January 2005 - Posts

WS-MetadataExchange on ASMX

Christian posted a link to a starting-point implementation of WS-MetadataExchange that's been put on top of ASMX web services through Soap Extensions. Read no further if you already know what that means. Web services are all Read More

Smile! You're on camera...

Interesting one from The Inquirer about Logica CMG doing work with facial recognition in a shopping centre - some interesting implications in there I'd think. Read More

Shipping icon files in VS 2005

There's a post here about the icons that ship with VS2005 for re-use in your own applications. This is a small thing but I think it's a really good thing. Most software companies don't have any kind of artist to draw this kind Read More

Avalon Property Triggers

This posting by Joe Marini explains a bit about how "property triggers" work in Avalon. I'd not seen this stuff before - this looks like a really elegant way of replacing a tonne of UI code with a bunch of declarative Read More

Service Pack 1 of BizTalk Server 2004

The first service pack for BizTalk Server 2004 has been released. It contains a bunch of fixes and the recommendation is that all installations of 2004 install it. There's also the BizTalk Server Adapter Migration Toolkit Read More

NetHousePrices

Like many people in the UK, I've recently registered to use a fantastic service which makes Land Registry house prices available. The service is provided by NetHousePrices and, essentially, it allows you to type in the name of Read More

TaskMan in Avalon

I really like this little sample application that Karsten Januszewski has built for this MSDN Article up at the Longhorn developer centre. The thing I like about is that I haven't seen a lot of code samples where people start Read More

Windows Internals - 4th Edition

It's very obviously an advertisement but I got my new edition of "Microsoft Windows Internals" in the post today and it's sitting on my table trying to trick me into opening it up and reading it. I can't think of many Read More

Films, films, films.

I've seen some cracking films just lately. 2005 (or at least the start of it) looks like it's going to be a really good year - not sure what's going on in the world of film makers that's caused January 2005 to be so strong but it's fantastic.So far, Read More

Digital Blackbelt Developer Security Webcasts

There's a cracking series of Webcasts being put together and delivered around looking at security topics from the developer's perspective. The series is called the "Digital Blackbelt Series" - they kick off in Read More

Unmanaged programming in Avalon/WinFX?

I found this thread over on the Longhorn developer centre to be an interesting one. If you follow it through you'll see the question that's being asked is a really good one in that it's asking where do you go for "unmanaged" Read More

Smart Client Architecture Guide

I hadn't seen this architecture guide before today so I thought that I'd mention it. Those busy chaps over at MSDN Patterns & Practices have put together an entire architecture guide for Smart Client applications. Here's Read More

Designing Class Libraries on MSDN

I just came across an area of the MSDN site that I'd never seen before. The hyperlink is here - the section is about designing .NET class libraries and there's a wealth of good information up there about design principles, naming Read More

Apple's New Kit

So the MacWorld conference delivered what the rumour mill said it was going to deliver. A $499 computer (now, that should be around £250 but of course it'll be around £500 which is more like $1000 - quite how we get Read More

Marcus is blogging

My team at Microsoft has grown a little lately with a couple of new members including Mr Mobile himself, Marcus Perryman who has a new blog site over here at MSDN. If you're interested in mobile development then Marcus is your Read More

Updated WSE 2.0 Tracing Utility

After a bit of prompting (from here) I've updated my WSE 2.0 Tracing Utility so that it works ok with WSE 2.0 Service Pack 2. The way in which I've done it is pretty hacky but seems to work. Essentially, I have a tracing filter Read More

WTF's

I was catching up on my Daily WTF's today and there's some really cool ones up there. This is the first one, a great use of IF/ELSE and here's the second one which really made me laugh just because it's daft.   Read More

.NET Sequential Disk Access Performance

Whilst looking at my last post I spotted a new report here which looks at performing sequential file access with C# and the .NET FileStream class. Essentially, the report shows that a standard C# program using FileStream can Read More

Herb Sutter on Concurrent Programming

Herb Sutter (C++ Guru of The Week chap and author of a number of top-notch and sometimes mind-bending C++ books) has written a nice article over here on the growing importance of concurrent programming for achieving performance Read More