April 2005 Entries
Do you know Web Matrix, the good tool for ASP.NET
developers? It's on the last days of its life unfortunately... with the release
of Visual Web
Developer Express 2005 it will be replaced.
I know that nostalgic people and Web Matrix lovers will be sad to listen this
news, but it's the normal step of the evolution on ASP.NET development. Visual
Web Developer 2005 it's more powerful than Web Matrix, you can use it without
using IIS for testing purposes and all the environment is more powerful.
Web Matrix was undoubtely a great tool, but the future is
here...
Carlos Segura is making a nice application for Pocket PC, called Sharepoint List Explorer, that essentially permits you to list the content of some lists of a Sharepoint server and update it each every N minutes.This application uses the Sharepoint webservices and it's quite simple, but shows how to work with a Sharepoint site from a Pocket PC. It needs the user credentials and the direction of the web service to use and shows all lists available and later it shows the content of the list selected in a datagrid: You can also view the web service response via the...
Today 've passed my first Microsoft Business Solutions MCP Exam, Microsoft Navision Development (Development II with the future nomination). Hurra! The exam was not so easy, questions sometimes was hard to understand and the arguments covered are a lot. Unfortunately, there's not too much informations regarding MBS exams on the net so I want to leave some feedbacks for people that will take this exam in the future:You've to focus your study on:Methodology: lots of questions are about development methodology, its phases, how to organize projects, documents that you've to do with the customers and during the development etc. (lots...
In these days all .NET developers are running to test the new Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and the stability of the platform (and the Framework too) are encouraging people to start deploy real application with the new .NET 2.0. The just announced Go Live license is another step on encouraging this but... are you really ready to deploy applications with the new .NET 2.0? I mean production applications, ready to go on the customer side NOW. I'm curious to know this... if you'll start a project in these days (web application or windows form application, no matters) what .NET...
Conrad Agramont today has written a post for a hosting feature request for SQL Server 2005, essentially about web administration of a SQL Server.I want to mention the post because it's exactly what I think and what I was talking about at the last WPC (I'm glad to see that there's something that thinks exactly like me ): if you need to remotely administer your SQL Server via web, you need that the SQL Server is exposed to the Internet and so you can use tools such as SQL Web Data Administrator or ASP.NET Enterprise Manager (a great open source...
Silicon
Walley Watcher today reports a log about browser's usage on their
site and they note that a few visitors are using a browser identified as
"Google 0.X". What is this? A beta test for Google Browser (as rumours
are saying)?
Mmm... I don't think so... I think that it's more something like a Google Bot
that scan the sites to update the engine, or something similar. I don't think
that a Google Browser is on the air and expecially that it's so tagged (easily
revealed as Google 0.X by a logger). However, it's a fascinating discover!
This is the news that I was waiting for...
How many of you have tryed on the past to install a Linux distribution under
Virtual PC? I'm one of this and with the most part of Linux releases
the installation under Virtual PC was a disaster (I'm actually using Linux
virtual machines with VMWare).
Now seems that Microsoft (with the voice of
Steve Ballmer) has promised to add Linux support (for the first time in one of
its products) because users need to manage heterogeneous networks (wow, all this
time to understand this? ). So, Virtual Server 2005, maybe
from...
Today I've found a new project started on GotDotNet that could solve
one of the task I've too often to do during deployment of applications: the
database setup.
Too many times your application needs to run a SQL Script to setup a database
when installed, but unfortunately there is no simple way to run a SQL script
from .NET. SQLScript.NET
helps you to do this task... it provides a simple class library to run SQL
Scripts. Sounds cool...
The project is only on an Alpha stage but I hope that it will be improved
soon (maybe with a MSI Installer sample...
When lots of time ago Microsoft was out with the news that the new Visual
Basic .NET 2005 will not have Refactoring features, all the VB.NET lovers was
terrible hurted. Why this choice? Why VB.NET can't have a good refactoring tool?
Lots of posts against this choice were out, on blogs, on newsgroups and also
on the Microsoft's Feedback center (personally, I wrote a lot about this choice
that for me was a declassification of VB.NET respect to C#). But today we can
see a little light...
Corrado
Cavalli on our User Group is saying us that Microsoft (to satisfy...
An interesting news for Sharepoint developers... Keith Richie has
finally release his Sharepoint
User Utility 2.1.
The purpose of the SharePoint User Utilities
(WSSUserUtil and SPSUserUtil) is to assist SharePoint
administrators with performing user maintenance activities for SharePoint
Products and Technologies (which includes Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and
SharePoint Portal Server 2003).
Some point of interest:
100% Full Fidelity User Migrations using the new MigrateUser()
APIs;
Update feature to synchronize existing SharePoint user Display Name and
Email Address with current values in Active Directory, or values in mapping
file;
Rich XML export of...
A new interesting project is starting in these days: Sharepoint
Explorer.
Sharepoint Explorer
will allow the developers to administer and explore a Sharepoint site from
Visual Studio .NET, essentially like actually Server or Solution
Explorers works now on VS.
According to
the project documentation and ambitions, the developer will be able to browse
the whole portal through a tree structure (like the actual Windows
Explorer), and view webparts, properties, etc. for each Sharepoint site. By
doing a right click on a site or webpart you will be able to view it in the
Visual Studio browser or IE. There would also be a limited amount of...
Sometimes I'm surprised to see some reactions of the IT world around some
good things that a big company like Microsoft is doing to satisfy the community
desires.
Slashdot today reports a post
about the release of the new Beta 2 for
Visual Studio .NET 2005 and the new Go Live
License, that essentially permits you to distribute the products of
your work with the new VS2005. Ok, everyone of us knows that Slashdot is
essentially made by anti-Microsoft people, but saying that Microsoft wants to
earn money by doing this and that Microsoft will be responsible to all the
consequence...
Observing the data that comes out from ProcessExplorer for the previous post, I've quicly observed another fact: Firefox is more memory consuming than Internet Explorer, and the difference is not so little...These are the result (just opened Firefox and IE without loading pages):I think that the gap could be that IE is kernel-integrated (it use some system DLL in order to work), but surely it's curious... IE is not so bad!
Mark Russinovich has written an interesting post about managed applications at the client side. He essentially observed that the same application (Notepad) written in native language is more performant that the version written in managed code (more memory consume).I'm not too much shocked about this... certainly I'm not a CLR expert, but I can imagine that a managed application has a considerable startup overhead due to the runtime setup (the CLR environment).Saying that .NET applications are not the best choice for a big client side application is not the truth, the CLR environment has lots of advantages that a new generation code must...
This is the news that lot of us was waiting for and today it's reality: the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 is now available to download (download available for the moment only for MSDN Subscribers).
Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 is available with the following tree:
Visual Source Safe 2005 Beta 2 (English)
Visual Studio 2005 Standard Beta 2 (English)
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition Test Load Agent Beta 2 (English)
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 2 (English)
Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Beta 2 (English)
Obviously, I think that in these days the download will be quite impossible...
Today I've discovered the great Safari Theme for Firefox by Ran Aroussi and obviously I've decided to download the .jar and to install it.The installation was ok, but when was the time to restart Firefox to apply the new setting.... crash!!! Firefox was unable to restart for a missing component and the browser screen was totally white and unusable. So... what to do? Uninstall Firefox and restart with a fresh installation? No no no, remember that this is Firefox! So, I've opened the folder where Firefox stores all the user settings (on my system C:\Documents and Settings\Stefano\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.o3g) and I've opened the...
If you're a virtualization lover, there's a tool out that you can't miss:
Virtual
Server Deployment Manager 1.3.0 (VSDM).
The Virtual Server Deployment
Manager Tools provides a streamlined way to manage and deploy Virtual
Machines. Using this tool, regular users (not just administrators) will be able
to create and manage their own machines, without impacting other users'
machines.
The original Virtual Server administration is very powerful but also
very complex to use, expecially for a regular user (not acquainted with
administration processes) and therefore suitable to mistakes. One of the most
critical mistakes this infra-structure provides support to avoid...
Interesting discover today from Evan
Williams, a Google employee (for Blogger): Gmail is testing
a new feature for all its users, called Web Clips,
which displays little headlines above your inbox or message via feeds (something
like an integrated feed reader on the mailbox).
Here you can see a screenshot of this feature (click for zooming):
Sounds interesting...
Microsoft has released a public beta of a tool that seems really interesting for a server administrator, Microsoft Data Protection Manager (DPM).Data Protection Manager (DPM) is a server software application that optimizes disk-based backup and recovery of Windows Servers (RAID support, replication validation and fix-up, recovery features etc.).Data Protection Manager will be available for sale in the second half of 2005 (this Beta expires 270 days after installation).
Just discovered now that the famous Cassini Web Server (a
little web server made in C# used expecially for testing purposes without the need for Internet Information
Server to be installed on a development machine) was ported to a new VB.NET
version.
The new project is called xNetServer
and it adds additional functionality to the original project, such as:
XML file to set all security and configuration settings;
W3C Format Access logging to write connection data to disk;
Enhanced Disk Eventlog debugging (debugging Server errors or .NET handling
errors);
Built into Windows...
Today someone leaves me a feedback and say me that I'm in love with Google... No, Google is not my love, but I love their creation and their continuous movements.What for today? Have you seen your Gmail? Now the Gmail interface is available in many languages, not only English as usual. To switch to a new language, you've to simply click the "Settings" button and choose from the select-box that appears you.Why not love this?
I've updated some days ago my MSN to the new version 7 (maybe I'm one of the last to have done this upgrade but I'm not a big user of MSN) and this evening, after an entire day of work outside my office, I've decided to play with it (and with my contacts, obviously ).During the conversations, a thinks comes in my mind: why Google don't launch an Instant Messaging service? I think that with the growth of all its last services (Google Maps, SMS, Google Mobile etc.) the giant Google is ready to launch a service like this.Ok, I...
Robert McLaws has written a simple but useful tool (called Remote
Desktop Assistant) that helps you to manage your Remote Desktop
connections.
Actually, removing entries from the Remote Desktop computer box in the
Windows Remote Desktop Connection client is not so simple and requires a
registry manual modification. With this little tool all is automatic...
A little consideration: sometimes it's really curious to see how things so
easy to do are forgotten by Microsoft developers. I hope that on the future
someone will spend 20 minutes of his time to add this feature on the Remote
Desktop client program.
I've see this post on
Robert Scoble's blog and on it there's something that sounds strange for
me: Gmail isn't scalable???
Are you sure Robert that the biggest email system around, based on thousand
servers around the world, with the quickest interface I've ever seen on an email
system with these dimensions, isn't scalable? I'm not so sure...
Gmail at the moment is the number one email system for quality (and for
dimension too, but this is not the point in exam) and for responsiveness, and
seeing that Google is continuously sending out a lot of
invites while increasing storage at the same...
The last Microsoft's attention to the software architect world (conference, articles etc.) seems to have a point of convergence: Microsoft has announced the creation of the Microsoft Certified Architect Program.Seems that this program will be a high level certification and will be done in a new manner respect to the actual MS certifications:The architecture candidate process will consists of a written submission and board examinations.Only about a quarter of the emphasis of a candidate's knowledge will be on Microsoft-related architecture technologies; the rest will relate to general architecture principles and best practices that aren't Microsoft specific.The estimated completion of the program could take...
Maurice Prather has released his new tool designed for use in RSS aggregators, the BlogExtension Plug-in for Windows® SharePoint® Services.This tool is designed for use by RSS aggregators that support IBlogExtension (such as intraVnew, RSSBandit, SharpReader, NewsGator , etc.).Two plug-in type are included:Content plug-in: Publish the entire contents of an RSS item to a SharePoint list. The item's <title> and <description> fields can be inserted into two columns which represent title and description. This plug-in is perfect for authoring posts on a SharePoint blog.Link plug-in: Publish the <title> and <link> information of an RSS item to a SharePoint list. This...
Google some days ago promised that rapidly all Gmail users will have their
mailbox capacity increased to 2 Gb, but at the moment seems that
Gmail is on a continuous growth (about 3,5 Mb per day).
Will have an infinite mailbox??
USB Pens are one of the most used types of portable media at the moment and I think that everyone of us have at least one of this toys with you every day (I use an usb pen every day to take files and documents from home to office and vice-versa or when I'm out for work).
If you're an XP user, now Microsof has released a little tool that can be useful for you: the Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager.
You can use this application to backup and restore presentation, pictures, songs and applications from and to USB Flash Drive...
Google today is out with a new
features... they have integrated Keyhole into Google Maps and
Google Local.
Now you can simply click on the "Satellite" link and it shows
you the actual satellite imagery of whatever you are looking at.
Wonderful...
HERE
is Microsoft... say HI to Bill!
Mobile-Review.com has an
interesting review of Windows
Mobile 2005 (code name Magneto), the successor of Windows
Mobile 2003.
Magneto is not announced yet, but what is interesting to see is that
Microsoft is moving its steps to the complete integration of Mobile Devices and
Desktops.
The new release of Office Mobile with Magneto seems really
interesting (improved Word and Excel, the introduction of Powerpoint) but I hope
that the final release will have more improved versions of these applications.
As you can see by reading this review, working with the same Office documents
from your Magneto device and your desktop actually requires...
Another cool Linux Live CD is available, this time totally devoted to network administrators...
This new cd is called Network Security Toolkit, a bootable ISO live CD based on Fedora Core 2. The toolkit was designed to provide easy access to best-of-breed Open Source Network Security Applications and should run on most x86 platforms (it contains the Top 75 Security Tools by insecure.org).
This is cool because you can transform your system into a system designed for network traffic analysis, intrusion detection, network packet generation, wireless network monitoring, a virtual system service server or a sophisticated network/host scanner all without disturbing or modifying any underlying sub-system...
Today is not the right day to blog, but I've to write some word for a big lost that affects the word today: our Pope is dead and the world has lost one of the great man I've never seen in my life, a man that has signed the human history.We'll always remember you, you will always be in our heart, and thanks to god for sending us a man like you. Happy travel Karol, the paradise has openend its doors to you...
Could Microsoft guys loose the chance for a sign on this 1st of April?
Nooo...
So, here the most revolutionary Microsoft product of this year, Microsoft
Neutrino. What is this?
Neutrino is a tool that is able to index the code in your programs and
generates a PowerPoint presentation from it, differentiated for the
right type of your audience. You don't have to work hard to do a presentation of
your work.
On the other side, if you're the boss of an IT company, you've poor
developers and you need a program that runs exactly how you (and your customer)
want, you can open...
Do you remember last 1st of April, year 2004? Google was out with the news that it will launch soon a new mail service with 1Gb of space. All was thinking that it was a joke but after some days the result was that Gmail was started.
1st of April 2005: Google is here again! Today Georges Harik, Gmail product manager, says Google plans to double Gmail’s 1 GB storage capacity to 2GB. A joke? Reality? I think that Google loves to play with this...
However, when today I've checked my mailbox I've see this:
You are currently using 114 MB (11%) of...