multi-Target .NET Frameworks, JavaScript & Ajax) support sounds pretty cool too. I will make another post as soon as I get a chance to play with the bits.
Looks like MS has declared war on Apple by confirming that they're working on a Zune phone. As I previously mentioned, I now own a Zune and I'm pretty happy with it. Scott Watermasysk has a pretty funny idea about a commercial for the Zune Phone if they release before the iPhone (yes, it's always a race). If you have the time, check it out. Now, if MS would only release an API for the Zune...now, that would be sweet!
Last night, we had the privelege of having Billy Hollis present about Smart Client design at our monthly UG meeting. We were able to book Billy through our membership with INETA. The presentation was pretty good since he covered alot of spects of smart client design, development and deployment. The crowd was somewhat interactive and over all had a good time. Thanks Billy for talking to our group!
I figured that I should share this information for those of you out there running Vista as your base OS. This way you won't have the same fun as I did trying to get things back in working order. So, I pediorically run Disk Cleanup Tool on my system to clean up all of the files that Windows decides to create as it runs. While looking through the list of cleanup items, I noticed an item called Hibernation File Cleaner with a size of 1.99 GB! (This is the actual size of your hibernation file used by Windows when you put your system under hibernation). My first impression...
Have you ever wondered what happends to the sporting event (Super Bowl, NBA Finals, World Series, etc.) merchandise of the "non-winning" (loser sounds so harsh!) team? Well, my brother Jon pointed out this article in the NY Times regarding the fate of these collector items. After reading the article, I don't know what to think...it was this paragraph shocked me the most: By order of the National Football League, those items are never to appear on television or on eBay. They are never even to be seen on American soil. ... This way, the N.F.L. can help one of its charities...
I'm proud to announce that I will helping out on the first ASP.NET MVP Live Chat on Feb 16th, 2007 from 8:00 - 9:00 PM EST! If you have any questions, regarding ASP.NET development, come and join the free live chat! Check out the info below (from community.strongcoders.com) Join the Strong Coders Community, Scott Guthrie, General Manager, Microsoft Developer Division, and Microsoft MVPs for the continuation of the 1st MVP Live Chat on Friday, February 16, 2007 from 8:00pm-9:00pm EST. Get your tough questions answered by experts. No question is too hard. The chat will take place on MSDN Chats. See details...
On Wednesday, I headed up north to help out at the Minneapolis Vista Launch key city event (KCE). One of my tasks was to help people by answering questions, showing them demos at the "Vista Trial Area." Surprisingly, I was also able to answer a couple of development related questions in regards to WPF, Gadgets and running Visual Studio on Vista. Another nice thing about the event is that I got to talk and hang out with Jeff, Mike and Farhan. Also, I made a new MVP friend with Bill Smith (Windows 2003 MVP and a Mac guy!!). The cool...