Connected Systems Chilled Out Blog

IE8 Beta 2 - Extraction Failure when installing

BizTalk Visionary — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:10:27 GMT

Just wasted a few minutes trying to install the latest and greatest beta of IE8. Kept receiving the very unhelpful message: "Extraction Failed"

And then the penny dropped - simply Run As Administrator!

Technorati Tags: IE8,Install failure,Extraction failed

Introducing Zermatt

BizTalk Visionary — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:17:53 GMT

Nice article by Sebastian Iacomuzzi: Intro to ZZermatt.

Zermatt is a set of .NET Framework classes. It is a framework for implementing claims-based identity in your applications.

When you build claims-aware applications, the user presents an identity to your application as a set of claims. One claim could be the user’s name, another might be an e-mail address. The idea here is that an external identity system is configured to give your application everything it needs to know about the user with each request she makes, along with cryptographic assurance that the identity data you receive comes from a trusted source.

Microsoft announces Zermatt!!

BizTalk Visionary — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:59:10 GMT

“Zermatt” is the codename of a .NET framework that helps developers build claims-aware applications to address challenging application security requirements using a simplified application access model. It is currently in beta, and the first final version is expected towards the end of this year. This framework consists of a comprehensive set of libraries that facilitate the use of "claims" in applications - in Microsoft's words: make them "claims-aware". This greatly simplifies the development of applications that will work within federated environments and the new identity metasystem technology that Microsoft is developing, and will give a push to adoption of the new identity technology.

Download the bits of the Beta of “Zermatt” Developer Identity Framework.

Apple news: iTunes and APP store

BizTalk Visionary — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:40:09 GMT

OK for those who like it first....

The new version of iTunes is ready to download. It includes all the hooks for the new iPhone and version 2.0 software release and of course APP store.

App store is hidden at present but you can get to it by searching for AOL AIM in the store search then 'backing out' to App store. Here you will find all the goodie apps for free download or paid download.

Remember you still need version 2.0 of the software to run these!!

Technorati Tags: iPhone 2.0,iPhone 3G,APP store

Browser Memory Hogs......

BizTalk Visionary — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:08:24 GMT

Have a look at the following investigation by Sam Allen.....

"The author developed a program to snapshot memory usage per process every 3 seconds on Windows. Using this he recorded 3 hours of memory usage for five different browsers under real-world usage scenarios: Safari 3.1, Firefox 3, Flock 1.2 (a browser based on Firefox 2), Opera 9.5, and Internet Explorer 8. A million data points indicate that Firefox 3 has a surprising advantage over the other browsers tested. These are real-world tests and not contrived benchmarks."

Technorati Tags: Firefox,IE,Opera,Flock

Review: SlickEdit

BizTalk Visionary — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:07:51 GMT

SlickEdit is one of the old school editors that has survived the wonder world of the new IDE. Version 13 has just been released and it continues to blur the boundaries between a simple text editor and a fullblown IDE. While there are no visual form designers and other such wizbang graphics, what you get is an editor that you can use for many development tasks, including building, running, and debugging complete applications.

Ten versions down the road, and we now have almost too many features to list, but let's hit a few of the highlights. You get multiple windows and configurable everything, with colour-coding for all the languages your heart could desire. There is also a variety of language-specific indentation, auto-completion, and code prettification functions designed to save you typing while making your code look right. Add in a slick diff and merge tool, integration with loads of source code control systems (Subversion support is new in this release), searching that lets you use regular expressions or skip strings or comments (or limit your searching to strings or comments, for that matter) or what ever. You get a C-based macro language and just about any keyboard shortcut man (or woman) can imagine. And then there is built-in class and definition browsers making it super-easy and super-fast to jump to parts of your code. So overall SlickEdit is very fast; if you're used to waiting for an IDE to churn, you'll be pleasantly surprised with the responsiveness here.

From there, move on to the actual coding stuff. For example, you can open up a Visual Studio .NET solution directly in SlickEdit v13, build or rebuilt it, run it, even debug it with a full selection of watches, single-stepping, and other advanced debugging features. If you're working in C++ you also get a whole mess of refactoring features in the editor. Java developers get new support for Java Live Errors and the Hot-Swap Debugger (essentially edit and continue for Java), plus the ability to run JUnit tests from within the editor. The user interface has also been modernized from previous versions, with slicker icons and dockable windows for a more modern feel.

If you want to take the program for a spin, there's a trial available for download.

Find it here....

Review: SlickEdit

BizTalk Visionary — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:42:41 GMT

SlickEdit is one of the old school editors that has survived the wonder world of the new IDE. Version 10 has just been released and it continues to blur the boundaries between a simple text editor and a fullblown IDE. While there are no visual form designers and other such wizbang graphics, what you get is an editor that you can use for many development tasks, including building, running, and debugging complete applications.

From there, move on to the actual coding stuff. For example, you can open up a Visual Studio .NET solution directly in SlickEdit v10, build or rebuilt it, run it, even debug it with a full selection of watches, single-stepping, and other advanced debugging features. If you're working in C++ you also get a whole mess of refactoring features in the editor. Java developers get new support for Java Live Errors and the Hot-Swap Debugger (essentially edit and continue for Java), plus the ability to run JUnit tests from within the editor. The user interface has also been modernized from v9, with slicker icons and dockable windows for a more modern feel.

If you want to take the program for a spin, there's a 15-day trial available for download.

Find it here....

SharePoint Log on nags

BizTalk Visionary — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:43:35 GMT

If you keep getting nagged for log ons when using sharepoint this will solve the problem almost 100% of the time. The trick is to use the Windows managed Stored username and password feature. To access this,

1. Simply go into Control Panel
2. Click User Accounts
3. Go into Managed Passwords and click Add
4. Type the URL of the server (without HTTP), for example portal.us.com
5. Enter your credentials and click Ok

Now anytime Windows attempts to access ANYTHING on this server it will use the use those credentials and your prompting issue should go away.

The downside to this is if you change your password, you need to remember to come change it here.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MOSS 2007,Vista Tips

O2 Plays fair in the UK with iPhone 3G

BizTalk Visionary — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:29:28 GMT

O2 remains the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in the UK for iPhone 3G. In keeping with Steve Jobs announcement the cost has been kept right as well.

O2 offers the following four tariffs for iPhone 3G:

£30/month - 8GB iPhone £99 - 16GB iPhone £159 - 75 Minutes - 125 Texts - Unlimited Data & WiFi - 18 month contract
£35/month - 8GB iPhone £99 - 16GB iPhone £159 - 600 Minutes - 500 Texts - Unlimited Data & WiFi - 18 month contract
£45/month - 8GB iPhone Free - 16GB iPhone £59 - 1200 Minutes - 500 Texts - Unlimited Data & WiFi - 18 month contract
£75/month - 8GB iPhone Free - 16GB iPhone Free - 3000 Minutes - 500 Texts - Unlimited Data & WiFi - 18 month contract

O2 is also offering existing iPhone customers the chance to simply renew their contract rather than having to pay it off coupled with a chance to upgrade their phone...

Finally O2 have announced a Pay and Go option as well!!!

Technorati Tags: Apple,iPhone

Microsoft Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool

BizTalk Visionary — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:55:13 GMT

As we use more and more virtual machines, particularly for development, there is a risk because they don't get updated by pushing critical security or virus updates and then they are fired up six months later we can have a security problem.

Microsoft has a solution for their virtual machine environment adding to the virtual machine management tooling - the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool. This turns on your VMs, updates them and shuts them down automatically. You can find information about getting on the Beta at the link below.

Get it here

Technorati Tags: Virtual Machines,System Centre

APPLE WWDC 2008

BizTalk Visionary — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:24:12 GMT

Technorati Tags: iPhone 3G,iPhone software

Steve Jobs announces the following:

IPhone 3G

IPhone price cut

IPhone 2 software (also for Ipod Toch)

mobileMe

ans 'snow leopard' OSX

Just for starters.....

BBC on-demand joins BT Replay

BizTalk Visionary — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:03:52 GMT

After a period of being 'free' BBC content has joined Channel 4 as part of the BT Replay package. Not unexpected and whilst the content is free on iPlayer the quality is much better. Now all we need is to add in ITV.

Technorati Tags: BT Replay,BBC,iPLayer

BT Broadband Anywhere Mobile Usage

BizTalk Visionary — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:43:47 GMT

This question has vexed the forums but the answer is very simple:

1. Make sure you have joined BT's on-line billing with your main phone/broadband account

2. Look up the direct debit reference number at your bank for your new BT Mobile account (starts GB********)

3. Go to you BT account and add account

4. Use the reference number and your Mobile number and there you have it -usage monitoring

Note: the monitoring lags by about 24 hours so beware!

Technorati Tags: BT Vision,BT Boradband,BT Anywhere

Test Post

BizTalk Visionary — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:39:04 GMT

Technorati Profile

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions User Guide, Version 1.1

BizTalk Visionary — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:57:54 GMT

This is the User Guide, Samples and Walkthroughs for the tools for developing custom SharePoint applications with the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, version 1.1 (VSeWSS 1.1). The user guide has sections:

Starting out in SharePoint Development
Walkthrough of the VSeWSS User Interface including the WSP View
The Team Site Project
The Blank Site Project
The List Definition Project
The Web Part Project
The Workflow Projects
Project Item Templates
Best Practices with VSeWSS
Changes from 1.0 to 1.1

Get it here!!!

Technorati Tags: MOSS 2007,Office Dev,WSS 3.0,VS2005 Extensions,WSS 3.0 Tools

Develop for SharePoint on Vista

BizTalk Visionary — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:49:27 GMT

If you are a developer for SharePoint your best friend has been Virtual PC or VMWare. It’s now time to introduce a new friend, Bamboo Nation's SharePointOnVista go here for more info

Technorati Tags: MOSS 2007,Deve on Vista,WSS3.0

Ten Tips for Using SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services

BizTalk Visionary — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:44:00 GMT

Learn ten tips to improve your use of SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services from the SharePoint - Excel Services forum.

Go here to download

Technorati Tags: MOSS 2007,Excel Services

SharePoint Placeholders Explained

BizTalk Visionary — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:23:20 GMT

Thanks to Mike Breeze for this one.

New BizTalk Series poster - BAM

BizTalk Visionary — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:18:27 GMT

Get it here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/7/c/d7c1bc18-8a77-4d94-88f8-217689c71325/BAM%20poster.pdf

Vista Tip: Creating an Elevated Command Prompt

BizTalk Visionary — Sat, 24 May 2008 08:08:30 GMT

In the main UAC has provided a more secure Windows Desktop OS but there are times when this can be very annoying. On of those times is when attempting to run commands from our old friend the DOS prompt. What invariably happens, even though we logged on as an administrator, we get the UAC nag prompt! What need to do is run what is called an Elevated Command Prompt. The following allows you to set on up for future use!

To create an ECP as a shortcut on the desktop:

1. Right-click the desktop, and select New > Shortcut.

2. In the text box of the Create Shortcut dialogue box that appears, type cmd and then click Next.

3. On the following screen, type a name for your shortcut -- I use Elevated Command Prompt. Then click Finish.

4. Right-click on the shortcut you have just created and select Properties.

5. Select the Shortcut tab and click the Advanced button.

6. Check the box titled Run as administrator. (see below) Click OK and then OK again.

We now have our Elevated Command Prompt....

Technorati Tags: Vista Tips,UAC,Elevated Command Prompt