Getting your Message Across

For those of you who have ever had to deal with the 'how to get your message across' part of every presentation's creation process.  Enjoy (thanks to Chris Sells)

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4106&n=3

 

Getting Something for Nothing - Almost

It's not often that you can get something for nothing. And this case is no exception. But when you realize what you do get, it's still a very, very good deal.

The offer is basically as follows:  buy some Microsoft Office Licenses, get a check towards to cost of developing software that utilizes the Office application set.  If this sounds lame to you, then you probably aren't aware of all of the development tools that are available for Office.  Nor all of the uses to which it can be put.

For example, we have one client that uses InfoPath as one of the interfaces into a workflow application.  Users enter data through an InfoPath form.  The data is transformed into an XML document which is then submitted to the workflow through a web service.  And that is just one application.  The Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) toolkit is surprisingly powerful.  If your user base is familiar with Office, then the ability to extend Word and Excel to interact with your corporate applications can be quite compelling.

If you want to talk to someone about the possibilities, feel free to drop me a line at bjohnson@objectsharp.com.

 

Changing Gears

First off, I apologise for my relative dearth of recent posts.  At the end of January, I finished off a fairly long contract. And, as yet, I haven't started onto anything new.  Actually, it has been a nice break for me, but for my blog?  Not so much.

Whether you realize it or not, I use the current project that I'm working on as fodder for many of my posts.  The goal of most of my posts is to describe a situation that I have run into, one that I hope is a relatively common one.  For that, I need situations.  No current project, then the bloggable situations are much fewer.

What I have been spending my time on is getting back into ASP.NET.  And what I apparently blocked out of my mind is some of the annoyances associated with data binding on web pages.  Especially the two-way binding necessary to allow web pages to show and update data.  I'm very much looking forward to the improvements in this process that will be forthcoming with Whidbey.

Get your Free Visual Studio Tools for Office custom applications here.

Ok, this is very cool - not often somebody gives you something for free.

Is your company upgrading to Office 2003 between June & July of this year?

Could you envision a customized solution built on top of Office - perhaps using Visual Studio Tools for Office, to solve some business need? If so, not only can we help with that, but Microsoft Canada is willing to foot the bill for the development effort. This is a great risk free way to try out Visual Studio Tools for Office projects - either the current 2003 or 2005 versions.

For more info, drop me an email. bgervin@objectsharp.com

Seems like maps are the next big thing

First there is Google Maps, a masterful example of the power of client-side scripting.

And today, I find out about Blogmaps

http://www.csthota.com/blogmap/

How could I resist?

Dog Food .NET

Here is a list of MS products that either include or are built using the .NET Framework. I was surprised to see how big it is. Thanks to Dan Fernandez @ MS for this list.

  • Windows Server 2003 includes 1.1
  • Sharepoint Team Services requires the .NET Framework
  • Sharepoint Portal Server 2.0 requires 1.1 and written in managed code.
  • Small Business Server 2003 - Remote Web Workplace and the Backup Snap-in use .NET
  • Windows XP Tablet PC Edition - 1.1 is included, and the Tablet API is written in managed code.
  • Windows XP Media Center Edition includes 1.1 and some of the applications are written in managed code.
  • Outlook Business Contact Manager - majority written in .NET
  • SQL Reporting Services - majority written in managed code.
  • Exchange 2003 Outlook Mobile Access is written in managed code using ASP.NET mobile controls
  • BizTalk 2004 - parts are written in managed code
  • Commerce Server 2002 - parts are written in managed code
  • Content Management Server 2002 - parts are written in managed code
  • MSN Messenger Server (Presence server and admin/config tools)
  • Microsoft Business Network written in managed code, requires .NET Framework 1.1
  • MS-CRM – parts are written in managed code
  • SharePoint Portal Server 2003 – Parts written in managed code
  • Speech Server 2004 – Parts written in managed code
  • ASP.NET Web Matrix – Fully written in managed code
  • Visual Studio .NET 2002/3 - parts are written in managed code
  • This one seems obvious......NET Framework 1.0/1.1 - parts are written in managed code.

 

What are you doing for your summer job?

We have a very exciting internship project coming up this summer for a university student, perhaps co-op - but not mandatory.

This high-profile project is to develop a software system to monitor the various systems in a “green” home that is completely off of the power grid. The house is fed by batteries charged by solar and wind (and a backup generator). There are many other systems in place to optimize power usage throughout the house. Although this home is off the grid, it's not off the internet, so the software will have to publish it's information and allow remote access via it's 2-way satellite system. The software will also be developed in .NET, likely using the current whidbey beta.

You are a university student with some combination of electrical engineering and computer science. You are strong “quality-oriented” programmer. You have strong design skills and are good at listening and capturing requirement. The position will be located in southern ontario.

If you are interested, please send your resume to bgervin@Objectsharp.com .

.NET Celebrity Auction

Be a sport and click on this link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5552696499

Then make a generous bid. If you'll win, you'll get an hour (or more) of help from a .NET guru/celebrity (or possibly me). But more, you'll also be helping Tsunami relief efforts.

The top bid gets to pick their consultant. Then next, and so on and so on. If you are in southern Ontario, and you get me, I'll make it up to you by coming to your office - for a whole day, hang out, and bring donuts. What will I do? I can tell you everything I know about Visual Studio Team System (breaking all kinds of NDA rules, etc.), try to convince you to use data sets, do some code reviews, help debug something nasty, defrag your hard drive, organize your mp3's, tell you what DataGrid girl is really like, whatever.

I'm visiting Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal over the next 3 months so if you live/work near there, my offer stands, pending my schedule. I'll also be in Orlando possibly in June (for TechEd), LA in Sept (for PDC), and Chicago in August, so ditto on those as well.

For more info on how it all works....

http://www.stephenforte.net/owdasblog/#a61b646aa-ca24-47ef-b013-012bf852f79d

And finally, special thanks to the other RD's who are volunteering their time (especially all those fellow Canadians). Last but not least, special thanks to Stephen Forte and Julia Lerman for organizing this.

So it has started - the auction for Aceh Aid, that is

The 10-day eBay auction for 30 world-famous .NET developers got under way less than half-an-hour ago.  Check out the auction at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5552696499

Standards at the speed of thought

I've had to deal with comment spam in the ObjectSharp blogs over the past few days.  Through a search of Google, found a simple, trigger-based solution for .Text (the engine that we use) that I suspect will deal with the majority of the spam that was coming through.  But, as explained in this post, Google is modifying their ranking engine to pay attention to a newly created attribute on the anchor tag that will basically mitigate the benefit of comment spam, that being to artificially raise the Google rank for the offending links.  What impressed me is the speed with which this innovation was implemented, not only by Google but by the list of blog hosts and competitive search engines at MSN and Yahoo.  Whoa. Would that other standards could work that way.