February 2007 - Posts

posted Tuesday, February 27, 2007 8:58 AM by mtaulty :: 1 Comments

Should you use Workflow Foundation?

Just highlighting Paul's great post that he wrote the other week about "What to use Workflow Foundation for". Here's the link. I've met customers that are using Workflow because it's new and cool. I've met customers that are using Workflow in order to Read More
posted Monday, February 26, 2007 3:16 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

OpenID

Since the OpenID announcement I've had a few goes at trying to work out what OpenID is. I've been up to the website and I've had a read of the spec a couple of times and each time I just zone out. I simply find that I can't read that spec. How come? Read More
posted Monday, February 26, 2007 2:12 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

DevWeek (not MIX)

I'm travelling down this afternoon and will be there until Thursday PM if anyone fancies a chat (drop me a mail). DevWeek's a great conference in a great location (I like the building a lot :-)) and, this year, it's good to see that the main conference Read More
posted Friday, February 23, 2007 4:50 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

3D Video Player in WPF at ContentPresenter.com

I've called out ContentPresenter before and they've just published a great new video on how to build a 3D video player in WPF. This is using the bits that got posted to CodePlex that allow you to take arbitrary WPF content and use it in a 3D scene, Read More
posted Thursday, February 22, 2007 7:16 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Vista Desktop Backgrounds - "Runners Up"

Some cracking desktop backgrounds up here; http://www.flickr.com/photos/darwishh/sets/72157594510047657/detail/?page=1 Read More
posted Thursday, February 22, 2007 7:05 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

C# V3.0 and Dynamic Casting?

In the February CTP of "Orcas" it looks like when you have a piece of code like; static void Main(string[] args) { var v = new { FirstName="Mike", LastName="Taulty" }; } static void Foo(object o) { var w = new { FirstName="", Read More
posted Thursday, February 22, 2007 5:10 AM by mtaulty :: 1 Comments

Rightmove and Virtual Earth

Anyone who knows me will know that I've spent far too long pondering over the state of the UK property market and one of the sites that I use a lot (and I mean a lot) is Rightmove Martin did a cracking job of talking about Windows Live at yesterday's Read More
posted Monday, February 19, 2007 6:55 AM by mtaulty :: 1 Comments

Using Desktops to Switch Presentation/Demo

Quite often when you're showing stuff to people you've got the 1 laptop and you've got some slides that you want to show and some demo bits and it's a bit painful switching between the 2 (minimising PowerPoint and so on). I wrote a little bit of code Read More
posted Friday, February 16, 2007 4:05 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Can C# V3.0 Please Have the VB9 XML Syntax?

Here's my online petition. I really like the new VB9 syntax for dealing with XElement and friends in order to construct an XML document. Can we please have that in C# V3.0 as well? :-) Anyone agree? Here's some C# that creates some XML (meant to be Read More
posted Friday, February 16, 2007 2:35 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Desktops and the DWM

For some reason, the idea of multiple desktops was bubbling around in my head this morning and I suddenly thought "I wonder how this works with the DWM". There's a post here that explains it; http://blogs.msdn.com/cjacks/archive/2006/11/09/a-desktop-of-your-own.aspx  Read More
posted Friday, February 16, 2007 2:16 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Grouping in LINQ

Each time I come to it, I find grouping in LINQ a bit odd so I thought I'd drop some code onto this page to try and help me remember it next time around. Using the May CTP, if I've got data; var cars = new[] { new { Make="BMW", Model="1Series", Read More
posted Thursday, February 15, 2007 4:40 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

UK Architect Insight Conference

I mentioned this back in November but the UK Architect Insight Conference is getting nearer. Taken from the official site; You’ll be able to engage in the technology debate with thought-provoking in-depth sessions from customer and partner architects Read More
posted Wednesday, February 14, 2007 4:49 PM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Nice Movie Playing XBAP

Here - don't know if there's an English language version of this. When I first played a movie with this I got a weird message from the Firewall asking me if I wanted to unblock a port which I found a bit weird for an XBAP running in its sandbox. Read More
posted Wednesday, February 14, 2007 4:34 PM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Groove - Web 3.0 :-)

Recently, I've been running Groove in an attempt to co-ordinate with other (internal and external) team members who are working on our MSDN Roadshow. My only comment about Groove is why on Earth haven't I been using this before? I spend a lot of Read More
posted Wednesday, February 14, 2007 4:30 PM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Vista and UAC

It looks like UAC in Vista is coming under more and more scrutiny. I've seen a lot of links to this post which is technically interesting but doesn't really seem to alter how I was thinking about UAC (i.e. it's an explanation of what I thought I Read More
posted Wednesday, February 14, 2007 4:11 PM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

NxtGenUG Fest07

Those chaps over at the NxtGenUG are having a "Fest" on the Microsoft Campus in Reading on the 23rd May. Pop on over here to sign up. From the site; Join NxtGenUG on the 23rd May 2007 for a unique one day event featuring TOP european speakers (we Read More
posted Monday, February 12, 2007 8:49 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

"Workflow Designer"

Hadn't seen this one before - interesting :-) Read More
posted Monday, February 12, 2007 4:00 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

UK MSDN Roadshow - Resources

This is a post that I'll update to link to the resources from the UK MSDN Roadshow with individual links to the session resources. The slide-decks will be available from the link below (should be available from the first delivery); http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/events/postevents.aspx Read More
posted Monday, February 12, 2007 3:54 AM by mtaulty :: 2 Comments

UK MSDN Roadshow - "Advances for Data in VS 'Orcas'" Session Resources"

This is a list of online resources to go hand in hand with the session that I'm delivering for the UK MSDN Roadshow. Web Sites LINQ Project on MSDN ADO.NET v.Next on MSDN Downloads LINQ May CTP (note - later CTP's are available) ADO.NET v.Next August Read More
posted Wednesday, February 07, 2007 4:31 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Online Banking and SMS

Something I've been wondering for quite a while. Why don't online banks let you set up a rule on your account such that if a transaction over a certain amount is made then you get an SMS notification telling you about it? That way, you'd potentially spot Read More
posted Sunday, February 04, 2007 2:18 PM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

"WPF/E" February CTP and Vista

Just a little thing that has hit me with the Feb CTP of "WPF/E" when installed in IE7 on Vista. I don't think happens to everybody but I've found that the plug-in detection doesn't work for me unless I run IE as elevated which, clearly, isn't how it's Read More
posted Sunday, February 04, 2007 1:34 PM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Machines are taking over

I use www.thetrainline.com to book my train tickets. It works well, finds me cheap trains, orders tickets, delivers them to a machine on the platform. Over the last few days they seem to have a problem in that I've been trying to book tickets and something Read More
posted Sunday, February 04, 2007 8:56 AM by mtaulty :: 2 Comments

Playing with DLINQ and Stored Procedures

I've been playing a bit with DLINQ generally and with stored procedure execution a little bit. If I'm using something like Northwind and its customer table then I create a stored procedure such as; create procedure dbo.GetCustomersByCountry@country nvarchar(30)asset Read More
posted Friday, February 02, 2007 3:22 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

New Expression Blend and Design Betas

Karsten's post has details on getting the new Expression Design and Blend betas. See here I need to get these as I ran up Expression Design for some people the other week only to find that it had expired on me. Read More
posted Friday, February 02, 2007 1:04 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

Linq needs a T-Shirt

I think LINQ needs a T-Shirt highlighting the IEnumerable/IQueryable "thing". Here's the front; and here's the back (yes, I know I can't draw and, yes, I know it's technically not quite correct but you get the idea); Read More
posted Friday, February 02, 2007 12:43 AM by mtaulty :: 1 Comments

Feb "WPF/E" CTP Is Available

From here Once you've got the player, try this sample (language is a bit of a blocker but you'll get the idea). Read More
posted Thursday, February 01, 2007 3:34 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

WPF Bits

A couple of WPF bits that I missed. ITN (UK News) has a new Video Player for their News stories available from http://www.itn.co.uk/vista/ - there's a WPF Application (deployed by ClickOnce! Hooray!!!) which has some resizable video and there's also Read More
posted Thursday, February 01, 2007 2:38 AM by mtaulty :: 0 Comments

"WPF/E" Updated CTP

Tim Sneath has a post over here about a bit of a slip-up with the "WPF/E" CTP which means that it stopped working. Fortunately, all is not lost in that you can follow the link on Tim's post to download a new Windows or Mac runtime and you'll also Read More